T HE internal condition of Russia, as produced or exasperated by
the war, is by far the most interest- ing question now discussed in Europe, and the one which presses most closely on all diplomatists. It is clear that the struggle in the Far East, though it is not yet over, has developed unrest in Russia of a dangerous kind, and all instructed Western men are watching the direction which the danger may take with anticipations at once eager and perplexed. There are so many conditions to the problem that it seems almost insoluble by human intelligence, and yet on its solution the immediate future will almost certainly depend. It is not only the future of Asia which is at stake, but much of the future of Europe. We are not talking of the " yellow peril," which may be real or imaginary, but of the changes within Europe itself which any radical change in Russia would involve. A paralysis of that great Empire, which for more than a century has hung like a heavy cloud on the Eastern frontiers of the really civilised section of the world, would, for example, leave Germany mistress of the Continent. It might shatter the Austrian Empire to pieces, for her Slav majority would no longer have to fear being "buried in the Russian morass." It would intensify in a high degree the quarrel always smouldering between the Ottomans and the remnant of their Christian subjects,—a result of which Europe already perceives signs in the new arrogance which the Divan is displaying in the Balkans. The Turkish Ministers have already appointed to high commands in Macedonia officers whose one idea of order is to keep down recalcitrant subjects by massacres so wide as to suggest an intention of extirpation. French society would be shaken to its heart by a new liability to invasion, and with it a fresh proclivity to panic. Even Great Britain, though still " encompassed by her inviolate sea," would feel the influence of the great change, for India would be as safe from invasion as herself, and being safe, would be apt to indulge in dreams of large ambition. It is not only natural, therefore, but inevit- able, that the world, though it is getting weary of the war considered as a drama, should watch the course of events upon the Sha-ho with fascinated eagerness.
While, however, we perceive this clearly, we do not understand so well why so many thoughtful men believe that the progress of the unrest will be fatal to the autocracy, or why they are so possessed with the notion that if that great cataclysm occurs, Russia will be weaker for its occurrence. As yet all the symptoms point rather to a vast jacquerie than to what is commonly known as a revolution. From province after province of Russia come up stories which show that the suspicion of the pro- prietary class so long smouldering among the peasantry is breaking into flame ; that château after château is menaced ; that in district after district the landlords are sending their families, or flying themselves, for protection to the great cities. The plunder to which the Reservists so often betake themselves is as much an expression of hatred to the rich as of desire for a final revel, and is accompanied in many instances by a destruction of property which can in no way benefit the mutineers. The peasantry, it must be remembered, are suffering severe economic distress, partly caused by increased taxation. They cherish at heart the Asiatic idea that " whose is the sweat, his is the soil " ; they thought themselves cheated in the ultimate result of the Emancipa- tion decree ; and they have some ground for believing that if they rise, the Central Government would show itself on their side. It is admitted by the great landlords them- selves, who are promoting the movement of the Zemstvos towards greater liberty, that one at least of their motives is dread of an agrarian revolution as sanauinary as that of 1789-93 in France. We do not imagine that the Government would actively aid that revolution, though it must be remembered that whole classes of the smaller proprietors were ruined at a stroke by the decree of Emancipation ; but it is not impossible they would remember that their soldiers are peasants, and would passively watch a revolt that would then end in a Russia composed of an absolute Czar and millions of small freeholders. The middle classes in Russia have no physical force with which to resist either the Army or the peasants. There is no proof of their control over the opinion of the masses, and a terrible and successful jacquerie is at least a con- ceivable alternative to a political revolution. If Louis XVI. had been a man with the great qualities of the earlier Bourbons, the French Revolution also might have ended in that way. The Army hated the aristocratic caste much more than it hated the Throne, and the emanci- pated peasantry would soon have furnished the Monarch, as it has repeatedly done since that time, with the force to hold down Paris. Besides, there is no Paris in Russia, no city which by itself is capable of overturning a dynasty that has ruled and has expanded Russia almost without a pause for nearly three hundred years. But supposing that a real revolution breaks out—which is possible, of course, as a result of weakness and inde- cision at the centre, and of the shock of angry surprise with which Russians recognise the fact that their Government can be beaten in war by a foe they had despised—where is the ground for thinking, as a number of grave persons without doubt secretly think, that an emancipated Russia would be either weak or unambitious ? She might, on the contrary, prove terribly strong. Russian Liberals obviously believe that the newly enfranchised people would be jealous of their prestige even in the Far East, and many of them suggest that the war with Japan would be carried on with a new energy if the people were but enfranchised. Even if that were not the case, owing to a certain horror of the " yellow devils " which has sprung up among the Russian masses, Russia, boiling with excitement, with all ambitions set free and her men of genius, of whom she has many, at last relieved from the heavy weight above them—at present they are like frogs under a flagstone—might find in conquest the readiest outlet for her energies, and by a grand war, say for Constantinople, might rouse to crusading height the enthusiasm of her masses. Unless Russia actually broke up into some form of federal State, which is hardly within the range of political possibilities, any Government of Russia, whatever the name of the dynasty, or whatever the form of its Constitution, must desire to reorganise the Army, and to obtain something of that military prestige without which armies are only collections of men in uniform. Men talk glibly enough of the grand financial crash which might follow any revolu- tion in Russia ; but how many millions were there in the treasury of the Terrorists, or of the Directory which followed them, when they commenced the conquest of the States around France, and when Napoleon, oppressed by the national poverty as well as by his own ambition, declared his intention to " make war support war," and to relieve rather than exhaust the national Exchequer by his campaigns ? Even anarchy in Russia might not destroy her strength except for a short period. There is much in the Slav of the French nervous excitability ; much, also, of that craving for external repute which used to be the French motive-power. Nothing is certain yet, and political prophecy is often political folly ; but the able persons who fancy that the disorder in Russia tends towards a millennium of peace and prosperity in Europe may be, as they often have been before, bemusing themselves with dreams.
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