Paul I of Russia

“ If there was no change in the lot of Paul's friends, it was otherwise with his victims. Exiles were called back, and their property was restored to them; justice was done to all who had been sacrificed to caprices without number. In fact, a golden era began for Russia. It was impossible to deny this at witnessing the love, the regard and the enthusiasm of the Russians for their new Emperor. That enthusiasm was so strong that all esteemed it the greatest thing to have seen, to have met Alexander. ”

“ In Old Russia, as in Germany and France, authority was historical; in Crim-Tartary, as in Turkey and Bokhara, it was personal. Ivan the Terrible introduced, and Peter the Great extended, the personal system. In her better days Russia had a noble class, as well as a citizen class and a peasant class; but these signs of a glorious past were gradually put away. "No man is noble in my empire, unless I make him so," said Peter. "No man is noble in my empire, except when I speak to him, and only while I speak to him," said Paul. ”

“ Of these courts, Russia was guided by the passions of its emperor, Paul, a man not without fits of generosity, and some natural goodness, but subject to the wildest humours of caprice, and erased by the possession of greater power than can ever be safely, or perhaps innocently, possessed by weak humanity. ”

“ Even a saint, I perceive, has his touch of egotism, and behind all Paul's talk of Russia's ideals, of the misconceptions of their fatherland's function by feather-brained Nihilists and Democrats possessed of that devil, the modern spirit, there danced, I am convinced, a glorified vision of St. Paul floating down the vistas of the future, with a nimbus of Russian ideals around his head. If he has only put them as eloquently into his book as he talks of them he will at least be read. ”

“ Nevertheless, Paul began to march his troops towards the lower Volga, and several polks of Cossacks had crossed that river on the ice, when the news of his assassination cut short the scheme. [147]
The grandiose schemes of Paul vanished with their fantastic contriver; but the rapprochement of Russia to revolutionary France was ultimately to prove an event of far-reaching importance; for the eastern power thereby began to exert on the democracy of western Europe that subtle, semi-Asiatic influence which has so powerfully warped its original character. ”

“ The princes and nobles of the French court received from Paul large pensions, while, at the same time, he ignobly made them feel that he was their master and they were his slaves. His dread of French liberty was so great, that with all his soul he entered into the wide-spread European coalition which the genius of Pitt had organized against France, and which embraced even Turkey. And now for the first time the spectacle was seen of the Russian and Turkish squadrons combining against a common foe. Paul sent an army of one hundred thousand men to coöperate with the allies. ”

“ Besides, if formerly the word of a czar was that of Russia, and his will the will also of his subjects, it is no longer the same in the present day. When Peter I. accepted the scheme of reunion proposed by the doctors of the Sorbonne of Paris, and consented to have it examined by his bishops (1717) ; when Paul I. took into consideration the plan suggested by Father Gruber (1800) , one might truly have said, Russia promises fair to become Catholic. At this present [63] time, however, an emperor of Russia might probably speak and promise for himself alone. ”

“ Till lately she has been living at Moscow, carefully concealing the secret of her romantic origin; but, through no act of her own, the story, by some means or other, has transpired.
“The Czar Paul is said to be convinced by documentary evidence of her legitimacy and Imperial lineage, a matter to him of grave import, since, as there is no Salic law in Russia, if the rule of primogeniture be followed, this grand-daughter of Ivan VI., as the eldest surviving representative of the House of Romanoff, should now be wearing the diadem of the Czars. ”

“ So enchanting were the mountains to Leo Tolstoy in his approach to Stary-Yurt.
The great natural beauties of the Caucasus, the wild mountaineers, the no less wild Russians, the Cossacks of the Terek—all this new, or rather regenerating, condition of life had such a beneficial influence on Leo Tolstoy that he threw off, like a dirty shell, all the worldly, infected atmosphere of the life in Russia in which he had so nearly perished. And this regenerating and vivifying process awakened in him two great forces: religion and creative power. ”

“ The Russian is a submissive man, and even capable of strong attachment to the throne: but there is no spot of the earth where national injury is more deeply resented; and Paul had been regarded as tarnishing the fame of Russia. His abandonment of Suwarrow—a warrior, of whom the annals of the Russian army will bear record to the end of time—had stung all classes. More than a soldier, Suwarrow was a great military genius. He gained battles without tactics, and in defiance of them. He had astonished the Austrian generals by the fierce rapidity of his movements ”

“ She was alone and she faced the trouble alone, but if she had known the full extent of the trouble she would have wanted the Emperor where he would be safer than out there among that murderous gang. She did not know that Russia was in revolution, nor would she believe it at first when she was told that the army had gone over to the revolutionists. The officers of the guard told her, but she simply shook her head. Finally, Grand Duke Paul came tearing out to Tsarskoe in his highest power motor car. ”

“ In the storm of Ismael, forty thousand men, women and, children fell in indiscriminate massacre at his command. In the campaign which resulted in the partition of Poland, twenty thousand Poles were cut down by his dragoons. A stranger to fear, grossly illiterate, and with no human sympathies, he appears on the arena but as a thunderbolt of war. Next to the emperor Paul, he was perhaps the most fantastic man on the continent. In a war with the Turks he killed a large number with his own hands, and brought, on his shoulders, a sackful of heads, which he rolled out at the feet of his general. ”

“ Baron Raff. What have we always done in Russia when a Czar suggests reforms?—nothing. You forget we are diplomatists. Men of thought should have nothing to do with action. Reforms in Russia are very tragic, but they always end in a farce.
Count R. I wish Prince Paul were here. 3By the bye, I think this boy is rather ungrateful to him. If that clever old Prince had not proclaimed him Emperor at once without giving him time to think about it, he would have given up his crown, I believe, to the first cobbler he met in the street. ”

“ Paul deemed himself the most illustrious monarch of Europe, and resolved that none but a Russian general should lead the allied armies. The Germans, on the contrary, regarded the Russians as barbarians of wolfish courage and gigantic strength, but far too ignorant of military science to be entrusted with the plan of a campaign. After much contention the Emperor of Austria was compelled to yield, and an old Russian general, Suwarrow, was placed in command of the armies of the two most powerful empires then on the globe. ”

“ Now, therefore, the people are turning towards the man who has been for a long time looked up to as expressing the consciousness of humanity—Leo Tolstoi. What a deep antagonism between the doctrine of love and non-resistance and the doctrine of violence and terror and dictatorship! And yet Tolstoism plays a leading part in Russia to-day, and the dictators tolerate the followers of the great apostle, and even given them a certain preferential treatment as compared with the members of other parties and movements. ”

“ Paul had been very justly called the Don Quixote of the coalition, and the other powers were now not a little apprehensive of the course he might adopt, for madman as he was, he was the powerful monarch of some forty millions of people. Soon he ordered the Russian fleet, which in coöperation with the squadrons of the allies was blockading Malta, to withdraw from the conflict. Then he recalled his ministers from London and Vienna, declaring that neither England nor Austria was contending for any principle, but that they were fighting merely for their own selfish interests. ”

“ He tenderly looks down from His bright, immeasurable heights, and enjoys the endless harmony in which ye all in your contradictions are eternally moving. In your pride ye thought to evade the universal law. Nay, thou, with thy petty, vulgar contempt for the waiters, thou also respondest to the harmonious necessity of the eternal and endless.”
From Lucerne Tolstoy returned to Russia through Germany, and in August he reached Yasnaya Polyana. There he intended to occupy himself with the estate and to open a school, but for that winter the whole family went to Moscow. ”

“ “If there was none of this magnanimity in war, we should go to war only when it was worth while going to certain death, as now. Then there would not be war because Paul Ivánovich had offended Michael Ivánovich. And when there was a war, like this one, it would be war! And then the determination of the troops would be quite different. Then all these Westphalians and Hessians whom Napoleon is leading would not follow him into Russia, and we should not go to fight in Austria and Prussia without knowing why. War is not courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; ”

“ Nevertheless we look upon the Communist institutions of Soviet Russia as an accomplished fact, and we believe that we can collaborate in the free education of the people in Communist ideals.
We understand by Communism the recognition of the duty to work and the guarantee of material existence. The abolition of that awful anxiety with regard to material needs in the life of each individual would be without doubt an enormous step forward, and this may indeed be realised. There is no doubt that the luxurious life which the possessing class lives at present cannot be guaranteed to all. ”

“ Paul I., Czar of Russia, son of the Empress Catharine II., and her successor in 1796; was a despotic and arbitrary ruler; fought with the allies against France, but entered into an alliance with Napoleon in 1799; was murdered by certain of his nobles as he was being forced to abdicate (1734-1801) .
Paul and Virginia, a celebrated novel by Saint-Pierre, written on the eve of the French Revolution, in which "there rises melodiously, as it were, the wail of a moribund world: everywhere wholesome Nature in unequal conflict with diseased, perfidious art ”

“ At the very bottom were the workers with bent backs supporting the whole weight of this social pyramid. The Revolution has turned this pyramid upside down. The classes which had been at the bottom straightened their backs and took into their hands the Government of the Russian State, and their rule is called the dictatorship of the proletariat. This complete reversal of things took place with comparative ease. There was very little resistance. The bourgeois class in Russia is estimated at ten per cent., or even less, of the population. ”

“ WHY THE PEASANTS ARE DISCONTENTED.
There are two other serious points of disagreement between the peasant and the Government. The first is the requisition of wheat. There is no country in the world where the peasant is willing to give up freely the product of his labour. Everywhere only constraint can force him to do that. Where laws are recognised by the population, this is done under the pretext of a voluntary contribution, but in Russia the revolutionary system is in a chaotic state, and compulsion appears in a more visible form. ”

“ Apart from these Communist organisations the Co-operative movement contains the largest number of groupings in present-day Russia. There are a great many of these Co-operative organisations, both of consumers and of producers, and their machinery is of great value for the feeding of the population. Another kind of group is that of the Trade Unions, which organise the placing of employees in different industries, domestic service, as well as the other kinds of employment. ”

“ Moscow, January 4th, 1919.
THE ATTACK ON THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM.
The battle has been opened on the whole length of the front. Capitalism and private property are in danger. Communist Socialism is developing its attack in strength and now for nearly two years has held in its hands the destinies of many nations. Are we to side with one party or with the other? We can side with neither. The Christian law which we profess prevents us from entering into the ranks of combatants who use violence and cruelty against their enemies. We are living at an exceptional period, at the turning of the ways. ”

“ Hence the void which Communist doctrine cannot fill produces a spiritual thirst which they cannot quench; and the political pamphlets spread broadcast by the Party in power are not enough to satisfy the people. It is all very well to wave flags on which are written the great words, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Justice, and so forth. The people knew too well that they have been carved on the buildings of a neighbouring republic, and that they failed to lead the nation towards a moral end. ”