CORRESPONDENCE.

THE DUMA AND THE IMPERIAL PROBLEM.

[TO TOO EDITOR Or TOM .SrEM.ATOB:j

Sra,—Perhaps the new Persian Parliament is more picturesque than the Russian in point of costume, but it certainly does not present such an extraordinary variety of nations and peoples and tongues as the Duma. Almost all the nationalities of the Empire are represented, though I am afraid those Caucasian Nogai Tartars whom I found at Christmas-time with their legs curled up on the seat of a railway carriage, after having fulfilled their mission of begging that their tribe might be allowed to elect a Deputy, must have been dis- appointed, for no Caucasian Nogai Tartars are here. But on those afternoons when discussion in the Duma flags the lobbies are full of ethnographical interest. Near the stairs stand a group of Mohammedans,—a Turkoman from Tash- kent in ample turban and long robe with broad green and yellow stripes, a short thick-set Tartar from the Crimea wearing a red fez, and Tartars from Kazan and the Urals, only to be distinguished from Russians by their black skull- caps. M. Khasanoff, a young teacher from Ufa, hastens across the hall intent on the organisation of a new group of Mohammedan Socialists. A group of peasants stand dis- cussing the inexhaustible land question. The Great Russians among them are for the most part dressed in "town costume." a compromise between flannels and a British workman's Sunday best. A Little Russian, looking sadly perplexed, is defending in broken sentences the rights of private property against Great Russian Land Nationalisers. He is thankful when a gigantic compatriot comes up in a Little Russian blue caftan and gives him the opportunity of expressing his views in his own tongue. A Georgian journalist approaches a group of dark-skinned Caucasian Deputies and joins in a dispute which may be less heated than the violence of Georgian dentala and gutturals would make it appear.

There are not many Jews in the present Duma, not more than nine or ten, and of these five are Christians in religion. The Letts, the Estlionians, and the Lithuanians, of whom there are about twenty in all, can with difficulty be distinguished from the mass of Russian provincial Deputies. The Finns have a Parliament of their own ; but even in the Duma there is one Finn, who, living on this side of the Finnish border, was elected by the St. Petersburg peasants as their representa- tive. There are Baahkirs and nomad Kirghizes ; there are Armenians from the Caucasus and Buriats from Eastern Siberia. There is even a Chuvash from the Government of Kazan. Finally, M. Krushevan, one of the leaders of the Great Russian Nationalists, is himself by origin a Bessarabian Moldavian.

All this variety is very interesting and picturesque ; but concentrated thus in the Dame it presents in its very sharpest form a problem which the most capable of Dumas could not hope immediately to solve. Every subject nationality was perpetually reminded by the Great Russian bureaucracy that

it was a subject nationality, a conquered nationality. Its language, institutions, and religion were persecuted ; it was forced to allow its 'children to be taught in Russian schools, and its national individuality was crushed—never crushed out —under the weight of the bureaucratic engines of Russifica- tion. The ideal of the bureaucracy, most consistently expressed during the twenty years preceding the year 1905, was the unity of the Empire, guaranteed by the political supremacy of the Autocrat, the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Orthodox Church, and the cultural supremacy of the Great Russian nationality. This conception of unity was capable of broader or narrower interpretation ; but its practical tendency was to crush out all variety in the name of a monotonous bureaucratic uniformity.

The Duma does not alter the situation. It puts the question in a new way. And the second Duna puts it even more forcibly than the first, for it includes representatives of the Great Russian Nationalists, who advocate in its most extreme form the old bureaucratic theory. M. Gringmut, the editor

of the Moscow nedenwsti, does not happen to be in the

Duma, but M. Gringmut's party, the Union of the Russian People, is this time very strongly represented. And M.

Gringmut's view, which he expressed to me in conversation a few weeks ago, is that the unity of Russia can only be maintained by maintaining the complete supremacy of the Great Russians, the conquerors whose sword created the Empire. He would allow the subject nationalities only the most limited measure of self-government, and on no account Home-rale. He pointed to the British Parliament, which contains only Britons, and when I suggested that the Colonies had Parliaments of their own, he insisted that the Colonists were all of British origin. N. Gringmut further holds that the Britons, as a strong race, can, without harming themselves, permit a considerable degree of liberty to subject nationalities, but that the concession to

Poles or Jews of equal rights with the Russians would involve a serious danger to the Russian element, which is not yet strong enough or mature enough to hold its own against more enterprising fellow-citizens.

N. Krupensky, one of the Russian Nationalists in the Duma, puts the argementem ad hominess in a slightly different way. "There are no Hindus in the British. Parliament," be says. "Why should Russia, after having lingered so far behind, suddenly rush so far in advance of Great Britain ? "

The Nationalists, even when supported by the Octobrist Conservatives, who lay stress on the unity of Russia, and are opposed to concessions in the direction of Home-rule, are in a

minority in the Duma. The majority of the Deputies, on the strength of their democratic principles, are, without having

clearly formulated their views, in favour of admitting to the full the claims of the subject nationalities. In the first Duraa a group of "Autonomists," under the leadership of M. Lednicki, a very able Polish Deputy, outlined a plan of action with the object of securing freedom of development in the new Constitutional Russia for the non-Russian nationalities.

The final goal of the group and of its adherents outside the Duma was a federation of autonomous States, a sort of United States of Russia ; but, as M. Lednicki says, the realisation of this dream is the work of to-morrow, not of to-day. In the Duma the group of Autonomists set itself the modest task of scrutinising all legislative work from the point of view of their ideal, and combating any proposals calculated to prevent its realisation in the future. M. Lednicki had his difficulties. The Polish Deputies, for instance, most of whom were Nationalists of a narrow type, were interested solely in the autonomy of the kingdom of Poland, and only by earnest persuasion were they brought to admit that co-operation with other non-Russian nationalities who had similar claims was the chief pledge of success. Attempts have been made to revive the group of Autonomists in the present Dams, but in the absence of such a tireless organiser as M. Lednicki this is not an easy task.

With or without the support of an organised group, how- ever, tendencies that may roughly be described as antonomistic are at work in the Duma, and are likely to make themselves more and more deeply felt. M. Donovsky, in speaking on the agrarian question, has already emphasised very strongly the point of view of the Polish Autonomists, and every reform of Imperial importance will be subjected to criticism from the point of view of the non-Russian nationalities. And the aim of all this criticism will be to secure the largest possible measure of local self-government, in some cases to the extent of Home-rule.

The claims of the non-Russian nationalities naturally vary in degree, and the Poles are right when they argue that their case, like that of Finland, stands apart from the rest. For Poland the question of complete autonomy is a question of to-day and not of to-morrow, and the Polish Deputies in the Duma frankly declare that they do not consider themselves as being on the same footing as other Deputies. They insist that they consent to appear as Members of the Russian Duma only so long as there is no Parliament in Warsaw. They profess indifference to the questions that most violently agitate Russian Deputies, for their one object in coming to St. Petersburg is to secure autonomy for Poland. Their claim is admitted by almost all the Opposition parties, and opposed by the Conservative Octobtists and the Russian Nationalists. If the Duma lives, the question of Polish autonomy, with its international implications, may become one of burning interest, but its turn has not yet come.

The Mohammedans, of whom there are about thirty in the Duma, do not claim autonomy after the manner of the Poles. Their point of view is, as the name of the group indicates, primarily religious, for, after all, Kirgbizes, Crimean Tartars, Ural Tartars, and Tartars of the Caucasus have no common interest but the religious interest. The dialects spoken by various Tartar peoples differ so widely that it has been found necessary to make Russian the business language of the Parliamentary group. What the Mohammedans desire above all is complete religious liberty, which implies considerable alterations in the civil law in order that it may not conflict with the requirements of the religious law of the Koran.

Other nationalities, such as Letts and Lithuanians, Georgians and Armenians, desire Home-rule, and the Little Russians dream of the day when the provinces of the South of Russia shall no longer be subjected to the Great Russian yoke, but shall constitute a happy, autonomous Ukraine. Only a few days ago a Little Russian idealist was discussing with me the question as to whether Kieff or Ekaterinoslav should be the capital of the Ukrainian State. But these dreams of Home-rule must from the very nature of the case for a very long time remain dreams. The utmost that any Russian Parliament could do to satisfy the claims of the majority of the non-Russian nationalities would be to concede a very large measure of local self-government, and complete liberty of development for language, religion, and all forms of national culture. And even this broad formula would necessarily be applied in practice with varying degrees of stringency, for not all the non-Russian nationalities are equally ripe for a large measure of self-government, and in certain regions, such as the Baltic Provinces and the Caucasus, the conflicting claims of various nationalities considerably complicate the question of language rights.

Clearly the United States of Russia will not be born in a day, perhaps not in fifty years. It may even be that they will never be realised historically in the form in which they are now conceived of by federalists ; but forces of decentralisation are now actively at work. The Russian Nationalists have taken alarm, and talk gloomily of the dissolution of the Empire ; but when the Parliamentary group of Autonomists discusses plans for Imperial federation, it is not acting in a merely factious separatist spirit. The Autonomists are not the enemies of a sound and liberty-loving Imperialism, they are its most ardent friends. The history of the emancipatory movement has already shown how Poles, Letts; Lithuanians, and Finns, who had bitterly hated the very name of Great Russian so long as it was associated in their minds solely with bureaucratic oppression, welcomed the Russians as brothers when they discovered that they too had been oppressed, and that they too were straggling for liberty. Even the Poles, with all their insistence on complete autonomy, do not dream of separating from Russia, and I imagine the point of view of the other nationalities was well expressed by a Mohammedan Moollah, who in broken Russian declared to me : "What we want is to be free Russian citizens."—I am, Sir, &c., $t. Petersburg.

H. W. WILLIAMS.