THE CONDITION OF RUSSIA.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1901, 29 March 1880, Page 3

THE CONDITION OF RUSSIA.

[Melbourne “ Argus,” March sth.j

Week by week the news from Russia becomes increasingly portentous, and its full significance can only bo appreciated by those who are conversant with the condition of society in that country. By a British colonist it is almost inconceivable. At the Socialist trials in St. Petersburg, some time ago, one of the prisoners, a peasant named Aleksieveff, made a speech in his own defence, full of simple eloquence, which made a profound impression upon all who heard it. To be like a workman in Russia, he said, was to be like a beast. “ We, the millions of the labouring population,” he continued, “ are cast upon the world almost as soon as wo have learned to walk ; undeveloped, both physically and mentally, we become prematurely dull, being crushed by a labor too great for onr strength. From the age of ten we are sent to work. We are sold for a piece o black bread, and we are placed under the orders of full-grown men, who accustom us by blows and kicks to a work above our powers. We eat God knows what; we breathe with difficulty in a fetid atmosphere; we sleep on the ground, without sheets and pillow. No wonder that in such circumstances mental capacity is blunted, and the moral sense remains undeveloped. What can we feel but hatred for those who treat ns thus?” Unhappily, there is no exaggeration whatever in this statement of the miserable lot of the great mass of the population in Russia. And its wretchedness is aggravated by the fiscal system of the empire. The budget for 1879 assumed a revenue of 628,965,708 roubles. Of this amount upwards of one-third—212,148,780 roubles—was expected to be derived from tares on fermented liquors, chiefly from vodka, with which the Russian peasant habitually stupifios himself; 118,823,237 roubles from a capitation tax and correlative resources ; 11,267,300 roubles from the tax on salt; 13,790,950 roubles from the excise on tobacco ; and 75,561,000 roubles from customs. Thus, something like two-thirds of the taxation of the empire is defrayed by the great mass of the people, who work seventeen hours a day for forty copecks, or about flfteenpence English. But as one hundred days in the year are saints’ days, upon which according to a report presented to the Czar by an Imperial commission in 1872, the clergy of the Greek Church and the peasants get drunk together, there are—deducting Sundays —little more than two hundred working days per annum ; and we shall not underestimate the yearly earningo of a Russian peasant if we put them down at £l2 10s, and of this a very large proportion is extorted from him by his warlike Government to pay the cost of foreign wars.

In the report just referred to the state of things in the province of Kostroma is thus described :—Holidays and drunkenness have caused a decline in morality. Robbery is so developed that a wife robs her husband, the children their parents, and the stolen goods are carried to the dram shop.” In the province of Kief it is stated that “ the peasants have become poorer, owing to excessive drunkenness. The population may bo divided into those who sell drink and those who consume it. Entire anarchy reigns. Everything is dona for vodka (corn brandy) and by vodka.” Count Orloff Davidoff, one of the largest landed proprietors in Russia, declares that, in his own district, “ Drunkenness hag spread among the peasantry, cattlebreeding is falling off, the peasants have become poorer, their huts resemble duug-heaps. Frequently there ia a gate (to an enclosure), but no fence. Their coffers are empty.” From the provinces of Yoronej and Tambof we learn that “ the village mayors are entirely in the hands of the populace, which has no confidence in them. The mayor stands uncovered before the village assembly, and is sometimes forced to retire to a dram-shop, together with the rest of the villagers.” Drunkenness, robbery, and depravity are so general that law and morality seem to have lost their restraining power. In the province of Kursk things are no better. True, the peasant “ does not drink vodka every day, but when he does drink, ho indulges until he becomes quite unconscious. For drink he spends his last copeck.” In the province of Yaroslaf the report says that drunkenness is alarmingly on the increase. The clergy are unfortunately not equal to their mission. Having no fixed means of existence, the village priest supports himself by collections, and his whole care is to collect from the peasantry as much money or as large a quantity of agricultural produce as he possibly can during the course of the year. It happens not unfrequcntly that the priests are not sober when performing the offices of religion.” And this is the main tenor of the evidence from most of the other provinces of the empire. The twelve days following Christmas and the whole of Easter week are given up to drunkenness and debauchery, women and children participating in the orgy as well as the men. Nor has the emancipation of the serfs been attended by their real enfranchisement. This much-belauded act was a blow aimed at the nobility by the Czar, under the guise of philanthropy. It impoverished a good many of the boyards, but it proved co bo merely a change of masters for the peasantry. They are now at the mercy of an Imperial functionary named the mizovy poszednik, rrhosß powers are almost absolute, and without whoso permission no peasant can quit the village in which he resides. As to the education of the people, although the State is commendably anxious to promote ii, its efforts are frustrated by the parents themselves, who bribe the school inspectors to exempt their children from attendance, This is easily accomplished in a country where every official is corrupt, and where the inspectors of police, for example, each receive £24 per annum only, while their unavoidable expenses exceed £240 a year, and as much as £2500 has been known to be given in the merchants’ quarter of Moscow for the temporary appointment of inspector’s secretary, which wus considered to bo cheap at the price. Such is the condition of Russian society, into which Nihilism has been thrown as a powerful solvent; the destructive nature of which is strikingly exhibited by a contributor to the current number of the “ Nineteenth Century,” who shows from the published writings of the revolutionary party ia that country that it aims at tho complete subversion of society and of all its institutions. “ Religion, the Slate, the family, laws, property, morality, ail are equally odious, and must be rooted out and abolished.” In a speech delivered at Geneva some years ago, by Michael Baknum, tho father of Nihilism, ho thus expressed himself :—“ When you have freed your minds from tho fear of a God, and from a childish respect for the fiction of right, then all the remaining chains which bind you, and which are called science, civilisation, property, marriage, morality, and justice, will snap asunder like threads. . . Our first work must be tho destruction and annihilation of everything as it now exists. You must accustom yourselves to destroy everything, tho good with the bad, for if but an atom of this old world remains, the new will never bo created.” The policy is as thorough as it is diabolical, and it is being carried out, as our

recent cable messages have shown, with a terrible sincerity and determination. A brutal depotism is engaged in a death struggle with a bestial anarchy, and to those who watch it from a distance the incidents of the conflict appear as full of awful interest as the spectacle of “ the eagle and the serpent wreathed in fight,” which Shelley has described so vividly in the first canto of the “ Revolt of Islam.” Whether the eagle—as in that case—will eventually triumph appears very doubtful.