ALAS! poor Russians! we seem to have no chance, no chance whatever, of obtaining justice among the English in England. No sooner do we flatter ourselves that at last we have met with a friend—with at least one person who has the courage not to accept as gospel all that is alleged against us without positive evidence, not to regard separate cases as general absolute truths—than a rude rebuff recalls us to the region of unpleasant but actual fact, and an act of pure unmistakeable hostility dissipates in a moment the pleasing illusion that at last we had found someone to understand us. Why is it that so many English people hate us ? There must be some strange subtle antipathy which baffles analysis, just as there is an equally strange sympathy which wins for the Turk, in spite of his revolting misdeeds, the affection of Englishmen.

Why can it be? Fear can surely have no share in the production of so persistent an animosity, so inveterate a prejudice! The menace to your Indian realm exists only in the imagination of those who fancy that it is but a stone’s throw from the banks of the Oxus to the southern slopes of the Himalayas. In Russia we cannot understand why Englishmen should pay us the exaggerated compliment of permitting a dread of Russian power to colour all the speeches of your Conservative politicians, and to bias the policy of your Ministry. We know too much of the power of England to accept such a compliment as quite au serieux. It is to us just a little too absurd. We see that England annexes new territories every year with a facility which betrays to foreigners little evidence of reluctance on her part to extend the boundaries of her Empire. We know that she is all-powerful at sea, and able to command everything that money can procure on the land at a moment’s notice. Russia, on the other hand, is not wealthy. She is only morally rich in the consciousness that she is performing her duty, and moral wealth according to old-fashioned Russian views is not altogether to be despised. But that moral wealth can neither threaten India nor annex Great Britain. Why, then, this irrational panic, which haunts the imagination of what used to be the most self-confident, self-reliant, and fearless race in the world? If I were an Englishman I should blush for shame if I entertained the coward fear of any Power on earth.

It is impossible to believe that fears so groundless can really occasion all the hostility with which my country is regarded by many Englishmen. If it is not fear, to what unknown source, then, can we trace the origin of Russophobia? To poor simpleminded Russians it may seem a hopeless task to undertake such an inquiry. As incomprehensible in its origin as it is illogical in its manifestation, they are content to dismiss it with that phrase which has served as a refuge to so many baffled inquirers—“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” But perhaps I may be pardoned if I suggest that ignorance, pure, sheer, downright ignorance, has not a little to do with it.

Let me give an instance of this ignorance in places where it might least be expected to exist. The other day a friend mentioned, in the course of conversation, that your great English poet, Mr. Tennyson, hated Russia.

“Indeed,” said I; “that is most unfortunate. But can you tell me why?’”

“Oh,” was the response, “we English people, you know, cannot tolerate your knout system!”

“How good of you!” I exclaimed; “upon this we perfectly agree. But tell me, why should your Laureate live only in the past and take no notice of the present? Poets are not confined to the contemplation of the past; the future itself is sometimes disclosed to their ken.”

With a puzzled look and hesitating accent, he observed, “But you do not mean to say that the knout is a thing of the past, not of the present?”

“That is exactly what I do mean to say,” I answered. “If I wish to stick to facts I can say nothing else. The knout has ceased to exist in Russia. Even in the navy,” I added, “which perhaps is also the case with the cat-о-nine-tails in the navy of England ! Is it not so?”

Without answering my question, my friend said, “Since when?”

“Shortly after the emancipation of the serfs,” said I. “Russia is a long way off; but is fifteen years not long enough for such a reform to reach the ears of England’s Laureate?”

We may be “barbarians,” but our criminal code, judged by the standard of the Howard Association, is more humane than that of at least one other nation which retains the lash in the marine, applies the cat-o’-nine-tails to the garotter, and secretly strangles murderers in the recesses of her gaols.

Well, perhaps that does not improve matters. Is ignorance not invincible? Does not Schiller say “against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain”? If Englishmen, fifteen years after the knout has disappeared from Russia, persist in denouncing Russians for using the knout, what can we hope? And here again we Russians labour at a great disadvantage. We shrink from the task of vindicating ourselves even from the most unjust reproaches. Some accusations appear to us so inconceivably absurd that we cannot understand how any answer can be required.

Let me illustrate this. Last year a curious collection of calumnies against Russia was anonymously published in England. My English friends, to whose judgment I attach the greatest importance, were anxious that it should be refuted. I applied, and applied in vain, to one after another of my literary friends in Russia to undertake such a task. “How can you ask such a thing! No Russian with any self-respect could stoop to notice such monstrous libels. Your beloved England is evidently demoralising you, or you would never pay attention to such attacks.” Is it either right or generous to declare that because no reply is made no reply can be made? The Golos last year published a long and circumstantial story of the way in which Lord Beaconsfield abused his position as Premier to influence the Money Market. Nobody in England dreamed of categorically refuting it. They regarded the calumny as beneath contempt. Has not a Russian as much right to silence when accused as Lord Beaconsfield?

I am the more disposed to attribute this strange antipathy to ignorance, because those Englishmen who really know us are among the best friends we have. If there were really some secret antipathy between the nations this would not be so. In cases of mutual repulsion the repulsion is most marked when the two objects approach. But English residents in Russia rarely manifest irrational antipathy which is so strongly shown on the banks of the Thames.

Examples of an exactly opposite feeling are present to our memory—such, for instance, as the warm-hearted letters which appeared in the Daily News and the ‘Times last year, from well known English residents in Moscow; and, frankly speaking, I think they are only paying us with our own coin. Although the English Turkophile press delights to represent us as evil spirits, Russians who come to England are so kindly treated that they always want to come again.

I am aware that the mistake is often made of attaching too much importance to what is said in certain clubs or coteries in London, or by journals which notoriously speak under official or foreign influences. I have lived long enough in England to discover that public opinion is a force which may exist independently of the political society of the capital, or of a particular political party in the country. It is certain that among large classes of the English people—in Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, and other great centres —there is a wide-spread conviction that Turkish misgovernment must no longer be supported by British bayonets; and that Russia is entitled to the moral sympathy of mankind in her efforts to liberate the oppressed Christians. While journals like the Times, the Daily News, the Echo, the Spectator, and the Examiner (many others might be mentioned) show that in London a strong feeling exists in favour of acting fairly to Russia, in the provinces and in Scotland the most widely circulated journals have resolutely opposed the Beaconsfield policy.¹

The evidence of war correspondents of the English press is not without some little weight Colonel Brackenbury, Mr. M’Gahan, Mr. Forbes, Sir Henry Havelock, Mr. Boyle, and others, less well-known, made the acquaintance of Russians in Roumania and Bulgaria under circumstances which render concealment of realities impossible. I desire no better verdict for my countrymen than that, pronounced by those witnesses selected at random, although some were hostile and others did not spare their reproaches against what they believed to be wrong—for, after all, we cannot be vexed with people, although they do not arrive at exactly the right result, if they honestly do their best.

After the knout, Russia is most abused for her treatment of her subject races, and with as little reason. We have, for instance, many Mohammedan subjects. They are not oppressed, or persecuted. They have all the liberty enjoyed by the Mohammedans in Turkey, except the liberty of oppressing their Christian neighbours They certainly enjoy a far better Government than their co-religionists in Asia Minor. In the Baltic Provinces there are many local municipal institutions; and no race has less reason to complain of ill-treatment than the Germans, who enjoy so large a share of the administration of the Empire. It is a characteristic of Russia that we open even the highest branches of our service to all our subject races—an example which England, I think, does not follow in India. General Melikoff and General Lazareff, who have covered themselves with glory in Armenia, are both Armenians. Todleben and Heimann are Germans of the Baltic Provinces. Nepokoitschitzky is a Pole, as also is Levitsky.

“Ah, Poland!” you exclaim. Of course it is in vain for a Russian to appeal for a hearing of his defence about the Poles, even to those who deny Home Rule to the Irish. Sometime I may say something of Russian rule in Poland, but I content myself with saying that Poland would have had a Constitution of its own for the last fourteen years if the Poles would have been content with the boundaries of the kingdom of Poland. But when they insisted, even at the sword’s point, that we should give Home Rule not only to Poland but almost to half Russia, which they claimed to be theirs, then a reaction set in, and the reforms which the Grand Duke Constantine went to Warsaw with such high hopes to establish remained a dead letter.

Constitutions are not unknown in Russia, nor is it beyond the boundaries of Russian policy to grant Home Rule to its subject provinces. Those who think so should go to Finland. In that important maritime province they would find the Finns in possession of a very large measure of administrative independence. The Russian language is not employed in Finnish Courts or in Finnish official documents. The Lutheran, and not the Russian Orthodox Church, is the established religion of Finland. Nay, even the Russian rouble will not circulate in that Russian province—which lies almost at the gates of the Russian capital. Finland has its own laws, its own legislature, its own Church, its own coinage, its own language, its own budget, and its own national debt.

Nor does the recognition of local independence destroy the loyalty of our Finns. During this war their enthusiasm has been very great, although they are connected neither by race nor religion with the Southern Slavs. There is no conscription in Finland. Its system of raising soldiers is the same as the English. A few weeks ago a call was made for volunteers in one district in Finland. In three days the list was more than filled by gallant men who were eager to be led to the liberation of Bulgaria. That they knew it was no holiday work upon which they had entered was shown by one grim little fact. Every volunteer before joining the ranks provided himself with a dagger, in order that he might have the means of saving himself by a swift death-stroke from the mutilation and torture that awaits the wounded who fall into the hands of the Turks! Have we not reason to be proud of men who go out joyfully to risk their lives in such a war?

It is difficult to convince those who are not familiar with Russia how willingly the whole population of my country will surrender all that they have, even life itself if it be required by the Czar, in order to carry on the war which he has undertaken for the oppressed Slavs. The declaration in the petitions which flowed in to the Czar after the Moscow address—“We place our fortunes and our lives at thy disposal”—was no meaningless phrase. The records of Russia’s history prove that it is a simple statement of a fact.

The calculating, sceptical, selfish part of Europe may look upon the addresses and petitions to the Czar merely as a species of new-fashioned eloquence. But in burning, decisive, historical moments such Russian words have always been synonymous with deeds. An offer of ” life and fortune ” can only be voluntary. We Russians are sometimes prevented from having this will categorically expressed and carried out; but after we have almost implored to be allowed to sacrifice them in a holy cause we never fear to be taken at our word—we never shrink from its consequences. The mighty voice of the Russian people has never been heard in vain.

Permit me to recall one instance alone out of numbers which might be mentioned to illustrate this characteristic of my countrymen. In the time of Peter the Great, whilst Russia was fighting, not for the tortured Slavs, not for her persecuted coreligionists, but merely for the possession of the Baltic Provinces—a question of comparatively small moment to the Russian people—the Czar sent an ukase to the Senate fixing new taxes upon salt. No sooner was the Imperial decree read than Prince Jacob Dolgorouky sprang from his chair, and in the presence of a numerous assemblage, to the bewilderment of everyone, tore it to pieces.

“Emperor!” exclaimed he, with a trembling voice, “you want money? We understand it! But why should the poor suffer and pay for it? Have you no wealthy nobility to dispose of? Prince Menshikoff may build a ship at his private expense, Apraxine another one, and I will certainly not remain behind my countrymen!”

Such was the spirit displayed by the Russians in those days, and since the time of Peter the Great Russians have not degenerated.

1. I am anxious to mention the fact that the Northern Echo of Darlington- is greatly appreciated and admired in Russia for the energetic, constant sympathy it has shown to the Slavonic cause. Long passages from its leading articles have been quoted both by M. Katkoff’s Moscow Gazette and M. Guilaroff’s Contemporary News. The above-mentioned gentlemen are proprietors and editors at the same time, as is almost always the case in Russian newspapers.