November 1916

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  With men like that an unmarried woman can talk only about politics.

  No! Obodovsky wouldn’t have it.

  “That’s just the trouble—the arrogance and conceit of the Germans, who must be taken down a peg, or else they’ll squeeze us and throttle us. Have you ever lived in Germany? You ought to see for yourselves what sort of people they are! Ruthless! Just let them get their hands on Russia! And so boring …”

  They had managed to involve Vorotyntsev in a battle of words again. What he wanted was just to sit there quietly, recover from the smoke and heat, begin to live again. And steal glances at the arrow-shaped amethyst brooch fastening the collar of her blouse.

  Let them get their hands on Russia? That’s what we don’t want. But that isn’t necessarily connected with hatred of the Germans. He was against letting them get their hands on a single inch of Russian soil. But (was this a respectable position for a colonel in the imperial army to take?) he meant, to begin with, truly Russian soil. And second, if you gave them nothing it followed that you shouldn’t take anything. It was a simple matter of conscience.

  Obodovsky leapt in, darting a glance at Andozerskaya. “Besides, we’ve got Siberia, and it’s practically empty!”

  “Exactly. So why this frantic fuss about Poland?”

  They could have been enemies, but they had come one step closer and they fitted as snugly as two polished flagstones. They were agreed on the main thing: meddle less in the rest of the world, let them carry on as they please, and keep out of it.

  Professor Andozerskaya’s general theory found further confirmation in Vorotyntsev’s freakish combination of idiosyncratic views. It is often like that when character, not logic, is the unifying factor.

  There was a striking contrast between this officer’s grim stories and his manner, in which there was no trace of despondency. Wedged into his chair he was like a great boulder, immovable but radiating power. An optimist in spite of everything.

  (But she sensed, unconsciously, that the boulder, huge as it was, had not always been invulnerable. It was unchipped, but also unpolished.)

  “But what makes you say that the Germans are so cruel?”

  “This, for instance. I lived on the Rhine at one time near a school, and regularly every Saturday”—Obodovsky’s twitching eyebrows arched in a grimace of pain, and there was a catch in his voice—"the names of all the children who’d been naughty at any time in the week were called out (at their age they’d probably forgotten and mended their ways since Monday!) and they were given the prescribed dose of the cane, conscientiously and relentlessly.”

  Vorotyntsev laughed aloud. “Is that all?”

  “Well, those weekend floggings got on my nerves, made me sick! I couldn’t bear to see it! We left the place!”

  “By and large, I don’t see anything wrong in corporal punishment for boys.”

  “What?!”

  “Though not with that sort of calculated delay, not deliberately leaving it to Saturday. But Russian fashion, in hot blood. A parent or teacher is right to do it. Learning to take his punishment when young will stand a child in good stead later. When he grows up he’ll face severer sanctions—the whole Penal Code, from his first day as an adult. So let him get used to the idea that there are limits to freedom of action, while he’s still a child.”

  Nusya wanted to ask whether the colonel himself had been whipped as a child, and whether he had children of his own. She and Petya had none, but if they had …

  “That way people will never grow up to be proud and free!” Obodovsky said indignantly.

  Vorotyntsev, coarsened by the slimy trenches, said, “Well, humble obedience is more useful to society.”

  That made Andozerskaya laugh. Any gathering of Russian intellectuals—just go and ask those in the next room—would agree with Obodovsky and nobody would dare support the colonel’s hopelessly benighted view.

  But the diminutive professor had the temerity to side with him. “It’s difficult to draw the line between protecting children and making idols of them. Idolized children despise their parents, and when they get a bit older they bully their countrymen. Tribes with an ancestor cult have endured for centuries. No tribe would survive long with a youth cult.”

  For all his soldierly boldness, his independence of mind, his resoluteness, Olda Orestovna detected in him an imperfect awareness of his own true nature, surprising in a man of forty. A rough diamond all right, and incapable of hiding it. I don’t know why it is, my friend, but somehow …

  Still, before you can decide how to bring up the young you must first define exactly what you intend to train them for. The engineer was in no doubt.

  “Education is necessary above all to make the country strong and industrious.”

  “Yes, but it must not challenge the people’s time-tested view of the world. When half-baked people with a grudge against the world go in for teaching, education damages young minds. And the more schools there are, the more people they corrupt.”

  Why “half-baked,” if they know their business? What is this “time-tested worldview” that must not be challenged? A religious one? Obodovsky balked at that. “What if science itself challenges it?”

  “Every nation has its own predispositions. And especially a preference for one form of social life rather than another.”

  Meaning? The form of government under which a people prefers to live? Was Russia supposed to be somehow different in this respect?

  Obodovsky knew very well what form of government he wanted, and had his reasons ready. He wanted the broadest possible democratic, socialist republic, but with political parties denied any share of power. Every colliery, every university would be self-governing, making its decisions, wherever possible, independently of the central power. On the Swiss principle: the commune is more powerful than the canton, the canton more powerful than the President. Only this deserves the name “republic”—the concern of society as a whole not of just a few people. Only in this way can society really participate in and understand power. (He had himself tried to establish such a form of government at the Socialist colliery, though without success.) A remote supreme authority is always alien to people—always was, is now, always will be—and any number of parliamentary speechifiers can never compensate the people for their alienation from power. (This in spite of the fact that when many socialists boycotted the First Duma, Obodovsky had rushed from meeting to meeting speechifying: “If you’re offered a weapon—take it!”)

  The colonel demurred, but halfheartedly. It seemed only too obvious that if you had a republic there was no need for such extremes of disorganization, with every company of soldiers administering itself and doing just what it liked. There’d have to be some sort of Doge’s Council or Directoire. Self-government of the majority—wasn’t it a contradiction in terms? They would flounder helplessly, maybe rush over a precipice, like the proverbial herd of swine. Only a strong, assured, self-reliant minority equipped to rule could make history.

  Once again they were in agreement.

  How is it that we share these extreme views? How is it that you and I, suddenly …

  If Vorotyntsev was ever visited by secret thoughts about possible changes in the structure of government in Russia, they were the sort that called for action, not just discussion, even such discussion as this with the sensible engineer and the ever so clever lady.

  Obodovsky rocked back in his chair. Brush the majority aside? Then for whose sake would we be doing it all? Yet this was only “in principle.” Ideology aside, summing up in the simplest way his own experience, he had always shouldered twenty men’s burdens, and it was he himself with a few others—you could count them on your fingers—who had always gotten things done. The majority did not really behave as they were supposed to in theory: they had a fatal tendency to indecision, they shunned the risks taken by individuals, or rushed to thwart them …

  In educated Russian society, opinion is so slanted, leans so sharply to one side, that by no means ev
ery view may be expressed. A whole school of thought opposed to that particular slant is morally forbidden, not merely in lectures but in private conversation. And the more “liberated” the company, the more heavily this tacit prohibition weighs on it. Warned that “he’s a rightist, you know”—“no! a rightist?”—everyone recoils in horror. That man’s entitlement to live, to express opinions, is abruptly terminated. As though anyone could forgo the use of his right hand, or buy only left-handed gloves. Only an innocent, charging in recklessly before he has found his feet, would lay about him as the colonel had today.

  But it was because of him that Andozerskaya had plucked up her courage. In her academic milieu she lived under the constant pressure of this ban on thoughts unwelcome to “society.” She had to choose every word so carefully that she never dared speak her mind fully or directly. Vorotyntsev’s enviable freedom of expression had drawn her out. And with the company trickling away the risk was small: nothing could distract the eccentric engineer from his notebook, and his happy wife was not one of those suspicious-minded progressive ladies always spoiling for an argument. Flouting all the taboos, even the most inflexible (and foreseeing the colonel’s jubilation), she looked at each of them in turn through half-closed eyes and said laughingly, “You seem to have plumped for a republic in a hurry, gentlemen! How lightly you have rejected monarchy! Are you sure you aren’t just slaves to fashion? One person starts it, and the rest take up the parrot cry: the monarchy is the main obstacle to progress. And this is the distinctive characteristic by which we recognize ‘our side’: abuse of monarchy in the past, in the future, and at all times in the world’s history.”

  Was she joking? Making fun of them? What wild nonsense was this? A professor of general history, in the twentieth century, defending … defending … not …

  “Au-toc-racy?”

  “That in particular. The slogan ‘Down with autocracy’ has blotted out the whole sky, clouded all minds. Autocracy is blamed for everything in Russia. But, historically, the word ‘autocrat’ means simply a ruler who does not pay tribute. A sovereign. It most certainly does not mean one who does just what he likes. True, he has plenary powers which he shares with no one, no other earthly authority limits him, he cannot be brought before any earthly tribunal, but he must answer to his own conscience and to God. And he must regard the limits imposed on his authority as sacrosanct, and observe them even more strictly than bounds drawn by a constitution.”

  Obodovsky could not believe his ears. An educated person defending, loud and clear, the barbarous, benighted institution called autocracy? Surely the time was past when a single word could be said in its defense? In defense not just of monarchy in the abstract but of the Russian autocratic police state? Perhaps even of that particular Tsar. The mere thought of that incompetent nonentity of a Tsar so sickened Obodovsky that when their floating industrial exhibition was anchored off Constantinople, and the personnel were invited to a party by the Russian ambassador, that ragged, half-starved émigré refused an opportunity to eat well for once so as not to have to drink the health of Nikolai II. “But unlimited power is directed by the greed of timeserving courtiers and sycophants, not by conscience before God!” the engineer exclaimed. “Once it has deprived the people of freedom, autocracy grows stupid, becomes deaf, and cannot will what is for the general good, but only what is bad. At best it can only be rendered helpless by its own might. The history of all ruling houses, everywhere, and not just our own, is criminal!”

  When Andozerskaya wanted to expound something seriously she always struck a characteristic pose, arching her small hands before her, and stroking one with the other.

  “Yes, many peoples have been quick to raise their hands against their monarchs. And some have suffered irreparable loss. In Russia, where there is only a thin veneer of social awareness, it will be a long, long time before anyone thinks up anything better than monarchy.”

  Obodovsky looked askance. Was she laughing at him? Trying to make a fool of him?

  “But look, monarchy means above all stagnation. How can anybody want his country to stagnate?”

  “A cautious approach to the new, a conservative sentiment, does not mean stagnation. A farsighted monarch carries out reforms—but only those for which the time is ripe. He does not go at it mindlessly, as some republican governments do, maneuvering so as not to lose power. And it is the monarch who has the authority to carry out lasting and far-reaching reforms.”

  “Are there any rational arguments in favor of monarchy in our age? Monarchy is a negation of equality. The negation of civic freedom!”

  “Why should it be?” Andozerskaya countered, unperturbed. “Both freedom and equality can perfectly well flourish under a monarchy.”

  But she saw as yet no twitch of agreement on the colonel’s weather-beaten face. He was biding his time.

  Wrinkling her small brow, summoning up all her strength (she wasn’t going to give way now that she’d started it), she spoke not in her oracular, professorial manner, but laying her sentences before them one by one, with the practiced skill of a housewife setting out polished knives on a tablecloth.

  “First, a firmly established line of succession saves a country from destructive rebellions. Second, with hereditary monarchy you don’t get periodic electoral turmoil, and political strife in the country is reduced. Republican elections weaken a government’s authority—they do not incline us to respect it: those who would govern have to truckle to us before the elections and work off their debt to us afterward. Whereas a monarch doesn’t have to make election promises. That’s number three. A monarch is able to strike an impartial balance. Monarchy is the spirit of national unity, whereas republics are inevitably torn by rivalries. That’s four. The personal power and prosperity of the monarch coincide with those of the country as a whole, and he is simply compelled to defend the national interest if only to survive. That’s five. For ethnically variegated multinational countries the monarch is the one binding force, the personification of unity. That’s six.”

  She gave a little smile. The strong, broad-bladed table knives lay gleaming in parallel lines.

  She looked triumphantly at the colonel, expecting that he would no longer withhold his strong support. That they would now speak with one voice.

  But he remained silent, looking rather lost and uncertain of himself.

  Surely you agree with what I have just said? Why this hesitation? Out of place, isn’t it, in such a fine soldier, one of the few capable of command?

  Have I got something wrong? … Do you find it somehow funny?

  The roads you soldiers march along are not the only ones in life. There’s many a byroad, on the verge of many an abyss.

  Could a mountain cannon make its way along them? Or a packhorse?

  No, no, of course not! How could you possibly think so?

  “How can you possibly count on its capacity for self-criticism?” the engineer cried. The thought of having to go over all his arguments again left him exhausted.

  “A monarch lives in a whirl of flattery. He is made to play the pitiful role of an idol. He lives in fear of subversion and conspiracy. What counselor can rely on logic to change the Tsar’s mind?”

  “To put your views across you have to change somebody’s mind—if not the monarch’s, that of your own party or those of a discordant public. Persuading a monarch is not the least bit more difficult and takes no longer than persuading the public. And would you deny that public opinion is often at the mercy of ignorance, passion, convenience, and vested interest? Don’t people try to flatter public opinion, and succeed all too well? Sycophancy has still more dangerous consequences in free polities than in absolute monarchies …”

  What made her so attractive? That toss of the head and the self-assured glance that went with it? The taut line of the sensitive neck? The subtly seductive, melodious voice?

  If a packhorse couldn’t … how could anyone use that byroad?

  Nothing to it. Hold on to the folds of m
y dress. We’ll get through!

  “And bowing to a monarch doesn’t go against the grain?” Obodovsky was trying to play on the most ordinary human feelings.

  “You always have to subordinate yourself to somebody. If it’s a faceless and uninspiring electoral majority, why is that pleasanter? The Tsar himself is subordinate to the monarchy, even more than you are, he is its first servant.”

  “But with a monarchy we are slaves! Do you like being a slave?”

  Andozerskaya proudly held her head at an unservile angle.

  “Monarchy does not make slaves of people; republics are more likely to depersonalize them. Whereas if you raise up an example of a man living only for the state, it ennobles the subject too.”

  The monarch as a purely theoretical example? That sort of argument could lead anywhere.

  “But what force is there in any of these arguments if the accident of birth can overshadow them all? A man can be born a fool and reign for a quarter of a century. And no one can do anything about it!”

  “The accident of birth is a vulnerable point, yes. But there are also lucky accidents. With a talented man at the head of a monarchy, what republic can compare? A monarch may be sublime. But a man elected by the majority will almost certainly be a mediocrity. And suppose the monarch is an unremarkable person. He is free at least from the temptations of wealth, power, and the honors list, he has no need to do stupid things to win promotion, he has complete freedom of judgment. Besides, efforts are made to correct accidents of birth: the future monarch is educated for his future role, conditioned to it from childhood on, and the best teachers are chosen for him.” (A little girl in an armchair, hands raised, loosely folded, boldly defending herself.)