It is quite a treat to read the Rev. Mr. MacColl’s paper on “Nihilism and its Lessons” in the Pall Mall Gazette of March 17. His view of Russian Nihilism is remarkably good, the more so when we compare it with the extraordinary absurdities published by the Western press just now against Russia in general and Panslavism, or Slavophilism, in particular. The “Reptiles” and the lunatics assert—and of course take good care to add that all their information comes from the very best authorities—that “Panslavism and Nihilism go hand in hand.” What a loathsome calumny! What are the tenets of Panslavism? Religion, autocracy, and nationality. These three motives, according to us, are not only united but indissoluble. They form the very essence of our creed, of our life. In fact we are the opposite pole of the Nihilists, who hate every idea of God, who detest autocracy, and despise nationality. The hostility between these two lies in their nature. There can be no compromise between them. The Russian people abhor the Nihilists, and the latter are perfectly aware of that feeling. I am told that some years ago a judge offered a Nihilist the alternative of being left to Lynch law, upon which the prisoner fell on his knees and implored to be punished by the existing Russian laws. All the Russians who deserve that name, who are devoted to their Church and their country, are particularly devoted to the present Emperor. They trust, they love him; they appreciate his noble and generous qualities, his extreme kindness, which is only equalized by his firmness and his self-sacrifice. Anything done to injure him injures the whole of Russia. It needs, in truth, no effort on the part of the Panslavists to be devoted to Alexander III.

The Rev. Mr. MacColl has made many true and clever observations in his article, but he has been misinformed upon certain less important questions. He supposes, for instance, that the peasants, disappointed with not receiving a new distribution of land at the last coronation, form a fertile ground for Nihilism. This is not the case. The Nihilists have given up long ago the hope of spreading their diabolic doctrines among the rural classes. If they got hold of a few peasants—thank God! very few indeed—those adepts of theirs have abandoned their plough and have been perverted in some public school by a semblance of science falsely so called. It is a fatal tendency, which is to be deplored and deprecated, in all the public establishments in Russia, as well as in foreign countries, that very young people, even children, are allowed to discuss and twaddle on politics, instead of studying their grammars and their history! With that tendency mistakes and false doctrines are unavoidable; any mischievous teacher may easily take hold of them and turn them into flexible tools.

The Rev. Mr. MacColl has been misinformed about the hardships of the military service. Compulsory military service gives every year a contingent of about 830,000 (in 1886 it was 823,200) out of a population of over 100,000,000, which is much beyond the number required by the army, this number being about 230,000 a year. (In 1886 it was 234,052.) Thus it happens that there are three out of every four exempted from the service, and leave is obtained by them with greatest ease. The story reported to the Rev. Mr. MacColl about the business man “suddenly drafted into the army” seems improbable. Whether incorporated in the service, or exonerated from it, there can be no surprise in the matter, as the question of entering or avoiding the service is settled when the young fellows are not yet twenty-one. They generally remain single until they know their fate, which is settled by the drawing of their lot. It is, therefore, quite out of the question to multiply that fact mentioned all over Russia.

Russia is not anxious to fight. In fact she had fewer wars than her neighbours. Since the Crimean war in 1855 till the year 1877 she fought only one serious war with a European Power. In this course of time France had two—in 1859 with Austria, in 1870 with Germany; Prussia two—in 1866 with Austria, in 1870 with France; Austria two—in 1859 with France, in 1866 with Germany. So there is no actual ground for pitying the Russian soldiers more than any other. Of course every military man risks being killed. That is not, however, the speciality of my countrymen alone. All the great European countries, England excepted, have general conscriptions. Position oblige!

People often talk, and the Rev. Mr. MacColl among the others, of the difficulty for an autocratic Government to crush revolutions. Is this really so? Are the years of ‘48 and ‘49 meaningless or forgotten? Surely not in France, not in Germany, not in Austria, or Italy! The form of government has nothing to do with plots and assassinations. The prototype of a Constitutional Monarch was undoubtedly Louis Philippe, who during his eighteen years’ reign had to face eighteen attempts directed against his life. The Emperor Louis Napoleon had about ten; and the President of the United States, is his life unassailable? Lincoln’s assassination is of recent date and full of meaning. Nevertheless, in spite of these few details upon which we differ, I must repeat again that the Rev. Mr. MacColl’s article is undoubtedly very good and worth remembering.

O.K.

St. Petersburg, March 16 (28).