111.6 RIOTS IN ST. PETERSBURG.
T'great question as to the internal situation in Russia which no one answers, or perhaps can answer, but which must be answered before the observer can form an accurate judgment as to the future of that vast country, is this—Do the peasantry want the land in free- hold, as the peasantry of France wanted it in 1789, or as the Irish peasantry want it now, or do they not ? If they do not, the autocracy is based on a rock,—namely, the loyalty of the mass of Russians who pay taxes and fill up the ranks of the Army ; and it can be overthrown only from within,—that is, by a Sovereign who is an ideologue, or a philanthropist, or a man utterly weary of a position worse in some respects than that of a Roman Caesar in De Quincey's wonderful description of the Imperator's powers and liabilities. If, on the other hand, they do want it, the autocracy, though far more solid than the old Monarchy of France, rests upon sand which may slip. None of the noisy " movements " of which the West hears, and makes so much, affect bodies heavy enough to cause an overturn of such a weighty mass of power. They are like shells thrown at a hillside, or like the little explosions of Vesuvius which warn Naples that the volcano is not exhausted, but neither menace the great city nor prevent the winegrowers from resuming their places on the slopes. Accounts are constantly coming up from the great cities of Russia of feuds between the student class and the Government, which always display themselves in the same way, and are always in the same way put down and ended. The student class of both sexes, furious at some oppression or some "insult," bursts the bonds of discipline, swarms into the college halls, sings revolutionary songs, distributes revolutionary tracts and posters, and at last makes a " demonstration in the streets. There is, in fact, a great " barring out," such as used in the be- ginning of the last century to be of frequent occurrence in English schools. The Government, which has a traditional fear of disorder, because, being all-in-all, every movement seems to it directed against itself, invariably relies upon the same method of defence, a prompt and unsparing appeal to physical force in its most naked and brutal form. The police, reinforced by the doorkeepers, who are all its agents and most of them old soldiers, are first let loose with their clubs, then the Cossacks with their whips, -and then, if needful, the Regulars with their rifles ' • the students are charged, dispersed, clubbed, and arrested in hundreds. A swift inquiry is held by police officials, the ringleaders are sent to fortresses or to Siberia, or till recently to the ranks, the remainder are ordered to their homes with black marks against them in the police books, the parents receive sharp warnings, and then for a time there is peace. Sometimes the grievance of the moment is redressed, occasionally a tyrannical pedagogue is dismissed, but always a demonstration is treated as petty treason, to be put down by force. This week the lot has fallen to St. Petersburg, and because that city is the capital the demonstration and its repression have attracted unusual attention ; but there was nothing unusual in the phenomena reported except this, that the artisans showed a disposition, as they have done also in Odessa and Kieff, to side with the protesting students. That sounds very ominous to citizens of the industrial countries ; but in Russia the only effect is that the force turned out to repress the movement is a little heavier, that the Cossacks strike a little harder, and that the sentences pronounced will be a little more severe. Neither the students nor the artisans have the ghost of a chance of securing political results by disturbing order. There is not enough of them to resist the police and the soldiery, and if there were they have no arms except a few revolvers. Irresistible physical force is on the side of the Government, and in the great cities would still be on their side even if the whole population sympathised with the malcontents. All St. Petersburg could not defeat the Guard, and the Government if pressed would use the Guard as if St. Petersburg were a foreign city. Those among us who fancy the autocracy in danger from such outbreaks are deceived by their knowledge of the French Revolution, and their forgetfulness of the one great mystery involved in the success of that awful upheaval. In France the forces of the Crown were never brought into action. No crowd was ever shot down " in the King's name." There never was a moment in the whole Revolution when thirty thousand soldiers who meant dying could not have checked its course ; but the heir of Louis XIV., with his army still unbroken, never had three thousand to defend him. The reason always assigned is that Louis XVI. was incompetent, but the real reason must have been that the Court knew it could not trust its troops. The Russian Government does trust its troops, and uses them unhesitatingly, and while it can do that all demonstrations, strikes, eneutes, and insurrec- tions must necessarily fizzle out. The Nihilists were formidable because they might affect the mind of the Czar or his successor, but no insurrectionary organisa- tion is.
The situation would be radically changed if the peasantry, bribed by a promise of the land, joined the party favourable to revolution, because then the troops could no longer be implicitly relied on. They are peasants, too, with their fathers' and brothers' feelings and desires. Some authorities, chiefly in Vienna, say this is happening already, and no doubt the marvellous popularity of Tolstoy points to some change of opinion in the villages ; but one would like to know if Viennese rumours about troops refusing to fire are not derived from Polish sources, and if Tolstoy is not worshipped rather as religious re- former than as social iconoclast. The peasantry in Russia are not readers, and though a few facts circulate very rapidly in the spirit shops, philosophic teachings do not. The very few narratives which ever reach the surface in Russia do not as yet point to any bitter discontent in the peasant class. The provinces stricken intermittently with famine do not rise in insurrection. Military service is not resisted except by evasion. The few agrarian outbreaks of which dim echoes cross the frontier seem to be directed rather against the gentry than the agents of the State. The peasantry are not prosperous, they are heavily hit by the general fall in the value of cereals, and we note now and again that troops are sent to support the tax-collectors ; but it is not clear that the cultivators attribute drought, or low prices, or even their troubles with the tax-gatherers to any imperfection in the Monarchy, or that they insist that the land is theirs. The evidence may be kept back, but if there is much of it some must, one would think, reach the thousands of foreign politicians and speculators to whom the condition of Russia means life and death, and if it reached them some of it would leak out. General suffering in any European State would directly affect politics ; but though Russians are not Asiatics, they have in some respects the Asiatic temper, which neither in China nor India, nor even Persia or Turkey, directly connects misfortune with the ruling powers. Famine does not produce revolt, and dynasties which perish of a lost battle survive long intervals of adversity without their authority being undermined. The vastness of the country prevents any general diffusion of new ideas, and the Government being efficient for repression, a local movement is stamped out before it can spread. We may, of course, prove to be utterly wrong, for of all peoples the Russian has fewest " wires " to the external world ; but we fancy that as yet the statesmen of St. Petersburg are far more alarmed by growing symptoms that the Empire cannot meet its expenses than by any dread of resistance from below. Even as regards this difficulty, though it is un- doubtedly serious, it is possible to be too pessimistic. Ever since the Crimean War the West has always been hearing that Russia would shortly be bankrupt ; yet the interest on the Foreign Debt has always been paid, and the amount of inconvertible paper afloat has been so steadily diminished that in the event of a great war the Government could again find in paper money a grand and swift resource. The autocracy may be destroyed either by bankruptcy or by peasant revolt, but of neither is there yet any clear sign.
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