Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

RUSSIAN AVERSION TO INNOVATIONS. 237

innovations which he sought to make in the.culture of their lands.

The people of this country have an aversion for every thing that is not Russian. I often hear it repeated, that they will some day rise from one end of the empire to the other upon the men without a beard, and destroy them all. It is by the beard that the Russians know each other. In the eyes of the peasants, a Russian with a shaved chin is a traitor, who has sold himself to foreigners, and who deserves to share their fate. But what will be the punish- ment inflicted by the survivors iipon the aiithors of these Muscovite Vespers ? All Russia cannot be sent to Siberia. Villages may be transported, but it would be difficult to exile provinces. It is worthy of remark, that this kind of punishment strikes the peasants without hurting them. A Russian recognises his country wherever long winters reign : snow has always the same aspect; the winding-sheet of the earth is every where eqiially white, whether its thickness be six inches or six feet; so that, if they only allow him to re-construct his cabin and his sledge, the Russian finds himself at home to whatever spot he may be exiled. In the deserts of the north it eosts little to make a country. To the man who has never seen any thing but icy plains scattered with stunted trees, every cold and desert land represents his native soil. Besides, the inhabitants of these latitudes arc always inclined to quit the place of their birth.

Scenes of disorder are multiplying in the country: every day I hear of some new crime : but, by the time it is made public, it has already become ancient, which tends to weaken its impressiveness, especially

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SERVILITY OF

as from so many isolated atrocities nothing results to disturb the general repose of the country. As I have already said, tranquillity is maintained among this people by the length and difficulties of communication, and by the secrecy of the government, which perpetuates the evil under the fear of disclosing it. To these causes I may add the blind obedience of the troops, and, above all, the complete ignorance of the country people themselves. But, singular conjunction of facts ! — the latter remedy is at the same time the first cause of the evil: it is, therefore, difficult to see how the nation will i>`et out of the dan-gerous circle in which circumstances have placed it. Hitherto the good and the evil, the danger and the safety, have come to it from the same source.

The reader can form no conception of the manner in which a lord, when taking possession of some newly- accµured domain, is received by his peasants. They exhibit a servility which woiud appear incredible to the people of our country: men, women, and children, all fall on their knees before their new master—all kiss the hands, and sometimes the feet, of the landholder; and, О ! miserable profanation of faith ! — those who are old enough to err, voluntarily confess to him their sins — he being to them the image and the envoy of God, representing both the King of Heaven and the emperor! Such fanaticism in servitude must end in casting an illusion over the mind of him who is its object, especially if he has not long attained the rank which he possesses: the change of fortune thus marked, must so dazzle him as to persuade him that he is not of the same race as those prostrate at his feet —· those whom he sud-

THE PEASANTS.

239

denly finds himself empowered to command. It is no paradox which I put forward, when I maintain that the aristocracy of birth could alone ameliorate the condition of the serfs, and enable them to profit by emancipation through gentle and gradual transitions. Their slavery becomes insupportable under the new men of wealth. Under the old ones, it is hard enough: but these are at least born above them, and also among them, which is a consolation; besides, the habit of authority is as natural to the one party as that of slavery is to the other ; and habit mitigates every thing, mollifying the injustice of the strong, and lightening the yoke of the feeble. But the change of fortunes and conditions produces frightful results in a country subjected to a system of servitude : and yet it is this very change which maintains the duration of the present order of things in Russia, because it conciliates the men who know how to benefit by it — a second example of the remedy being drawn from the source of the evil. Terrible circle, round which revolve all the populations of a vast empire ! This lord, this new deity — what title has he to be adored ? He is adored because he has had enough money and capacity for intrigue to be able to buy the land to which are attached all the men prostrate before him. An upstart appears to me a monster, in a country where the life of the poor depends upon the rich, and where man is the fortune of man; the onward progress of industrious enterprise, and the immovableness of villenage combined in the same society, produce results that are revolting: but the despot loves the upstart — he is his creature ! The position of a new lord is this: yesterday his slave

240SERVILITY OF THE PEASANTS.

was his equal: his industry more or less honest, his flatteries more or less mean, have put it into his power to purchase a certain number of his comrades. To become the beast of burden of an equal is an intolerable evil. It is, however, a result which an impious alliance of arbitrary customs, and liberal, or, to speak more justly, unstable institutions, can bring upon a people. No where else does the man who makes a fortune have his feet kissed by his vanquished rivals. Anomalies the most shocking have become the basis of the Russian constitution.

I may allude, en passant, to a singular confusion of ideas produced in the minds of the people by the system to which they are subjected. Under this system, the individual is intimately connected with the soil, being, indeed, sold with it; but instead of recognising himself as a fixture, and the soil as transferable — in other words, instead of pereeiving that he belongs to this soil, by means of which men dispose of him despotically, he fancies that the soil is his own. In truth, his error of perception is reduced to a mere optical illusion ; for possessor as he imagines himself of the land, yet he does not understand how it can be sold without the sale also of those who inhabit it. Thus, when he changes masters, he does not say that the soil has been sold to a new proprietor ; he considers that it is his own person that has been first sold, and that, over and above the bargain, his land has gone with him — that land which saw him born, and which has supplied him with the means of life. How could liberty be given to men whose acquaintance with social laws is about on a level with that of the trees and plants ?

EXILE OF M. GUIBAL.2-41

M. Guibal — every time that I am authorised to cite a name, I use the permission — M. Guibal, the son of a schoolmaster, was exiled without cause, or at least without explanation, and without being able to guess his crime, into a Siberian village in the environs of Orenburg. Л song, which he composed to beguile his sorrow, was listened to by an inspector, who put it before the eyes of the governor; it attracted the attention of that august ]Dersonage, who sent his aide-de-camp to the exile to inform himself re'·ardin?·· the circumstances of his situation and his

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conduct, and to judge if he was good for any thing. The unfortunate man succeeded in interesting; the aide- de-camp, who, on his return, made a very favourable report, in consecpience of which he was immediately recalled. He has never known the real cause of his misfortune: perhaps it was another song.

Such are the circumstances on which depends the fate of a man in Russia !