A Study of Russia

SOME of the recent books on Russia have reminded us, perhaps more than anything else, that an essentially new art has arisen in modern times, the art of understanding peoples. Literary fashion, to say nothing of literary incapacity, once made foreign countries the stamping-ground of alien prejudice, and the traveling Philistine who succeeded in recording accurately every deviation he witnessed abroad from ways and sights to which he had become accustomed at home thought he had done a permanent service to literature. This faulty method long distinguished the studies that peoples so closely allied as the great branches of the Anglo-Saxon stock made of each other. Emerson gave a fair, manly, and on the whole very sympathetic account of the British long before England could afford to send us a Bryce. The narrowness of Dr. Johnson, who declared that America contained nothing but natural curiosities, is still imitated by the insular tourist who annually makes the round of our large cities. But in the case of Russia, cut off from the rest of the world by barriers of language and custom almost insurmountable, the tarrying of literary justice has been still more marked. The early books on that empire, from Herberstein down almost to Haxthausen, have descriptive but little critical value. Largely the work of authors unfamiliar with the speech of the country, these writings showed general as well as historical unfitness for the task of comprehending its people. It was the same incapacity that filled the old books on Russia with the wildest hearsays concerning the most impossible occurrences as that which to-day sends to our newspapers the mad stories about Nihilists who set fire to forests along the Neva in order to destroy the Winter Palace, or of peasants stricken with cholera panic who burn up whole villages with the aid of petroleum. Emergence from this habit of treating Russia as a Scythian country rich in Slavonian marvels has naturally been slow, but the process has proved not less certain than that of growing civilization and the progressive unification of the nations.

The modern art of understanding peoples is based not only on the humanitarianism which regards no race that is human as alien to it, but also on that latest product of our complex intellectual life, ethnic sympathy, — the power not merely to recognize a common humanity beneath its various racial differences, but to value and enjoy it in and through those differences. It is true that the method of study has also undergone enormous improvement. We no longer regard ethnography as rounded off in itself. Any worthy account of a people in these days is something more than its geography, something more than its history, something more than its politics : it is certainly all these, enriched by knowledge of its language and literature. But it is preeminently sympathy with the people in their ethnic life and “ idea.” Once we have this, the driest details become luminous, while the “outlandish” elements that formerly would have repelled us are now welcomed as contributions of priceless value to our knowledge. The last dozen years, or more, have seen just such a power as this brought to bear upon the Russian country, until the people whom we once thought to be semi-barbarous have gained a more just appreciation at the hands of traveler and historian, a new value for our literature, a fresh interest for our intellectual life.

One of the latest, in some ways certainly the most notable, of that galaxy of modern writers on Russia which includes such names as Wallace, Leger, Rambaud, De Vogüé, and Brandes, is the well-known publicist Anatole LeroyBeaulieu, whose work, so far as it has been reproduced in English translation,¹ forms the immediate subject of the present notice. How this versatile Frenchman picked up his knowledge of Russia is more or less of a mystery, since, with the exception of a few summer tours in northeastern Europe during the sixties and seventies, he is not known to have sojourned permanently for any length of time in the land of the Tsar. Nor did his “ all round ” experiences as a publicist writing articles and books, mainly on social and economic topics, seem to qualify him in a special way for any deep or thorough insight into the life and thought of a foreign people. All the more surprising and delightful it was to receive, in the first installment of his work, a view of Russian things which, for its remarkable breadth, brilliancy of coloring, and general accuracy, but above all for its understanding of the Slav character, has not been surpassed. Two additional volumes of the work have thus far appeared in France, the latest bearing date of 1889, and neither of them shows any falling off from the power and promise of the first. This is the most comprehensive account of Russian civilization now in existence. On its broad canvas Leroy - Beaulieu has spread his rich material with an artistic effect, with a never failing consciousness of the whole in the part, and a close, logical enchainment of the various groupings that are admirable. Writing, evidently, with a knowledge of the Russian language, the author displays an extensive command of original sources of information. In a single volume he tells, with much picturesqueness and descriptive force, the story of nature, climate, and soil, of the Slav race and its temperament, of the peasant, the emancipation, and the village communities. In another we get details of the machinery of government, in some respects fuller, and in all respects newer, than any that are to be found in extended treatments of the subject hitherto printed. The chapters on the religious life of the people, making the third volume, form what is perhaps the most fascinating part of the whole work. Readers are further indebted to Leroy-Beaulieu for a fairly complete account of the revolutionary movement in Russia, the translation of which into English will go far to make good for Anglo-Saxon readers the serious defect, not to say one-sidedness, of Mr. Wallace’s otherwise admirable study.

So much, at least, must be said in praise of a work which will gain for its author a wider fame than all his other writings put together. Its shortcomings, leaving out a few unimportant errors, spring mainly from Leroy - Beaulieu’s high conception of what such a work ought to be; they are, moreover, inseparable from a method of treatment which demands, along with philosophic insight, sustained brilliancy. We think, for example, that, in his effort to go to the bottom of the Russian character and institutions, the author has overestimated the influence of climate and natural surroundings. He regards the life of GreatRussia as “ more than anywhere else a strife against nature,” and describes this warfare as a “ school of patience, resignation, and submissiveness. Unable to slip his neck from under the yoke of nature, he [the Russian] has borne that of man more patiently: the one has bent and fashioned for him the other ; the tyranny of climate has prepared him for man’s absolute power.”

It may fairly be doubted whether there is anything like that connection between climate, political serfdom, and autocratic power in Russia which is here so strongly emphasized. The influence alleged must have been very recent, even in GreatRussia, since it was there that Slav republics, based on a highly developed conception of popular liberties, flourished up to a late period in the nation’s history. We must also bear in mind that submission to the power of autocracy in Russia is found not merely among the inhabitants of Great-Russia, with its low winter temperature, but also among subjects of the Tsar who enjoy, both in Europe and in Asia, climates as mild as that of southern Europe. Owing, moreover, to a very efficient system of house-warming, and a comfortable style of winter apparel from the wearing of which all conventional checks have been removed, the GreatRussian suffers less from cold in winter than does the average inhabitant of the United States. If the struggle with a severe climate predisposes to despotism, the free governments of the American continent are an anomaly. Our criticism must be the same of Leroy-Beaulieu’s attempt to connect the peculiarities of the Russian environment with certain traits of the Russian character as manifested in the revolutionary movement and in religious phenomena : many of the observations made are undoubtedly just, but others show an extreme refinement of psychological analysis.

Leroy-Beaulieu is frequently happier when he is telling us what he observed in Russia than when he is advising us how we are to think about it. The objective value of his work is great. He has contributed powerfully to that revised view which is everywhere supplanting our old conceptions of the Slav world. Perhaps the culminating interest of the production for American readers is in its chapters on the problems of Russian administration; and here, in spite of a treatment alternately too tentative and too ambiguous, the author is outspoken enough to satisfy even radical demands. In a preface written especially for the first volume of the English translation, he praises the personal character of an autocrat who, though “ with one sign he can put in motion ten millions of men, is a lover of peace,” apostrophizing the “ self-constituted warder of the peace of the world, — a grand rôle for an autocrat, and we in France wish that he may long continue to enact it.” All the same, Leroy-Beaulieu tells us that “ the Tsar Alexander Alexandróvitch, crowned in the Kremlin of Moscow, is the contemporary not so much of Queen Victoria as of Queen Isabella of Castile ; ” and that “ if, at the distance of four centuries, the Russian Tsar takes against his Jewish subjects measures which recall the edicts issued in 1492 by Los Reyes Católicos, it is because Orthodox Russia is not unlike Catholic Spain of the fifteenth century.” He points to the “ frightful development of political crimes ” between 1878 and 1883, condemns government interference with education and faith, and urges as a prime necessity reforms that shall usher in the intellectual, political, and religious emancipation of the Russian people. If at the beginning of his work he assures us that when the Tsar signs ukases which our conscience condemns he “ does it with a good conscience,” at the end of it he declares that “ the status quo in Russia cannot be maintained with safety to the future of the people.”

The task of presenting to English readers this substantial installment of justice to Russia has been appropriately laid upon Madame Zénaïde Ragozin, a native Russian, among whose qualifications may be mentioned her own historical researches and her long residence in the United States. There has been some slight departure in this first volume from the completeness of the original ; but where exigencies of publication required the shortening of particular passages and the leaving out of others, the work has been done with both judiciousness and in impartiality. Our comparison of the translation thus far made with the text shows a version that adheres closely to the original, and is written in generally excellent English. Here and there the language becomes colloquial, as when “ the nastiness of the thaw ” is spoken of; sometimes the author imitates too closely a French expression, as where winds are described as being robbed of their "water vapors,” instead of their moisture or humidity. That horrid word “ desinence ” is used throughout to indicate a grammatical termination, and “ Cosacks ” appears as an English version of the French “ Cosaques.” The special feature of the translation is its annotations. In these Madame Ragozin supplies a running commentary on the text, chiefly from a Russian point of view, now in the form of footnotes, which are saved from confusion with Leroy-Beaulieu’s own notes by a special set of markings, and now in the form of extended paragraphs in small type placed at the ends of the chapters. It would be nothing less than a calamity if this method of supplementing an author’s work were to obtain any considerable extension in modern literature ; but if there was ever a case in which the practice could be justified, it is the present. In some cases Madame Ragozin amplifies the illustrations of the author ; in others she supplies omissions, or brings down to date a book written in the early seventies ; in still others we have etymologies which Miklosich himself would indorse. In all these respects her work is welcome. But we doubt the wisdom of French methods of spelling Russian words in a work intended for American and English readers : it would have been better to transliterate the Slavic expressions used by Leroy-Beaulieu into good Anglo-Saxon. It should be added that this first installment of the translation, with its maps and special index, is more sumptuous, and typographically more readable, than its French original.