Nothing is more difficult than drawing a middle line for social development. The loud mouth, the big fist, the bomb, the prison bars are of no help to you, as they are to those at the two extremes. Following the middle line demands the utmost self-control, the most inflexible courage, the most patient calculation, the most precise knowledge.
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The zemstvo, if you give the word its broadest meaning, is a social union of the whole population of a given district. More narrowly, it is a social union only of those who are connected with the land, those who own it or work it, and excludes town dwellers. In the Zemstvo Act of 1864, which was thought of at the time as a first step, the word was interpreted in the narrowest possible way, to mean local self-government for the most part by landlords.
Zemstvo work, however, was voluntary. The gentry did not enroll in large numbers, the self-interested saw nothing there for themselves, and so only those who were obsessed with social problems and a longing for justice went in for it.
Whether it was for this reason, or because, as the most eminent of zemstvo activists, Dmitri Nikolaevich Shipov, reminds us, common endeavor to achieve the common good, and not the championship of group or class interests, was traditional in Russia, the zemstvo ideal was something higher than the usual municipal concept: it was a matter not merely of local self-government but of furthering the demands of social justice, and gradually weakening the social injustices which had taken shape in the course of history. Members of the Zemstvo Union contributed to local funds in proportion to their income, but spent the money on the less well-off classes.
The zemstvo as originally established did not strike roots among the lower stratum of the population. There was no rural district zemstvo to become a genuine organ of peasant self-government. Nor did the institution extend outward to the non-Russian periphery or upward beyond the provincial level. The provinces had no legal right to form interprovincial or All-Russian associations. Growth in all these directions was, however, implicit in the reform of Aleksandr II, and given a period of patient, nonrevolutionary development, we might by the end of the nineteenth century have had, with the monarchy intact, a self-governing society, ethical in complexion, and free of party politics.
Alas, Aleksandr III, who thought he saw the seeds of revolution in any independent social activity, put the brake on most of his ill-thanked father’s initiatives, and checked and distorted the development of the zemstvos: he made bureaucratic supervision more stringent and reduced the scope of their activity. Instead of gradually equalizing the rights of different social classes within the zemstvos, he aggravated class distinctions: enlarging the rights of the gentry, the educated section of which had turned away from the aristocracy, and leaving the peasantry, which alone could have been the natural prop of the monarchy, in its degraded situation, and even subject to corporal punishment. Even in those circumstances, the zemstvos remained faithful to the ideas of the Great Reforms—collaboration between progressive society and the traditional state power. Beset by constant suspicions of disloyalty, the zemstvos became ever quicker to take offense, and more and more adroit in evading, circumventing, and cunningly surmounting obstacles put in their way by the government. But society’s hopes of gaining the understanding and cooperation of authority were not yet dead and cold, and the moment Nikolai II came to the throne many zemstvos turned hopefully toward him in their first loyal addresses. Zemstvo activists assumed that the young Tsar, unaware as he was of the mood of society, and unacquainted with the needs of the population, would eagerly accept their proposals and their memoranda.
Several such moments, when there was some chance of ending the mindless strife between the regime and society, of bringing them together in creative collaboration, twinkle like warm orange lights along Russia’s path over a century. But for it to happen each side would have had to restrain itself and try to trust the other. The regime would have had to think: “Maybe there is some good in what society wants. Maybe there are things we don’t know about our country.” And society would have needed to think: “Perhaps the regime is not entirely bad. The people are used to it, it is firm in its actions, it stands above party, perhaps it is not its country’s enemy, but is in some ways a blessing.”
But no, in the life of states, even more than in private life, the rule is that voluntary concessions and self-limitation are ridiculed as naïve and stupid.
Nikolai II’s celebrated reply was:
Some people in zemstvo assemblies have let themselves be carried away by senseless dreams of participation by zemstvo representatives in matters of internal administration. I shall defend the principles of autocracy as firmly and unswervingly as did my late and unforgettable parent.
Any sort of association between zemstvo men from different provinces was considered illegal, so much so that Goremykin, appointed Minister of the Interior just before the coronation, forbade the chairmen of provincial zemstvo boards to discuss the pooling for a single charitable purpose of funds which would otherwise be wasted on presentations (the traditional “bread and salt,” with silver tray and saltcellar) from all the zemstvos. As a great privilege the zemstvos were given permission to hold consultations in private apartments, provided that not a single word about these gatherings got into the press. (No small concession, however, by the standards of the 1970s.)
Sipyagin, as Minister of the Interior, tightened the screws of bureaucratic administration, for the good of his sovereign and of his country, and was killed by terrorists in April 1902. The intelligent martinet Pleve followed the same policy for two more years, until he too was killed, to swelling applause from the public. The Machiavellian Witte wound his serpentine way in and around them. Too shrewd a minister for that country, he understood everything, but would not take risks, or sides. He drafted a memorandum to the Tsar arguing that the zemstvo system was incompatible with autocracy: its theme seemed to be that the autocracy must not be undermined, but its hidden message was that autocracy must hold back self-government no longer. He was, however, thinking a hundred moves ahead: others could work it out for themselves, he wasn’t going to put it in so many words.
The Russian regime entered the new century, the twentieth, with the same fixed and paralyzing idea—to halt the evolution of the country. As a result, it lost the respect of society, and aroused its indignation by absurd administrative procedures and the unreproved high-handedness of thickheaded local authorities. Measures to broaden the zemstvos’ power were halted. The student disturbances of 1899 and 1901 set the regime and society at loggerheads: in the turbulent protests of the young, the liberals admired themselves as they might have been, though they had not stood their ground in their own day. Society chose to see the murder of the Minister of Education by a student (1901) as a symbol of justice, and the forcible enlistment of rebellious students in the army as a symbol of tyranny. Events of 1902 further exacerbated the discord between the regime and society: with the turbulent students now out on the streets, the energetic Pleve took advantage of Witte’s deviousness to deprive the zemstvos even of their right to deal with the most basic local matters—he refused to let representatives of zemstvo assemblies take part in the “conferences on the needs of agriculture.” His object was to keep out the zemstvo “third element”—the paid specialists employed by zemstvo boards, among whom many revolutionaries had indeed found employment—or, as Pleve called them,
the cohorts of sansculottes and doctrinaires, second-rate bureaucrats whose style of work was perfected during their leisure periods in jail.
Nevertheless, it was natural for the zemstvos to feel wounded and alarmed: if they were excluded from discussion of essentially agricultural matters, would the zemstvos continue to exist at all? In May 1902, a gathering of leading zemstvo men took place in Shipov’s apartment on Sobachya Square in Moscow—a private (and illegal) interprovincial conference. The resolutions adopted were very moderate and sensible: one to the effect that they would not boycott the government’s provincial consult
ations but would find ways to connect them with the activities of the zemstvos themselves, and so mitigate the crude and clumsy behavior of the government. But the resolution pointed out that to solve the particular problems of agriculture, it was necessary to
raise the personal status of the Russian peasant, equalize his rights with those of people of other classes, protect him with the correct type of court, abolish corporal punishment, and expand education. And also to make eligibility for membership in zemstvo assemblies independent of social class.
An immense backlog of work to be done blocked Russia’s path into the new century. The long-suffering zemstvos did not insidiously seek to blow up the obstruction, but reached out workmanlike hands to dismantle it. Intelligent people concerned to change their country for the better know that a gradual approach is essential.
Shipov: If you hope to succeed, you cannot refuse to take into account the views of those whom you are addressing. Before any reform can be carried out, not only must society at large realize the need for it but the state leadership must be reconciled to it.
Such were the views and the actions of the zemstvo men, but they still failed to persuade the regime. On Pleve’s insistence, those who took part in the unauthorized conference at Sobachya Square were rebuked by the Tsar and warned that they might be forbidden to take part in any public activity. Needless to say, their request to be represented in preliminary discussions of draft legislation affecting local government (before it was submitted to the Tsar) was rejected. An Imperial Manifesto dated February 1903 promised to suppress
unrest fostered in part by persons with designs inimical to our system of government, and partly by persons infatuated with ideas alien to the Russian way of life.
This was all that autocracy could promise: no accommodation! no hearing for its subjects, however well-intentioned! It alone, with no need for any popular assembly, helped only by its retinue of bureaucrats concerned above all to protect each other’s privileges on every rung of the ladder, could determine Russia’s real needs.
But the zemstvo, as it lost hope for the regime’s goodwill, defended its own social philosophy all the more stubbornly. The interprovincial Zemstvo Union, though illegal, was gradually becoming a reality. Personal contacts made it easy for provinces and districts to adopt similar resolutions and petitions, and to make a similar show of intransigence, to the growing annoyance of the government.
Imperceptibly at first, and with no abrupt transition—as always at the headwaters of history—the zemstvo milieu changed its nature, it split into two unequal parts, a diffuse majority and a tiny minority. As time went on, the majority associated more and more with non-zemstvo elements in the municipal administrations, in the judicial system (in particular the barristers), and among the professional intelligentsia, joining with them in the broad grouping of “constitutionalists,” and later, in July 1903, in the fascinating games of what was called the League of Liberation. If their activity was prohibited—it would have to be carried on illegally. And if all the revolutionaries could successfully organize in conspiratorial parties, why shouldn’t liberals start a party of the same kind? But since they did not have to manufacture and store bombs, there was no need for them to abandon their normal way of life—no need to hide behind false names, to leave their comfortable homes, to go into exile, to endure the rigors of party discipline. Everybody who sympathized with the militant League was ipso facto a member of it, and no heavier demands were made on anyone. So that the whole of educated “society” was automatically part of the League, no formal admission being required. It cost the government no effort to discover the membership of the League, because everybody was a member. The League was illegal, yet virtually without concealment, known to everybody, and hardly to be considered criminal. Whatever they felt like saying that could not be said in Russian conditions was published abroad, and their journal, Osvobozhdenie (Liberation), was freely distributed in Russia.
The non-zemstvo men were au courant with all Western socialist doctrines, trends, and resolutions, they read everything, knew everything, discussed everything, could very confidently criticize Russia and compare it with other countries. The one thing they lacked was the practical experience of government which would tell them what to do and how to build if it was suddenly their turn tomorrow (not that they showed any great eagerness for it). The zemstvo men proper were the only ones in Russia, apart from the Tsar’s bureaucrats, who possessed long (though in their cases purely local) experience in administration and a penchant for it, the only ones who knew the Russian land and the broad Russian population and understood their needs. But it was the non-zemstvo men who, being nimbler and more sophisticated, acquired greater influence and set the course.
The League began with a three-word program: “Down with Autocracy!” That should unite everybody! They supposed that the whole mass of the illiterate common people was longing for political freedom. All we have to do is overthrow the monarchy—and then a magical, omniscient Constituent Assembly, composed of supermen, would give precise expression to the people’s will and work out all the details. The reigning monarch must at once, before the Constituent Assembly met, be removed from all influence on the life of the state. The existing system was required not to restructure or improve itself, but simply to disappear. The Liberationists—that is to say, the majority of the Russian intelligentsia, its fine liberal flower—wanted no reconciliation with the regime. Their tactic was to seize every convenient opportunity to aggravate the conflict. They did not even try to discover whether anything in Russia’s present and her existing institutions could be reformed and find a place in the future: it must all be lopped off and completely replaced. Their thoughts, and their theoretical studies, were on Constitution with a capital C; once introduced it would solve all Russia’s problems.
A year went by, and it was seen that “Down with Autocracy” was a program with no appeal to either peasants or workers. So they worked out a broader program, hoping to attract those two groups with specific promises on matters affecting them, while the nation as a whole, which was assumed to be tormented with frustrated longing to participate in politics, was offered an assortment of intoxicating freedoms that would make this possible. They assembled under thirty headings all that was needed to construct a life on the best Western models. (Against which no reasonable argument can be found until you have experienced them in your own country and for yourself.)
“Down with Autocracy” was a principle that seemed to unite all those who wanted to join in. Russian radicalism (which went on calling itself liberalism) made common cause with all the revolutionary movements, and so could not condemn terrorism: indeed it censured those who censured terror. Russian radicalism adopted the principle that terror was justified if it was directed against the common enemy. All political disturbances, strikes, and the sacking of gentry estates were considered justified. Indeed, revolution itself was acceptable if it was needed to sweep away autocracy. It was, in any case, a lesser evil than autocracy.
The editor of Liberation, the prolific Pyotr Struve, had by then flirted with everything in sight, helped to found the RSDRP (and written its manifesto), discussed plans for Iskra with Lenin and Martov in Pskov, fallen out and in again with Plekhanov more than once—and now there he was printing in the organ of the free liberals his view that
it is not too late for Russian liberalism to become the ally of social democracy.
Ah, but it was too late! The Second Congress of the RSDRP repulsed the liberal-Liberationists, leaving them deeply distressed and hurt. In October 1904, neither the Bolsheviks nor the Mensheviks went to Paris for the first (and last) conference of opposition parties, at which Milyukov, Struve, and Prince Dolgorukov, in accordance with the principle of solidarity with the revolutionary tendencies, sat in conclave with the SRs, Azef, and the defeatists, who were buying weapons with Japanese money and sending them to Petersburg to start an uprising, taking advantage of the war. (All means were good in the struggle
with autocracy, so even if the money was known to be Japanese, why not take it?)
The imperial government was still in existence, but in the eyes of the Liberationists it might have ceased to exist. What they did not for a moment envisage was that between the regime and the population at large there were not only cruel differences but also a cruel bond: they were rowers in the same boat, and if it went to the bottom, they would all go with it. What the Liberation movement could not imagine and refused to imagine was the attainment of its ends by smooth evolutionary means.
But that was precisely the path to follow, the path which the zemstvo minority sought to follow. A fragile minority, but led by Shipov, who was chairman of the Moscow Provincial Board, and in effect the acknowledged leader of the as yet unfounded All-Russian Zemstvo. Other members included the two remarkable Princes Trubetskoy, and three future presidents of the State Duma.
Shipov’s philosophy of life and his social program can be summarized as follows:
The purpose of life is not to assert our own will but to seek understanding of the principle that rules the world. Nevertheless, although the inner development of the person has priority over social development (there can be no genuine progress until the hearts and minds of the majority are changed), the systematic improvement of the forms of social life is also a necessary condition. These two processes should not be seen as in opposition one to the other, and no Christian has the right to be indifferent to the social order. Now, rationalism shows an exaggerated concern for man’s material needs and neglects his spiritual essence. That alone made possible the emergence of a doctrine asserting that every social system is the natural result of a historical process, and so obviously does not depend on the good or ill will of particular persons, or the delusions and errors of whole generations, and that the main stimulus in social and private life is self-interest. The whole modern Western parliamentary system, with its political parties, their constant strife, their vote-chasing, and the constitutions which regulate the contest between them, stems from the assertion of private and sectional interests above all else. This whole system, in which legal forms are set above ethics, is beyond the pale of Christianity and Christian culture. The slogans of the people’s sovereignty and the people’s rights muddy the waters of human life. They incite people to involve themselves in the struggle to defend their rights, sometimes completely forgetting about the spiritual side of life.
November 1916 Page 12