On the other hand, it is wrong to attribute to Christianity the view that all power is of divine origin and that it must be humbly accepted in its existing form. State power is of terrestrial origin and bears the imprint of human wills, mistakes, and failures. State power exists everywhere, because human nature is weak, and man cannot do without an ordered form of life, without coercion. But the state power itself has its share of human weakness, and a large share, since power corrupts, and corrupts more thoroughly than ever when the ruler is spiritually weak. Power is fatally flawed. It can never rid itself of its inherent faults entirely, but only more or less. A Christian must therefore actively endeavor to improve the holders of power and the state system.
But the general good cannot be realized through the struggle of interests and classes. Rights and freedoms can only be assured by the moral solidarity of all. Importunate struggle for political rights, so Shipov believed, was alien to the spirit of the Russian people, and he was against involving them in the dangerous excitements of political struggle. The Russian idea from of old had been not to fight against authority but to work in unison with it, to order men’s lives according to God’s will. The Tsars of ancient Russia, who made no division between themselves and the people, were of the same mind.
“Autocracy” meant independence from other rulers, and certainly not arbitrary rule. Earlier monarchs sought not to impose their own will but to express the collective conscience of the people—and it was still not too late to revive the spirit of that older order. Shipov affirms that when the Assembly of the Land used to meet, there was never strife between it and the Tsar, and that there is no known instance of the Tsar acting contrary to the consensus: if he had parted company with the Assembly the Tsar would only have weakened his own authority. For a state in which rulers and ruled must above all aim at justice in their relations, instead of pursuing their own ends, Shipov believes that monarchy is the best form of government because a hereditary monarch stands above the clash of sectional interests. But the monarch must feel that there is something more important than his authority—the implantation on earth of God’s justice. He must regard ruling as service to the people, and make sure at all times that his decisions accord with the collective conscience of the people as expressed through a popular representation. Such a system is superior to any constitutional system, because it envisages not strife between the Sovereign and society, not brawling between parties, but cooperation in the quest of the good. The zemstvo established by Aleksandr II, which embodied in itself a moral idea, was to be the institution to resurrect the Assemblies of the Land in a new form, to establish a “state plus zemstvo” system. And all this could be achieved by patient persuasion and in a spirit of mutual love.
It was, alas, a very difficult undertaking, for at the turn of the century those who held power in Russia had lost faith in themselves. And on the other hand,
the supreme power cannot be expected to trust a society like this, devoid of moral force and incapable of cooperating with it. A negative attitude, both toward the faith of their fathers and toward the history, way of life, and outlook of their people, is predominant in educated society. The liberal course is as extreme and as false as that of the government. It is nonetheless possible to seek to eliminate and succeed in eliminating the distrust between the state and society, and to establish a lively reciprocity between them. The authorities must stop thinking that all spontaneous activity on the part of society undermines autocracy. The public must here and now begin to manage matters of local concern independently, and not be subject to bureaucratic arbitrariness and caprice. Measures proposed by government agencies should be open to public criticism before they are confirmed by the Sovereign.
And that was all he asked, to start with! Was it really so very much, Your Imperial Majesty? Shipov was not proposing a constitution, he was not calling for armed struggle, only for moral solidarity with the people. Surely the zemstvo men would have done no worse for their own localities than bureaucrats with no knowledge of the land issuing instructions from Petersburg.
Such were Shipov’s thoughts and actions during his four terms of office in the zemstvo. Early in 1904 he was elected for a fifth term of three years. Such was his prestige, not only in the Moscow zemstvo but with the zemstvo movement throughout Russia, that in spite of the growing dissension and the schism in which it resulted, his opponents voted for him and invariably wanted him and no one else as chairman. (His spiritual purity, his considerate gentleness, his reasonableness, and his firmness charm even the modern reader of his unhurried pages.) Shipov tried to deal with Minister Pleve in the same spirit of receptive, loving kindness, and was first deceived by him, then subjected to harassment, the inspection of his correspondence, and subsequently nonconfirmation of his fifth term. Pleve called him pretender to leadership of an “All-Russian zemstvo” and said that his “activity in trying to widen the competence of the zemstvos and uniting them is politically damaging.” In the spring of 1904, Shipov had no choice but to give up zemstvo work and withdraw to his estate at Volokolamsk. Then, on 28 July, Pleve was killed by a terrorist.
This news had a depressing effect on me. It was always intellectually and emotionally inconceivable to me that anyone aspiring to reshape the framework of our lives on principles of good and of higher truth could take the path of murder.
Struve, though, had prophesied long ago that
the life of the Minister of the Interior is ensured only insofar as there are technical difficulties in putting him to death.
With the murder of the intransigent Pleve, the hopes of the liberals flared up like a crimson solar eruption. There was rejoicing all over Russia, it was springtime in politics. But the Japanese war was still on—a war begun for no clear reason, alien, distant, and ignominious, so distant and so ignominious that the humiliations it caused had passed all bounds, that people began to welcome further humiliation, indeed longed for defeat, so that the bankrupt autocracy would have to make concessions at home. Those months saw the birth of the word “regime” (which in Russian has penal associations) instead of “state system,” and in a theater in the capital the audience yelled at a ballerina, the mistress of the Navy Minister, Grand Duke Aleksei Aleksandrovich, “Out, out! You’re wearing our battleships around your neck!” Liberation, addressing the military, said:
What we need from you is not senseless bravery in Manchuria but political courage in Russia; turn against your true enemy, he is in Petersburg and Moscow, it is autocracy.
Society no longer had any fear of authority (and we can see now that there was nothing for them to be afraid of). Speeches against the government were made at street meetings, and terrorists were thought of as “doing the people’s work.”
The government immediately lost heart, sagged, gave way, as though it had depended entirely on Pleve and had no self-propelled program (as indeed it had not), but looked only at the balance of forces: if you’re holding your own, increase the pressure; if your hand is weakening, smile and give in. The revolutionaries, though, hissed that the liberal bastards would reap the benefit of revolutionary sweat and smother revolution with reform again.
A chance of agreement, like a warm point of light, flashed once more on Russia’s path. In the summer of 1904, Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky was appointed Minister of the Interior. He had little relevant experience and was not a strong character, but he declared sincerely in his very first speech in September that
the success of the government’s labors depends on goodwill toward and trust in social institutions and in the population. Without mutual trust we cannot expect lasting success in reorganizing the state.
But that was exactly the program of Shipov and his minority! The minister’s concession was seized on by the whole zemstvo majority. He was inundated with telegrams, and preparations for the long-planned general congress of prominent zemstvo men (mandated only by themselves) were immediately set in motion. Svyatopolk-Mirsky’s pliability prompted the zemstvo men to ask f
or more than they had previously wanted: legal guarantees instead of promises from the new minister. The organizing committee of the Zemstvo Congress consisted entirely of constitutionalists, almost all of them members of the League of Liberation, and they voted against Shipov, a minority of one (in spite of which they asked him to continue acting as chairman), to withdraw the previously proposed diffident questions about the shortcomings of zemstvo institutions, the condition of the countryside, and educational policy, and instead to call for discussion of “the general condition of the state.” The trusting Svyatopolk-Mirsky, on previous representation from Shipov, had asked the Tsar to permit a congress devoted to local questions, but now the congress was beginning to resemble the long-dreamt-of Constituent Assembly, and society fell silent in tense expectancy. The Tsar meanwhile was busy with military parades, and when Svyatopolk-Mirsky reported that he had made a mistake and was the innocent victim of deception, it was too late: a hundred zemstvo men were already converging on Petersburg. At the last moment they were reluctantly granted the status of a “private conference.” They met on 6–9 November, in private apartments, changing and keeping secret their addresses, in spite of which the police politely stood guard over their gatherings and delivered telegrams from all ends of the country, even from political exiles. (Milyukov, back from the conference of defeatists in Paris, haunted the corridors with the program of the League of Liberation.)
Shipov did not decline to take the chairmanship. He hoped to have a pacific influence on a conference which started with the conviction that
if proper foundations are not laid Russia will inevitably move toward revolution.
The abnormality of the present administrative system … society is excluded from participation … centralization … there are no guarantees to protect the rights of each and all … freedom of conscience, religion, speech, the press, association, assembly … inviolability of the home … independence of the judiciary … liability of officials to criminal prosecution … equalization of classes and national groups … Nothing in this list of demands from the program of the League provoked disagreement in the Zemstvo Congress. It was nonetheless split. Should it specify that the national assembly must have powers to legislate, to confirm the budgets, and to scrutinize the actions of the government (the majority view)? Or should it call only for an assembly that would participate in legislation, for which purpose the State Council would become a State-Zemstvo Council, and its bureaucratic membership would be replaced by persons chosen in pyramidal elections, beginning at rural district and ending at provincial level (the view of the minority)?
Shipov’s arguments sound particularly interesting in our day, when we have all accepted the view of his opponents and regard direct and secret elections on an equal franchise as the acme of freedom and justice. Shipov points out:
The national representation must express not merely the will of the majority of voters, formed fortuitously during the elections, but the real direction of the national spirit and the mind of society, so that the state, by basing itself on this, can acquire moral authority. To this end, the most mature forces of the nation, who would see their activity as a moral duty to put the country’s life in order, and not as a mere display of popular sovereignty, should be brought into the representative body. In direct elections on a universal franchise the personalities of the candidates remain virtually unknown to the electors, who vote for party programs which they are not really able to understand, so that they actually vote for crude party slogans which appeal to selfish instincts and interests. It can only do harm if the whole population is drawn into the political struggle. The assumption of the modern constitutional state that every citizen is capable of forming an opinion on all the matters which come before the national representation is in fact false. No, in order to deal with complex matters of state the members of the national representation must possess practical experience and a sound philosophy of life. The less enlightened a man is, intellectually and spiritually, the readier he is to resolve, confidently and lightheartedly, life’s most complicated problems. The more highly developed a man is, intellectually and spiritually, the more cautious and circumspect he is in arranging his own private life and that of the community. The less experience of life and of matters of state a man has, the more susceptible he is to extremist political and social enthusiasms; the more knowledge and experience a man has, the more clearly he realizes the impracticability of extremist doctrines. Moreover, the national representation must bring to state affairs a knowledge of those local needs which require imminent attention in the country. The best school for all this is preliminary participation in local—zemstvo or municipal—self-government.
So, instead of direct elections on a universal franchise, modeled on the Western parliamentary system, Shipov proposed three-stage general elections unrelated to class, in which the electors would choose capable people well known to them. Rural districts would elect county zemstvo assemblies, counties would elect provincial assemblies, and provinces the All-Russian assembly. At each stage, special provision would be made for big towns, and the assembly would have the right to co-opt up to one-fifth of its total membership,
so that very useful public figures not elected for fortuitous reasons—a greater number of worthy candidates than of places to be filled, unfavorable personal circumstances, etc.—would not be left out.
And at all stages the principle of proportionality would be observed, so that nowhere would the representatives of minorities be excluded or denied a hearing.
Next, ministers would be appointed by the Tsar, but from among the members of the representative assembly. The State-Zemstvo Council could address questions to them, but they would be responsible only to the Tsar. This meant, the majority retorted, that absolute monarchy would be preserved, and that the national representation would have only a consultative voice. Shipov’s answer was:
Yes, from a legalistic point of view—that is, if you think that the purpose of a national representative body is to limit the power of the Tsar. But if you bear in mind the close unity between them, if the monarch and the national representation bear the same burden of moral duty—how can the monarch fail to reckon with them? That being so, whether the national representation has a deciding or a consultative voice is a superfluous question.
Alas, there was no monarch of that sort in Russia in 1904, nor would her clamorous educated public have permitted the election of such representatives.
The reality is that the split within the Zemstvo Congress went deeper than the forms of election or the rights of the national representation, deeper than practical and organizational questions, right down to the roots of the two opposing philosophies. Shipov was trying to show the majority that making rights and guarantees the basis of reform meant destroying, frittering away the religious and moral idea which was still intact in the mind of the people. In return, his opponents in the majority called him a Slavophile, although he did not recognize either the divine origin of absolutism or the superiority of Orthodoxy to other forms of Christianity—but it had become the custom half a century earlier (and remained so half a century later) to call anyone who chooses to deviate from direct imitation of Western models, anyone who assumes that Russia’s path (or that of any other continent) might be peculiar to itself—a reactionary, a Slavophïle.
When this schism took place in Vladimir Nabokov’s apartment, those present did not fully realize its importance, but thought of it as a disagreement on one point out of a dozen. It was in fact a schism between zemstvo-constitutionalists and zemstvo men proper, between—if we want to use bad language—zemstvo-Bolsheviks and zemstvo-Mensheviks (one of history’s little jokes seldom remembered by our historians). It differed, however, from the schism in the RSDRP, which had taken place two years earlier, in one respect: the majority in this case insisted on including the minority view in the final resolution side by side with its own. And also in that the majority (in effect the Kadet Party, though it did not yet think of
itself in that way) wanted peaceful reform, wanted evolution.
Svyatopolk-Mirsky was given a memorandum about these desirable reforms.
The present war has exposed the sores of our bureaucratic system even more thoroughly than the Crimean War … The old order is condemned in the judgment of man and of God … As at the time of the Emancipation, the government must take the lead, and not trail behind society.
There was, then, this one warm, inviting glimmer of hope. The congress had exceeded its mandate and its limits, but it almost seemed as though there was a second chance (the first was lost long ago) of concord between the public and the state. Svyatopolk-Mirsky, risking dismissal, confronted the Tsar with the need to initiate reforms, sincerely intending to follow through with them. And the Tsar seemed not to object. He was simply undecided. His usual distrustfulness and reticence prevented him from agreeing straight off.
In the meantime the zemstvo majority, flushed with success, raced around Russia talking of victory. They had now merged with the enraptured League of Liberation and, acting on its instructions from abroad, and taking advantage of Svyatopolk-Mirsky’s relaxation of restrictions on the press and public meetings (a concession which they had ridiculed), set their “banquet campaign” rolling all over Russia. In every important town there were large, noisy gatherings of anybody and everybody who could pay for his portion of snow-white tablecloth, perfume, and champagne, egging each other on with ever bolder toasts, listening now to a gray-headed professor on the behests of Voltaire, now to a pockmarked land surveyor on the program of the Social Democrats, and instead of hailing as the triumphant achievement of the General Zemstvo Congress what it was in fact offering, crying, “Down with Autocracy,” joyously filling their lungs to shout, “Long live the Constituent Assembly,” as though the whole country was already cowering in the ruins and the urgent need was to establish a government of whatever sort.
November 1916 Page 13