Tsar of Russia

“ THE world in mourning for a Russian Tsar!
⁠A despot of the nineteenth century
⁠Mourned by the nations that have made men free!
⁠Ye captives of his rule! where'er ye be,
Whether in dungeons or in mines afar—
Wretches who mourn, yet mourn not for the Tsar,—
⁠Forgive the tears that seem a wrong to grief
⁠Barren of comfort and without relief;
The Tsar was Russia's martyr—as ye are! ”

“ For the Tsar is not only the executive and the law-making power of the state, head of the Church, fountain of justice, commander-in-chief of the army and navy, but, more than all these, he is father to his people. His subjects owe him, in theory, a filial respect and obedience; and, with the exception of the Nihilists, they are dutiful children. The relation is an Oriental one, which we of the West can not understand. But it is powerfully operative in Russia. It has not been really weakened by anything that the Nihilists have done, but, on the contrary, strengthened. ”

“ What they thought of the problems of their rule I do not know; and I do not know enough of their people to understand what those problems really are. But surely no power could be more beneficently exercised than this man’s must be; and if his spirit could only animate the instruments of his authority and the innumerable officials who are necessary to administer it, the mad asperities of recrimination in Russia would be as impossible to the administration and its opponents as they are to the Tsar himself. ”

“ Dimitry's name! SHUISKY. Then he knew nothing. TSAR. Listen: take steps this very hour that Russia Be fenced by barriers from Lithuania; That not a single soul pass o'er the border, That not a hare run o'er to us from Poland, Nor crow fly here from Cracow. Away! SHUISKY. I go. TSAR. Stay!—Is it not a fact that this report Is artfully concocted? Hast ever heard That dead men have arisen from their graves To question tsars, legitimate tsars, appointed, Chosen by the voice of all the people, crowned By the great Patriarch? Is't not laughable? Eh? What? Why laugh'st thou not thereat? ”

“ The Tsar was the one person who could bestow it, and if he would not do so voluntarily, he must be compelled to grant it. No one man had the right to wreck the happiness of millions of human beings. If the authority was centralized, so was the responsibility. Alexander's entire reign had been a curse—and emancipation was a delusion and a lie. He must yield or perish. This vicious and degenerate organization had its center in a highly educated middle class, where men with nineteenth-century intelligence and aspirations were in frenzied revolt against methods suited to the time of the Khans. ”

“ With such a base to the pyramid as is constituted by the peasant proprietors of Russia, aided by the enormous army, recruited almost to any extent from among their ranks, whose chief religion is a superstitious reverence for the "great father," the Tsar is safe in refusing all concessions, all improvements; and the hopeless nature of Russian reform hitherto, mainly hangs upon the conviction of the Government that nothing external can possibly act upon this inert mass. "Great is stupidity, and shall prevail." ”

“ Here lies the true cause of the revolutionary movement of more than a century. The last three Tsars of Russia—the two Alexanders and the present Tsar—have taken steps to eliminate the great evil, and if, so far, they have only been partially successful, the fault lies not with them nor with the Russian people, but with the still German mind of their advisers. The abolition of serfdom, repeated constitutional manifestos and the introduction of the Duma system are momentous steps towards a brighter future. ”

“ Peter the Great was the typical Russian Tsar, though built on the most majestic and colossal scale. He forced his reforms upon an indifferent or unwilling people. While many Russians are, from one point of view, enlightened and others are crudely educated and correspondingly radical, the fact remains that to any proposed change the masses block the way ; nor is it strange that the reforms in other lands extorted from the rulers by the people are in Russia, if they exist at all, forced upon the ruled by the ruler. ”

“ I think, from my description, which possesses the merit of accuracy, that it will be recognised what simplicity of life surrounded the rulers of one of the greatest Empires the world has ever known. Simplicity characterised all their doings, the simplicity which was to prove their undoing. The Imperial pair wished to lead the lives of private individuals; they imagined that it was possible. In Russia it has never been popular or possible for a Tsar to be human ”

“ When the time comes and when the people is ready, the tsar will make way for the socialist republic and will become its president. In contrast with old and moribund Europe, young and vigorous Russia can offer two notable guarantees, the younger generation of the landowning aristocracy and the peasantry. ”

“ In the eighteenth century, however, Russia began to take an increasingly important part in European affairs, and it is now a great force in the politics of the world. The realms of the Tsar which lie in Europe exceed in extent those of all the other rulers of the continent put together, and yet they are scarcely more than a quarter of his whole dominion, which embraces northern and central Asia, and forms together an empire occupying toward three times the area of the United States.
Movements of the Slavs during the period of the German invasions. ”

“ The first practical result of the Russian revolution was the cheapening of bread and food; the great task of new Russia is to reform the bureaucracy, to turn it from the absolutist regnare to the democratic gubernare. In absolute Tsardom every bureaucrat is a tsar, and, in his own domain, the tsar. Russia is handicapped by her size ”

“ They are not down-trodden; and, out of their 100,000,000 free souls, there is a proportion of Nihilists no larger, probably, than that of Socialists in Germany, Communists in France, “Dynamiters” in London, or Anarchists in Chicago. The Tsar enjoys the confidence and love of the vast majority of his people. Russia may safely challenge the rest of Europe to exhibit a parallel to the comparative progress, social and political, which she has made in the past thirty years. ”

“ In a word, Russia is bound hand and foot. She cannot make a warlike move. And if her diplomatists speak as though she contemplated such a step,37 it will be nothing more than bluff.
Moving along this line of reasoning, the statesmen of Berlin and Vienna reached the comforting conclusion that they had nothing to fear from the Tsardom. And that was the crucial point that had needed elucidation. For if the Tsar’s Government remained inactive while Servia was being punished and Turkey and Bulgaria bribed, there would be no cause to apprehend a hitch. ”

“ The Russians of Alexander's day could not fail to note all these changes, and it was inevitable that discontent with reaction should be greatly accentuated because for so long a period the tsar had cherished constitutionalist designs and had given public pledges of reform. Moreover, Poland and Finland were granted constitutions, and in view of their own condition it was natural that the Russians should feel that this implied a slight to themselves. Progressive philosophy, opposition ideas, sociological and political journalism and literature, were widely circulated. ”

“ Accustomed to govern themselves within a certain range, the Russians could easily be fitted for participation in the higher duties which a constitutional government would impose upon them. A lower House could be evolved from the seeds of the Tir. An upper House could be created by the Tsar out of abundant existing materials. Thus, without any violent metamorphosis, liberal institutions might be introduced into Russia. They may come, as a spontaneous offering from the throne, sooner than their most sanguine friends in the empire now expect. ”

“ There was a fierce struggle between the progressives and the moderates, between the opponents and the supporters of the institution. The emperor's position was difficult, for with two exceptions (Constantine, Alexander's younger brother, and Helena Pavlovna, his aunt) all the members of the court were adverse to the reform.
After the conclusion of peace and the issue of the peace manifesto of 1856, the tsar seized the first opportunity to instruct the delegation of the Moscow aristocracy to consider the possibility of liberating the serfs. ”

“ The concord and union of the people and the Tsar are a great moral force, which has created Russia in the course of centuries by protecting her from all misfortunes and all attacks, and has constituted up to the present time a pledge of unity, independence, integrity, material well-being, and intellectual development. ”

“ All men are equal and the Tsar is just such a man as we are. Why should we pay him tribute? Why should I subject my life to danger in order to kill in war a man who has done me no wrong? You may cut us into small pieces, but we will not change our [31] ideas, we will not put on the military cloak, and will not eat rations. He who will pity us will give us an alms, but we have nothing belonging to the Crown and we want nothing.' Such are the words of these peasants, who assert that there is a large number like them in Russia. ”

“ Alexander III, son of a Grand-Duchess of Hesse-Darmstadt, to the extent of one thirty-second, and the present ruler, Nicholas II, who married a Princess of the House of Oldenburg, to the extent of one sixty-fourth. One sixty-fourth of the blood of the present Tsar is Russian Romanov blood. ”

“ Somewhere he’s thinking about his soldiers, and he knows.” He was photographed in their uniform, just as one of themselves, and the photograph was distributed amongst the troops. “God save the Tsar!” is the one clamorous cry of the streets in Russia to-day, we are told. The Emperor and Empress show themselves in a balcony in Petrograd as naturally as King George and Queen Mary show themselves at Buckingham Palace when the crowd ask for them. ”

“ Luká cries, "The pope!"
And Román, "The Pomyéshchick!"
And Prov shouts, "The Tsar!"
And Demyán, "The official!"
"The round-bellied merchant!"
Bawl both brothers Goóbin,
Mitródor and Ívan.
Pakhóm shrieks, "His Lordship, 130
His most mighty Highness,
The Tsar's Chief Adviser!"
The obstinate peasants
Grow more and more heated,
Cry louder and louder,
Swear hard at each other;
I really believe
They'll attack one another!
Look! now they are fighting! ”

“ After the peace of Tilsit Napoleon wished Alexander to banish or imprison the English in Russia, but the Tsar answered, “Their ancestors have been here during past centuries and I shall not treat my old friends so ill as to consider them enemies; if they choose to remain in Russia none shall molest them.” They suffered during the French occupation of Moscow; their Church was burned, and the residence of their pastor as well as their own warehouses and dwellings. ”

“ He was therefore during the remainder of his life in high favour with the tsar, who confided to him the command of his capital during his absence from Russia, employed him in organizing his army according to the European system, and latterly raised him to the rank of general-in-chief. ”

“ Although the Tsar was reputed to be learned and was probably the most learned man in his nation, and had always about him a coterie of distinguished scholars, still there was no intellectual life in Russia, and owing to the Oriental seclusion of the women there was no society. ”

“ The Russian Finance Minister, Count Kokovzeff, wrote to the Tsar advising against this course—I was informed of this by Count Mirbach after the peace of Brest-Litovsk—recommending a firm union with Germany and warning against war, which, he said, would be unfavorable to Russia and lead to revolution and the fall of the dynasty. The Tsar did not follow this advice, but pushed on toward war. ”

“ Such was the intimate, the patriarchal relation between the Tsar and his people, and such was the real soul of Russia before the Revolution. I have often read, in books written by Western authors, that the Tsar and all the Imperial Family lived in hourly terror of assassination, that they knew themselves hated by their people and were righteously afraid of them. Nothing could possibly be farther from the truth.{48} Certainly neither Nicholas II nor Alexandra Feodorovna feared their people. ”

“ To this I replied that if this was the Tsar's attitude he must make his military preparations conform to it without delay. The Tsar said nothing.
At all events, I sought to utilize Tsar Nicholas II's worry at the growing power of Japan to the advantage of Germany and general European culture. Russia, despite siding with Japan, was the first nation to collapse among all those participating in the war. ”

“ ALEXANDER III died in the belief that Russia was the greatest and strongest monarchy in the world. He spoke of Russia as the sixth continent, and the following anecdote is related of him. He was fishing in Finland, when Giers, the minister for foreign affairs, came to ask his decision upon some urgent matter, saying that Europe was waiting for an answer. Alexander rejoined. "When the Russian tsar is fishing, Europe can wait." ”

“ The Tsar may be called the infinite unit. In Russia there is another or an atomic unit, just as real, but in compar- ison infinitely small. This is the mir. None the less mir is the most important word in the Russian language. It means the village and the village assembly. To the mind of the peasant it means the world. European Russia is made up of 107,676 communes or villages. Each is and has its mir. As in national af- fairs the Tsar decides or acts through his senate or council or synod, so in local affairs the mir acts for him. ”