I LEFT EMS for Russia five months ago, and return to this elegant village after having made a tour of some thousand leagues. My stay here during the previous spring was disagreeable to me by reason of the crowd of bathers and drinkers: I find it delicious now that I am literally alone, with nothing to do but to enjoy a beautiful autumn sky in the midst of mountains the solitude of which I admire; and to review my recollections, while I at the same time seek the rest I need after the rapid journey just completed.
With what a contrast am I presented! In Russia, I was deprived of all the scenes of nature; for I cannot give the name of nature to solitudes without one picturesque object,—to seas, lakes, and rivers, whose banks are on a level with the water; to marshes without bounds, and steppes without vegetation, under a sky without light. Those plains are not, indeed, devoid of a kind of beauty; but grandeur without grace soon fatigues. What pleasure can the traveler have in traversing immense spaces, where the surface and horizon are always destitute of feature? Such monotony aggravates the fatigue of locomotion, by rendering it fruitless. Surprises must always constitute a great portion of the enjoyment of traveling; and the hope of them must always furnish much of the stimulus that keeps alive the zeal of the traveler.
I have surveyed the Russian Empire. I hoped to see a country where should reign the calm of a power assured of its own strength: but arrived there, I found only the reign of silence maintained by fear; and I have drawn from the spectacle a lesson very different from the one which I went to seek. Russia is a world scarcely known to foreigners: the Russians who travel to escape it, pay, when at a distance, in crafty encomiums, their tribute to their country; and the greater number of travelers who have described it to us have been unwilling to discover in it anything but that which they sought to find. If people will defend their prejudices against evidence, where is the good of traveling? When thus determined to view nations as they wish to view them, there is no necessity for leaving their own country.
The following is the résumé of my journey, written since my return to Ems.
In Russia, all that strikes the eye, everything that passes around, bears the impress of a regularity that is startling; and the first thought that enters the mind of the traveler, when he contemplates this symmetrical system, is that a uniformity so complete, a regularity so contrary to the natural inclinations of men, cannot have been established, and cannot be maintained except by violence. Imagination vainly implores a little variety, like a bird uselessly beating its wings against a cage. Under such a system a man may know the first day of his life all that he will see and do until the last. This hard tyranny is called in official language, respect for unity, love of order; and it is a fruit of despotism so precious to methodical minds, that they think they cannot pay too dear for it.
In France, I had imagined myself in accord with these rigorous disciplinarians; but since I have lived under a despotism which imposes military rule upon the population of an entire empire, I confess that I have learnt to prefer a little of the disorder which announces vigor to the perfect order which destroys life.
In Russia, the government interferes with everything and vivifies nothing. In that immense empire, the people, if not tranquil, are mute; death hovers over all heads, and strikes capriciously whom it pleases: man there has two coffins, the cradle and the tomb. The Russian mothers ought to weep the birth more than the death of their children.
I do not believe that suicide is common there: the people suffer too much to kill themselves. Singular disposition of man!—when terror presides over his life, he does not seek death; he knows what it is already.[2]
But if the number of suicides in Russia were ever so great, no one would know it; the knowledge of numbers is a privilege of the Russian police: I am ignorant whether they arrive correct before the eyes of the emperor; but I do know that no misfortune is published under his reign until he has consented to the humiliating confession of the superiority of Providence. The pride of despotism is so great that it seeks to rival the power of God. Monstrous jealousy! into what aberrations hast thou not plunged princes and subjects! Who will dare to love truth, who will defend it in a country where idolatry is the principle of the constitution? A man who can do everything is the crowned impersonification of a lie.
It will be understood that I am not now speaking of the Emperor Nicholas, but of the emperor of Russia. We often hear mention made of customs which limit his power: I have been struck with its abuse, but have seen no remedy.
In the eyes of real statesmen, and of all practical minds, the laws are, I admit, less important than our precise logicians and political philosophers believe them; for it is the manner in which they are applied that decides the life of the people. True; but the life of the Russian people is more gloomy than that of any other of the European nations; and when I say the people, I speak not only of the peasants attached to the soil, but of the whole empire.
A government that makes profession of being vigorous, and that causes itself to be dreaded on every occasion, must inevitably render men miserable. Wherever the public machine is rigorously exact, there is despotism, whatever be the fiction, monarchical or democratical, which covers it. The best government is that which makes itself the least felt; but such lightness of the yoke is only procured by the labors of genius and superior wisdom, or by a certain relaxation of social discipline. Governments, which were beneficial in the youth of nations, when men, still half savages, honored everything that snatched them from a state of disorder, become so again in the old age of communities. At that epoch is seen the birth of mixed institutions. But these institutions, founded on a compact between experience and passion, can suit none but already wearied populations, societies the springs of which are weakened by revolutions. From this it may be concluded, that if they are not the most powerful of political systems, they are the most gentle: the people who have once obtained them cannot too carefully strive to prolong their duration, fruits as they are of a green old age. The old age of states, like that of men, is the most peaceable period of existence, when it crowns a glorious life; but the middle age of a nation is always a time of trial and violence: Russia is passing through it.
In this country, which differs from all others, nature itself has become an accomplice in the caprices of the man who has slain liberty to deify unity; it, too, is everywhere the same: two kinds of scattered and stunted trees, the birch and the pine, spread over plains always either sandy or marshy, are the only features on the face of nature throughout that immense expanse of country which constitutes northern Russia.
What refuge is there against the evils of society in a climate under which men cannot enjoy the country, such as it is, for more than three months of the year? Add to this, that during the six most inclement of the winter months, they— unless they are peasants—dare not breathe fresh air for more than two hours in the day. Such is the lot that heaven has assigned to man in these regions.
Let us see what man has done for himself: St. Petersburg is unquestionably one of the wonders of the world; Moscow is also a very picturesque city; but what can be said of the aspect of the provinces?
The excess of uniformity engendered by the abuse of unity will be seen described in my chapters. The absence of soul betrays itself in everything: each step that you take proves to you that you are among a people deprived of independence. At every twenty or thirty leagues, the same town greets your eyes.
The passion of both princes and people for classic architecture, for straight lines, buildings of low elevation, and wide streets, is a contradiction of the laws of nature and the wants of life in a cold, misty region, frequently exposed to storms of wind which case the visage in ice. Throughout my journey, I was constantly but vainly endeavoring to account for this mania among the inhabitants of a country so different from those lands whence the architecture has been borrowed: the Russians cannot probably explain it any better than I, for they are no more masters of their tastes than of their actions. The fine arts, as they call them, have been imposed on the people, just like the military exercise. The regiment, and its spirit of minuteness, is the mold of Russian society.
Lofty ramparts, high and crowded edifices, the winding streets of the cities of the Middle Ages, would have suited, better than caricatures of the antique, the climate and the customs of Muscovy; but the country the wants and genius of which are least consulted by the Russians, is the country they occupy.
When Peter the Great published from Tartary to Lapland his edicts of civilization, the creations of the Middle Ages had long been out of date in Europe; and the Russians, even those that have been called great, have never known how to do more than follow the fashion.
Such disposition to imitate scarcely accords with the ambition which we attribute to them; for man does not rule the things that he copies; but everything is contradictory in the character of this superficial people: besides, a want of invention is their peculiar characteristic. To invent, there must be independence; in them, mimicry may be seen pervading the very passions: if they wish to take their turn on the scene of the world, it is not to employ faculties which they possess, and the inaction of which torments them; it is simply to act over the history of illustrious communities: they have no creative power; comparison is their talent, imitation is their genius: naturally given to observation they are not themselves except when aping the creations of others. Such originality as they have, lies in the gift of counterfeit, which they possess more amply than any other people. Their only primitive faculty is an aptitude to reproduce the inventions of foreigners. They would be in history what they are in literature, able translators. The task of the Russians is to translate European civilization to the Asiatics.
The talent of imitation may become useful and even admirable in nations, provided it develops itself late; but it destroys all the other talents when it precedes them. Russia is a community of imitations: and every man who can do nothing else but copy necessarily falls into caricature.
Oscillating for the space of four centuries between Europe and Asia, Russia has not yet succeeded in distinguishing itself by its works in the field of human intellect, because its national characteristics are lost under its borrowed decorations.
Separated from the West by its adherence to the Greek schism, it returns, after many centuries, with the inconsistency of a blind self-love, to demand from nations formed by Catholicism the civilization of which a religion entirely political has deprived it. This Byzantine religion, which has issued from a palace to maintain order in a camp, does not respond to the most sublime wants of the human soul; it helps the police to deceive the nation, but that is the extent of its power.
It has, in advance, rendered the people unworthy of the culture to which they aspire.
The independence of the church is necessary to the motion of the religious sap; for the development of the noblest faculty of a people, the faculty of believing, depends on the dignity of the man charged with communicating to his fellow-men the divine revelations. The humiliation of the ministers of religion is the first punishment of heresy; and thus it is that in all schismatic countries the priest is despised by the people, in spite of, or rather because of, the protection of the prince. People who understand their liberty will never obey, from the bottom of their hearts, a dependent clergy.
The time is not far distant when it will be acknowledged that, in matters of religion, what is more essential even than obtaining the liberty of the flock, is the assuring that of the pastor.
The multitude always obey the men whom they take for guides: be they priests, doctors, poets, sages, or tyrants, the minds of the people are in their hands; religious liberty for the mass is therefore a chimera; but it is on this account the more important that the man charged with performing the office of priest for them should be free: now, there is not in the world an independent priest except the Catholic.
Slavish pastors can only guide barren minds: a Greek pope will never do more than instruct a people to prostrate themselves before violent power. Let me not be asked, then, whence it comes that the Russians have no imagination, and how it is that they only copy imperfectly.
When, in the West, the descendants of the barbarians studied the ancients with a veneration that partook of idolatry, they modified them in order to appropriate them. Who can recognize Virgil in Dante, or Homer in Tasso, or Justinian and the Roman laws in the codes of feudalism? The passionate respect then professed for the past, far from stifling genius, aroused it: but it is not thus that the Russians have availed themselves of us.
When a people counterfeit the social forms of another community, without penetrating into the spirit which animates it—when they seek lessons in civilization, not from the ancient founders of human institutions, but from strangers whose riches they envy without respecting their character— when their imitation is hostile, and yet falls into puerile precision—when they borrow from a neighbor, whom they affect to disdain, even the very modes of dress and of domestic life, they become a mere echo, a reflection; they exist no longer for themselves. Russians remind me of portraits badly painted, but very thickly varnished.
It was Peter the Great, who, with all the imprudence of an untaught genius, all the temerity of a man the more impatient because deemed omnipotent, with all the perseverance of an iron character, sought to snatch from Europe the plants of an already ripened civilization, instead of resigning himself to the slow process of sowing the seeds in his own soil. That too highly lauded man produced a merely artificial work: it may be astonishing, but the good done by his barbarous genius was transient, the evil is irreparable.
How does a power to influence the politics of Europe benefit Russia? Factitious interests! vain, foolish passions! Its real interests are to have within itself the principles of life, and to develop them: a nation which possesses nothing within itself but obedience does not live. The nation of which I speak has been posted at the window; it looks out—it listens—it feels like a man witnessing some exhibition. When will this game cease?
Russia ought not only to stop, but to begin anew: is such an effort possible? can so vast an edifice be taken to pieces and reconstructed? The too recent civilization of the empire, entirely artificial as it is, has already produced real results— results which no human power can annul: it appears to me impossible to control the future state of a people without considering the present. But the present, when it has been violently separated from the past, bodes only evil: to avert that evil from Russia, by obliging it to take into account its ancient history, which was the result only of its primitive character, will be henceforward the ungrateful task, more useful than brilliant, of the men called to govern this land.
The altogether national and highly practical genius of the Emperor Nicholas has perceived the problem: can he resolve it? I do not think so; he does not let enough be done—he trusts too much to himself and too little to others, to succeed; for in Russia, the most absolute will is not powerful enough to accomplish good.
It is not against a tyrant, but against tyranny, that the friends of man have here to struggle. There would be injustice in accusing the emperor of the miseries of the empire and the vices of the government: the powers of a man are not equal to the task imposed upon the sovereign who would suddenly seek to reign by humanity over an inhuman people.
He only who has been in Russia, who has seen close at hand how things are there conducted, can understand how little the man can do, who is reputed capable of doing everything; and how, more especially, his power is limited, when it is good that he would accomplish.
The unhappy consequences of the work of Peter I have been still further aggravated under the great, or rather the long reign of a woman who only governed her people to amuse herself and to astonish Europe—Europe, always Europe!— never Russia!
Peter I and Catherine II have given to the world a great and useful lesson, for which Russia has had to pay: they have shown to us that despotism is never so much to be dreaded as when it pretends to do good, for then it thinks the most revolting acts may be excused by the intention; and the evil that is applied as a remedy has no longer any bounds. Crime exposed to view can triumph only for a day; but false virtues forever lead astray the minds of nations. People, dazzled by the brilliant accessories of crime, by the greatness of certain delinquencies justified by the event, believe at last that there are two kinds of villainy, two classes of morals, and that necessity, or reasons of state, as they were formerly called, exculpate criminals of high lineage, provided they have so managed that their excesses shall be in accord with the passions of the country.
Avowed, open tyranny would little terrify me after having seen oppression disguised as love of order. The strength of despotism lies in the mask of the despot. When the sovereign can no longer lie, the people are free; thus I see no other evil in this world except that of falsehood. If you dread only violent and avowed arbitrary power, go to Russia; there you will learn to fear above all things the tyranny of hypocrisy. I cannot deny it; I bring back with me from my journey ideas which I did not own when I undertook it. I therefore would not have been spared, for anything in the world, the trouble which it has cost me: if I print the relation of it, I do so precisely because it has modified my opinions upon several points. Those opinions are known to all who have read me; my change of opinion is not: it is therefore a duty to publish it.
On setting out, I did not intend writing this last journey: my method is fatiguing, because it consists in reviewing for my friends, during the night, the recollections of the day. Whilst occupied with this labor, which bears the character of confidential communications, the public appeared to my thoughts in only a dim and vapory distance—so vapory that I scarcely yet realize its presence; and this will account for the familiar tone of an intimate correspondence being preserved in my printed letters.
I liked to think that I should this time be able to travel for myself alone, which would have been a means of observing with tranquillity; but the ideas with which I found the Russians prepossessed with regard to me, from the greatest personages down to the smallest private individuals, gave me to see the measure of my importance, at least of that which I could acquire in Petersburg. “What do you think, or rather, what shall you say of us?” This was at the bottom of every conversation held with me. They drew me from my inaction: I was playing a modest part through apathy, or perhaps cowardice; for Paris renders those humble whom it does not render excessively presumptuous; but the restless self-love of the Russians restored to me my own.
I was sustained in my new resolution by a continual and visible dispersion of illusion. Assuredly, the cause of the disappointment must have been strong and active to have allowed disgust to take possession of me in the midst of the most brilliant fêtes that I have ever seen in my life, and in spite of the dazzling hospitality of the Russians. But I recognized at the first glance, that in the demonstrations of interest which they lavish upon us, there is more of the desire to appear engaging, than of true cordiality. Cordiality is unknown to the Russians: it is one of those things which they have not borrowed from their German neighbors. They occupy your every moment; they distract your thoughts; they engross your attention; they tyrannize over you by means of officious politeness; they inquire how you pass your days; they question you with an importunity known only to themselves, and by fête after fête they prevent you seeing their country. Unhappily, they have chanced to fall upon a man whom fêtes have always more tired than diverted. But when they perceive that their direct attempts upon the mind of a stranger fail, they have recourse to indirect means to discredit his statements among enlightened readers: they can lead him astray with marvelous dexterity. Thus, still to prevent him from seeing things under their true color, they will falsely depreciate when they can no longer reckon upon his benevolent credulity to permit them falsely to extol. Often have I, in the same conversation, surprised the same person changing his tactics two or three times towards me. I do not always flatter myself with having discerned the truth, but I have discerned that it was concealed from me, and it is always something to know that we are deceived; if not enlightened, we are then at least armed.
All courts are deficient in life and gaiety; but at that of Petersburg, one has not even the permission to be weary. The emperor, whose eye is on everything, takes the affectation of enjoyment as a homage, which reminds me of the observation of M. de Talleyrand upon Napoleon: “L’empereur ne plaisante pas; il veut qu’on s’amuse.”
I shall wound self-love: my incorruptible honesty will draw upon me reproaches; but is it my fault if, in applying to an absolute government for new arguments against the despot that reigns at home, against disorder baptized with the name of liberty, I have been struck only with the abuses of autocracy; in other words, of tyranny-designated good order? Russian despotism is a false order, as our republicanism is a false liberty. I make war with falsehood wherever I discover it; but there is more than one kind of lie: I had forgotten those of absolute power; I now recount them in detail, because, in relating my travels I describe without reserve all that I see.
I hate pretexts: I have seen that in Russia, order serves as a pretext for oppression, as, in France, liberty does for envy. In a word, I love real liberty—all liberty that is possible in a society from whence elegance is not excluded; I am therefore neither demagogue nor despot; I am an aristocrat in the broadest acceptation of the word. The elegance that I wish to preserve in communities is not frivolous, nor yet unfeeling; it is regulated by taste; taste excludes all abuses; it is the surest preservative against them, for it dreads every kind of exaggeration. A certain elegance is essential to the arts, and the arts save the world; for it is through their agency more than any other that people attach themselves to civilization, of which they are the last and the most precious fruits. By a privilege which belongs to them alone among the various objects that can shed a halo upon a nation, their glory pleases and profits all classes of society equally.
Aristocracy, as I understand it, far from allying itself with tyranny in favor of order, as the demagogues who misunderstand it pretend, cannot exist under an arbitrary government. Its mission is to defend, on one side, the people against the despot, and, on the other, civilization against that most terrible of all tyrants, revolution. Barbarism takes more than one form: crush it in despotism and it springs to life again in anarchy; but true liberty, guarded by a true aristocracy, is neither violent nor inordinate.
Unfortunately, the partisans of a moderating aristocracy in Europe are now blinded, and lend their arms to their adversaries: in their false prudence they seek for aid among the enemies of all political and religious liberty, as though danger could only come from the side of the new revolutionaries: they forget that arbitrary sovereigns were anciently as much usurpers as are the modern Jacobins.
Feudal aristocracy has come to an end in all except the indelible glory which will forever shine around great historical names; but in communities which wish to endure, the noblesse of the Middle Ages will be replaced, as it long has been among the English, by a hereditary magistracy: this new aristocracy, heir of the old, and composed of many different elements, for office, birth, and riches all form its basis, will not regain its credit until it supports itself upon a free religion; and I again repeat, the only free religion, the only one that does not depend on a temporal power, is that taught by the Catholic church: for as to the temporal power of the pope himself, it is now only calculated to defend his sacerdotal independence. Aristocracy is the government of independent minds, and it cannot be too often reiterated, Catholicism is the faith of free priests.
Russia still remains farther from liberty, not in words, but in things, than most of the countries upon earth. Tomorrow, in an insurrection, in the midst of massacre, by the light of a conflagration, the cry of freedom may spread to the frontiers of Siberia; a blind and cruel people may murder their masters, may revolt against obscure tyrants, and dye the waters of the Volga with blood; but they will not be any the more free: barbarism is in itself a yoke.
The best means of emancipating men is not pompously to proclaim their enfranchisement, but to render servitude impossible by developing the sentiment of humanity in the hearts of nations: that sentiment is deficient in Russia. To talk of liberalism to the Russians, of whatever class they may be, would now be a crime; to preach humanity to all classes without exception is a duty.
The Russian nation has not yet imbibed the sentiment of justice; thus, one day it was mentioned to me in praise of the Emperor Nicholas, that an obscure private individual had gained a cause against some powerful nobleman. In this instance, the encomium on the sovereign appeared to me as a satire upon the community. The too highly boasted fact proved to me positively that equity is only an exception in Russia.
Everything duly considered, I would by no means advise obscure men to act in reliance upon the success of the person thus instanced, who was favored perhaps to assure impunity to the usual course of injustice, and to furnish a specimen of equity which the dispensers of the law were in need of, to serve as a reply to reproaches of servility and corruption.
Another fact, which suggests an inference little favorable to the Russian judiciary, is that there should be so little litigation in the country. The reason is not obscure; people would more often have recourse to justice if the judges were more equitable. A similar reason accounts for there being no fighting or quarreling in the streets. A dread of chains and dungeons is the consideration which usually restrains the parties.
Notwithstanding the melancholy pictures that I draw, two inanimate objects, and one living person, are worth the trouble of the journey: the Neva of Petersburg during the nightless season, the Kremlin of Moscow by moonlight, and the emperor of Russia. These include picturesque, historical, and political Russia; beyond them everything is fatiguing and wearisome to a degree that may be judged of by the preceding chapters.
Many of my friends have written to advise me not to publish them.
As I was preparing to leave Petersburg, a Russian asked me, as all the Russians do, what I should say of his country. “I have been too well received there to talk about it,”[3] was my reply.
This avowal, in which I thought I had scarcely politely concealed an epigram, is brought up against me. “Treated as you have been,” I am told, “you cannot possibly tell the truth; and as you cannot write except to do so, you had better remain silent.” Such is the opinion of a party among those to whom I am accustomed to listen. At any rate, it is not flattering to the Russians.
My opinion is, that without wounding the delicacy, without failing in the gratitude due to individuals, nor yet in the respect due to self, there is always a proper manner of speaking with sincerity of public men and things, and I hope to have discovered this manner. It is pretended that truth only shocks, but in France, at least, no one has the right or the power to close the mouth of him who speaks it. My exclamations of indignation cannot be taken for the disguised expression of wounded vanity. If I had listened only to my self-love, it would have told me to be enchanted with everything: my heart has been enchanted with nothing.
If everything related of the Russians and their country turn into personalities, so much the worse for them: this is an inevitable evil, for things do not exist in Russia, since it is the whim of a man who makes and unmakes them; but that is not the fault of travelers.
The emperor appears to me little disposed to lay down a part of his authority. Let him suffer, then, the responsibility of omnipotence: it is the first expiation of the political lie by which a single individual declares himself absolute master of a country and all-powerful sovereign of the thoughts of a people.
Forbearance in practice does not excuse the impiety of such a doctrine. I have found among the Russians that the principles of absolute monarchy, applied with inflexible consistency, lead to results that are monstrous: and, this time, my political quietism cannot withhold me from perceiving and proclaiming that there are governments to which people ought never to submit.
The Emperor Alexander, talking confidentially with Madame de Staël about the ameliorations which he projected, said to her, “You praise my philanthropical intentions—I am obliged to you; nevertheless, in the history of Russia, I am only a lucky chance.”
That prince spoke the truth: the Russians vainly boast of the prudence and management of the men who direct their affairs; arbitrary power is not the less the fundamental principle of the state; and this principle so works that the emperor makes, or suffers to be made, or allows to exist, laws (excuse the application of this sacred name to impious decrees) which, for example, permit the sovereign to declare that the legitimate children of a man legally married have no father, no name; in short, that they are numbers and not human beings. And am I to be forbidden to accuse at the bar of Europe a prince who, distinguished and superior as he is, consents to reign without abolishing such a law?
His resentment is implacable: with hatred so strong, he may yet be a great sovereign, but he cannot be a great man. The great man is merciful, the political character is vindictive: vengeance reigns, pardon converts.
I have now made my last observations upon a prince that one hesitates to judge, after knowing the country where he is condemned to reign; for men are there so dependent upon things, that it is difficult to know how high or how low to look in fixing the responsibility of actions. And the nobles of such a country pretend to resemble the French! The French kings, in barbarous times, have often cut off the heads of their great vassals; but those princes, when they destroyed their enemies and seized their goods, did not debase by an insulting decree their caste, their family, and their country: such a forgetfulness of all dignity would have rendered the people of France indignant, even in the Middle Ages. But the people of Russia suffer even worse things than these. I must correct myself—there is no people of Russia: there is an emperor, who has serfs, and there are courtiers who have serfs also; but this does not constitute a people.
The middle class, few in number as compared with others, is at present almost entirely composed of foreigners; a few peasants, enfranchised by their wealth, together with the smallest employees, begin to swell its ranks. The future fate of Russia depends upon this new class, the elements of which are so diverse that it seems scarcely possible they can combine together.
The attempt is now making to create a Russian nation; but the task is difficult for one man. Evil is quickly committed, but slowly repaired: the mortifications of despotism must often, I should think, enlighten the despot on the abuses of absolute power. But the embarrassments of the oppressor do not excuse oppression. I can pity them, because evil is always to be pitied; but they inspire me with much less compassion than the sufferings of the oppressed. In Russia, whatever be the appearance of things, violence and arbitrary rule are at the bottom of them all. Tyranny rendered calm by the influence of terror, is the only kind of happiness which this government is able to afford its people.
And when chance has made me a witness of the unspeakable evils endured under a constitution founded on such principles, is the fear of wounding this or that delicate feeling to prevent my describing what I have seen? I should be unworthy of having eyes if I ceded to such pusillanimous partiality, disguised as it has this time been under the name of respect for social propriety; as though my conscience had not the first claim to my respect. What! when I have been allowed to penetrate into a prison, where I have understood the silence of the terrified victims, must I not dare to relate their martyrdom, for fear of being accused of ingratitude, because of the complaisance of the jailers? Such reserve would be anything but a virtue. I declare then, that, after having observed well around me, after endeavoring to see what was attempted to be concealed, to understand what it was not wished I should know, to distinguish between the true and the false in all that was said to me, I do not believe I am exaggerating in affirming, that the empire of Russia is a country whose inhabitants are the most miserable upon earth, because they suffer at one and the same time the evils of barbarism and of civilization. As regards myself, I should feel that I was a traitor and a coward if, after having already boldly sketched the picture of a great part of Europe, I could hesitate to complete it, for fear either of modifying opinions of my own which I once maintained, or of shocking certain parties by a faithful picture of a country which has never been painted as it really is. On what, pray, should I ground a respect for evil things? Am I bound by any other chain than a love of truth?
In general, the Russians have struck me as being men endowed with great tact; extremely quick, but possessing very little sensibility; highly susceptible, but very unfeeling: this I believe to be their real character. As I have already said, a quick-sighted vanity, a sarcastic finesse are dominant traits in their disposition; and I repeat, that it would be pure silliness to spare the self-love of people who are themselves so little merciful: susceptibility is not delicacy. It is time that these men, who discern with so much sagacity the vices and the follies of our society, should accustom themselves to bear with our sincerity. The official silence which is maintained among them deceives them: it enervates their intellect: if they wish to be recognized by the European nations, and treated as equals, they must begin by submitting to hear themselves judged. All the nations have had to undergo this kind of process. When did the Germans refuse to receive the English, except on condition that the latter should speak well of Germany? Nations have always good reasons for being what they are, and the best of all is, that they cannot be otherwise.
This excuse could not indeed be pleaded by the Russians, at least not by those who read. As they ape everything, they might be otherwise; and it is just the consciousness of this possibility which renders their government severe, even to ferocity! That government knows too well that it can be sure of nothing with characters which are mere reflections.
A more powerful motive might have checked my candor— the fear of being accused of apostasy. “He has long protested,” it will be said, “against liberal declamations; here behold him ceding to the torrent, and seeking false popularity after having disdained it.”
Perhaps I deceive myself; but the more I reflect, the less I believe that this reproach can reach me, or even that it will be addressed to me.
It is not only in the present day that a fear of being blamed by foreigners has occupied the minds of the Russians. That strange people unite an extremely boasting spirit with an excessive distrust of self; self-sufficiency without, uncomfortable humility within, are traits which I have observed in the greater number of Russians. Their vanity, which never rests, is, like English pride, always suffering. They also lack simplicity. Naïveté, that French word of which no other language can render the exact sense, because the thing it describes is peculiar to ourselves, naïveté, that simplicity which can become pointedly witty, that gift of disposition which can produce laughter without ever wounding the heart, that forgetfulness of rhetorical precautions which goes so far as to lend arms against itself to those with whom the individual converses, that fairness of judgment, that altogether involuntary truthfulness of expression, in one word, that Gallic simplicity, is unknown to the Russians. A race of imitators will never be naïf; calculation will, with them, always destroy sincerity.
In a country where minds are, from the cradle, fashioned in the dissimulation and finesse of Oriental policy, natural sentiment must be more rare than elsewhere; and, consequently, when it is discovered it has a peculiar charm. I have met in Russia some men who blush to feel themselves oppressed by the stern system under which they are obliged to live without daring to complain: they are only free when in the face of the enemy; they therefore go to make war in the Caucasus, that they may get rid of the yoke imposed upon them at home. The sorrows of such a life imprint prematurely on their faces a seal of melancholy, which strikingly contrasts with their military habits and the heedlessness of their age: the wrinkles of youth reveal profound griefs, and inspire deep pity. These young men have borrowed from the East their gravity, and from the North their vague, imaginative reverie: they are very unhappy and very amiable: no inhabitants of any other land resemble them.
Since the Russians possess grace, they must necessarily have some kind of natural sentiment in their character, though I have not been able to discern it. It is, perhaps, impossible for a stranger traveling through Russia as rapidly as I have done, to grasp it. No character is so difficult to define as that of this people.
Without a middle age, without ancient associations, without Catholicism, without chivalry to look back upon, without respect for their word,[4] always Greeks of the Lower Empire, polished, like the Chinese, by set forms, coarse, or at least indelicate, like the Kalmyks, dirty like the Laplanders, beautiful as the angels, ignorant as savages (I except the women and a few diplomatists), cunning as the Jews, intriguing as freed-men, gentle and grave in their manners as the Orientals, cruel in their sentiments as barbarians, mockers both by nature and by the feeling of their inferiority, the Russians, light-minded in appearance only, are still essentially fit for serious affairs. All have the requisite disposition for acquiring an extraordinarily acute tact, but none are magnanimous enough to rise above it; and they have therefore disgusted me with that faculty, so indispensable to those who would live among them. With their continual surveillance of self, they seem to me the men the most to be pitied on earth. This police of the imagination is incessantly leading them to sacrifice their sentiments to those of others: it is a negative quality which excludes positive ones of a far superior character; it is the livelihood of ambitious courtiers, whose business is to obey the will and to guess the impulses of another, but who would be scouted should they ever pretend to have an impulse of their own. To give an impulse requires genius; genius is the tact of energy; tact is only the genius of weakness. The Russians are all tact. Genius acts, tact observes; and the abuse of observation leads to mistrust, that is, to inaction; genius may ally itself with a great deal of art, but never with a very refined tact, because tact—that supreme virtue of subalterns who respect the enemy, that is, the master, so long as they dare not strike—is always united with a degree of artifice. Under the influence of this talent of the seraglio, the Russians are impenetrable: it is true that we always see they are concealing something, but we cannot tell what they conceal, and this is sufficient for them. They will be truly formidable and deeply skillful men when they succeed in masking even their finesse.
Some of them have already attained to that proficiency: they are the first men of their country, both by the posts they occupy, and the superiority of their abilities. But, good heavens! what is the object of all this management? What sufficient motive shall we assign for so much stratagem? What duty, what recompense, can so long reconcile the faces of men to bear the fatigue of the mask?
Can the play of so many batteries be destined to defend only a real and legitimate power? Such a power would not need it; truth can defend herself. Is it to protect the miserable interests of vanity? Perhaps it is; yet to take so much pains to attain so contemptible a result would be unworthy of the grave men to whom I allude: I attribute to them profounder views; I think I perceive a greater object, and one which better explains their prodigies of dissimulation and longanimity.
An ambition inordinate and immense, one of those ambitions which could only possibly spring in the bosoms of the oppressed, and could only find nourishment in the miseries of a whole nation, ferments in the heart of the Russian people. That nation, essentially aggressive, greedy under the influence of privation, expiates beforehand, by a debasing submission, the design of exercising a tyranny over other nations: the glory, the riches, which it hopes for, console it for the disgrace to which it submits. To purify himself from the foul and impious sacrifice of all public and personal liberty, the slave, upon his knees, dreams of the conquest of the world.
It is not the man who is adored in the Emperor Nicholas— it is the ambitious master of a nation more ambitious than himself. The passions of the Russians are shaped in the same mold as those of the people of antiquity: among them everything reminds us of the Old Testament: their hopes, their tortures, are great, like their empire.
There, nothing has any limits,—neither griefs, nor rewards, nor sacrifices, nor hopes: the power of such a people may become enormous; but they will purchase it at the price which the nations of Asia pay for the stability of their governments —the price of happiness.
Russia sees in Europe a prey which our dissensions will sooner or later yield to her: she foments anarchy among us in the hope of profiting by a corruption which she favors because it appears favorable to her views: it is the history of Poland recommencing on a larger scale. For many years past, Paris has read revolutionary journals paid by Russia. “Europe,” they say at Petersburg, “is following the road that Poland took; she is enervating herself by a vain liberalism, whilst we continue powerful precisely because we are not free: let us be patient under the yoke; others shall someday pay for our shame.”
The views that I reveal here may appear chimerical to minds engrossed with other matters; their truth will be recognized by every man initiated in the march of European affairs, and in the secrets of cabinets, during the last twenty years. They furnish a key to many a mystery; they explain also the extreme importance which thoughtful men, grave both by character and position, attach to the being viewed by strangers only on the favorable side. If the Russians were, as they pretend, the supporters of order and legitimacy, would they make use of men, and, what is worse, of means which are revolutionary?
The distance which separates Russia from the West has wonderfully aided hitherto in veiling all these things from us. If the astute Greek policy so much fears the truth, it is because it so well knows how to profit by falsehood; but what surprises me is, that it should succeed in perpetuating the reign of that influence.
Can the reader now understand the importance of an opinion, of a sarcastic word, a letter, a jest, a smile, or, with still greater reason, of a book, in the eyes of a government thus favored by the credulity of its people, and by the complaisance of all foreigners? A word of truth dropped in Russia, is a spark that may fall on a barrel of gunpowder.
What do the men who govern the empire care for the want, and the pallid visages of the soldiers of the emperor? Those living specters have the most beautiful uniforms in Europe; what signify, then, the filthy smocks in which the gilded phantoms are concealed in the interior of their barracks? Provided they are only shabby and dirty in secret, and that they shine when they show themselves, nothing is asked from them, nothing is given them. With the Russians appearance is everything, and among them, appearance deceives more than it does among others. It follows, that whoever lifts a corner of the curtain loses his reputation in Petersburg beyond the chance of retrieving it.
Social life in that city is a permanent conspiracy against the truth.
There, whoever is not a dupe, is viewed as a traitor,— there, to laugh at a gasconade, to refute a falsehood, to contradict a political boast, to find a reason for obedience, is to be guilty of an attempt against the safety of the state and the prince; it is to incur the fate of a revolutionist, a conspirator, an enemy of order, a POLE; and we all know whether this fate is a merciful one. It must be owned, the susceptibility which thus manifests itself is more formidable than laughable; the minute surveillance of such a government, in accord with the enlightened vanity of such a people, becomes fearful; it is no longer ludicrous.
People must and ought to employ all manner of precautions under a master who shows mercy to no enemy, who despises no resistance, and who considers vengeance as a duty. This man, or rather this government personified, would view pardon as apostasy, clemency as self-forgetfulness, humanity as a want of respect towards its own majesty, or, I should rather say, its divinity!
Russian civilization is still so near its source that it resembles barbarism. The Russians are nothing more than a conquering community; their strength does not lie in mind but in war, that is, in stratagem and brute force.
Poland, by its last insurrection, has retarded the explosion of the mine; it has forced the batteries to remain masked: Poland will never be pardoned for the dissimulation that she has rendered necessary, not towards herself, for she is immolated with impunity, but towards friends whom it is needful to continue making dupes, while humoring their stormy philanthropy.
If ever the Russians succeed in conquering the West, they will not govern it from their own country, after the manner of the old Mongols; on the contrary, there will be nothing in which they will show such eager haste as to issue from their icy plains: unlike their ancient masters, the Tartars, who tyrannized over the Slavs from a distance—for the climate of Muscovy frightened even the Mongols—the Muscovites will leave their country the moment the roads of other countries are open to them.
At this moment they talk moderation; they protest against the conquest of Constantinople; they say that they fear everything that would increase an empire where the distances are already a calamity; they dread—yes! even thus far extends their prudence!—they dread hot climates! . . . Let us wait a little, and we shall see what will become of all these fears.
And am I not to speak of so much falsehood, so many perils, so great an evil? . . . No, no; I would rather have been deceived and speak, than have rightly discerned and remain silent. If there is temerity in recounting my observations, there would be criminality in concealing them.
The Russians will not answer me; they will say, “A journey of four months!—he cannot have fully seen things.”
It is true I have not fully seen, but I have well penetrated.
Or, if they do me the honor of refuting me, they will deny facts,—facts which they are accustomed to reckon as nothing in Petersburg, where the past, like the present and the future, is at the mercy of the monarch: for, once again, the Russians have nothing of their own but obedience and imitation; the direction of their mind, their judgment and their free will belongs to their master. In Russia, history forms a part of the crown domain: it is the moral estate of the prince, as men and lands are the material; it is placed in cabinets with the other Imperial treasures, and only such of it is shown as it is wished should be seen. The emperor modifies at his pleasure the annals of the country, and daily dispenses to his people the historic truths that accord with the fiction of the moment. Thus it was that Minin and Pozharsky—heroes forgotten for two centuries—were suddenly exhumed, and became the fashion, during the invasion of Napoleon. At that moment, the government permitted patriotic enthusiasm.
Nevertheless, this exorbitant power injures itself; Russia will not submit to it eternally. A spirit of revolt broods in the army. I say, with the emperor, the Russians have traveled too much; the nation has become greedy of information: the customhouse cannot confiscate ideas, armies cannot exterminate them, ramparts cannot arrest their progress; ideas are in the air, they pervade every region, and they are changing the world.
From all that has gone before, it follows that the future— that brilliant future dreamt of by the Russians—does not depend upon them; they have no ideas of their own; and the fate of this nation of imitators will be decided by people whose ideas are their own. If passions calm in the West, if union be established between the governments and their subjects, the greedy hope of the conquering Slavs will become a chimera.
Is it proper to repeat, that I write without animosity, that I have described things without charging persons, and that, in expatiating upon certain facts which have shocked me, I have generally accused less than I have recounted?
I left Paris with the opinion, that the intimate alliance of France and Russia could alone set to rights the affairs of Europe: but since I have seen the Russian nation, and have recognized the true spirit of its government, I have felt that it is isolated from the rest of the civilized world by a powerful political interest, supported by religious fanaticism; and I am of opinion that France should seek for allies among nations whose interests accord with her own. Alliances are not to be formed on opinions in opposition to wants. Where, in Europe, are wants which accord? I answer among the French and the Germans, and the people naturally destined to serve as satellites to those two great nations. The destinies of a progressive civilization, a civilization sincere and rational, will be decided in the heart of Europe: everything which tends to hasten the perfect agreement of French and German policy is beneficial; everything which retards that union, however specious be the motive for delay, is pernicious.
The proof that the kind of alliance to which I aspire is good, will be that a time shall come when we shall not have it in our power to choose any other.
As a foreigner, especially as a foreigner who writes, I was overwhelmed with protestations of politeness by the Russians: but their obliging civilities were limited to promises; no one gave me facilities for seeing into the depths of things. A crowd of mysteries have remained impenetrable to my intellect. A year spent in the journey would have but little aided me; the inconveniences of winter seemed to me the more formidable because the inhabitants assured me that they were of little consequence. They think nothing of paralyzed limbs and frozen faces; though I could cite more than one instance of accidents of this kind happening even to ladies in the highest circles of society; and once attacked, the individual feels the effects all his life. I had no wish uselessly to brave these evils, together with the tedious precautions that would be necessary to avoid them. Besides, in this empire of profound silence, of vast, empty space, of naked country, of solitary towns, of prudent physiognomies, whose expression, by no means sincere, made society itself appear empty, melancholy was gaining hold upon me; I fled before the spleen as much as the cold. Whoever would pass a winter at Petersburg must resign himself for six months to forget nature, in order to live imprisoned among men who have nothing in their characters that is natural.[5] I admit, ingenuously, I have passed a wretched summer in Russia, because I have not been able well to understand more than a small portion of what I have seen. I hoped to arrive at solutions; I bring back only problems.
I speak without personal hatred, but also without fear or restriction; for I brave the danger even of wearying.
The country that I have just surveyed is as somber and monotonous as the Spain which I described formerly is brilliant and varied. To draw its exact picture is to renounce the hope to please. In Russia, life is as gloomy as in Andalusia it is gay; the Russians are as dull as the Spaniards are full of spirits. In Spain, the absence of political liberty is compensated by a personal independence which perhaps exists nowhere else to the same extent, and the effects of which are surprising; whilst in Russia, the one is as little known as the other. A Spaniard lives on love, a Russian lives on calculation: a Spaniard relates everything, and if he has nothing to relate, he invents; a Russian conceals everything, or if he has nothing to conceal, he is still silent, that he may appear discreet: Spain is infested with brigands, but they rob only on the road; the Russian roads are safe, but you will be plundered infallibly in the houses: Spain is full of the ruins and the memories of every century; Russia looks back only upon yesterday, her history is rich in nothing but promises: Spain is studded with mountains, whose forms vary at every step taken by the traveler; Russia is but a single unchanging scene, extending from one end of a vast plain to the other: the sun illumines Seville, and vivifies the whole peninsula; the mists veil the distances in Petersburg, which remain dim during even the finest summer evenings. In short, the two countries are the very opposite of each other; they differ as regards day and night, fire and ice, north and south.
He must have sojourned in that solitude without repose, that prison without leisure which is called Russia, to feel all the liberty enjoyed in the other European countries, whatever form of government they may have adopted. It cannot be too emphatically repeated: liberty is wanted in everything Russian—unless it be the commerce of Odessa. The emperor, who is endowed with prophetic tact, little loves the spirit of independence that pervades this city, the prosperity of which is due to the intelligence and integrity of a Frenchman[6]: it is, however, the only point in his vast dominions where men may with sincerity bless his reign.
If ever your sons should be discontented with France, try my recipe; tell them to go to Russia. It is a journey useful to every foreigner: whoever has well examined that country will be content to live anywhere else. It is always well to know that a society exists where no happiness is possible, because, by a law of his nature, man cannot be happy unless he is free.
Such a recollection renders the traveler less fastidious; and, returning to his own hearth, he can say of his country what a wit once said of himself: “When I estimate myself, I am modest; but when I compare myself, I am proud.”
[1]Written at Ems, October, 1839.
[2]Dickens says—speaking of the solitary prison of Philadelphia—“Suicides are rare among the prisoners; are almost, indeed, unknown. But no argument in favor of the system can reasonably be deduced from this circumstance, although it is very often urged. All men who have made diseases of the mind their study, know perfectly well that such extreme depression and despair, as to change the whole character, and beat down all its powers of elasticity and self-resistance, may be at work within a man, and yet stop short of self-destruction.”—American Notes for General Circulation.
The great writer, the profound moralist, the Christian philosopher from whom I borrow these lines, has not only the authority of talent, and of a style which engraves his thoughts on brass, but his opinion on this particular subject is law.
[3]“J’y ai été trop bien reçu pour en parler.”
[4]Notwithstanding all that has been already said, it may be proper here to repeat, that this applies only to the mass, who, in Russia, are led solely by fear and force.
[5]I have found, in the newly published letters of Lady Montague, a maxim of the Turkish courtiers, applicable to all courtiers, but more especially to the Russian; it will serve to mark the relations, of which more than one sort exist, between Turkey and Muscovy:—“Caress the favored, shun the unfortunate, and trust nobody.”
[6]The Duke de Richelieu, minister of Louis XVIII.