Henry Woodd Nevinson

“ I have seen a few peasants starving on potatoes warmed with straw, while they had sold their corn to Europe before it was reaped, so as to pay for defeated armies, sunken battleships, a bloodthirsty police, and the pleasures of landowners in St. Petersburg. I have seen a few, but the imagination refuses to picture the millions on millions like them, who are actually now existing. I have seen a few tattered soldiers from the war draggling into Moscow at last, begging for farthings, squatting on the curb-stones or murmuring vacantly to themselves, “Alive and home; alive and home!” ”

“ It was they who had suffered scourgings and exile and imprisonment and madness and violation and the gallows in the name of freedom. It was they who had endured the horror that most people feel in killing a man. And, above all, it was they who had devoted their lives, their careers, and reputations to going about among the peasants and working-people to show them that the misery and terror under which they lived were neither necessary nor universal. At length the firstfruits of their toilsome propaganda, continued through forty years, were seen, and the revolutionary workman appeared. ”

“ Of all the methods by which a cowardly government can harass the people who feed it, none is more despicable than the entanglement of espionage with which it surrounds itself. But as to abolition, what would then become of all those swarms of censors, blackers-out, interpreters, letter-openers, secret police, cabdrivers, porters, and provocative agents who seek their meat from Government? Will not all these men struggle for existence like others, being human creatures, though no one would suppose so? ”

“ Then I knew that until they could face violence with some sort of organized front, the revolutionists had better stay at home. Against twenty men in uniform, five hundred had no chance. As a gigantic Caucasian cried in scorn the night before to a meeting of peaceful and scientific Social Democrats, “The party that commands force is the Government.” Who would command force was at that time the most important question in Russia, and no one was certain how it should be answered from day to day.
In the ordinary affairs of life we enjoyed liberty tempered by assassination. ”

“ Many who deserved no worse than the rest of us poor intellectual and decently clothed men were caught up in the whirling skirts of revolution and carried shrieking they knew not where. From every side came rumours of burnings and slaughters. The country was spoken of as a wilderness of destruction, into which none dared penetrate. For many days in vain I sought for a guide and interpreter to accompany me among the peasants. To enter a village was sudden death, and not for three pounds a day would a townsman go with me, till at last I found one whose poverty consented. ”

“ Yet the recent strike had almost failed, and it was just because a general strike was the workmen’s only weapon that it should be sparingly used. A second failure within a fortnight would show the Government that freedom’s only weapon was not so dangerous after all. In the end the executive had its way; they were supported by three hundred votes against twenty; and there could be no question of the wisdom. The weapon of a general strike is too powerful [33] to be brought out, except for some special and all-important crisis. It is like an ancient king, more feared when little seen. ”

“ But as a rule the design was far more savage, and the savagery grew as the reaction became stronger, till after the Days of Moscow all the cartoons might have been printed in blood, and most appeared in that colour. Then we were shown the skeleton of death stalking through the devastated streets, or the skeleton of hunger crawling upon the stage from the flies, or the Kremlin floating in blood like an island, or Dubasoff as butcher in a human meat-shop, or foul monsters brooding over the corpses beneath the gallows of freedom. ”

“ Divisions are the evidences of life, and Russia was seething with life like the world in the days of creation. But one thought exhilarated all young and happy minds—the thought of liberty. And if to a middle-aged man and a stranger in the country it was a joy then to be alive, to the young and to the Russian it must indeed have been very heaven. ”

“ Perhaps there are some people still left among the royal family who sincerely reckon those dull tombs among Russia’s treasures; but close beside the church along the Neva, so low that some of the cells are beneath the river level, run the dungeons which form the true Martyrs’ Memorial of the country—the places that will some day be honoured like the graves of the saints, for they are consecrated by the blood and suffering of hundreds of men and women who fought for freedom, though they seemed to fight in vain. ”

“ The deep and brilliant river ran silent and empty of traffic, while up its course the Tsar was spirited back to the city which had not known him since Bloody Sunday. All the approaches to the Winter Palace were barred from dawn. The two nearest bridges over the Neva were closed. Troops were drawn across the neighbouring streets. Bodies of variegated Cossacks and Guards, their horses bright with scarlet cloths, stood patient for hours upon the vast and stony square before the palace doors. No common eye might gain a glimpse of the glory to be revealed. ”

“ We have not the least desire to become a powerless confederation like Austria, in perpetual danger of disruption. That would be even worse than to become like Germany, continually hampered by her Socialists. Any kind of separation would mean immediate ruin to Poland and her industries. Russia, Siberia, and the Far East are her only markets. If she were separated from us, first she would starve, next she would be swallowed up by Germany, and foolish as the Poles are, they still have sense enough to hate the Germans more than they hate us. ”

“ A few wore some kind of collar, a few showed the finest type of Russian head—the strong, square forehead and chin, the thoughtful and melancholy eyes, the straight nose, not very broad, and the dense masses of long hair all standing on end. A few seemed to be bred just a trifle too fine for their work, as dog-fanciers say. There they sat and spoke and listened—the members of that Strike Committee which had won fame in a month—just a handful of unarmed and unlearned men, who had shaken the strongest and most pitiless despotism in the world. ”

“ For there is never any real break in a nation’s history from day to day, and the movement of 1905 was not the first sign of change, but only the brightest. The story of the undaunted struggle for freedom in Russia during the last fifty years has been admirably told by Stepniak, Kropotkin, Zilliacus, Miliukoff, and many other writers. In books that are easily obtained, any one may learn the course of that great movement—the changes in its aims and methods, the distinctions in its parties, and the martyrdoms of its recorded heroes. ”

“ The Government drove the leaders to use it piecemeal and often. They confiscated the strike funds to starve the women and children, they employed hunger and Cossacks to shake the determination of the men. By bombarding a committee, they drove the revolutionists to build the Moscow barricades before the movement was ripe and while the other cities remained inactive. They discovered the fighting weakness of freedom, and the entire security with which men in uniform can be trusted to kill at the command of those who feed and pay them. They stamped down the rising in blood. ”

“ Already the people recognized that as yet they had no guarantee of freedom. As long as the Oligarchs controlled the police and the army, freedom existed only on sufferance. No one knew what the army would do, and no one knew what the fighting power of the revolution was. Those unknown factors alone terrified the Oligarchs into reform. But all the promises were only bits of paper. It had long been proved that the Tsar’s word went for nothing. At the birth of his son he had abolished flogging, but the taxes had been “flogged out” of the peasants just as before. ”

“ Even in winter the dress of Little Russian peasants is brilliant and distinctive. They go in cheerful crimson and orange, and their skirts and aprons are worked with barbaric embroidery, as among the Bulgarian Slavs of Macedonia. Their music and dances are like no other in Russia, being comparatively gay. The artistic instincts run in their blood, and the women supply the Empire with singers, actresses, dancers, and others among whom beauty counts for wealth. ”

“ Many of the students, with long hair all on end, wore the Russian tunic, and no one stared. Some girl-students—those indomitable “Kursistki,” on whom the soldiers have no mercy—were dressed in the loose black blouse, fitting closely to the throat and buttoned along the top of the shoulder instead of down the front or back. A few gentler spirits had yielded to a tiny edge of white collar above the black. But the blouse of the violent shone red, all gules from throat to waist, and the more revolutionary a girl is by nature, the thicker is her hair, and the lower it hangs over her eyes and ears. ”

“ At the time of the strike, the hands demanded the right of receiving friends and relations from outside into the premises. The managers complied, and that evening the whole place was crammed with enthusiastic advocates of family affection. A mass meeting, eloquent of revolution, was held in the mill yard, and the devotees of friendship paraded their red flags in front of the managers’ quarters with trumpet and drum. Next day the managers withdrew their amiable concession, cleared the dormitories of men and women, and turned them neck and crop out into the road to fend for themselves. ”

“ A certain dignity of tone, combined with the excellence of its foreign news, has given it a reputation for sobriety and truth, but against the rights of freedom it is virulent in its animosity, and against a leader of the people it will welcome any libel without reserve. To discover where justice lies, one has but to take the opposite view to its own, and to agree with it is a danger-signal that one’s sense of right has gone astray. ”

“ I with unwavering firmness will uphold the institutions which I have established, in the firm conviction that you will devote all your powers to the self-sacrificing service of the Fatherland, to a clear presentation of the needs of the peasants, which lie so close to my heart, to the enlightenment of the people, and to the development of its well-being. You must realize that for the great welfare of the State, not only is Liberty necessary, but also order on the basis of law. ”

“ Of course, the prolonged post strike, which had continued for nearly three weeks then, was inconvenient for everybody. Revolutions are generally inconvenient, especially for business people. But it was rather too much when that ancient champion of tyranny, the Novoe Vremya, took this opportunity for working itself up into such a glow of righteous indignation because the strikers were depriving mankind of humanity’s glorious right—the right of communication and speech—the right of corresponding with fellow-men afar off, and calling on others to associate in their joys and griefs. ”

“ The failure at Moscow fell like a blight upon all Russia, and hope withered. The revolutionists, certainly, protested that much was gained. They admitted that they had allowed their hand to be forced by the Government. The attempt, they knew, was ill-timed and ill-devised. But they had not intended to win this time; the rising was only a dress rehearsal for the great revolution hereafter. They were teaching the proletariat the methods of street fighting, and after all it was something to have held a large part of the ancient capital for ten days against the Government troops. ”

“ In Russia, even more than in other countries, was seen the power of the creative word. A strain of unwonted idealism has long been audible in all Russian literature, and has led to the hope that when Russia’s hour came she would advance on finer and higher lines than the more material and self-satisfied peoples of Europe. The hour seemed now to have come, and the hope to be justified. The people were drunken with ideas. After these centuries of suppression, all Russia was revelling in a spiritual debauch of words. Meetings were held almost every night. ”

“ Polite, charming, highly educated, well dressed, healthy, fond of sport and country life, full of good will and high intentions, they were so like our own country squires and aristocracy at their best—so like the people who used to be held up to us as the school of manners and the producers of the fine old English stock—that only the dreariest of Social Democrats could have refused them sympathy. ”

“ But for the moment the Government which feeds the vultures was afraid for its own skin. The police and spies slunk out of the conference without compulsion, and in the workmen’s meeting the five-minutes’ speeches began. They went with that extraordinary dash and fire which appear to be the common heritage of nearly all Russian speakers. How they have managed to inherit such a power is one of the mysteries of this mysterious revolution. In a land where public speaking has usually been punished by exile or death, we find a whole race of orators. ”