YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

RUSSIAN LIFE TO-DAY

His Imperial Majesty the Tsar.

Frontispiece.

RUSSIAN LIFE
TO-DAY

BY THE
Right Rbv. HERBERT BURY, D.D.
Bishop fir Northern and Central Europe
Author of'J 'Bishop among 'Bananas "

A. R. MOWBRAY & CO. Ltd.
London : 28 Margaret Street, Oxford Circus, W.
Oxford : 9 High Street
Milwaukee, U.S.A. : The Young Churchman Co.

TO MT FELLOW COUNTRTMEN
AT WORK IN SIBERIA

First impression, March, 191 5
New impression, April, 19 15

INTRODUCTION
TV /T Y first inclination, when the entirely unex-
-LVJ- pected proposal of the Publishers came
to me to write this book, was immediately to
decline. There are so many well-known writers
on Russia, whose books are an unfailing pleasure
and source of information, that it seemed to me
to be nothing less than presumption to add to
their number. But when I was assured that
there seems to be a great desire just now for a
book which, as the Publishers expressed it,
" should not attempt an elaborate sketch of the
country, nor any detailed description of its
system of government and administration, or any
exhaustive study of the Russian Church, and
yet should give the impressions of a sympathetic
observer of some of the chief aspects of Russian
Life which are likely to appeal to an English
Churchman," I felt that I might venture to
attempt it.
: It has been given to me to get to understand
-thoroughly from close and intimate knowledge
the commercial development of Siberia by our
countrymen ; and yet everywhere, both there and

vi Introduction
in Russia proper, I have to go to every place
specially and primarily to give the ministrations
of religion. It can be permitted to few, if any,
to see those two sides of the life of a great
and growing Empire at the same time. This
has been my reason, therefore, for undertaking
this small effort, and my object is to give, as the
Publishers expressed it, "personal impressions."
I hope my readers will accept this book, there
fore, as an impressionist description of Russian
life of to-day, of which it would have been quite
impossible to keep personal experiences from
forming an important part. And though I write
as an English Churchman, yet I wish to speak,
and I trust in no narrow spirit, to the whole
religious public, that I may draw them more
closely into intelligent sympathy with this great
nation which has seemed to come so suddenly,
unexpectedly, and intimately into our own
national life and destiny — and 1 believe as a
friend.
HERBERT BURY,
Bishop.

CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. Russia's Great Spaces - - i
II. General Social Life - - - - 21
III. The Peasantry - 46
IV. The Clergy - - - 71
V. Religious Life and Worship - - 95
VI. His Imperial Majesty the Tsar - -118
VII. A Paternal Government - 139
VIII. The Steppes - 162
IX. Russia's Problem - - 186
X. The Anglican Church in Russia - 205
XI. The Jews - - 228
XII. Our Countrymen in the Empire - - 248
Index - 268

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

His Imperial Majesty the Tsar
Russia's Great Spaces— Winter
Russia's Great Spaces — Summer
The Kremlin ... -
The Gate of the Redeemer, Moscow
A Well-clad Coachman -
A Village Scene
The Metropolitan of Moscow
The Convent at Ekaterinburg, Siberia
The Abbess Magdalena
The Russian Priest at Spassky
S. Isaac's Cathedral, Petrograd
Interior of a Russian Church
The Cathedral at Riga
Her Imperial Majesty the Tsaritsa
His Imperial Highness the Tsarevitch Alexei
Her Imperial Highness the Grand Duchess
Elizabeth, The Friend of the Poor
Characteristic Group of Russians
A Group of Russian Peasants
Consecration of Burial Ground in the
Siberian Steppes
Outside a Kirghiz Uerta
Tarantass with its Troika for the Steppes
Inside a Kirghiz Uerta
Russian Service at the Atbazar Mine
A Class of Russian Students with Teacher
The English Church of S. Andrew, Moscow
The Bishop and Russian Chauffeur
The British Community at Atbazar, Siberia
The Archbishop of Warsaw
A Polish Jew
Camels at Work — Summer
Camels at Work — Winter
Map - 

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at end
RUSSIAN LIFE TO-DAY
— «• • SB • •»-
CHAPTER I
Russia's Great Spaces
I WILL begin my opening chapter by explaining
how I come to have the joy and privilege of
travelling far and wide, as I have done, in the
great Russian Empire. I go there as Assistant
Bishop to the Bishop of London, holding a
commission from him as bishop in charge of
Anglican work in North and Central Europe.
It may seem strange that Anglican work in
that distant land should be directly connected
with the Diocese of London, but the connection
between them, and between all the countries of
Northern and Central Europe, as far as our
Church of England work is concerned, is of long
standing. It dates from the reign of Charles I,
and from an Order in Council which was passed
in 1633, and placed the congregations of the
Church of England in all foreign countries at

2 Russian Life To-day
that time under the jurisdiction of the Bishop
of London "as their Diocesan." It may be
remembered that when the present Bishop of
London went to Washington some years ago he
took with him some interesting documents which
he had found in the library at Fulham Palace,
and which were connected with the time when
Church work in the United States looked to
London for superintendence and episcopal
leadership. These he handed over to the
custody of the Episcopal Church of America,
knowing how interested that Church would be
to possess them, and to keep them amongst
other historical records.
The same rapid progress as that which has
attended the American Church has been made
in the Colonies and other parts of the world.
New dioceses and provinces have been formed
one after another, and in 1842 the Diocese
of Gibraltar was formed, taking in the con
gregations of the English Church in Spain,
Portugal, Italy, and Roumania, and all places
bordering upon the Mediterranean and the Black
Sea. But the other countries of Europe, to the
north and in the centre, remain still, as far as
Church work goes, where that old Order in
Council placed them, in the jurisdiction of the
Bishop of London.

Russia's Great Spaces 3
It is impossible, of course, that he should
attempt to meet this responsibility himself and
bear the burden of such a diocese as that of
London, and so the rule has been, since 1825,
to issue a commission to another bishop, who,
while being an assistant, yet has to feel himself
fully responsible, and in this way spare the Bishop
of London as much as he possibly can.
It will therefore be understood, as I have said
in my few words of introduction, that, filling
such a position and having such work to super
intend, and also, for many reasons to be more
fully explained in succeeding pages, finding the
Orthodox Church of Russia very friendly towards
our own, I shall write throughout with those
whom 1 have termed the " religious public " very
clearly in my mind and sympathies. At the
same time I am hoping to interest the general
reader also, and therefore shall try my utmost
to give a comprehensive view of Russian life as
it will be found to-day by travellers on the one
hand if they give themselves time and opportunity
enough, and by those, on the other, who have
to go and live and work in Russia.
First impressions are usually interesting to
recall. Mine were immediate and extraordin
arily vivid, and were all associated with
thoughts — which have gradually become con-

4 Russian Life To-day
victions — of Russia's vast potentialities and
future greatness.
When first I had the honour and pleasure of
an audience with the Emperor of Russia — I will
speak of it at greater length in a later chapter —
one of the first questions he asked me was : —
" And what has most impressed you, so far, on
coming, as a new experience, into my country ? "
I was not prepared for the question, but
answered at once and without the least hesitation
— for there seemed to come into my mind even
as His Majesty spoke, the vivid impression I had
received —
" Russia's great spaces ! "
" Ah, yes ! " he said, evidently thinking very
deeply ; " that is true. Russia's great spaces —
what a striking impression they must make, for
the first time ! "
I went on to explain that one can see great
spaces elsewhere. On the ocean when for days
together no other vessel is seen ; on some of the
great plains in the other hemisphere ; riding
across the great Hungarian tableland ; and even
in Central France or in the Landes to the west
I have felt this sense of space and distance ; but
Russia's great flat or gently undulating expanses
have always seemed to me to suggest other spaces
on beyond them still, and to give an impression

mm

Page 4.

Russia's Great Spaces — Winter.

Russia's Great Spaces 5
of the vast and illimitable, such as I have never
known elsewhere. It is under this impression
of vast resources, no doubt, that so many military
correspondents of our daily papers constantly
speak of the Russian forces as "inexhaustible."
It is the same with other things also. They
suggest such marvellous possibilities.
This is the impression I would like to give at
once in this my opening chapter — a sense of
spaciousness^-power to expand, to develop, to
open out, to make progress, to advance and grow.
It is not the impression the word " Russia "
usually makes upon people who know little
about her inner life, and have received their ideas
from those who have experienced the repressive
and restrictive side of her policy and adminis
tration. But I can only give, and am glad of
the opportunity, the results of my own experiences
and observations ; and those are embodied in my
reply to the Emperor.
When I crossed the Russian frontier for the
first time it was with a very quaking and appre
hensive spirit. All that lay beyond was full of
the mysterious and unknown, so entirely different,
one felt it must be, from all one's previous
experiences of life ! Anything might happen,
for this was Russia ! " Russia " has stood so
long with us in this country for the repressive

6 Russian Life To-day
and reactionary, for the grim and forbidding and
restricting, that it will be difficult for many to
part with those ideas, and I can hardly hope to
remove impressions now deeply rooted. I can
only say, however, that my own prejudices and
preconceptions in the same direction disappeared,
one after another, with astonishing rapidity in
my first year ; and now my spirits rise every
time I cross the frontier of that great country,
and my heart warms to that great people as soon
as I see their kindly and friendly faces, their
interesting and picturesque houses, and catch my
first sight of their beautiful churches, with the
fine cupolas above them with their hanging chains,
painted and gilded domes, and delicate finials
glittering in the sun and outlined against a sky
of blue. Russia to me presents at once a kindly,
friendly atmosphere, and others feel it also ; for
I have, just before writing these words, laid
down a copy of The Times in which Mr. Stephen
Graham — no one knows the heart and soul of
Russia quite as he does, I fancy — writing one of
his illuminating articles on " Russia's Holy
War," says " People in Russia are naturally kind.
They have become even gentler since the war
began." Those who enter Russia expecting
the unfriendly will find, I feel sure, as we have
done, exactly the opposite — nothing but kindness

Russia's Great Spaces 7
and courtesy. It will be the same in other
experiences also if I mistake not.
One of the chief difficulties ordinary travellers
or tourists expect to encounter, for instance, in
Russia is that of language.
" Isn't it extraordinarily difficult to acquire,
and to make yourself understood ? " is an in
variable question, and certainly in long journeys
across country, as from Warsaw up to Riga,
and from Libau on the Baltic to Moscow, and
especially in my Mining Camp Mission in Siberia,
I expected to have very great difficulties ; but,
as so often happens, they were difficulties in
anticipation rather than in reality.
Even ofF the beaten track in Russia any one
who can travel comfortably in other European
countries can travel equally satisfactorily there.
Most educated people speak French, and an ever-
increasing number — for English governesses and
nurses are in great request — speak English. Great
numbers of the working class speak German, the
national language, of course, of Russia's Baltic
provinces, on railway trains as conductors and
in restaurants as waiters, and at railway stations
as porters. Indeed, if any one is in the dining-
car of a train or in the buffet or dining-room of
a railway station or other public place, and has
the courage to stand up and say, " Does any one

8 Russian Life To-day
here speak French ? " or " Does any one here
speak German ? " some one ready to help and
be friendly will invariably come forward.
In my first Siberian Mission, however, I found
myself in a real difficulty. I had to drive across
the Kirghiz Steppes from the railway at Petro-
pavlosk, about four days and nights east of
Moscow, to the Spassky Copper Mine, and the
management had sent down a very reliable
Kirghiz servant of theirs to be my interpreter ;
but I found that his only qualification for the
work of interpreting was that, in addition to his
own Kirghiz tongue, he could speak Russian !
For the inside of a week, travelling day and
night, we had to get on as best we could together,
and arrange all the business of changing horses,
getting food, and paying expenses, largely by
signs. Once only, and then in the dead of night
when changing horses, did we encounter a
German-speaking farmer from Courland or
Lettland on the Baltic, and a great joy it was
to him to meet some one who knew those fair
parts of the Russian Empire where agricultural
work brings much more encouraging results for
the toil bestowed upon it than Siberia, with its
terrible winter season.
But though to acquire a knowledge of Russian
for literary purposes, so as to write and compose

Page 8.

Russia's Great Spaces — Summer.

Russia's Great Spaces 9
correctly, must be most difficult, owing to the
number of letters in the alphabet — forty-six as
compared with our twenty-six — and the entirely
different way from our own in which they are
written, I do not think it is difficult to acquire
a fair knowledge of the language in a com
paratively short time so as to make one's self
understood and get along. I find young
Englishmen, going to work in Russia and beyond
the Urals, very quickly come to understand
what is being said, and to make known their
own wishes and requirements ; and in a couple
of years, or sometimes less, they speak quite
fluently. It always seems to me that the Russians
pronounce their words with more syllabic dis
tinctness than either the French or Germans.
And that natural kindness and friendliness of
the whole people, of which I have already written,
makes them wish to be understood and to help
those with whom they are speaking to grasp
their meaning. This, of course, makes all the
difference !
When the question of the great difficulty of
the language is raised another remark nearly
always follows :
" But then the Russians are such great linguists
that they easily understand ! " And it is usually

10 Russian Life To-day
supposed that they " easily learn other languages
because their own is so difficult," though they
encounter no more difficulty, probably, than any
one else when talking in their own tongue in
infancy. They are " great linguists " for the
same reason as the Dutch — and that is because,
if they wish to be in educated society or in
business on any large scale, their own language
will only go a very short way.
In Russia as in Holland, as I have been told
in both countries, an educated household will
contain a German nurse and an English gover
ness, while French will be the rule at table. It
used to be a French governess, but now the
English governess is in great request everywhere
in Russia and Poland ; and, in the great nobles'
houses, there is the English tutor also — not
always for the language, but to impart English
ideas to the boys of the family. When I was
last in Warsaw, an Oxford graduate came up at
a reception and introduced himself, and told me
he was with a Polish prince who had astonished
him on the first morning after his arrival by
saying : —
" I have engaged you as a tutor for my two
boys, but it will not be necessary for you to teach
them anything — that is already provided for.
I want you to be their companion, walk out

Russia's Great Spaces i i
with them, play games with them, and help
them to grow up after the manner of English
gentlemen." There is no real difficulty, therefore, with the
language, nor is there with the money of the
country as soon as one realizes the value of
the rouble, eight of which make nearly a pound,
and that it is divided into a hundred kopecks^
pronounced kopeeks, two of which are equal to
about a farthing.
And now to speak of the actual travelling.
Everything in the way of communication in
Russia is on a large scale and in keeping with
the answer I gave to the Emperor, and which
I have placed at the head of this chapter. As
soon as one passes the frontier, for instance,
the travellers change into carriages adapted for
a broad-gauge railway, and are at once in
more commodious quarters. There is no land,
I suppose, where travelling over great distances
is so comfortable as in Russia for all classes ; and
it is incredibly cheap, first-class tickets costing less
than third in our own country, for those using
the ordinary post train, which every year becomes
more comfortable and nearer to the standard of
the wagon-lit. There are excellent lavatories,
kept perfectly clean, where one can wash, shave,
and almost have a sponge bath, for — though

12 Russian Life To-day
without the luxuries of the Trans-Siberian
express — there is more room.
There is usually a restaurant-car on the long
distance trains — and practically all the trains in
Russia are for long distances — and, if not, there
is plenty of time to get food at the stations on
the way. Conductors will take every care and
trouble to get what is necessary, and first and
second-class compartments are never overcrowded,
as far as my experience goes. I believe, indeed,
that not more than four people may be put into
a compartment for the night, and, as the cushioned
back of the seats can be lifted up, all the four
travellers can be sure of being able to lie down.
The first-class compartments on a post train are
divided into two by folding-doors, and one is
allowed to buy a platzcarte and so have the whole
compartment to one's self. Every accommodation
too is provided for lying down comfortably in the
third-class, and the travellers there are always
the happiest-looking on the train.
Another consideration shown to the public is
that the scale of charges falls in proportion to
the distance to be traversed. The stations are
specially spacious, particularly along the routes
beyond Moscow, where emigration continually
goes on into the great pastoral lands of Siberia.
In the summer months the traffic is very great,

Russia's Great Spaces 13
and it is one of the most touching and appealing
experiences I can recall to pass through one of
the great waiting-halls of such a station as Samara,
at night, and pick one's way amongst the sleeping
families of peasants waiting to get their connection
with another line, and resting in the meantime.
Their little possessions are all about them, and
father and mother and sons and daughters lie
gathered close up together, pillowing their heads
upon each other, good-looking, prettily dressed,
and fast asleep — as attractive a picture as any
one could wish to see.
There is a great freedom of movement every
where in Russia, and I do not remember
having seen the word verboten (the German for
" forbidden "), or its equivalent, in any part of
a Russian or Siberian station. The rule of having
three bells to announce approaching departure is
a most excellent one, whether the pause is long
or short, the first ringing very audibly about
five minutes, the second one minute, and the
third immediately before departure. If travelling
long distances, the ten-minutes' stop at all large
towns gives plenty of opportunity for exercise
and fresh air, and the absolute certainty of hearing
the bells gives a perfect sense of security that no
one will be left behind. If the bell rings twice
just as the train enters the station, every one

14 Russian Life To-day
knows that the stay will be short, and that it is
not worth while getting out.
Some of the most resting and refreshing
experiences I have ever had have been those
of travelling day after day for some two or three
thousand miles in Russia, getting one's corres
pondence straight, for writing is quite easy in
those steady and slow-moving express trains,
reading up reviews and periodicals or making
plans for future journeys, looking out of the
windows in the early morning or late evening,
all varied by meals in the coupe1 or at a station,
seeing all kinds of interesting people in strange
costumes, and many attractive incidents at places
where one alights for a walk and exercise.
More interesting than the railways, however,
are the rivers. How large these are, and how
important a part they have filled in the past,
before the days of railways, and still play in the
commerce and life of the people, will be seen at
once by a glance at the map at the end of the
book. None of them, however, though one gets
a real affection for the Neva after sledging over
it in the winter and sailing upon it in the summer,
attracts and indeed fascinates, as the Volga never
fails to do. It is magnificent in size, and is the
largest in Europe, 2,305 miles in length, three
times as long as the Rhine. Many of us know

Russia's Great Spaces 15
what the Rhine is to the Germans. Treitschke,
as we have been reminded in one of the most
widely read of modern books, when leaving
Bonn, wrote to a friend, " To-morrow I shall
see the Rhine for the last time. The memory
of that noble river will keep my heart pure, and
save me from sad and evil thoughts throughout
all the days of my life."
I have always understood the strong appeal
to the historic, and even the poetic, sense which
the Rhine puts forth, but I never understood the
sense of the ideal which a river might convey
until I saw, approached, and crossed the Volga.
It was a May evening, three years ago, as we
drew near and then passed along its right bank
before crossing. It was of the loveliest colour
of rich and living brown, like that of a healthy
human skin, carrying life and burdens of every
description upon its ample bosom, fostering all
kinds of enterprise and activity on its shores,
and flowing on with stately dignity, as if it would
not be hurried from its calm consciousness of
its own strength and significance for those nine
provinces through which it passes on its way to
the Caspian. I felt its spell at once, and, as
I crossed the great bridge over which the Trans-
Siberian line is carried — an exquisite piece of
engineering a mile and a quarter in length —

1 6 Russian Life To-day
I knew that I should always feel a curious sense
of personality in connection with that glorious
river. 1 think Merriman, in one of his novels,
speaks of associating a sense of consciousness
with the Volga ; and that is just what I have felt
each time of crossing over its bounteous-looking,
calm, and steady flow. It seems to live and know.
The third and last " difficulty " which I will
speak of in this opening chapter, and which is
no difficulty at all, is the passport. Every one
in Russia must possess one ; and, if travelling
and intending to spend one or two nights in
a place, it must be sent to the proper official
and be duly stamped. It must be vised by the
Russian ambassador, or minister, at the place
from which one starts before entering Russia ;
and, which is even more important, it must be
visld by the right official at some important town
or place of government, and stamped with the
necessary permission, before one is able to leave
Russia. It is natural to feel at the frontier, when enter
ing the country, " I hope it is all right," as the
passport is handed to the customs officer, and,
with just a little approach to anxious uncertainty,
after all one has heard and read ; but it is almost
impossible to avoid real anxiety that it will be
found correct and in order as it is presented at

Russia's Great Spaces 17
the frontier when leaving, as the difficulties of
being kept back there, so far away from the great
cities, would be far greater than those of being
refused admission from some technicality that
could probably be put right by a telegram to
and from England.
"But surely the passport must prevent you
from feeling that sense of freedom that you have
spoken of more than once — surely that must
give a sense of repression and suspicion and
being watched and having an eye kept on your
doings," my reader will be thinking, and perhaps
many other people have the same feeling. It is,
however, exactly the opposite with me, for my
passport in Russia and Siberia is a great stand-by,
and gives me a great sense of being always able
to establish my own identity.
There can be little doubt that the passport was
established from the first in the interests of the
community, for it is entirely in their own interests
that people should possess them. No one who
is honest in purpose can have any difficulty in
procuring one or be brought to any trouble
through it. The necessity of frequently producing
them, in moving from place to place, is always in
the interests of the traveller in a vast empire
like Russia. It has given me a great feeling of
confidence in launching out, as has been neces-

1 8 Russian Life To-day
sary now and then, into the unknown, to feel
"They will be able to trace me all along
by the entries made in official registers, as
the passport has been stamped." If any one
disappeared in Russia the police would be able
to trace his movements to very near the place
of disappearance.
It is a great help in getting letters also to have
a passport, for we are just as anxious as the
officials can be that our letters should not go to
the wrong people ; and in travelling in out-of-
the-way places it is simply invaluable in getting
the help, advice, and recognition that sometimes
are so very necessary. Even the passport, there
fore, helps to deepen the sense of security and
freedom with which one launches out into
Russian travel, anxious to gain all that it has to
give in information and stimulating experience.
It will be remembered, however, that I speak
always not as a resident, but as a traveller ; and
there is just this difference — indeed, it is a vast
difference — between my own opportunities and
those of an ordinary traveller. Travelling as
the bishop for the English Church work in
Russia, in every place our clergy and residents
have only been too happy to speak of their own
experiences and impressions, some of them life
long and all-important. When travelling in

Russia's Great Spaces ig
Siberia, and the guest from time to time of
managers of the great mines, I go out with
them day after day and get long conversations
with them, their wives, and members of the
staff. I hear all about early struggles, hopes
and fears, difficulties and triumphs extending
over many years. The conditions of life and
characteristics of the people in vast tracts of
country are described to me by those who
know them well. No one but a. bishop
travelling through the country would have the
same information so freely volunteered to him.
And it is this which has led me to feel that
I might, without undue presumption, write for
ordinary readers about the life of a country in
which I have not, as yet, spent a great many
years. It is a great country, as all we who know it
feel, and " It doth not yet appear what it shall
be." If some of us are right in thinking of the
Russians as a great race with a vast country of
tremendous resources ; who can in any way picture
the great and wonderful possibilities of their
future ? It will be my task to try and show
how little opportunity they have had as yet
of getting their share of modern civilization,
how imperfectly, as yet, the ethical side of their
religion has been imparted to them ; and still,

2o Russian Life To-day
in spite of all this and of other defects of their
social and religious life, how much they have
accomplished in the way of real achievement.
I fail to see how any one can help feeling the
greatest interest — hopeful and expectant — about
their future, or feel anything else but the great
thankfulness that I feel myself, that we and
they as peoples have been brought so intimately
together by circumstances which few could have
foreseen only a very few years ago, but which
have come about not only, as some would say,
in the course of Providence, but in a very true
sense, as I trust our and their national histories
shall show in time to come, "According to the
good hand of our God upon us."

CHAPTER II
General Social Life
HPHE whole life of the Russian people reminds
¦*¦ those who visit them continually and in every
possible way that they are in a religious country ;
for everywhere there is the ikon, or sacred religious
picture. There are other ways, especially the
columns of the newspapers full of notices of
private and public ministrations and pathetic
requests for prayers for the departed, of bringing
religion continually before the public mind, but
the ityn is most in evidence. It is a picture in
one sense, for it is a representation either of our
Lord or of the Holy Virgin or of some well-
known saint ; but the garments are in relief,
often composed of one of the precious metals
and ornamented in some cases with jewels ; and
thus it is quite different from other sacred pictures.
It is the first characteristic evidence of " Russia "
to meet one's eyes on entering, and the last to
be seen as one leaves, any public place.
"A great picture of the Virgin and Child
hangs in the custom-house at Wirballen," writes
21

22 Russian Life To-day
Mr. Rothay Reynolds at the beginning of My
Russian Tear, " with a little lamp flickering
before it."
" The foreigner, who was a few minutes before
on the German side of the frontier and stands on
Russian soil for the first time, looks at the shrine
with curiosity. Porters are hurrying in with
luggage, and travellers are chattering in half a
dozen languages. An official at a desk in the
middle of the great hall is examining passports.
A man is protesting that he did not know that
playing-cards were contraband ; a woman is
radiant, for the dirty lining she has sewn in a new
Paris hat has deceived the inquisitors. Every
body is in a hurry to be through with the
business, and free to lunch in the adjoining
restaurant before going on to St. Petersburg.
It is a strange home for the majestic Virgin of
the Byzantine picture.
" Here, at the threshold of the empire, Russia
placards — S. Paul's vivid Greek gives me the
word — her faith before the eyes of all comers.
In the bustle of a custom-house, charged with
fretfulness and impatience and meanness, Russia
sets forth her belief in a life beyond the grave
and her conviction that the ideals presented by
the picture are the noblest known to mankind."
Nowhere as in Russia is one reminded so

General Social Life 23
constantly, in what we should consider most
unlikely places, that we are in a Christian
country. In the streets and at railway stations,
in baths, hotels, post offices, shops, and ware
houses, in the different rooms of factories and
workshops, in private houses, rich and poor alike,
in government houses, and even in places of evil
resort which I will not specify, as well as in
prisons, indeed in every public place there is the
ikon — most frequently representing the Holy
Mother and Child — and its lamp burning
before it.
In later chapters I will write more at length
upon religion and worship, but I must give the
reader at once, if a stranger to Russia, something
of the impression which the ubiquity of the ikon
makes upon those who go there for the first
time. It is always to be seen. And though I
will try and describe what it directly represents
in the shape of Church life later, yet from the
very first I must write, as it were, with the ikon
before me. I must see with my mind's eye the
Holy Mother clasping the Divine Child to her
bosom, with a few flowers and a twinkling little
light before them, all the time I write, whether
it is of things secular or sacred, grave or gay,
national or international, or I shall give out but
little of the spirit which I feel I have breathed

24 Russian Life To-day
deeply into my life in that wonderful country,
and certainly shall not be able to help any reader
who has not been there as yet to understand
why it should be spoken of as " Holy Russia."
That which the ikon stands for, therefore, must
be the spirit of every chapter I write, or I shall
give my readers no true picture of Russian life.
Fortunately for those who want further
particulars than such a book as this can give
them — and it will fail in its purpose if it does
not make many readers wish to have them — there
has been a very excellent "Baedeker's Guide to
Russia published last year, which is a wonderfully
complete work considering the vast empire with
which it has to deal. I will therefore attempt
nothing at all in the way of statistics or descrip
tions such as a guide-book gives, or such as will
be found in the excellent books to which I shall
often refer. If I can take my readers with me
in thought as I travel about Russia and Siberia,
and can give them some of the information which
has been given so freely to me, and can convey
to them some portion of the impressions made
upon me when far away from the beaten track,
and above all can lead them to give their
sympathies freely and generously to the people
of the land and to our own countrymen so
hospitably welcomed amongst them, and so

General Social Life 25
generously treated, I shall be more than repaid
for my work, and shall ask nothing better.
In Russia there are two forms of government,
clearly and strenuously at work, and wide
asunder in their character, the autocratic and
the democratic. It is impossible to do much
more than mention these two tremendous forces,
which are so strongly forming the character, and
determining the destinies for a long time to come,
of a great people.
Since 1905 the Russian Empire has had con
stitutional government under the form of
an Imperial Council or First Chamber, the
Imperial Duma or Second Chamber, with the
Emperor, advised by a small council of ministers,
still an autocratic sovereign. The Emperor can
overrule any legislation, and probably would if
advised by a unanimous council ; but it must be
evident to most people if they think a little, that
even now he would be very reluctant to do this
except in some very grave crisis of the national
life, and that in time to come he will never dream
of such interference. Constitutional government
in Russia has really begun, and when one considers
the past it is clear that great progress has been
made in the direction of constitutional freedom
since it was granted in 1 905. The reconstitution
of the Polish nation, the stirring amongst the

26 Russian Life To-day
Finns, the rising hopes of the Jews, the national
aspirations of Mongolia more and more fully
expressed, the general "moving upon the face
of the waters " of the Spirit which makes a free
people, cannot but rivet the attention of those
interested in social and national life upon Russia
at this time, when the autocratic government of
long standing is passing, so simply and so
naturally, it would seem, into the constitutional.
Since the emancipation of the serfs there has
been a steady growth of the democratic, almost
communal, spirit in all the peasant villages of
Russia, and though their powers have been some
what curtailed since 1889 they are self-governing
and very responsible communities. Some of the
best and most interesting Russian stories, there
fore, deal with incidents and experiences in village
life ; and it is the great fact that Sir Donald
Mackenzie Wallace, whose book upon Russia is
one of the most complete character, went and
shut himself out from the rest of the world at the
little village of Ivanofka, in the province of
Novgorod, and there drank in the spirit of the
language and of the national life, that makes his
compendious work a real classic for those who want
truly to understand Russian life and nationality.
There are two distinct social and constitutional
forces at work, therefore, and not working slowly

General Social Life 27
and deliberately, as so often in the past, but with
great rapidity — the autocratic seeking to realize
its responsibilities and to fulfil them, and the
democratic feeling that its ideals are coming
nearer to being realized every day.
There is consequently no country so absorb
ingly interesting to the constitutionalist at this
time as Russia. Nothing can be more stimu
lating, to those who want to read the signs of
the times, than to know that revolutionaries,
such as M. Bourtzeff,1 who had left their country
in despair to plan and plot, have now returned,
without troubling whether they would be pardoned
or punished, full of expectant hope for their
country's constitutional future. Perhaps cautious
people will hope that progress may be slow, but
the great thing is to be able to say, " It moves."
Every city and great town in Russia has some
thing specially characteristic about it, and of
course they are, as yet, very few in number.
Catherine the Great, as is well known, thought
cities and towns could be created, though
she found out her mistake, and Russia still
remains a land of villages rather than of towns,
but the great towns which do exist have usually
very distinctive features.
Petrograd, for instance, though, as Peter
1 See end of this chapter, p. 45.

28 Russian Life To-day
intended it should be, essentially modern, has
its very special features in its domed churches
and the magnificence of its wide river with the
great palaces upon its banks and bordering upon
its quays. The fortress of S. Peter and S. Paul,
on the opposite side, " home of political prisoners
and dead Tsars," when the sun is setting, is
never to be forgotten, and enters at once upon
the field of vision as one thinks of Peter's capital.
Then Moscow ! How well I remember Bishop
Creighton's enthusiasm whenever he spoke of
Moscow. Though his face might be calm and
its expression grave before, only let Moscow be
mentioned and it would light up at once, as with
sparkling eyes he would exclaim : —
" Moscow ! — oh, you must see Moscow :
nothing in the world is like it. You must
see it.
But it is really the Kremlin which makes
Moscow unique, with an intangible influence
and sense of association connected with it that
no one can describe, as one thinks of its historic
past and of Napoleon ! The Kremlin ! I had
read and heard descriptions of it from time to
time, but was in no way prepared for that vast
area of palaces, churches, treasuries, great houses,
and barracks, enclosed by glorious walls and
towers and entered by impressive gateways,

The Gate of the Redeemer^ Moscow.

Page 29.

General Social Life 29
over which one gazed with wondering eyes
when seen first under the blue sky and brilliant
winter sun.
It is no use attempting to describe it ; but
Moscow is the Kremlin, and to feel the Kremlin
is to know Moscow.
Upon entering the Spassky Gate, or Gate of
the Redeemer, every hat has to be removed in
honour of the ikon of the Saviour which is placed
above it. The picture was placed there, by the
Tsar Alexis, in 1647, to be regarded as the
" palladium of the Kremlin," and the order was
given then that hats should be removed when
passing through. The law is rigorously enforced
still, and though it is sometimes a trial — I had
frostbite in consequence when I last went through
a year ago — yet the act is almost an instinctive
one when entering or leaving the Kremlin.
Warsaw, again — for no one in this generation
can dissociate it from Russia and call it Polish
only — with its glorious position on the Vistula
in the midst of its great plain, though not so
ancient and inspiring as Cracow, in Galicia, is
full of moving appeal to the national and historic
sense for those who visit it for the first time, and
especially, as in my own case, when entering the
empire by that route. I have seen Warsaw in
spring, summer, and winter, and always felt its

30 Russian Life To-day
charm ; and I have not felt more deeply moved
for a long time than by the Emperor's proclama
tion that he intended the Poles once more to be
a nation and — there can be but little doubt about
it — with Warsaw as its capital.
Riga also, the great shipping-port on the Baltic,
which I have entered by sea and by land, and when
coming in by sea have had the pleasure of seeing
our beautiful English church on the shore with
its graceful spire standing out conspicuously, yet
blending in with other towers and pinnacles. How
very characteristic of the Baltic and attractive the
city is, with its blending of the Teuton and Slav
populations ! But how essentially Russian it is
in all its leading features, while different from
all other Russian cities ! It is so wherever one
goes both on this and on the other side of the
Urals. There always seems to be something
specially characteristic in these great centres of
population ; and they all seem as if, unlike
other towns, they had each their own interesting
story to tell for those who have ears to hear.
Town or city life in Russia is not very repre
sentative of the true life of the country and its
people, though it undoubtedly exerts a widespread
influence upon their general social life ; for
Russia's vast population is not gathered together
in either towns or cities, but in hamlets and villages.

General Social Life 31
Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace tells us that when
he wrote his first book on Russia, in 1877, there
were only eleven towns with a population of
over 50,000 in European Russia, and that, in
1905, they had only increased to thirty-four.
The increase of the future will no doubt be
more rapid when the war is over.
The great cities will probably, as practically all
the cities of Europe have done of late years,
follow the lead of Paris under Baron Hausmann
in the character of their imposing blocks of
houses and wide boulevards, and one capital
will be much the same as any other in Europe in
its general appearance and social life.
Russian cities, however, even the capital,
though ever becoming more cosmopolitan, still
possess their many distinctive and interesting
features, costumes, and customs, and are most
picturesque and interesting, of course, during
the long winter. It gives one a shock almost
to go for the first time to Warsaw or Petrograd
— at Moscow there is always the Kremlin — in
the middle of the summer. There is little to
distinguish them then, apart from the ever-
glorious beauty of the churches, from Buda-Pest
or Vienna.
But in the winter ! Then it is everywhere still
characteristic Russia. The sledges, for instance,

32 Russian Life To-day
with their troikas ! They are the same carriages
or droschkes as in summer, but with runners instead
of wheels. Horses are harnessed in the same
way in both seasons, and even the coachmen
seem to wear exactly the same dress all the year
round, edged with fur like their caps, though
the padding inside the coat must be less in summer,
one would think. The sledges of nobles and
other wealthy people, used in the winter only,
are painted and decorated most attractively. To
drive out on a winter night, under a sky brilliant
with stars, the air extraordinarily keen, bracing,
and stimulating, the bells tinkling from the high
and graceful yoke which rises from the central
horse of the three, wrapped in furs, and with no
sounds but the bells and the crack of whips and
the subdued crunching of the snow, is to taste
one of the joys of life, and feel to the full, with
happiness in the feeling, " This is Russia ! "
The coachmen pad up their robes of blue to
an enormous extent, so that they seem to bulge
out over their seat. It is said to be a custom
dating from Catherine's days and from her
requirements that there should be at least twelve
inches of good stuff between her coachman's skin
and her nose ! But the present reason for the
custom, which prevails, as far as I know, in no
other country, is that there is an objection to

-53

General Social Life 33
a thin coachman. When I was speaking of the
absurdity of these grotesque padded-out figures
to a lady whom I had taken into dinner one night
in Moscow, she at once said : —
" Well, 1 must say I like my coachman to look
comfortable and well fed, I should hate a thin
one." Dickens's fat boy in Pickwick must commend
himself to Russia, for they love Dickens and read
him in translation and the original all through the
empire, as just what a driver ought to be. I should
think coachmen in Russia, however, ought to be
fat without any padding-up, for they are all merry
and good-tempered, their blue eyes and pleasant
faces under their furry caps giving the impression
of perfect health. They sit on their boxes all
day without any violent exercise, and probably
have good and abundant food, and above all they
sleep. However long you keep your coachman,
even in the depth of winter, he does not mind,
for he invariably seems to go to sleep while
waiting, and to have an absolutely unlimited
capacity for gentle and peaceful slumber. I
am not at all sure whether my driver on the
steppes has not usually been asleep even when
we have been going at full speed, the centre
horse trotting swiftly, the other two, according
to custom, at the gallop.

34 Russian Life To-day
The dvorni\ is another institution in town life.
He is an indoor servant in great houses, usually
about the front hall, to open the door for those
who go out, ready for all sorts of odd things ; or
he may be a head out-of-doors servant ; or he
may give general help for three or four or more
smaller establishments ; but he has to be there,
and cannot be dismissed, for he is ex officio a
member of the police and has to make his report
from time to time. It must give a little sense
of espionage, but still, as with the passport, it
is only the evil-minded or evil-living who need
to be afraid of the dvornik^s report, and it must
be remembered also that the Russian Government
has long had cause to dread the revolutionary spirit,
and has had to fight for its very life against it.
This is the darker side of life in Russia ; and as
far as my experience goes it is the only dark side,
for it must be evident that a designing dvornik
may do untold harm, and specially — as I have
known to be the case — in official and diplomatic
establishments. The custom opens out possi
bilities of blackmail also, and one can only hope
that it will pass away in what so many of us feel
are to be for Russia the better days to come.
Russians are very hospitable, not only lavish
in its exercise where ample means allow, but
naturally and by custom thoroughly and truly

General Social Life 35
ready, even in the homes of the very poor, to
welcome the coming guest.
This is brought out in every book one reads
of Russia, but by no one more touchingly than
by Mr. Stephen Graham in his Tramp's Sketches,
when he journeyed constantly amongst the very
poor and found them always ready to " share
their crusts." Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace
says the same about the wealthier classes : " Of
all the foreign countries in which I have travelled
Russia certainly bears off the palm in the matter
of hospitality."
An interesting feature of a Russian meal,
luncheon, or dinner, is its preliminary, the
zakouska. It probably dates from the time when
guests came from long distances, as they do still
in the country, and would be hungry upon
their arrival, and yet would have to wait until
all the guests had come. It would be, and indeed
in some houses to which I have been is still,
understood, that if you were asked for a certain
time the dinner would follow in the course of
an hour or two ; and so the " snack " was pro
vided, and laid out upon the sideboard. The
great dinners or banquets in London are " 7 for
7.30," to give time for guests to assemble.
The zakouska, however, remains the custom
still at every meal, and consists of caviare sand-

36 Russian Life To-day
wiches, pdte de foie gras, and various kinds of
deliciously cured fish. Strangers to the country,
not understanding this particular custom, for it
is provided in the drawing-room, ante-room, or
in the dining-room itself, sometimes enjoy it so
much and partake so freely, that they feel unequal
to the meal which follows, and then have the
pain of seeing their host and hostess quite
mortified and hurt by their not doing full justice
to the good things provided. I remember being
entertained at supper in Libau by the good consul
and his family, at the St. Petersburg Hotel, when
the zakouska provided was so abundant and
attractive that we all decided that we could not
go beyond it to anything more substantial.
Another special and characteristic feature of
Russian life, and one which it seems impossible to
transplant to another country, for many of my
friends have tried it, is the samovar or large urn
with a central flue for burning or smouldering
charcoal. The samovar is always near at hand,
and ready to be brought in at short notice to
furnish what one can only call the national
beverage of tea. The steaming urn is a very
cheerful object in the room, and when tea is
made and guests are served, the teapot is placed
on the top of the central flue and everything is
kept bubbling hot. On the steppes I used to

General Social Life 37
boil my eggs in the space between the flue and
the outside cover, though this was not held to
be good for the tea. Tea is provided and enjoyed
everywhere in Russia, drunk very hot, rather
weak and almost always with sugar, though not
with lemon except in great houses and hotels.
" Slices of lemon," to my amazement I was told,
as I travelled ofF the track of railways and some
times on, " are an English custom ! "
Tea is always taken in tumblers set in a little
metal frame with a handle. On the trains for
the poorest passengers there is often hot water,
and always at stations on the way ; and emigrants,
as they travel, may be said to do so teapot in
hand. It is China tea and light in colour, and,
as the custom amongst the poorer classes is to
put only a moderate quantity of tea into the
tchina\ or teapot, to begin with, and to fill up with
hot water as they go on drinking for an indefinite
time, it must be very weak indeed at the end.
Not even at the start is it strong, or what some
public schoolboys call "beefy." At the end it
can hardly have even a flavour of tea about it,
though they go on drinking it quite contentedly.
Across the Urals and amongst the Kirghiz I found
the custom was not to put sugar in the tea but
in the mouth, and drink the tea through it, and
just above the Persian frontier jam was taken in

38 Russian Life To-day
the same way, to flavour and sweeten the tea in
the act of drinking.
Russian houses, in the great cities, are much
the same as in other capitals, though perhaps
rather more spacious and richly furnished. The
rooms for entertainment and daily use open out
of each other, of course, and the beautiful stoves
of porcelain have not, as yet, given way to central
heating. Double windows in all the rooms are
the rule all through the long winter, with a small
pane let in for ventilation ; and thus a cosy
and comfortable sense of warmth is experienced
everywhere whilst indoors, which renders it,
strange as it may seem, unnecessary to wear, as
in our own country, warm winter under-garments.
Comfortably warm by night or day, without
extra clothing or extra blankets whilst indoors,
and wrapped in thick warm furs when out of
doors, the winter is not as trying in Russia as
in more temperate countries. One takes a cold
bath, indeed, in that country with more enjoy
ment than anywhere else, for, though the water
gives an almost electric shock with its icy sting,
yet, as soon as one steps out into the warm air
of the bath-room and takes up the warm towels,
the immediate reaction brings at once a glow of
pure enjoyment. There is every comfort in a
Russian house, especially in the winter.

General Social Life 39
The country house, or datcha, is a necessity for
those who have to live in Russia all the year
round, as the cities and great towns are very hot
and dusty, and often full of mosquitoes in the
two or three months of summer, which is quite
tropical in its character.
Thus there are the two extremes, an Arctic
winter and a tropical summer.
The country houses are entirely summer
residences, with great verandahs and balconies
and other facilities for life in the open, and are
often placed amongst pine-woods or by the sea.
Some of my friends use their datchas in winter
also ; and it is interesting to see how balconies
and verandahs which in summer are filled with
carpets, furniture, and plants, and are quite open
on every side to meet the needs of the family and
its guests all through the day in the open air, in
winter are closed in by double windows fitted
in on every side, and thus are made into
additional and altogether different rooms.
The homes of the Russian nobility are very
richly and artistically appointed in every particular.
I stayed with friends a couple of years ago who
had taken such an establishment for the summer ;
and furniture, pictures, china, arrangements and
decorations of rooms all gave striking testimony
to the wealth and cultivated tastes of the absent

40 Russian Life To-day
family. Even beyond the Urals, at the Kyshtim
Mine, when first I visited it and was the guest
of the managing director, I was amazed at the
sumptuous character of his abode built by the
former owners of the mine.
It is a vast building approached by a great
courtyard and in the Greek style of architecture,
with towers in different places giving it a fortress
like appearance in the distance. The rooms are
extraordinarily large and numerous, and here
and there are bits of Venetian furniture, old
paintings, and rich carpets. On going straight
through the great salon, which one enters from
the outer door and into the open air on the other
side, one is again under a great portico with
Greek pillars, capitals, and frieze, looking out
over a large sheet of water towards hills and
forests. I could not help saying to myself in
amazement the first time I went there, "And
this is Siberia ! "
I am not at all sure that social life upon Euro
pean lines will not develop more rapidly in
Siberia than in European Russia. Even now
I do not know any railway station in Russia
proper that can compare with that of Ekaterin
burg, just where Siberia really begins, in all
its arrangements for the travelling public and
especially in the equipment of its restaurant and

General Social Life 41
dining-rooms, where every comfort in the way
of good food and good service is provided for
the traveller, and French and German are freely
spoken.
It is impossible to write on the general social life
without mentioning, though one cannot do more,
certain recent events which must have a tre
mendous influence upon Russia's future, socially
as well as nationally. There is, for instance,
the Emperor's proclamation against the vodka
monopoly hitherto enjoyed by the government,
which prohibits State vodka selling for ever.
The effect upon the public life of the great cities
has been astonishing already. No one could have
believed that the " stroke of a pen," so to speak,
could have wrought such a change in the habits
of a people. It remains to be seen, of course,
how long the change will last ; but, though Acts
of Parliament cannot make people sober, it is
a grand step in the right direction to decide that
they shall not make them drunk, as the encourage
ment given by the State to the sale of vodka must
certainly have done.
Could any other modern government have
made a sacrifice such as Russia has made in
giving up the expectation of nearly £100,000,000
of revenue for the social well-being of her people ?
Truly she deals with " large spaces ! "

42 Russian Life To-day
Moreover, the vodka proclamation comes in
the natural course of things, and can have been
but very little hurried by the war ; for things
were already moving in that direction. Last year
but one — 19 13 — a scheme of "local option" was
introduced into the empire ; and, in every
commune within its boundaries, I am assured,
men and women alike having the vote for the
purpose, the inhabitants were allowed to decide
for themselves whether they would allow vodka
to be sold in their villages and towns. It was
recognized that if the men enjoyed getting drunk
the wives and mothers were the sufferers, and
so they were allowed to vote.
The whole country, therefore, before the war
broke out, was prepared to face a great issue.
And the general war cry, " We've a greater foe
to fight than the Germans ! " shows how they
faced it, and gives them that ideal which should
enable them to go far. They are out for a holy
war and far-reaching influences are clearly at
work which will profoundly and permanently
affect the whole social conditions and well-being
of the people.
Then there is the proclamation concerning the
resuscitation of Poland. This also does not come
at all as an overwhelming surprise to many of
us, as it has been fairly well known that the

General Social Life 43
Emperor, and some at least of his principal
advisers, have for some time had ever-increasing
constitutional, even democratic, sympathies. It
has been more and more felt of late that what
is called Russification, as practised towards the
Finns, would go no further ; and indeed, as far
as they were concerned, would be reversed. No
thoughtful person who has marked the trend
of events since 1908 could doubt the direction
in which higher and responsible Russian thought
was moving. But who can possibly foresee the
far-reaching effect of raising up a great Polish
nation once more and recognizing the Roman
Catholic Church as the Church of that part of
the empire, with Russians and Poles, Orthodox
and Roman Catholic living together in amity and
international unity ?
" I have just been staying," writes Mr. Stephen
Graham in the Times for October 29, 19 14, "in
the fine old city of Wilna, a city of courtly Poles,
the home of many of the old noble families
of Poland. It is now thronged with Russian
officers and soldiers. Along the main street is
an incessant procession of troops, and as you
look down you see vistas of bayonet-spikes
waving like reeds in a wind. As you lie in bed
at night you listen to the tramp, tramp, tramp
of soldiers. Or you look out of the window

44 Russian Life To-day
and see wagons and guns passing for twenty
minutes on end, or you see prancing over the
cobbles and the mud the Cossacks of the Don,
of the Volga, of Seven Rivers. In the days of
the revolutionary outburst the Poles bit their lips
in hate at the sight of the Russian soldiers,
they cursed under their breath, darted out with
revolvers, shot, and aimed bombs. To-day they
smile, tears run down their cheeks ; they even
cheer. Whoever would have thought to see
the day when the Poles would cheer the Russian
troops marching through the streets of their
own cities ? The Russians are forgiven ! "
No one who has known Russia and Poland
before the war could read this description without
deep emotion.
" A very touching spectacle," he continues,
" may be seen every day just now at the Sacred
Gate of Wilna. Above the gateway is a chapel
with wide-open doors showing a richly-gilded
and flower-decked image of the Virgin. At one
side stands a row of leaden organ-pipes, at the
other stands a priest. Music is wafted through
the air with incense and the sound of prayers.
Down below in the narrow, muddy roadway
kneel many poor men and women with prayer-
books in their hands. They are Poles. But
through the gateway come incessantly, all day

General Social Life 45
and all night, Russian troops going to the front.
And every soldier or officer as he comes lifts
his hat and passes through the praying throng
uncovered. This is beautiful. Let Russia always
be so in the presence of the Mother of Poland."
It is impossible to read of that scene also, and
recall at the same time past relations of the two
Churches here mentioned, without dreaming
dreams and seeing visions of social unity such
as has never yet been known, both for Russia
and all other countries to which she has so
nobly and unselfishly given a social lead and
invitation to follow on.

Note from p. 27, " M. Bourtzeff." — There was a notice
in the Times of February 4th last as follows : " A Reuter
telegram from Petrograd of yesterday's date states that
M. Bourtzeff has been sentenced to deportation to Siberia."
I have never been able, however, to obtain any confirmation
of this from Russian officials in this country, nor do the
Russian Embassy know anything about it. I hope it will
prove that a sentence was passed pro forma, and that the
Emperor, as in Miss Malecska's case, at once remitted the
sentence, or that M. Bourtzeff was merely requested to live
in Siberia for the present rather than in Russia, and I
personally should think that no great hardship. I feel that
we must await further particulars before being able to form
correct impressions of this important case.

CHAPTER III
The Peasantry
IT would be much more satisfactory to one's
self to try and write a boo\ about the peasantry
of Russia, rather than attempt to say all that one
wants to say in a single chapter, for there could
hardly be any more interesting and promising
people in the world than the peasant folk of Russia.
The future of the empire depends upon the
development and improvement of its agricultural
population, as they form three-fourths, accord
ing to the last census of three years ago, of
its grand total of over 171,000,000 souls.
Russia thus leads in the white races in the
matter of population, and possesses that splen
did asset, which Goldsmith feels to be vital to
a nation's advance and with which nothing else
can compare when lost : —
" Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade ;
A breath can make them as a breath has made ;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied."
It is upon coming to write even briefly and
in an impressionist kind of way upon a class which
46

A Village Scene.

Page 46.

The Peasantry 47
forms the huge majority of Russia's population
that the vastness of her empire and the different
conditions under which her people live begin
to be in some small degree apparent. It is
no wonder that thoroughly well-informed and
experienced writers, who have lived long and
travelled far in the country and who are
evidently quite to be trusted, should yet write
so differently.
One will write as if the Russian peasant was
only a degree better in his intelligence than
the animals which share his filthy hovel, and
no less brutish in temperament and nature.
Fearsome pictures are drawn in some books
I have read of the almost impossible conditions
and indescribable filth in which men, women,
and children, fowls, pigs, horses, cattle, and
dogs herd together in a stifling atmosphere and
sickening stench, where to enter is out or the
question unless one is to be covered with vermin
and contract some illness. All this may be true
to the writer's own experiences, and he can only
write and describe things as he has found them ;
but I too will do the same.
It is worth while to remember from the first
that the lives of the peasant population of Russia
must be as different in summer and winter as
tropical heat is from arctic cold. In the winter

48 Russian Life To-day
all must crowd in together when the household
is poor if life has to be preserved and defended
against that appalling cold, when the one con
dition of the survival is warmth, or even heat.
All outdoor occupation ceases, of course, with
the one exception, it may be, of cutting, stacking,
and carting wood. A peasant population, with
a not very advanced civilization as yet, and little
education — only twenty per cent, of the whole
population can read and write — must, like the
animal world, hibernate, come as it were to a stand
still, rest physically and mentally, and prepare
for the unremitting activities of the summer.
I remember once when staying in an inn at
the top of an Alpine pass being impressed with
the extraordinary energy and vivacity of the
head waitress. She was simply untiring, always
in good spirits, always at hand when wanted,
unfailing in her attentions ; however late a guest
was up she was moving cheerfully about, how
ever early one was down she was down before
him helping to get things ready. When I was
leaving I said to her, " I've been wondering
when you get your rest ? "
She smiled brightly, and said cheerfully, " In
the winter, sir."
That 's when the Russian peasant gets his
rest also, and with the spring he begins his

The Peasantry 49
energetic life of farming and agriculture, of
carting and labour. The long days are busy
and all too short, the brief nights are hardly
more than an interval. The whole land is full
of movement, the air is full of song and
music, the holidays marked by game and dance.
Nothing could be more unlike the bitter cold
and gloom of Russia's long and terrible winter
than the glow, brilliance, joy, and never-ceasing
activities of her amazingly rich and life-giving
summer. Her peasantry must present the same
contrasts in homes and seeming temperaments,
and two writers may therefore be widely asunder
in their descriptions, and yet both write truth
fully of the things they have seen and known at
different times of the year.
To me the Russian peasant is, as to others who
have known him at his best, an amiable, attrac
tive, intelligent, thoroughly good-natured and
altogether lovable creature. It is quite true that
he can do, has done, and may again do some
perfectly appalling things, but it has been when
thoroughly worked up, as one of a crowd, and
when every one else has lost his head. Terrible
things which were not allowed to be known in
Europe outside their frontiers, and now will
probably never be known, were done during the
revolution of seven years ago. But the Russian

50 Russian Life To-day
peasants are like children, as yet, and any one
who knows and loves children knows perfectly
well also what they are capable of, if they have
any spirit in them, when thoroughly worked up,
and when they too have for the time being lost
their head and feel capable of almost anything
that will hurt and pain and annoy. The peasants
are in this, as in many other things, like children.
As soon as the statistics of the Russian
peasantry come to be examined a startling fact
comes to light. More than half their number —
582 out of every 1,000 — die before they are
five years old. This means, as in the more
inclement parts of our own country, that those
who survive are a hardy race, strong and virile.
The mortality is greatest amongst male children
— over 600 out of every 1,000 — and those,
therefore, who do live are strong enough for
anything and of amazing vitality, as we have
seen in the present war.
Not only are they vigorous and strong in
physique, however, but there is nothing lacking
in their intelligence, or Russia would not have
the charm and fascination she possesses. Prob
ably no country in the world, unless it be still
agricultural France, can compare with Russia
in the character of its peasant industries or their
importance as part of the national revenue and

The Peasantry 51
resources. Probably the people will be stimulated
to greater industry in this direction by the
removal of the vodka temptation, and both cease
to feel the desire for it and get something in
its place. Just as a man I once knew who was
led to give up drink and gambling at the same
time, when wondering how he could possibly
live without them, had to change his house
and remove to another with a garden. There
in gardening work he found his compensation,
and at the same time added to the resources of
his household. Thus may it be in Russia.1
The list of the Russian peasant industries is
a long and interesting one, but 1 won't take up
time in enumerating them, as they can be found
in the Russian Tear Book, or probably in most
encyclopaedias. 1 may perhaps mention a few
which have especially interested and attracted
me, and will no doubt be brought before our
own people in the Russian shops and exhibitions
which are almost certain to be opened before long,
and it must be remembered that I am speaking
of peasant productions only.
There is the beautiful " drawn thread " work,
lace-like in character, that all my friends say
1 Just as I go to press Mr. Lloyd George has told the
House of Commons that productivity is already increased
30 per cent, in Russia.

52 Russian Life To-day
is unlike anything to be found in our own
country, the making of which is promoted by
the Princess Tenisheva and other Russian ladies,
as well as embroidered and worked linen of
all descriptions. Toys, and particularly large
ornamental wooden spoons, of all kinds are made
in great quantities by village folk, and painted
boxes such as the Japanese make, but with
Russian scenes upon them, in delightful shades
of colour, and with rich and brilliant lacquer
inside and out. Then there are hand-woven
laces of different varieties, and, above all, the
Orenburg shawls, exquisitely dainty and so fine
that the largest of them will go through a
wedding-ring, and yet warmer than Shetland wool.
These also are hand-woven, and come from the
province of Orenburg, just beyond the Urals.
Ironwork, again, is a speciality in Siberia,
where they are said to be the best iron-workers
in the world, though a friend of mine to whom
I mentioned this, when I was showing him some
perfectly wonderful and artistic specimens which
had, been given to me when I first went to
Siberia, said, " That 's because they have the best
iron in the world." The stone or gem-cutting
industry is an important one. Furs, from sheep
and wolf-skins up to bears, as well as those of
foxes, sables, elk, and reindeer, and other animals,

The Peasantry 53
are perfectly dressed by the peasants for their
own use, as well as for sale. 1 have some
exquisite work in coloured silks upon hand-
woven cloth which had never been out of the
tents where they were made till given to me,
and above all I cherish a silver box which had
been made in a Kirghese uerta or tent, far away
upon the steppes, and was given to me when
I had had services there after my long drive
in the tarantass. It would hold about a hundred
cigarettes, and was given to me for that purpose,
is oblong in shape, with a lid of sloping sides,
and is made from silver roubles hammered out
and ornamented with that beautiful damascening
that is said to be a lost art except for the peasants
of the steppes. It is such a beautiful bit of
workmanship that any one looking at it would
think it had come out of a Bond Street silver
smith's, until he turned it over and saw that
the bottom is a plain piece of iron, rough and
unornamented. Let no one think the Russian
peasant unintelligent or unskilful or wanting in
dexterity or resource. The wonder to me is
that, with the few advantages and opportunities
he has had, he is so capable, intelligent, and
quick to learn as he is. And what is important
for us to remember is that he loves to learn
from an Englishman.

54 Russian Life To-day
Then, again, we are told that he is brutish in
temperament and of low ideals, and never seems
to rise above his squalid surroundings. I don't
agree that his surroundings are squalid. Simple
they are, without a doubt, as the Canadian shack
of three brothers I know is simple, and has
nothing in it but beds and tables and chairs, their
boxes and saddle-trees, etc., and all is bed and
work, but it is not squalid. They have been
brought up in a good and refined home, and yet
find nothing incongruous in their present abode
amongst the pine-woods.
That's what a Russian peasant's home is also,
simple and yet attractive. It is built of logs,
the interstices well plastered up with moss and
clay to keep out all cold air, cool in summer and
warm in winter by reason of the thickness of
these outer walls ; and it usually has an inner
entrance or small room, before the large and
chief living-room. There will be two or more
small square windows in the latter, an ikon in a
corner with a lamp before it and a shelf for
flowers below— every one on entering looks
towards it, bowing reverently and making the
sign of the Cross — a very large stove of bricks,
whitewashed, upon the top of which rests a wide
shelf, carried along the wall as far as is necessary
for the whole family to be able to find sleeping-

The Peasantry 55
space upon it. There will also be a long wooden
bench, a great table, a few wooden stools, and
a great cupboard, and, nearly always, cheap
coloured pictures of the Emperor and Empress,
whose portraits are to be found in all shops, inns,
post offices, and places of public resort.
These are the simple surroundings described
and made familiar to us by all writers of Russian
stories of which peasants form a part, and all
over the empire they are found just as Tolstoi,
Dostoviesky, Turgenieff, and others bring them
before us in their interesting tales. Take for
example Tolstoi's Where Love is there God is also,
Master and Man, and other parables and tales.
When Martin Avdeitch is looking out from his
small abode through his one small window upon
the passers-by as simply as man could do, and
yet with shrewd and discerning eyes, he is ready
for the old pilgrim who comes into his life just at
the right moment, and shows him the way to God.
Or take Nikita in Master and Man, in the
same volume. In some ways he is extraordin
arily simple, and does not appear to know how
shamefully he is being exploited by his avaricious
and grasping master. We are told in the story
that he does know even though he goes on as
if he didn't, and does his duty by him as if he
were the best of masters, just as he does by an

56 Russian Life To-day
unfaithful and unfeeling wife. It would be diffi
cult to imagine a peasant one would more love
to know and understand than Nikita, strong,
capable, affectionate, and shrewd, as he comes
running before us in the story, to harness the
horse for his master, the only man on the place
that day not drunk, talking to the little brown
cob which noses him affectionately, and in the
end making a tremendous struggle for his own
and his master's life, and winning through him
self. Thus he goes on steadily as long as he
lives, with no other thought but that of duty,
until he lies down beneath the ikon, and, with
the wax candle in his hand just as he had always
wished, passes away at peace with every living
creature and with God.
There are no peasants like the Russians, or
who think as they do. They are young, one
feels, and "The thoughts of youth are long,
long thoughts," and that is just what those who
know them best find out.
A friend of mine told this story the other day
at a meeting, at which we both had to speak,
and I am sure it will bear repetition. A moujik,
or peasant, was driving a German commercial
traveller across the open country, and in the
course of their conversation together his com
panion said to him : —

The Peasantry 57
" Your countrymen are nothing but a lot of
idolaters. You worship those ikons of yours, and
bow down to them as the heathen do," and so on.
The moujik was very indignant, and grumbled
out his disapproval of all this.
" Worship our ikons indeed ! We don't."
And as they went driving on he suddenly drew
up, and, pointing to a tree, demanded of the
astonished traveller : —
"Do you mean to say that I would worship
that tree ? "
" No, no. Of course not ! Drive on."
With a very disapproving grunt he drove on,
and when they reached their destination, where
there was a painter at work upon an outside
door, the moujik, pointing to the paint-pot beside
it, again demanded of the traveller : —
"Would you say I could worship that paint?"
" No, certainly not ! You could not be so silly."
" But yet you say I worship an ikon, which is
only painted wood, and can't see that I only use
it to help me to worship God."
Let the reader reflect upon the way in which
that peasant had been thinking over the charge
made against him of idolatry, thinking what
idolatry really was, and how far he felt himself
from it. Let him try and imagine how one of
our own agricultural labourers would think over

58 Russian Life To-day
such a subject if he were entering into conversa
tion with us as he was digging in our garden,
or driving us in a farmer's cart to a country
station. I am writing this chapter in a quiet
part of the country, and I can't conceive of any
of the labouring people here even approaching
that line of thought upon which the mind of
that moujik began at once to move, though slowly
enough no doubt, when he was told he was little
better than a worshipper of idols.
I read the other day in a book on Russia
that the peasantry are very dirty in person, and
never wash ; but again it must be borne in
mind, as another remarkably well-informed and
sympathetic writer ' says also : " When people
generalize about the intense misery of Russian
peasants and the squalor in which they live they
should remember that Russia is a large country,
that it possesses a North and a South, an East
and a West, and that what is true about one place
is quite untrue about another." 1 shall be quite
prepared, therefore, to be told by people who
know Russia far better than I can ever hope to
do, that their experience has been altogether
different from my own, and I shall not dream
of questioning or doubting the truth of what
they say as far as their own experience goes.
1 The Hon. Maurice Baring.

The Peasantry 59
In this vast area of which we are thinking
there must indeed be great varieties of experience
and conditions of life, and it is not contrary to
what one might expect to find much nearer home,
that the people of one village may be clean in
their habits and those of another quite the reverse.
But from all I have seen, heard, and read the
Russian labouring and peasant class have a great
desire to be clean. Nor is this a new thing at
all in the national life. It is nearly forty years
ago since Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace told us,
in the first edition of his work, of the important
part taken by the weekly vapour-bath in the life
of the Russian peasantry, and described " the
public bath possessed by many villages." How
many villages of our own, even now, have
a public bath ? And how many of our own
peasantry dream of having what is a perfectly
ordinary and weekly habit of the Russians — the
bath in his own house ?
My Russian and Siberian friends tell me how
they have always to arrange for their domestic
servants to get a good bath, before they change
for Sunday, every Saturday afternoon and evening.
Mr. Rothay Reynolds says the same : " My
friend took me to see his bath-house. Russians
are exceedingly clean. In villages one may see
a row of twenty cottages, and, thirty yards

60 Russian Life To-day
from them, a row of twenty bath-houses. The
one the peasant showed me was a hut with
a stove intended to heat the great stones placed
above it. On bath nights the stove is lit, and
when the stones are hot a bucket of water
is thrown on them, so that the place is filled
with steam. The bather lies on a bench in the
suffocating atmosphere, soaps himself, and ends
his ablutions with ice-cold water. In town and
country it is held to be a religious duty to take
a steam-bath once a week. Servants ask if they
can go out for a couple of hours to visit one of
the great baths in the cities. They go away with
clean linen bound up in a handkerchief, and
return shining with cleanliness. Admission to
the cheapest part of a steam-bath is usually
a penny farthing, but in the great towns there
are luxurious establishments frequented by the
rich." There is another custom connected with the
bath which testifies to the hardy character of
the Russian moujik^. They often rush straight
out of the almost suffocatingly hot bath which
they have been taking inside the huge earthenware
oven that they all possess and, naked and steaming,
roll themselves contentedly and luxuriously in
the snow. This, as a writer has well said, " aptly
illustrates a common Russian proverb which says

The Peasantry 6i
that what is health to the Russian is death to the
German " — a proverb which has had striking
illustration again and again this very winter.
Probably some of my readers saw the account
of the arrival at the Russian front, soon after
war began, of the bath-train which was so
completely furnished and arranged that two
thousand men could have a clean bath during
the day or twelve thousand in the course of the
week. No doubt others have followed since then.
The bath to the Russian has a certain religious
significance also, as in Moslem countries ; " and
no good orthodox peasant," I have read, " would
dare to enter a church after being soiled with
certain kinds of pollution without cleansing
himself physically and morally by means of the
bath. " Cleanliness is next to godliness " is
not a bad motto for any people, and possibly
Russians will like to know that we have an order
of knighthood which dates from 1398, and is
named "The Most Honourable Order of the
Bath," and mentioned regularly in the services
at Westminster Abbey.
A great sense of initiative and personal respon
sibility, as well as corporate spirit at the same
time, is clearly given early in life to the peasant
mind in Russia, for nowhere, I fancy, in the world,
except in countries where primitive ideas and

62 Russian Life To-day
customs still obtain, is there the same standard
of village life and self-government. There are
two kinds of communities. First, there is the
village community with its Assembly or Mir,
under the presidency of the Staroshta, who is
elected by the village. He presides over the
Assembly, which regulates the whole life of the
village, distributes the land of the commune,
decides how and when the working of the land
has to be done ; and it is specially interesting
to know that in this most remarkable and
exceptional village government of the Mir all
women who permanently and temporarily are
heads of houses are expected to attend its
meetings and to vote — no one ever dreams of
questioning their right to do so.
In addition to the village assembly and chief
elder there is also the " Cantonal " Assembly,
consisting of several village communities together,
meeting also under the presidency of a chief elder.
All this is, of course, a development of family
life where exactly the same ideas of corporate
duty in its members, and responsibilities in its
head, are held.
It is evident that Russia has a great future
if this view of self-government is gradually
carried upwards. The right beginning in con
stitutional government, surely, is in the family,

The 'Peasantry 63
for there we find the social unit. A state is
not a collection or aggregate of individuals, but
of families, and all history shows us that the
greatness or insignificance of a country has always
been determined by the condition of its homes
and the character of its family life. If from the
family, village, and commune Russian consti
tutionalists work slowly and carefully upwards,
giving freedom to make opinions and convictions
felt in the votes, just as responsibility is under
stood and met in the home, until one comes
to the head of it all in " The Little Father " ;
and if he really rules — or administers rather,
for no true father rules only — just as any good
father would do, Russia the autocratic and
despotic, associated in the minds of so many
with arbitrary law in the interests of a few,
enforced by the knout and prison-chain, may
yet give the world a high standard of what the
government of a free and self-respecting people
ought to be.
I should doubt if any peasantry in the world
live so simply and frugally or, as they say in
the North of England, " thrive so well on
it," as the Russians. The men are of huge
stature, and their wives are strong, comely, and
wholesome-looking also. Their boys and girls
are sturdy, vigorous, and full of life ; and yet

64 Russian Life To-day
how bare the table looks at the daily meal, how
frugal the fare and small the quantity ! It has
been the greatest joy to me to have Russian boys
and girls, in out-of-the-way places, to share my
sandwiches or tongue or other tinned meats,
when stopping at a rest-house, and see their eyes
shine at the unexpected and unusual treat.
Black rye-bread and cabbage-soup form the
staple food of a peasant family, while meat of
any kind is rarely seen. The many and rigorous
fasts of the Church make very little difference to
the quality of the food, but only to its quantity.
The thanks given by guests to their host and
hostess, Spasibo za kleb za sol, " Thanks for bread
and salt," tell their own story of a bare and simple
diet. Many of us have read in The Russian
Pilgrims to Jerusalem of the sacks of black and
hard crusts the peasants take with them, which
quite content them.
What a tremendous difference it must have
made this winter in the Russian food transport
from the base to the front, to know that, if
a serious breakdown took place, or a hurried
march was ordered with which it was difficult
for them to keep up, and the worst came to the
worst, the men would have their crusts. It has
been said in years gone by, and may be true still
in many places, that the Russian peasant's ideas of

The Peasantry 65
Paradise is a life in which he would have enough
black bread to eat.
This bare subsistence and monotonous diet,
perhaps, is responsible for the break-out from
time to time when the attraction of Itodka is too
strong to be resisted in a life in which there are
no counter-attractions. Counter-attractions there
ought to be for a being who is created not for
work alone, but for that recreation which, as its
very name betokens, his whole nature needs if
he is to do his best work. " There is a time to
work and a time to play," says the proverb
writer ; and if we hold that in school life " All
work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," we
can hardly wonder that, the world over, those
for whom work is provided and play refused will
seek, as they have ever done, to make up for its
absence by the exhilaration of stimulating and
intoxicating drinks. It is when writing upon the
drunkenness to be seen at every Russian village
holiday that one whom I have often quoted in this
book,1 truly says, " As a whole a village fete in
Russia is a saddening spectacle. It affords a
new proof — where, alas ! no proof was required
— that we northern nations who know so well
how to work have not yet learnt the art of
amusing ourselves." 1 Wallace, Russia, vol. i, p. 1 29.

66 Russian Life To-day
As an instance of the real and natural friend
liness and essential good nature of the Russian,
I may say that even when drunk I have never
seen or heard of men quarrelling. They do
not gradually begin to dispute and recriminate
and come to blows or draw the knife, as some
of the more hot-blooded people of the South
do, when wine excites or spirits cheer them.
They seem to become more and more affectionate
until they begin to kiss each other, and may be
seen thus embracing and rolling over and over
together like terriers in the snow. If wine
unlooses the tongue, and brings out what is
usually hidden away beneath the surface, it evi
dently brings out nothing very evil from the
inner life of the Russian peasant.
In time to come, if all 's well, Russia is to be
opened up to the traveller, and everywhere the
British tourists will be welcomed, and even though
the beaten track of the railway may never be left
there will be abundant opportunities for observing
the habits and customs of the people. A modern
writer who, apparently, in passing through Siberia
never went far from the railway, though he prob
ably stayed for some time at different places on the
way, and sat in third and fourth-class carriages
even if he did not actually travel in them, man
aged to see a great deal of peasant life. The

The Peasantry 67
railway train is open from end to end, and a
great deal may be learnt thus about the people
while merely passing through. There are also
the long waits at the stations where there are
invariably interesting groups of the most romantic
and picturesque character — the women vivacious
and full of conversation, while the men stand
more stolidly by, always making one long to
speak and understand their language and to know
more about them.
There is a story of Mr. Maurice Baring's
which illustrates what I have already said of
the way in which the Russian peasant mind
begins to move freely, independently, and
responsibly upon lines undreamed of by those
who may be addressing him, and shows how
far he is from receiving merely conventional
and stereotyped impressions, but is always
ready to think for himself. Mr. Baring con
siders it an instance of his common sense.
The reader may also have his own ideas of what
it illustrates, but the story is this : —
" A Socialist arrived in a village to convert the
inhabitants to Socialism. He wanted to prove
that all men were equal, and that the govern
ment authorities had no right to their authority.
Consequently he thought he would begin by
disproving the existence of God, because if he

68 Russian Life To-day
proved that there was no God it would natur
ally follow that there should be no Emperor and
no policemen. So he took a holy ikon and said,
'There is no God, and I will prove it immedi
ately. I will spit upon this ikon and break it
to bits, and if there is a God He will send
fire from heaven and kill me, and if there is
no God nothing will happen to me at all.'
Then he took the ikon and spat upon it and
broke it to bits, and said to the peasants, ' You
see God has not killed me.' 'No,' said the
peasants, ' God has not killed you, but we will ' ;
and they killed him."
It is not difficult to imagine that closing scene,
knowing Russia. There would be no excite
ment, but all would be quickly and effectually
done. The same writer draws our attention to
Turgenieff's wonderfully appealing sketches of
country life, though not many of his works
have been translated for English readers as
yet. He alludes especially in an essay of last
year on " The Fascination of Russia " to his
description of the summer night, when on the
plain the children tell each other bogey stories ;
or the description of that July evening, when
out of the twilight from a long Way off a voice
is heard calling, " Antropk-a-a-a ! " and Antropka

The Peasantry 69
answers, " Wha-a-a-ati ? " and far away out of
the immensity comes the answering voice, " Come
home, because daddy wants to whip you ! "
Perhaps the reader may feel nothing as he
reads, but all who know and love Russia, and
are stirred by thoughts of its life and people
will feel that it was abundantly worth while
to write down such a simple incident. They
will understand and feel that stirring within,
which Russia never fails to achieve again and
again for those who have once lived and moved
amongst her peasantry, and come under her
strange spell and felt her charm.
"Gogol, the greatest of Russian humorists,
has a passage in one of his books, where, in exile,
he cries out to his country to reveal the secret of
her fascination : —
" ' What is the mysterious and inscrutable
power which lies hidden in you ? ' " he exclaims.
"'Why does your aching and melancholy song
echo unceasingly in one's ears ? Russia, what
do you want of me ? What is there between
you and me ? ' This question has often been
repeated not only by Russians in exile, but by
others who have merely lived in Russia.
" There are none of those spots where nature,
art, time, and history have combined to catch
the heart with a charm in which beauty, associa-

70 Russian Life To-day
tion,and even decay are indistinguishably mingled;
where art has added the picturesque to the beauty
of nature ; and where time has made magic the
handiwork of art ; and where history has peopled
the spot with countless phantoms, and cast over
everything the strangeness and glamour of her
spell. " Such places you will find in France and in
England, all over Italy, in Spain and in Greece,
but not in Russia.
"A country of long winters and fierce sum
mers, of rolling plains, uninterrupted by moun
tains and unvariegated by valleys.
"And yet the charm is there. It is a fact
which is felt by quantities of people of different
nationalities and races ; and it is difficult if you
live in Russia to escape it ; and once you have
felt it you will never be free from it. The
aching melancholy song which, Gogol says,
wanders from sea to sea throughout the length
and breadth of the land, will for ever echo
in your heart and haunt the recesses of your
memory." r
1 Russian Review for February, 1914.

The Metropolitan of Moscow.

Page 71.

CHAPTER IV
The Clergy
*" I "HE Russian Church is a daughter of the
-¦¦ Byzantine Church — the youngest daughter
— and only dates from the close of the tenth
century, when monks came to Kieff from Con
stantinople during the reign of Vladimir. There
would be little "preaching of the Cross of
Christ," I should fancy, as the great means of
conversion for that great mass of servile popu
lation. We are told, indeed, that Vladimir gave
the word and they were baptized by hundreds
at a time in the River Dnieper, and that no
opposition was offered to the new religion as the
old Nature worship had only very lightly held
them, and had no definite priesthood.
The new religion, however, soon acquired a
very strong hold upon the people of all classes,
and the power and influence of the Church grew
just as the State gained ever-new importance ;
the power of the Patriarch increasing as that of
the Tsar increased, until in a comparatively short
time the Orthodox Church stood alone, and
71

72 Russian Life To-day
owned no Eastern supremacy on the one hand,
nor yielded to the approaches of the Roman
Papacy on the other. By the end of the six
teenth century the other Eastern Patriarchs
recognized and accepted the Patriarchate of
Moscow as being an independent one, and fifth
of the Patriarchates of the East.
This absolute independence only lasted about
a hundred years, and the masterful Peter the
Great laid his hands upon the Church as upon
other parts of the national life, for he certainly
had little cause to love the clergy, and appointed
no successor to the Patriarch of Moscow when
he died in 1700. It was very interesting to hear,
from the Procurator of the Holy Synod himself,
M. Sabloff, when I first went to Petrograd, what
great importance Peter attached to this office
when he constituted the Holy Synod in 1721
to take the place of the Patriarchate.
" He used to say," he mused, looking down
upon the ground, "that the Procurator of the
Holy Synod was the oculus imperatoris (the
Emperor's right hand, literally 'the Emperor's
eye')," and as he said so one could not but
remember how his predecessor, M. Pobonodo-
nietzeff had upheld that tradition, and, next to the
Emperor, had himself been the most prominent
and autocratic figure in the whole empire.

The Clergy 73
The Procurator, however, is not the President
of the Holy Synod, as the Metropolitan of
Petrograd fills that office, but he is present as
the Emperor's representative, and though all the
other members of the Synod are the highest
ecclesiastical dignitaries of the Russian Church,
yet as they are summoned by the Emperor, and
his special lay representative is there always to
represent and state his opinion and wishes, the
Emperor himself must have an infinitely greater
influence than our own sovereigns possess, though
theoretically they fill the same office of " Defender
of the Faith." He is described in one of the
fundamental laws as " the supreme defender and
preserver of the dogmas of the dominant faith,"
while immediately afterwards it is added "the
autocratic power acts in the ecclesiastical adminis
tration of the most Holy Governing Synod created
by it." The Emperor must have unlimited power,
typified by his crowning himself at his coronation,
in ecclesiastical administration, and the bishops
and other clergy, who arc intensely loyal, would
probably not wish it otherwise ; but he could not
affect or change, even by a hair's breadth, any of
the doctrines of the Church nor one of the
ceremonies of its Liturgy.
Should the reader wish to know more about
Church and State in Russia he will find a most

74 Russian Life To-day
admirable chapter (XIX) with that heading in
Sir Donald M. Wallace's book. Interesting and
important as the position of the Russian Church
— in many ways so like our own — is for us
to-day, it is only possible now to glance briefly
at its constitution.
The clergy are divided into two classes, the
black and the white, the black being the monastic
and the white the secular and married clergy.
All the patriarchs or archbishops, bishops, abbots,
and higher dignitaries are taken from the ranks of
the celibate and monastic clergy and have attained
a high standard of education. All the parochial
clergy, on the other hand, are educated in semin
aries, or training colleges, but only those who
show special ability go on to the academy, an
institution which occupies the same position for
the clergy as the university fills in civil education.
They do not reach a very high standard as a rule,
and before being appointed to a parish must be
married. No unmarried priest can be in charge
of a parish, and should he become a widower
he must resign his parish, and either enter a
monastery or retire into private life ; but, in
either case, he must not marry again.
Many years ago (1890) there appeared an
interesting story of Russian life in the chief
Russian literary magazine, and it was translated

The Clergy 75
for the " Pseudonym Library " in a cheap form
under the title of A Russian Priest.1 It is still
to be obtained, and it is most refreshing to
read again this brief story of a brilliant young
seminarist going on to the academy and attaining
such distinctions, that he might have aspired to
any high office in the Church, yet impelled by
his ideals, and full of the CHRiST-like spirit,
choosing the lowest grade of humble and village
life, and " touching bottom," so as to speak, in
his Church's work. As far as I can judge it
describes still quite faithfully and clearly the
relations of clergy and people in Russian villages
and hamlets.
Let me now, however, speak briefly of some
of the clergy I have met, taking such as I con
sider fairly representative of the different classes.
I have felt myself that I have learnt a great deal
more about the spirit and aims of the Russian
Church, and what we may regard as its present
and future attitude to ourselves, from knowing
its clergy and devout laity than ever I could have
hoped to do by reading books about them, or
from lectures, addresses, or letters written by
them. I will speak first of the Archbishop of Warsaw,
who received me at Petrograd on my first visit,
1 Published by T. Fisher Unwin, Paternoster Square.

76 Russian Life To-day
in place of the Metropolitan Antonius who
had sent a very brotherly message of welcome
from his sick-room, where shortly afterwards he
died. The Archbishop Nicolai — Russians speak
of their bishops and archbishops in this way,
using the Christian name and not that of the
See — is a most imposing and fatherly figure, and
received me attired, just as his portrait shows
him, wearing a very rich-looking satin robe,
decorated with orders, and with a large cross of
magnificent diamonds in the centre of his black
cap or mitre. He had been in the United States,
in charge of the Russian work there, and also in
England, and spoke a little English, but it was
so little that I was glad to have Mr. Feild, a
churchwarden of the English Church, who has
lived in Russia all his life, to be my interpreter.
His Grace was full of interest, sympathetic
and intelligent, in all that I could tell him about
our own Church at home, in Russia, and on the
Continent generally, very keen to know of my
impressions, and of my reception by the Pro
curator of the Holy Synod, and by the official
at the Ministry of the Interior, who is responsible
for religious administration. I shall have to speak
later of the status of our Anglican Church in
Russia, and so here I will only say that it led me
to speak of the work of our Anglican Chaplain

The Clergy 77
(the Rev. H. C. Zimmerman) at Warsaw, where
upon the archbishop said at once, " Ask him to
come and see me when I am at Warsaw three
months from now." I did so, and Mr. Zimmer
man wrote to tell me afterwards that he had had
the kindest reception, with quite a long conver
sation, had been presented with souvenirs, and
dismissed with a blessing, his Grace saying
to him as he left : —
" Now, regard me as your bishop, when your
own is not here, and come to me whenever you
are in need of advice or information."
The archbishop loves to think of his pleasant
recollections of England and its Church life.
"Ah," he said, "your English Sunday! How
beautiful it is to walk along Piccadilly on Sunday
morning, with all the shops closed, and no one
in the streets except quiet-looking people, all on
their way to Church ! "
London is very different in that respect on
Sunday mornings, whatever it is later in the day,
from every capital in the world. All is quiet,
and Church and worship are in the air. Then
the archbishop told me of his going to S. Paul's
Cathedral, sitting in the congregation, and enjoying
it all, until it had gradually come home to him
during the Second Lesson that something was
being read from one of the Gospels. On finding

78 Russian Life To-day
by inquiry that this was so, he rose at once to his
feet, and looked with amazement upon the people
sitting all round him while the Holy Gospel was
being read. I'm afraid my telling him that we
always stand for it in the Liturgy only added to
his surprise, for he murmured to himself in a
puzzled way, " Why in one place and not in
another ? "
Dear old man, he presented me with his
portrait, here given, and all his published works,
and hoped, as I do, that it would not be long
before I went to see him again.
When at length the Metropolitan Antonius,
after a long illness, passed away, he was succeeded
by the Archbishop of Moscow who, in his turn,
was succeeded by Archbishop Macarius, and it
is of the last-named that I will next give briefly
my experience. It was on January 10, 1914,
according to our calendar, and on December 28,
1 9 13, according to the Russian, when I had
the feeling of being in two years at the same
time, and of spending the same Christmas first in
London and then in Russia, that he received me
in his palace at Moscow. Palace it certainly is
in the character and spaciousness of its rooms,
but the furniture is what we should consider,
in our own country, simple and rather con
ventional. The salon, or drawing-room, was

Page 78.

The Convent at Ekaterinburg, Siberia.

The Clergy 79
very large, with the usual polished floor and
rugs laid upon it. At one side two rows of
chairs, facing each other, stood out from the
wall, against which a sofa was placed, and in
front of that a table. It was exactly the same
at the Archiepiscopal Palace at Riga, where I
had been a few months before, and the same
procedure was followed on both occasions.
First the archbishop warmly embraced me,
kissing me on either cheek and then upon the
lips, and then courteously waved me to the
seat of honour upon the sofa. At Riga when
the archbishop took his seat upon the sofa he
indicated the place beside him which I did not
notice, and took the chair. But just as I was
about to sit down, Madame Alexaieff, who had
most kindly come to interpret, said hurriedly
and in rather a shocked tone, "Take the seat
beside him, he wishes it," and, remembering
the etiquette of the sofa as observed still by
old-fashioned people in Germany, I did as I
was told.
At Moscow, however, I was more observant,
and when the archbishop courteously waved his
hand to the sofa I bowed to him and at once sat
down, but only to find that he himself took a
chair next me and left me alone in the place
of dignity. It was quite in keeping with his

80 Russian Life To-day
whole bearing and conversation throughout, for
he is evidently one of the most humble and
unassuming of men. Yet he has covered himself
with distinction in the course of his long life
spent chiefly far away in the Altai country in
Siberia, below Omsk, engaged in work of a
missionary character. No one is more respected
in the whole of Russia. He is just as shown
in the portrait he gave me, slight and not tall,
and his whole face lights up with keen interest
as he talks and enforces his words with appro
priate gestures. He was very caustic upon
the subject of the non-attendance at church
of educated and wealthy people in a certain
place, which perhaps it will be kinder not to
mention. " No," he said, " they are never to be seen
at any service, however important and solemn
it may be. There are none there but the same
common people who are always crowding into
their churches. At least," he added more
deliberately, " if the others are there, they
adopt the common people's dress for the
occasion ! "
His expression and gesture as he said this
were inimitable and indescribable, and the little
touch of humour made one's heart warm to
wards him. He was much interested in hearing

The Clergy 8i
anything I could tell him of our own Church,
and delighted, in a wistful sort of way, to hear
the many details I gave him of its progress,
especially in the extension of its missionary
activities and ever-deepening interest in social
questions and economic problems, as they affect
the labouring classes and the very poor. His
eyes sparkled as he too spoke of the poor, and
told me what I should hear from the Grand
Duchess Elizabeth, whom I was to see that
afternoon, about the work to which she has
given her life since the assassination of her
husband, the Grand Duke Serge.
Like all his brethren of the episcopate he was
greatly interested in anything I could tell him
of the Archbishop of Canterbury and of his views
and hopes about our own and the Russian
Churches, and the Christian Church as a whole.
He looked thoughtfully down as I spoke to him
about unity and intercommunion under special
circumstances, and said rather sadly : —
" How one would love more unity ! But how
much ground there is to be covered, how many
difficulties to be cleared away before that can
come !
I smiled a little, at which he looked at me
questioningly, and so I said : —
" I smiled because I thought of the brotherly

82 Russian Life To-day
and loving way in which you have received me
to-day, and in which you are speaking so much
and so freely of what is in your heart, and if
these kind and friendly relations go on increas
ing between our Churches it will be progress
such as He must love to see Who said ' By this
shall all men know that ye are My disciples if ye
have love one to another.' That will be progress
of the best kind, and, even if it is slow, I for one
shall greatly rejoice that we are moving at all in
the right direction. Let us only keep moving,
and we shall arrive in time."
We talked on about my own experiences the
year before just to the south of where he had
lived so long, and when I told him that I hoped
this year to go to the Altai, his own actual
country, he looked as though he envied me the
journey. After embracing me again he accom
panied me into the anteroom, where a poor
peasant woman was waiting to see him with an
ikon to be blessed. There was a great pile of
quite cheap ikons for the poor, towards which he
waved his hand and said, " And I have all these
to bless also."
As I left I could only murmur to myself,
" The dear old saint." He made me feel some
sense of being back at Troas or Miletum or
Ephesus, or coming out from the presence of

The Clergy 83
Barnabas or Silas or St. Paul. It was truly
apostolic !
Of course the interpreter makes a tremendous
difference, but again, as at Petrograd and Riga,
I had an excellent friend and helper in Mr.
Birse, one of the churchwardens of our church
in Moscow, who had spoken Russian all his life.
I may add also that, as in Mr. Feild's case at
Petrograd, he enjoyed the interview as much as
I did, and would probably catch little subtleties
of expression and self-revelation that would be
lost to me by the hurried kind of interpretation
that was necessary.
The next great dignitary I will try and de
scribe, though I know I cannot possibly do
justice to the dignity and nobility of character
evident in all she says and does, is the Abbess
Magdalena of the great Convent at Ekaterinburg
in Siberia. The Convent is a most imposing
group of buildings, stretching along an extended
front, with cupolas, spires, and pinnacles, and is
much frequented by pilgrims from far and near
who come to pray in its chapel before a famous
ikon. The Abbess and all her nuns wear the
same kind of black dress, with cap and veil, quite
black and unredeemed by any trace of white
linen or cambric. The first thing that impressed
me, even before I entered the gate, was the

84 Russian Life To-day
beauty of their singing. The choir were prac
tising for a service on the Emperor's name-day
on the morrow, and their hymn was the most
beautiful thing I had ever heard from women's
voices. It seemed to me that all the four parts
were there. The bass certainly was, and I was
told that the nuns with deep voices submitted
them to careful training until they were able to
reach very low notes indeed. There was, of
course, no accompanying music, the conductor
just waving her open hand to and fro to beat
time, and the precision and crispness of the whole
hymn were wonderful.
The chapel is a fine building beautifully
painted by the nuns themselves, and its services
are conducted by a priest and deacon. The
deacon is a special feature in the ranks of the
Russian clergy, and is responsible for all the
choral parts of the services, apart from the actual
priest's part in the Liturgy of course, and is
chosen for the beauty of his voice. If a young
man has a very fine voice and is wondering
what use he shall make of it, he sees nothing
at all unbecoming or incongruous in saying
that he has not made up his mind yet whether
he shall choose the Church or the stage.
When I was being introduced to the Ekaterin
burg deacon, my friend and interpreter whispered

The Abbess Magdalena.

Page 84.

The Clergy 85
to me, "He gave up the opera to come here."
I thought, in my ignorance, that he had left the
world for religion, and full of sympathetic
interest said : —
" Ask him if he has ever regretted it ! " and
was rather disconcerted when he said in an off
hand way : —
" Oh ! well of course I missed things at first,
but I'm gradually getting used to it."
The Abbess confided to us that sometimes
from the way he offered the incense she thought
he must be thinking he was on the stage still.
He was a remarkably good-looking man with
a wonderfully rich voice, and as none of the
clergy ever cut hair or beard after Ordination,
and his was just getting full, he looked a most
picturesque and interesting figure. I should like
to meet him again, and put the same question,
in the hope of a somewhat more encouraging
answer. The Abbess, as well as managing and inspiring
her sisters, superintends a really remarkable work.
Her revenue is a very large one, and she gives a
portion of it to the Bishop of Ekaterinburg for
the work of his diocese — he is a young and
energetic prelate whom I greatly liked when I
knew him later — and out of the remainder she
supports an Orphanage for six hundred girls in

86 Russian Life To-day
the Convent. The remarkable thing, however,
about her management is its essentially practical,
sensible, and considerate character. The girls do
not wear a uniform, but can consult and improve
their own taste in dress. They are carefully
studied individually, and, while all are educated
in school in the same way, special preparation is
given for different callings in life according to
the inclination and aptitude shown by the girls.
Many, of course, prefer domestic service as being
simpler and perhaps more in keeping with what
they have known before coming there ; but the
more enterprising and competent can be, and
are, taught all sorts of things which these very
modern nuns do with such great ability them
selves. They play, sing, do all sorts of " white
work" for Russian and French purchasers, and
are well up in modern photography. They
carve, paint, make ikons, illuminate pictures,
and do wonderful embroidery. There is a wide
choice, therefore, for the girls under their charge,
and they avail themselves of it to the full. Just
before I was there a girl with a wonderful voice,
after having been trained, had been launched, at
the age of twenty-six, upon her career as a
member of the Russian Imperial Opera.
I described this very modern work as carried
out by the nuns of a very ancient convent, on

The Clergy 87
my return, to the Archbishop of Canterbury,
who remarked significantly, as I daresay many
of my readers will, " And that is in Siberia ! "
From Abbess let me pass to Abbot, but to a
very different community. At Tiumen, the
farthest point I reached in North Siberia, and
where I had been to give services to a family
living alone there, and from Scotland originally,
I went out in the afternoon to see an old church
outside the town where there had formerly been
a fairly large monastery. It is very small and
humble now, I am sure, from the few we saw
there, and their neglected appearance as they went
about their work in old and well-worn habits.
The church was locked, but one of their number
fetched the keys and showed us over the church,
explaining their oldest ikons. As we walked
towards the gate and our little carriage, he was
full of curiosity about ourselves and our Church,
and at last, as he questioned me rather closely,
my friend could keep it in no longer, and
explained : —
" He's a bishop, an English bishop, and he
has come from London to give us lonely folk
a service ! "
The effect was extraordinary.
" An English bishop ! Do you say it ? Only
to think of it ! And I in my dirty clothes like

88 Russian Life To-day
any common labourer ! And I am the Abbot !
I beg of you ! Oh ! yes, I must insist. Do
not deny me. Enter my humble house, and
let me feel, even if you only take a seat upon
a chair for a moment, that I have entertained
you ! "
Such hospitable intent was not to be with
stood, and willingly enough we went with him
into his small and, as he said, very humble
abode, feeling how very touching and appealing
it all was. We entered, our host saying cheer
fully, " Be good enough to walk on," and found
ourselves in a very bare and cheerless-looking
parlour with stiff chairs, with black horsehair
seats, round the walls, and a bare table in the
centre, upon which stood a conventional and
faded little basket of wax-flowers and fruit
under a glass shade. On looking round we saw
the good Abbot had disappeared, so we sat down
and looked about us, hoping he had not gone
off to order food ; but in an incredibly short
time, as if he had been a "lightning-change
artist," he was back again. And what a trans
formation ! The dirty and faded brown cassock
was gone, and a flowing rich black robe had
taken its place, a black mitre with dependent
veil was upon his head, a magnificent chain and
cross hung from his neck, and, thoroughly

The Clergy 89
satisfied with his change, he looked as though
he were saying "Now we meet upon equal
terms ! " His boyish delight was good to see
as he said : —
" Now let me welcome you and greet you ! "
and he kissed me as other bishops had done.
These embraces are no light ordeal, as the
good clergy never shave or cut their hair, and
are very heavily bearded. But what of that, if
one can feel as I did that day, when driving
off and waving our adieux, that one had been
breathing apostolic air, and had been very near
in the spirit to " Peter and John " ?
It only remains to give my experience of a
typical parish priest, and then I shall feel that
the Russian clergy have been fairly described.
Upon my arrival at the Spassky Mine, during
my first journey in Siberia, in the very heart of
the Kirghese Steppes, the manager told me what
had passed between himself and the parish priest,
kept there by his company to minister to the
labourers in the smelting works. These were all
Russians, though the labourers in the mine itself
were chiefly Kirghese and Mohammedans.
" You will be interested to hear that our
bishop is coming to see us," he had said by way
of beginning.
"Your bishop ! Where from and what for ? "

90 Russian Life To-day
" He is coming across the steppes, and from
London, to give us services."
" You don't mean to say so ! " was the startled
exclamation. " I never heard of such a thing !
Your bishop, all the way from London, driving
night and day for five days across the steppes,
to give you twenty English folk your services !
Why, our bishop is only two or three days down
the river at Omsk, but we could not expect him
to come here for us."
" Well, you see," observed my friend, " our
English Church does not forget her children,
even if they are scattered far and wide. And
we shall be glad to see him and receive Holy
Communion and have sermons from him about
our faith and highest duties.
After a moment's silence the priest looked
up suddenly and said : —
" I wonder if your bishop will come to our
service on Sunday and join with us in worship ?
If he will address us how glad we shall be to
hear him ! "
" He will certainly come, and, what is more,
we will all come with him, and we will all be at
divine service together for once. Suppose we
have our Celebration at 7.30, and you arrange
yours for 8.30 instead of 8.15, and we will all
come over together ? We shall fill our little

The Russian Priest at Spassky.

Page 90.

The Clergy 91
room, and can't invite others ; but we will all
accompany the bishop to the church."
Next day (Sunday), after our Communion —
all the staff received it — we went over, I in my
robes, to the church, and were received by the
wardens, the choir leading off with a hymn as
we entered. The wardens at once conducted me
behind the screen where the priest stood before
the altar in his vestments, with a boy server on
either side beautifully vested, the one in gold
and the other in silver tissue.
After bowing to me gravely and reverently, he
began the service. Nothing is seen of it by the
congregation, and they hear only the voice of the
priest, and are told from the other side of the
screen what is passing within. The Russian
Liturgy is full of traditional ceremonies, and
rather bewildering, I should think, to an Eng
lish Churchman ; but there is no question as to
the great reverence which distinguishes it. The
priest confided to his manager afterwards how
nervous he felt at celebrating with a bishop at
his side, and how anxious he felt to make no
mistake. He did not show it, however, and
was as reverent and absorbed as any priest ought
to be when back again in thought and word and
deed in the Upper Room, where, on the same
night on which He was betrayed, our Lord left

92 Russian Life To-day
us the memorial of His Passion and the Sacra
ment of His love and grace.
It was touching also to see the little servers
struggling between curiosity and the claims of
the service, but the latter triumphed ; and not
till they had taken off their little vestments and
stood forth in their ordinary clothes did they
permit themselves a good look at their strange
visitor, and show themselves ready to have a
word or two from him.
The priest, when he had taken an extra little
service which some old men had asked for, came
over to the manager's house and told me of his
work, asked questions, and received little gifts,
and told me how inspiring it was to all the
Russians to know that their English staff were
religious, as well as clever and able men, and
glad to have their services when they could.
In one way this priest was not typical, for
he was paid his stipend by the company, and
not dependent upon his people. In all ordinary
parishes this is not the case. The parish priest
receives a nominal stipend from public sources,
but depends upon his people for the rest. They
give small contributions on their name days —
a very substantial sum is received on S. John's
Day, as a favourite Russian name is Ivan, or
John — when the priest comes to bless their

The Clergy 93
house or workshop, or for a marriage, christen
ing, or funeral, or to give the Sacrament in ill
ness. There is often, usually, indeed, bargain
ing on all these occasions. A portion of their
fruits and crops is claimed. All sorts of con
tributions are made throughout the year, and,
except in town parishes where able clergy have
large incomes, given ungrudgingly by their
people, the priest and his wife are always
trying to get as much as they can for their
services, and the people, who are very poor,
to give as little.
This cannot lead to good relations between
clergy and people, and, as the clergy in the
country seldom if ever preach, there is no
personal teaching to bring them together. Offi
cially, therefore, it is true to say that the
Russians value and reverence the ministry of
their parish clergy, while, personally, they do
not feel any great interest in them or their
families, nor see any reason why they should.
And certainly, as a rule — the fault of the system
no doubt — they do not love them.
Let me now describe the service which I have
mentioned upon a previous page, conducted after
the Liturgy was over and the people had been
dismissed. The priest told me four old men had
asked to have a few special prayers and a reading

94 Russian Life To-day
from the Gospels, and I stayed to share it. The
prayers were said, petition and response, by all
five standing before the screen, after which the
four old men, with rough and rugged faces,
shaggy hair, and wide flowing beards, closed
up together, and, as they stood back to back,
the priest placed the beautifully-bound copy of
the Gospels upon their heads and began to read.
The rough faces seemed at once to change their
whole expression : their blue eyes sparkled, and
there appeared that light upon every countenance
which " never was on sea or land," or anywhere
else except upon the face of one who is in com
munion with God. My thoughts went back to
the story of Moses as he came down from Sinai,
and veiled his face as he spoke to the people,
lest they should find there that which they
could neither bear to see or understand. One's
thoughts are always going back to scriptural
scenes and descriptions when amongst the
Russian peasantry.

S. Isaac's Cathedral, Petrograd.

Page 95.

CHAPTER V
Religious Life and Worship
IT is well sometimes to define our terms and
phrases, and it is absolutely necessary in this
case. What is it that we mean when we speak
of the religious life of a people, Christian and
non-Christian alike ? Our soldiers have been
fighting shoulder to shoulder with Hindoos and
Mohammedans, whose British commander, on
the eve of their first battle, addressed them in
words which Ought to be long remembered by
those who are working and praying for the
hastening of God's kingdom, appealing to their
faith, and reminding them that prayers were
ascending from Mosque and from Temple to
the God of all, on their behalf.
The Hindoos and Moslems have their religious
life as well as ourselves. And it behoves us of
the Christian Church, especially when such
stirring words can be addressed to two Eastern
peoples, so widely different in their creeds, to
remind them that their prayers are going up to
the same " God of all," to look very earnestly
95

96 Russian Life To-day
and sympathetically at the religious life and
worship of all the different Churches which make
up the " Mystical Body of Christ and the blessed
company of all faithful people."
It is along that way and that alone — the
affectionate, respectful, and sympathetic interest
in the religious life and worship of those
who differ from us and those not in com
munion with us, that unity lies, and I feel
sure there is no other. The religious life of
a man, or people, is his life as it is influenced
by the creed he professes and the worship he
offers. We are not thinking at the moment of a moral
life, for a moral life is led by many who, as they
would express it, "make no religious profession."
It is open to us to question whether they are
not more influenced than they are aware by
the religion of those about them, which is in
the very air they breathe, for there is such an
influence as " religious atmosphere " ; or we may
think also that they have more religion than they
suspect ; but they themselves would disclaim all
this. Some live, as John Stuart Mill lived,
frankly without religion, yet leading a blameless
and irreproachable moral life. Then as a contrast
there are the lives of religious people leaving as
far as moral values are concerned much to be

Religious Life and Worship 97
desired, and probably, in many cases, most of
all by themselves.
Religious life, however, is creed and worship
translated into daily life and expression, effort
and achievement ; and accepting that definition I
unhesitatingly claim for the Russian people that
they are one of the most religious peoples in
the world. Their religion is the desire and
effort to know God. "This is life eternal,
to know God, and Jesus Christ Whom He has
sent." The Russian has not been fully taught
as yet the ethical and moral side of this
knowing God, though he is ready for it, but
only its mystical side. He seeks the know
ledge of God, quite simply, as a spiritual
experience. It will always be found that when races have
received civilization and Christianity suddenly,
as the Russians have done, while they astonish
and charm by their spiritual fervour and deep
earnestness, they disappoint by their want of
consistency in moral life. But spiritual fervour
and great earnestness arising out of a real need
for God and a deep sense of His meeting that
need "fulfilling minds and granting hearts'
desires," and a real sense of communion with
the Great Eternal in Christ in beautiful and
uplifting worship, afford the best of all founda-

98 Russian Life To-day
tions for building up moral conduct permanently
and well.
To the Russian, as to the ancient Hebrew,
moral law will only lastingly and effectually
appeal when prefaced by " God hath said." His
religion is God ; the knowledge of the Most
High as revealed in Christ. And he is one of
the most consistently religious persons in the
world, for he must have his religion everywhere,
and, just as the Hebrew felt it must be, "when
talking with his children, when sitting in his
house, when walking by the way, when going
to lie down, and when rising up, written upon
the posts of his house, and on the gates." The
mystical or spiritual temperaments of the two
peoples are much the same. Russians have a
passion for God. They never want to be away
from the sense and consciousness of His presence.
Only when they have gained some sense of this
spiritual endowment of the Russian race will
my readers be able to see where their religious
life corresponds with our own, and where it
widely diverges from it. We have spoken of
this war as a righteous war ; the Russians as
a religious one ! They have brought their
religion into it as they have never done into
any war before. A Russian officer, for instance,
gave a very picturesque account of the great

Religious Life and Worship 99
battle of the Vistula last October, and ended
with these words : " My company was the first
to cross the river, which seemed to boil from the
bursting of the shells. Afterwards nine com
panies rushed the enemy's position. A priest
with long, streaming hair, and holding high a
cross amid a hail of bullets, stood blessing the
soldiers as they ran past." That is the true
Russian, his religion everywhere and in every
thing. There is nothing in life, throughout the
year, however secular it may seem to us to be,
which does not have that blessing by the priest.
The war has had it from first to last. All
through mobilization, in the families from which
the bread-winner was to go, there would be special
little private services such as I have described in
my last chapter. On the day when the conscripts
were to depart from the village there would be
the Liturgy in church, with all who could be
present, and others outside. There would be,
it has been described for us, the solemn reading
of the Holy Gospel in the open-air, the book
resting upon a living lectern ; and as they rode
away the last thing the departing men would see,
as with those nine companies on the Vistula,
would be the cross lifted high by a priest, with
his long hair streaming over his shoulders, or
out upon the wind.

100 Russian Life To-day
It would be just the same all through the long
journeys : the sacred ikons were carried, the priest
marched steadily along, or sat in the railway
carriages with the soldiers, and always with his
cross. The soldiers of course saluted their priests
as they saluted their officers, and for a time it
was a little puzzling to decide how this salute
should be suitably returned in such a war as this.
For a priest to raise his hand to his cap did not
seem to belong to his sacred office, and so it was
decided he should touch his cross instead. Quite
apart from the regular and official services, the
priest would be always fulfilling his part in
bringing God home to his countrymen, until the
very end when he stood blessing them, as we
have been told, as they rushed past him to
attack, many of them to return no more. There
is something very inspiring in the thought that
the last earthly object many of them saw as they
rushed on to death was the Cross of Him Who
had robbed death of all its terrors, and brought
Immortality to light.
One of my great reasons for looking to the
Orthodox* Church of Russia to give us our first
opportunity, in seeking to promote the larger
unity of Christendom, is, as I had occasion to
say at a large public meeting in London last
year, that, like ourselves, they wish to have the

Religious Life and Worship ioi
New Testament sense of the presence of Christ.
I cannot use any other phrase to express my
meaning. It is to me the whole spirit of their
worship, not only at the Holy Communion,
where one would expect it, but at all the other
services as well. Litanies form a very important
part of their worship, and as one hears that
softly repeated "Lord, have mercy" (Gospodi
pomilui) again and again from the choir, it is as
if they were all conscious of speaking straight
to their Lord with the feeling that He is there
Himself to grant their prayer. No other refrain
that I have ever heard has the same appealing
note of real and moving faith.
I have attended the " all-night service " at
S. Isaac's, in Petrograd, on Saturdays at 6 p.m.
It lasts two hours in cathedrals and churches,
but all night in monasteries and convents, and
some of us going to S. Isaac's for the first time
would almost wish that it could be " all night "
there also. The glorious richness of the men's
voices, their deep rolling basses and sweet tenors,
the silvery trebles of the boys — there is no organ
or other accompaniment — when heard as a new
experience makes one involuntarily think to
one's self " I have never heard prayer and praise
expressed like this before." Whether one is
behind the screen, where I was conducted at

102 Russian Life To-day
once, or standing with the choir before it —
there are no seats in a Russian church — noting
their picturesque uniforms like those of officers,
and their profound reverence, or moving amongst
the congregation, and looking towards the screen,
the same impression is given everywhere and by
every one, " We are praising Thee, O God, we
acknowledge Thee to be the Lord. Thou art
the King of Glory, O Christ."
The screen separates the sacrarium from the
body of the church, and is a carved partition
painted and gilded, arid in the cathedrals and
great churches, is covered with silver and
gold ikons, often richly jewelled, and with
numerous lamps and tapers burning before them.
At each side of this screen is a narrow door
through which people seem to pass at will, to
and fro, for there is a great feeling of freedom
in a Russian church, and every one does just
what he feels led to do. No ladies, however,
may ever pass behind. In its centre are fold
ing doors which are only used for ceremonial
purposes, and are called "The Royal Gates."
In the Liturgy it is a moment of deep solemnity
when they are opened wide, and the priest passes
through carrying the bread and wine for con
secration. This is "The Great Entrance." At
the evening service on Saturday night also there

Page 102.

Interior of a Russian Church.

Religious Life and Worship 103
is an entrance, when the deacon carries the
Gospels through, before which the gates stand
open wide for a little while, and the congrega
tion may look straight through. Immediately
within stands the altar, a perfectly plain, square
structure with nothing at all upon it but a large
copy of the Four Gospels, and behind it is
the seven-branched candlestick. It has an extra
ordinary effect upon the worshipper who has
only just come to Russia when the Royal Gates
are thrown open thus, and, with incense filling
the air, the seven lamps on the great candle
stick come into view. It is for a moment
as if one was back in the days of Zacharias
and Elisabeth, waiting for him to come forth
through the gates to bless us, as he did on that
memorable occasion after the announcement of
the birth of S. John the Baptist. It is, how
ever, only for a moment that the Temple fills
the mind, for on looking up the representation
of our Lord is there in the great window above,
where He seems to look down upon us in love
and blessing, and " The same yesterday, to-day,
and for ever," seems to have new and blessed
significance. Russian worship to me is just dominated by
the very presence of Christ. All the mere
tricious surroundings, the lights and glittering

104 Russian Life To-day
and jewelled ikons have not the least power to
diminish the joyous, thankful sense of it. He
is in the midst of us "gathered together in
His Name." Every one seems to feel it, every
one seeks to realize it. They are there for
that ! That is why the beautiful voices keep
singing " Gospodi pomilui " or " Lord, be merci
ful to us." We feel it is real worship, and
I can only hope that many of my readers
who have not had the joy of it in that
special way may yet have the opportunity
afforded them. There are Russian churches, of
course, in England, and I have happily and
helpfully worshipped in the Russian church in
Paris at 6 p.m. on Saturdays ; but Russian
worship can only be truly known and fully
shared in Russia.
This "New Testament sense of the presence
of Christ," as I have called it, is no doubt
promoted by the extraordinary veneration given
to the Gospels, both in their external and
internal form. There is an intense feeling of
close personal attention as the deacon carries
them through the Royal Gates. They are
always beautifully bound, rimmed and clasped
with gold or silver, and often sparkling with
diamonds and other precious stones. A beauti
fully bound copy — in ordinary churches the

Religious Life and Worship 105
best they have — rests upon the altar, in its
very centre, with a silken covering, and when
the priest comes to celebrate he first kisses it,
and then, lifting it up and setting it upon end,
and laying the corporal where it has rested,
with the chalice and paten upon it, proceeds
to the Liturgy. The consecration takes place
on that part of the altar where the Gospels
have lain before, and where they will again be
laid when the service is over.
The four evangelists always appear painted
upon the Royal Gates, together with a repre
sentation of the Annunciation, our Lord, and
the Holy Virgin, on either side. This is never
departed from. In every church which follows
traditional lines there are the four huge pillars
holding up the whole structure — typifying the
four evangelists again. Upon the roof they are
set forth in the four cupolas, which are always
there at the corners, while a fifth rising above
them typifies our Lord over and above and
dominating, yet supported by, them. Then
there is nothing in the ordinary services to
compare with the reading of the Holy Gospel
to the people, nor is any special or private
ministration complete without reading some
portion of these, the most important parts of
the sacred Scriptures.

106 Russian Life To-day
It is easy to see, therefore, how it comes about
that the Russian sense of the living Christ is
essentially that which is realized by His Apostles
and described in the New Testament.
Last year no less than three writers, as different
from each other as they could well be, writing
of visits paid to the Holy Land — Mr. Robert
Hichens, the novelist, in The Holy Land, Sir
Frederick Treves, the well-known and eminent
surgeon, in The Land that is 'Desolate, and Mr.
Stephen Graham, in With the Russian Pilgrims to
Jerusalem — all alike show us that no one had
made the same impression upon them as the
Russians who had come to realize their Lord
in the very place where He had lived our
human life. They all so clearly felt that those
simple-minded folk, as they followed traditions
and visited one place after another from Bethle
hem to Calvary, and wept where He had wept,
and prayed where He had prayed, looked over
the places and the waters upon which His eyes
had rested, crossed themselves reverently again
and again where He had suffered, and sung Te
Deum and Alleluia where He had risen, were
looking not at the things which are seen, but at
the things which are not seen, believing with all
the strength of their great and simple hearts
that "the things which are seen are temporal,

Religious Life and Worship 107
while the things which are not seen are
eternal." To the devout Russian the so-called good
things of this life are unsubstantial and swiftly
passing experiences, while the great and only
realities worth thinking about seriously are those
spiritual experiences of the Apostles as they
went in and out with Christ and companied
with Him, which are now described in the
Gospels that we may have the same "even to
the end of the ages." If Russia gives, as we
pray she may, a lead to Christendom in the
direction of unity, she will have a wonderfully
uplifting and apostolic contribution to offer to
the common stock of our Christian heritage.
And yet with all this wealth of very real
spiritual experience there goes also a sad
deficiency of moral conduct. " But that vitiates
it all," some of my readers may exclaim. No ;
it does not. We, with our very different
temperament, have come to substitute morality
for religion and the ethical for the spiritual,
whereas for the " whole man," as even Eccle-
siastes tells us, both are necessary. Morality is
not religion at all while the spiritual faculties
are absolutely quiescent and the soul knows no
need of God nor cries out for Him. A deep
sense of the spiritual and a longing and effort

108 Russian Life To-day
to attain touch with the eternal is religion,
although an imperfect morality impairs and
cripples the adequate witness, the full unfettered
enjoyment of it. And, as another writer has
lately done in the political sphere, I would plead
for the Russians that " they did not get a fair
start." I have already described the rough-and-ready
way in which they were converted to Christianity,
never having anything like our opportunities of
instruction from the first. I have never heard a
Russian sermon ! The vast majority of the clergy
have never been trained to preach, and would not
be able to do so if they tried. The people are
not taught at all in church, except by what is
read to them in Scripture, or what they read for
themselves. Let Englishmen give them " fair
play" all round, both in political and con
stitutional, and also in moral deficiencies ; and
let us remember that it was to a body of real
and earnest Christians — " saints " and " faithful,"
he himself calls them— that S. Paul found it
necessary to write and caution against "the
lusts of the flesh, foolish talking and unseemly
jesting, covetousness and uncleanness, lying and
stealing." If it was necessary to write those
fifth and sixth chapters of the Ephesians to
a body of Christian believers of whose sincerity

Religious Life and Worship 109
an Apostle had no doubt, we may well have
hopeful patience with a great body of our fellow
Christians whose want of consistency in conduct
provokes such ready criticism. It is well known
how a mystical people like the West Indians
(I have described it at length in a former book,
A Bishop among Bananas, in chap, v) resent
being accused of theft when helping themselves
to " God's gifts," as they call them, in the shape
of fruit and fowls, when they would not dream
of taking money, clothing, or other material
things, or would consider themselves thieves if
they did. And so it interested me to learn the
other day that the Russian peasant views thefts
of the same kind of things in much the same
way, drawing in his mind a distinction between
that which God gives for all and that which man
produces for himself. It is imperfect reasoning,
we know, as there is no real distinction between
what a man produces by cultivation and what
he manufactures ; but we can understand an
untrained and rather childlike mind making such
a distinction. The devout Russian peasantry in this stage
often seem to illustrate our Lord's words
concerning things revealed to " babes " which
even the " wise and prudent " seem to miss.
Sir Donald M. Wallace again tells the story in

no Russian Life To-day
Our Russian Ally which he told in his Russia —
it will bear constant repetition — as an instance
of real spiritual insight in a simple and untrained
mind. " I remember once asking a common
labourer," he says, "what he thought of the
Mussulman Tartars among whom he happened
to be living ; and his reply, given with evident
sincerity, was — ' Not a bad sort of people.'
' And what about their religion ? ' I inquired.
' Not at all a bad sort of faith — you see they
received it like the colour of their skins, from
God.'" He assumed, of course, in his simple
piety, that whatever comes from God must be
good. It necessitated a very special spiritual
experience and real vision before a Christian
Apostle could say the same thing, " Of a truth
I perceive that God is no respecter of persons " ;
but that common labourer in this little incident
had taken in the same wide outlook, in a perfectly
normal way, from his ordinary surroundings and
the religious influences which make up such
an important portion of his life.
The lesson is learnt early. I was, one morning,
in an elementary school in Siberia, just before the
work of the day began, to speak to the children.
They opened with prayer, but how different from
prayers in our own schools ! The master and
teachers did nothing except pray with the rest. At

Religious Life and Worship hi
a sign that all was ready a boy of twelve stepped
out and took his place before the ikon in its
corner, and then bowing with that inimitable
grace which belongs alone to the Russian when
at prayer, and making the sign of the Cross, he
gravely led the simple prayers of the whole
school, all singing softly and reverently in unison.
It was all inexpressibly touching and appealing,
and to be treasured up with those other things
of which one says, " I shall never forget."
The sign of the Cross is always made very
slowly and solemnly, quite differently from other
Churches, and from right to left upon the breast,
and it is always accompanied by a slow and
reverent bowing of the head, and is repeated
usually three times. It is the special sign during
the public services that a worshipper is just then
feeling his or her own part in it. People do not use
this devotion at set times during service, but just
when they wish, and as the spirit moves them.
I have been in the S. Isaac's choir when all the
men and boys were singing a hymn, and sud
denly a man near me would stop, bow, and cross
himself devoutly, and then resume his hymn.
No one would take the least notice, but all would
go on singing as before. Then a choir-boy, after
a moment or two, would do the same, his com
panions continuing to sing till their turn of being

H2 Russian Life To-day
moved within came also. I have seen soldiers in
the ranks do just the same when bareheaded at
an out-door service. There is so much spon
taneity and elasticity and liberty in Russian
worship. They do just as they feel "led by
the Spirit" to do.
One of the most interesting experiences I had
last year was attending on the Feast of the
Epiphany — the appointed day for that and
similar services — the blessing of the Neva.
The ceremony takes place just outside the
Winter Palace at Petrograd. Diplomatists and
other visitors who wish to look on, stand within
at the windows, but I much preferred to be
outside, even though it was bitterly cold and
we had to be bareheaded. There was a mag
nificent and bewildering gathering of Russian
ecclesiastics, gorgeously vested. Priceless ikons
were carried, and beautiful banners of rich
embroideries, the whole effect being strangely
Eastern in character. A few only could enter
the small kiosk^ on the river's bank where the
water, brought in a silver basin, was blessed.
But the thrilling thing that day was the glorious
singing, chant and refrain, which so richly
filled the air, stirring the very depths of one's
being, and the innumerable rows of deeply
attentive soldiers in their long grey coats, whose

The Cathedral at Riga.

Page 112.

Religious Life and Worship 113
frequent bowings and devout crossings all
through the ranks showed that, though they
were there officially, they were there to worship
also. The Emperor walked from the palace
amongst others and returned to it, bareheaded
like any common soldier, with a perfectly plain
overcoat like the rest, and nothing whatever
to distinguish him from the crowd. He was
unattended and moved quite freely with the
rest, and could not be recognized except by a few
of us standing near the door, who were already
familiar with his appearance. There was but little
cheering in consequence, though he acknow
ledged it in that modest and unaffected way
which always distinguishes him. It was then
that I saw the Grand Duke Nicholas for the
first time, the generalissimo in the war, a
magnificent man. He had certain announce
ments to make, or directions to give, and
his grand voice rang out on the clear air so
that every one could hear. "A real leader
of men that," one felt instinctively without
dreaming how soon one would have cause to
remember the thought, under tragically altered
circumstances. We cannot possibly attach too much impor
tance to the fact, admitted on all sides and in
the most unexpected quarters, that this great race, Q

114 Russian Life To-day
coming so very closely into our lives, uniting
their destiny in some measure with our own,
is above all others a distinctly religious people.
Russia, as must be ever becoming more and
more evident, is to be our ally in a way hitherto
entirely unknown to our race and nation.
Thoughtful observers have seen it coming for
some time, and are not taken at all by surprise,
but the idea is still new and not altogether
welcome to many. There is no doubt at all
about it in my own mind, and I shall return
to it more fully in a later chapter, that while
we shall still remain the friends of France and
act the part of true " friends in need " should
occasion again arise, and look with a friendly
eye upon other nationalities, and even — how
much I hope it — make up our quarrel with
Prussia and the German peoples she has in
fluenced against us, yet with Russia our rela
tions are already altogether different, and our
two empires are rapidly beginning to realize that
they are coming together in an entirely different
relationship, to knit up true and enduring ties
of brotherly unity with each other, not for
selfish purposes at all, but for a great work
together for civilization and for God. We
Anglo-Saxons are a deeply religious people at
heart, though with our temperamental reticence

Religious Life and Worship 115
and reserve we speak least about the things
of which we feel the most. The Russians are
also a sincerely religious people, and they, on
the other hand, bring out most readily, spon
taneously, and naturally, the things which mean
most to them. We are unlike each other in
temperament, yet absolutely like each other in
our view of the deep things of God. Thus
complementary to one another, we have a real
intelligible hope of a lasting friendship. We
should have no hope at all of any such
tie between ourselves and them if they did
not share our serious view of human life
and responsibility, and base that view upon
a firm belief in God. We should feel at
heart that we had no real confidence in their
stability, grit, and powers of staying and
lasting out.
Surely the one thing that has come out during
the war is the supreme importance of morale.
Napoleon went so far, I have seen it stated,
as to say it counted for an army, in proportion
to its numbers, as three to one. I remember
too how the military correspondent of the Times,
in one of his most interesting articles on the
Balkan War, when it was drawing to a close,
explained the disastrous defeat of the Turkish
army by the gradual loss of morale they had

1 1 6 Russian Life To-day
sustained by the decay of religion amongst them
under the regime of the Young Turks. Prayers
had been largely given up by the troops, who
no longer had the ministrations of their spiritual
leaders, and morale had gone in consequence.
Then had come disaster. He contrasted with
all this the tremendous fervour of the Balkan
League, and described a picture he had recently
seen in a French illustrated paper. Two French
officers were shown looking at a Bulgarian
regiment on their knees, their priest praying
for them and blessing them before they went
into action. " What would one of our generals
get," said one of the French officers to his
friend, " if he ordered such a thing as that ? "
" He would get the victory," quietly said the
other. I am expecting great things from Russia, and
for us through Russia, for civilization and for God,
and what I have written is being ever more and
more widely felt by others also, and even expressed
in daily papers, where at one time we should
not have expected such a thing to be thought
of in the midst of a great war. " That Russia
is one of the most truly religious countries
in the world is proved by the crowds which
filled and overflowed in all the churches
yesterday when thanksgiving services were held

Religious Life and Worship 117
in celebration of the victory, nor is it possible
to doubt the sincerity and demotion of the wor
shippers. The firm belief in the divine ruling
of the world is to be found among all
classes." 1
1 The Daily Mail correspondent at Petrograd, November
12, 1914.

CHAPTER VI
His Imperial Majesty the Tsar
ONE interesting figure has held the attention
of the Continent of Europe for many long
years, appealing to the imagination and baffling
comprehension, but will never fill the same place
again. Another, however, is coming forward very
possibly in his stead, withbut any wish or in
tention of his own, and that other is the Emperor
of Russia. He will do so, I believe, just as the
German Emperor has done, because history
affords him the opportunity, and because, like the
Kaiser, he too is a man who cherishes thoughts
of great purposes for his people and ideals for
himself. It affords me the greatest pleasure to write
about the Emperor — he is not usually spoken
of in Russian society as the Tsar — for I
shall always feel most deeply grateful to him
for his great personal kindness at my first
audience with him, and the great encourage
ment he gave me at the very beginning of my
work abroad. 118

Her Imperial Majesty the Tsaritsa.

Page 118.

His Imperial Majesty the Tsar 119
I have already explained the quaking spirit in
which I crossed the frontier. It so happened that
Russia was the first country I visited when
appointed to take charge of the jurisdiction, and,
as to so many others, there was something for
bidding to me in the very name of Russia. I knew
at that time also that my visitations would bring
me, as they have done, into contact with other
sovereigns, and with great personages in other
countries, and here at St. Petersburg I was to
begin with the most unknown and, as one
thought of his vast empire, most overwhelming
of them all. And then — but let me describe an
audience at the palace at Tsarskoe Selo, for it
will probably interest many a reader, and also
explain how very different from a somewhat
perturbed anticipation was the pleasurable reality.
I have taken care to satisfy myself beforehand
that I shall not be transgressing any of the rules
of court etiquette, nor be guilty of any breach of
confidence in so doing.
Audiences abroad are always arranged through
the British Embassy or Legation. Court dress
is worn in Russia, even though the reception
itself is perfectly informal, but, as court dress
for a bishop consists in being robed as for Easter
services, in red chimere, etc., there was no diffi
culty in providing it even for one who has to

120 Russian Life To-day
carry everything in a couple of bags, and for
months at a time.
Tsarskoe Selo — " The Tsar's village," the words
mean — is a little over half an hour by rail from
Petrograd, and 1 was instructed to start from the
Imperial Station in Petrograd, and there walked
over rich carpets, through saluting soldiers, to
the imperial train, most beautifully and comfort
ably arranged with smoking, writing, and reading
compartments. Upon arrival at Tsarskoe Selo
imperial carriages are always waiting for those
expected, with coachman and footman on the
box, wearing bright scarlet cloaks edged with
white fur and very smart cocked hats of red
and gold.
It was a typical Russian wintry day with a
tremendous blizzard blowing, and blinding snow
falling. Sentries were stationed at intervals
through the streets of the village, saluting all
the imperial carriages as they went by, although
no occupant could be seen ; and having passed
through it we entered the park and soon drew
up at the door of the small palace where the
Emperor always resides, and which, white itself,
looked that day like a fairy palace rising up amid
the snow.
Nothing could be more strikingly different
from that white world without, however, than

His Imperial Majesty the Tsar i2i
the warmth and richness of colour within. On
every side there were brilliant and unfamiliar
liveries and dazzlingly rich uniforms. An official,
of huge physique, wearing several medals, with
a broad gold band round his head, from which,
on its right side, stuck out a curious bunch of
dark feathers, in velvet and lace dress, and with
breeches and silk stockings — there was no one
the least like him in the crowd of attendants —
at once came forward and led me away to a
dressing-room in which to leave my furs and
change into my robes. He then conducted me
through one beautiful room after another, each
one richly furnished and adorned with beautiful
china, paintings, ikons, trophies, and presents from
different parts of the empire, until at length we
reached a small room where a number of officers
in brilliant uniforms were seated and evidently
in attendance.One of them, the Conte de Grabbe, at once
came forward and welcomed me, chatting
pleasantly until a servant, very quietly attired
like an English butler, came out from a room
opposite and, holding the door open, signified
that I was to enter.
There was no introduction or announcement
of any kind, and, as I entered, the Emperor was
already standing there to meet me, smiling

122 Russian Life To-day
pleasantly and encouragingly, with extended
hand. " It is very kind in your Imperial Majesty,"
I said, " to allow me to come and see you in
this informal way."
" It is very kind in you to come and see us,
bishop," he replied, so cheerily and unaffectedly,
that away went every bit of diffidence and sense
of constraint, and, to my great relief and grati
tude, I found myself talking as naturally as to
an intimate friend. I say " gratitude " because,
being put so entirely at ease, able to say all that
it was in my mind to say, and ask anything
that it was in my mind to wish to know,
enabled me to get a clear idea of the Emperor's
attractive personality, and even, as he spoke quite
freely, of some at least of the opinions and
principles which must rule his conduct and shape
his policy and government.
" He gives you confidence," a diplomatist who
had had many official audiences with him said
to me one day, and that exactly describes the
effect he produces. He talked freely of all
things before the public mind just then — of the
approaching Coronation of King George, for
whom he expressed a more than cousinly regard
and respect ; of domestic duties and family
life as the ideals which shape the destinies of

His Imperial Majesty the Tsar 123
races ; of the Russian Church, particularly
asking if its dignitaries had welcomed me ; of
our English Church ; of travelling ; of my own
impressions of Russia and other things. It was
quite astonishing afterwards to recall the ground
we had covered in that interview. And before I
left he inquired : —
" When will you be coming to Russia again,
bishop ? "
" Next year, sir," I said ; " for I believe I am
to go to Siberia."
" Siberia ! How interesting ! I've never yet
been to Siberia! Then you'll come and tell us
all about it when you return, won't you ? "
" I shall be much honoured, sir." And praying
God's blessing upon himself and the imperial
family, for which he thanked me as simply and
modestly as any other layman would have done,
I withdrew, feeling that it had been one of the
most helpful and memorable interviews I had
ever had.
I have been often asked if the Emperor is
not very much like our King, and it is a some
what difficult question to answer. As he stood
there that morning, in a simple pale blue uniform,
well set up and looking extraordinarily young
and boyish, and smilingly happy — so entirely
different from one's expectations — it did not

124 Russian Life To-day
occur to me to see any such likeness, but an
old courtier said to me, in speaking after
luncheon of " the resemblance which is so
much talked of" —
" There is no resemblance to be noticed when
their two Majesties are together, nor would there
be any striking likeness seen between their por
traits in colours, but in photographs or anything
that is black and white, just bringing out light
and shade, then the similarity is most remarkable,
you might easily mistake one for the other."
This puts one's own impressions very clearly.
There is a well-known photograph, circulated
as a postcard in Germany, and from a German
negative, of which I have a copy, in which the
two Emperors are shown in conversation on the
imperial yacht. Any one seeing it in English
hands would certainly think that it was our King
and the Kaiser, and be quite astonished at learn
ing it was not.
The Emperor received me the first time in
a very comfortable but simply furnished study,
and the last time, when, in accordance with his
invitation, I went to tell him about my two
missions to Siberia, in his billiard-room fitted up
as a study or library, and in which he led me to
the kind of window-seat which we know so well
in English country houses, looking out upon the

His Imperial Highness the Tsarevitch Alexei.

Page 125.

His Imperial Majesty the Tsar 125
park. Afterwards luncheon was served for me
in the Grand Palais of the Great Catherine, a
most magnificent and immense palace a little
distance away, full of interesting souvenirs of
Russia's past.
It is well known how many and different
rumours have been circulated during the last
two years about the heir to the throne, and it
seems rather a pity that the simple truth has
not been announced and made fully known
from the first, for I am assured on the best
authority in Petrograd, that the Tsarevitch suffers
from a skin affection not unknown, unfortunately,
to members of our royal family, which, as he is
a very high-spirited boy, difficult to watch and
caution, has in moments of exuberance and violent
exertion caused him to receive injuries which for
a time have been disabling.
When last at Tsarskoe Selo, before taking my
leave I took out some puzzles from my pocket,
made of wood and steel, quite inexpensive, as I
thought it likely they would be most welcome
because most unfamiliar, and handing them to
the Emperor, said : —
" I have brought the Tsarevitch a present, sir,
and I bring it out with much hesitation, for it is
a very simple one, and I know he must have had
many beautiful and costly gifts this Christmas."

126 Russian Life To-day
" Not at all," he said ; "we bring him up very
simply, and he loves puzzles. He and I used up
all we could get, especially those jig-saw puzzles,
while he was ill. These, I see, are new."
" 1 hope," I said, " that he is now better ? "
" Yes," he said, " he is ; he 's quite well now —
quite well," he repeated with emphasis.
The Emperor speaks English perfectly, fluently,
and with ease, and I have been told that it is the
language most generally, if not always, used in
the ordinary daily life of the imperial family.
I have taken up some time in giving these
personal impressions, but I think it is quite
worth while to do so just now as the Emperor
was so particularly gracious and kind, and thus
enabled me to form some idea of what he is,
just as a man and a father in his own home ;
and that I know will appeal to my own country
men when wondering what is likely to be his
policy and aim as a ruler of a vast empire.
A man can only do what he is, whether he be
in the highest or the lowest positions in the
world ; and he always brings out, sooner or
later, what he is at heart. It must therefore
be a very great source of confidence to us all
just now, when we believe that the providence
of God has brought the British and the Russian
Empires together, not for temporary, but for

His Imperial Majesty the Tsar 127
enduring objects, to know, as 1 feel we may
consider that we do know, that the Emperor
of all the Russias is a man we can all respect
and trust, precisely as we respect and trust our
own Sovereign — as one whose ideals are those
of domestic duty and family life on the one
hand, and the real interests and well-being of
the labouring and toiling millions of his people
on the other.
A somewhat scandalous book was written last
year which I won't mention by name, lest curiosity
should lead those who have not read it to do so,
which gave a most unfavourable impression of the
Emperor and the imperial family. It was not,
however, written by an Englishman ; and, with
out questioning in any way the writer's bona fides,
I am bound to say, and very confidently and
energetically, that I have never yet met one of
my own countrymen who has had to do with
the Emperor of Russia, financially, diplomatically,
or in audience, who has not expressed himself to
me about him in the same appreciative terms
as I have here used myself.
Take, for instance, what Sir Donald Mackenzie
Wallace has written only a few months ago.1
"The antiquated idea that Tsars are always
heartless tyrants who devote much of their time
1 Our D^ew Jlly.

128 Russian Life To-day
in sending troublesome subjects to Siberia, is now
happily pretty well exploded, but the average
Englishman is still reluctant to admit that an
avowedly autocratic government may be, in cer
tain circumstances, a useful institution. There
is no doubt, however, that in the gigantic work
of raising Russia to her present level of civiliza
tion, the Tsars have played a most important
part. As for the present Tsar, he has followed,
in a humane spirit, the best traditions of his
ancestors. Any one who has had opportunities
of studying closely his character and aims, and
who knows the difficulties with which he has had
to contend, can hardly fail to regard him with
sympathy and admiration. Among the qualities
which would commend him to Englishmen are
his scrupulous honesty and genuine truthfulness.
Of these — were I not restrained by fear of com
mitting a breach of confidence — I might give some
interesting illustrations.
"As a ruler, Nicholas II habitually takes a
keen, sympathetic interest in the material and
moral progress of his country ; and is ever ready
to listen attentively and patiently to those who
are presumably competent to offer sound advice
on the subject. At the same time he is very
prudent in action ; and this happy combination
of zeal and caution, which distinguishes him

His Imperial Majesty the Tsar 129
from his too impetuous countrymen, has been
signally displayed in recent years. During the
revolutionary agitation which followed close on
the disastrous Japanese War, when the impetuous
would-be reformers wished to overturn the whole
existing fabric of administration, and the timid
counsellors recommended vigorous retrograde
measures, he wisely steered a middle course,
which has resulted in the creation of a moderate
form of parliamentary institutions."
I am not alone, therefore, in the very favour
able impression 1 have formed of the Russian
Emperor as a man whom the best of my own
countrymen may respect as one like-minded with
themselves in his views of life and conduct, and
his own countrymen thoroughly trust as a con
stitutional ruler who, though determined, as he
will be advised by his most trusted counsellors,
to go cautiously, yet is convinced that a good
government's one and chief concern is the
well-being of those who are governed, and
especially of those who form the lowest class
in its social scale.
Like Sir Donald Wallace, I too could give
instances of the Emperor's straightforward and
generous action which show the essential right-
mindedness of his nature in a very striking way,
if it were possible to do so without breach of

130 Russian Life To-day
confidence. Especially was this the case in a
particular instance of which 1 know, when it
was a question of putting his own interests, and
even dignity, in a very secondary position. It
was one, indeed, in which no great ruler could
be expected or asked to do so, but when he
learnt himself what was involved he at once did
so subordinate his own interests, and has earned
in consequence the lasting gratitude of all con
cerned, and their entire and loyal confidence.
The Russian people are intensely loyal, and,
as the overwhelming majority are of the peasant
class, their loyalty is of that simple, fervid, and
trusting character which is seen in their family
and village life. They do not speak of the
" Emperor " so much as of " The Little Father,"
and that is how they feel towards him. He is
the father of his people and they are his
children. If there is anything they object to in
legislation it is always put down to officialdom,
just as our own Colonies, before the days when
they began to "think imperially," used to vent
all their displeasure upon "Downing Street"
when unwelcome legislation took place, and
never upon Queen Victoria (or her govern
ment), for whom they had the greatest respect
and affection. The Russian peasant too murmurs
loudly at times against the governors and their

His Imperial Majesty the Tsar 131
subordinates when he is requested to do some
thing that he does not like, but with a solacing
reflection to himself that "The Little Father
would put everything right if he only knew."
There is disaffection and serious disloyalty
in other quarters, and I shall try my best to
describe it and what may very possibly be some of
its causes, in my chapter on " Russia's Problem,"
but the dangerous disaffection, probably already
beginning to pass away, is confined to a few of
the largest towns, and does not in any way
affect the overwhelming majority of the Em
peror's subjects, who are entirely devoted to
him and patriotically loyal.
This ought to be remembered also when we
are thinking over future relations between our
own people and theirs. The Russians are not
a downtrodden and oppressed people struggling
to throw off the yoke of a harsh and despotic
rule, but are contented, loyal, and law-abiding.
They do not, however, show their loyalty by
any outward expressions such as the "All
Highest," and others with which we have been
made familiar in the addresses and letters of
Germans of high rank, office, and birth, during
the war. No such terms exist or are thought
of amongst the subjects of the Emperor of
Russia. The word Tsar occurs, I believe, in

132 Russian Life To-day
the National Anthem, and Tsaritsa is used
occasionally, while there is no such word as
Tsarina in the language. But neither Tsar,
Emperor, Tsaritsa, or Empress are used, I am
told, amongst the ordinary people. They speak
of " Gosudar " and " Gosudarina," which mean
Lord and Lady, or Sir and Madame, and in
such general use are these terms, I believe, that
a man writing a business letter to a tradesman
would begin " Gracious Gosudar." The Tsare
vitch Alexis is spoken of amongst the people
by a word in perfectly common use, which is
no more than the ordinary word for "heir."
Loyalty and great respect, it would seem, are
quite consistent with great familiarity of thought
and expression.
The Emperor is probably spoken of more
frequently as Nicolai Alexandrovitch — " Nicholas,
son of Alexander " — than by any other title, and
I feel sure that the Grand Duke Nicholas, Com
mander-in-Chief, and his doings at head-quarters,
have been spoken of all over Russian plains and
Siberian steppes this winter as familiarly and as
proudly as of some one who had gone from
their own village. " Ah ! Nicolai Nicolaievitch !
What a man he is ! How well he has fought
this war ! How proud we are of him ! " etc.,
etc. I was told lately of a touching incident

His Imperial Majesty the Tsar 133
which occurred at a great service in Russia (the
translation of the remains of a great saint) at
which the Grand Duchess Serge was present,
and, when she arrived, had gone quietly up
to a gallery pew, arranged for her and other
great ladies. Soon afterwards an old peasant
woman, to whom she had once shown a kind
ness, arrived, and at once began to inquire : —
" Has Elizabeth come yet ? " — the Grand
Duchess's Christian name — " I want Elizabeth.
She told me when next 1 came where she was to
be sure and ask for her. Where's Elizabeth ?"
The Grand Duchess in her exalted gallery
caught something of what was going on, and,
hearing her own name, at once came down.
" Here I am, little mother ! " And then
with " Dear Elizabeth ! " the old woman threw
her arms about her neck and began her story.
Such a thing is only possible in Russia, and
yet it is the one country in the world where
we have always been led to think that between
the highest and the lowest there is that "great
gulf fixed," which if not bridged over in this
life by sympathy and love, has little hope of
being passed in the world to come.
Rank and position and high office if worthily
filled need no buttressing up. Least of all
need those who hold them give themselves airs.

134 Russian Life To-day
Their office is enough in itself; and last year,
when I had a large party of German youths to
take about London, and by the kindness of
those concerned took them to see one or two
great places where they were most courteously
and graciously received — they were the sons of
working men in Frankfurt — I was more than
pleased to hear one of them say to his friend,
" I notice that in England the higher the rank
the less the pretence." So it is in Russia. The
more exalted the position the more unaffected
and simple the one who fills it !
The Grand Duchess Elizabeth, daughter of
our own Princess Alice, is probably the best
known and the best loved woman in all Mos
cow, indeed in all Russia, and hereafter will, in
all probability, have "Saint" prefixed to her name.
Many do not hesitate to use it even now. Her
sad experiences appealed most powerfully to the
people's sympathies when she was so tragically
widowed a few years ago. Her husband, the
Grand Duke Serge, Governor of Moscow, had
become extremely unpopular with certain classes,
and it was well known that his life was in
danger ; but he knew no fear, and drove out
constantly in an open carriage in which the
Grand Duchess insisted upon accompanying him.
It is said that at length a letter was written to

His Imperial Majesty the Tsar 135
him advising him to leave her behind if he
valued her life, and adding significantly, "We
have no quarrel with her, nor anything against
her." She was, therefore, from that time left
at home, his secretary asking to be allowed to
go in her place. Again the same kind of letter
was received, and he too was left behind ; and
the Grand Duke, who was no coward, deter
mined to go alone. And then, on the first
morning he did so, and not far from his own
door, the fatal bomb was thrown, and did its
work so effectually that there was nothing left
to be seen ! He was literally " blown to
atoms." Every one in Moscow is said to have
heard the terrific explosion, and knew at once.
"They have him at last ! " The Grand Duchess
heard also and rushed immediately to the scene.
It may be questioned whether any other woman
has ever had such an ordeal as that to face !
She had just seen her husband drive away from
his home, and in a few moments there was
nothing left ! I believe a finger with his signet
ring was subsequently found, but that was all.
Moscow, which had always respected and
admired her, at once gave her whole-hearted
sympathy, which soon became a deep and true
affection as they learnt that she had determined
to give her whole life and income to their poor.

136 Russian Life To-day
She founded the first order which has been
introduced into Russia for women's work
amongst the sick and poor. When I was last
in Moscow, she explained to me its character,
and it seemed to me to be a blend of the
Tertiaries of S. Francis and the deaconesses
of the primitive church, though the latter is the
model she has wished to follow. She told me
she had ninety-six sisters in the order now,
and that whilst some sick were brought into
their own wards many were visited in their
own homes. It is this visiting work that she
hopes most to develop as time goes on. She
is, of course, by Baptism and Confirmation a
member of our own Church, and is full of
interest and sympathy towards it, and usually
attends the Abbey service when in London,
though she joined the Orthodox Church of
Russia during her married life. This, she told
me, was without any influence being brought
to bear upon her, and entirely from conviction
that it was best for her own religious life in
her adopted country.
She wore the simple and grey habit of her
order, and it was difficult to realize that she
was a princess of the blood, and sister-in-law
to the Emperor himself, as she spoke, so simply
and humbly about her work, and what she

His Imperial Majesty the Tsar 137
hoped still with the blessing of God to do.
She does not cut herself off, however, from life's
ordinary relationships, for when later at Tsarskoe
Selo, I told the Emperor that I had been able
to see her and hear about her work, he said,
" She is coming to spend a fortnight with us
this very afternoon."
That is what one meets everywhere in Russia,
the unconventional and the natural. The superior
of a new order, which is an entirely fresh de
parture, would be expected in any other country
to give up everything else in the way of social and
family relationships. But in Russia, if a perfectly
natural thing like a visit to near relations suggests
itself as desirable the visit is duly paid.
It is so always ! The splendid and the
simple, high rank and humble birth seem to find
themselves close together, the rich and the poor
unite so easily in a common interest. " A
gorgeous imperial procession was passing through
the palace hall," writes one who saw it at Tsar
skoe Selo as a specially grand function, " and
two or three maid-servants appeared at the
head of a little staircase to look on, wearing
print dresses. No one told them to go away." r
No one would think of it.
The Emperor loves the simple folk he governs,
1 Rothay Reynolds, My Russian Tear.

138 Russian Life To-day
and showed it plainly when in the earlier part
of his reign he moved freely amongst them,
standing next to peasants and workmen in
Moscow, when he stepped into a church to
pray. And after he returned from our own
country, from the marriage of King George, I
read the other day, " somebody asked him what
had impressed him most. ' The crowd outside
Buckingham Palace waiting to see Queen
Victoria drive out,' he said. ' There they
waited, hour after hour, and at last a little black
carriage came out of the palace-gates. Very few
of the people in the crowd could see the Queen,
but they knew that she was there, and they
went away satisfied. One day it will be like
that in Russia.' " And the writer adds : " I
do not think the Emperor's prophecy is likely
to be realized in his lifetime ; but a day will
come when his subjects will forget the mistakes
that have been made in his name, and recognize
that they owe to him great reforms." I fancy
in subsequent editions, for his book well deserves
to have them, he will alter those words into
" I feel sure that he will live to see it, and not
have long to wait."

Her Imperial Highness the Grand Duchess Elizabeth-
The Friend of the Poor.

Page 139.

CHAPTER VII
A Paternal Government
TWO years ago, when I was in conversation
with one of our leading diplomatists, who
has a very intimate knowledge of the Russian
people, their Emperor and governing classes,
I asked him, " Do you not think that the Russian
government is the most paternal in its aim and
character of all the governments in Europe ? "
" Of course I do," he replied ; and rather
excitedly added, " But when I even hint at such
a view of Russian methods to our own country
men here at home they regard me as if I had
taken leave of my senses, and look at me with
an incredulous and pitying eye."
It is no wonder that this should be so when
our own people still, for the most part, look
upon Russia as the land of the knout and
banishment, with an oppressive and despotic
government which on the least suspicion seizes
upon unoffending victims and consigns them to
Siberia and the mines, where, chained together,
they drag out their lingering existence in
i39

140 Russian Life To-day
unfamiliar and degrading toil. No words arc
wasted, it is believed, upon the weak and
ineffective, but the lash comes stingingly down
upon their shoulders. Harsh legislation is the
rule, it is thought, and if perchance people rise up
in masses against it, as they do from time to time,
the dreaded Cossack sweeps through the streets,
and, at terrible cost to human life, clears them.
Again and again I find this is the prevailing idea
of Russia, as I am asked if I am not afraid to
travel there ; and something like it, I have
candidly admitted, was my own impression
before I went there and saw things for myself.
But nothing could be more unlike the actual
reality. The relations of the governing and governed
in Russia are really paternal on the one hand
and filial on the other, and I hope that I may
be able to induce my readers to believe that is
true of the greater part of the whole population.
In the first place, the knout is long since
gone. No such thing exists now, except as a
curiosity, in the whole of Russia, nor has it been
used officially since the days of the present
Emperor's great grandfather !
Next there are the convicts. It is now twenty-
five years since Mr. Harry de Windt, the well-
known traveller, disproved the lurid accounts

A Paternal Government 141
which had been given a short time before of
the horrors of Siberian prisons. In his book
of 1903 he says, "I have always maintained that
were I sentenced to a term of penal servitude
I would infinitely prefer to serve it in (some
parts of) Siberia than in England." When he
puts these words in brackets he is thinking, of
course, of the severity of climate and distance
from frequented routes, and not of the treatment
of the prisoners. He tells at length — space does
not permit me to quote freely as I would like
to do — how even criminal convicts are well
cared for ; and that even the murderers and
murderesses amongst them, for there is no
capital punishment in Russia, are lodged in
wards which are clean and well warmed ; that
there is a comfortable infirmary connected with
a prison, and even a home close at hand,
supported by private subscription, for children
of the prisoners.
Mr. Foster Fraser also, in his book on The
Real Siberia — perhaps one of the best known
of modern works on that part of the empire —
tells us that having been more " thrilled " as a
boy by what he had read about Siberian prisons
than by Red Indian stories, and knowing that
people, the world over, were in the habit of
saying, " Only Russia could be so cruel,

142 Russian Life To-day
a civilized country would shrink from such
barbarities," determined to go and see for
himself, and, as is usual with those who go
to Russia full of prejudice and dread, the scales
fell from his eyes when he visited Irkutsk prison.
He found to his surprise that, " It was not
the gloomy, sullen-stoned, slit-windowed, iron-
barred structure such as are our prisons at home " ;
and he describes at length a system which will
compare favourably with any other prisons in
the world, as to discipline, but surpasses them
all in friendliness and freedom from con
straint. "What attracted me was the informal
relationship between governor and prisoners.
The men talked without any restraint, made
requests and even jests." But the climax of
his experiences of " Siberian horrors " came
when he asked to see the women prisoners,
and was taken to the " best house in the
place," where, on going into the yard, he saw
some women " sitting about, and some children
playing with a kitten."
" I'll send for the matron," said the governor.
" Is this the prison ? " I asked in some amaze
ment. " Yes — this is the only prison we have in
Irkutsk for women."
" It was just a large-sized ordinary house," he

A Paternal Government 143
goes on, " abutting on the street, but not a single
soldier to see. I couldn't help laughing," he
adds, for the women, who numbered about forty,
and had twenty children with them, represented
offences which ranged from petty theft up to
murder, the five or six murderesses being much
the same as the others in appearance and
character as far as could be seen. Mr. Fraser
felt it was absurd to call such a place a prison,
and asked : —
" Do you really mean to say that these women
don't go away ? "
And then his amazement was complete when
he was told that one had surprised them very
much, a little while before, by going off, but had
surprised them even more by coming back after
a day or two and telling them that she had
wanted to see a man she was rather fond of
and have a week-end with him, as men visitors
were not allowed on Sundays, the visiting day !
It will be conceded, I think, by my most
prejudiced reader, that Russia does not seem
to be unduly harsh in her dealings with even
her worst type of criminals !
Next let me speak of " politicals," as we may
call them. It is nearly two years ago since
a meeting was organized in London to protest
in the name of civilization — very strong language

144 Russian Life To-day
indeed was used in the preliminary circular —
against Russia's treatment of her political
prisoners ; and one who holds very high office
in London, and whom it was specially desired
to have present, did me the honour of asking
my advice about attending it, as I had just
returned from Siberia. I replied at once, and
pointed out how very difficult and delicate the
work of embassies and legations is made when
such meetings of protest are held in the countries
they represent, and that we should deeply resent
meetings of a similar kind being held in other
countries with respect to methods of our own.
We are open to criticism ourselves at times,
every one will admit ! I gave it as my opinion
also that the statements of the circular were
greatly exaggerated. Wishing later to be assured
that this was so, I questioned a Russian of high
rank in diplomacy, who at once said : —
"Suppose you go and see for yourself the
next time you are in Siberia. Visit any mines
you wish, or prisons either, and the Russian
government shall afford you all facilities."
This I am hoping to do this very year, if all 's
well, and so, though I have seen convicts for
myself in Siberia, yet what I have to say here
now is not at first hand, but still it will be on
the best authority in every case, and when I

Characteristic Group of Russians.

Page 144.

A Paternal Government 145
can I will give names. It was quite a revelation
to me as I listened, on my first visit to Russia,
%o the statements I heard on all sides whenever
banishment to Siberia was mentioned.
" But surely you know what that means ?
No ? Well, for ordinary political offenders
who are either suspect or actually giving offence,
and making government difficult, all that it
means is that they have to go and live in Siberia,
where their wives and families follow them.
Their property is not seized nor income forfeited.
It can all be realized, and so they can live as
comfortably there as in Russia. There are people
indeed who prefer to live in Siberia after they
have gone there. After a few years or so, if
they like to escape they can do so, and no one
interferes. They can live where they please, but
they must not return to Russia."
That did not seem a very hard fate, nor can
it be said to be a very undeserved one, for every
one must feel that the government of a country
so vast is beset with difficulties and must, in the
present state of its population, be firm, and not
hesitate at strong measures against those plotting
against it. I know myself, in a recent case too,
which caused much excitement in this country,
warning after warning was given to enable the
offender to leave the country before arrest took

146 Russian Life To-day
place, and even after the sentence unexpected
indulgence and clemency were shown.
Let me now quote straight from Mr. Foster
Fraser's book, written by one who tells us frankly
that he " went to Siberia with the average
Britisher's prejudice against things Russian, but
with eyes open," and determined to see things
for himself.
" The political prisoners are given the best part
of the country to live in, namely, in the west.
Other prisoners are exiled nearer to the icy
regions according to the gravity of their offence.
The political prisoners may practise handicrafts,
and, by special permission, medicine. A
' political ' is not identified with the criminal
any more than a debtor is identified with a felon
in England. Such offenders do not travel with
other prisoners in a gang. A ' political ' may
be on a train going into exile ; but no one knows
it besides himself and the members of the police
travelling in the same carriage. Politicals get
about £1. ioi. a month from the government,
but this varies according to the district to
which they are sent. Wives who accompany
their husbands are allowed 36 lb. of bread a
month, but must submit to the regulations of
the hope. If all goes well with a ' political ' he
gets permission to settle in some Siberian town

A Paternal Government 147
with his family, but any allowance from the
government then ceases. He is just the same
as any other resident, save that he can never
leave Siberia. If he wishes to farm, the govern
ment will give him a plot of land and money to
work it. But this money must be paid back by
instalments." He states, as will be seen, " he
can never leave Siberia," but what, I fancy, was
really meant by his informant was " never return
to Russia." We can hardly think, in a land
where the executive is so indulgent as to allow
a dangerous criminal to " week-end " with a
friend, that they will be less considerate to a
political of good character wishing to go to a
better climate and letting it be understood that
Russia would not be the place selected. There
is the human touch about everything in that
country of spacious and large ideas, and it is not
lacking either in the treatment of political
offenders or with other criminals and felons also.
Mr. Harry de Windt is not only explicit but
even amusing and entertaining as he tells us
what he found at Yakutsk, which is quite remote
enough from civilization, on the great Lena post
road, to make one feel that the lot of the banished
there must be sad indeed ; but at the same time
we can enter a little, perhaps, into his feelings of
amazement when he found that "the political

148 Russian Life To-day
exiles there seemed to be no worse off, socially,
than any one else, for they moved about in
society and were constantly favoured guests
of the Chief of Police. The exiles, however,
were not permitted to take part in the private
theatricals I have mentioned, a restriction which
caused them great annoyance. Their loud and
unfavourable criticisms from the stalls on the
evening in question were certainly not in the
best of taste, and, to my surprise, they were
not resented by the governor's staff." This inci
dent will show that, in Yakutsk at any rate, the
" politicals " are treated not only with leniency
but with a friendly courtesy, which on this
occasion was certainly abused. Mr. Olenin, an
exile whose term of banishment was expiring,
told me that he had no fault whatever to find
with Yakutsk as a place of exile, so much so
that he had resolved not to return to Russia at
the end of his sentence, but to remain here and
complete an ethnological work upon which he
was engaged. I don't think that " harshness and
barbarity" are words that can be appropriately
used for a discipline that permits attendances at
" private theatricals " where politicals are so
much at ease that they indulge in loud and
unfavourable criticisms in the presence of the
governor's staff, and go out as favoured guests

A Paternal Government 149
to dinner parties given by the Chief of the
Police! A few months ago, however, I had my last
and great surprise as to Russia, in learning —
what strangely enough is not yet known to
many Russians of experience and official rank —
that convict labour in mines is entirely abandoned
now, and has been for some years ! It was
found to be both unprofitable and impracticable
as modern ideas of mining advanced. It was
clearly a great waste of time to march gangs
to the "pit's mouth," as they call it in our
own mining districts, and remove their chains
before sending them down, putting them on
when they came up again. Then no blasting
is now done without dynamite ; and that, clearly,
was a dangerous substance to hand over to
criminals. Again, they are of all classes, and
but few could ever have worked in mines before,
and not having either technical knowledge or
experience, their work would be unprofitable.
Convict labour below ground has been given
up for some time in consequence. Prisoners
now, when sent out to Siberia, are only required
to work above ground, though they may go into
the mines if they choose, and have fitness for
the work, and can be trusted. They are all
allowed and encouraged to hire themselves out,

150 Russian Life To-day
receiving the market price for their work, and
so being able to obtain little comforts for them
selves. As far as I have been able to consider
the experiences of reliable authorities, I feel
convinced that when able to see for myself I
too shall say I would far rather serve a term
of imprisonment with hard labour amongst the
convicts of Siberia than in Dartmoor or Portland.
There is far more of the human touch in the
former, and a man does not suffer in his manhood
in the same way there as he does in the English,
French, Belgian, and Central American prisons I
have known.
How, then, are we to account for all the well-
known stories of miseries and sufferings associated
with that lone, and in winter very terrible land ?
Most of us read in our youthful days Elizabeth,
or the Exiles of Siberia, and since then have
always spoken of " the Siberian mines," and
" banishment " with bated breath ! How have
such impressions so gained ground that the very
name of Russia has taken us straightway out of
Europe into Asia to thoughts of the severest and
most hopeless criminal punishments in the world ?
I should say that the explanation is to be found,
very possibly, in the methods used before arrest.
What is called "administrative procedure" has
long been the usual way of dealing with suspected

A Paternal Government 151
political offenders. A man or woman is arrested,
and without public trial is removed to Siberia,
and there required to live under police super
vision. Arrests are made at any time. "A man
may be seated quietly at home with his family,
in his office, or at some place of public entertain
ment, when a touch upon his shoulder summons
him away." There are no press reports of his
trial or examination, which is conducted in private,
nor any appeal from it, and there have been, and
perhaps are still, cases where a suspected offender's
family remain in ignorance of what has happened
to him, or where he is. The thought of such
a disappearance from the midst of family and
friends is enough to chill any heart, and even if
Russia does consider it necessary to deal thus
summarily with those who are enemies of social
order and the well-being of the State, without
being unduly harsh in her treatment of them
when they are exiled, one may very well hope
that what have been called the " underground
methods " of her police may soon be entirely
laid aside. It is still consistent, I submit, with
the aim of a paternal government to remove at
once, and with no uncertain or hesitating hand,
those who are considered the most dangerous
elements in its social life, and the enemies of its
stability and well-being.

152 Russian Life To-day
It was in Siberia, however, that I learnt the
positive side of Russia's care for her peasant and
working population. There I found, as soon as
I looked into the working of a great company,
that it was necessary to have a Russian engineer,
in addition to the one employed by the staff,
who is held responsible by the governor of the
district for the inspection of all machinery and the
arrangements made for securing those employed
from unnecessary risk and danger. A police
officer of a superior class is attached to the staff
also, not only to maintain order, but to receive
any complaints and transmit them if serious to
higher authorities. The government distinctly
interferes in order to guard the interests of its
working class, and though sometimes the presence
of another engineer or the police official may
seem irksome, our countrymen recognize loyally
that the government have no wish to be vexatious,
but only to fulfil their duty to their own people.
Then next I found, also in Siberia, how extra
ordinarily kind and helpful all officials are to
colonists, who are not always easy to deal with
when travelling or settling down in a new country.
They take things for granted and expect much,
and yet are never disappointed ; officials of
every class, and especially on railways, being
unfailing in patience, tact, good-nature, and good-

A Group of Russian Peasants.

Page 152.

A Paternal Government 153
humour. The working folk on a train, in their
third or fourth classes, are always treated with
indulgence and kindly consideration.
1 read the following in the Statist last year,
finding later that it was contributed by a friend
of mine : —
" Government emigration offices are situated
all over Russia in Europe. These supply would-
be settlers in Siberia with information as to water
supply, timber, fuel, distances from market, etc.
Intending settlers choose some of their number,
at the expense of the government, to inspect the
different tracts of land parcelled out for settle
ment, and select areas considered suitable for the
settlers. This may take a whole year, and the
deputed settlers return and report to their fellows.
A petition is then sent in to the government —
say that 100 men want to go to such and such
a place. Then the government marks on the
map that this land has been apportioned to the
applicants, and it is set aside for them accordingly.
The land is given free up to 275 acres per head.
Each man thus has his own land. He cannot
sell it, and it cannot be mortgaged either, though
he get into debt. The land is his as long as he
cares to work it. For special purposes, horse
and cattle breeding, the government now permits
larger areas up to 10,000 acres to be acquired,

154 Russian Life To-day
and helps settlers in this connection by providing,
for breeding purposes, thoroughbred stallions and
Jersey bulls. The government send the settlers
down passage free, and as the people are simply
peasants, doctors and nurses are provided to
look after them and treat them for sickness, etc.
Further, the settlers are given in certain cases
a sum up to £20 to reach their destination.
They are allowed, carriage free, to take one cow,
implements, and other goods for their purposes.
The government gives them free timber for
house building, though the settlers have to cut
it themselves. Should the settlers be short of
money or funds for buying horses, ploughs, etc.,
they can get a credit through the Land Bank up
to £20, which they have to pay back in instal
ments spread over a long period."
Does not a government which thus develops
its country and moves its working population in
vast numbers from places where they are not
doing well to other places where they may do
better well deserve to be called " fatherly " in
its care for their interests ?
It is well known to those who have been
watching Russia's progress that she has of late,
and especially last year, been drawing upon her
enormous revenues and taking advantage of
her unexampled prosperity, as one of the best-

A Paternal Government 155
informed journalists in Europe x has stated, " for
public works, railways, and canals, factories,
schools, post offices, model farms and reform
measures for the improvement of the lot of the
working man." It was in the interests of her
working poor that one of the most costly and
far-reaching experiments ever undertaken by a
government, at great financial sacrifice to itself,
was launched just before war was declared — the
legislation concerning vodka.
It surely is an inspiring thought that we and
our new friend may tread the path of social
reform together just when it has become alike
the need and opportunity of our time ! There
is nothing so certain than that it is along this
path that our two sovereigns will gladly lead
us. We in our country have never before had
King and Queen visiting the manufacturing
districts of their realm, acquainting themselves
with every detail of daily work, going simply
and naturally into homes, and sharing the humble
fare of the working classes. We have never had
a king before — without reflecting upon any who
have preceded him we may say it — who has
gone amongst his soldiers and sailors, as one of
themselves, crossing over to the front that he
might see how they did, and show them that he
1 Dr. E. J. Dillon.

156 Russian Life To-day
was determined to know for himself the con
ditions under which they were so nobly doing
their duty, so that they should not only have
his leadership but all the sympathy he could
give them.
It has been just the same in Russia. There,
at last, has come the great departure from pre
cedent and tradition for which the Emperor has
always longed and felt to be possible since he
came to London and said, " Some day it will be
like that in Russia ! " The " some day " has
come at last. One felt it when he went into
the Duma last year at the outbreak of the war,
and, on his own initiative alone, addressed its
members informally on the task of serving their
country together. Other things have followed in
quick succession ! The Empress and her daugh
ters became nurses at once as soon as the wounded
soldiers began to be brought in. They wore the
uniform, and were addressed as Sister Olga or
Sister Tatiana like every one else, although the
Russian Court has been held to be the most exact
ing and punctilious court in Europe. Again and
again the Emperor has been to the front, endear
ing himself to his soldiers, to whom it is known
that he equipped himself in a common soldier's
uniform, before he passed it, with kit, rifle, and
boots complete, and tramped miles across the

A Paternal Government 157
country that he might know what it was like to
be on the march.
Does it make no difference to Ivan Ivanoff to
say to himself on the march when he thinks of
his Emperor, " He knows what it 's like, for he 's
done it himself ? Somewhere he 's thinking about
his soldiers, and he knows." He was photographed
in their uniform, just as one of themselves, and
the photograph was distributed amongst the troops.
" God save the Tsar ! " is the one clamorous cry
of the streets in Russia to-day, we are told. The
Emperor and Empress show themselves in a
balcony in Petrograd as naturally as King George
and Queen Mary show themselves at Buck
ingham Palace when the crowd ask for them.
Such a thing has never been seen, or even
thought of, before in Russia. The last time the
Emperor came up from the Crimea to the capital,
there were soldiers within speaking distance of
each other along the entire length of rail, keeping
watch and guard. Soon he will go about
unattended, and without escort ; and as it was
with Queen Victoria, so "it will be like that
in Russia."
Again, I want to dwell upon this link between
us, and its tremendous promise for the future.
The two greatest rulers in the world, closely
and affectionately related, have the same ideals

158 Russian Life To-day
of what rulers should be, and want nothing better
than to lead and serve their people ; and God, in
His providence, has given them at the same time
both the power and opportunity for doing this
splendid work together.
Never, probably, has the monarchical principle,
in its best aspect, been so intelligently accepted in
both empires as now. A near relation of the
Emperor's, though much his senior, was telling
me once of a recent visit he had paid to England,
and of some of his experiences in the East End,
where, under the guidance of a detective, he had
visited some of the worst haunts.
" And do you know, bishop ? " he said, " I
learnt from that detective that everybody in
London showed their respect for King Edward,
at his death, by going into mourning ; and the
very thieves stole black to mourn him with the
rest ! There 's the monarchical principle, going
down even to the lowest classes in the nation ! "
"But, sir," I ventured, "I don't think that
men of that class would be thinking of him as
a ruler, but as a sportsman."
" No ! no ! " he maintained. " It was the
monarchical principle going down to the very
lowest of the people ! " And I am sure he
thinks so, and tells the story to enforce it.
There can be no doubt that the monarchical

A Paternal Government 159
principle, as we understand it, makes rapid pro
gress in Russia. The Emperor has always been
an autocrat, but his worst enemy could not accuse
him of ever having been merely despotic ; and
surely, though gradually, he will be less and less
an autocrat, and more and more constitutional in
his rule. He meets the needs and satisfies the
ideals of his people, as he embodies in his person
government and rule. If any one thinks that
Russia has a seething revolutionary spirit longing
for expression and an outlet, I can't help feeling
that they are utterly and entirely mistaken. Serious
discontent and unrest prevail ; but, as I will try
and show later, it is directed against the social
order rather than against the Emperor himself.
Plots to kill him have been plots to overturn the
social order, and nothing more.
Even political exiles in Siberia never blame him
for their condition, as Mr. de Windt tells us :
" I never once heard members of the imperial
family spoken of with the slightest animosity or
disrespect ; and once when the Emperor was
mentioned one of the exiles burst out with a
bitter laugh —
" ' The Emperor ! You may be quite sure the
Emperor does not know what goes on, or we
should not be here a day longer.' "
The people are wholly loyal, and regard their

160 Russian Life To-day
ruler as embodying a government which is in their
own interests as being his children. There can be
no doubt that this is the feeling throughout the
empire, however difficult it may be for some
classes in our community to believe it.
For instance, as it has been pointed out,1
"When not long ago in the House of Com
mons it was debated whether or no the King
should pay a visit to the Emperor of Russia,
and some one suggested that were the visit to
be cancelled the immense majority of the Rus
sian people would regard it as an insult, and
that the Russian peasants bore no ill-will towards
the Emperor, but rather complained of the results
of a system of government which in the last few
years has undergone, and is still undergoing,
radical change. When such arguments were
brought forward some of the Labour Members
nearly burst with ironical cheers. Here, they
thought, was the voice of officialdom, Torydom,
a,nd hypocrisy speaking. Now turn to the facts.
When Professor Kovolievski was elected a mem
ber of the first Duma in the government of
Karkov as an advanced Liberal Member, he,
after his election, asked some of his peasant
electors whether he was not right in supposing
that had he said anything offensive with regard
1 The Hon. Maurice Baring.

A Paternal Government 161
to the Emperor at his meetings there would
have been no applause.
"'We should not only have not applauded,'
was the answer, ' but we should have beaten
you to death.' "
There is nothing of the merely sentimental
in this feeling that their government is, and
ought to be, paternal in its character. Every
Russian peasant drinks it in from the first, for
he gets his training in the Mir of his native
village. It is there he learns what family and
social rule really mean, and they are identical.
His home is ruled by his father, the village
by the elder ; and everything is as constitutional
and as democratic as it can be, or is anywhere
else in the world. The children have their
rights, but look up to and obey their father.
They are free and responsible in village life,
but yield to their elders. It is natural, therefore,
and no other view is even possible, for men
brought up in such surroundings to look out
side the village and regard the State as a whole
in the same way. There too they feel that
they have full rights, and yet are under a firm,
unquestioned, and paternal rule — the rule of
him who, while rightly called their Emperor, yet
is better known to themselves and loyally loved
as their " Little Father."

CHAPTER VIII
The Steppes
AMONGST all the interesting experiences of
- an unusually varied and adventurous life,
since, in the very middle of my Oxford course I
had, for health's sake, to spend a couple of years
ranching in the River Plate, my long drives
across the steppes stand out in bold and pleasing
relief. They were necessitated by a Mining Camp
Mission in Siberia, for the steppes form a large
part of the eastern portion of the Russian Empire,
and do not belong to Russia proper at all, lying
beyond the Volga and the Urals. It is in that
part of Asiatic Russia that the development of
the empire's vast resources is taking place with
special rapidity, and our own countrymen are
bearing a hand in it and playing no unworthy
part. I believe the word " steppes " is given to that
undulating but level country in the provinces of
Ufa and Orenburg, about two days' and two
nights' journey by train east of Moscow, inhabited
162

Consecration of Burial Ground in the Siberian Steppes. (Seepage 178.)

Page 162.

The Steppes 163
by the Bashkirs, the descendants of those Tartar
hordes who nearly overwhelmed Russia at one
time, and possibly Europe itself, and were called
for their relentless cruelty "the Scourge of
God." They are a fierce-looking race, even now,
though peaceable enough, and it seems strange
to find them so near to Moscow still, and to see
them at their devotions when driving past their
mosques on a Friday. They are great agricul
turists, and a delightful sight is presented by
their vast tracts of tender green wheat and oats
shooting up as soon as the winter is over, and
even while, in out-of-the-way hollows, snow still
remains. The earth is black and very rich in
character, and the seed, sown often before the end
of September, lies nearly seven months under
the protecting and fertilizing snow. As soon
as this has gone and spring comes, the young
crops shoot up with amazing speed and strength.
Late frosts are terrible disasters, of course, under
such circumstances.
But the real steppes, which resemble the veldt
of Africa, or the pampas of South, and the prairie
of North America, are those vast level plains,
partly agricultural, partly pasture, and partly
scrub and sand, which lie another day and night
still further east, and extend for thousands of

164 Russian Life To-day
miles to the south till they reach nearly to the
borders of Turkestan. These are the steppes I
know best. There is also a pastoral steppe of
large extent and of agricultural character just
above the Black Sea.
If the reader will refer to the map he will see
what a huge portion even of the great country of
Siberia is taken up by the Kirghiz Steppes, and
as they are extraordinarily rich in minerals, so far
as one can judge from enterprises already success
fully started, produce large crops, and sustain
innumerable flocks and herds, it will be seen how
much they are likely to count for in the progress
of Russia. The Kirghiz, familiarly called the
" Ks " in the mining camps, are a Tartar race,
like the Bashkirs, and, like them also in religion,
are Mohammedans ; but while I saw mosques
amongst the Bashkirs filled with praying con
gregations, I never saw either mosque or prayers
amongst the Kirghiz, nor their women veiled.
They are small in stature, very strongly built,
rather like the Japanese, and splendid horsemen.
A Kirghiz when mounted seems part of his horse
as he dashes across the steppes at full speed with
the merest apology for reins and bit, ready to
pull up in the twinkling of an eye.
They struck me always as very friendly, though
I have read that others have not found them so.

The Steppes 165
That they are very hospitable every one admits.
A traveller, it is said, can go thousands of
miles across the steppes without a rouble in
his pocket, and want for nothing. Everywhere
he will be hospitably entertained. A Russian, of
course, asks nothing better than to have a guest,
and considers himself honoured in being asked to
take him in for a meal or for the night ; and the
Kirghiz are Eastern in their reception of guests
as well.
In the steppes governments of Ufa, Orenburg,
and Akmolinsk the population must be nearly
seven millions, of which the great majority are
the nomadic Kirghiz, living in tents in the
summer, and taking their flocks and herds away
to the south and into villages, where they can
have roofs and walls during the seven months —
at least ! — of terrible winter.
The tent is a most comfortable abode, though
not much to look at from outside. It has a
wooden floor, with a rug or skins upon it, is
circular in its area, but has no pole of any kind,
being built up very neatly and ingeniously upon a
framework of canes and laths until it is in shape
like a well-spread-out low and evenly-rounded
haystack. It has a movable top in its centre,
which affords ample ventilation. Inside it is
lined with felt, which has often prettily em-

1 66 Russian Life To-day
broidered draperies fastened upon it ; and out
side the canework it is well covered over with
stout canvas securely lashed into its place. It
will be seen that no obstacle is presented to the
strong winds which continually blow over the
steppes, as there are no " corners " such as are
spoken of in Job i. 14, which shows us that tents
were raised upon four poles in early Israelitish
days as they are still amongst the Bedouin tribes
of North Africa and Arabia.
The beautifully and symmetrically rounded
uerta, as the Kirghiz tent is called, receives every
wind that sweeps over it, and never makes the
slightest movement. At least twenty people
could be, and often are, gathered inside when
some festivity is afoot, though each family as a
rule has its own tent. They are extremely attrac
tive, and when 1 once went to see an American
family, engaged in preliminary mining work, I
found them with one of these tents for their
living-room, set up with sideboard, dining-table,
easy-chairs, etc., and another opposite to it fitted
up as a most comfortable bedroom with brass
beds and all the usual furniture, the little cook
house also being not far away. Breathing in the
marvellous air of the steppes, I thought I had
never seen the " simple life " presented in a
more alluring form. I have longed, indeed, ever

Page 166.

Outside a Kirghiz, Uerta.

The Steppes 167
since to have a month of it some time, and get as
close to Mother Nature as it is possible to do in
these busy days.
The descendants of Jonadab knew what they
were about, and what was good for them, when
they determined to keep to their pastoral life,
and hold on to all their tent-dwelling traditions ;
and as for wine, no one need ever feel the need
of such a stimulant in the invigorating air of
those great plains.
Amongst the Kirghiz one feels an extraordinarily
biblical atmosphere, and is back again in the days
of Abraham and the patriarchs, and the " women
in the tent," of whom Jael sang after the great
victory. The men are attired much as Isaac and
Ishmael, and Jacob and Esau were, and the
women very probably keep the traditions of
thousands of years in wearing their pretty nun
like head-dresses of white, which leave their
pleasant faces free and uncovered.
These Kirghiz hardly ever use money. They
grow " rich in many flocks and herds," and if
they sold would immediately buy again. Some
of them, however, are very well off, and I was
told that one, who lived simply with his wife in a
uerta on the steppes, had sent his only son to
complete his education in Paris, and get a medical
degree at its University. For this he would have

1 68 Russian Life To-day
to sell off some of the increase of his flock, and
send the proceeds to his son.
Let me now explain how I came to be amongst
these tent-dwelling folk at all. During my first
visit to Petrograd I was asked one evening by a
member of the Russia Company if I could appoint
a chaplain to go out to Siberia once a year or so,
and visit the scattered little groups of our own
countrymen who are there, but, at that time, had
never seen a clergyman nor had a service since
coming into the country.
" There are unbaptized," he said, " and uncon
firmed, and even those who need to be married
with the service of their Church, who through
no fault of their own, but through circumstances,
have had to go without it. There are people
who have been in Siberia all their lives, and some
who have been there forty and fifty years, and
never once had any ministration of their Church.
Can nothing be done ? "
This, of course, was a strong and direct appeal,
and, after considering for a short time, it seemed
impossible to appoint a chaplain for work of
which one knew nothing, and so I proposed to
go myself, which I found later was what it was
hoped and expected that I should do. Accord
ingly in 19 1 2 and again in 1913 I carried out
this intention, and found that it practically took

The Steppes 169
the form of a Mining Camp Mission ; for,
though I visited one or two other British com
munities, yet the most interesting part of both
years' experiences was in going to the mines
situated, except in one case, in the very heart of
the steppes. Each, though employing thousands
of Kirghiz and Russians, is managed by a British
staff of between twenty and thirty, and is the
property of a British company with its board of
directors meeting in its offices in London.
I will describe two of these journeys, for with
out knowing something of the steppes and of
those who live there, and indeed taking in some
thing of their spirit, it is impossible to feel that
one really knows Russia.
Four days and nights from Moscow brings one
to Petropavlosk (Peter and Paul's town), and it
is from there, in a southerly direction at first,
and then heading towards the east, that the great
Spassky Copper Mine is reached, for which a
drive of a thousand miles, there and back, is
necessary. I had not realized till just before I
set out that I should have to drive on day and
night without stopping for anything but food and
to change horses, as there were no Russian rest-
houses on that route, and the Kirghiz tents were
impossible owing to the great number of living
beings, other than human, which inhabited them.

170 Russian Life To-day
It was no light thing to undertake, as it meant
leaving on Tuesday and getting in late on Satur
day evening, and this only if all went well. Some
people can sleep under such conditions during
the night. I don't know how they possibly can,
for there are no roads in any true sense of the
word, and none of the vehicles which cross them
have springs.
The manager of the mine had kindly sent down
the usual tarantass, which, hooded like a victoria,
is a very stout cart, lashed securely upon poles,
and drawn by three horses or troika. There is
no seat inside, but hay is placed over the bottom,
and pillows and cushions on the top, and there
one reclines during the day, and lies down at
night. It all sounds very comfortable and even
luxurious, but as there are no roads, and only the
roughest of tracks with fearful ruts and soft
places where water lingers, with sometimes a
sloping bank down to a stream, and, as the wild
driver keeps his horses at their full speed, one is
hurled violently and roughly about the whole
time, sleep, for me at least, is beyond my wildest
hopes from start to finish.
For the first day or so I had the greatest
difficulty to avoid biting my tongue in two as 1
was thrown about and it came between my teeth,
and I used to look with amazement and envy at

Tarantass with its Troika for the Steppes.

Page 170.

The Steppes 171
my Kirghiz conductor, on the box beside the
driver, swaying about in all directions like a tree
in a hurricane, but sound asleep. His name was
Mamajam, and on our arrival he brought his
little daughter Fatima to see me, and another
youth named Abdullah, completing the Arabian
Nights impression he had already given me.
There is no regularity in the arrangements for
changing horses along the steppes. Sometimes
one would drive about twenty versts (twelve and
a half miles) and then change, while at others we
would go on as far as sixty, or even eighty, versts
(fifty miles) without any change at all. The
horses are very strong and hardy, and are never
allowed either food or drink until the journey is
over ; and, with the horses, the driver is changed
also, as every man brings and understands his
own. It was a wonderful study in character,
temperament, and dress, for the men were extra
ordinarily different from each other, though all
most attractive and interesting ; the Kirghiz more
so than the one or two Russians we had.
We carried our food, chiefly tinned, with us,
but there was an abundance of eggs, butter, and
white bread always to be got, and, most welcome
sight, always the steaming samovar, with its
promise of cheering and comforting tea. It is
astonishing how one's ordinary food can be cut

172 Russian Life To-day
down in quantity when necessary. We gradually
came down to two meals a day, and on the return
journey these only consisted of eggs, bread and
butter, and tea ; and yet the simple life and
magnificent air made one feel always extraordin
arily fit and well and in good spirits.
The steppes, though vast solitudes as far as
human habitations are concerned, are full of life
and movement, and the most is made of the short
summer. Caravans are continually meeting the
traveller as he goes south or north, or crossing
his route from east to west, or west to east,
carrying tea from China, timber and other articles
of commerce, travellers from town to town, or
from one village to another, or a little band of
colonists seeking land upon which to settle, or
herdsmen in charge of sheep, oxen, or horses.
Perhaps one's driver catches sight of another
troika going in the same direction, and with a
shrill cry urges on his team ; the other, nothing
loath, joins in, and for a quarter of an hour
there is a most thrilling race. There is never a
dull moment night or day, though perhaps the
most inspiring times are those when one has just
changed horses, and has a wild young Kirghiz on
the box who, seeing an opportunity of showing
off, stands up whirling his whip and, shrieking,
yelling, whistling, like a demon, urges his horses

The Steppes 173
to their utmost speed, making the dust and earth
fly in all directions. It makes one feel that it is
good to be alive.
The air is most transporting at that height,
four thousand feet above sea-level ; the whole
steppes in the early summer are strewn with
flowers, larks are singing overhead, streams are
flowing on every side, there is a clear horizon as
at sea, though now and then there is hilly ground,
the sky is ever delightfully blue and without a
cloud, and the sun shines brightly, though not
too fiercely, from morn till eve. Nothing could
be more delightful than that first experience,
especially as one thought of the object of one's
journey and the services of the coming Sunday.
Then the wonderful nights, beginning with the
sweet, bell-like sounds of the innumerable frogs
after the birds had ceased. As I did not sleep I
saw and enjoyed all that the nights had to give,
and we had the full moon. First the golden
sunlight gradually died away and the silvery light
of the moon appeared, that in its turn, after what
seemed an extraordinarily short time, giving place
to the dawn, which shows itself sometimes more
than an hour before the actual sunrise. Night on
the steppes, like the day, is also full of movement,
for many of those who travel long distances prefer
to let their horses and bullocks feed and rest

174 Russian Life To-day
during the long day, when they enjoy their
pasture best, getting their own rest also at the
same time, basking in the sun, and continuing
their journey through the night, which is never
really dark.
My second night out, just after midnight, I
was startled at seeing a camel come into view in
the moonlight on my right, going in the opposite
direction and dragging a small cart, but making
no sound upon the grass. It looked quite spec
tral in the moonlight, and was followed by another,
and yet another ; then came a bullock, then a
horse or two, one after another, then more camels,
all with carts and in single file. Not a sound
could be heard, and only at intervals men walked
beside them. It went on and on, the strange,
silent procession, and I could not think what
manner of caravan it could possibly be. All the
carts were small, carefully covered over, and
evidently had small loads, though requiring
powerful creatures to draw them ; and then
all at once I understood. It was smelted copper
being taken down to the railhead from which
I had come, and from the mine to which I
was going ! I then began to count how many
had still to pass me, and reckoned up a hundred
and six, so that there must have been nearly three
hundred in all. They take three months to go

The Steppes 175
down, load up with stores, and return, and yet I
was told that such transport was cheaper than
sending by rail will be when that part of the
government of Akmolinsk is connected with the
great Trans-Siberian line running from Petro
pavlosk both to Moscow and Petrograd.
Another time I should take the opportunity
afforded by a pause when changing horses in the
night to get a few hours' sleep in the tarntass in
the open air, which would, of course, make all the
difference, and which would then be quite possible.
But if I had done it on this occasion I should
have had to lose a Sunday instead of arriving on
the Saturday evening. I was well repaid, for
though nothing more than a notice was sent
quickly round, " The bishop has come, and there
will be services at the manager's house to-morrow
at half-past ten and at six, and Holy Communion
at half-past seven," yet at half-past seven every
one of our countrymen was there and received
Communion except the wife of one member of
the staff ill in bed. The manager's two little
boys were there to be present at the first early
Anglican celebration of Holy Communion ever
taken beyond the Urals. A beautiful ikon, flowers,
and two lights adorned the temporary altar.
Others than our own countrymen attended the
other services. It was a glorious day to have, in-

176 Russian Life To-day
eluding as it did attendance at the Russian Church
in the morning when our own service was over.
This great mining property includes Karagandy,
where the coal is, and to which I came first ;
Spassky, where the smelting-works had been set
up, some forty miles further on ; and Uspensky,
where the mine itself is, some fifty miles further
still. From Spassky I went to Uspensky by
motor-car, and spent three days there with the
foreman of the mine and his family. I went down
the mine also to make acquaintance with the
Kirghiz who are at work there, and knocked off
for myself some specimens of the rich ore.
The foreman and his family — two girls and
two sons of between twenty and thirty — had been
in New Zealand, in the Backs, and it was no new
thing for them to have a bishop stay and give
them services. The wife was a particularly good
and devout woman, and in all the years she had
been there had never once had the happiness
of attending a service of her own Church. The
two young men were shy fellows, but the manager
having first prepared the way, I took them in
hand, and, finding they were ready to come to
a decision in life, instructed and confirmed them.
On these missions, as with Philip and the eunuch,
we cannot lose such opportunities ; and I shall not
forget the Celebration, early on the day I left,

The Steppes 177
when that whole family received Communion
together. I know what a joy, such as she
had never expected, it was to that good woman
thus to have family unity ; and, as she died
suddenly before the year was over, I shall always
feel that my long journey across the steppes was
fully worth while if it were only for the happiness
it had brought her in enabling her for once in her
life to receive Communion with all the members
of her family.
I had another most interesting experience before
leaving Spassky and the Akmolinsk Steppes.
Some little time before my arrival, two of the
staff had lost their lives in the smelting-works
and been buried in a little plot of ground with
two monuments placed above them. One of
the memorials was of pure copper, the other
of stone, and there was a wooden railing round
the small enclosure. The manager asked me to
consecrate this little plot of ground with a larger
space added to it, so that they might have their
own little God's acre.
As soon as the Russian priest heard that this
was to be done he immediately asked if he and
his people might be present and share in the
service ? And to this, of course, we readily
agreed. It was impossible, however, to draw
up any joint service, as we were ignorant of each
2 A

178 Russian Life To-day
other's language, so I arranged that he should
say a few prayers first and that 1 should take
our own service afterwards. This he was very
glad to do, and, robed in his vestments as for
the Liturgy, he prayed for the departed, singing
with his people, present in great numbers,
a touching little litany, and finishing with the
offering of incense. As I looked at all those
fellow Christians of ours and their priest, and
then outside at the great circle of the vast steppes
stretching away in all directions, so suggestive
of greatness of spirit, I felt most deeply moved
as I took the censer from him and, offering the
incense as he had done, led the way, censing the
boundaries of the new burial-ground marked out
by stones. Our little community followed singing,
" O God, our help in ages past," every line of
which helped us all to realize a little at least
of that large-hearted view of life and of death
which no other passage of Scripture gives us
with the directness and grandeur of Psalm xc.
The people looked on at this simple little pro
cession with the closest attention and sympathy,
and then, after an address — an entirely new
experience for them in a religious service —
I proceeded to the consecration of the ground.
I should fancy it is the only instance, as yet, of
clergy of the two Churches actually sharing

The Steppes 179
a service together ; and that was especially in
my mind as I took the good priest's censer to
offer, just as he had done and from the same
censer, " an oblation with great gladness," feeling
to the full " how good and joyful it is for
brethren to dwell together in unity." I should
say of that service also that it was quite worth
while taking that long journey across the steppes
to have it.
The prevailing idea of Siberia in this country
is, as we all know, that it is a terrible waste of
ice and snow, a land of mines and of convicts,
ravaged by packs of wolves ; and this is not at
all an incorrect impression of the greater part
of it and for the longest period of the year. All
that is wrong in the impression is that it leaves
out the five months of the year in which there is
the glow and charm of the tropics, with growth
and upspringing life and beauty on every hand.
The steppes are a paradise of singing birds and
blooming flowers and flowing streams, where the
air is joyous to breathe, invigorating, quickening,
and inspiriting beyond description. These are
the Siberian Steppes I have known and traversed
and loved, and long and hope to see again.
But I am keenly alive to all the real and ever-
present sense of peril which the winter brings
with it as soon as it comes, and which it keeps

180 Russian Life To-day
steadily before the mind till it is over for all who
have to meet it and struggle against it. I have
heard men speak of the terrible blizzards and the
appalling cold ; of the deadly gloom, when the air
is so full of snow that they can hardly see a hand
before their faces, and they wander uncertainly
for a whole day and night together until they
give themselves up for lost, to find after all, when
the storm is over, that they are only a few yards
away from their own doors, or in the middle of
the street from which they had started.
They instantly drop their voices on the Kirghiz
Steppes when they begin to speak of winter, and
on some faces there comes at once that beaten
look which, whenever it appears, is testimony that
the man has measured himself against the sterner
forces of Nature or of human life, and has failed.
Tolstoy's Master and Man gives a very clear
and convincing account of what a snowstorm may
mean for even experienced travellers. There the
scene is laid in Russia, and between one village
and another in a country often traversed ; but
the vast spaces of Siberia in that long, gloomy
winter must be specially fraught with dangers
and terrors during those swiftly rising and deadly
boirams, as the wind-storms are called, which
completely obliterate all landmarks while they
last, and which are not to be met with anywhere

Page 1 80.

Inside a Kirghiz Uerta.

The Steppes 181
else in the inhabited parts of the world. At
Spassky they told me of a Kirghiz horseman
who had been found one morning, during the
preceding winter, just outside his home, horse
and rider rigid in the snow and frozen stiff, both
of them dead for hours. They had struggled
against the boiram as long as they could, the
man probably urging on his horse to the last,
and both giving up the struggle together as the
awful frost took possession of them, so swiftly
that there was no falling off for the one nor
sinking down for the other. And, if they had
only known it, or the blinding storm had
permitted them to see, they were at the very
door of their home and within reach of warmth
and food and shelter.
I remember once saying to friends that I
supposed when travelling in winter they could
make themselves very comfortable by packing
themselves in with " hot- water foot-warmers."
" Hot-water foot-warmers ! " they exclaimed.
" Why, the frost would have them and destroy
them completely almost before we had left
the door."
Then the wolves are there also ! Siberia has
not changed in that respect from the weird land
of which we have read as long as we can remem
ber, and is still the haunt of the most fierce and

1 82 Russian Life To-day
untiring enemies which man and beast alike have
to fear when they are the hunters and not the
hunted. The fair Siberia of the glorious sum
mer knows no wolves. Then there is food
enough and to spare always within reach, and
there are homes and family life even for wolves
to think of and be happy about. There is no
need then, though they are gregarious by nature,
for them to join together. Each can fend for
himself, and have enough for all his family and
to spare. Not a wolf is to be seen except very
rarely, and the traveller never even thinks of
them with fear as, singly, sleek, and well fed,
they slink away immediately as soon as seen. It
is altogether different when winter comes, and
hunger, even famine, gets a grip upon them
because so many other creatures are hibernating.
Then the quarry must be of different character,
and nothing is too strong or big for a huge pack
well led. Once they have been driven by stern
necessity to combine together and choose their
leader they will stick at nothing and attempt
almost anything.
A friend of mine, born in Petrograd, tells us
of an old travelling carriage of his father's, in
which he and his brothers and sisters, when
children, used to play.
" It was raised very high from the ground,"

The Steppes 183
he says, "only to be reached by a small ladder,
so as to be out of the reach of wolves."
Just the same stories are told after every
winter as those of which we have so often read
in prose and verse ; and, out of the many told
me as happening quite recently, I select the
following : —
Three winters ago a wedding party went from
their village, in the Altai, where the ceremony
had taken place in the morning at the home
of the bride, to the village where the bridegroom
lived, and to which he was now taking back his
newly-wedded wife. They were a hundred and
twenty in number, and made a large party, with
their horses and sledges, and were not afraid ;
but an unusually large pack of wolves was out
that afternoon, and, soon scenting them, gave
chase. Party after party were overtaken, pulled
down, and, with horses as well, devoured. The
bride and bridegroom and best man were in the
front sledge with good horses, and kept ahead
till they were quite close to the village, when
they too were overtaken by a few of the strongest
and swiftest of their pursuers. To save them
selves the bridegroom and best man threw out
the bride, and thus stopped the pursuit for a
time sufficiently for them to gain the village.
It was a shocking thing to do, but when the

184 Russian Life To-day
villagers began to question and help them out
the awful explanation was forthcoming ! The
two men had gone mad with fright, and had
not known what they were really doing. In
that terrible hunting down, with the shrieks and
despairing cries of their friends, as they were
overtaken, ever ringing in their ears as they
urged their own terror-stricken horses forward,
it is little wonder that their minds gave way.
Let there be no mistake, therefore, about the
steppes. The reader may keep the new impres
sion (if it is new) that I have endeavoured to
give of a most beautiful, rich, and fertile country ;
and which I am hoping to be visiting again while
this book is being read, finding, I hope, this
country of the wolves story rejoicing in all the
glow and beauty of summer. But still, for
nearly seven months of the year, that Siberia
is the old Siberia still, fast bound in the grip
of an appalling frost, waging, in its storms, a
never-ceasing battle against human enterprise
and effort ; and the haunt of those insatiable and
savage creatures which seem to stand out from
all other creatures in being devoid, when in
packs, of all fear or dread of man.
The steppes above Turkestan, which I visited
last, are milder in climate than those of Ak
molinsk. Great parts of them are sand, with

The Steppes 185
a sage-like scrub, dear to the heart of camels ;
and they have a drier and even more invigorat
ing air than that of the northern plains. Across
these I travelled my five hundred miles in a
Panhard motor-car, with a wild Russian chauffeur
who knew no fear. He dashed across a country
which practically had no roads and resembled a
rough Scotch moor, with an elan that the most
daring French chauffeur might envy. He was
a fine fellow, Boroff by name, and carried me
on as before, day and night, and again with
sunshine for the one and moonlight for the
other. " The devil's wagon " is the name the
wondering Kirghiz have given the motor-car from
the first, but it is the last description it deserves.
My journey of under twenty-four hours from the
railhead to the Atbazar Mining Camp, if I had
had to go by camel, as I expected might be pos
sible until my actual arrival, would have taken me
some twelve days, or even more.
All the transport in these steppes is by camels,
and I could not be satisfied until I had made
a small expedition upon one, and shall, perhaps,
have to do the same again ; but modern appli
ances are not to be despised, and no one can wish
for a better experience of the steppes than to
make the journey in the middle of summer and
in a good modern motor-car. 2 B

CHAPTER IX
Russia's Problem
THE Social Problem, as it presents itself to
thoughtful people in Russia, really demands
a book to itself. No doubt it will come before
long, and from some experienced pen. It is
only possible for me just to touch upon it
in this chapter, which one must write ; or else
even this very general view of Russia's life
of to-day would be utterly inadequate and
incomplete. And, in so doing, I shall have
to try and show how different it is in Russia
from the same problem as presented in other
countries in Europe.
It is well known, for instance, that the great
question for ourselves waiting for solution at
some early date is the social question. What
was called for us the " Triple Alliance " in the
world of labour, the Union of the Railway,
Transport, and Mining Workers was completed
just before war broke out; and, though with
a patriotism beyond praise all needs and desires
of their own are put aside for the present, our
186

Russian Service at the Atbazar Mine. (See page 178.)

Page 186.

Russia's Problem 187
workers will give expression to their wishes at
no distant day after peace comes. Even before
this book is in print the masses in Germany,
grimly silent so long except for the ever-increas
ing votes for their socialistic representatives,
silent even during the disillusionment which
has come to them these last six months, may
have at last spoken out. We are told that
their leader, Herr Bebel, who is said to have
known the German character through and
through, declared that the first serious defeat
experienced by Germany " would produce a
miracle." Social unrest is still universal.
We find it, therefore, as we should expect
to do, in Russia ; and more general, perhaps,
and more acute than at any other previous
time, just before the war was declared. This,
it may be remembered, is stated to have been
one of the reasons why the curt and hurried
ultimatum was presented at Petrograd, where
it was thought that social troubles and dangers
were so serious that it would be impossible
for the government even to think of going to
war. We have been told,1 though it was prob
ably not known outside Russia at that time,
what a good turn Germany really did to the
Russian government and the Russian people
1 " Anglitchanin " in The Contemporary Review, Nov., 1914.

1 88 Russian Life To-day
by turning their thoughts from their own
grave difficulties to the dangers which threat
ened them from without. At that time, we
are assured, not only Petrograd, but every
big manufacturing district of Russia, was shak
ing with revolt of a peculiar kind, and civil
war on the point of breaking out. In Petro
grad there were barricades already erected, at
least 120,000 were on strike, tramcars had been
broken up, attacks upon the police had taken
place, factories were garrisoned in expectation of
attack, the Cossacks were everywhere — openly
in the streets, hidden away in places most
threatened. The police arrested those who were
supposed to be leaders, but it made no differ
ence, for the people needed no leading. They
were all so thoroughly in the movement. In
deed, we are told, " things seemed to the
Russian government to be as bad as they
could very well be ; and orders were actually
given for the severest possible repressive mea
sures, which would, perhaps, have involved a
large-scale battle, probably a massacre, and
certainly a state of war in the capital." It
would have been " Red Sunday " over again,
only this time infinitely and more ominously
worse. A great calamity was narrowly escaped.
Now there is this to be noticed about this

Russia's Problem 189
Russian upheaval, and this social bitterness and
discontent expressing itself in the way with
which we are only too sadly familiar, and which
claims our attention as being so entirely different
from similar movements of our own. The Rus
sian workers made no demands, had no special
grievances nor complaints which they wished
to make known. In all strikes one has pre
viously heard of there has been some hardship
or injustice to bring forward, some claim or
request to urge. Here there was nothing of
the kind. " They were not on strike," we are
told, " for higher wages. In no single case did
the men make a demand from their masters.
In no single case had a man gone on strike
because of a grievance which his master could
put right. No concessions by the masters could
have brought the men back to work. The only
answer they returned when asked why there was
a strike was that they were dissatisfied with their
lives, and that they intended to disorganize the
State until these things were altered." It is clear,
therefore, that the social unrest, and the activity
which has so long resulted from it, have not
a very definite aim as yet. Hence the Nihilist.
He is dissatisfied, embittered, smarting under a
sense of wrong ; and while he does not see
how he can put things right, feels that he

190 Russian Life To-day
must do something, and so destroys. "That
at least will be something," he feels, "then we
can begin again."
This, we can further see, will be the youthful
student's view if dissatisfied and discontented, and
without either experience or constructive and
practical knowledge to suggest how the wrong
may be put right. Some of us, therefore, think
that Russia's greatest social danger arises from
the student part of her population, and that her
great problem — a vital one for her to solve, and
soon — is how to deal fairly and wisely with them,
and, caring for them as paternally as she does
for her peasant population, incorporate them fully
and intimately into her national life.
It is from the educated classes that social
unrest and discontent have proceeded in Russia,
and from them that those agents have come
who have spread wild and daring dreams of
change and revolution amongst the working
classes of the towns, and, although that has
not been so successful, amongst the peasantry
also. To some extent their socialistic ideas have
been echoes from Western Europe. I remember
being told, when I first went to Petrograd, " We
usually have your bad weather here about eight
or ten days after you, only we have it worse."

Russia's Problem 191
It would seem that the rule holds good in other
ways also, for Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace
tells us, in one of his three deeply interesting
chapters on social difficulties in Russia, that
during the last two centuries all the important
intellectual movements in Western Europe have
been reflected in Russia, and that these reflec
tions have generally been what may fairly be
called exaggerated and distorted reflections of
the earlier socialistic movements of the West,
but with local peculiarities and local colouring
which deserve attention.
He goes on to explain how the educated
classes, absorbing these ideas from abroad, just
as ideas, and not as relating to the conditions
of life in Russia as closely as in England, France,
and Germany, from which they came, have quite
naturally been less practical in the conclusions
they have drawn from them, if indeed they have
pushed their ideas to any conclusion at all. We
are shown plainly by this lucid and well-informed
writer how natural it has been for Western
Socialists to be constructive and definite in their
aims, while Russians could only be destructive.
Nihilism is made clear, and we understand its
origin, while we can equally well understand
what we are so reassuringly told about its present
decline. This does not imply necessarily that

192 Russian Life To-day
Russian thinkers and workers are becoming less
socialistic in sympathy and aims, but more
practical ; and that they are learning, just as the
West has taught them, that the only way in
which they can hope to advance their own views
is to use all the legal means which their govern
ment, as it becomes ever more democratic and
constitutional, will increasingly give them.
But amongst all the different classes who may
be called educated, the university students of
both sexes form the class which most claims our
sympathies, and constitutes, I consider, Russia's
gravest problem. There are ten universities in
the empire, only one of which contains less
than 1,300 students, while the leading ones far
exceed this number — Moscow having just under
10,000, and Petrograd about 8,500. We can
hardly realize what such numbers mean for the
national life, when over 40,000 men and women
are receiving university education and being
prepared for professional careers. Over 15,000
are studying law, nearly 10,000 are receiving a
scientific education before taking up work as
chemists, engineers, etc., another 10,000 are
studying medicine, comparatively few only being
left for the teaching profession. There are only
about a hundred divinity students.
In addition to these there are Russian students

Russia's Problem 193
in all the universities of Europe. I have nevtx*
been able to ascertain their actual numbers, but
at Geneva, Lausanne, Berne, Leipzig, Berlin, and
other great centres of education I have always
been told, not only that they were there in no
small numbers, but that they were the keenest
and most attentive of all the students in the
class, the first to come, and the last to leave, always
in the front seats, and unflagging in their atten
tion. They are evidently most eager to learn,
and are turned out from all the universities of
Europe and from their own, extremely well
equipped and prepared for professional work.
Then a vast number of students of this class are
pitiably poor, straining every nerve, putting up
with privations undreamed of elsewhere, in order
to get through the preparation for their life's
work. Many of them, great numbers of them
indeed, must be miserably disappointed. Town
and city life, upon which the professional
classes must rely chiefly in seeking the means
of gaining their livelihood, has not developed
as yet in proportion to that of the agricultural
population ; and certainly at nothing like the
rate which would be necessary if all those edu
cated and trained at the universities were to be
provided with careers and given an adequate 2 c

194 Russian Life To-day
opportunity. The supply is far, far greater than
the demand.
Thus we have in Russia a large class of really
competent, brainy, well qualified young graduates
of both sexes, naturally longing to take their part
in the life, work, and affairs of their country,
urged on also by their poverty to seek and even
demand it ; and yet many, it seems to me some
times that it must be far the greater number,
must be unable to find it. Here obviously are
all the materials for a real social danger ; and
students, therefore, always appear in stories of
plots and conspiracies, always fill an important
place in plays of the same kind, and are always
to the fore in tumults and demonstrations. It
must be so, for they are the one really em
bittered class, and to them it must seem some
times that there can be no hope for them at all
in the social order as it is, and that its only
possibility for them lies in its being destroyed
and reconstructed.
In many of our centres of work abroad we
have a. foyer where the foreign students can meet,
and at Geneva last year with great difficulty we
had opened a hostel for Russian students when
the war broke out. There one heard the most
touching stories of their poverty, and yet of their
pride and independence, and also of the special

Page 195.

jt Class of Russian Students with their Teachers.

Russia's Problem 195
temptations to which their poverty exposed them.
Some landlords, for instance, are not slow to tell
girls that they would live better and more cheaply
if they would temporarily " keep house " with
one of the young men students, and occupy one
room ! Our hostel was hurried on last year as
we heard of many instances of this kind, and a
generous friend in Petrograd helped me very
largely in finding the money. Everything was
to be supplied at cost price, and no profits were
to be made, the two English ladies in charge
giving their services. There was a restaurant
also which supplied good food at very moderate
rates, and how moderate may be judged from
the charge made for afternoon tea of a halfpenny !
It consisted of a cup of tea and a small roll of
bread without butter.
The first time I saw how cheaply the foreign
students at Geneva lived was one festival evening
when they invited me to supper, and when we
had chicken salad with bread and butter followed
by dessert, tea, and coffee, for which the charge
was about fivepence each. The year after that I
entertained them in return and gave them a
Christmas party at which there were fourteen
nationalities present, mainly Slav. Nothing
could have been more interesting than that
gathering, nor could any host have had more

196 Russian Life To-day
grateful guests. Last year the Noel Fest could
not be held as there were no students ; but I
hope next Christmas may possibly see the war
over, and that we may have a Slav evening party
in Geneva once again.
It may be well to mention here how there
comes to be a foyer or club for Russians and other
students at Geneva. It is a part of the organiza
tion connected with the World Student Christian
Federation, which had its beginning in the
eighties in the United States of America, as a
movement to promote an interest in missionary
work amongst students. In 1887 a deputation
came over to this country to tell the student
world what was going on across the Atlantic,
and the student foreign missionary union was
the result. Next the Christian Student Move
ment extended itself into all our European
countries, and finally the World's Federation was
accomplished at Wadstena Castle in Sweden in
1895. It is directed by a committee consisting
of two representatives from each national move
ment, with Mr. John R. Mott, so well known,
as its general secretary. Its operations now
extend into all the leading countries of the world.
There is a biennial conference, and it is admitted
that one of the most interesting of any yet
held was the one at Constantinople in 191 1,

Russia's Problem 197
which was attended by patriarchs representing
all the Orthodox Churches of the East. It is not
an undenominational movement, but exactly the
opposite — a call rather to all the Churches of the
world to be consistent in their Christian pro
fession and " walk worthy of the vocation where
with they are called." It is not a society nor
a religious body, but a movement or union, and its
basis, to be accepted by all its voluntary members
and officers, is the declaration, " I desire, in joining
this Union, to declare my faith in Jesus Christ as
my Saviour, my Lord, and my God." There is no
reason why any Christian in the world should not
join it. Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans,
and members of other Churches the world, over
can have no possible difficulty in making such
a simple declaration if there is any reality at all
in their sense of membership in Christ's Church ;
and there is every reason why a Christian student
should join a movement which is the only one
of its kind to aim at work for Christ in those
places where it is most urgently and sorely
needed, and where it is most likely to be truly
fruitful — the universities and colleges of the
world. There we have to-day those who have to lead
and guide and guard the course of the whole
world to-morrow. It is in the universities of

198 Russian Life To-day
the world that some of those influences which
are most hostile and inimical to true social well-
being are first set in motion, and it is there most
certainly that we must begin if we wish to see
the world made better and won for God. The
war has made us long, I hope, for better things
in a way the world has never dreamt of before,
because there has never been anything in all
history which has so focussed attention for the
watching world upon a simple and direct question
of right and wrong. The issue is even more
momentous and significant than that. This
great question of righteousness and unrighteous
ness must be answered by every one in the
world according to his belief or unbelief. It is
just a question for us all to settle whether our
own interests, individual or national, or our duty
to God comes first. The issue has never been
more simply stated, and the Church of Christ
has never in all her history had such a mag
nificent opportunity of giving her message, and
proclaiming her mission. I hope, therefore, that
all my readers will take an early opportunity of
learning all they can about the Christian Student
Movement, and satisfy themselves as to its fitness
for helping the whole Church of Christ to avail
herself to the full of this GoD-given opportunity
and possibility.

Russia's Problem 199
A foyer is a necessary centre for students
wherever a branch of the movement has been
formed, and it would be difficult to speak too
warmly of its value for its members. I have
mentioned this movement here, briefly enough,
I fear, of necessity, because I should think there
is no place where it is more needed, nor, as far
as I can judge, more likely to continue to succeed,
than in Russia. In Petrograd there are already
a number of influential and wealthy Russians
deeply interested in its work amongst the men
students. They include a near relation of the
Emperor, and the work is directed by a number
of extremely competent and earnest Americans.
I had an opportunity of meeting and addressing
them when in Petrograd a year ago.
The work amongst the girl and women students
is being carried forward very quietly by our own
country-women, who are full of hope. But up to
the present a great deal of caution and wisdom has
had to be exercised, both because the authorities
have so long been accustomed to look suspiciously
at anything which seemed to promote associa
tions amongst students, and because students
themselves, for reasons already given, have
naturally looked askance at anything which was
obviously working in the direction of law and
order. The movement, more and more, it will be

200 Russian Life To-day
seen, is one of the soundest of modern efforts
in the direction of real social improvement,
because it begins at the right end, with those
who are thinking and pondering life's problems
before launching out to try their best to solve
them. Nowhere has it been more needed, as
I have said, than in Russia, and nowhere has
it made a better start. The hopeful thing about
Russia just now is that every one is most keenly
and profoundly interested in the social well-being
of the people — on the one hand anxious to
obtain it more fully for themselves, and on the
other really wishful to give and promote it,
even if watchful and cautious lest they should
make mistakes and have to draw back.
And surely caution is very necessary in Russia.
It is only a little over fifty years since the
emancipation of the serfs. Let any one think
of Russia with a servile population so short a
time ago, and then think of what she is to-day,
and they will form some idea of the extraordinary
social improvement and transformation which
has taken place. Yet with all this caution the
desire to see improvement is general, and no one
is satisfied with the lives of the working-classes
in the large towns as they are. It is well known
indeed, as I have already said, that Russia has
been absorbed in plans for social improvement

Russia's Problem 201
for the last few years, and was meaning to launch
out into great undertakings this very year.
Those plans are only deferred, we hope, and
will be taken up with greater zest and confidence
than ever when peace comes. Perhaps the delay
will prove to have been an inestimable gain, if
it has made it clearer than before that there are
certain examples it might be well to avoid. A
great deal has been said and written of late years
of the vast superiority of German municipal
government and organization, and certainly no
cities in Europe approach those of Germany for
attractiveness and excellence of arrangements as
to streets, parks, public buildings, and imposing
blocks of flats for private families of all classes.
Germans have been for many years now animated
by the very best spirit of municipal initiative
and responsibility, and have shown a really worthy
civic pride. Railway stations, post offices, walks,
and squares in Germany are beyond comparison
with those of any other country. And yet I am
assured that much is sacrificed for effect and
appearance ; and I was astonished to hear, a little
while ago, how miserably inadequate was the
accommodation that even a skilled artisan in
Berlin could afford to have.
A well-known social authority, Mr. T. C.
Horsfall, writing in the Spectator last December,

202 Russian Life To-day
told us that there is terrible overcrowding in
nearly all large German towns, and that the
overcrowded tall blocks of buildings are them
selves too closely crowded together, and the
effect is bad both for health and morality. The
death-rate, including that of infants, is much
higher with them than with us. And I cannot
help thinking that the effect of giving families
only two rooms and a small scullery, one living-
room and one bedroom for all, must have its
effect upon the morality of a population. What
ever the cause, we are told that in Berlin 17
per cent, of the births are registered as illegiti
mate, in Munich as many as 28 per cent., in
Vienna over 40 per cent., while in London they
are only 5 per cent.
" The effect . on German town populations,"
Mr. Horsfall states, "especially on the poorer
inhabitants of Berlin, of the conditions existing
in German towns is described in an appeal made
in or about the year 1886 by Professor SchmoUer
to his fellow-countrymen to deal adequately and
promptly with those conditions. The appeal has
been reprinted in an important Report published
in 1 9 1 1 by Dr. Werner Hegemann :
' The circumstances are so terrible that one can only
wonder that the consequences have not been even worse.
Only because a large part of these poor people have brought

Russia's Problem 203
from their earlier life a store of good habits, of religious
tradition, of decent feeling, into these dens, has the worst
not yet been reached. But the children and young people
who are now growing up in these holes must necessarily
lose the virtues of economy, domesticity, family life, and all
regard for law and property, decency, and good habits. He
who has no proper dwelling, but only a sleeping-place, must
fall a victim to the public-house and to drink. . . . The
community to-day is forcing the lower strata of the factory
proletariat of large towns by its dwelling conditions with
absolute necessity to fall back to a level of barbarism and
bestiality, of savagery and rowdiness, which our forefathers
hundreds of years ago had left behind them. I maintain
that there lies the greatest danger for our civilization .' "
With such examples as this before her we
must trust that Russia will set about promoting
the social well-being of her people with all her
characteristic independence, and determine that in
their housing she will have only those " great
spaces " which are her characteristic features in so
many other ways. We have to tread this same
road of social reform also when the war is over,
and it is good to think that we may, perhaps,
be able to take it, just as we have carried on the
war, without any party questions or party spirit
connected with it, as will be the case also in
Russia. It is even more inspiring to think, again
let me say it, that we and our new friend may
tread this path together : comparing notes and
making plans together as we go. That would be
indeed an Entente worth the name, when it was not

204 Russian Life To-day
in order that we might make war together, only
that we had come to an agreement, but that we
might help each other's peoples in all the arts of
peace. Mr. Baring tells us that he was once
drinking tea with a Russian landowner who calls
himself a moderate liberal, and when, in their
conversation, the Anglo-Russian agreement was
mentioned, he exclaimed (and I have no doubt
he expressed the feelings of many others who
desire the social good of Russia as he did so),
"This is the most sensible thing the Russian
government has done for the last forty years ! "

The English Church ofS. Andrew, at Moscow, with the Parsonage.

Page 205.

CHAPTER X
The Anglican Church in Russia
T WELCOME the opportunity that this chap-
*• ter affords me of defining the position taken
by our Church in Russia, for it is just the same
there as in Germany, France, Belgium, and the
other countries in our jurisdiction. Many Eng
lish Churchmen deprecate, while others strongly
resent, our having clergy, churches, and services
on the Continent of Europe at all. They
consider it an interference with the Church of
the country, schismatical in its character, and a
hindrance and impediment to the reunion of
Christendom. Some English clergy come, there
fore, into the jurisdiction of North and Central
Europe from their own parishes, and though
their own Church may have its services there,
ostentatiously attend the services of the Roman
Catholic Church. Young men coming out for
business, girls taking positions as nurses and
governesses, and others coming for health and
enjoyment, are sometimes advised by their
clergy not to go near the English Church, but
205

206 Russian Life To-day
to attend Mass and "worship with the people
of the country."
What, I fancy, many of our brethren at home,
clergy and laity alike, fail very often to realize
is the great difference between a temporary
and permanent residence abroad. Many of us
know what it is to spend a holiday in some
simple and beautiful village — in the Black
Forest, for instance — amongst devout and good
people, far away from one's own Church, and
where it is just as natural as anything can be,
and completes the friendly feeling between us,
to go to church on Sunday and worship with
them. Even in an unfamiliar service we have
our own Prayer Books, and can read Collect,
Epistle, and Holy Gospel, and be in spirit
and touch with our brethren worshipping in
their own churches all over the world.
There is something to be said, therefore, for
sharing the worship of the people of the place
when passing through or making but a short stay,
though, even in holiday resorts or " Sports
centres," the opportunities which our Church,
chaplain, and services offer are too precious
and important to be lost or undervalued.
But there is nothing whatever to be said for
leaving a community of our own countrymen,
permanently resident in another land, without

The Anglican Church in Russia 207
the ministrations of their own Church, if they
can possibly be supplied to them ; and still less
if, as in Russia and some other places, the people
can find the means of support themselves.
Will any of our brethren seriously maintain
that, when families have to leave this country
and go to live on the Continent of Europe,
they must leave their own Church and be
received into the Roman or Greek Communion ?
Or, if not, will they consider that they ought
to frequent the services of those Churches as
outsiders, never having the experiences and helps
afforded by the sacramental means of grace ? It
must be one or the other. If abroad we are not
to attend the services of our own Church, then
the only alternative is either to leave it altogether
or to live the maimed spiritual life of those who
are without the ministry of the Word and Sacra
ments. And, moreover, if it is thought that one of
the pressing duties of our time is to follow our
brethren across the ocean to Canada, though even
there the Roman Church claims to be the
" Church of the country " in its French-speaking
territory, and to give them the ministrations of
religion, why are we not to follow them across
the Channel, when they leave their country for
precisely the same reason, to extend its business

208 Russian Life To-day
and commercial influence and to serve its interests
in diplomatic, consular, and professional life ? To
think at all carefully over the situation is to see
at once that our people in North and Central
Europe have just the same rights (and I don't
ask for anything more than that) to the services
of their own Church as anywhere else in the
world. Take, for instance, this typical case of a friend
of mine living in one of the cities of Europe, and
now retired from business, but still living on
where he is so well known, and where he has
many ways of making himself of use. He was
married young, and his bride went with him to
make her home abroad. They had their own
Church there, and there they took their children
to be baptized and, when old enough, to worship,
be confirmed, and become communicants. There
those children have been married, and from there
gone out into the world to make new homes.
In his house the clergy have been always made
welcome, and have visited them when sick,
counselled them when necessary, and received
much valuable advice in return. Can any one
be heartless enough, or foolish enough, to say
that there ought to have been no English Church
in that place at all, and that he and his young
wife ought to have attended the Church of the

The Anglican Church in Russia 209
country, and with their descendants been lost to
their own ?
Then there are girls at school, young men
learning the language, governesses, nurses, lads
in the training stables, girls dancing on the stage
— these are well shepherded in Paris — and others.
Are they to feel in after life, " Just at the critical
time, when I needed it most, my Church was not
there to give me the helping hand — and all might
have been so different if it had been !" I will not
dwell upon all the priceless opportunities afforded
us abroad, where touch is more quickly gained,
and more easily maintained, of winning during
sickness and at other times those who have never
been in touch with clergy or Church at home,
bringing them out into the light, gaining them for
the Church, and sending them home to " strengthen
the brethren " there.
Most of our clergy,, from Northern Russia to
Southern France and the Pyrenees, have their
inspiriting stories to tell of the services they
have rendered to the Church at home in this way,
and yet that Church, if some of our brethren
could have their way, would disown them. It
won't bear seriously thinking of, this objection to
English Church work abroad ; and surely it rings
more true to what we feel is the Englishman's
duty wherever he is, when we read that our
2E

210 Russian Life To-day
countrymen, after settling at Archangel in the
sixteenth century, built their warehouses and
their Church at the same time, and wished, in
their adopted country, to worship God " after the
manner of their fathers."
1 have taken a little time to explain our con
tinental position thus, because it is the same in
every country, is thoroughly understood, and
never, as far as I know, resented. We always
make it perfectly clear that we never wish to
interfere with the Church of the country, nor the
religion of its people, but are there to shepherd
our own. And it is a curious thing that in
Catholic Belgium, as it is called, with people
devoted to their Church, and with a clerical
government such as they have had for at least
the last forty years, our Anglican clergy receive
from the Belgian government the same recog
nition, status, stipends, grants for houses, etc., as
are given to the clergy of the country.
But nowhere is the position of our Church
more fully, sympathetically or affectionately
recognized than in Russia. Nowhere would it
be felt, as there, a grave and responsible neglect
of duty on our part if we were to leave our own
people without the ministrations of their own
Church. They go further than this in sympathetic
feeling, for they consider that there is a special

The Anglican Church in Russia 211
link and bond of union between our Church and
their own. An anonymous but evidently ex
tremely well-informed writer about Russia, over
the nom de plume of " Anglitchanin " in a leading
Review ' a month or two ago, said, in the course
of his article on Russia and the War, " the English
Church is said to be very like the Greek Orthodox.
It is not so in fact, but in Russia it is believed
to be so by all classes of the population. That
is indeed the one thing about England that they
all know. I have known more than one peasant
ask me, ' Is England beyond Germany- — far ? or
beyond Siberia ? But your religion is like ours.'
" The origin of this belief," he adds, " is to be
found in the fact that we are not Lutherans on
the one side, and on the other do not acknow
ledge the Pope."
They welcome our bishops and clergy to their
services in their robes, and attend ours in the
same way. When the late Duke of Edinburgh
married the daughter of the Emperor Alexander,
the service took place first in the cathedral with
the Russian rite, with Dean Stanley present in
his robes, and then a second time in the English
Church with our own service, with the Russian
clergy present in the sanctuary. The Bishop of
London also loves to describe his reception at
1 Contemporary "Review, November, 19 14.

212 Russian Life To-day
the great Troitsky Monastery near Moscow,
where he attended the services in cope and
mitre, and with pastoral staff, and was greeted
by all the clergy present as one of their own
bishops ; and the last time I heard him describe
the beautiful ceremonial, he added significantly,
" I should not have been received in that way at
S. Peter's, Rome " ; but who can say what may
be the outcome of this war ? There has been a
wonderful drawing together of the French and
English clergy, and perhaps we may soon have
more brotherly relations with the Roman clergy,
even though we do not have inter-communion.
When four of our English bishops went to
Russia with a large party of Members of Parlia
ment and business men, three years ago, the
chaplain at Petrograd arranged a choral celebra
tion of Holy Communion in his church, and it
was attended by some of the highest dignitaries
of the Russian Church, who were present in their
robes and took part in the procession, following
the service as closely and intelligently as they
could. No clergy of our Church have ever gone
to Russia to learn what they could for themselves,
or give lectures, or act as members of deputations,
and come into touch with the Orthodox clergy
and been disappointed with their reception ; but,
on the contrary, they have often been quite

The Anglican Church in Russia 213
astonished at the warmth of welcome offered
them and the keen interest shown towards them.
I had no idea until I had read what the Con
temporary Review has told us that there is nothing
so well known about England, throughout all
classes of the population, as the similarity of the
two Churches and the religion they represent ;
but I can speak for the archbishops, bishops, and
clergy, that they have a real knowledge of the
Church of England and the character of its ser
vices, and a very sincere wish to be on friendly
and brotherly terms with its members, clergy and
laity alike. And I do not think there is one of
them who would not consider it a great compli
ment and most kind attention if any English
Churchman called upon him to pay his respects
and show interest in his church and work.
Their keen interest in our Church all over the
empire, even in a humble little village, is extra
ordinarily different from the almost complete
ignorance and indifference which prevails amongst
our own countrymen as to theirs, except amongst
the members of one or two societies founded to
bring the two Churches into more real unity of
spirit. However, this, like so many other things, is to
be entirely changed. We are going to see and
know more than we have ever done before of the

214 Russian Life To-day
way in which " God is working His purpose
out" in His Church, as we are being brought into
intelligent sympathy with a simply overwhelming
part of Christendom, as represented by the
Orthodox Church of Russia and the other
Churches of the East.
Will there be many English Churchmen who
will not be most deeply moved when they read
that the first Te Deum, after all these centuries,
has been sung in St. Sophia, in Constantinople ?
It will be a most inspiring thing too to hear that
the whitewash, always peeling off, which covers
up the mosaic picture of our Lord, has been
cleared away, and He is shown looking down in
blessing while the Holy Communion is once more
celebrated in the great Church of Justinian.
We are all praying that God will bring good
out of evil, and overcome evil with good, as this
war draws on to its close, and many of us from
time to time think of the " good " it will be for
humanity if a more united Christian Church can
be one of its first results. "Who will not pray ? "
said Mr. W. J. Birkbeck, the one English layman
who knows Russia, its people, and its Church as
few Englishmen or even Russians know them,
when addressing a great gathering in London
last year, " that this terrible conflict in which we
are engaged will bring the Eastern and English

The Anglican Church in Russia 215
Churches closer to one another ? We are mind
ful of the considerable advances which have
already been made in that direction, and of
the ever-increasing friendship which has arisen
between the English and Russian Churches of
late years, and more especially during the twenty
years' reign of the Emperor Nicholas II. It is
known that even in the earliest years of his reign
His Majesty more than once expressed his wish
that the two Churches should get to know one
another more closely, and that this was the best
way to draw the two nations together. It is
known too that Queen Victoria, when she was
told of this, said, ' Yes, it is not only the best way,
it is the only sure way.' The visits of Anglican
bishops at various times have all tended to pro
mote good feeling and mutual understanding,
as did also the visit to England of the late
Archbishop Antonius of Finland, afterwards
Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, on the occasion
of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. The
question of the reunion of our two Churches is
one that cannot be forced or rushed ; it will
never be brought about by compromises, or by
diplomatic shams. It will only come about when
the two Churches, after coming fully to know
one another, find that both of them hold the
whole of that Faith which each of them, and not

216 Russian Life To-day
one only, and all its members, and not some
only, hold to be essential."
I hope it will not be uninteresting now if, as
they are not many in number, I describe briefly the
places where English Church work is carried on
in Russia, and give some characteristic service at
each. At Petrograd the British Church, with the
parsonage, library, and a number of other suites
of rooms, is a great block of buildings, formerly
a palace, owned and maintained by the British
Factory, and with a staff of three clergy. The
church is the former ballroom of the palace, and
is a classical basilica, with rows of Greek pillars
and capitals, and a very impressive place of
worship. If I single out one of the beautiful
services I have known I shall choose the Even
song on the Feast of the Epiphany last year,
when I preached on the last day of my stay, and
had what one might call a Sunday congregation.
It was grand to see that large congregation on a
weekday, so far away from home.
Three other places are served from Petrograd
— Helsingfors, Narva, and Schlusselberg. Hel-
singfors has a small community of girls engaged
in teaching and nursing, and the one Englishman
who lives there with his wife, a Mr. Reid, is a
Professor of English in the Finn University.

The Bishop and Russian Chauffeur in the midst oj the Steppes on the way to Atbazar.

Page 216.

The Anglican Church in Russia 217
One has to go there and return during the night,
and during my day there I had a Confirmation in
the Art School, most carefully and reverently
prepared, and in the evening Mr. and Mrs. Reid
had all the girls for a reception, at which I was
able to chat with them individually and speak
to them about the important and responsible
trust they had in being allowed to lay the founda
tions of character in young lives. At midnight
they were all on the station to say good-bye,
bright English girls with sparkling eyes and
happy faces. Who could not go away deeply
thankful that they were not allowed to feel in
that remote place that they were forgotten by
their Church ?
Narva is a great manufacturing community
with a large staff of Englishmen, also a long
journey away, and it so happens that they are
nearly all Nonconformists there, but they value
our services, and enjoyed mine with them, fol
lowed as it was by a special evening of music and
recitations, about sixty being present.
Schlusselberg is a large factory for printing
cotton goods for Asia, half a day's journey up
the Neva, where we always have an evening
service followed by Holy Communion next
morning. It is the only place I have yet known
where all the community, about forty, have been

21 8 Russian Life To-day
present at the evening service, and next morning
been all present again as communicants, but with
one added to their number, a man who had been
away the night before.
Moscow has a church and parsonage and large
courtyard, as will be seen in the illustration ;
almost startlingly like, it seems in that ancient
capital, to a bit of a London suburb. But as I
saw it on Christmas Eve last year it was Russian
enough, the great courtyard was full of troikas
and sledges, and the clear air musical with tinkling
bells as the people came driving in from far and
near, clad in warm furs, for the service. That
Christmas Eve, with its carols and the old hymns,
helped one to realize what it means to have an
English church and clergyman in a community
like that of Moscow. The chaplain conducts all
the services, does all the work of the community,
and visits over a large neighbourhood outside,
single-handed. Warsaw is the next capital to take, much before
us of late, and perhaps with a great place yet to
fill in future history. It is the centre of Christian
work amongst the Russian Jews, as I shall have
to explain more at length in my next chapter ;
but there is also a British community to whom
the chaplain ministers, and which perhaps num
bers, all told, about a hundred, with one or two

The Anglican Church in Russia 219
outlying places reckoned in. The service I
remember most at Warsaw, and shall always
associate with it, was the dedication or consecra
tion — the two abroad mean the same thing — of
their church. We had it on a Sunday morning,
with a very large congregation, and very impres
sive it was to take, so far away, as our little
copies of the service told us, " The Order of
Consecration as used in the Diocese of London."
There were some Old Catholics present, and they
were deeply impressed with the scriptural charac
ter of a service which carried us back to the days
of David and Solomon. I dare say it was true of
all there, as one of them said, that they had never
seen the consecration of a church of their own
before, and had had to come to Russia for it
when they did.
We have only two other places in our jurisdic
tion — as the shores of the Black Sea fall to the
Diocese of Gibraltar — Libau and Riga.
Libau is a Baltic port in Courland, a German-
speaking place, where there is an extremely small
British community, but where there are a fair
number of British ships in the course of the year.
The establishment consists of two flats side by
side, one of which supplies the chaplain and his
wife with a comfortable home ; and the other,
which communicates with it, provides an institute,

220 Russian Life To-day
with papers and a billiard-table, etc., for the
sailors, and a beautiful little chapel opening out
of it. When last there we had a reception, or
social, in the institute, followed by a service ; after
which we came back into the institute, and I had
a talk with the seamen and apprentices and one
or two young fellows in the business houses.
I need not ask the reader if he thinks that little
church ought to be there or not.
Riga is a great port, also on the Baltic, and its
beautiful church, with a great spire, is close to
the banks of the river. It has a splendid
position and is tremendously appreciated and
well supported by a fairly large and prosperous
community. The service to mention here was
my Confirmation on the Russian Whitsun Day
last year but one. Every one comes to a Con
firmation abroad, and it was to us at Riga a real
anniversary of the great gift of the Holy Spirit.
It was in the afternoon, and we had had the
Holy Communion at eight and Morning Service
at eleven as at home — but the Confirmation was
at three, and was the service of the day.
It makes a great difference when a large con
gregation can really be brought to pray during
the short space of silence usually kept for the
purpose. They most certainly prayed that after
noon at Riga, and many told me in touching

The Anglican Church in Russia 221
language what an experience it had been to
them. These are great opportunities abroad.
A man in middle life told me once, also abroad,
what the confirmation of his daughter had been
to him that day after he had been led specially
to pray in the service ; and he added, " I've
never been at a Confirmation before this since
my own at Charterhouse, and I can only wish
that it had meant more to me at the time."
There is one other place to mention, the port
which is historic for us in more senses than one
just now — Archangel. It is not actually upon
the White Sea, but a little distance up the Dvina,
and is frequented by a good number of British
ships in the summer when the sea there is free
from ice. There is a church and a rectory, but
no community at all, and so the Russia Company
send a chaplain there for the summer months to
visit the men aboard ship and hold services for
them ashore.
The Anglican Church in Russia, therefore, for
I have described every place in which it is at
work, is not a very large community, but I can
claim that it is zealous, earnest, efficient, and
thoroughly representative, and I feel sure that
it will be admitted that it is doing a real and
good work for Russia as well as for ourselves.
I have often brought home to myself the real

222 Russian Life To-day
significance of an interest or influence by asking
myself what I should do without it. And
if one only just thinks, " What would our
countrymen do in Russia ? how would they hope
to knit up real and lasting ties, if their Church
were not there ? " there would be, to my mind,
no answer which could be adequately expressed
in words.
I hope to be able, when the war is over, to
appoint a chaplain whose work it shall be
to travel over those great spaces in European
and Siberian Russia and visit very small com
munities where it is impossible for a permanent
chaplain to find enough to do.
These will rapidly increase now as the country
and its people become better known to us. The
first Church of England Service ever taken in
Siberia is a very good instance to give of such
opportunities. It was in 1 9 1 2, at Ekaterinburg,
just beyond the Urals, and in the government
of Perm, a large and growing town of 80,000
people, where our British community is repre
sented almost entirely by one family named
Yates, paper manufacturers, whose first mill was
built there fifty years ago. It now consists of
Mr. and Mrs. Yates, their brothers, children,
and grandchildren.
Ekaterinburg is a distributing centre for the

The Anglican Church in Russia 223
Bible Society, and their agent — earnest, energetic,
and capable — is one of the best-known and
respected Englishmen in Siberia. He it was
who had prepared for my coming, arranged for
me to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Yates, and invited
every one within reach — " I've sounded the big
drum," he said — and with governesses, English
wives of Russians, a young fellow and his wife
teaching roller-skating, and one or two others —
some having travelled long distances to get there
— we must have numbered about thirty in all.
They prepared a little temporary altar in the
large drawing-room, with an ikon, flowers, etc.,
and we had Holy Communion, a morning and
evening service, our dinner and supper together,
and a priceless experience of the unity which
thankfulness and fellowship always bring with
them when realized in common prayer and
worship. From Ekaterinburg I went a day's journey to
another town, in a part of the country to which
very few English travellers ever go, and there the
small community consisted of one family only,
though they were three generations. We were
only a dozen altogether, and some might think
it was hardly worth taking up a bishop's time for
three days to go and see one family. But the
head of that family had been there between forty

224 Russian Life To-day
and fifty years, and never had our Church's
service during that time, nor received Com
munion. The grandchildren had never seen or
heard the service before, and they were the
children of a Russian father, attending a Russian
school. I made my address simple so that they
could understand it, knowing that the others
could if the children did, and I had one or two
opportunities of conversation with them, which
they greatly welcomed. Late at night I left, all
the party accompanying me to the station to see
me off ; and after we had said, " Good-bye,"
and they had left, the mother of those children
came back quietly and said : —
" Bishop, I felt I must come back just to tell
you this. In the winter, after having tried so
long to keep my boy and girl English in their
ideas, I felt hopeless and gave up the struggle ;
but I want you to know that in the service
to-day I've had the strength and courage given
me to begin again."
Is it not worth while to have a travelling
chaplain go about and find such experiences as
that waiting for him in many places ? Can
any one possibly think that those who have to
live on the Continent of Europe, because of
some fanciful ideas of intrusion upon the juris
diction of another Church, should be deprived

Page 224.

The British Community at Atbazar, Siberia, after Morning Service during the Bishop's Visit.

The Anglican Church in Russia 225
of the services of their own, and find, as they
inevitably do find, that they are ever accept
ing for themselves a lowered standard and a
dimmer ideal ?
I remember a girl whom I had confirmed in
Switzerland coming at a later visit to tell me
that, after six months of happy life as a com
municant, she had begun to " fall away," and
now seemed to have "lost all interest." What
was she to do ? On being questioned, it appeared
that at the end of those six months she had gone
to stay with a family in the country, where there
was no English church within any possible dis
tance, and she said : —
" I missed the services at first, but I found
gradually that I could do without them ; and
so I grew not to mind." 1 advised her,
wherever she was in future, when not able
to attend a service, carefully to use the Com
munion Office at eight o'clock, and think of all
those who were in church, and realize her unity
with them, and reverently and slowly think over
all the special parts of the service, and she would
find herself eager enough to go to church at the
usual time when opportunity again presented
itself, as she would have wished every time she
was reading the service that she was having the
complete experience. She would not " find that

226 Russian Life To-day
she could do without it." Spiritual things are
spiritually discerned. And -if we drop away
from those means of grace which help us to be
spiritually minded, there will certainly in time
be little, if any, spiritual experiences to show.
This chapter is not, like the others, concerned
with Russian people and affairs ; but I have
ventured to write it because without it English
Churchmen would not be able to understand
fully the influence we are exercising upon Russian
life and thought even now, and which, in far
fuller measure, we are expecting to exercise in
the time to come.
The Duma (I was assured in 1 9 1 1 when
calling at the Ministry of the Interior in
Petrograd) have been preparing a Bill for
some time to give the Anglican Church in
Russia a legal status and recognition such as
it has never yet had ! We shall be glad and
thankful enough to have it, but I am far more
happy and grateful in the thought of the real
spiritual influence our Church possesses and exer
cises, even without that legal status, both in the
permanent chaplaincies and in those distant places
visited from time to time.
Just as in its legislation, it is not so much the
law as it stands which determines the state of
things social in Russia, as the trend and aim and

The Anglican Church in Russia 227
purpose of every new enactment, and the present
actual life of the people. All that is in one
direction in Russia. Government becomes ever
more and more constitutional. It is the same
with respect to religious life and prospects.
There has been no change whatever in the actual
formal and legal relations of the Russian and
Anglican Churches ; but surely and evidently,
in sympathy, mutual knowledge, regard, and
respect, every year, they are drawing more
closely and affectionately together.
I cannot close this chapter without expressing
my deep and grateful appreciation of the help
and support given to our work by the Russia
Society. It is no longer a trading company but
still possesses large funds and, it seems to me,
they must all be spent in support of our Anglican
Church in Russia. It is impossible even to think
of what that work would be without the help
given to us by the Russia Society, and the
British Factory in Petrograd.

CHAPTER XI
The Jews
THE Jewish question was the first of many
I was called upon to consider after crossing
the Russian frontier, for my first service within
the empire was the Confirmation of a Jew. He
was of the educated class, and particularly attrac
tive ; and as he bowed low over my hand and
kissed it with a singular grace of manner the
western part of Europe seemed already far
away. It was at Warsaw, where, as at Cracow —
the ancient capital of Poland — the Jews form
a larger and more influential part of the popula
tion than in any other European city. It will
surprise many, no doubt, to hear that, though the
Anglican Church has no legal status as yet, our
chaplain at ¦'Warsaw has the sole and exclusive
right of baptizing those Jews who are Russian
subjects, and wish to be received into the Chris
tian Church. Any Jew who wishes to become a
Christian, if in the Russian Empire, must go to
Warsaw and receive Baptism from the Anglican
chaplain, maintained there for many years by the
228

The Jrchbishop of Warsaw.

Page 228.

The Jews 229
London Society for Promoting Christianity among
the Jews.
This young Russian, with his wife, had trav
elled a great distance for his Baptism and Con
firmation, and, if I remember rightly, was leaving
Russia in the course of time. He was able,
therefore, to receive Confirmation in our own
Church, although Russian subjects, if Jewish,
on receiving Baptism from us — it is a strange
anomaly that we hope will soon cease — are
expected to choose whether they will next be
received into the communion of the Lutheran,
Roman Catholic, or Orthodox Churches. None
of these, of course, attract them after receiving
instruction and Baptism in our own Church, and,
on that account, no doubt, many of them have
reverted again to their old religion.
The passport system in Russia is an admirable
and comprehensive one, and as soon as a Hebrew
Christian abandons his Faith and returns to
Judaism, he is required by law to report it at
once to the local authority, in order that his
passport may be altered ; and on his doing so
a notice is at once dispatched to our chaplain at
Warsaw that a pen is to be drawn through his
name in the baptismal register. It was painfully
affecting to turn over the pages of that register,
and see those ominous-looking lines drawn from

230 Russian Life To-day
top to bottom of various entries. One could not
see anything like it anywhere else, I suppose.
It carried the mind back to the early days of
the Faith, and to that sad class known as the
lapsi ("lapsed"); to the lament over Demas,
who had forsaken S. Paul and gone back to the
world ; and to such promises as " I will not blot
out his name from the book of life."
There is much in the work at Warsaw to take
one back thus in spirit to the days of the Apostles.
One felt it a little at the Confirmation itself,
when saying the sentence which accompanies
the laying on of hands, first in German for
the young Jew, and then in English for the
girl who followed him ; but most of all on the
Sunday evening, when the services of the day
in the little chapel were all over, and everything
was quiet.
That is the time always given to " inquirers " ;
and they came one after another, that first
Sunday of mine at Warsaw, stealing in, just as
Nicodemus came by night and for the same
reason, sometimes singly, sometimes husband
and wife together, and sometimes a whole family
— the children going off to join the chaplain's
children, while the parents came to us. When
the room in time was quite full we began by
singing a few hymns in German, after which the

The Jews 231
chaplain prayed for guidance and the sense of
God's presence ; and then a most interesting
time followed. He took the holy Gospel for
the day, every one reading a verse in turn — in
German — during which questions were encour
aged if the literal meaning of the verse was not
clear. It was a particularly arresting Gospel for those
present to consider, as it included our Lord's
words, " If I by the finger of God cast out
devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come
upon you." There is no more striking symbol
for a Jew than that of the " finger of God,"
nor anything more absorbingly interesting than
" God's kingdom " ; and I have always thank
fully felt that I was fortunate that night. The
Chaplain of Warsaw is not one who loses or
wastes opportunities, and he did his very best
with that one. It was an extraordinarily inter
esting scene as I watched the faces of that little
gathering of men and women gazing with the
keenest and most penetrating of expressions upon
their teacher ; and now and then, as he mentioned
psalm or prophecy, taking up their Bibles to find
the passage named. Then, satisfied as to its
apposite character, they would look up again as
eagerly as before. I seemed to be back again in
spirit sharing in one of those Apostolic scenes of

232 Russian Life To-day
the New Testament, when one or another
"preached Christ unto them," and they, as at
Berea, received the teaching "with readiness
of mind, and searched the Scriptures whether
those things were so."
Just such little gatherings as that at Warsaw,
and in just such places, to which people came
stealthily yet expectantly, were addressed by
Barnabas and Paul, by Silas and John Mark.
One feels now when listening to a chapter from
the Acts of the Apostles, or reading it, as if one
had been there and seen and heard. It is only
a year since I was once more at Warsaw, and
again it was Sunday evening, with the Holy
Communion, Confirmation, and other services of
the day all over, and just as before the Jewish
inquirers came quietly in, in ones and twos
and threes, only this time the gathering was
larger and the attention keener even than it had
been three years before. The same order was
followed, the singing of hymns in German,
prayer — those present were encouraged to pray
in very simple words — the reading of a passage
from the New Testament, and then its exposition ;
but though it was the same faithful teaching of
the Faith, or preaching Christ, there was a
difference both in what was said and in the
questions asked. It was no longer the Messiah,

The Jews 233
or the Christ fulfilling Messianic psalm or
evangelical prophecy, but the living Christ of
to-day. It was a sight not soon, if ever, to be forgotten,
those keen Jewish faces, such as our Lord Him
self looked into daily during His ministry, eager,
expectant, hopeful, while questioning again, as in
the Synagogue of Capernaum, how it could be
possible for Him to be not only Way and Truth,
but Life ; how He could in any comprehensible
sense be said to live in His people, and how any
one could with any conviction say or sing " And
now I live in Him." It made one feel that even
there, in far-away and comparatively unknown
Russia, that same Spirit is moving upon the
waters to whom the Quarterly 'Review gave its
testimony in the October number of 19 12, when
it stated at the close of a remarkable review of
modern German and other critical literature
that the net result of modern negative criticism
had only been " to make the living Christ a
greater Reality to-day than He has been since
the days of the Apostles." So it was at Warsaw
that night. They wanted to understand the
Christ whom S. Paul not only taught but had
experienced ever since his conversion, and which
enabled and impelled him to say, " I live, yet
not I, but Christ liveth in me." 2 H

234 Russian Life To-day
The Jews have had hard experiences in Russia,
and the story of their wrongs would take long
to tell ; but let us hope that now there is no
reason for wishing to tell it. We are hoping
that in more ways than one Russia is going to
"forget those things which are behind, and reach
forward to those things which are before," and
which are worthy of the aims of a great nation.
Few nobler things have been said during the
war than General Botha's counsel to his fellow-
countrymen when the Beyers and De Wet
revolution had come to a fitting end. He
reminded them that what had happened was
within their own household, and their own affair,
and that the only right course was to let by-gones
be by-gones, and " cultivate a spirit of tolerance
and forbearance and merciful oblivion " with
respect to the errors of the past.
A year ago, if writing upon Russian life
of to-day, one could not but have touched
upon the hardships of the Jews who have
to live " within the pale " in Russia, and have
been alternately tolerated and persecuted, even
massacred within recent years ; and one would
have had to own that there was something
to be said upon the Russian side as well, even
if not agreeing with it. But this is now
no longer necessary. In Russia as in South

The Jews 235
Africa we must say, " Let by-gones be by-gones,
and let the spirit of tolerance and forbearance
and merciful oblivion " blot out the errors of
the past for Russian and for Jew. It should be
remembered also that the devout Jew is as
mystical in his religion as the Russian, who must
surely now and then, as he looks toward the
seven-branched candlestick within his own
sacrarium, or listens to the psalms, be reminded
that his devotion has a Jewish source.
A Jewish Confirmation with none but Jews in
the congregation is a great experience. Twice I
have had it at Wandsbeck, just outside Hamburg,
where, under Pastor Dolman of our London
Society, the work is entirely for and amongst
Jews. At my first visit there were about four
teen candidates, fine young men from many
countries, one or two being German and Austrian,
and several in uniform. As we entered, the
large congregation, without rising, began to sing
a German hymn, slowly and softly, and at once
the whole atmosphere of the place became
deeply devotional. Everything was in German,
and though I confirm in German I cannot venture
to preach or address in the language ; and so in
the address Pastor Dolman stood beside me to
interpret, and so masterly and rapid was this
interpretation that the candidates seemed to be

236 Russian Life To-day
listening to me, rather than to him, from first
to last. There was no mistaking the spirit of
that congregation, nor the character of the
service. Every one was in it, every one
deeply interested and attentive, and eager to
be spiritually helped. The consciousness of
it seemed to embrace every one present in the
most convincing way, and again seemed to carry
us back to Apostolic days, making one wonder
whether amongst those rugged and strong-
featured men and women there might not be
another Aquila and Priscilla, ready for work if
God should bring it to them ; whether amongst
those youths there might not be another
Timotheus ready to gladden the heart of any
one who should see what was in him and take
him in hand for God. " Why shouldn't there
be amongst this eager-looking crowd," I found
myself thinking, "another Apollos, or even a
S. Paul?"
I shall always be glad also to have visited
Cracow, and taken a service there in what we
shall probably soon be speaking of as " the old
days before the war." Nowhere, I suppose, in
Europe does the Jew walk the streets of a city
with the same confidence and assurance as he
does in this ancient capital of Poland and burial-
place of its kings. The Jews form a very large

J Polish Jew.

Page 236.

The Jews 237
part of its population, fill the foremost places of
commercial importance, and show most unmis
takably in every look and gesture how strong,
whenever it can find expression, is the Jewish
pride of race.
There is a very small Christian community
both here and at Lemberg — or Luow as we
must call it now — but there are two licensed
laymen to deal with Jewish inquirers, and we
had a celebration of Holy Communion, and
conference together two years ago. I saw then
another side of the Russian or Polish Jew, for
whether he is in Poland proper or that part of
the old kingdom which is called Galicia, or in
the western part of Russia — he is not legally
allowed anywhere else in the empire — the Jew,
of course, is always essentially the same.
It is most important to keep this from slipping
out of sight when thinking of them. I was
reading a short time ago a most depressing
account of life in some Jewish villages in a
certain part of Russia, of the dirt and degra
dation of the people there, their cunning and
greed, their hang-dog expression of countenance,
and disgusting clothing. Every one is familiar
with the stories told of the usurer and the
extortioner who suck the blood of their inex
perienced and unsuspecting victims, and it is

238 Russian Life To-day
not for me to question their accuracy. We may
all admit that Shylock is a type. But still
environment plays its part, and it would be
difficult to picture any other result from the
treatment which has been meted out to Jews in
Russia than the degradation which has followed.
A very different picture, however, is given for
us by Mr. Rothay Reynolds, in the report of
a Russian official, sent out by his government
to visit the settlements of Russian Jews in the
Argentine Republic. He made a formal report,
but it was no dry and formal statement, but a
real picture, painted in glowing colours, of the
" change wrought in them by the free and open
life of the new land," and he described with
enthusiasm the rich farms possessed and admir
ably cultivated by the former children of the
ghetto. He drew a contrast between the peaky,
timorous Jewish boys of the Russian pale and
the lusty Jewish youngsters astride half-tamed
horses on the ranche. And the settlers spoke
of Russia as our colonists speak of the old
country, as "home." No Jew in Russia dreams
of calling himself a Russian, but when he goes
and settles in another land far away, and prospers
there, then he can speak of Russia as " home."
There are 6,000,000 Jews in the empire, and
250,000 of them rallied to the colours, we are

The Jews 239
told, at the general mobilization. It may be
claimed, therefore, that they have " done their
bit." Will this count for nothing after the
war ? We are assured by one authority after
another that the war only precipitated the
proclamation of autonomy for Poland, and gave
it wider application and comprehension. We
are told, and I for one believe it, that the
government have been preparing for some time
to give constitutional rule to Finland as well
as to Poland, and that the old idea of " Russi-
faction " is entirely abandoned and set aside.
All this is in keeping with what has followed,
in some cases swiftly, in others slowly, but in
all important matters which concern the well-
being of the state, in some measure or other, since
1905. This being so we should expect that the
Jews will also be admitted before long to equal
civil and political rights with other Russian
subjects of the Emperor, and I feel sure the
hopes will not be disappointed. The Jewish
revolutionaries in the past have been the most
dangerous of all, and I believe there has never
been any conspiracy of real moment in which
they have not taken a share ; but there again, as
we think of their degradation in country villages,
we cannot but ask, " How could anything else
be expected of them ? Treated as they have

240 Russian Life To-day
been, their boldest spirits would be sure to plot."
The Jews with us are loyal and patriotic citizens
and though proud — as they have a right to be —
of their race, they are proud also of their nation
ality. So it will be in Russia when she gives
them freedom. None will be more patriotic
than they, amongst all the mixed races which
make up the empire. They have given a fore
taste of this already. A writer in the Contemporary
Review last December (Gabriel Costa), in telling
us something of what " Freeing Six Millions "
would mean, points out that while no Russian
Jewish soldier could hold commissioned rank,
nor aspire even to be the conductor of a military
band — though none could be more fitted — nor be
accepted as an army surgeon, yet when the call
to arms came great numbers of Jewish doctors
were summoned to the front, and obeyed the
call. He also tells us how Jews of all social
grades contributed freely to the Red Cross funds,
whilst — most wonderful of all — the Jews of
Kishineff, where one of the most terrible of all
Russia's "pogroms " or massacres (the word
means literally destruction) took place, offered
up prayers in its synagogues for the success of
the Russian army.
It is a very significant and instructive fact of
life that where great issues have to be faced

The Jews 241
together, whether it is by few or many, those
barriers which have been considered fundamental,
of race, religion, and politics, have a strange way
of disappearing and sinking out of sight. Some
times it is disconcerting, but often it is most
encouraging and even inspiring. And so when
Jews are confronted by the tremendous issues
of this war they find that they can pray for those
towards whom but lately they have been burning
with a deep sense of indignant wrong. Russians
and Poles have been at enmity together for
generations now, but in face of the common peril
and the common foe all this is forgotten, and
the Russian officers sent to head-quarters soon
after the invasion of Poland their grateful recog
nition of the heroism of the Polish peasant
children who made a regular practice of carrying
water to the Russian trenches, often under fire
and at imminent peril of their lives, while stead
fastly refusing all payment. So with Jew and
Christian. The death of the Chief Rabbi of
Lyons on the battle-field has been told in papers
all over the world since it first appeared, last
October, in the Jewish World. " The Chief
Rabbi was bringing spiritual consolation to the
wounded Jewish soldiers on the battle-field, when
he was called to the side of a dying Roman
Catholic trooper. The dying man, evidently

242 Russian Life To-day
mistaking the rabbi for a priest of his own
faith, begged him to hold the crucifix before his
eyes and to give him his blessing. While
holding a crucifix and whispering words of
comfort to the mortally wounded soldier the
rabbi was shot dead ! " No less appealing and
encouraging for those who long to see nation
alities and great races appreciating and admiring
each other's national temperaments and racial
characteristics are some of the incidents which
Gabriel Costa gives us in his Freeing Six Millions.
" First to attract notice," he says, " is the exploit of a
Jewish medical student from Wilna, named Osnas, invalided
home on account of wounds received in saving the colours of
his regiment during the fighting in East Prussia. ' Do every
thing that is possible to save the life of Osnas,' telegraphed his
commander to the hospital authorities. The medical student
has been honoured by the bestowal of the military Cross of
S. George." When events come to be sifted, we shall probably hear of
similar instances of Russo-Jewish patriotism. As for our own
brave soldiers, there can be nothing more convincing, nothing
more gratifying than the emphatic reply of a wounded corporal
of the Black Watch to a ' voice ' in a crowd of sympathetic
Londoners. ' And the Jews,' queried the ' voice,' ' What are
they doing ? ' The Highlander replied, without a moment's
hesitation, ' Doing ? Well, their duty. We had three with
us, and bonnier lads and braver I don't wish to see. They
fought just splendid.'
" No less arresting was the avowal of a private of the Berkshire
Regiment. ' We had ten in our company,' he said, ' all good
fighters, and six won't be seen again. So don't say a word
against the Jews.' "

The Jews 243
Why has Russia's attitude hitherto, then, been,
and for so long, one of rigid exclusion ? The
Pale, to which they are limited, includes only
the ten provinces of Russian Poland, and fifteen
provinces in Western Russia, and the arrange
ments were made first by the government of
Catherine the Great in 1791, and definitely settled
in 1835. Even there, though by law they are
entitled to live and follow their particular tastes
and callings freely, yet we are told that " harass
ing laws restrict their initiative and make even
their right of residence within the Pale itself
become something of a chimera." Why is this
policy of vexatious exclusion so persistently
followed ? We are told that it is because the
Jewish element is a sordid and deteriorating
influence, bad for the local and national life
alike, and a hindrance to the nation's progress.
This, however, was clearly not the view of
M. de Plehve when, as Minister of the Interior,
he received a deputation of representative Jews
petitioning for an extension of civil rights. He
is reported to have said to them, " It is not true
that the Tsar and myself regard the Jews as
an inferior race. On the contrary, we regard
them as exceptionally smart and clever. But if
We admitted Jews to our universities, without
restriction, they would overshadow our own

244 Russian Life To-day
Russian students and dominate our own intel
lectual life. I do not think it would be fair to
allow the minority thus to obtain an advantage
over the majority in this way." He did not
seem to see that, as those in question were
Russian subjects, the very ability to which he gave
his testimony was being prevented from enrich
ing the national life. This is a fallacy as old
as history itself, and pursued by that short
sighted Pharaoh on the Nile of whom it is
significantly said, by way of explanation of his
folly, that " He knew not Joseph ! " As we
read the records of Scripture — and the historical
books are for the most part extraordinarily
dispassionate and free from undue Hebrew
bias — we see that neither Egypt, Assyria,
Chaldea, nor Persia had any cause to regret
giving Jews a place in their national life, and
that their fatal mistakes, even with the Jews
themselves, lay in not following Jewish counsels.
The Jews have what can only be called a
genius for patriotism, and in a way not to be
explained they breathe in this spirit very deeply
towards any nation which bids them welcome,
and offers them a home. During my first service
in Siberia, described in another chapter, at
Ekaterinburg, three years ago, a young soldier
in Russian uniform walked slowly into the room,

The Jews 245
and took his place with a most wondering expres
sion on his face. He was, I found, a young Jew,
and had received baptism some time before in
England. The manoeuvres had brought him
to that part of Siberia, and to his great amaze
ment he had heard just before, that in that
unlikely place, there was to be on the following
Sunday a service of the Church into which he
had been baptized. In my conversation with
him afterwards, however, it seemed to me that
I was speaking not to a Jew but to a Russian.
Somewhere, no doubt, he is fighting now, and
as patriotically, I feel sure, as his comrades in
the ranks. Is it good policy to waste such good
material as this, to restrict the national assets in
this way, and keep back its powers of expansion
and development ? To ask such questions in
these days is to answer them.
" I have been discussing," says Mr. Costa in his most
instructive article, " with Jewish folk in London, Russian men
and women of culture and refinement, the prospect of this
dream becoming a reality. They incline to the belief that if
Russia is really in earnest over the matter, and is not pro
pounding it as a strategical move ; if, in our time, she will
hurl to the dust the grim, hope-excluding walls of the con
gested Pale, she cannot but open up an era of unexampled
greatness and prosperity. With that wonderful intellectual
force, now held in check, applied to the advancement of
Russian culture and progress, the Empire of the Tsar might
awaken and expand beyond the most ambitious dreams of
its dead-and-gone autocrats."

246 Russian Life To-day
Just as we are led to believe that a people
gets the government it deserves, so we may
well be brought to think that possibly, with
respect to this virile and persistent race, the
nation gets the Jews it deserves. As a
policy which is meant to degrade must have a
degraded class as its result, so to give every
part of the nation's life and equipment full
equality of opportunity is to get the best the
nation as a whole has to give in return. We
are further told by Mr. Costa that while the
Russian conscript fights because he must, the
English Jew fights because he loves to serve
the country which has been all in all to him
and his. And thus " Peer's son and first-born
of the ghetto grocer rub shoulders in the task
of upholding the nation's honour. In the
Regulars, Cavalry, Guards, and Territorials,
here you shall find the cream of Anglo-Jewry,
the sons of merchant princes, men who hold
the purse-strings of nations."
I suppose there is no country in the world
where so long and so freely, as with us, the Jews
have been able to give their full contribution to
the national life, and who amongst us with any
breadth of view and largeness of heart does not
see what this has meant to us in the past, and is
meaning for us just now ?

The Jews 247
If any race can truthfully say that they have
never had a chance that race is the Jews. They
have not even had a proper chance of accepting
Christianity. The Christian Church marvellously
soon became their enemy. The nations of the
world, without exception, since the first destruc
tion of Jerusalem have taken up the same
position of antagonism. All this could only
have one end.
In the new time to come, let all this be
forgotten, and the nations use all their national
life to the full, and confidently await the
result. Nothing to my mind can withstand the
influence of our Christian religion when it is
presented as the religion of Christ Himself;
and the modern Jew, I for one believe, will
find it as hard to go on kicking against the
pricks as his great co-religionist did when he
encountered the real thing in S. Stephen, and
was already prepared to receive it as his own
experience. Nothing can stifle loyal and dutiful
service in the hearts of her children when a
nation is a true mother to them all. This, in
Church and State, we can honestly claim is our
own aim towards the Jews ; let us express the
Emperor's confident hope once more, and say,
" Some day it will be like that in Russia."

CHAPTER XII
Our Countrymen in the Empire
" HpHERE are no two powers in the world —
-^ and there have been no other two in history
— more distinct in character, less conflicting in
interests, and more naturally adapted for mutual
agreement and support than are Britain and
Russia." It is in the full endorsement of these carefully-
weighed statements, from a most-experienced
authority, that I wish to write this last chapter.
Looking back upon the past to the days of Ivan
the Terrible and Queen Elizabeth, and reviewing
the situation in the Russian Empire to-day, and,
above all, looking forward to our immediate
future, it seems to me that our countrymen in
Russia have had a real mission to fulfil, and have
done it worthily and well.
They have, from the first, prepared the ground
for what has come up for a great decision to-day,
our splendid opportunity of having Russia for
a friend. And they have not done it by working
and planning, still less by scheming for it, but,
248

Our Countrymen in the Empire 249
just as we should wish our countrymen to extend
our influence the world over, by being honestly
and consistently true to their own nationality,
and worthily representing British traditions and
ideals. There is one testimony, if I may venture
without undue complacency to give it, to the
estimation in which our nationality is held, which
does not suggest that we are really considered,
even by those who have of late so often glibly
said it, to be degenerate and decadent and not
fit to hold the possessions we have, or shape the
destinies of the many peoples who own our
rule. I have never met any one yet, of another
nationality, who did not think it a compliment to
be mistaken for an Englishman. It is not often
that one can make such a mistake, but I have
met Dutchmen and Germans, and Russians also,
who just for a moment or two, from dress,
expression, or speech have made one feel that
they were fellow countrymen. Young Russians
especially, though different in physique, for often
they are built on huge lines and are enormously
strong, after receiving an English education
from a very early age, wearing English dress,
being pleased to meet us, may easily be considered
to be English ; and I doubt if there are amongst
them any who would not feel it a compliment to

250 Russian Life To-day
be so considered, while they would resent the
same mistake being made with regard to any
other nationality.
Englishmen, therefore, it will be admitted,
have kept up the standard in Russia, and not
let down the good name of their own country.
When I was visiting the Troitsk Gold Mine, in
19 12 — a little short of three days' and three
nights' journey, on the other side of Moscow
— to spend Sunday and give them their first
English services, the surveyor, when showing
me over the mine and its workings on the
Monday, told me that those large illustrated
almanacks which we have, with a picture in the
middle and information about Church and parish
round the sides, and which are so often seen on
the walls of the houses of our own working-
classes, are also very popular amongst their own
work-people. " They are got up in the Russian style, of
course," he said, " with a Russian illustration,
and so on ; but you will be interested to hear
that a great part of the paragraphs round it is
given up to describing English ways and ideas,
societies and arrangements, and always with
appreciation and approval."
It must ever be remembered that people who
cannot leave their own country must judge

Our Countrymen in the Empire 251
largely of other countries by what they see of
those who come from them. If English ideas,
manners, and customs are held in favour and
esteem in Russia and Siberia it can only be,
therefore, because English men and women
have worthily represented them there in business
and commerce, by upright and moral conduct.
It does not usually fall to the lot of a bishop
in these days, many-sided as are his sympathies,
and various as are the claims made upon his time
and attention, to see much of actual business and
commercial life, nor have I seen much of the
working of factories and workshops in the other
countries in our jurisdiction ; but in Russia and
Siberia one of the most important parts of a
visitation has been the going amongst the mem
bers of a staff while they were actually at work so
as to get to really know them and their daily
lives. Outside Moscow, for instance, are nearly twenty
mills and manufactories ; in and outside Petro
grad are some of the largest and best-managed
cotton and thread-mills in the world ; at Schlus-
selberg, on the Neva, there is a large and
splendidly equipped print-works for Asiatic trade ;
at Narva, a day's journey from Petrograd, is a
huge factory employing some 70,000 people ;
and in Siberia are the great mining enterprises,

252 Russian Life To-day
some of them employing from 1 8,000 to 20,000
people of both sexes. And in all these places the
staff is composed of our own countrymen, and
numbers sometimes as many as sixty.
I have always, in these places, stayed with the
manager, and have had opportunities of meeting
the staff socially and for services, going into
every department in the mill, factory, or mine,
and, as these visits were not short, making friends
and learning their experiences, seeing their out
look and often acquiring the history of the
enterprise, with all its ups and downs, and suc
cesses and failures, from the very first. Then I
am a guest always at the Embassy in Petrograd,
and am asked to meet all who can be brought
together by kind and courteous host and hostess.
It is the same with the Consul and his wife in
other cities. And above all is it so when I am the
guest of the chaplain, who takes care that I meet
every one in the community who cares about it.
I get thus into close touch with all sorts and
conditions of men, and am compelled to come to
the conclusion that very few can have anything
like the opportunity of really knowing, in a
general way, his own countrymen in Russia as
the bishop who goes amongst them. It seems to
me, therefore, to be a very real duty to give my
tribute to what they have done to make England

Our Countrymen in the Empire 253
well spoken of and well thought of throughout
the empire.
Englishmen have succeeded amongst the Rus
sians for precisely the same reason that they have
succeeded in building up vast colonies and a
huge empire. They have developed, and not
exploited. There is a way of becoming rich by
exploiting resources at the expense of those
employed. Instances will occur to the reader at
once, and probably are not far to seek. I myself
have seen this degrading process conducted on a
fairly large scale in another hemisphere, while the
most terrible and sinister instance of all is that of
the Congo, out of which King Leopold and his
agents amassed an immense fortune in a few
years, while the natives engaged in collecting the
rubber were reduced from twenty millions to a
little over seven. No more deadly and wicked
exploitation was ever known.
True development, on the other hand, is culti
vating and bringing into use the resources of a
country and improving the conditions of life for
those who produce them at the same time. We
have been accused again and again, even by
writers of our own, of exploiting India, and of
being indifferent to the true interests of its
people. No one has ever known, for the Hindoo
temperament is vastly different from our own,

254 Russian Life To-day
whether its people did not think so too. But the
war has declared it. When India rose as one
man and asked only to be allowed to give all for
those who had ruled them, then we all knew that
we had been understood all over that vast depen
dency of ours as being there not only to get but
to give, not to exploit but to develop.
Is it not true of Egypt also, where the fellaheen
along the Nile are of the same race in general
habits and employments as their ancestors of
thousands of years ago, though different ruling
races have come and gone, that in all those ages
they have never enjoyed true liberty, and never
reaped the fruit of their labours and toil without
oppression until they came under British rule ?
It need not weigh at all with us that this is not
known or acknowledged, as it ought to be in
Egypt. We are not given, fortunately, to worrying
as to what other people think about us. Perhaps
it might be better for us sometimes if we were.
But we know that in time Egypt will learn, as
India has learnt, that we are amongst them not
to exploit them, but to develop their resources
and to improve in every way that is possible their
own character and condition. Thus has it been
also in Russia ; and I felt a very thankful man,
proud of my country and nationality, when, a
year ago, I could say to the Emperor of Russia,

Our Countrymen in the Empire 255
" My countrymen are in Siberia, sir, not to
exploit but to help to develop Russia's resources
and its people."
" I know it," he quietly said. And I gave him
the following instance to show him how rapidly
and on what a large scale this is being done.
Some distance to the left of the Orenburg
line which runs down from Samara to Tashkend
in Turkestan, and not far from Orenburg itself,
only reached at present by motor-car and camel,
is a place called Tanalyk, an English property.
Not much more than a year ago there were there
a British engineer, surveyor, and assistants, with a
little handful of nomads, Kirghiz I should think,
looking on and giving their labour. They were
engaged in prospecting, and drilling for copper.
Now, even in this short time, the preliminary work
of a great mine has been begun, and there are from
eighteen to twenty thousand Russians engaged in
it. Accommodation has been provided, schools
are going up, their church and priest are there,
medical and surgical treatment is within the
reach of all. There are stores where they can
buy everything they need in the way of food,
dress, appliances, all sorts of conveniences and
comforts that they have never seen before, at
prices which give no profit to the company.
Those who used to taste meat perhaps once a

256 Russian Life To-day
fortnight can have it daily, for they have good
wages. They are becoming more handy as work
men and improved in physique, and the next
generation will be better still. Education and
the amenities of life are increasing their self-
respect. The determination of the staff not to
overlook bad work, their wish to see them
improve in character, to set them an example in
their own family life, are all having their effect.
" Is it possible," I asked, " to put too high a
value on such good work as this which adds to
Russia's enterprise, wealth, and resources, and
makes all those thousands of men, women, and
children better subjects of your Majesty and
the empire ? "
The managing director of the Russo-Asiatic
Corporation, which began its development with
Tanalyk, and has gone on to other and more
important developments still, told me that when
local option was granted, two years ago, he himself
was given the sole right of deciding whether
those thousands of Russians should have vodka
or not, although it was at that time a govern
ment monopoly, and important as a source of
revenue. He decided that vodka should not be
sold, but that a very light and harmless beer
might be provided for those who wished to have
it. It was only to be sold by one man, however,

Page 256.

Camels at Work — Summer.

Our Countrymen in the Empire 257
and if an instance of drunkenness occurred he
was to lose his right to sell. The amount paid
for rent has been spent on a People's House for
the recreation of all employed at the mine.
Another manager friend of mine told me that
he had helped his people to become more sober
by selling "fiodka at his own stores at a lower price
than that of the government. It sounds a strange
way of doing it, no doubt, but the sale was
restricted to Wednesdays and Saturdays. When,
therefore, on the other days there came would-
be purchasers anxious to have vodka, with the
plea that there was a wedding or a christening
or some other domestic festivity at which it
would be needed just to complete the enjoyment,
they were always told that they could not have
it except on the stated days. This was not
hardship, for the government shop was open,
though the higher price was demanded there.
This they would not pay and so went with
out it, and yet the christening or wedding
passed off no less happily — perhaps even more
happily ; and thus, gradually, amongst the
Russian staff, and through them the work
people, there grew up the idea that the results
of yodka were to be avoided.
Nothing could be more encouraging than the
experience of the management of this particular 21

258 Russian Life To-day
mine in trying, by example and discipline,
to lift their foremen and subordinates of the
staff out of what used to be thought a perfectly
natural and pardonable weakness, but now
throughout the empire is being acknowledged
as a national sin.
It will surely and easily be seen by any think
ing reader that this initiative on the one hand,
and responsiveness on the other, promise well
for our future relations with each other, and
explains, perhaps, how the Russian Entente has
passed quite naturally into an Alliance, which
some of us hope and believe will be permanent
and stable for many generations.
Our Entente with France has been indeed an
Entente Cordiale, and it is now more cordial and
friendly than ever ; but it is not easy to conceive
of anything in the future beyond an Entente and
Alliance. We can be real and staunch and
faithful friends as becomes those who are near
neighbours, but little else opens out before us.
Is it possible to think of anything between our
selves and Germany, even when the war is over
and many years have passed, except the gradual
removal of sadly embittered feelings and outraged
convictions and beliefs ? Our ideas of what can
rightly be called world-power and world-forces
are so diametrically opposed that it passes the

Our Countrymen in the Empire 259
imagination of man to conceive what great world-
purpose we and they could undertake together,
for some time.
But directly we think of ourselves and Russia
as side by side, and with confidence in each other,
there is no limit to what we and they may hope
to accomplish together for our own peoples, for
humanity, and for God. Not only have we
constitutional and religious ideals in common,
but our own countrymen are already at work all
over the richest and most promising part of their
vast empire, and upon the only right lines any
one can adopt if the object in view is to increase
the resources, character, and ability of a people
at the same time.
The Englishman of the ordinary and normal
type cannot be content to look upon the man
he employs as merely a wage-earner. He wants,
as he would put it, " to give him a leg-up "
besides, and our countrymen in Siberia have
sought just to give that " leg-up " to their
employes, to better their conditions of life and
educate their children ; by precept and example
to give them wholesome recreations ; to help
them to see that there is nothing laughable but
everything that is disgusting in such a vice as
drunkenness ; and to help them in every way
they can to manly self-respect.

260 Russian Life To-day
This is tremendously far-reaching in its results.
The Christian paradox is fulfilled here also.
" To lose is to save, to save is to lose." To
try and get all one can out of work-people and
give as little, is to have little enough to show
by way of good results. To think not of the
work alone which the wages claim, but of the
man who is to do it ; to try one's utmost to
make him more of a man for his being employed
and to lift up his self-respect, is straightway to
increase the value of everything he does, and of
the work for which is wages are paid.
The explanation of "dividend or no dividend"
is far simpler than it seems, and the New Testa
ment contributes to it. If only a little additional
value is placed upon the manhood and woman
hood of those employed, and a little increase
given to self-respect, responsibility, and con
scientiousness where hundreds and thousands
are employed, then it requires no great powers
of insight to see how rapidly what has hitherto
been a failure may become a great commercial
success. I attach the greatest importance to the
fact that our countrymen in Siberia whom it has
been my great privilege to know and make my
friends are conducting their great enterprises as
honourable and chivalrous men, and have, with
public-spirited Russians, like-minded with them-

Our Countrymen in the Empire 261
selves, laid the foundations of a true Anglo-
Russian friendship and agreement. In this 1 think
we are extremely fortunate in the opportunity
which world events have brought us, and through
no effort of our own. Our own people at home,
for the most part, are probably not yet convinced
that this is our GoD-given opportunity. I have
already freely owned my former prejudices and
misconceptions, and explained how quickly they
passed away, and I know that others must feel
and think as I used to do myself, and that they
have had comparatively little as yet to clear their
minds, though I trust what is written in these
pages may be a help in that direction. But this
opportunity which has come to us was possible
for Russia's great neighbour at one time, as she
was told by one of the most far-seeing men of
Europe, but it was carelessly and even con
temptuously refused. Great opportunities for
great nations never return.
Just as Bismarck pleaded for friendliness with
England and against naval expansion for his own
country, so also he was quite alive to the possi
bilities of Russia and its "wonderful materials
for making history if it could take the virility
of Germany into its national character." The
Emperor William, however, differed with his
great chancellor upon this as upon other policies

262 Russian Life To-day
he advocated, maintaining that the "Sclavonic
peoples are not a nation but only soil out of
which a nation with an historic mission may be
grown." We in this country are not as alive to the
magnificent opportunity which is now afforded
us as are our countrymen in Russia who know
its people and its potentialities. And all grades
of Russian society, from the Emperor and his
Court downwards, also know it, and all who are
intelligent in their patriotism desire it. This is
what a Russian x wrote at the beginning of 19 14,
when no one was even dreaming of what the
close of the year was to see : —
" All progressive Russia is united in desiring a
rapprochement with England, because there is a
universal belief that the influence of English
constitutional ideas on Russian internal politics
will be most beneficial to the interests of the
people and to the general, welfare of the country.
Being one of the youngest constitutional countries,
Russia is holding out a hand of friendship to the
mother of all constitutions — England ; and she
hopes that good relations between them will bear
much fruit. This, on the other hand, explains
to us why all reactionaries in Russia are so up
1 Boris Lebedev, in the February number of the 'Russian
Tieview.

Camels at Work— Winter.

Page 262.

Our Countrymen in the Empire 263
in arms against the Entente with England. There
is also a widespread opinion all over Russia that
English interests require Russia to be a strong
and civilized country with a firmly established
constitutional government. If England wishes
to have an ally that ally should be a strong one,
and Russia cannot be strong so long as reaction
is in full swing. The Russian Liberals hope that
constant intercourse between the two countries
will lead to a better mutual understanding, and
will ultimately improve the state of affairs now
prevailing in Russia."
France is Russia's ally, and well and faithfully
have they both kept the terms of their alliance.
We are a new friend only, but it was the British
flag the populace demanded, at the beginning of
the war, in Petrograd. They went in vast num
bers to the British Embassy, and asked for it ;
and our Ambassador (Sir George Buchanan),
though he had only two, handed one of them
down, asking them to take care of and return it.
They received it with the utmost reverence
bent down and kissed it, as many as could get
near, and then, in procession, went cheering and
singing through the streets of the capital, the
British flag carried high before them.
During the visit of the Fleet earlier in the
year to Crpnstadt a party of moujiks were in a

264 Russian Life To-day
boat within the harbour ; and, in their excitement
to get near and see all they could of a British
warship, they upset their boat, and were thrown
struggling into the water. Instantly some twenty
of our bluejackets (officers and men) dived
amongst them, and in the shortest possible time
had them safe in their righted boat again. This
made a great impression in Russia, and, though
news travels slowly in that vast country, this
story went everywhere, continually evoking the
comment, " Then it 's true, all that we've been
told about them — and their officers dived in to
save the lives of poor peasant folk ! " It is a
tremendous link between us and them to feel,
as they do, that, while claiming all the rights
of rank and authority, we feel human ties to
be supreme. And just as we read of the British
officer early in the war lying wounded in both
legs, but lifting himself up with difficulty and
crying, " Now my bonny lads, shoot straight and
let them have it ! " so we read of the Russian
officer who addresses his men under similar
circumstances as " little pigeons " — a special
Russian term of endearment. Thus, while
there is leadership in the officers of both
countries, yet towards their men there is, as
boys would say, " no side."
We have only now to read and watch the

Our Countrymen in the Empire 265
course of events to keep free from prejudice
and suspicion, as we try and discern the signs
of the times, and the forces already at work
will quite naturally and normally bring the two
peoples together in enduring friendship. It is
a most significant thing, surely, that three
writers so utterly different from each other
in their whole outlook upon life as the great
surgeon, the popular novelist, and the inde
pendent thinker1 should go to the Holy Land
for totally different objects, and all find the
Russians, above all other nationalities, get very
close to their hearts, both for what they were
themselves, and for what it was so evidently
in them to become.
The most important link of all, however, and
that which I have kept in mind in everything I
have written, between ourselves and Russia, is
that our two races are at heart deeply religious
people. The difference between us is that the
devout Russian shows his religion in every pos
sible way, while the Englishman, with his charac
teristic reserve, seems to hide it or to speak about
it with difficulty. When I was talking last year
with a British officer in a specially responsible
position, and religion came to be mentioned,
1 Sir Frederick Treves, Mr. Robert Hichens, and Mr.
Stephen Graham. 2 M

266 Russian Life To-day
he said very shyly and with hesitation, " Well,
I have my bit, but I don't talk much about it,
though it 's everything to me, and I could not
live without it." It 's " everything " to us and
to the Russians, though our public expressions
of it are so entirely different. And in Russia
once again, as, in former experiences in my
episcopal work, I have found that the religious
men — when they are the real thing — are all
round the best men.
And thus I come to the end, hopefully con
fident about our relations with the Russians and
our work in the world together. This book
was asked of me, and pressed upon me at a
specially busy and harassing time, and as it has
had to be written amidst many distractions and
interruptions its imperfections and deficiencies,
as I well know, are many, yet it has been a
most congenial task to write it. It has been
written throughout with the one desire, while
giving as true a description of Russia and
its people's life as I could, to lead my own
countrymen to view them with a friendly eye
and a kindly heart. This is essential if we
are to have sound and stable relations with
each other. Treaties and other diplomatic
agreements are indeed mere "scraps of paper "
without it, and when the Prime Minister

Our Countrymen in the Empire 267
addressed the deputies from the Russian Duma
at a luncheon given them in the House of
Commons in 1909, he truly and appropriately
said that it is not enough to let governments
sign treaties and agreements, but the nations
themselves must have feelings of friendship
for each other, without which all agreements
and alliances are not worth the paper on which
they are written. I believe — firmly and thank
fully I believe it — that our feelings towards
those of whom I have written are already those
of sympathy and friendship. I am sure it is so
in their feelings towards us, and that we are in
consequence going to find in Russia not only a
new ally but a very faithful one, and a loyal
and true friend for many generations.

INDEX

Archangel, 210, 221.
Berlin, Social conditions in,
202-03.
Catharine the Great, 27.
Cleanliness of Russians, 59-60.
Climate of Russia, 31—32; of
Siberia, 179-81.
Convict Labour, 149.
Duma, The, 25, 160, 226,
267.
Ekaterinburg, 40, 222, 223,
244 ; Convent at, 83 ; Bishop
of, 80, 83.
Elizabeth, The Grand Duchess,
81, 133, 134-37.
English Church, position of in
Russia, 1-2, 205-10; re
lations with Russian Church,
90-93, 210-13, 226-27 ;
work of in Russia, 89-91,
175-79, 221-24; relations
with the Jews, 228 sqq.
Germany, contrasted with
Russia, 201.
Ikons, Ubiquity of, 21-24, 54,
100, 121 ; at the Kremlin,
29 ; "worship of" by peas
ants, 57 ; in churches, 87,
104 ; the blessing of, 82.

Jews in Russia, 26 ; religious
work among, 218 ,228 sqq. ;
persecution of, 234-3 5, 240 ;
as soldiers, 241—42, 246.
Kirghiz, The, 8, 37, 53, 89,
164 sqq., 255.
Kremlin, The, 29, 3 1 .
Language, The Russian, 7—1 1.
Libau, 7, 36, 219-20.
Magdalena, Abbess, 83.
Moscow, 7, 8, 12, 28, 31, 33,
138, 175, 192, 250, 251 ;
the Archbishop of, 78-83 ;
English Church at, 218.
Neva, The, 14, 25 1 ; the bless
ing of, 1 1 2-1 3.
Nicholas II, 2, 113, 118, 122
sqq., 156-57, 254-56.
Nicholas, The Grand Duke,
"3» I32-
Orthodox Church in Russia,
relations with the State, 71-
74 ; clergy of, 74 sqq. ; their
relations with the people,
92-94; services, 91—94,
101-05 5 arrangement of
churches, 102-05.

569

270

Index

Passport system, The, 16-18.
Peter the Great, 27, 72.
Petrograd, 27, 31, 83, 1 01,
112, 125, 157, 168, 175,
190, 192, 195, 199, 212,
251, 252, 263; English
Church at, 216.
Poles, relations with Russia,
25, 42-44, 241.
Riga, 7, 3°, 83, 220.
Samovar, The, 36, 171.
Siberia, 7, 12, 17, 19, 40, 52,
89, no, 123, 124, 152,
159, 168 sqq., 244, 251,
259 ; the prisons in, 141-
5i-

Steppes, The, 8, 162 sqq.
Students, Problem of, 192 sqq.;
numbers of, 192 ; at Geneva
and elsewhere, 194-95.
Tea, how drunk in Russia, 37.
Tiumen, Abbot of, 87-89.
Travelling in Russia, n-14;
by sledge, 3 2 ; on the Steppes,
170-75.
Tsarevitch, The, 125-26.
Vodka, Prohibition of, 41, 42,
51, 155 ; attraction of, 65,
256-57.
Volga, The, 14, 16-17, 44-
Warsaw, 10, 29, 31, 228 sqq.;
Archbishop of, 75-78.
Wolves, 179, 181-83.

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