THE TWO RUSSIAS—MOSCOW AND ST. PETERSBURG.¹

‘So the people who made the war are already repenting of their folly!’ sneers a cynical politician, as he lays down the Times of last Wednesday, after perusing a letter from its St. Petersburg correspondent with the above heading. ‘Indeed!’ I exclaim, with unfeigned surprise, ‘that is strange news. Who says so? What is your authority?’

‘The St. Petersburg correspondent of the Times,’ rejoins the cynic, ‘who, as the Pall Mall Gazette says, is known as the writer of a famous book on Russia, which appeared some months ago—other words, all but naming Mr. R. Mackenzie Wallace.’

‘And Mr. Wallace says the people who made the war are repenting of what they did,’ I continue. ‘Where does he say so? I don’t see any such statement in his letter.’

‘Do you not?’ he asks in amazement. ‘What can be plainer than his account of the regret with which the war, its objects, and its sacrifices are spoken of in St. Petersburg by men “who consider themselves good patriots?” Here, for instance, he speaks of the statesman or official dignitary, the representative of the St. Petersburg Liberal press, and the commercial man, all of whose sentiments are faithfully reproduced. What more would you have as a proof that those who made the war are repenting in sackcloth and ashes of their Quixotic undertaking?’

I could not help smiling. ‘And so that is the evidence upon which you and Mr. Wallace build your theories of “peace possibilities in Russia!” These people—they did not make the war!    Not they, in deed! It was not these “patriots” to whose voices our Emperor gave ear!’

And so dismissing my Turkophile acquaintance, let me in a few sentences correct the false impression which that letter in the Times has produced, as the high character and deserved reputation of its author may mislead many.

The English people were told last year, and truly told, that there are two Russias. There is official Russia, and national Russia. There is, in a word, the Russia of St. Petersburg, and the Russia of Moscow.² Now, the Times correspondent lives in St. Petersburg, and he transmits faithfully enough to England his impressions of public opinion in St. Petersburg. The only danger is that his readers may mistake St. Petersburg for Russia. But St. Petersburg, thank God! is not Russia, any more than the West-end of London is England. The whole course of European history, for the last two years, would be utterly incomprehensible on the contrary hypothesis. It was because foreigners took their impression of Russia from St. Petersburg that they blundered so grossly about the course which events would take in the East, and they will blunder not less grossly if, disregarding the lessons of the past, they once more entertain the hollow fallacy that the national opinion of Russia can be ascertained in the salons of St. Petersburg or by interviewing official personages on the banks of the Neva.

There are good men and true in St. Petersburg, as there are good men and true even in the dubs of Pall Mall; but the typical St. Petersburger, of whom Mr. Wallace writes, is as destitute of faith and of enthusiasm as the West-ender. But just as you say London is Turkophile, although many Londoners are anti-Turks, so we say St. Petersburg is anti-Slav. But then it must not be forgotten that St. Petersburg is not Russia. Peter the Great styled it ‘a window out of which Russia could look upon the Western world;’ but it is not a window by which the Western world can look in upon Russia.  No, St. Petersburg is not Russian! It is cosmopolitan. It is not vitalised with the fierce warm current of Russia’s life-blood. It stands apart.  It undoubtedly exercises a grea influence in ordinary times, but at great crises it is powerless. St. Petersburg did its best to avert the war. It sneered at our Servian volunteers—nay, if it had had its way it would have arrested them as malefactors.Those who went first to Servia on their heroic mission were compelled to smuggle themselves as it were out of the country for fear of the interference of officialdom supreme at St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg would, if it could, have suppressed our Slav Committees, and it did its best to induce our generous Emperor to violate that knightly word which he pledged at Moscow, amid the unbounded enthusiasm of all his subjects, to take up the cause of the Slavs, ‘although he had to take it up alone.’ In the midst of the great uprising of the nation occasioned by the Bulgarian atrocities and the Servian war, St. Petersburg was comparatively unmoved—mere dead cold cinder in the midst of the glowing warmth of our national revival. All the diplomatic negotiations which preceded the war are inexplicable unless this is borne in mind. Mycountrymen, rising in the sacred wrath kindled by the inexpiable wrongs inflicted upon their kinsmen, pressed sternly, steadily onward to redress these wrongs, to terminate for ever the status quo, which rendered them chronic, inevitable.Official Russia, unable to arrest the movement entirely, nevertheless attempted, and attempted in vain, to divert it by diplomatic contrivances. We had one device after another invented in rapid succession to avoid the war by which alone our brethren could be freed. It is humiliating to recall the tortuous windings of Russian diplomacy, the inexhaustible expedients by which the Petersburg party endeavoured to balk the fulfilment of the national aspirations.³

The last of these was the Protocol! By that famous document official Russia consented, for the sake of the European concert and the peace of the Continent, to postpone indefinitely all action on behalf of the Southern Slavs, receiving in return for this sacrifice of her mission a promise that the Great Powers would watch the Turks, and after a period of time, not particularly specified, when it had once more, for the thousandth time, been demonstrated to the satisfaction even of the diplomatic mind that Turkish domination isutterly incapable of reform, improvement, or other amelioration than its total destruction, the Powers promised—oh, great concession!—to consider what should then be done to save our tortured brethren from the Ottoman horde. This was the patent St.Petersburg device for disappointing the hopes of the Russian people, and eagerly these officials, representatives of the Liberal press, and commercial men, who are now prating of peace to the Times correspondent, hoped that it would stave off what they are deriding now as the ‘Quixotic enterprise’ of the War of Liberation. In Moscow, however—that great heart of the Russian Empire—the suspense occasioned by the negotiations about the Protocol was one longdrawn-out agony. Those who lived in the very heart of the national movement can never forget the terrible forebodings of those dismal days. We all moved under the pressure of a great dread.Was it to end thus? Were all our sacrifices to be sacrificed? was the blood of our martyrs spilt in vain? Was Holy Russia Holy Russia no more, but a mere appanage to cosmopolitan St. Petersburg? When the news came that the English Cabinet was insisting upon alterations, we breathed more freely. ‘Demobilisation!’ we cried. ‘No, it is not demobilisation; it is demoralization! TheEmperor is too noble, too good a Russian; he will never consent to that!’ But, then, again the news came that even that was to be accepted; and the sky grew very dark overhead, and we went about as if in the chamber of death, speaking in low accents and oppressed by a terrible fear of that national dishonour which we Russians, strange as it may appear to some people, dread even more than death! At last, to our great relief, the cloud lifted, the darkness disappeared, for the Turks rejected the Protocol; and the declaration of war was as grateful to us as the bright burst of sun­ light in the east after a long, dark, stormy night.

And here may I venture, as a Russian, to say that, in securing by his provisoes the rejection of the Protocol by the Turks, Lord Derby has at least done one good thing at the English Foreign Office. He may not have intended it, but, as a matter of fact, he was our most efficient ally. But for him St. Petersburg might have triumphed. Russia might have been disgraced, and theTurks might have received a new lease of power. The Slav world has reason to thank him for having secured the victory of our cause by rendering it impossible for Russia to refrain from drawing the sword in the cause of the Southern Slavs.

Even St. Petersburg could not shrink from the contest after that last deadly blow was administered by the Turks to the schemesof the diplomatists. The war began. It is going on, and it will go on until the end is accomplished. No babble of St. Petersburg will now be able to bring that war to a dishonourable close; and no peace can be honourable that does not secure the object of the war.St. Petersburg is even worse than usual just now. Its best elements are in Bulgaria and Roumania. The Emperor is there, and the sight of the fiendish atrocities perpetrated by the Turks upon our patient soldiers can only confirm his resolution to persevere ‘until the end.’ And behind him there stands, arrayed as one man, the whole Russian nation, ready to endure any sacrifices rather than leave the Turk to re-establish his desolating sovereignty over our brethren.

Is it so strange to Englishmen that there should be two Russias? Are there not two Englands? The England that is true toEnglish love for liberty, and the England that sees in liberty itself only a text for a sneer? There is the England of St. James’s Hall and the England of the Guildhall. An England with a soul and a heart, and an England which has only a pocket. In other words, there is the England of Mr. Gladstone and the England of Lord Beaconsfield. We Russians, too, have our sordid cynics, but they are in a minority. They may sneer, but they cannot rule; and, with that distinction, let me conclude by saying that these St. Petersburg Tchinovniks, whose views Mr. Wallace reproduces, are now what they have always been, the Beaconsfields of Russia!

The above letter was written m the middle of November, 1877.

Rightly to understand the genuine spontaneity of the national Slavonic movement which forced our Government into a war at a time when they were notoriously unprepared for such an enterprise, it was necessary to have resided in Russia when the news of the rising of the Christians in the Balkans stirred the national heart to its depths. Whatever doubts might prevail outside Russia, no one, be he ever so prejudiced, who witnessed the explosion of national and religious enthusiasm which shook Russia from her centre to her circumference, could deny the reality and spontaneity of the all prevailing sentiment, the fervour of which our officials in vain endeavoured to abate. Even the English Ambassador was impressed by the unprecedented spectacle of a torrent of enthusiasm, sweeping away an entire people. Writing to the Earl of Derby, from St.Petersburg, on August 16, 1876, he says:—

The enthusiasm for the cause of the Servians and Christian Slavs is daily increasing here. The feeling is universal, and it pervades all classes from the Crown to the peasant. The sympathy of the masses has been roused by the atrocities which have been committed in Bulgaria, and bears a religious and not a political character.

Public collections are being made for the sick and wounded. Officers with the ‘Red Cross,’ and ladies of the Court and of society go from house to house requesting subscriptions. At the railway stations, on the steam-boats, even in the carriages of the tramways, the ‘Red Cross’ is present everywhere, with a sealed box for donations. Every stimulant, even to the use of the name of the Empress, is resorted to, with a view to animate feelings of compassion for the suffering Christians and to swell the funds for providing ambulances for the sick and wounded.

I am informed that such is the excitement in favour of the Christians that workmen are leaving to join the Servian army. Within the last fortnight seventy-five officers of the Guards have announced their intention to accept service in the Servian army, and it is reported that 120 officers at Moscow and in Southern Russia are on the point of leaving to join the Servian ranks.

I have also received private information that 20,000 Cossacks are going to Servia in disguise to join the Servian army.

The number is probably greatly exaggerated, but the fact of a considerable number of Cossacks having volunteered for service in aid of the Christians is undoubtedly true.

The religious feeling of the Russian nation is deeply roused in favour of their Christian Slav brethren, while the impassioned tone of the press is daily exciting the popular feeling.

From the foregoing symptoms it might be feared that should any fresh atrocities occur to influence the public mind, neither the Emperor nor Prince Gortschakoff would be able to resist the unanimous appeal of the nation for intervention to protect and save their co-religionists.⁴

Lord Augustus Loftus inclosed an extract from a letter published in the Moscow Gazette, from a ‘Retired Cossack,’ who writes from the capital of the Cossacks of the Don. The writer, describing the state of excitement in which he found theCossacks, says:—

Even women, old men and children speak of nothing but the Slavonic war; the warlike spirit of the Cossacks is on fire, and from small to greatthey all await permission to fall on the Turks like a whirlwind. At many of the settlements the Cossacks are getting their arms ready, with afull conviction that in a few days the order will be given to fall on the enemies of the Holy Faith, and of their Slav brethren. There is at the same time a general murmuring against diplomacy for its dilatoriness in coming to the rescue. Deputies have arrived from many of the Cossack settlements to represent to the Ataman that the Cossacks are no longer able to stand the extermination of the Christians.⁵

There is abundance of similar testimonies in your Blue Book.

Those who are not satisfied with official testimonies, will find unofficial confirmation of the reality of the popular movement in the pages of Mr. D. Mackenzie Wallace’s ‘Russia,’⁶ a work which is certainly not characterised by too great a partiality towards us.

1. The Times of Nov. 14, 1877, published a letter from its correspondent in St. Petersburg, describing a minority in the Russian capital as wearied of the war and anxious to make peace, regardless of the fate of the Southern Slavs. The Pall Mall Gazette, noticing his remarks under the suggestive heading ‘Reported return of reason in Russia,’ exulted in the hope that the Russians were about to abandon their heroic enterprise. This delusion can be removed most effectually by the simple statement of facts, too often ignored in England.
2. An English lady residing in Moscow from 1876 to 1878, described with simple fidelity the enthusiasm prevailing in the ancient capital of Russia, in a series of letters to the Daily News and to the Northern Echo, which Messrs. Remington & Co. republished in a volume—Sketches of Russian Life and Customs, Selwyn Eyre.
3. In the Memoirs of Baron Stockmar occur some observations about diplomacy and diplomatists which are often too true:—’Diplomatists are for the most part a frivolous, superficial and rather ignorant set of people, whose first object is to lull matters to sleep for a few years, and to patch up things for a time. The distant future troubles them but little. They console themselves with such maxims as “Alors comme alors,” “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” With statesmen of this kind it is sorry work discussing the conditions of a new political creation to be carried out under difficult circumstances. They have no real conception what work of this kind means. To those who point out the difficulties, they reply, “It will all come right in time,” or they attempt to throw dust in the eyes by vague promises.’—Baron Stockmar’s Memoirs, vol. i. p. 121.
4. Turkey, I (1877), No. 55, pp. 44-5.
5. Ibid., Inclosure in No. 55, pp. 45-0.
6. Vol. ii. p. 453.