THE LATEST RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY PROGRAMME.
WE see little that English Liberals can deem hopeful in the latest programme of the Russian Revolutionists, drawn up, it is believed, by the University students, who are impatient at once of over-restraint and of the interference of Government with their scientific studies. They have learned at last that if they are to attract European sympathy, they must suggest some plan of organisation by which autocracy is to be superseded, and they suggest one ; and that if they re- quire popular support, some attraction must be offered to the multitude, and they offer one ; but the organisation, though fearfully powerful, would not secure their ends, and the at- traction, if described aright, is hopelessly immoral. The students propose, as the first object of their efforts, and the grand demand which they make on the Czar, that a Russian Con- stituent Assembly should be elected by universal suffrage, and be invested with sovereign power, even over the most funda- mental institutions. They admit that there may be objec- tions to such a machine, but say that no other can be devised which would be more satisfactory. There is, for a Russian Revolutionary programme, some moderation in this statement, nor are we disposed to consider the project absurdly im- practicable or visionary. It would be so in many countries as little advanced as Russia, but the Russian peasants are ac- customed to elections, and in practice the Mirs or village communes could and would, if ordered, send up delegates— who, however, must be paid—to the capital. That a central or supreme Mir, once assembled at Moscow, would be obeyed, is quite possible, and, indeed, if the Executive did not resist or were too dismayed to struggle, quite certain ; but where is the evidence that it would establish liberty, socialistic or other- wise ? That it might allot all landed property in private hands and all Crown lands to the Communes is extremely probable ; but that act of transfer or of spoliation would secure no liberty whatever. It might make the peasants more cora: fortable, but it would in no way increase liberty, or, rather, it would diminish it, first, by leaving nothing in the country but the Czar, his officers, and the tillers of the soil ; and secondly, by greatly increasing the authority of the Communes, themselves often exceedingly tyrannical, and, where local or religious prejudices are excited, sometimes even brutal. The land secured, the Communal Delegates would, in all human probability, act not upon any far-seeing or reasonable plan, but upon the general feeling of their constituents,—whose mandataries, by the way, they are to be—and proceed to confirm the autocratic power of the Czar, under the impression that it would be exercised for their benefit. Universal suffrage tends always to strengthen the Executive, and in Russia, where the throne is still sacred and the recollection of serfdom still keen, an Assembly of Peasants would be a mere instrument in the hands of "our Father the Czar." What would such an Assembly care for the freedom of the Press, the spread of scien- tific education, the personal freedom of the cultivated, or the restraining laws upon the bureaucracy which the educated Russians, who sympathise with the Revolution, all profess to desire, and no doubt in great measure do actually desire ? They would care nothing about such things, would scarcely understand them, and would probably sell all liberties in .a lump for the sake of securing their land claims, which could be best secured, as emancipation was secured,• by enlisting the Czars upon their aide. There would be no liberty worth the name conceded, while the cloud of absolutism which bangs over Russian life would be thicker than ever, because the power of the masses, organised and legalised, would be behind the power of the Czar. The Revolutionists think they have a remedy for this in their proposal to change the standing Army into a territorial one, but a territorial Army is just as strong against local e'meutiers as a regular force ; and the change, even if possible, would secure nothing, except a certain inefficiency in the Military Department. The Czars, backed by the Supreme Mir, could punish a refractory village just as easily as at present, and Russia is not ready yet for local combinations to defend law against the Throne. Besides, the change, even if desirable, is not possible. The Russian peasant will not agree to surrender Poland, and Asia, and his dream of Constantinople, and all external influence in the world, at the bidding of any party, or for any considera- tion. His passions hitherto have been loyalty, orthodoxy, and national pride, and there is no proof whatever that any one of them is extinct. The Irish peasant is not less a Catholic because he will not obey his Bishop on agrarian questions, nor is the German less sensitive about his country because he is overpressed by poverty and State demands. The Russian.moujik is the last man in the world to abolish the Army, even if he could secure the object without a struggle with the Czars, which he shows as yet no readiness to begin. Nor can we see any ground for satisfaction in the offer to redistribute the land. That a great deal of the land of Russia does of right belong to the Communes has been ac- knowledged by all authorities, and was admitted in the decree sanctioning emancipation. When that great mea- sure was passed, a sufficient share may not have been conceded to them, as the peasants contend, and an in- quiry into their proper share may be quite justifiable ; but to assign all to them without compensation,—for compensation except in assignats is impossible,—would be a gross invasion of private rights, and entirely destroy the very principle of indi- vidual property in land, without which society invariably stereotypes itself. The Russian Parliament would have no more moral right to pass such a decree than the Government of India would have to absorb all private estates in the village co-partnerships of Northern India—where the Mir system is at least as general as in Russia—and the decree would at once destroy all personal energy. No individual could rise, the only thing alive would be the Commune, and the Commune would be perpetually pressed, first, by the natural increase of population, which, always extensive in Russia, might make the population as thick as the Chinese ; and secondly, by that slow but irresistible sway southwards which perplexes the Russian Home Office, and threatens, as the means of locomo- tion improve, to depopulate the northern governments. The remedy for this pressure is variety of occupation, but the Revolu- tionary programme would kill out that variety, bind the people to the soil, and produce the condition of some Indian districts, where in a good year all are fairly content, in a bad year all suffer, and after three bad years nature settles the difficulty by causing the over-numerous, non-improving, non-emigrating population to die of hunger. There is nothing whatever in such a scheme to attract English Liberals, who desire the progresss of the individual, and hope rather to see the Slavon world at liberty, and full of varied, busy, and enterprising strata of society, than to see it levelled down to a dreary plain, in which nothing will be visible but an endless succession of untaught and prejudiced village aldermen, with a limited power even of accumulating wealth. That is not an ideal for which to break up the social order of a vast population, to run the risk , of an explosion which might appal all Europe, and to abandon finally the chance, not yet at an end, that a wiser Czar may use the vast powers conferred by his legal authority and his hold upon the people to introduce a regulated freedom, strong provincial Diets, and a central Assembly, with power .of exposing, discussing, and remonstrating against all evils, nine out of ten of which are as injurious to the Throne as to the people. It is impossible to watch without interest such a struggle as that now proceeding within Russia ; but if the Revolu- tionaries desire sympathy in England, they must, besides abandoning their claim to inflict death without hearing, which can never be just, abandon also programmes which would throw Russia back for centuries into the Asiatic condition from which she has but just begun to emerge.
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