Russian society

“ Political events had tended to concentrate absolute power in the hands of the Grand Princes of Moscow, beginning with Iván III. But no counterbalancing power had arisen in Russian society; there was no independent life, no respect for the individual, no public opinion to counteract the abuse of power. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, Russian society had reached the extreme limits of development possible to it under its unfavorable conditions. ”

“ But this fact, important as it is, must not obscure the equally important fact that the educated and cultivated class in Russia, speaking several languages, and personally familiar with the civilisation of one or more foreign countries, exercises an influence over Russian society and Russian public opinion undoubtedly stronger than that of any other educated class whatever—with the possible exception of that of Germany. ”

“ RUSSIAN SOCIETY.—The great nobles kept in their castles a host of servants. These were slaves, subject to the caprices of their master. Russian women were kept in seclusion. There was an Asiatic stamp imprinted on civil and social life. "Thanks to the general ignorance, there was no intellectual life in Russia: thanks to the seclusion of women, there was no society." By degrees intercourse with Western Europe was destined to soften, in some particulars, the harsh outlines of this picture. ”

“ We cannot too carefully remember that, however we may talk about Russian society, we know nothing of the life of any part of it but the aristocracy. There is nothing else that we can know; for there is nothing there equivalent to our middle class. English residents and travellers in Russia describe to us the dress and appearance of everybody who appears in the streets and passes along the roads ”

“ The Russian Republic is a free Socialist society of all the working people of Russia. The entire power, within the boundaries of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, belongs to all the working people of Russia, united in urban and rural Soviets.... ”

“ The civilized world seems almost certain, sooner or later, to follow the example of Russia in attempting a Communist organization of society. I believe that the attempt is essential to the progress and happiness of mankind during the next few centuries, but I believe also that the transition has appalling dangers. ”

“ The first Russian Revolution, therefore, turned Russia into a debating society and a political scramble. The liberal forces of the country, unaccustomed to action or responsibility, set up a clamorous discussion whether Russia was to be a constitutional monarchy, a liberal republic, a socialist republic, or what not. ”

“ The Russian Empire is a huge peasant commonwealth, a federation of forty thousand democratic republics, thousands of which have retained the socialist and collectivist organization of the "Mir" or village community.
For the Russian is not like the Scot or the American a born individualist, rather is he a born Socialist. Now, individualism generally creates for itself an aristocratic or bourgeois or middle class form of society. The Socialist spirit finds its most fitting expression in democracy. ”

“ A survey of the development of "Russian socialism" (or "Russian communism") since Herzen, cannot fail to convince us that the Russian socialists, like the French and the German socialists, were looking for a new philosophy and a new ethic. Life was to be entirely renovated; society was to be rebuilt upon completely new foundations. ”

“ Little by little these institutions, as they begin to function automatically in a Communist sense, will take on more and more automony. By the tremendous campaign of social education and re-organization now being carried on in Russia, which will fit the masses for the new society, the dictatorship of the proletariat will be gradually dissolved and the ultimate Communist goal of a non-government society arrived at. ”

“ They give the workers a much more flexible and practical governmental organization than one constructed upon so-called democratic principles. It is safe to prophecy that, the revolution prospering, the Russian workers will not dispense with their Soviets until they are able to develop the non-governmental society towards which they are aiming. ”

“ To a predominant extent the leaders of the party were intellectuals and this gave the social democratic organisation the character of an undemocratic and aristocratic secret society. In this connection, we have, of course, to bear in mind the nature of Russian conditions, which rendered it impossible to constitute a comprehensive united organisation such as exists in European lands, for in Russia there are obstacles to the union and association of the workers such as do not exist to the same degree in Europe. ”

“ Ethics leads on logically to politics. The political and social trend of Russian philosophy is ethical; ethical theory is to be practically applied to extant society. In concrete, therefore, we have to do with socialism and its justification. To carry matters a stage further, we have to ask how the goal of socialism is to be attained, whether by reform of the existing political organisation or by revolution. ”

“ In consequence, the Russians finally found themselves alone, with the admittedly next to impossible task on their hands of making their country a Communist society against the united opposition of the capitalist world. ”

“ Again: “We are free because we begin with our own liberation; we are independent; we have nothing to lose or to honour. A Russian will never be a protestant, or follow the juste milieu ... our civilization is external, our corrupt morals quite crude.”
The great point Herzen was always making was that Russia had escaped the baleful tradition of Western Europe, and the hereditary infection of Western corruption. Thus, in his disenchantment with Western society and his enthusiasm for the communal ownership of land, he was at one with the Slavophiles ”

“ Only a minority are intellectually prepared for the new society. And it falls as naturally to this intelligent minority to set up the essential discipline in Russian industry as it does to the corresponding minority in Amercan trade unions to create the discipline absolutely necessary to make the masses function in those bodies. ”

“ Not only does the action of Governments not deter men from crimes; on the contrary, it increases crime by always disturbing and lowering the moral standard of society. Nor can this be otherwise, since always and everywhere a Government, by its very nature, must put in the place of the highest, eternal, religious law (not written in books but in the hearts of men, and binding on every one) its own unjust, man-made laws, the object of which is neither justice nor the common good of all but various considerations of home and foreign expediency. ”

“ Some of us, therefore, think that Russia’s greatest social danger arises from the student part of her population, and that her great problem—a vital one for her to solve, and soon—is how to deal fairly and wisely with them, and, caring for them as paternally as she does for her peasant population, incorporate them fully and intimately into her national life. ”

“ What will become of the foundations of society? What will become of the family? Parricide, it appears, is only a bogy of Moscow merchants' wives. The most precious, the most sacred guarantees for the destiny and future of Russian justice are presented to us in a perverted and frivolous form, simply to attain an object—to obtain the justification of something which cannot be justified. ‘Oh, crush him by mercy,’ cries the counsel for the defense; but that's all [pg 849] the criminal wants, and to-morrow it will be seen how much he is crushed. ”

“ There is a fortune waiting for the capitalist who will take cold, soft drinks to Russia, and he will have besides the fortune the additional satisfaction of bringing hope to the sodden victims of vodka.
An army that will obey orders; a government that will govern; leaders in business, in transportation, in agriculture and a people willing to obey those leaders; education, wholesome life. Russia needs all these, and in her coming mighty struggle to achieve them the whole world of democracy, and especially our United States, must lend willing and sympathetic help and guidance. ”

“ We hear so much nowadays of the inefficiency of Russia's present social system, of her lack of ambition in the line of practical endeavor, that we are apt to overlook the really wonderful progress that Russia has made in the course of the last few decades. ”

“ During the nineteenth century Russia became a very active participant in western civilisation, and there was an extraordinary development of civilisation in Russia, expressing itself in a very great variety of ways, in literature, in art, in economic and social life and in the development of political forms. ”

“ That Russia will live which has already renounced passive submission to another will and to the past, which will go to the West, accept its great experience, its forms of life, and which will live attentively following its work, revering its active Aryan culture which has set as its aim the unification of all mankind in one family. ”

“ But, in truth, "modern", "stable", Russia is merely a glittering veneer beneath which lurk, festering, the old ills of authoritarianism, lawlessness, oligarchy, aggression, ignorance, superstition, and repression mingled with extremes of poverty and disease. ”

“ Let us think of Russia with her bigness, her space, her consciousness of unity, and of the large thing, and remember we have all the possibilities of health and splendour that the Russians have if we will only face our problems and do the things which are obvious to all except to those who fight in the political arena for fighting’s sake.
To recapitulate:
(1) Russia has at least double the white population in her Empire that we have in ours. Why should we not take steps to transplant from over-crowded Britain to the less crowded parts of the Empire, and so get better families? ”

“ It was felt that Russia was destined to be the great hope of the world largely because it was running a different historical course from that of other nations. And the differentiating factor was the "rural" community. The cry was for Russia to purge its social system of the conditions that prevented a return to the communal mode of life. By far the saddest of these conditions was serfdom. ”

“ It is evident that Russia has a great future if this view of self-government is gradually carried upwards. The right beginning in constitutional government, surely, is in the family, [Pg 63] for there we find the social unit. A state is not a collection or aggregate of individuals, but of families, and all history shows us that the greatness or insignificance of a country has always been determined by the condition of its homes and the character of its family life. ”

“ When I think of the nationalities of Russia, I do not think first of all of political struggles, of debates in the Duma, or of newspaper articles. I think of certain more intimate aspects of the lives of these very numerous and varied peoples, of certain episodes which show the way their thoughts are tending, without regard to the vicissitudes of political conflicts. Politics are necessary, whether we like or dislike them. But politics are a system of relations, and we cannot understand relations unless we first of all realise what bodies they are between which the relations subsist. ”

“ Following out these principles, Russia is a real workers' republic. Work is the standard by which it establishes the status of all its people. The nation's official motto, also written into the Constitution, is, "He who does not work, neither shall he eat." Only the workers—including the peasants and soldiers—who are over the age of eighteen have the right to vote or to hold office. No distinction is made because of sex. Capitalists and others who live by exploiting labor are disfranchised and denied all participation in the Government. ”

“ In the bustle of a custom-house, charged with fretfulness and impatience and meanness, Russia sets forth her belief in a life beyond the grave and her conviction that the ideals presented by the picture are the noblest known to mankind. ”

“ If some of us are right in thinking of the Russians as a great race with a vast country of tremendous resources; who can in any way picture the great and wonderful possibilities of their future? It will be my task to try and show how little opportunity they have had as yet of getting their share of modern civilization, how imperfectly, as yet, the ethical side of their religion has been imparted to them ”

“ The Russian nation, indeed, is not one of fools, but of potential geniuses. But the trend of their genius is not that of Western races. It lies in the arts and philosophy and rarely descends to the more sordid realms of politics and commerce.
Yet, in spite of a reputation for unpracticalness, the Russians have shown the world at least one supreme example of economic organization. It is forgotten nowadays that Russia deserves an equal share in the honours of the Great War. She bore the brunt of the first two years of it and made possible the long defence of the Western front. ”

“ Not only the abstract ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity; but more concrete and more recently popularized ones such as proletariat, bourgeois, soviet, are already surrounded with a sort of fungous growth concealing their real meaning, so that every time they are employed they have to be freshly defined.
The phenomenon of Red Russia is a supreme example of the triumph over reason of the shibboleth, the slogan, and the political catchword. War-weary and politics-weary, the Russian people easily succumbed to those who promised wildly what nobody could give, the promisers least of all. ”

“ The soviets, or councils of soldiers’ and workmen’s delegates, which have spread like wildfire throughout the country, are the nearest thing to a government that Russia has known since the very early days of the revolution. ”