A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre
Page 19
But the years passed; the ‘ukase in letters of gold’ was slow in appearing, and the moujiks reckoned that, although they were freed from bodily servitude, other restraints weighed upon them. In fact, to make it possible for them to acquire their enclosures and portions (nadel) rapidly, the State had granted them long-term loans. It was the State which, in their stead, had paid the purchase price (obrok) to the landowners in letters of credit. Afterwards, the State turned to the moujiks to claim an annual payment of six kopecks for every rouble advanced, the capital being fully redeemed in forty-nine years. Thereafter every connection was broken between the former masters and the peasants. But the latter remained debtors to the State which, to secure its debt, imposed responsibility for payment upon the commune, represented by the popular assembly known as the mir. Formerly, it had been the master who had accepted the responsibility for tax collection: if he was harsh he flogged the negligent payer, but ended by sending the taxes where they were intended; if he was a good man, he might pay the debt himself out of laziness or pity. But the mir was intractable. This assembly of peasants accepted no excuses from their fellows who, by misfortune or mistake jeopardized the interests of the community. According to Paul Egorovitch Sychkin, many moujiks, overwhelmed by care, felt a nostalgia for the days of serfdom. Once they had been like children, without rights, vaguely oblivious and without initiative; but now they had become adults overnight, with instructions to steer their own way through life. ‘Things were better in the masters’ days,’ the old folk said. ‘At least, we didn’t have to worry about the future. We were sure of eating our fill. The master did the thinking for us….’
*
Chekhov trained as a doctor (attending the Moscow University Medical School, where he began writing the short stories that established his reputation as an author, from 1879–1884); and in the 1870s medical students had become a centre of radical activity, particularly at St. Petersburg where Kropotkin had become their spokesman. In 1874 between 1,000 and 2,000 socialist students from Moscow and St. Petersburg had spread out across Russia, following Bakunin’s theories in forsaking self-education for political action, to become rural agitators. The signal failure of this populist movement led radical socialists to advocate terrorism as an instrument of political change. After a wave of assassinations in 1878, including the attempted shooting of the Governor-General of St. Petersburg and the killing of General Mezentsev, the head of the gendarmes, the extremist People’s Will (Narodnaia Volid) organization was founded in 1879 – the year Chekhov entered medical school. In 1881 they assassinated Czar Alexander II, by throwing a bomb at the Royal coach as he returned from inspecting the guards, and sent an open letter to the new Czar justifying his father’s killing.
Chekhov hardly ever refers to political issues in his correspondence – an exception being his support for Dreyfus in 1897, while living in France – and (following a similar line to Ibsen) rejects all brands of politics in favor of individual liberty:
I am neither liberal, nor conservative, nor gradualist, nor monk, nor indifferentist… I hate lies and violence in all their forms … Pharisaism, dullwittedness and tyranny reign not only in merchant’s homes and police stations. I see them in science, in literature, among the younger generation … I look upon tags and labels as prejudices. My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love and the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom from violence and lies, no matter what form the latter two take. Such is the program I would adhere to if I were a major artist.
(Letter to Alexei Plehcheyev, 4 October 1888)
Indeed, politics form only the most muted subtext in his plays, the most obvious example being the polemic speech of the student radical in Act II of The Cherry Orchard.
However, Chekhov was certainly aware of the ideological ferment that increasingly preoccupied the Russian intelligentsia from the mid-1880s, leading up to the 1905 revolution. He saw the political activist Vladimir Korolenko, whose writing was largely protest literature devoted to the liberation of the common people, as a close colleague. He corresponded with Maxim Gorki, and resigned from the Russian Academy together with Korolenko when Gorki’s election was cancelled in 1902. His rejection of overtly political commentary in art expresses a position familiar to more contemporary political writers:
I sometimes preach heresies, but I haven’t gone so far as to deny that problematic questions have a place in art … You are right to demand that an author takes conscious stock of what he is doing, but you are confusing two concepts: answering the questions and formulating them correctly. Only the latter is required of an author.
(Letter to Alexei Suvorin, 27 October 1888)
In 1872 the first volume of Marx’s Das Kapital had been translated into Russian; and in 1883 Plekhanov founded the first Russian Marxist group, the “Emancipation of Labour”. By the 1890s large numbers of (legally published) books and journals were propagating Marxist ideas – among them G.V Plekhanov’s The Monist View of History (1895), and The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899) by V.I. Ulianov (Lenin). Clandestine Marxist groups of intelligentsia and industrial laborers were formed in several major cities, leading to the founding of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party in 1898, with its official paper, Iskra (The Spark), being published abroad and secretly distributed in Russia. At the same time, a populist movement (the Agrarian Socialist League) emerged in the provinces, establishing “peasant brotherhoods” in various villages from which the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries emerged in 1901, calling for “the nationalization of land and communal, planned socialist organization of production” (Chernov, The Immediate Question of the Revolutionary Cause, 1900). In addition, the growing student population became increasingly radicalized. When a student demonstration in St. Petersburg was violently broken up by police in 1899, protest strikes and riots erupted across university campuses, in 1901 one of the students expelled for taking part assassinated the minister of public education, and continuing agitation among the students led into the revolution of 1905.
The socialist ideas that preoccupied so many of Chekhov’s contemporaries form a background to his early naturalistic drama (Ivanov, 1887; The Wood Demon, 1889). It becomes still more evident in his last plays, The Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904), each of which deal on a very broad level with the destruction of the old establishment.
The influence of revolutionary theories, coupled with reactionary policies in the wake of Alexander II’s assassination, the effects of famine in 1891–2, and the economic miseries of rapid industrialization, compounded by the unpopular and militarily disastrous war with Japan – the result of Russian Imperial expansion in the Far East – produced the revolution of 1905. Although over a year after the writing of The Cherry Orchard, it was the culmination of the political situation indirectly symbolized by “the sound of a breaking harp-string, mournfully dying away” and the appearance of a drunken beggar in Act II. The spark was a peaceful march of striking workers through the streets of St. Petersburg on 22 January 1905, led by a priest carrying a petition to Nicholas II. Barred from the Winter Palace by police, they were fired on before they could present their grievances and demands to the Czar. Scores were killed, hundreds wounded; “Bloody Sunday” triggered nationwide protest demonstrations, anti-government strikes and mutinies. Together with continuing military and naval defeats in the war with Japan, the widespread insurrection forced the Czar to grant “civic freedom based on the principles of genuine personal inviolability, freedom of conscience, speech, assemblies and associations.” The same proclamation promised “that no law shall become effective without confirmation by the State Duma”, which would now include representatives of “all those classes of the population which presently are completely deprived of voting rights” (The October Manifesto). A month later the Czar canceled all the redemption payments imposed on the peasants by the Emancipation bill of 1861.
5.1.3 A Letter from the Revolutionary Executive Commi
ttee of the Narodnaia Volia to Alexander III: 22 March 1881
Translated by Basil Dmytrshn
Basil Dmytrshn, Imperial Russia, Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1974
Your Majesty:
[…]
The tragedy enacted on the Ekaterinski canal [the assassination of the Tsar] was not a mere casualty, nor was it unexpected. After all that had happened in the course of the previous decade it was absolutely inevitable; and in that fact consists its deep significance for a man who has been placed by fate at the head of governmental authority. Such occurrences can be explained as the results of individual malignity, or even of the evil disposition of “gangs,” only by one who is wholly incapable of analyzing the life of a nation. For ten whole years – notwithstanding the strictest prosecution; notwithstanding the sacrifice by the late Emperor’s Government of liberty, the interests of all classes, the interests of industry and commerce, and even its own dignity; notwithstanding the absolute sacrifice of everything in the attempt to suppress the revolutionary movement – that movement has obstinately extended, attracting to itself the best elements of the country – the most energetic and self-sacrificing people of Russia – and the revolutionists have carried on, for three years, a desperate partizan warfare with the administration.
You are aware, your Majesty, that the Government of the late Emperor could not be accused of a lack of energy. It hanged the innocent and the guilty, and filled prisons and remote provinces with exiles. Tens of so-called “leaders” were captured and hanged, and died with the courage and tranquility of martyrs; but the movement did not cease – on the contrary it grew and strengthened. The revolutionary movement, your Majesty, is not dependent upon any particular individuals; it is a process of the social organism; and the scaffolds raised for its more energetic exponents are as powerless to save the out-grown order of things as the cross that was erected for the Redeemer was powerless to save the ancient world from the triumph of Christianity. The Government, of course, may yet capture and hang an immense number of separate individuals, it may break up a great number of separate revolutionary groups, it may even destroy the most important of existing revolutionary organizations; but all this will not change, in the slightest degree, the condition of affairs. Revolutionists are the creation of circumstances; of the general discontent of the people; of the striving of Russia after a new social framework. It is impossible to exterminate the whole people; it is impossible, by means of repression, to stifle its discontent. Discontent only grows the more when it is repressed. For these reasons the places of slain revolutionists are constantly taken by new individuals, who come forth from among the people in ever-increasing numbers, and who are still more embittered, still more energetic. These persons, in order to carry on the conflict, form an association in the light of the experience of their predecessors, and the revolutionary organization thus grows stronger, numerically and in quality, with the lapse of time. This we actually see from the history of the last ten years. Of what use was it to destroy the Dolgu-shintsi, the Chaiköftsi, and the workers of 1874? Their places were taken by much more resolute democrats. Then the awful repressive measures of the Government called upon the stage the terrorists of 1878–1879. In vain the Government put to death the Koválskis, the Dubróvins, the Ossînskis, and the Lisobübs. In vain it destroyed tens of revolutionary circles. From among those incomplete organizations, by virtue of natural selection, arose only stronger forms, until, at last, there has appeared an Executive Committee with which the Government has not yet been able successfully to deal.
A dispassionate glance at the grievous decade through which we have just passed will enable us to forecast accurately the future progress of the revolutionary movement, provided the policy of the Government does not change. The movement will continue to grow and extend; deeds of a terroristic nature will increase in frequency and intensity, and the revolutionary organization will constandy set forth, in the places of destroyed groups, stronger and more perfect forms. […] A terrible explosion, a bloody hurly-burly, a revolutionary earthquake throughout Russia, will complete the destruction of the old order of things. Upon what depends this terrible prospect? […] It arises, your Majesty, from the lack in Russia of a real government in the true sense of that word. A government, in the very nature of things, should only give outward form to the aspirations of the people and effect to the people’s will. But with us – excuse the expression – the Government has degenerated into a mere camarilla, and deserves the name of a usurping “gang” much more than does the Executive Committee.
Whatever may be the intentions of the Tsar, the actions of the Government have nothing in common with the popular welfare, or popular aspirations. The Imperial Government subjected the people to serfdom, put the masses into the power of the nobility, and is now openly creating the most injurious class of speculators and jobbers. All of its reforms result merely in a more perfect enslavement and a more complete exploitation of the people. It has brought Russia to such a pass that, at the present time, the masses of the people are in a state of pauperism and ruin; are subjected to the most humiliating surveillance, even at their own domestic hearths; and are powerless even to regulate their own communal and social affairs. The protection of the law and of the Government is enjoyed only by the extortionist and the exploiter, and the most exasperating robbery goes unpunished. But, on the other hand, what a terrible fate awaits the man who sincerely considers the general good! You know very well your Majesty, that it is not only socialists who are exiled and prosecuted. Can it be possible that the Government is the guardian of such “order”? Is it not rather probable that this is the work of a “gang” – the evidence of a complete usurpation?
These are the reasons why the Russian Government exerts no moral influence, and has no support among the people. These are the reasons why Russia brings forth so many revolutionists. These are the reasons why even such a deed as Tsaricide excites in the minds of a majority of the people only gladness and sympathy. Yes, your Majesty! Do not be deceived by the reports of flatterers and sycophants – Tsaricide, in Russia, is popular.
From such a state of affairs there can be only two exits: either a revolution, absolutely inevitable and not to be averted by any punishments, or a voluntary turning of the Supreme Power to the people. In the interest of our native land, in the hope of preventing the useless waste of energy, in the hope of averting the terrible miseries that always accompany revolution, the Executive Committee approaches your Majesty with the advice to take the second course. Be assured, so soon as the Supreme Power ceases to rule arbitrarily, so soon as it firmly resolves to accede to the demands of the people’s conscience and consciousness, you may, without fear, discharge the spies that disgrace the administration, send your guards back to their barracks, and burn the scaffolds that are demoralizing the people. The Executive Committee will voluntarily terminate its own existence, and the organizations formed about it will disperse, in order that their members may devote themselves to the work of culture among the people of their native land.
[…]
The conditions that are prerequisite to a change from revolutionary activity to peaceful labor are created, not by us, but by history. These conditions, in our opinion, are two.
1. A general amnesty to cover all past political crimes; for the reason that they were not crimes but fulfillments of civil duty.
2. The summoning of representatives of the whole Russian people to examine the existing framework of social and governmental life, and to remodel it in accordance with the people’s wishes.
We regard it as necessary, however, to remind you that the legalization of the Supreme Power, by the representatives of the people, can be valid only in case the elections are perfectly free. For this reason such elections must be held under the following conditions.
1. Delegates are to be sent from all classes, without distinction, and in number are to be proportionate to the number of inhabitants.