Edward Aveling (1885)
Source: Commonweal, June 1885, pp. 46-7
Transcription: by Graham Seaman for MIA, March 2021.
Stepniak has again written a book that everyone will read. Following up the line along which he worked in “Underground Russia,” there is no reason to doubt that the success of the earlier volume will be at least equalled by that of the new work. The country of the Muscovite, from its uncouth vastness, if from nothing else, has a fascination for us all. The struggle to the death at present waging throughout the whole domain, from the Crimea to Siberia, draws the eyes of all Europe. Even the average English person will be interested in an account of Russia, the highways and byeways of its social and political life, from the pen of one so observant and so intimately connected with the movement for freedom as Stepniak. Still more will every one of those who in England are openly declared antagonists to tyranny, read his book with eagerness and earnestness. Mudie's will probably do much business with “Russia under the Tzars.” But its most understanding readers will be among the Socialists. For that average reader, of whom I have already spoken, will be amused with the history of the mir of the Russian village, the vetche of the ancient principalities, the evolution of a despotism out of free institutions. He will be shocked at the exile without accusation, imprisonment without trial, and at the treatment and tortures to which political prisoners are subject in the Troubetzkoi ravelin or on their way to Siberia. But, having been duly amused and duly shocked, he will put the book down with a smile of patriotic Pharisaism, thanking God that his country is not as others, or even as this Russia. But the Socialist will read Stepniak's book with altogether a deeper feeling. He will read it in the lurid light of the fact that in England a tyranny exists, not, indeed of the same form and uncomeliness as that of Russia, but not less real. Nor will he be able to get away from the consciousness that, when once this tyranny — of capital — is seriously menaced, the measures that will be adopted in this land against those that menace it will differ in no wise from those now employed in Russia. When once our onslaught on capital takes an actual, tangible form; when once our middle class begins to feel that their hideous and damnable reign is drawing to an end, we shall find that “the resources of civilisation,” in the shape of police, soldiers, judges and prisons, will be turned against us.
Stepniak's book deals first with the evolution of the autocracy. This is the most interesting part, historically. Most English readers will hear with a sort of shock that the peasants of Russia have self-government, not less in degree than the rural communes of Switzerland and Norway. “Dark Places,” the second part of the work, deals with the prisons in which political prisoners are confined, the tribunals before which they appear, and with Siberia. This is the most dramatic part of the work. Administrative Exile follows. This is exile, not at the hands of any tribunal, but at those of the administration, i.e., of the police. This is meted out without any trial, or even, in many cases, any accusation. The last part of the book deals with the crusade against culture, and the relations of the administration to the universities and the press are considered.
The early portions of “Russia under the Tzars” are those that will most surprise the English reader. He is already acquainted generally with the kind of treatment to which Russian political prisoners are subjected. But a passage such as this comes very newly to him: “The tillers of the soil, who form the bulk of the Russian nation, still profess devotion to an ideal Tzar — the creature of their own imagination — still believe that the day is at hand when he will drive all landowners out of the country and bestow their possessions on his faithful peasants.” Nor will his surprise be lessened when he finds that in the village assembly of to-day, as in the governing bodies of the ancient states, legislation by unanimous decision obtains.
The great strength of the government in Russia at the present time lies in its strategic position. The vastness of the country makes the concerted action of masses of the people a physical impossibility, and the want of moral union between the different classes of the nation increases the difficulty of the reformers, and strengthens the hands of the powers that be.
Few English readers, again, are there who will not be astonished at the fact, familiar enough to all students, that capital punishment in Russia is reserved entirely for political offenders. As long ago as 1753 the Empress Elizabeth abolished the death-penalty for any of the ordinary common-place offences. And even those who know something of Muscovite methods will possibly be startled at the extent to which the system of “mutual responsibility” has been developed. Under this system, prisoners are made to suffer for outbreaks, revolts, executions and the like that occur outside their prison walls. Thus as a consequence of an attempted escape in May, 1882, from the political prison of Lower Kara and of the pretended revolt on May 11 in that prison — a revolt got up and carried out wholly by the authorities — sixteen men who had finished their term of imprisonment were kept in prison another year, though they had nothing to do with either escape or revolt. Political prisoners elsewhere, who had not even heard of the difficulties at Lower Kara were treated in like fashion.
I quote only one of the many passages I am tempted to give from this deeply fascinating work. It is one in which the fates awaiting prisoners are grimly sketched.
“Yes, what will become of poor Thirty-nine? Oh, there are many alternatives for her, all equally possible. If by some shock her vital energy should be awakened and the acute crisis return, she may strangle herself with a pocket handkerchief or a piece of linen, like Kroutikoff; or poison herself, like Stransky; cut her throat with a pair of scissors, like Zapolsky, or, in default of other means, with a bit of broken glass, as Leontovitch did at Moscow, and Bogomoloff in the Preventive prison of St. Petersburgh. She may go mad, like Betia Kamenskaia, who was kept in prison long after her lunacy had declared itself, and only released when her condition was utterly desperate, to poison herself shortly afterwards in a fit of suicidal mania. If she continues to fade she will die of phthisis, like Lvoff, Trutkovsky, Lermontoff, and dozens of others. Relenting too late, her custodians may release her provisionally, but only to let her die outside the prison, as they did with Ustugeaninoff, Tchernischeff, Nokoff, Mahaeff, and many others, all of whom fell victims to phthisis a few days after they were provisionally enlarged. If, however, by reason of abnormal strength of character, vigour of constitution, or other exceptional circumstances, she should survive until the day of trial, her judges, out of consideration for her tender age and long imprisonment, may let her end her days in Siberia.”
The translation of our Russian friend's French appears to have been well done by Mr. Westall, although one wonders he did not prevent Stepniak from using so constantly the word “Mr.” The style of the work is on the whole excellent. A tendency to discursiveness and want of system, here and there, are its only blemishes. All revolutionists will be grateful to their brother-revolutionist for a book of the most tremendous interest and importance. It is a work to be read, to be studied, to be remembered. Full of information, it is also full of inspiration for all who are fighting the good fight.
E. B. A.