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PATRIOTISM

THE SLAVERY OF OUR
TIMES

GENERAL ARTICLES

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF
LYOF N. TOLSTOi'

Patriotism
Slavery of Our
Times

General Articles

New York

CARLTON HOUSE

Copyright, 1899,

BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.

Copyright, 1927,

BY NATHAN HASKELL DOLE

Published, 1928,

BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STVTE9 OF AMERICA

PREFACE

S INCE the death of Count Lyof Nikolayevitch Tolstoi,
in November, 1910, multifarious manuscripts left
by him either practically complete or in more or less
embryonic form, have been released for publication. Up
to the time of the Revolution in Russia, those that ap-
peared in that country were, as usual in his case during
his life, subjected to strict censorship. Some of them,
however, were issued in foreign countries with the ex-
punged passages restored and indicated by brackets.
When the eighty-volume edition, which is appearing in
Moscow, is completed, it is probable that all his works
will be restored to their pristine integrity — unless indeed
the Bolsheviki, in their turn take it upon themselves to
delete the passages in which he either directly or im-
plicitly animadverts on the “errors” of Communism.

Archaeologists, when excavating in mounds which hide
relics of a departed civilization, preserve with the most
scrupulous care even tiny shards broken from the pottery
once carelessly thrown into some rubbish-heap. Nothing
is neglected which may throw light on the art or the ar-
tizanship of peoples long vanished from the face of the
earth. From such apparently insignificant fragments the
trained observer is often enabled to trace lost facts of
history and reconstitute in no small measure the state
of culture to which forgotten tribes or nations once
attained.

So it is with the contents of a great writer's aftermath.
He may have completed some important work but put it
away for revision or for the reason that the time for its
publication seemed unpr^pitious. His note-books may
contain isolated thoughts jotted down for future ampli-
fication, scenes intended to be worked up into a projected
drama, criticisms of other men's philosophies of life, un-
finished letters, awaiting the moment for completion and

VI

PREFACE

despatch — a moment which never came. There is no end
to the variety to be found in the debris of a prolific
author’s desk.

This is eminently true of Count Tolstoi. His frequent
attacks of illness, his particular habit of becoming inter-
ested in a subject and then being diverted to something
else and laying aside that which he had begun with en-
thusiasm, perhaps years afterwards to take it up again
resulted in his leaving a great amount of manuscripts
covering many years. He had convinced himself of the
futility of pure art-productions, finding far greater im-
portance in disseminating his opinions regarding the
Christian doctrine, as he understood it and the conduct
of life as he believed it should be led. Nevertheless his
dramatic instinct was so strong that it seemed impossible
for him to treat of any subject, whether moral, social or
theologic, without introducing what might be called the
romantic element. Illustrations, taken from his daily
observation of the men and women around him, are in-
troduced with the keenest zest. When money was
required to help suffering humanity, as in the case of the
Dukhobors, persecuted by the bigoted Government and
finally obliged to emigrate en masse to Canada, he found
the easiest way to raise it was by returning for the
moment to the composition of fiction and the novel
Voskrcseniye, “Resurrection,” was written for this
purpose.

There have been found also various articles hidden
away in magazines or intended for possible publication
which contribute to the mass of the material of what
may be called his posthumous works. The present vol-
ume, the first of four containing translations of these
precious remains, is devoted mainly to controversial ar-
ticles, essays on timely topics — arbitration, liquor-drink-
ing, vegetarianism, prefaces, defences of the Dukhobors,
reports on the districts of Russia that were especially
devastated by famine and were in large measure relieved
by the efforts of Count Tolstoi, theological paper setting
forth the errors of conventional religion, the perverted
relations of Church and State, his own ideas of the mean-
ing of Christianity as presented in the Four Gospels,

PREFACE

vii

interpretations of Science and Philosophy, the false
applications of which to the common life of the people
result in practical slavery. Most of these chapters, how-
ever brief or even fragmentary will be found to contain
some of the author’s most vigorous and most character-
istic utterances.

The famine articles, relating the measures instituted
to assist the depressed and demoralized peasantry, and
picturing the terrible conditions under which no small
part of the population of Russia seemed to his mind to
be degenerating, are intensely interesting. There are
details which are like extracts from a novelist’s note-
book. Count Tolstoi lays his finger on the deep, under-
lying causes of the famine: it was not crop-failures; klF
it was not a material, but a moral, famine.

No unprejudiced person can fail to accept Count Tol-
stoi’s theory that the paternalism which made a child
of the peasant, subjecting him to the whims of all sorts
of functionaries, destroying his self-respect by flogging
and his dignity by a State religion which did not appeal
to his conscience, was bringing ruin upon Russia. The
peasantry is the very bone and sinew of a country, and
when agriculture fails, the country is doomed.

Count Tolstoi advocated greater freedom of education,
of religion, of movement, and he predicted that prosper-
ity would soon return, and the chronic state of famine
at that time obtaining and growing worse year after year
would correct itself, if the terrible exactions of govern-
ment would cease.

He returns again and again to his plea for Christians
to unite on the five simple commands of Christ and put
them into practice. Several of his papers contain a
rather unusual and pathetic personal note which cannot
help touching the heart, bringing out so evidently the
man’s generous sincerity and simplicity.

His application of the rule of non-resistance to the
tremendous international questions which were and still
are keeping Europe, and, indeed, the whole world, in the
condition of a vast mine of dynamite, ready at any instant
to explode with unimaginable consequences, is perhaps
his most important contribution to the practical solution

Vlll

PREFACE

of the difficulty which confronts humanity at the present
time. Occasionally a single man, or even a whole body
of men, like the Dukhobors, will refuse to bear arms from
conscientious motives. Count Tolstoi sees that the sim-
plest and easiest method of disposing of the question of
excessive armament of the nations is for all men to fol-
low their example. War would then cease from sheer
inertia. If every man in every country should refuse to
enter the army, the army would cease, and the millions
of armed men, devouring like caterpillars, would return
to their peaceful vocations and bring prosperity to the
tormented land.

His plea against the use of intoxicants is as chivalrous
and convincing as anything that he has ever written.
Possibly the believer in a moderate use of light wines
will charge him with fanatic extravagance, but no one
can doubt his zeal or the genuineness of his conviction.

Taking the volume as a whole, its consistency and its
vitality — its inherent power to interest — will be found
no less marked than previous volumes, though they be
more coherent. Like a prophet he sends forth his clarion
voice against the oppressions of power and the dangerous
teaching of a pseudo-Christianity. It is as if one heard
it reproduced on a phonograph ! In this respect the vol-
ume equals, if it does not excel in interest all the others,
just as a man’s personality must be superior to what he
produces. It is a sort of epitome of the life of a man
who towers head and shoulders above the great men
of his own country, and either now does, or is destined
to, wield a greater influence than any other man of the
century.

The translations in the present volume are due to sev-
eral hands, but a large number of them have been made
by Mr. Aylmer Maude of England, who was a personal
friend of Count Tolstoi’s and has been for years in im-
mediate touch with his industrial, religious, and social
activities. Many of the articles thus furnished have
been from sources otherwise unattainable.

January, 1928.

N. H. D.

CONTENTS

GENERAL ARTICLES

PAGE

Introduction vii

Patriotism and Christianity i

Two Wars 63

The Beginning of the End 70

Carthage Delenda Est 80

Shame! 90

Nikolai Palkin 97

In the Cause of Temperance:

The Feast of Enlightenment of January Twenty-fourth . 108

To God or Mammon 114

Why do People Stupefy Themselves? 123

Church and State 144

How TO Read the Gospels 158

Reason and Religion 162

Autobiographical :

First Recollections 166

The Demands of Love 172

Three Parables 180

FAMINE ARTICLES

A Terrible Question 191

Means of Helping the Population Suffering from Bad

Harvests 203

Help for the Starving 227

Unprinted Conclusion 254

In the Midst of the Starving 259

Famine or Not Famine 276

THE DUKHOBORS

Persecution of Christians in Russia 296

Help ! 304

Thf Emigration of the Dukhobors 310

ix

X

CONTENTS

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

PAGE

CiOODS-PORTERS WhO WoRK ThIRTY-SEVEN HOURS . . . 31?

Society’s Indifference While Men Perish .... 324
Justification of the Existing Position by Science . . 327

The Assertion of Economic Science that Rural Labor-
ers Must Enter the Factory System .... 329
Why Learned Economists Assert What Is False . . 334

Bankruptcy of the Socialist Ideal 337

Culture or Freedom? 341

Slavery Exists Among Us 344

What Is Slavery? 347

Laws Concerning Taxes, Land and Property . , . 349

Laws the Cause of Slavery 354

The Essence of Legislation Is Organised Violence . . 357

What Are Governments? Is It Possible to Exist with-
out Governments? 359

How Can Governments Be Abolished? 366

What Should Each Man Do? 373

An Afterword 379

Pascal

382

PATRIOTISM AND CHRIS-
TIANITY'

T he Franco-Russian festivities which took place in
October, 1894, in France made me, and others, no
doubt, as well, first amused, then astonished, then indig-
nant — feelings which I wished to express in a short
article.

But while studying further the chief causes of this
strange phenomenon, I arrived at the reflections which
I here offer to the reader.

I

The Russian and French peoples have been living for
many centuries with a knowledge of each other — enter-
ing sometimes into friendly, more often, unfortunately,
into very unfriendly, relations at the instigation of their
respective governments — when suddenly, because two
years ago a French squadron came to Kronstadt, and
its officers, having landed, eaten much, and drunk a

1 In this remarkable work by Count Tolstoi, which powerfully aroused
European attention, the principle of ** non-resistance,” which is so often,
by opponents, made to take a doctrinaire^ or even absurd complexion, is
seen in drastic application to the huge militarism under which the world
groans. As reasonable people, following Tolstoi, we must ask : What
other principle of conduct than this can possibly remove the incubus?”

To those living outside of Europe, the unusual contentions of this work
may not seem so startling as to those who live under a system of compulsory
military service. But a little thought reminds us that we also maintain
Jmndreds of thousands of fighting men, and that in paying taxes for gov-
ernment purposes, we are responsible for the appearance, upon the sea and
in the field, of those whom Tolstoi might call “ licensed murderers.” So
that the obligation of conscience raised by this Book is equally binding
upon all, whether Russian or English, French or American. — Tr.

1

2 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

variety of wine in various places, heard and made many
false and foolish speeches; and because last year a
Russian squadron arrived at Toulon, and its officers,
having gone to Paris and there eaten and drunk copi-
ously, heard and made a still greater number of silly
and untruthful speeches, — it came to pass that not only
those who ate, drank, and spoke, but every one who was
present, and even those who merely heard or read in
the papers of these proceedings — all these millions of
French and Russians — imagined suddenly that in some
especial fashion they were enamored of each other;
that is, that all the French love all the Russians, and
all the Russians all the French.

These sentiments were expressed in France last Octo-
ber in the most unheard-of ways.

The following description of these proceedings ap-
peared in the Village Review^ a paper which collects its
information from the daily press : —

‘‘When the French and Russian squadrons met they
greeted each other with salvos of artillery, and with
ardent and enthusiastic cries Of ‘ Hurrah ! ' ‘ Long live
Russia 1 ’ ‘ Long live France! *

“To all this uproar the naval bands (there were
orchestras also on most of the hired steamboats) con-
tributed, the Russian playing ‘ God save the Tsar,* and
the French the ‘ Marseillaise,* the public ujJon the
steamboats waving their hats, flags, handkerchiefs, and
nosegays. Many barges were loaded entirely with men
and women of the working-class with their children,
waving nosegays and shouting ‘ Long live Russia ! * with
all their might. Our sailors, in view of such national
enthusiasm, could not restrain their tears.

“ In the harbor all the French men-of-war present
were ranged in two divisions, and our fleet passed be-
tween them, the admiraFs vessel leading. A splendid
moment was approaching.

“ A salute of fifteen guns was fired from the Russian
flagship in honor of the French fleet, and the French
flagship replied with thirty. The Russian National
Hymn pealed from the French lines; French sailors

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 3

mounted their masts and rigging; vociferations of
welcome poured uninterruptedly from bothTleets, and
from the surrounding vessels. The sailors waved their
caps, the spectators their hats and handkerchiefs, in
honor of the beloved guests. From all sides, sea and
shore, thundered the universal shout, ‘ Long live Rus-
sia! ’ ‘ Long live France I *

“According to the custom in naval visits. Admiral
Avellan and the officers of his staff came on shore in
order to pay their respects to the local authorities.

“ At the landing-stage they were met by the French
naval staff and the senior officials of the port of Toulon.

“ Friendly greetings followed, accompanied by the
thunder of artillery and the pealing of bells. The
naval band played the Russian National Hymn, ‘ God
save the Tsar,* which was received with a roar from the
spectators of * Long live the Tsar I * ‘ Long live Russia! ’

“The shouting swelled into one mighty din, which
drowned the music and even the cannonade. Those
present declare that the enthusiasm*'of the huge crowd
of people attained at that moment its utmost height,
and that it would be impossible to express in words the
feelings which overflowed the hearts of all upon the
scene.

“ Admiral Avellan, with uncovered head, and accom-
panied by the French and Russian officers, then drove
to the naval administration buildings, where he was re-
ceived by the French Minister of Marine.

“ In welcoming the admiral, the minister said, ‘ Kron-
stadt and Toulon have severally witnessed the sympa-
thy which exists between the French and the Russian
peoples. Everywhere you will be received as the most
welcome of friends.

“ * Our government and all France greet you and your
comrades on your arrival as the representatives of a great
and honorable nation.*

“ The admiral replied that he was unable to find lan-
guage to express his feelings. ‘ The Russian fleet, and
all Russia,* he said, ‘will be grateful to you for this
reception.*

4 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

“ After some further speeches, the admiral again, in
taking leave of the minister, thanked him for his recep-
tion, and added, ‘ I cannot leave you without pronounc-
ing the words which are written in the hearts of every
Russian : ‘ Long live France ! ' ^

Such was the reception at Toulon. In Paris the wel-
come and the festivities were still more extraordinary.

The following is a description, taken from the papers,
of the reception in Paris : —

‘‘All eyes are directed toward the Boulevard des
Italiens, whence the Russian sailors are expected to
emerge. At length, far away, the roar of a whole hur-
ricane of shouts and cheers is heard. The roar grows
louder, more distinct. The hurricane is evidently ap-
proaching. The crowd surges in the Place. The
police press forward to clear the route to the Cercle
Militaire, but the task is not easy. Among the spec-
tators the pushing and scrambling baffles description.
.... At last the head of the cortege appears in the Place.
At once arises a deafening shout of ‘ Vive la Russie !
Vivent les Russes ! ’

“ All heads are uncovered ; spectators fill the windows
and balconies, they even cover the housetops, waving
handkerchiefs, flags, hats, cheering enthusiastically, and '
flinging clouds of tricolor cockades from the upper win-
dows. A sea of handkerchiefs, hats, and flags waves
over the heads of the crowd below ; a hundred thousand
voices shout frantically, ‘Vive la Russie! Vivent les
Russes ; * the throng make wild efforts to catch a glimpse
of the dear guests, and try in every possible way to
express their enthusiasm.*’

Another correspondent writes that the rapture of the
crowd was like a de liriu m. A Russian journalist who
was in Paris at the time thus describes the entry of the
Russian marines: —

“ It may truthfully be said that this event is of uni-
versal importance, astounding, sufficiently touching to
produce tears, an elevating influence on the soul, mak-
ing it throb with that love which sees in men brothers^

1 SteVsky Vyesinik, 1893, No. 41.

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 5

which hates bloody and violence, and the snatching of chil-
dren front a beloved mother. I have been in a kind of
torpor for the last few hours. It seemed almost over-
poweringly strange to stand in the terminus of the
Lyons Railway, amid the representatives of the French
government, in their uniforms embroidered with gold,
amongst the municipal authorities in full dress, and to
hear cries of ‘Vive la Russie!' ‘Vive le Tsar!* and our
national anthem played again and again.

“ Where am I .? I reflected. What has happened ?
What magic current has united all these feelings, these
aspirations, into one stream } Is not this the sensible
presence of the God of love and of fraternity, the pres-
ence of the loftiest ideal descending in His supremest
moments upon man }

“ My soul is so full of something beautiful, pure, and
elevated that my pen is unable to express it. Words are
weak in comparison with what I saw and felt. It was
not rapture, the word is too commonplace ; it was better
than rapture. More picturesque, deeper, happier, more
various. It is impossible to describe what took place
at the Cercle Militaire when Admiral Avellan appeared
on the balcony of the second story. Words here are of
no avail. During the ‘ Te Deum,’ while the choir in the
church was singing, ‘ O Lord, save Thy people,* through
the open door were blown the triumphal strains of the
‘ Marseillaise,* played by the brass bands in the street.

“It produced an astounding, an inexpressible impres-
sion.** ^

II

On arriving in France the Russian sailors passed, dur-
ing a fortnight, from one festivity to another, and during
or after each they ate, drank, and made speeches. In-
formation as to where and what they ate and drank on
Wednesday, and where and what on Friday, and what
they said on these occasions, was purveyed by telegraph
to the whole of Russia.

1 Novoye Vremya (New Time), Oct. 1893.

6 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

The moment one of the Russian commanders had
drunk to the health of France, it became known to the
whole world ; and the instant the Russian admiral had
said, “I drink to beautiful France,'’ his effusion was
transmitted round the globe. Moreover, for such was
the solicitude of the papers that they commemorated
not merely the toasts, but the dishes, not even omitting
the hors-d'oeuvres, or zakouskas^ which were consumed.

For instance, the following menu was published, with
the comment that the dinner it represented was a work
of art ; —

Consomm^ de volailles ; petits patds.

Mousse de homard parisienne.

Noisette de boeuf k la bdarnaise.

Faisans k la Pdrigueux.

Casseroles de truffes au champagne

Chaudfroid de volailles k la Toulouse.

Salade russe.

Crokte de fruits toulonnaise.

Parfaits k Pananas.

Dessert.

In a second number it said : From a culmary stand-
point nothing better could have been desired. The
menu was the following : —

Potage livonien et Saint-Germain.

Zdphyrs Nontua.

Esturgeon braisd moldave.

Selle de daguet grand veneur. ... etc.

And a following issue gave still another menu. With
each was a minute description of the wines which the
feasters imbibed — such vodka, such old Burgundy,
Grand Moet, etc.

In an English journal a list of all the intoxicating liquor
drunk during the festivities was given. The quantity men-
tioned was so enormous that one hardly believes it would
have been possible that all the drunkards in France and
Russia could account for so much in so short a time.

The speeches made were also published, but the
menus were more varied than the speeches. The lat-
ter, without exception, always consisted of the same

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 7

words in different combinations. The meaning of
these words was always the same — We love each
other tenderly, and are enraptured to be so tenderly
in love. Our aim is not war, not a revanche ^ not the
recovery of the lost provinces; our aim is only peace,
the furtherance of peace, the security of peace, the tran-
quillity and peace of Europe.

Long live the Russian emperor and empress! We
love them, and we love peace. Long live the President
of the Republic and his wife 1 We love them and we
love peace. Long live France, Russia, their fleets and
their armies 1 We love the army, and peace, and the
commander of the Russian fleet.

The speeches concluded for the most part, like some
popular ditty, with a refrain, Toulon-Kronstadt,” or
“ Kronstadt-Toulon.” And the reiteration of the names
of these places, where so many different dishes had
been eaten and so many kinds of wine drunk, were pro-
nounced as words which should stimulate the represent-
atives of either nation to the noblest deeds — as words
which require no commentary, being full of deep mean-
ing in themselves.

‘‘ We love each other ; we love peace. Kronstadt-
Toulon ! '' What more can be said, especially to the
sound of glorious music, performing at one and the same
time two national anthems — one glorifying the Tsar
and praying for him all possible good fortune, the other
cursing all tsars and promising them destruction ?

Those that expressed their sentiments of love espe-
cially well on these occasions received orders and rewards.
Others, either for the same reason or from the exuber-
ance of the feelings of the givers, were presented with
articles of the strangest and most unexpected kind.
The French fleet presented the Tsar with a sort of
golden book in which, it seems, nothing was written —
or, at least, nothing of any concern ; and the Russian
admiral received an aluminium plow covered with flow-
ers, and many other trifles equally astonishing.

Moreover, all these strange acts were accompanied
by still stranger religious ceremonies and public services

8 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

such as one might suppose Frenchmen had long since
become unaccustomed to.

Since the time of the Concordat scarcely so many
prayers can have been offered as during this short
period. All the French suddenly became extraordina-
rily religious, and carefully deposited in the rooms of
the Russian mariners the very images which a short
time previously they had as carefully removed from
their schools as harmful tools of superstition; and they
said prayers incessantly. The cardinals and bishops
everywhere enjoined devotions, and themselves offered
some of the strangest of prayers. Thus a bishop at
Toulon, at the launch of a certain ironclad, addressed
the God of Peace, letting it, however, at the same
time be felt that he could communicate as readily, if
the necessity arose, with the God of War.

‘‘ What its destination may be,’^ said the bishop, allud-
ing to the vessel, '' God only knows. Will it vomit death
from its dreadful ma^y ? We do not know. But if, having
to-day pleaded with the God of Peace, we may hereafter
have to call upon the God of War, we may be sure that
it will advance against the foe in rank with the powerful
men-of-war whose crews have to-day entered into so near
and fraternal union with ours. But let this contingency
be forgotten, and let the present festival leave none but
peaceful memories, like those of the Grand Duke Con-
stantine,^ who was here at the launch of the “ Quirinal,'*
and may the friendship of France and Russia consti-
tute these two nations the guardians of peace !

At the same time tens of thousands of telegrams flew
from Russia to France and from France to Russia.

French women greeted Russian women, and Russian
women tendered their thanks to the French. A troupe
of Russian actors greeted the French actors; the French
actors replied that they had laid deep in their hearts the
greetings of their Russian colleagues.

The Russian law students of some Russian town or
other expressed their rapture to the French nation.
General So-and-so thanked Madame This-and-that ;

^ Constantine Nikolaevitch visited Toulon in 1857.

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 9

Madame This-and-that assured General So-and-so of
the ardor of her sentiments toward the Russian nation.
Russian children wrote greetings in verse to French
children ; and French children replied in verse and
prose. The Russian Minister of Education assured the
French Minister of Education of the sudden amity
toward France of all the children, clerks, and scientists
in his department. The members of the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals expressed their warm
attachment toward the French. The municipality of
Kazan did the same.

The canon of Arrare conveyed to the most reverend pro-
topresbyter of the court clergy the assurance that a deep
affection toward Russia, his imperial majesty the Emperor
Alexander III, and all the imperial family, exists in the
hearts of all the French cardinals and bishops, and that the
French and Russian clergy profess almost a similar faith,
and alike worship the Holy Virgin. To this the most
reverend protopresbyter replied that the prayers of the
French clergy for the imperial family were joyously
echoed by the hearts of all the Russian people, lovingly
attached to the Tsar, and that as the Russian nation also
worships the Holy Virgin, France may count upon it in
life and death. The same kind of messages were sent
by various generals, telegraph clerks, and dealers in
groceries.

Every one sent congratulations to every one else, and
thanked some one for something.

The excitement was so great that some extraordinary
things were done ; and yet no one remarked their strange-
ness, but on the contrary every one approved of them,
was charmed with them, and as if afraid of being left
behind, made haste to accomplish something of a simi-
lar kind in order not to be outdone by the rest.

If at times protests, pronounced or even written and
printed, against this madness made their appearance,
proving its unreasonableness, they were either hushed up
or concealed.^

1 Thus I am aware of the following protest which was made by Russian
students and sent to Paris, but not accepted by any of the papers : —

lo PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Not to mention the millions of working-days spent in
these festivities ; the widespread drunkenness of all who
took part in them, involving even those in command ;
not to speak of the senselessness of the speeches which
were made, — the most insane and ruthless deeds were
committed, and no one paid them any attention.

For instance, several score of people were crushed

“An Open Letter to French Students

“ A short time back a small body of Moscow law students, headed by its
inspector, was bold enough to speak in the person of the university con-
cerning the Toulon festivities.

“ We, the representatives of the united students of various provinces,
protest most emphatically against the pretensions of this body, and in sub-
stance against the interchange of greetings which has taken place between
it and the French students. We likewise regard France with warm affec-
tion and deep respect, but we do so because we see in her a great nation
which has always been in the past the introducer and announcer of the
high ideals of freedom, equality, and brotherhood for all the world ; and
first also in the bold attempts to incorporate these high ideals into life.
The better part of Russian youth has always been prepared to acclaim
France as the foremost champion of a loftier future for mankind. But we do
not regard such festivities as those of Kronstadt and Toulon as appropriate
occasions for such greetings.

“ On the contrary, these receptions represent a sad, but, we hope, a tem-
porary condition — the treason of France to its former great historical
r61e. The country which at one time invited all the world to break the
chains of despotism, and offered its fraternal aid to any nation which might
revolt in order to obtain its freedom, now burns incense before the Russian
government, which systematically impedes the normal organic growth of
a people’s life, and relentlessly crushes without consideration every aspira-
tion of Russian society toward light, freedom, and independence. The
Toulon manifestations are one act of a drama in the antagonism between
France and Germany created by Bismarck and Napoleon III.

“ This antagonism keeps all Europe under arms, and gives the deciding
vote in European affairs to Russian despotism, which has ever been the
support of all that is arbitrary and absolute against freedom, and of tyrants
against the tyrannized.

“ A sense of pain for our country, of regret at the blindness of so great
a portion of French society, these are the feelings called forth in us by these
festivities.

“ We are persuaded that the younger generation in France is not allured
by national Chauvinism, and that, ready to struggle for that better social
condition toward which humanity is advancing, it will know how to inter-
pret present events, and what attitude to adopt toward them. We hope
that our determined protest will find an echo in the hearts of the French
youth.

(Signed) “ The United Council of Twen^-four Federate Societies of
Moscow Students.**

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY ii

to death, and no one found it necessary to record the
fact.

One correspondent wrote that he had been informed
at a ball that there was scarcely a woman in Paris who
would not have been ready to forget her duties to satisfy
the desire of any of the Russian sailors.

And all this passed unremarked as something quite
in the order of things. There were also cases of
unmistakable insanity brought about by the excitement.

Thus one woman, having put on a dress composed of
the colors of the Franco- Russian flags, awaited on a
bridge the arrival of the Russian sailors, and shouting
“Vive la Russie,*’ threw herself into the river, and was
drowned.

In general the women on all these occasions played
the leading part, and even directed the men. Besides
the throwing of flowers and various little ribbons and the
presenting of gifts and addresses, the F'rench women
in the streets threw themselves into the arms of the
Russian sailors and kissed them.

Some women brought their children, for some reason
or other, to be kissed, and when the Russian sailors had
granted this request, all present were transported with
joy and shed tears.

This strange excitement was so contagious that, as
one correspondent relates, a Russian sailor who appeared
to be in perfect health, after having witnessed these ex-
citing scenes for a fortnight, jumped overboard in the
middle of the day, and swam about, crying “ Long live
France.*' When pulled out of the water, and questioned
as to his conduct, he replied that he had vowed to swim
round his ship in honor of France.

Thus the unthwarted excitement grew and grew, like
a ball of snow, and finally attained such dimensions that
not alone those on the spot, or merely nervously predis-
posed persons, but strong, healthy men were affected by
the general strain and were betrayed into an abnormal
condition of mind.

I remember even that whilst reading distractedly a
description of these festivities, I was suddenly overcome

12 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

by strong emotion, and was almost on the verge of tears,
having to check with an effort this expression of my
feelings.

Ill

A PROFESSOR of psychiatry, Sikorsky by name, not
long ago described in tfie Kief University Review what
he calls the psychopathic epidemic of Malevanshchina,
which he studied in the district of Vasilkof. The es-
sence of this epidemic, according to Sikorsky, was that
the peasants of certain villages, under the influence of
their leader, Malevanni, became convinced that the end
of the world was at hand ; in consequence of which they
changed their mode of life, began to dispose of their
property, to wear gay clothing, to eat and drink of the
best, and ceased to work. The professor considered
this condition abnormal. He says :

Their remarkable good humor often attained to exal-
tation, a condition of gaiety lacking all external motives.
They were sentimentally inclined, polite to excess, talka-
tive, excitable, tears of happiness being readily summoned
to their eyes, and disappearing without leaving a trace.
They sold the necessities of life in order to buy parasols,
silk handkerchiefs, and similar articles, which, however,
they only wore as ornaments. They ate a great quan-
tity of sweets. Their condition of mind was always joy-
ous, they led a perfectly idle life, visiting one another and

walking about together When chided for the insanity

of their conduct and their idleness, they replied invari-
bly with the same phrase : ‘ If it pleases me, I will
work ; if it does not, why compel myself to

The learned professor regards the condition of these
people as a well-defined psychopathic epidemic, and in
advising the government to adopt measures to prevent
its extension, concludes, “ Malevanshchina is the cry of
a sick population, a prayer for deliverance from drunk-
enness, and for improved educational and sanitary
conditions.'*

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 13

But if malevanshchina is the cry of a sick population
for deliverance from inebj-iety and from pernicious social
conditions, what a terrible clamor of a sick people, and
what a petition for a rescue from the effects of wine
and of a false social existence, is this new disease which
appeared in Paris with such fearful suddenness, infect-
ing the greater part of the urban population of France,
and almost the entire governmental, privileged, and civi-
lized classes of Russia ?

But if we admit that danger exists in the psychical
conditions of malevanshchina, and that the government
did well in following the professor’s advice, by confin-
ing some of the leaders of the malevanshchina in asylums
and monasteries, and by banishing others into distant
places; how much more dangerous must we consider this
new epidemic which has appeared in Toulon and Paris,
and spread thence throughout Russia and France, and
how much more needful is it that society — if the gov-
ernment refuse to interfere — should take decisive meas-
ures to prevent the epidemic from spreading ?

The analogy between the two diseases is complete.
The same remarkable good humor, passing into a vague
and joyous ecstasy, the same sentimental, exaggerated
politeness, loquacity, emotional weeping, without reason
for its commencement or cessation, the same festal mood,
the same promenading and paying calls, the same wear-
ing of gorgeous clothes and fancy for choice food, the
same misty and senseless speeches, the same indolence,
the same singing and music, the same direction on the
part of the women, the same clownish state of attitudes
passionnhsy which Sikorsky observed, and which corre-
sponds, as I understand it, with the various unnatural
physical attitudes adopted by people during triumphal
receptions, acclamations, and after-dinner speeches.

The resemblance is absolute. The difference, an
enormous one for the society in which these things take
place, is merely that in one case it is the madness of
a few scores of poor peaceful country people who,
living on their own small earnings, cannot do any vio-
lence to their neighbors, and infect others only by

14 PATRIOTISM AND CHh:STIANITY

personal and vocal communication of their condition
whereas in the other case it is the madness of millions
of people who possess immense sums of money and
means of violence, — rifles, cannon, fortresses, ironclads,
melinite, dynamite, — and having, moreover, at their dis-
posal the most effective means for communicating their
insanity : the post, telegraph, telephone, the entire
press, and every class of magazine, which print the
infection with the utmost haste, and distribute it
throughout the world.

Another difference is that the former not only remain
sober, but abstain from all intoxicating drinks, while the
latter are in a constant state of semi-drunkenness which
they do their best to foster.

Hence for the society in which such epidemics take
place, the difference between that at Kief, when, accord-
ing to Sikorsky, no violence nor manslaughter was
recorded, and that of Paris, where in one procession
more than twenty women were crushed to death, is
equivalent to that between the falling of a small piece
of smojdering coal from the fireplace upon the floor,
and a fire which has already obtained possession of the
floors and walls of the house.

At its worst the result of the epidemic at Kief will be
that the peasants of a millionth part of Russia may
spend the earnings of their own labor, and be unable to
meet the government taxes ; but the consequences of the
Paris-Toulon epidemic, which has affected people who
have great power, immense sums of money, weapons of
violence, and means for the propagation of their insanity,
may and must be terrible.

IV

One may listen with compassion to the mouthings of
a feeble, old, and unarmed idiot in his cap and night-
shirt, not contradicting and even humorously acquiescing
with him ; but when a crowd of able-bodiecT madmen
escape from confinement, armed to the teeth with knives,

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 15

swords, and revolvers, wild with excitement, waving then
murderous weapons, one not only ceases to acquiesce,
but one is unable to feel secure for an instant.

It is the same with the condition of excitement which
has been evoked by the French festivities and which is
now carrying French and Russian society away. Those
who have succumbed to this psychopathic epidemic are
the masters of the most terrible weapons of slaughter
and destruction.

It is true that it was constantly proclaimed in all the
speeches, in all the toasts pronounced at these festivities,
and in all the articles upon them, that the object of what
was taking place was the establishment of peace. Even
the partisans of war, the Russian correspondent pre-
viously cited amongst them, speak not of any hatred
toward the conquerors of the lost provinces, but of a love
which somehow hates.

However, we are well aware of the cunning of those
that suffer from mental diseases, and this constant itera-
tion of a desire for peace, and silence as to the senti-
ments in every man’s mind, is precisely a threat of the
worst significance.

In his reply at the dinner at the Elys^e the Russian
ambassador said : —

‘‘ Before proposing a toast to which every one will re-
spond from the depths of his soul, not only those within
these walls, but also, and with the same enthusiasm, all
those whose hearts are at the present moment beating in
unison with ours, far away or around us in great and beau-
tiful France, as in Russia, permit me to offer an expres-
sion of the deepest gratitude for the welcome, addressed
by you to the admiral whom the Tsar deputed to return
the Kronstadt visit. In the high position which you oc-
cupy, your words express the full meaning of the glorious
and peaceful festivities which are now being celebrated
with such remarkable unanimity, loyalty, and sincerity.”

The same entirely baseless reference to peace may be
found in the speech of the French president.

“ The links of love which unite Russia and France,” he
said, ‘‘ were strengthened two years ago by the touching

1 6 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

manifestations of which our fleet was the object at Kron-
stadt, and are becoming every day more binding ; and the
Aonest intQVchangc of our friendly sentiments must inspire
all those who have at heart the welfare of peace, security,
and confidence,” etc.

In both speeches the benefits of peace, and of peace-
ful festivities, are alluded to quite unexpectedly and
without any occasion.

The same thing is observable in the interchange of tele-
grams between the Russian emperor and the president
of the Republic.

The emperor telegraphs : —

** At the moment when the Russian fleet is leaving
France it is my ardent wish to express to you how
touched and gratified I am by the chivalrous and splen-
did reception which my sailors have everywhere ex-
perienced on French soil. The expressions of warm
sympathy which have been manifested once again with
so much eloquence will add a fresh bond to those which
unite the two countries, and will, I trust, contribute to
strengthen the general peace which is the object of our
most constant efforts and desires.”

The French president replies : —

“The telegram, for which I thank your majesty,
reached me when on the point of leaving Toulon to
return to Paris.

“ The magnificent fleet on which I had the great sat-
isfaction of saluting the Russian pennant in French
waters, the cordial and spontaneous ‘reception which
your brave sailors have everywhere received in France,
prove gloriously once again the sincere sympathies
which unite our two countries. They show at the same
time a deep faith in the beneficent influence which may
weld together two great nations devoted to the cause of
peace'*

Again, in both telegrams, without the slightest occa-
sion, are allusions to peace which have nothing at all to
do with the reception of the sailors.

There is no single speech or article in which it is not
said that the purpose of all these orgies is the peace of

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 17

Europe. At a dinner given by the representatives of
the Russian press, all speak of peace. M. Zola, who, a
short time previously, had written that war was inevita-
ble, and even serviceable ; M, de Vogii^, who more than
once has stated the same in print, — say, neither of them,
a word as to war, but speak only of peace. The sessions
of parliament open with speeches upon the past festiv-
ities ; the speakers mention that such festivities are an
assurance of peace to Europe.

It is as if a man should come into a peaceful company,
and commence energetically to assure every one present
that he has not the least intention of knocking out any
one’s teeth, blackening their eyes, or breaking their arms,
but has only the most peaceful ideas for passing the
evening.

“ But no one doubts it,” one is inclined to say, “ and
if you really have such evil intentions, at least do not
presume to mention them.”

In many of the articles describing the festivities a
naYve satisfaction is clearly expressed that no one dur-
ing them alluded to what it was determined, by silent
consent, to hide from everybody, and that only one in-
cautious fellow, who was immediately removed by the
police, voiced what all had in their minds by shouting,
**A das V Allemagne ! — Down with Germany!

In the same way children are often so delighted at
being able to conceal an escapade that their very high
spirits betray them.

Why, indeed, be so glad that no one said anything
about war, if the subject were not uppermost in our
minds

V

No one is thinking of war; only milliards are being
spent upon preparations for it, and millions of men are
under arms in France and Russia.

“ But all this is done to insure peace. Si vis pacent
para helium, U empire c'est la paix. La R^publique c'esl
la paixy

1 8 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

But if such be the case, why are the military advan-
tages of a Franco-Russian alliance in the event of a war
with Germany not only explained in every paper and
magazine published for a so-called educated people,
but also in the Village Messenger, a paper published for
the people by the Russian government ? Why is it in-
culcated to this unfortunate people, cheated by its own
government, that ‘‘to be in friendly relations with
France is profitable to Russia, because if, unexpectedly,
the before-mentioned states (Germany, Austria, and
Italy) made up their minds to declare war with Russia,
then, though with God^s help she might be able to with-
stand them by herself, and defeat even so considerable
an alliance, the feat would not be an easy one, and great
sacrifices and losses would be entailed by success.” ^
And why in all French schools is history taught from
the primer of M. Lavisse (twenty-first edition, 1889,)
which the following is inserted : —

“ Since the insurrection of the Commune was put down
France has had no further troubles. The day following
the war she again resumed work. She paid Germany with-
out difficulty the enormous war indemnity of five milliards.

“ But France lost her military renown during the war
of 1870. She lost part of her territory. More than
fifteen thousand inhabitants of our departments of the
Upper Rhine, Lower Rhine, and the Moselle who were
good Frenchmen have been compelled to become Ger-
mans. But they are not resigned to their fate. They
detest Germany ; they continue to hope that they may
once more be Frenchmen.

“ But Germany appreciates its victory, and it is a great
country, all the inhabitants of which sincerely love their
fatherland, and whose soldiers are brave and well dis-
ciplined. In order to recover from Germany what she
took from us we must be good citizens and soldiers. It
is to make you good soldiers that your teachers instruct
you in the history of France.

“ The history of France proves that in our country the
sons have always avenged the disasters of their fathers.

1 SUV sky VUstnik, 1893, No. 43.

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 19

“ Frenchmen in the time of Charles VII. avenged the
defeat of their fathers at Cr^cy, at Poitiers, at Agincourt.

“ It is for you, boys being educated in our schools, to
avenge the defeat of your fathers at Sedan and at Metz.

“ It is your duty — the great duty of your life. You
must ever bear that in mind.”

At the foot of the page is a series of questions upon
the preceding paragraphs. The questions are the follow-
ing : —

“What has France lost by losing part of her terri-
tory ? ”

“How many Frenchmen have become Germans by
the loss of this territory ? ”

“ Do these Frenchmen love Germany ? ”

“ What must we do to recover some day what Germany
has taken from us ? ”

In addition to these there are certain “ Reflections on
Book VII.,” where it is said that “the children of France
must not forget her defeat of 1870”; that they must
bear on their hearts the burden of this remembrance,”
but that “ this memory must not discourage them, on the
contrary, it must excite their courage.”

So that if, in official speeches, peace is mentioned with
such emphasis, behind the scenes the lawfulness, profit,
and necessity of war is incessantly urged upon the
people, the rising generation, and in general upon all
Frenchmen and Russians.

“ We do not think of war, we are only working for
peace.”

One feels inclined to inquire, “ Qnt diable trompe-t-on
id ? ” if the question were worth asking, and it were not
too evident who are the unhappy deluded ones.

The deluded ones are always the same eternally de-
luded, foolish working-folk, those who, with horny hands,
make all these ships, forts, arsenals, barracks, cannon,
steamers, harbors, piers, palaces, halls, and places with
triumphal arches, and who print all these books and
papers, and who procure and transport all these pheas-
ants and ortolans and oysters and wines which are to be
eaten and dfunk by those "who are brought up, educated,

lo PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

and maintained by the working-class, and who, in turn,
deceive and prepare for it the worst disasters.

Always the same good-natured, foolish working-folk,
who, yawning, showing their white, healthy teeth,
childishly and naively pleased at the sight of admirals
and presidents in full dress, of flags waving above
their heads, and fireworks, and triumphal music ; for
whom, before they can look round, there will be no
more admirals, or presidents, or flags, or music ; but
only a damp and empty field of battle, cold, hunger,
and pain; before them a murderous enemy; behind,
relentless officers preventing their escape ; blood,
wounds, putrefying bodies, and senseless, unnecessary
death.

While, on the other hand, those who have been
made much of at Paris and Toulon will be seated,
after a good dinner, with glasses of choice wine beside
them and cigars between their teeth, in a warm cloth
tent, marking upon a map with pins such and such
places upon which a certain amount of ‘‘food for
cannon** is to be expended — “food** composed of
those same foolish people — in order finally to capture
this fortified place or the other, and to obtain a cer-
tain little ribbon or grade.

VI

“But nothing of the kind exists; we have no bel-
licose intentions,** it is replied. “All that has hap-
pened is the expression of mutual sympathy between
two nations. What can be amiss in the triumphal
and honorable reception of the representatives of a
friendly nation by the representatives of another na-
tion ? What can be wrong in this, even if we admit
that the alliance is significant of a protection from a
dangerous neighbor who threatens Europe with war

It is wrong, because it is false — a most evident and
insolent falsehood, inexcusable, iniquitous.

It is false, this suddenly begotten love of Russians

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 21

for French and French for Russians. And it is false,
this insinuation of our dislike to the Germans, and our
distrust of them. And more false still is it that the
aim of all these indecent and insane orgies is supposed
to be the preservation of the peace ol Europe.

We are all aware that we neither felt before, nor
have felt since, any special love for the French, or
any animosity toward the Germans.

We are told that Germany has projects against
Russia, that the Triple Alliance threatens to destroy
our peace and that of Europe, and that our alliance
with France will secure an equal balance of power
and be a guarantee of peace. But the assertion is so
manifestly stupid that I am ashamed to refute it seriously.
For this to be so — that is, for the alliance to guarantee
peace — it would be necessary to make the Powers mathe-
matically equal. If the preponderance were on the side
of the Franco-Russian alliance, the danger would be the
same, or even greater, because if Wilhelm, who is at the
head of the Triple Alliance, is a menace to peace, France,
who cannot be reconciled to the loss of her provinces,
would be a still greater menace. The Triple Alliance
was called an alliance of peace, whereas for us it proved
an alliance of war. Just so now the Franco-Russian
alliance can only be viewed truly as an alliance for
war.

Moreover, if peace depend upon an even balance
of power, how are those units to be defined between
which the balance is to be established ?

England asserts that the Franco-Russian alliance
is a menace to her security, which necessitates a new
alliance on her part. And into precisely how many
units is Europe to be divided that this even balance
may be attained }

Indeed, if there be such a necessity for equilibrium,
then in every society of men a man stronger than his
fellows is already dangerous, and the rest must join de-
fensive alliances in order to resist him.

It is asked, “What is wrong in France and Russia ex-
pressing their mutual sympathies for the preservation of

22 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

peace ? ” The expression is wrong because it is £«.lse, and
a falsehood once pronounced never ends harmlessly.

The devil was a murderer and the father of lies.
Falsehood always leads to murder; and most of all in
such a case as this.

Just what is now taking place occurred before our
last Turkish war, when a sudden love on our part
was supposed to have been awakened toward cer-
tain Slavonic brethren none had heard of for cen-
turies; though French, Germans, and English always
have been, and are, incomparably nearer and dearer
to us than a few Bulgarians, Servians, or Montene-
grins. And on that occasion just the same enthusiasm,
receptions, and solemnities were to be observed, blown
into existence by men like Aksakof and Katkof, who
are already mentioned in Paris as model patriots.
Then, as now, the suddenly begotten love of Russ
for Slav was only a thing of words.

Then in Moscow as now in Paris, when the affair be-
gan, people ate, drank, talked nonsense to one another,
were much affected by their noble feelings, spoke of
union and of peace, passing over in silence the main
business — the project against Turkey.

The press goaded on the excitement, and by degrees
the government took a hand in the game. Servia re-
volted. Diplomatic notes began to circulate and semi-
official articles to appear. The press lied, invented, and
fumed more and more, and in the end Alexander II.,
who really did not desire war, was obliged to consent
to it ; and what we know took place, the loss of hun-
dreds of thousands of innocent men, and the brutalizing
and befooling of millions.

What took place at Paris and Toulon, and has since
been fomented by the press, is evidently leading to a
like or a worse calamity.

At first, in the same manner, to the strains of the
“ Marseillaise and God save the Tsar,’' certain
generals and ministers drink to France and Russia in
honor of various regiments and fleets; the press pub-
lishes its falsehoods ; idle crowds of wealthy people, not

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 23

knowing how to apply their strength and time, chatter
patriotic speeches, stirring up animosity against Ger-
many ; and in the end, however peaceful Alexander III.
may be, circumstances will so combine that he will be
unable to avoid war, which will be demanded by all who
surround him, by the press, and, as always seems in such
cases, by the entire public opinion of the nation. And
before we can look round, the usual ominous absurd
proclamation will appear in the papers : —

“ We, by God’s grace, the autocratic great Emperor
of all Russia, King of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland,
etc., etc., proclaim to all our true subjects, that, for the
welfare of these our beloved subjects, bequeathed by
God into our care, we have found it our duty before God
to send them to slaughter. God be with us.”

The bells will peal, long-haired men will dress in
golden sacks and pray for successful slaughter. And
the old story will begin again, the awful customary acts.

The editors of the daily press, happy in the receipt of
an increased income, will begin virulently to stir men up
to hatred and manslaughter in the name of patriotism.
Manufacturers, merchants, contractors for military stores
will hurry joyously about their business, in the hope of
double receipts.

All sorts of government functionaries will buzz about,
foreseeing a possibility of purloining something more
than usual. The military authorities will hurry hither
and thither, drawing double pay and rations, and with the
expectation of receiving for the slaughter of other men
various silly little ornaments which they so highly prize,
as ribbons, crosses, orders, and stars. Idle ladies and
gentlemen will make a great fuss, entering their names
in advance for the Red Cross Society, and ready to
bind up the wounds of those whom their husbands and
brothers will mutilate, and they will imagine that in
so doing they are performing a most Christian work.

And, smothering despair within their souls by songs,
licentiousness, and wine, men will trail along, torn fronj
peaceful labor, from their wives, mothers, and children,-—
hundreds of thousands of simple-minded, good-natured

24 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

men with murderous weapons in their hands, — any.
where they may be driven.

They will march, freeze, hunger, suffer sickness, and
die from it, or finally come to some place where they
will be slain by thousands, or kill thousands themselves
with no reason — men whom they have never seen be-
fore, and who neither have done nor could do them any
mischief.

And when the number of sick, wounded, and killed
becomes so great that there are not hands enough left
to pick them up, and when the air is so infected with
the putrefying scent of the “food for cannon” that
even the authorities find it disagreeable, a truce will be
made, the wounded will be picked up anyhow, the sick
will be brought in and huddled together in heaps, the
killed will be covered with earth and lime, and once
more all the crowd of deluded men will be led on and
on till those who have devised the project weary of it,
or till those who thought to find it profitable receive their
spoil.

And so once more men will be made savage, fierce,
and brutal, and love will wane in the world, and the
Christianizing of mankind, which has already begun,
will lapse for scores and hundreds of years. And so
once more the men who reaped profit from it all will
assert with assurance that since there has been a war
there must needs have been one, and that other wars
must follow, and they will again prepare future genera-
tions for a continuance of slaughter, depraving them
from their childhood.

VII

Hence, when such patriotic demonstrations as the
Toulon festivities take place, — though they only con-
strain from a distance the wills of men, and bind them
to those accustomed villainies which are always the out-
come of patriotism, — every one who realizes the true
import of these festivities cannot but protest against

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 25

what is tacitly included in them. And, therefore, when
those gentlemen, the journalists, assert that every Rus-
sian sympathizes with what took place at Kronstadt,
Toulon, and Paris, and that this alliance for life and
death is sealed by the desire of the entire nation ; and
when the Russian Minister of Education assures the
French minister that all his brigade of children, clerks,
and scientists share his feelings; or when the com-
mander of a Russian squadron assures the French that
all Russia will be grateful to them for their reception ;
and when protopresbyters answer for their flock, and as-
sert that the prayers of Frenchmen for the welfare of the
imperial house are joyously echoed in the hearts of the
Russian Tsar-loving nation ; and when the Russian am-
bassador in Paris, as the representative of the Russian
people, states, after a dish of ortolans h la sonbissy or
lagopldes glac/Sy with a glass of Grand Moet champagne
in his hand, that all Russian hearts, beating in unison
with his heart, are filled with sudden and exclusive love
for la belle France y — then we, men not yet idiots, re-
gard it as a sacred duty, not only for ourselves, but for
tens of millions of Russians, to protest most energetically
against such a statement, and to affirm that our hearts
do not beat in unison with those of these gentlemen, —
the journalists, ministers of education, commanders of
squadrons, protopresbyters, and ambassadors ; but on the
contrary, are filled with indignation and disgust at the
pernicious falseh.iod and wrong which, consciously or
unconsciously, they are spreading by their words and
deeds. Let them drink as much Moet as they please ;
let them write articles and make speeches from them-
selves and for themselves ; but we who regard ourselves
as Christians, cannot admit that what all these gentle-
men write and say is binding upon us.

This we cannot admit because we know what lies
hidden beneath at these tipsy ecstasies, speeches, and
embracings, which resemble, not a confirmation of peace
as we are assured, but rather those orgies and revelings
to which criminals are addicted when planning theii
joint crimes.

26 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

VIII

About four years ago the first swallow of this Toulon
spring, a well-known French agitator for a war with
Germany, came to Russia to prepare the way for the
Franco- Russian alliance, and paid a visit to us in the
country. He came to us when we were all engaged
cutting the hay crop, and when we had come into lunch
and made our guests acquaintance, he began at once
to tell us how he had fought, been taken prisoner, made
his escape, and finally pledged himself as a patriot — a
fact of which he was evidently proud — never to cease
agitating for a war with Germany until the boundaries
and glory of France had been reestablished.

All our guest’s arguments as to the necessity of an
alliance of France with Russia in order to reconstruct
the former boundary, power, and glory of his country,
and to assure our security against the evil intentions of
Germany, had no success in our circle.

To his arguments that France could never settle down
until she had recaptured her lost provinces, we replied
that neither could Russia be at rest till she had been
avenged for Jena, and that if the revanche of France
should happen to be successful, Germany in her turn
would desire revenge, and so on without end.

To his arguments that it was the duty of France to
recover the sons that had been snatched from her, we
replied that the condition of the majority of the work-
ing population of Alsace-Lorraine under the rule of
Germany had probably suffered no change for the
worse since the days when it was ruled by France, and
the fact that some of the Alsatians preferred to be reg-
istered as Frenchmen and not as Germans, and that he,
our guest, wished to reestablish the fame of the French
arms, was no reason to renew the awful calamities which
a war would cause, or even to sacrifice a single human
life.

To his arguments that it was very well for us to talk
like that, who had never endured what France had, and

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 27

that we would speak very differently if the Baltic pro*
vinces, or Poland, were to be taken from us, we replied
that, even from the imperial standpoint, the loss of the
Baltic provinces or Poland could in no wise be consid-
ered as a calamity, but rather as an advantage, as it
would decrease the necessity of armed forces and State
expenses ; and that from the Christian point of view one
can never admit the justice of war, as war demands
murder ; while Christianity not only prohibits all killing,
but demands of us the betterment of all men, regarding
all ,men as brothers, without distinction of nationalities.

A Christian nation, we said, which engages in war,
ought, in order to be logical, not only to take down the
cross from its church steeples, turn the churches to some
other use, give the clergy other duties, having first pro-
hibited the preaching of the Gospel, but also ought to
abandon all the requirements of morality which flow
from the Christian law.

^^Cest d pretidre ou d laisser,' we said. Until Chris-
tianity be abolished it is only possible to attract mankind
toward war by cunning and fraud, as now practised.
We who see this fraud and cunning cannot give way
to it.

Since, during this conversation, there was no music
or champagne, or anything to confuse our senses, our
guest merely shrugged his shoulders, and, with the
amiability of a Frenchman, said he was very grateful
for the cordial welcome he had experienced in our
house, but was sorry that his views were not as well
received.

IX

After this conversation we went out into the hay-field,
where our guest, hoping to find the peasants more in
sympathy with his ideas, asked me to translate to an old,
sickly muzhik, Prokophy by name — who, though suffer-
ing from severe hqrnia, was still working energetically,
mowing with us, — his plan for putting pressure on
Germany from both sides, the Russian and the French.

28 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

The Frenchman explained this to him graphically, by
pressing with his white fingers on either side of the
mower's coarse shirt, which was damp with perspiratioa

I well remember Prokophy's good-humored smile of
astonishment when I explained the meaning of the
Frenchman’s words and action. He evidently took the
proposal to squeeze the Germans as a joke, not conceiv-
ing that a full-grown and educated man would quietly
and soberly speak of war as being desirable.

^‘Well, but, if we squeeze him from both sides,” he
answered, smiling, giving one pleasantry for another,
as he supposed, “ he will be fixed too fast to move. We
shall have to let him out somewhere.”

I translated this answer to my guest.

“Tell him we love the Russians,” he said.

These words astonished Prokophy even more than
the proposal to squeeze the Germans, and awoke in him
a certain feeling of suspicion.

“Whence does he come ? ” he inquired.

I replied that he was a wealthy Frenchman.

“And what business has brought him here.?” he
asked.

When I replied that the Frenchman had come in the
hope of persuading the Russians to enter into an alliance
with the French in the event of a war with Germany,
Prokophy was clearly entirely displeased, and, turning
to the women who were sitting close by on a cock of
hay, called out to them, in an angry voice, which unwit-
tingly displayed the feelings which had been aroused in
him, to go and stack the rest of the hay.

“Well, you crows,” he cried, “you are all asleep!
Go and stack ! A nice time for squeezing the Germans !
Look there, the hay has not been turned yet, and it looks
as if we might have to begin on the corn on Wednes-
day.” And then, as if afraid of having offended our
visitor, he added, smiling good-naturedly and showing
his worn teeth, “ Better come and work with us, and
bring the Germans too. And when we have finished we
will have some feasting, and make the Germans join us,.
They are men like ourselves.”

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 29

And so saying Prokophy took his sinewy hand from
the fork of the rake on which he had been leaning, lifted
it on to his shoulder, and went to join the women.

Oh, le brave homme ! ” exclaimed the polite French-
man, laughing. And thus was concluded for the time his
diplomatic mission to the Russian people.

The different aspects of these two men — one shining
with freshness and high spirits, dressed in a coat of
the latest cut, displaying with his white hands, which
had never known labor, how the Germans should be
squeezed; the other coarse, with haydust in his hair,
shrunken with hard work, sunburnt, always weary, and,
notwithstanding his severe complaint, always at work :
Prokophy, with his fingers swollen with toil, in his large
home-made trousers, worn-out shoes, and a great heap
of hay upon his shoulders, moving slowly along with
that careful economy of stride common to all working-
men, — the different aspects of these two men made
much clear to me at the time, which has come back to
me vividly since the Toulon-Paris festivities.

One of them represented the class fed and maintained
by the people’s labor, who in return use up that people
as *Tood for cannon”; while the other was that very
“ food for cannon ” which feeds and maintains those
who afterwards so dispose of it.

X

“But France has lost two provinces — children torn
from a beloved mother. And Russia cannot permit
Germany to make laws for her and rob her of her his-
torical mission in the East, nor risk the chance of losing,
like France, her Baltic provinces, Poland, or the Cauca-
sus.

“ And Germany cannot hear of the loss of those ad-
vantages which she has won at such a sacrifice. And
England will yield to none her naval supremacy.”

After such word it is generally supposed that a
Frenchman, Russian, German, or Englishman should

30 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

be ready to sacrifice anything, to regain his lost prov-
inces, establish his influence in the East, secure national
unity, or keep his control of the seas.

It is assumed that patriotism is, to start with, a senti-
ment natural to all men, and that, secondly, it is so
highly moral a sentiment that it should be induced in
all who have it not.

But neither one nor the other is true. I have lived
half-a-century amid the Russian people, and in the great
mass of laborers, during that period, I have never once
seen or heard any manifestation or expression of this
sentiment of patriotism, unless one should count those
patriotic phrases which are learned by heart in the army,
and repeated from books by the more superficial and
degraded of the populace. I have never heard from the
people any expression of patriotism, but, on the con-
trary, I have often listened to expressions of indiffer-
ence, and even contempt, for any kind of patriotism, by
the most venerable and serious of working-folk. I have
observed the same thing amongst the laboring classes
of other nations, and have received confirmation from
educated Frenchmen, Germans, and Englishmen, from
observation of their respective working-classes.

The working-classes are too much occupied support-
ing the lives of themselves and of their families, a duty
which engrosses all their attention, to be able to take an
interest in those political questions which are the chief
motives of patriotism.

Questions as to the influence of Russia in the East,
the unity of Germany, the recovery by France of her
lost provinces, or the concession of such a part of one
state to another state, do not interest the working-man,
not only because, for the most part, he is unacquainted
with the circumstances which evoke such questions, but
also because the interests of his life are altogether inde-
pendent of the state and of politics. For a laboring
man is altogether indifferent where such-and-such a
frontier may be established, to whom Constantinople
may belong, whether Saxony or Brunswick shall or
shall not be a member of the German Federation,

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 31

^vhether Australia or Montebello shall belong to Eng-
land, or even to what government they may have to
pay taxes, or into what army send their sons.

But it is always a matter of importance to them to
know what taxes they will have to pay, how long to
serve in the army, how much to pay for their land, and
how much to receive for their labor — all questions en-
tirely independent of State and political interests. This
is the reason why, notwithstanding the energetic means
employed by governments to inculcate patriotism,
which is not natural to the people, and to destroy social-
ism, the latter continues to penetrate further into the
laboring masses; whereas patriotism, though so assidu-
ously inculcated, not only makes no headway, but dis-
appears constantly more and more, and is now solely a
possession of the upper classes, to whom it is profitable.
And if, as sometimes happens, that patriotism takes
hold of the masses, as lately in Paris, it is only when the
masses have been subjected to some special hypnotic in-
fluence by the government and ruling class, and such
patriotism lasts only as long as the influence is continued.

Thus, for instance, in Russia, where patriotism, in the
form of love for and devotion to the faith. Tsar, and
country, is instilled into the people, with extraordinary
energy by every means in the hands of the government,
— the Church, schools, literature, and every sort of
pompous ceremony — the Russian working-man, the
hundred millions of the working people, in spite of their
undeserved reputation for devotion to faith, Tsar, and
country, are a people singularly unduped by patriotism
and such devotion.

They are not, for the most part, even acquainted with
the orthodox official faith to which they are supposed to
be so attached, and whenever they do make acquain-
tance with it they leave it and become rationalists, —
that is, they adopt a creed which cannot be attacked
and need not be defended; and notwithstanding the
constant, energetic insistence of devotion to the Tsar,
they regard in general all authority founded on violence
either with condemnation or with total indifference:

32 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

their country, if by that word anything is meant outside
their village and district, they either do not realize at
all, or, if they do, would make no distinctions between
it and other countries. So that where formerly Rus-
sians would emigrate into Austria or Turkey, they now
go with equal indifference in Russia or outside of
Russia, in Turkey, or China.

XI

An old friend of mine, who passed the winters alone
in the country while his wife, whom he visited from
time to time, lived in Paris, often conversed during the
long autumn evenings with his steward, an illiterate but
shrewd and venerable peasant, who used to come to
him in the evening to receive his orders ; and my friend
once mentioned amongst other things the advantages
of the French system of government compared with
our own. The occasion was a short time previous to
the last Polish insurrection and the intervention of the
French government in our affairs. At that time the
patriotic Russian press was burning with indignation at
this interference, and so excited the ruling classes that
our political relations became very strained, and there
were rumors of an approaching war with France.

My friend, having read the papers, explained to this
peasant the misunderstanding between France and
Russia ; and coming under the influence of the journal,
and being an old military man, said that were war to
be declared he would reenter the army and fight with
France. At that time a revanche against the French
for Sevastopol was considered a necessity by patriotic
Russians.

‘‘ Why should we fight with them } asked the peas-
ant.

‘‘Why, how can we permit France to dictate to
us ?

“ Well, you said yourself that they were better gov-
erned than we,"' replied the peasant quite seriously;
“let them arrange things as well in Russia.’*

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 33

And my friend told me that he was so taken aback
by this argument that he did not know what to reply,
and burst into laughter, as one who has just awaked
from a delusive dream.

The same argument may be heard from every Rus-
sian workman if he has not come under the hypnotic
influence of the government. People speak of the
Russian’s love for his faith, Tsar, and country; and
yet a single community of peasants could not be found
in Russia which would hesitate one moment had they
to choose of two places for emigration — one in Russia,
under the “ Father-Tsar ” (as he is termed only in
books), and the holy orthodox faith of his idolized
country, but with less or worse land ; and the other
without the White-father-Tsar,” and without the or-
thodox faith, somewhere outside Russia, in Prussia,
China, Turkey, Austria, only with more and better
land — the choice would be in favor of the latter, as we
have often had opportunity to observe.

The question as to who shall govern him (and he
knows that under any government he will be equally
robbed) is for the Russian peasant of infinitely less sig-
nificance than the question (setting aside even the matter
of water), Is the clay soft and will cabbage thrive in it ?

But it might be supposed that this indifference on
the part of Russians arises from the fact that any gov-
ernment under which they might live would be an im-
provement on their own, because in Europe there is
none worse. But that is not so; for as far as I can
judge, one may witness the same indifference among
English, Dutch, and German peasants emigrating to
America, and among the various nationalities which
have emigrated to Russia.

Passing from the control of one European govern-
ment to another — from Turkish to Austrian, or from
French to German — alters so slightly the position of
the genuine working-classes, that in no case would the
change excite any discontent, if only it be not effected
artificially by the government and the ruling classes.

34 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

XII

Usually, for a proof of the existence of patriotism one
is referred to the display of patriotic sentiment by the
people on certain solemn occasions, as in Russia, at the
coronation of the Tsar, or his reception after the railway
accident on October 29 ; in France, on the proclamation
of war with Prussia ; in Germany at the rejoicings after
the war ; or during the Franco- Russian festivities.

But one ought to take into consideration the way
these manifestations are arranged. In Russia, for ex-
ample, during every progress of the sovereign, delegates
are commanded to appear from every peasant community,
and materials requisitioned for the reception and welcome
of the Tsar.

The enthusiasm of the crowd is for the most part arti-
ficially prepared by those who require it, and the degree
of enthusiasm exhibited by the crowd is only a clue to
the refinements in the art of those who organize such
exhibitions. The art has been practised for long, hence
the specialists in it have acquired great adroitness in its
preparation.

When Alexander II. was still heir apparent, and com-
manded, as is usual, the Preobrazhensky Regiment, he
once paid an after-dinner visit to the regiment, which
was in camp at the time.

As soon as his calash came in sight, the soldiers, who
were only in their shirts at the time, ran out to welcome
their ** august commander,*' as the phrase is, with such
enthusiasm, that they all followed the carriage, and
many, while running, made the sign of the cross, gaz-
ing upon the prince. All who witnessed this reception
were deeply moved by this simple attachment of the
Russian soldier to the Tsar and his son, and by the
genuinely religious, and evidently spontaneous, enthusi-
asm expressed in their faces, movements, and especially
by the signing of the cross.

And yet all this had been artificially prepared in the
following manner : —

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 35

After a review on the previous day the prince told the
commander of the brigade that he would revisit the regi-
ment on the following day.

“ When are we to expect your imperial highness ?

“ Probably in the evening, only, pray, do not expect
me : and let there be no preparation.”

As soon as the prince was gone, the commander of
the brigade called all the captains of companies together,
and gave orders that on the following day all the men
should have clean shirts, and the moment the prince's
carriage should come in sight (special signalmen were
to be sent out to give warning of it) every one should run
to meet it, and with shouts of Hurrah ! ” run after it,
and, moreover, that every tenth man in each company
should cross himself whilst running. The color-ser-
geants drew up the companies, and told off every tenth
man to cross himself. “ One, two, three, .... eight, nine,
ten. Sidorenko, you are to cross yourself. One, two,
three, .... Ivanof, to cross yourself.”

Thus, what was ordered was accomplished, and an im-
pression of spontaneous enthusiasm was produced upon
the prince and upon all who saw it, even upon the sol-
diers and officers, and even upon the commander of the
brigade himself.

The same thing is done, though less peremptorily,
wherever patriotic manifestations take place.' Thus the
Franco-Russian festivities, which strike us as the spon-
taneous outcome of the nation's feelings, did not happen
of their own accord, but were very cleverly prepared
and arranged for by the foresight of the French gov-
ernment.

As soon as the advent of the Russian fleet was settled,
“at once,” I again quote from that official organ, the
Village Messenger^ “ not only in large towns upon the
somewhat lengthy route from Toulon to Paris, but in
many places far removed from it, the organization of
festivities was commenced by special committees.

“ Contributions were everywhere received to defray
the expenses of the welcome. Many towns sent depu-
tations to our ambassador in Paris, praying that our

36 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

sailors should be permitted to visit them even for a day
or an hour.

‘*The municipalities of all those towns which our
sailors were directed to visit voted vast sums of money
— more than a hundred thousand rubles — to promote
various festivities and merrymakings, and expressed
their readiness to devote even a larger sum to the pur-
pose, if necessary, to make the welcome as magnificent
as possible.

‘‘ In Paris itself, in addition to the sum voted by the
town municipality, a large amount was collected in vol-
untary contributions by a private committee for the series
of entertainments, and the French government decreed
over a hundred thousand rubles for the reception of
the Russian visitors by the ministers and other authori-
ties. In many places which our sailors were unable to
visit it was decided to keep October 1 3 as a festal day in
honor of Russia. A number of towns and departments
decided to send to Toulon and Paris special deputies to
welcome the Russian visitors, to give them presents in
memory of France, or to send them addresses and tele-
grams of welcome.

It was decided everywhere to regard October 13 as a
national feast-day, and to give a day’s holiday to all the
school children, and in Paris two days.

Soldiers undergoing certain sentences were pardoned,
in order that they Height remember with thankfulness the
joyous October 13 in the annals of France.

“ To enable the public who wished to visit Toulon to
participate in the reception of the Russian squadron,
the railways reduced their fares to one-half, and arranged
for special trains.’*

And thus when, by a series of measures undertaken
everywhere and at the same time, — always thanks to
the power in its hands at the command of the govern-
ment, — a certain portion of people, chiefly the froth,
the town crowds, is brought into an unnaturally excited
state, it is said : Look at this spontaneous action of the
will of the whole nation !

Such manifestations as those of Toulon and Paris, as

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 37

those which take place in Germany at the receptions of
the emperor or of Bismarck, or at the manoeuvers in
Lothringen, as those which are always repeated in Rus-
sia at all pompously arranged receptions, only prove that
the means of exciting a nation artificially which are at
present in the hands of the governments and ruling
classes, can always evoke any patriotic manifestation
they choose, and afterward label it as the outcome of
the patriotic sentiments of the people.

Nothing, on the contrary, proves so clearly the absence
of patriotism in the people, as these same excessive meas-
ures now used for its artificial excitement and the small
results attained with so much effort.

If patriotic sentiments are so natural to a people, why
then is it not allowed to express itself of its own accord,
instead of being stirred up by every ordinary and extraor-
dinary means ?

If only the attempt were made for a time in Russia
to abolish at the coronation of the Tsar the taking of
the oath of allegiance by the people, the solemn repeti-
tion of the prayers for the Tsar during every church
service ; to forgo the festivals of his birth and saints’
days, with illuminations, the pealing of bells, and com-
pulsory idleness, to cease the public exhibition of his
portrait, and in prayer-books, calendars, and books of
study to print no more the family names of himself and
of his family, and of even the pronouns alluding to then\;
in large letters ; to cease to honor him by special books
and papers published for that purpose ; to put an end
to imprisonment for the least word of disrespect con-
cerning him, — let us see these things altered for a time,
and then we could know how far it is inherent in the
people, in the genuine working-class. Prokophy and
Ivan the village elder, as they are always assured, and
as every foreigner is assured, idolize the Tsar, who one
way or another betrays them into the hands of land-
owners and of the rich in general.

So it is in Russia. But if only in like manner the
ruling classes in Germany, France, Italy, England, and
America were to do what they so persistently accom-

38 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

plish in the inculcation of patriotism, attachment, and
obedience to the existing government, we should be
able to see how far this supposed patriotism is natural
to the nations of our time.

From infancy, by every possible means, — class-books,
church-services, sermans, speeches, books, papers, songs,
poetry, monuments, — the people is stupefied in one
direction ; and then either by force or by bribe, several
thousands of the people are assembled, and when these,
joined by the idlers always present at every sight, to the
sound of cannon and music, and inflamed by the glitter
and brilliance about them, will commence to shout out
what others are shouting in front of them, we are told
that this is the expression of the sentiment of the entire
nation.

But, in the first place, these thousands, or even tens
of thousands, who shout something or other on these
occasions, are only a mere ten-thousandth part of the
whole nation; and, in the second, of these ten thou-
sand men who shout and wave their hats, the greater
part, if not collected by the authorities, as in Russia, is
artificially attracted by some kind of bait ; and in the
third place, of all these thousands there are scarcely a
hundred who know the real meaning of what is taking
place, and the majority would shout and wave their hats
in just the same way for an exactly opposite intention ;
and in the fourth place, the police is present with power
to quiet and silence at once any who might attempt to
shout in a fashion not desired or demanded by govern-
ment, as was energetically done during the Franco-Rus-
sian festivities.

In France, war with Russia was welcomed with just
the same zest in the reign of Napoleon I., then the war
against Alexander I., then that of the allied forces under
Napoleon III.; the Bourbons have been welcomed in
the same fashion as the House of Orleans, the Republic.
Napoleon III., and Boulanger. And in Russia the same
welcome has been accorded to Peter, Catherine, Paul,
Alexander, Constantine, Nicolas, the Duke of Lichten-
berg, the “ brotherly Slavonians,'' the King of Prussia,

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 39

the French sailors, and any others the authorities desired
to welcome. And just the same thing has taken place
in England, America, Germany, and Italy.

What is called patriotism in our time is, on the one
hand, only a certain disposition of mind, constantly pro-
duced and sustained in the minds of the people in a
direction desired by the existing government, by schools,
religion, and a subsidized press ; and on the other hand
it is a temporary excitement of the lowest stratum, mor-
ally and intellectually, of the people, produced by special
means by the ruling classes, and finally acclaimed as the
permanent expression of the people’s will.

The patriotism of states oppressed by a foreign power
presents no exception. It is equally unnatural to the
working masses, and artificially induced by the higher
classes.

XIII

“ But if the common people have no sentiment of
patriotism, it is because they have not yet developed this
elevated feeling natural to every educated man. If they
do not possess this nobility of sentiment, it must be cul-
tivated in them. And this the government does.”

So say, generally, the ruling classes, with such as-
surance that patriotism is a noble feeling, that the
simple populace, who are ignorant of it, think them-
selves, in consequence, at fault, and try to persuade
themselves that they really possess it, or at least pre-
tend to have it.

But what is this elevated sentiment which, according
to the opinion of the ruling classes, must be educated in
the people ?

The sentiment, in its simplest definition, is merely the
preference for one’s own country or nation above the
country or nation of any one else ; a sentiment perfectly
expressed in the German patriotic song, Deutschland,
Deutschland fiber Alles,” in which one need only sub-
stitute for the first two words, “ Russland,” “ Frankreich,’*

40 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

** Italien/' or the name of any other country, to obtain
a formula of the elevated sentiment of patriotism for
that country.

It is quite possible that governments regard this
sentiment as both useful and desirable, and of service
to the unity of the State ; but one must see that this
sentiment is by no means elevated, but, on the con-
trary, very stupid and immoral. Stupid, because if
every country were to consider itself superior to others,
it is evident that all but one would be in error; and
immoral because it leads all who possess it to aim at
benefiting their own country or nation at the expense
of every other — an inclination exactly at variance with
the fundamental moral law, which all admit, “ Do not
unto others as you would not wish them to do unto
you.”

Patriotism may have been a virtue in the ancient world
when it compelled men to serve the highest idea of
those days, — the fatherland. But how can patriotism
be a virtue in these days when it requires of men an ideal
exactly opposite to that of our religion and morality, —
an admission, not of the equality and fraternity of all
men, but of the dominance of one country or nation
over all others ? But not only is this sentiment no vir-
tue in our times, but it is indubitably a vice ; for this
sentiment of patriotism cannot now exist, because there
is neither material nor moral foundation for its concep-
tion.

Patriotism might have had some meaning in the ancient
world, when every nation was more or less uniform in
composition, professing one national faith, and subject
to the unrestrained authority of its great and adored
sovereign, representing, as it were, an island, in an ocean
of barbarians who sought to overflow it.

It is conceivable that in such circumstances patriotism
— the desire of protection from barbarian assault, ready
not only to destroy the social order, but threatening it
with plunder, slaughter, captivity, slavery, and the viola-
tion of its women — was a natural feeling; and it is
conceivable that men, in order to defend themselves

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 41

and their fellow-countrymen, might prefer their own
nation to any other, and cherish a feeling of hatred
toward the surrounding barbarians, and destroy them
for self-protection.

But what significance can this feeling have in these
Christian days ?

On what grounds and for what reason can a man of
our time follow this example — a Russian, for instance,
kill Frenchmen; or a Frenchman, Germans — when he
is well aware, however uneducated he may be, that the
men of the country or nation against whom his patriotic
animosity is excited are no barbarians, but men, Chris-
tians like himself, often of the same faith as himself,
and, like him, desirous of peace and the peaceful inter-
change of labor; and besides, bound to him, for the
most part, either by the interest of a common effort, or
by mercantile or spiritual endeavors, or even by both ?
So that very often people of one country are nearer and
more needful to their neighbors than are these latter to
one another, as in the case of laborers in the service of
foreign employers of labor, of commercial houses, scien-
tists, and the followers of art.

Moreover, the very conditions of life are now so
changed, that what we call fatherland, what we are asked
to distinguish from everything else, has ceased to be
clearly defined, as it was with the ancients, when men
of the same country were of one nationality, one state,
and one religion.

The patriotism of an Egyptian, a Jew, a Greek is
comprehensible, for in defending his country he defended
his religion, his nationality, his fatherland, and his state.

But in what terms can one express to-day the patriot-
ism of an Irishman in the United States, who by his
religion belongs to Rome, by his nationality to Ireland,
by his citizenship to the United States ? In the same
position is a Bohemian in Austria, a Pole in Russia,
Prussia, or Austria; a Hindu in England; a Tartar
or Armenian in Russia jor Turkey. Not to mention the
people of these particular conquered nations, the people
of the most homogeneous countries, Russia, France,

42 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Prussia, can no longer possess the sentiment of patriot
ism which was natural to the ancients, because very
often the chief interests of their lives — of the family,
for instance, where a man is married to a woman of
another nationality; commercial, where his capital is
invested abroad ; spiritual, scientific, or artistic — are
no longer contained within the limits of his country, but
outside it, in the very state, perhaps, against which his
patriotic animosity is being excited.

But patriotism is chiefly impossible to-day because,
however much we may have endeavored during eigh-
teen hundred years to conceal the meaning of Christian-
ity, it has nevertheless leaked into our lives, and controls
them to such an extent that the dullest and most unrefined
of men must see to-day the complete incompatibility of
patriotism with the moral law by which we live.

XIV

Patriotism was a necessity in the formation and
consolidation of powerful states composed of different
nationalities and acting in mutual defense against bar-
barians. But as soon as Christian enlightenment trans-
formed these states from within, giving to all an equal
standing, patriotism became not only needless, but the
sole impediment to a union between nations for which,
by reason of their Christian consciousness, they were
prepared.

Patriotism to-day is the cruel tradition of an outlived
period, which exists not merely by its inertia, but be-
cause the governments and ruling classes, aware that
not their power only, but their very existence, depends
upon it, persistently excite and maintain it among the
people, both by cunning and violence.

Patriotism to-day is like a scaffolding which was
needful once to raise the walls of the building, but
which, though it presents the only obstacle to the house
being inhabited, is none the less retained, because its
existence is of profit to certain persons.

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 43

For a long while there has not been and cannot be
any reason for dissension between Christian nations.
It is even impossible to imagine, how and for what,
Russian and German workmen, peacefully and con-
jointly working on the frontiers or in the capitals, should
quarrel. And much less easily can one imagine ani-
mosity between some Kazan peasant who supplies Ger-
mans with wheat, and a German who supplies him with
scythes and machines.

It is the same between French, German, and Italian
workmen. And it would be even ridiculous to speak of
the possibility of a quarrel between men of science, art,
and letters of different nationalities, who have the same
objects of common interest independent of nationalities
or of governments.

But the various governments cannot leave the nations
in peace, because the chief, if not the sole, justification
for the existence of governments is the pacification of
nations, and the settlement of their hostile relationships.
Hence governments evoke such hostile relationships
under the aspect of patriotism, in order to exhibit their
powers of pacification. Somewhat like a gipsy who,
having put some pepper under a horse's tail, and beaten
it in its stall, brings it out, and hanging on to the reins,
pretends that he can hardly control the excited animal.

We are told that governments are very careful to
maintain peace between nations. But how do they
maintain it ? People live on the Rhine in peaceful com-
munication with one another. Suddenly, owing to cer-
tain quarrels and intrigues between kings and emperors,
a war commences ; and we learn that the French gov-
ernment has considered it necessary to regard this
peaceful people as Frenchmen. Centuries pass, the
population has become accustomed to their position,
when animosity again begins amongst the governments
of the great nations, and a war is started upon the most
empty pretext, because the German government con-
siders it necessary to regard this population as Germans :
and between all Frenchmen and Germans is kindled a
mutual feeling of ill-will.

44 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Or else Germans and Russians live in friendly fashion
on their frontiers, pacifically exchanging the results of
their labor; when all of a sudden those same institu-
tions, which only exist to maintain the peace of nations,
begin to quarrel, are guilty of one stupidity after another,
and finally are unable to invent anything better than a
most childish method of self -punishment in order to have
their own way, and do a bad turn to their opponent, —
which in this case is especially easy, as those who
arrange a war of tariffs are not the sufferers from it ; it is
others who suffer, — and so arrange such a war of tariffs
as took place not long ago between Russia and Germany.
And so between Russians and Germans a feeling of
animosity is fostered, which is still more inflamed by the
Franco- Russian festivities, and may lead at one moment
or another to a bloody war.

I have mentioned these last two examples of the
influence of a government over the people used to excite
their animosity against another people, because they have
occurred in our times : but in all history there is no war
which was not hatched by the governments, the govern-
ments alone, independent of the interests of the people,
to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

The government assures the people that they are in
danger from the invasion of another nation, or from foes
in their midst, and that the only way to escape this
danger is by the slavish obedience of the people to their
government. This fact is seen most prominently during
revolutions and dictatorships, but it exists always and
everywhere that the power of the government exists.
Every government explains its existence, and justifies
its deeds of violence, by the argument that if it did not
exist the condition of things would be very much worse.
After assuring the people of its danger the government
subordinates it to control, and when in this condition
compels it to attack some other nation. And thus the as-
surance of the government is corroborated in the eyes of
the people, as to the danger of attack from other nations.

“ Divide et imperay

Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubi-

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 45

table signification is nothing else but a means of obtain*
ing for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires,
and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason,
and conscience, and a slavish enthralment to those in
power. And as such it is recommended wherever it
is preached.

Patriotism is slavery.

Those who preach peace by arbitration argue thus :
Two animals cannot divide their prey otherwise than by
fighting ; as also is the case with children, savages, and
savage nations. But reasonable people settle their dif-
ferences by argument, persuasion, and by referring the
decision of the question to other impartial and reason-
able persons. So the nations should act to-day. This
argument seems quite correct. The nations of our time
have reached the period of reasonableness, have no
animosity toward one another, and might decide their dif-
ferences in a peaceful fashion. But this argument applies
only so far as it has reference to the people, and only
to the people who are not under the control of a govern-
ment. But the people that subordinate themselves to a
government cannot be reasonable, because the subordi-
nation is in itself a sign of a want of reason.

How can we speak of the reasonableness of men who
promise in advance to accomplish everything, including
murder, that the government — that is, certain men who
have attained a certain position — may command } Men
who can accept such obligations, and resignedly subordi-
nate themselves to anything that may be prescribed
by persons unknown to them in Petersburg, Vienna,
Berlin, Paris, cannot be considered reasonable ; and the
governments, that is, those who are in possession of
such power, can still less be considered reasonable, and
cannot but misuse it, and become dazed by such insane
and dreadful power.

This is why peace between nations cannot be attained
by reasonable means, by conventions, by arbitration, as
long as the subordination of the people to the govern-
ment continues, a condition always unreasonable and
always pernicious.

46 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

But the subordination of people to governments will
exist as long as patriotism exists, because all govern-
mental authority is founded upon patriotism, that is, upon
the readiness of people to subordinate themselves to
authority in order to defend their nation, country, or
state from dangers which are supposed to threaten.

The power of the French kings over their people
before the Revolution was founded on patriotism ; upon
it too was based the power of the Committee of Public
Welfare after the Revolution; upon it was erected the
power of Napoleon, both as consul and as emperor ;
upon it, after the downfall of Napoleon, was based the
power of the Bourbons, then that of the Republic,
Louis Philippe, and again of the Republic ; then of
Napoleon III., and again of the Republic, and upon it
finally rested the power of M. Boulanger.

It is dreadful to say so, but there is not, nor has
there been, any conjoint violence of one people against
another which was not accomplished in the name of
patriotism. In its name the Russians fought the French,
and the French the Russians ; in its name Russians and
French are preparing to fight the Germans, and the
Germans to wage war on two frontiers. And such is
the case not only with wars. In the name of patriotism
the Russians stifle the Poles, the Germans persecute
the Slavonians, the men of the Commune killed those
of Versailles, and those of Versailles the men of the
Commune.

XV

It would seem that, owing to the spread of education,
of speedier locomotion, of greater intercourse between
different nations, to the widening of literature, and
chiefly to the decrease of danger from other nations,
the fraud of patriotism ought daily to become more
difficult and at length impossible to practise.

But the truth is that these very means of general ex-
ternal education, facilitated locomotion and intercourse,
and especially the spread of literature, being captured

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 47

and constantly more and more controlled by govern-
ment, confer on the latter such possibilities of exciting
a feeling of mutual animosity between nations, that in
degree as the uselessness and harmfulness of patriot-
ism have become manifest, so also has increased the
power of the government and ruling class to excite
patriotism among the people.

The difference between that which was and that
which is consists solely in the fact that now a much
larger number of men participate in the advantages
which patriotism confers on the upper classes, hence
a much larger number of men are employed in spread*
ing and sustaining this astounding superstition.

The more difficult the government finds it to retain
its power, the more numerous are the men who share
it.

In former times a small band of rulers held the reins
of power, emperors, kings, dukes, their soldiers and
assistants ; whereas now the power and its profits are
shared not only by government officials and by the
clergy, but by capitalists — great and small, land-
owners, bankers, members of Parliament, professors,
village officials, men of science, and even artists, but
particularly by authors and journalists.

And all these people, consciously or unconsciously,
spread the deceit of patriotism, which is indispensable
to them if the profits of their position are to be pre-
served.

And the fraud, thanks to the means for its propaga-
tion, and to the participation in it of a much larger
number of people, having become more powerful, is
continued so successfully, that, notwithstanding the
increased difficulty of deceiving, the extent to which
the people are deceived is the same as ever.

A hundred years ago the uneducated classes, who
had no idea of what composed their government, or
by what nations they were surrounded, blindly obeyed
the local government officials and nobles by whom they
were enslaved, and it was sufficient for the govern-
ment, by bribes and rewards, to remain on good terms

48 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

with these nobles and officials, in order to squeeze from
the people all that was required.

Whereas now, when the people can, for the most
part, read, know more or less of what their govern-
ment consists, and what nations surround them ; when
working-men constantly and easily move from place
to place, bringing back information of what is hap-
pening in the world, — the simple demand that the
orders of the government must be accomplished is
not sufficient ; it is needful as well to cloud those true
ideas about life which the people have, and to inculcate
unnatural ideas as to the condition of their existence,
and the relationship to it of other nations.

And so, thanks to the development of literature,
reading, and the facilities of travel, governments which
have their agents everywhere, by means of statutes,
sermons, schools, and the press, inculcate everywhere
upon the people the most barbarous and erroneous ideas
as to their advantages, the relationship of nations, their
qualities and intentions ; and the people, so crushed by
labor that they have neither the time nor the power
to understand the significance or test the truth of the
ideas which are forced upon them or of the demands
made upon them in the name of their welfare, put them-
selves unmurmuringly under the yoke.

Whereas working-men who have freed themselves
from unremitting labor and become educated, and who
have, therefore, it might be supposed, the power of see-
ing through the fraud which is practised upon them, are
subjected to such a coercion of threats, bribes, and all
the hypnotic influence of governments, that, almost with-
out exception, they desert to the side of the government,
and by entering some well-paid and profitable employ-
ment, as priest, schoolmaster, officer, or functionary,
become participators in spreading the deceit which is
destroying their comrades.

It is as if nets were laid at the entrances to edu-
cation, in which those who by some means or other
escape from the masses bowed down by labor, are in
evitably caught.

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 49

At first, when one understands the cruelty of all this
deceit, one feels indignant in spite of oneself against
those who from personal ambition or greedy advantage
propagate this cruel fraud which destroys the souls as
well as the bodies of men, and one feels inclined to
accuse them of a sly craftiness ; but the fact is that
they are deceitful with no wish to deceive, but because
they cannot be otherwise. And they deceive, not like
Machiavellians, but with no consciousness of their
deceit, and usually with the natve assurance that they
are doing something excellent and elevated, a view in
which they are persistently encouraged by the sympa-
thy and approval of all who surround them.

It is true that, being dimly aware that on this fraud
is founded their power and advantageous position,
they are unconsciously drawn toward it ; but their
action is not based on any desire to delude the peo-
ple, but because they believe it to be of service to
the people.

Thus emperors, kings, and their ministers, with all
their coronations, manoeuvers, reviews, visiting one an-
other, dressing up in various uniforms, going from
place to place, and deliberating with serious faces as to
how they may keep peace between nations supposed to
be inimical to each other, — nations who would never
dream of quarreling, — feel quite sure that what they
are doing is very reasonable and useful.

In the same way the various ministers, diplomatists,
and functionaries — dressed up in uniforms, with all
sorts of ribbons and crosses, writing and docketing with
great care, upon the best paper, their hazy, involved,
altogether needless communications, advices, projects
— are quite assured that, without their activity, the
entire existence of nations would halt or become de-
ranged.

In the same manner military men, got up in ridiculous
costumes, arguing seriously with what rifle or cannon
men can be most expeditiously destroyed, are quite cer-
tain that their field-days and reviews are most important
and essential to the people.

50 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

So likewise the priests, journalists, writers of patriotic
songs and class-books, who preach patriotism and receive
liberal remuneration, are equally satisfied.

And no doubt the organizers of festivities — like the
Franco-Russian f^tes — are sincerely affected while pro-
nouncing their patriotic speeches and toasts.

All these people do what they are doing unconsciously,
because they must, all their life being founded upon
deceit, and because they know not how to do anything
else ; and coincidently these same acts call forth the
sympathy and approbation of all the people amongst
whom they are done. Moreover, being all linked to-
gether, they approve and justify one another's acts —
emperors and kings those of the soldiers, function-
aries, and clergymen ; and soldiers, functionaries, and
clergymen the acts of emperors and kings, while the
populace, and especially the town populace, seeing noth-
ing comprehensible in what is done by all these men,
unwittingly ascribe to them a special, almost a supernat-
ural, significance.

The people see, for instance, that a triumphal arch
is erected; that men bedeck themselves with crowns,
uniforms, robes ; that fireworks are let off, cannons fired,
bells rung, regiments paraded with their bands; that
papers and telegrams and messengers fly from place to
place, and that strangely arrayed men are busily en-
gaged in hurrying from place to place and much is said
and written ; and the throng being unable to believe
that all this is done (as is indeed the case) without the
slightest necessity, attribute to it all a special mysterious
significance, and gaze with shouts and hilarity or with
silent awe. And on the other hand, this hilarity or silent
awe confirms the assurance of those people who are
responsible for all these foolish deeds.

Thus, for instance, not long ago, Wilhelm II. ordered a
new throne for himself, with some special kind of orna-
mentation, and having dressed up in a white uniform,
with a cuirass, tight breeches, and a helmet with a bird
on the top, and enveloped himself in a red mantle, came
out to his subjects, and sat down on this new throne,

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 51

perfectly assured that his act was most necessary and
important ; and his subjects not only saw nothing ridicu-
lous in it, but thought the sight most imposing.

XVI

For some time the power of the government over the
people has not been maintained by force, as was the
case when one nation conquered another and ruled it by
force of arms, or when the rulers of an unarmed people
had separate legions of janizaries or guards.

The power of the government has for some time been
maintained by what is termed public opinion.

A public opinion exists that patriotism is a fine moral
sentiment, and that it is right and our duty to regard
one’s own nation, one’s own state, as the best in the
world ; and flowing naturally from this public opinion is
another, namely, that it is right and our duty to acquiesce
in the control of a government over ourselves, to sub-
ordinate ourselves to it, to serve in the army and submit
ourselves to discipline, to give our earnings to the gov-
ernment in the form of taxes, to submit to the decisions
of the law-courts, and to consider the edicts of the gov-
ernment as divinely right. And when such public opinion
exists, a strong governmental power is formed possessing
milliards of money, an organized mechanism of adminis-
tration, the postal service, telegraphs, telephones, disci-
plined armies, law-courts, police, submissive clergy,
schools, even the press; and this power maintains in
the people the public opinion which it finds neces-
sary.

The power of the government is maintained by public
opinion, and with this power the government, by means
of its organs, — its officials, law-courts, schools, churches,
even the press, — can always maintain the public opinion
which they need. Public opinion produces the power,
and the power produces public opinion. And there
appears to be no escape from this position.

Nor indeed would there be, if public opinion were

52 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

something fixed, unchangeable, and governments were
able to manufacture the public opinion they needed.

But, fortunately, such is not the case; and public
opinion is not, to begin with, permanent, unchangeable,
stationary ; but, on the contrary, is constantly changing,
moving with the advance of humanity; and public
opinion not only cannot be produced at will by a gov-
ernment, but is that which produces governments and
gives them power, or deprives them of it.

It may seem that public opinion is at present station-
ary, and the same to-day as it was ten years ago ; that
in relation to certain questions it merely fluctuates, but
returns again — as when it replaces a monarchy with a
republic, and then the republic with a monarchy ; but it
has only that appearance when we examine merely the
external manifestation or public opinion which is pro-
duced artificially by the government.

But we need only take public opinion in its relation
to the life of mankind to see that, as with the day or the
year, it is never stagnant, but always proceeds along the
way by which all humanity advances, as, notwithstand-
ing delays and hesitations, the day or the spring ad-
vances by the same path as the sun.

So that, although, judging from external appearances,
the position of European nations to-day is almost as it
was fifty years ago, the relationship of the nations to
these appearances is quite different from what it was
then.

Though now, the same as then, exist rulers, troops,
taxes, luxury and poverty, Catholicism, orthodoxy, Lu-
theranism, in former times these existed because public
opinion demanded them, whereas now they exist only
because the governments artificially maintain what was
once a vital public opinion.

If we as seldom remark this movement of public
opinion as we notice the movement of water in a river
when we ourselves are descending with the current, this
is because the imperceptible changes in public opinion
influence ourselves as well.

The nature of public opinion is a constant and irresisb

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 53

ible movement If it appears to us to be stationary it is
because there are always some who have utilized a cer-
tain phase of public opinion for their own profit, and who,
in consequence, use every effort to give it an appearance
of permanence, and to conceal the manifestations of real
opinion, which is already alive, though not yet perfectly
expressed, in the consciousness of men. And such peo-
ple, who adhere to the outworn opinion and conceal the
new one, are at the present time those who compose
governments and ruling classes, and who preach patriot-
ism as an indispensable condition of human life.

The means which these people can control are im-
mense ; but as public opinion is constantly pouring in
upon them their efforts must in the end be in vain : the
old falls into decrepitude, the new grows.

The longer the manifestation of nascent public opin-
ion is restrained, the more it accumulates, the more
energetically will it burst forth.

Governments and ruling classes try with all their
strength to conserve that old public opinion of patriot-
ism upon which their power rests, and to smother the
expression of the new, which would destroy it.

But to preserve the old and to check the new is pos-
sible only up to a certain point ; just as, only to a cen
tain extent, is it possible to check running water with a
dam.

However much governments may try to arouse in the
people a public opinion, of the past, unnatural to them,
as to the merit and virtue of patriotism, those of our
day believe in patriotism no longer, but espouse more
and more the solidarity and brotherhood of nations.

Patriotism promises men nothing but a terrible fu-
ture, but the brotherhood of nations represents an
ideal which is becoming ever more intelligible and more
desirable to humanity. Hence the progress of mankind
from the old outworn opinion to the new must inevi-
tably take place. This progression is as inevitable as
the falling in the spring of the last dry leaves and the
appearance of the new from swollen buds.

And the longer this transition is delayed, the more

54 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

inevitable it becomes, and the more evident its neces
sity.

And indeed, one has only to remember what we pro-
fess, both as Christians and merely as men of our day,
those fundamental moralities by which we are directed
in our social, family, and personal existence, and the
position in which we place ourselves in the name of
patriotism, in order to see what a degree of contradic-
tion we have placed between our conscience and what,
thanks to an energetic government influence in this
direction, we regard as our public opinion.

One has only thoughtfully to examine the most ordi-
nary demands of patriotism, which are expected of us
as the most simple and natural affair, in order to under-
stand to what extent these requirements are at variance
with that real public opinion which we already share.
We all regard ourselves as free, educated, humane men,
or even as Christians, and yet we are all in such a posi-
tion that were Wilhelm to-morrow to take offense
against Alexander, or Mr. N. to write a lively article
on the Eastern Question, or Prince So-and-so to plunder
some Bulgarians or Servians, or some queen or em-
press to be put out by something or other, all we edu-
cated humane Christians must go and kill people
of whom we have no knowledge, and toward whom
we are as amicably disposed as to the rest of the
world.

And if such an event has not come to pass, it is
owing, we are assured, to the love of peace which con-
trols Alexander, or because Nikolat Alexandrovitch has
married the granddaughter of Victoria.

But if another happened to be in the room of Alex-
ander, or if the disposition of Alexander himself were
to alter, or if Nicholas the son of Alexander had married
Amalia instead of Alice, we should rush at each other
like wild beasts, and rip up each other’s bellies.

Such is the supposed public opinion of our time, and
such arguments are coolly repeated in every liberal and
advanced organ of the press.

If we, Christians of a thousand years’ standing, have

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 55

not already cut one another’s throats, it is merely because
Alexander III. does not permit us to do so.

But this is awful I ^

XVII

No feats of heroism are needed to achieve the great-
est and most important changes in the existence of
humanity; neither the armament of millions of soldiers,
nor the construction of new roads and machines, nor
the arrangement of exhibitions, nor the organization of
workmen’s unions, nor revolutions, nor barricades, nor
explosions, nor the perfection of aerial navigation ; but
a change in public opinion.

And to accomplish this change no exertions of the
mind are needed, nor the refutation of anything in exis-
tence, nor the invention of any extraordinary novelty ; it
is only needful that we should not succumb to the erro-
neous, already defunct, public opinion of the past, which
governments have induced artificially ; it is only need-
ful that each individual should say what he really feels
or thinks, or at least that he should not say what he
does not think.

And if only a small body of the people were to
do so at once, of their own accord, outworn public
opinion would fall off us of itself, and a new, living,
real opinion would assert itself. And when public
opinion should thus have changed without the slight-
est effort, the internal condition of men’s lives which
so torments them would change likewise of its own
accord.

One is ashamed to say how little is needed for all men
to be delivered from those calamities which now oppress
them ; it is only needful not to lie.

Let people only be superior to the falsehood which
is instilled into them, let them decline to say what
they neither feel nor think, and at once such a revo-
lution of all the organization of our life will take place
as could not be attained by all the efforts of revolu.

56 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

tionists during centuries, even were complete power
within their hands.

If people would only that strerjgth is no tjn

force but in truth, would only not shrink from it either
STwordT or ^eedT'not say what they do not think, not do
what they regard as foolish and as wrong !

** But what is there so gravely serious in shouting
Vive la France ! or, Hurrah for some emperor, king, or
conqueror ; in putting on a uniform and a court decora-
tion and going and waiting in the anteroom and bowing
low and calling men by strange titles and then giving
the young and uncultured to understand that all this sort
of thing is very praiseworthy ? Or, “ Why is the writ-
ing of an article in defence of the Franco-Russian alli-
ance, or of the war of tariffs, or in condemnation of
Germans, Russians, or Englishmen, of such moment ? **
Or, “ What harm is there in attendance at some patriotic
festivity, or in drinking the health and making a speech
in favor of people whom one does not love, and with whom
one has no business ? ** Or, “ What is of such importance
in admitting the use and excellence of treaties and alli-
ances, or in keeping silence when one’s own nation is
lauded in one’s hearing, and other nations are abused and
maligped ; or when Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Luther-
anism are lauded; or some hero of war, as Napoleon,
Peter, Boulanger, or Skobelef, is admired ? ”

All these things seem so unimportant. Yet in these
ways which seem unimportant to us, in our refraining
from them, in our proving, as far as we can, the un-
reasonableness that is apparent to us, in this is our chief,
our irresistible might, of which that unconquerable force
is composed which constitutes real genuine public opin-
ion, that opinion which, while itself advancing, moves
all humanity.

The governments know this, and tremble before this
force, and strive in every way they can to counteract or
become possessed of it.

They know that strength is not in force, but in
thought and in clear expression of it, and, therefore,
they are more afraid of the expression of independent

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 57

thought than of armies ; hence they institute censor-
ships, bribe the press, and monopolize the control of
religion and of the schools. But the spiritual force
which moves the world eludes them ; it is neither in
books nor in papers ; it cannot be trapped, and is al-
ways free ; it is in the depths of consciousness of man-
kind. The most powerful and untrammeled force of
freedom is that which asserts itself in the soul of man
when he is alone, and in the sole presence of himself
reflects on the facts of the universe, and then naturally
communicates his thoughts to wife, brother, friend,
with all those with whom he comes in contact, and
from whom he would regard it as sinful to conceal the
truth.

No milliards of rubles, no millions of troops, no
organization, no wars or revolutions will produce what
the simple expression of a free man may, on what he
regards as just, independently of what exists or was
instilled into him.

One free man will say with truth what he thinks and
feels amongst thousands of men who by their acts and
words attest exactly the opposite. It would seem that
he who sincerely expressed his thought must remain
alone, whereas it generally happens that every one else,
or the majority at least, have been thinking and feeling
the same things but without expressing them.

And that which yesterday was the novel opinion of
one man, to-day becomes the general opinion of the
majority.

And as soon as this opinion is established, immediately
by imperceptible degrees, but beyond power of frustra-
tion, the conduct of mankind begins to alter.

Whereas at present, every man, even, if free, asks
himself, “ What can I do alone against all this ocean
of evil and deceit which overwhelms us ? Why should
I express my opinion } Why indeed possess one ? It
is better not to reflect on these misty and involved
questions. Perhaps these contradictions are an inevi-
table condition of our existence. And why should I
struggle alone with all the evil in the world ? Is it not

58 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

better to go with the stream which carries me along ?
If anything can be done, it must be done not alone but
in company with others/'

And leaving the most powerful of weapons — thought
and its expression — which move the world, each man
employs the weapon of social activity, not noticing that
every social activity is based on the very foundations
against which he is bound to fight, and that upon enter-
ing the social activity which exists in our world every
man is obliged, if only in part, to deviate from the truth
and to make concessions which destroy the force of the
powerful weapon which should assist him in the struggle.
It is as if a man, who was given a blade sa marvel-
ously keen that it would sever anything, should use its
edge for driving in nails.

We all complain of the senseless order of life, which
is at variance with our being, and yet we refuse to use
the unique and powerful weapon within o ur hands —

orTthe contrary, under the pretext of struggling with
evil, we destroy the weapon, and sacrifice it to the exi-
gencies of an imaginary conflict.

One man does not assert the truth which he knows,
because he feels himself bound to the people with whom
he is engaged; another, because the truth might de-
prive him of the profitable position by which he main-
tains his family ; a third, because he desires to attain
reputation and authority, and then use them in the ser-
vice of mankind ; a fourth, because he does not wish to
destroy old sacred traditions; a fifth, because he has
no desire to offend people ; a sixth, because the expres-
sion of the truth would arouse persecution, and disturb
the excellent social activity to which he has devoted
himself.

One serves as emperor, king, minister, government
functionary, or soldier, and assures himself and others
that the deviation from truth indispensable to his condi-
tion is redeemed by the good he does. Another, who ful-
fils the duties of a spiritual pastor, does not in the depths
of his soul believe all he teaches, but permits the devia-

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 59

tion from truth in view of the good he does. A third in*
structs men by means of literature, and notwithstanding
the silence he must observe with regard to the whole truth,
in order not to stir up the government and society against
himself, has no doubt as to the good he does. A fourth
struggles resolutely with the existing order as revolu-
tionist or anarchist, and is quite assured that the aims
he pursues are so beneficial that the neglect of the truth,
or even of the falsehood, by silence, indispensable to
the success of his activity, does not destroy the utility
of his work.

In order that the conditions of a life contrary to the
consciousness of humanity should change and be re-
placed by one which is in accord with it, the outworn
public opinion must be superseded by a new and living
one.

And in order that the old outworn opinion should
yield its place to the new living one, all who are con-
scious of the new requirements of existence should
openly express them. And yet all those who are con-
scious of these new requirements, one in the name of
one thing, and one in the name of another, not only
pass them over in silence, but both by word and deed
attest their exact opposites.

Only the truth and its expression can establish that
new public opinion which will reform the ancient obso-
lete and pernicious order of life ; and yet we not only
do not express the truth we know, but often even dis-
tinctly give expression to what we ourselves regard as
false.

If only free men would not rely on that which has no
power, and is always fettered — upon external aids;
but would trust in that which is always powerful and
free — the truth and its expression !

If only men were boldly and clearly to express the
truth already manifest to them of the brotherhood of all
nations, and the crime of exclusive devotion to one’s
own people, that defunct, false public opinion would
slough off of itself like a dried skin, — and upon it de-
pends the power of governments, and all the evil pro-

6o PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

duced by them ; and the new public opinion would
stand forth, which is even now but awaiting that drop-
ping off of the old to put forth manifestly and power-
fully its demand, and establish new forms of existence
in conformity with the consciousness of mankind.

XVIII

It is sufficient that people should understand that
what is enunciated to them as public opinion, and main-
tained by such complex, energetic, and artificial means,
is not public opinion, but only the lifeless outcome of
what was once public opinion ; and, what is more im-
portant, it is sufficient that they should have faith in
themselves, that they should believe that what they are
conscious of in the depths of their souls, what in every
one is pressing for expression, and is only not expressed
because it contradicts the public opinion supposed to
exist, is the power which transforms the world, and to
express which is the mission of mankind : it is sufficient
to believe that truth is not what men talk of, but what
is told by his own conscience, that is, by God, — and at
once the whole artificially maintained public opinion will
disappear, and a new and true one be established in its
place.

If people would only speak what they think, and not
what they do not think, all the superstitions emanating
from patriotism would at once drop away with the cruel
feelings and violence founded upon it. The hatred and
animosity between nations and peoples, fanned by their
governments, would cease ; the extolling of military hero-
ism, that is of murder, would be at an end ; and, what is
of most importance, respect for authorities, abandon-
ment to them of the fruits of one's labor, and subor-
dination to them, would cease, since there is no other
reason for them but patriotism.

And if merely this were to take place, that vast mass
of feeble people who are controlled by externals would

PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 6i

sway at once to the side of the new public opinion,
which should reign henceforth in place of the old.

Let the government keep the schools, Church, press,
its milliards of money and millions of armed men trans-
formed into machines : all this apparently terrible organ-
ization of brute force is as nothing compared to the
consciousness of truth, which surges in the soul of one
man who knows the power of truth, which is communi-
cated from him to a second and a third, as one candle
lights an innumerable quantity of others.

The light needs only to be kindled, and, like wax in
the face of fire, this organization, which seems so power-
ful, will melt, and be consumed.

Only let men understand the vast power which is given
them in the word which expresses truth ; only let them
refuse to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage ; only
let people use their pdWer, — and their rulers will not dare,
as now, to threaten men with universal slaughter, to
which, at their discretion, they may or may not subject
them, nor dare before the eyes of a peaceful populace
to hold reviews and manoeuvers of disciplined mur-
derers ; nor would the governments dare for their own
profit and the advantage of their assistants to arrange
and derange custom-house agreements, nor to collect
from the people those millions of rubles which they dis-
tribute among their assistants, and by the help of which
their murders are planned.

And such a transformation is not only possible, but it
is as impossible that it should not be accomplished as
that a lifeless, decaying tree should not fall, and a
younger take its place.

“ Peace I leave with you ; my peace I give unto you :
not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your
heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid,"' said Christ
And this peace is indeed among us, and depends on us
for its attainment.

If only the hearts of individuals would not be troubled
by the seductions with which they are hourly seduced,
nor afraid of those imaginary terrors by which they are
intimidated ; if people only knew wherein their chiefest^

62 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY

all-conquering power consists, — a peace which men have
always desired, not the peace attainable by diplomatic
negotiations, imperial or kingly progresses, dinners,
speeches, fortresses, cannon, dynamite, and melinite,
by the exhaustion of the people under taxes, and the
abduction from labor of the flower of the population,
but the peace attainable by a voluntary profession of
the truth by every man, would long ago have been
established in our midst.

March 29, 1894.

TWO WARS*

C HRISTENDOM has recently been the scene of
two wars. One is now concluded, whereas the
other still continues ; but they were for a time being
carried on simultaneously, and the contrast they present
is very striking. The first — the Spanish- American
war — was an old, vain, foolish, and cruel war, inoppor-
tune, out-of-date, barbarous, which sought by killing one
set of people to solve the question as to how and by
whom another set of people ought to be governed.

The other, which is still going on, and will end only
when there is an end of all war, is a new, self-sacrificing,
holy war, which was long ago proclaimed (as Victor
Hugo expressed it at one of the congresses) by the best
and most advanced — Christian — section of mankind
against the other, the coarse and savage section. This
war has recently been carried on with especial vigor and
success by a handful of Christian people — the Dukho-
bors of the Caucasus — against the powerful Russian
government.

The other day I received a letter from a gentleman
in Colorado — Jesse Goldwin — who asks me to send
him *' . . . a few words or thoughts expressive of my
feelings with regard to the noble work of the American
nation, and the heroism of its soldiers and sailors.’'
This gentleman, together with an overwhelming ma-
jority of the American people, feels perfectly confident
that the work of the Americans — the killing of several
thousands of almost unarmed men (for, in comparison
with the equipment of the Americans, the Spaniards
were almost without arms) — was beyond doubt a

J From The Clarion^ November 19, 1898.

63

64

TWO WARS

noble work*'; and he regards the majority of those
who, after killing great numbers of their fellow-creatures,
have remained safe and sound, and have secured for
themselves an advantageous position, as heroes.

The Spanish- American War — leaving out of account
the atrocities committed by the Spaniards in Cuba,
which served as a pretext for it — is very like this : An
old man, infirm and childish, brought up in the tradi-
tions of a false honor, challenges, for the settlement of
some misunderstanding, a young man, in full possession
of his powers, to a boxing-match. And the young man,
who, from his antecedents and professed sentiments,
ought to be immeasurably above such a settlement of
the question, accepts the challenge. Armed with a
club, he then throws himself upon this infirm and
childish old man, knocks out his teeth, breaks his ribs,
and afterward enthusiastically relates his great deeds
to a large audience of young men like himself, who
rejoice and praise the hero who has thus maimed the
old man.

Such is the nature of the first war, which is occupying
the attention of the whole Christian world. Of the
other no one speaks ; hardly any one knows about it.

This second war may be described as follows : The
people of every nation are being deluded by their rulers,
who say to them, ‘‘ You, who are governed by us, are
all in danger of being conquered by other nations ; we
are watching over your welfare and safety, and conse-
quently we demand of you annually some millions of
rubles — the fruit of your labor — to be used by us
in the acquisition of arms, cannon, powder, and ships for
your defence ; we also demand that you yourselves
shall enter institutions, organized by us, where you will
become senseless particles of a huge machine — the
army — which will be under our absolute control. On
entering this army you will cease to be men with wills
of your own; you will simply do what we require of
you. But what we wish, above all else, is to exercise
dominion ; the means by which we dominate is killing,
therefore we will instruct you to kill.”

TWO WARS

65

Notwithstanding the obvious absurdity of the assertion
that people are in danger of being attacked by the
governments of other states, who, in their turn, affirm
that they — in spite of all their desire for peace — find
themselves in precisely the same danger ; notwithstand-
ing the humiliation of that slavery to which men subject
themselves by entering the army ; notwithstanding th^
cruelty of the work to which they are summoned, — mer
nevertheless submit to this fraud, give their money to be
used for their own subjugation, and themselves help to
enslave others.

But now there come people who say : ‘‘ What you tell
us about the danger threatening us, and about your
anxiety to guard us against it, is a fraud. All the states
are assuring us that they desire peace, and yet at the
same time all are arming themselves against the others.
Moreover, according to that law, which you yourselves
recognize, all men are brothers, and it makes no differ-
ence whether one belongs to this state or to that; there-
fore the idea of our being attacked by other nations,
with which you try to frighten us, has no terrors for us ;
we regard it as a matter of no importance. The essen-
tial thing, however, is that the law given to us by God
and recognized even by you who are requiring us to
participate in killing, distinctly forbids, not killing only,
but also every kind of violence. Therefore we cannot,
and will not, take part in your preparations for murder,
we will give no money for the purpose, and we will not
attend the meetings arranged by you with the object
of perverting men’s minds and consciences, and trans-
forming them into instruments of violence, obedient
to any bad man who may choose to make use of
them.”

This constitutes the second war. It has long been
carried on by the best men of the world against the
representatives of brute force, and has of late flamed
up with special intensity between the Dukhobors and
the Russian government The Russian government
has made use of all the weapons it had at command
— police measures for making arrests, for prohibiting

66

TWO WARS

people moving from place to place, for forbidding all
intercourse with one another, the interception of let-
ters, espionage, the prohibition to publish in the
newspapers information about anything concerning
the Dukhobors, calumnies of them printed in the
papers, bribery, flogging, imprisonment, and the ruin
of families.

The Dukhobors have, on their part, employed their
one religious weapon, viz., gentle intelligence and patient
firmness ; and they say : ‘‘ One must not obey man
rather than God. Therefore, whatever you may do to
us, we cannot and will not obey you.’*

Men praise the heroes of the savage Spanish-
American war, who, in their desire to distinguish them-
selves before the world, and to gain reward and fame,
have slain great numbers of men, or have died while
engaged in killing their fellow-creatures. But no one
speaks or even knows about the heroes of the war
against war, who — unseen and unheard — have died
and are now dying under the rod, in foul prison cells or
in painful exile, and who, nevertheless, to their last
breath, stand firm by goodness and truth.

I knew dozens of these martyrs who have already
died, and hundreds more who, scattered all over the
world, are still suffering martyrdom for the truth.

I knew Drozhin, a peasant teacher, who was tortured
to death in a penal battalion ; I knew another, Izum-
tchenko (a friend of Drozhin), who, after being kept
for some time in a penal battalion, was banished to the
other end of the world. I knew Olkhovikof, a peasant
who refused military service, and was consequently
sent to a penal battalion, and then, while on board a
steamer which was transporting him into exile, converted
Sereda, the soldier who had him in charge. Sereda,
understanding what Olkhovikof said to him as to the
sinfulness of military service, went to his superiors and
said, like the ancient martyrs ; “ I do not wish to be
among the torturers; let me join the martyrs.'* And
forthwith they began to torture him, sent him to a
penal battalion, and afterwards exiled him to the prov-

TWO WARS

67

ince of Yakutsk. I knew dozens of Dukhobors, of
whom many have died or become blind, and yet they
would not yield to demands which are contrary to the
divine law.

The other day I read a letter from a young Dukhobor,
who has been sent alone to a regiment stationed in
Samarkand. Again, those same demands on the part
of the officers, the same persuasion from the chaplain,
the same threats and entreaties, and always the same
simple and irresistible replies : I cannot do what is
opposed to my belief in God/’

“ Then we will torture you to death.”

** That is your business. You do your work and I
will do mine.”

And this youth of twenty, forsaken of all, in a strange
place, surrounded by men who are hostile to him, amid
the rich, the powerful, and the educated, who are con-
centrating all their energies on the task of bringing him
to subjection, does not submit, but still perseveres in his
heroic deed.

But men say : “ These are useless victims ; these
people perish, but the order of life will remain the
same.” This, I believe, is just what was said with
regard to the sacrifice of Christ, as well as of all the
other martyrs to truth. The men of our time, especially
the learned, have grown so coarse that they, owing to
their coarseness, are even unable to understand the
significance and effect of spiritual force. A shell with
250 puds of dynamite, fired at a crowd of living men
— this they understand and recognize as a force; but
thought, truth, which has been realized and practised in
the life, even to martyrdom, which has now become
accessible to millions — this, according to their concep-
tion, is not a force, because it makes no noise, and one
cannot see broken bones and pools of blood. Learned
men (true, it is those whose learning is misdirected) are
using all the power of erudition to prove that mankind
lives like a herd of cattle, that man is guided by eco-
nomic considerations alone, and that his intellect is given
him merely for amusement. But governments well

68

TWO WARS

know whajt it is that rules the world, consequently —
guided by the instinct of self-preservation — they are
undoubtedly chiefly concerned about the manifestation
of spiritual forces, upon which forces depend their
existence or their ruin.

And this is precisely the reason why all the energies
of the Russian government were, and still continue to
be, exerted to render the Dukhobors harmless, to isolate
them, to banish them beyond the frontier.

Notwithstanding all these efforts, however, the strug-
gle of the Dukhobors has opened the eyes of mill-
ions.

I know hundreds of military men, old and young, who,
owing to the persecution of the gentle, industrious
Dukhobors, have begun to have doubts as to the legality
of their occupation. I know people who have, for the
first time, begun to meditate on life and the meaning
of Christianity only after seeing or hearing about the
life of these people, and the persecutions to which they
have been subjected.

And the government that is tyrannizing over millions
of people knows this, and feels that it has been struck
to the very heart.

Such is the nature of the second war which is being
waged in our times, and such are its consequences.
And not to the Russian government alone are these
consequences of importance ; every government founded
upon violence and upheld by armies is wounded in the
same way by this weapon. Christ said, **/ have con-
quered the world'" And, indeed, He has conquered
the world, if men would but learn to believe in the
strength of the weapon given by Him.

And this weapon is the obedience of every man to
his own reason and conscience. This, indeed, is so
simple, so indubitable, and binding upon every man.
‘‘ You wish to make me a participator in murder ; you
demand of me money for the preparation of weapons ;
and want me to take part in the organized assembly of
murderers,'* says the reasonable man — he who has
neither sold nor obscured his conscience. “ But I

TWO WARS

69

profess that law — the same that is also professed by
you — which long ago forbade not murder oniy, but all
hostility also, and therefore I cannot obey you”

And it is just by this simple means, and by it alone,
that the world is being conquered.

November, 1898.

THE BEGINNING OF THE
END

D uring last year, in Holland, a young man named
Van der Veer was called on to enter the National
Guard. To the summons of the commander, Van der
Veer answered in the following letter : —

‘^Thou Shalt do no Murder.”

To M. Herman Sneiders, Commandant of the National Guard
of the Midelburg district.

Dear Sir, — Last week I received a document ordering me
to appear at the municipal office, to be, according to law,
enlisted in the National Guard. As you probably noticed, I
did not appear, and this letter is to inform you, plainly and
without equivocation, that I do not intend to appear before the
commission. I know well that I am taking a heavy responsi-
bility, that you have the right to punish me, and that you will
not fail to use this right. But that does not frighten me. The
reasons which lead me to this passive resistance seem to me
strong enough to outweigh the responsibility I take.

I, who, if you please, am not a Christian, understand better
than most Christians the commandment which is put at the
head of this letter, the commandment which is rooted in
human nature, in the mind of man. When but a boy, I allowed
myself to be taught the trade of soldier, the art of killing ; but
now I renounce it. I would not kill at the command of
others, and thus have murder on my conscience without any
personal cause or reason whatever.

Can you mention anything more degrading to a human
being than carrying out such murder, such massacre? I am
unable to kill, even to see an animal killed ; therefore I be-
came a vegetarian. And now 1 am to be ordered to shoot

70

THE BEGINNING OF THE END 71

men who have done me no harm ; for I take it that it is not
to shoot at leaves and branches of trees that soldiers are taught
to use guns.

But you will reply, perhaps, that the National Guard is be-
sides, and especially, to keep civic order.

M. Commandant, if order really reigned in our society, if
the social organism were really healthy — in other words, if
there were in our social relations no crying abuses, if it were
not established that one man shall die of hunger while another
gratifies his every whim of luxury, then you would see me in ,
the front ranks of the defenders of this orderly state. But I
flatly decline to help in preserving the present so-called social
order.” Why, M. Commandant, should we throw dust in each
other’s eyes ? We both know quite well what the ‘‘ preserva-
tion of order ” means : upholding the rich against the poor
toilers, who begin to perceive their rights. Do we not know
the role which the National Guard played in the last strike at
Rotterdam? For no reason, the Guard had to be on duty
hours and hours to watch over the property of the commercial
houses which were affected. Can you for a moment suppose
that I should shoot down working-people who are acting quite
within their rights? You cannot be so blind. Why then
complicate the question? Certainly, it is impossible for me
to allow myself to be molded into an obedient National
Guardsman such as you want and must have.

For all these reasons, but especially because I hate murder
by order, I refuse to serve as a National Guardsman, and ask
you not to send me either uniform or arms, because I
have a fixed resolve not to use them. — I greet you, M.
Commandant,

J. K. Van der Veer.

This letter, in my opinion, has great importance.
Refusals of military service in Christian states began
when in Christian states military service appeared. Or
rather when the states, the power of which rests upon
violence, laid claim to Christianity without giving up
violence. In truth, it cannot be otherwise. A Christian,
whose doctrine enjoins upon him humility, non-resistance
to evil, love to all (even to the most malicious), cannot
be a soldier; that is, he cannot join a class of men
whose business is to kill their fellow-men. Therefore

72 THE BEGINNING OF THE END

it is that these Christians have always refused and now
refuse military service.

But of true Christians there have always been but
few. Most people in Christian countries count as
Christians only those who profess the doctrines of some
Church, which doctrines have nothing in common, ex-
cept the name, with true Christianity. That occasion-
ally one in tens of thousands of recruits should refuse
to serve did not trouble the hundreds of thousands,
the millions, of men who every year accepted military
service.

Impossible that the whole enormous majority of
Christians who enter upon military service are wrong,
and only the exceptions, sometimes uneducated people,
are right ; while every archbishop and man of learning
thinks the service compatible with Christianity. So
think the majority, and, untroubled regarding them-
selves as Christians, they enter the rank of murderers.
But now appears a man who, as he himself says, is not
a Christian, and who refuses military service, not from
religious motives, but from motives of the simplest kind,
motives intelligible and common to all men, of whatever
religion or nation, whether Catholic, Mohammedan, Bud-
dhist, Confucian, whether Spaniards or Japanese.

Van der Veer refuses military service, not because he
follows the commandment, “ Thou shalt do no murder,''
not because he is a Christian, but because he holds mur-
der to be opposed to human nature. He writes that he
simply abhors all killing, and abhors it to such a degree
that he becomes a vegetarian just to avoid participation
in the killing of animals; and, above all, he says, he
refuses military service because he thinks murder by
order," that is, the obligation to kill those whom one is
ordered to kill (which is the real nature of military ser-
vice), is incompatible with man's uprightness.

Alluding to the usual objection that if he refuses
others will follow his example, and the present social
order will be destroyed, he answers that he does not
wish to preserve the present social order, because it is
bad, because in it the rich dominate the poor, which

THE BEGINNING OF THE END 73

ought not to be. So that, even if he had any other
doubt as to the propriety of serving or not serving, the
one consideration that in serving as a soldier he must,
by carrying arms and threatening to kill, support the
oppressing rich against the oppressed poor, would com-
pel him to refuse military service.

If Van der Veer were to give as the reason for his
refusal his adherence to the Christian religion, those
who now join the military service could say, “We are
no sectarians, and do not acknowledge Christianity ;
therefore we do not see the need to act as you do.”

But the reasons given by Van der Veer are so simple,
clear, and universal that it is impossible not to apply
them each to his own case. As things are, to deny
the force of these reasons in one's own case, one must
say : —

“ I like killing, and am ready to kill, not only evil-
disposed people, but my own oppressed and unfortunate
fellow-countrymen, and I perceive nothing wrong in the
promise to kill, at the order of the first officer who comes
across me, whomever he bids me kill.”

Here is a young man. In whatever surroundings,
family, creed, he has been brought up, he has been
taught that he must be good, that it is bad to strike
and kill, not only men, but even animals ; he has been
taught that a man must value his uprightness, which
uprightness consists in acting according to conscience.
This is equally taught to the Confucian in China, the
Shintoist in Japan, the Buddhist, and the Mohammedan.
Suddenly, after being taught all this, he enters the
military service, where he is required to do the pre-
cise opposite of what he has been taught. He is told
to fit himself for wounding and killing, not animals,
but men ; he is told to renounce his independence as a
man, and obey, in the business of murder, men whom
he does not know, utter strangers to him.

To such a command, what right answer can a man of
our day make ? Surely, only this, “ I do not wish to,
and I will not.”

Exactly this answer Van der Veer gives. And it is

74 the beginning of the end

hard to invent any reply to him and to those who, in a
similar position, do as he does.

One may not see this point, through attention not
having been called to it ; one may not understand the
import of an action, as long as it remains unexplained.
But once pointed out and explained, one can no longer
fail to see, or feign blindness to what is quite obvious.

There may still be found men who do not reflect upon
their action in entering military service, and men who
want war with foreign people, and men who would con-
tinue the oppression of the laboring class, and even
men who like murder for murder’s sake. Such men
can continue as soldiers ; but even they cannot now fail
to know that there are others, the best men in the world,
— not only among Christians, but among Mohammedans,
Brahmanists, Buddhists, Confucians, — who look upon
war and soldiers with aversion and contempt, and whose
number grows hourly. No arguments can talk away
this plain fact, that a man with any sense of his own
dignity cannot enslave himself to an unknown, or even
a known, master whose business is killing. Now just in
this consists military service, with all its compulsion of
discipline.

“ But consider the consequences to him who refuses,’^
I am told. It is all very well for you, an old man
exempted from this exaction, and safe by your position,
to preach martyrdom; but what about those to whom
you preach, and who, believing in you, refuse to serve,
and ruin their young lives ? ”

“ But what can I do ” — I answer those who speak
thus. — “ Because I am old, must I therefore not point
out the evil which I clearly, unquestionably see, seeing
it precisely because I am old and have lived and thought
for long ? Must a man who stands on the far side of
the river, beyond the reach of that ruffian whom he sees
compelling one man to murder another, not cry out to
the slayer, bidding him to refrain, for the reason that
such interference will still more enrage the ruffian.?
Moreover, I by no means see why the government,
persecuting those who refuse military service, does not

THE BEGINNING OF THE END 75

turn its punishment upon me, recognizing in me an
instigator. I am not too old for persecution, for any
and all sorts of punishments, and my position is a
defenseless one. At all events, whether blamed and
persecuted or not, whether those who refuse military
service are persecuted or not, I, whilst I live, will not
cease from saying what I now say ; for I cannot refrain
from acting according to my conscience.” Just in this
very thing is Christian truth powerful, irresistible ;
namely, that, being the teaching of truth, in affecting
men it is not to be governed by outside considerations.
Whether young or old, whether persecuted or not, he
who adopts the Christian, the true, conception of life,
cannot shrink from the claims of his conscience. In
this is the essence and peculiarity of Christianity, dis-
tinguishing it from all other religious teachings ; and in
this is its unconquerable power.

Van der Veer says he is not a Christian. But the
motives of his refusal and action are Christian. He
refuses because he does not wish to kill a brother man ;
he does not obey, because the commands of his con-
science are more binding upon him than the commands
of men. Precisely on this account is Van der Veer’s
refusal so important. Thereby he shows that Chris-
tianity is not a sect or creed which some may profess
and others reject ; but that it is naught else than a life’s
following of that light of reason which illumines all
men. The merit of Christianity is not that it prescribes
to men such and such acts, but that it foresees and
points out the way by which all mankind must go and
does go.

Those men who now behave rightly and reasonably
do so, not because they follow prescriptions of Christ,
but because that line of action which was pointed out
eighteen hundred years ago has now become identified
with human conscience.

This is why I think the action and letter of Van der
Veer are of great import.

As a fire lit on a prairie or in a forest will not die
out until it has burned all that is dry and dead, and

76 THE BEGINNING OF THE END

therefore combustible, so the truth, once articulated
in human utterance, will not cease its work until all
falsehood, appointed for destruction, surrounding and
hiding the truth on all sides as it does, is destroyed.
The fire smolders long; but as soon as it flashes into
flame, all that can burn burns quickly.

So with the truth, which takes long to reach a right
expression, but once that clear expression in word is
given, falsehood and wrong are soon to be destroyed.
One of the partial manifestations of Christianity, — the
idea that men can live without the institution of slavery,
— although it had been included in the Christian con-
cept, was clearly expressed, so it seems to me, only by
writers at the end of the eighteenth century. Up to
that time, not only the ancient pagans, as Plato and
Aristotle, but even men near to us in time, and Chris-
tians, could not imagine a human society without slavery.
Thomas More could not imagine even a Utopia without
slavery. So also men of the beginning of this century
could not imagine the life of man without war. Only
after the Napoleonic wars was the idea clearly expressed
that man can live without war. And now a hundred
years have gone since the first clear expression of the
idea that mankind can live without slavery ; and there
is no longer slavery in Christian nations. And there
shall not pass away another hundred years after the
clear utterance of the idea that mankind can live with-
out war, before war shall cease to be. Very likely some
form of armed violence will remain, just as wage-labor
remains after the abolition of slavery ; but, at least,
wars and armies will be abolished in the outrageous
form, so repugnant to reason and moral sense, in which
they now exist.

Signs that this time is near are many. These signs
are such as the helpless position of governments, which
more and more increase their armaments; the multi-
plication of taxation and the discontent of the nations ;
the extreme degree of efficiency with which deadly
weapons are constructed; the activity of congresses
and societies of peace ; but above all, the refusals of

THE BEGINNING OF THE END 77

individuals to take military service. In these refusals
is the key to the solution of the question. You say that
military service is necessary ; that, without soldiers, dis-
asters will happen to us. That may be ; but, holding
the idea of right and wrong which is universal among
men to-day, yourselves included, I cannot kill men to
order. So that if, as you say, military service is essen-
tial — then arrange it in some way not so contradictory
to my, and your, conscience. But, until you have so
arranged it, do not claim from me what is against my
conscience, which I can by no means disobey.

Thus, inevitably, and very soon, must answer all hon-
est and reasonable men ; not only the men of Christen-
dom, but even Mohammedans and the so-called heathen,
the Brahmanists, Buddhists, and Confucians. Maybe
by the power of inertia, the soldiering trade will go on
for some time to come ; but even now the question stands
solved in the human conscience, and with every day,
every hour, more and more men come to the same solu-
tion ; and to stay the movement is, at this juncture, not
possible. Every recognition of a truth by man, or
rather, every deliverance from an error, as in the case
of slavery before our eyes, is always attained through
a conflict between the awakening conscience and the
inertia of the old condition.

At first the inertia is so powerful, the conscience so
weak, that the first attempt to escape from error is met
only with astonishment. The new truth seems madness.
Is it proposed to live without slavery ? Then who will
work Is it proposed to live without fighting.^ Then
everybody will come and conquer us.

But the power of conscience grows, inertia weakens,
and astonishment is changing to sneers and contempt.
‘‘The Holy Scriptures acknowledge masters and slaves.
These relations have always been, and now come these
wiseacres who want to change the whole world ; so
men spoke concerning slavery. “ All the scientists and
philosophers recognize the lawfulness, and even sacred-
ness, of war; and are we immediately to believe that
there is no need of war ?

78 THE BEGINNING OF THE END

So men speak concerning war. But conscience con-
tinues to grow and to become clear; the number in-
creases of those who recognize the new truth, and sneer
and contempt give place to subterfuge and trickery.
Those who support the error make slow to understand
and admit the incongruity and cruelty of the practice
they defend, but think its abolition impossible just now,
so delaying its abolition indefinitely. “Who does not
know that slavery is an evil ? But men are not yet ripe
for freedom, and liberation will produce horrible dis-
asters ” — men used to say concerning slavery, forty
years ago. “Who does not know that war is an evil.!*
But while mankind is still so bestial, abolition of armies
will do more harm than good,” men say concerning war
to-day.

Nevertheless, the idea is doing its work ; it grows, it
burns the falsehood ; and the time has come when the
madness, the uselessness, the harmfulness, and wicked-
ness of the error are so clear (as it happened in the
sixties with slavery in Russia and America) that even
now it is impossible to justify it. Such is the present
position as to war. Just as, in the sixties, no attempts
were made to justify slavery, but only to maintain it; so
to-day no man attempts any longer to justify war and
armies, but only tries, in silence, to use the inertia which
still supports them, knowing very well that this cruel
and immoral organization for murder, which seems so
powerful, may at any moment crumble down, never
more to be raised.

Once a drop of water oozes through the dam, once a
brick falls out from a great building, once a mesh comes
loose in the strongest net — the dam bursts, the build-
ing falls, the net unweaves. Such a drop, such a
brick, such a loosed mesh, it seems to me, is the re-
fusal of Van der Veer, explained by reasons universal
to all mankind.

Upon this refusal of Van der Veer like refusals must
follow more and more often. As soon as these become
numerous, the very men (their name is legion) who the
day before said, “ It is impossible to live without war,''

THE BEGINNING OF THE END 79

will say at once that they have this long time declared
the madness and immorality of war, and they will
advise everybody to follow Van der Veer’s example.
Then, of wars and armies, as these are now, there will
remain only the recollection.

And this time is coming.

January 6, 1897.

CARTHAGO DELENDA EST’

L a Vita intemationale and U Humanity nouvelle
have sent me the following letter : —

‘‘Sir, — With the object of furthering the de-
velopment of humanitarian ideas and civilization, La
Vita intemationale {pi Milan), with the support of V Hu-
manity nouvelle (of Paris and Brussels), has deemed it
necessary to concern itself with the difficult problem
which has of late arisen in all its gravity and impor-
tance, owing to the delicate question about which France
and the whole world has become so ardently impassioned,
— we mean the problem of war and militarism. With
this aim in view, we beg all those in Europe that take
part in politics, science, art, and the labor movement,
and even those that occupy the foremost positions in
the army, to contribute to this most civilizing task by
replying to the following questions : —

“ I. Is war among civilized nations still required by
history, law, and progress ?

“ 2. What are the intellectual, moral, physical, eco-
nomical, and political effects of militarism ?

“ 3. What, in the interests of the world’s future civi-
lization, are the solutions which should be given to the
grave problems of war and militarism ?

“4. What means would most rapidly lead to these
solutions ? ”

I cannot conceal the feelings of disgust, indignation,
and even despair which were aroused in me by this let-
ter. Enlightened, sensible, good Christian people, who
inculcate the principle of love and brotherhood, who
regard murder as an awful crime, who, with very few^

^ First printed in The Westminster Gazette,
So

CARTHAGO DELENDA EST 8i

exceptions, are unable to kill an animal, — all these peo-
ple suddenly, provided that these crimes are called war,
not only acknowledge the destruction, plunder, and kill-
ing of people to be right and legal, but themselves con-
tribute toward these robberies and murders, prepare
themselves for them, take part in them, are proud of
them.

Moreover, always and everywhere one and the same
phenomenon repeats itself, viz.^ that the great majority
of people — all working-people — those same people
who carry out the robberies and murders, and on whom
the burden falls — neither devise, nor prepare, nor de-
sire these things, but take part in them against their
will, merely because they are placed in such a position
and are so instigated that it appears to them, to each
individual, that they would suffer more were they to
refuse. Whereas those who devise and prepare for
these plunders and murders, and who compel the work-
ing-people to carry them out, are but an insignificant
minority, who live in luxury and idleness, upon the labor
of the workers.

This deceit has already been going on for a long time,
but lately the insolence of the impostors has reached its
extremest development, and a great share of what labor
produces is being taken away from the workers, and
used for making preparations for plundering and killing.
In all the constitutional countries of Europe the work-
ers themselves — all, without exception — are called
upon to take part in these robberies and murders ; in-
ternational relations are purposely always more and
more complicated, and this leads on to war ; peaceful
countries are being plundered without the least cause ;
every year, in some place or other, people murder and
rob ; and all live in constant dread of general mutual
robbery and murder.

It seems evident that, if these things are done, it
can only be because the great mass of people are de-
ceived by the minority to whom this deceit is advanta-
geous, and therefore that the first task of those who are
anxious to free people from the evils caused by this

82 CARTHAGO DELENDA EST

mutual murdering and plundering should be to expose
the deception under which the masses are laboring ; to
point out to them how the deceit is perpetrated, by what
means it is being upheld, and how to get rid of it.

The enlightened people of Europe, however, do noth-
ing of the kind, but, under the pretext of furthering the
establishment of peace, they assemble now in one, now
in another city of Europe, and, seated at tables, with
most serious faces, they discuss the question how best
to persuade those brigands who live by their plunder to
give up robbing, and become peaceful citizens ; and
then they put the profound questions : first, whether
war is still desirable from the standpoint of history, law,
and progress (as if such fictions, invented by us, could
demand from us deviation from the fundamental moral
law of our life) ; secondly, as to what are the conse-
quences of war (as if there could be any doubt that the
consequences of war are always general distress and
corruption) ; and finally, as to how to solve the problem
of war (as if it were a difficult problem how to free de-
luded people from a delusion which we clearly see).

This is terrible ! We see, for instance, how healthy,
calm, and frequently happy people year after year arrive
at some gambling-den like Monte Carlo, and, benefiting
no one but the keepers of those dens, leave there their
health, peace, honor, and often their lives. We pity
these people ; we see clearly that the deceit to which
they are subjected consists in those temptations whereby
gamblers are allured, in the inequality of the chances,
and in the infatuation of gamblers who, though fully
aware that in general they are sure to be losers, never-
theless hope for once at least to be more fortunate than
the rest. All this is perfectly clear.

And then, in order to free people from these mis-
eries, we — instead of pointing out to them the tempta-
tions to which they are subjected, the fact that they are
sure to lose, and the immorality of gambling, which is
based on the expectation of other people’s misfortunes
— assemble with grave faces at meetings, and discuss
how to arrange that the keepers of gambling-houses

CARTHAGO DELENDA EST 8j

should of their own accord shut up their establish-
ments ; we write books about it, and we put questions
to ourselves as to whether history, law, and progress
require the existence of gambling-houses, and as to
what are the economical, intellectual, moral, and other
consequences of roulette.

If a man is given to drink, and I te?l him that he
himself can leave off drinking and that he must do so,
there is a hope that he will listen to me ; but if I tell
him that his drunkenness is a complicated and difficult
problem which we learned men are trying to solve at
our meetings, then in all probability he will, while
awaiting the solution of this problem, continue to drink.

Thus also with these false and refined external, scien-
tific means of abolishing war, such as international tri-
bunals, arbitration, and similar absurdities with which
we occupy ourselves, while all the time carefully omit-
ting to mention the most simple, essential, and self-
evident method of causing war to cease — a method
plain for all to see.

In order that people who do not want war should
not fight, it is not necessary to have either international
law, arbitration, international tribunals, or solutions of
problems ; but it is merely necessary that those who
arc subjected to the deceit should awake and free them-
selves from the spell or enchantment under which
they find themselves. The way to do away with War is
for those who do not want war, who regard participa-
tion in it as a sin, to refrain from fighting. This method
has been preached from the earliest times by Christian
writers such as Tertullian and Origen, as well as by
the Paulicians, and by their successors, the Mennonites,
Quakers, and Herrnhuters. The sin, harmfulness, and
senselessness of military service have been written
about and exposed in every way by Dymond, Garri-
son, and, twenty years ago, by Ballou, as well as by
myself. The method I have mentioned has been
adopted in the past, and of late has been frequently
resorted to by isolated individuals in Austria, Prussia,
Holland, Switzerland, and Russia, as well as by whole

84 CARTHAGO DELENDA EST

societies like the Quakers, Mennonites, and Nazarenes,
and recently by the Dukhobors, of whom a whole
population of fifteen thousand are now for the third
year resisting the powerful Russian government, and,
notwithstanding all the sufferings to which they have
been subjected, do not submit to its demands that they
should take part in the crimes of military service.

But the enlightened friends of peace not only refrain
from recommending this method, but cannot bear the
mention of it ; when it is brought before them they pre-
tend not to have noticed it, or, if they cannot help
noticing it, they gravely shrug their shoulders and ex-
press their pity for those uneducated and unreasonable
men who adopt such an ineffectual, silly method, when
such a good one exists, — namelj, to sprinkle salt on the
bird one wishes to catch, i.e, to persuade the govern-
ments, who only exist by violence and deceit, to for-
sake both the one and the other.

They tell us that the misunderstandings which arise
between governments will be settled by tribunals or
arbitration. But the governments do not at all desire the
settlement of misunderstandings. On the contrary, if
there be none they invent some, it being only by such
misunderstanding with the governments that they are
afforded a pretext for keeping up the army upon which
their power is based. Thus the enlightened friends of
peace strive to divert the attention of the working, suf-
fering masses from the only method that can deliver
them from the slavery in which they are held (from
their youth upward), first by patriotism, next by oaths
administered by the mercenary priests of a perverted
Christianity, and lastly, by the fear of punishment.

In our days of close and peaceful relations between
peoples of different nationalities and countries, the de-
ceit called patriotism (which always claims the pre-
eminence of one state or nationality over the rest, and
which is therefore always involving people in useless
and pernicious wars) is too evident for reasonable peo-
ple of our age not to free themselves from it ; and the
religious deceit of the obligation of the oath (which

CARTHAGO DELENDA EST 85

is distinctly forbidden by that very gospel which the
governments profess) is, thank God, ever less and less
believed in. So that what really prevents the great
majority from refusing to take part in military service
is merely fear of the punishments which are inflicted
by the governments for such refusals. This fear, how-
ever, is only a result of the government deceit, and
has no other basis than hypnotism.

The governments may and should fear those who
refuse to serve, and, indeed, they are afraid of them
because every refusal undermines the prestige of the
deceit by which the governments have the people in
their power. But those who refuse have no ground
whatever to fear a government that demands crimes
from them. In refusing military service every man
risks much less than he would were he to enter it.

The refusal of military service and the punishment —
imprisonment, exile — is only an advantageous insurance
of oneself against the dangers of the military service.
In entering the service every man risks having to take
part in war (for which he is being prepared), and during
war he may be like a man sentenced to death, placed in a
position in which under the most difficult and painful cir-
cumstances he will almost certainly be killed or crippled,
as I have seen in Sevastopol, where a regiment marched
to a fort where two regiments had already been destroyed,
and stood there until it too was entirely exterminated.
Another, more profitable, chance is that the man who
enters the army will not be killed, but will only fall ill
and die in the unhealthy conditions of military service.
A third chance is that, having been insulted by his
superior, he will be unable to contain himself, will
answer sharply, will break the discipline, and will be
subjected to punishment much worse than that to which
he would have been liable had he refused military
service.

The best chance, however, is that instead of the impris-
onment or exile to which a person refusing military service
is liable, he will pass three or five years of his life amid
vicious surroundings, practising the art of killing, being

86 CARTHAGO DELENDA EST

all the while in the same captivity as in prison, and in
humiliating submission to depraved people. This in the
first place.

Secondly, in refusing military service, every man,
however strange it may seem, can yet always hope to
escape punishment — upon his refusal being that last
exposure of the governments' deceit which will render
any further punishment for such a deed, the punish-
ment of one who refuses to participate in their oppres-
sion, impossible. So that submission to the demands
of military service is evidently only submission to the
hypnotization of the masses — the utterly futile rush
of Panurge’s sheep into the water, to their evident
destruction.

Moreover, besides the consideration of advantage,
there is yet another reason which should impel every
man to refuse military service who is not hypnotized and
is conscious of the importance of his actions. No one
can help desiring that his life should not be an aimless
and useless existence, but that it should be of service to
God and man ; yet frequently a man spends his life
without finding an opportunity for such service. The
summons to accept the military service presents pre-
cisely such an opportunity to every man of our time.

Every man, in refusing to take part in military service
or to pay taxes to a government which uses them for
military purposes, is, by this refusal, rendering a great
service to God and man, for he is thereby making use of
the most efficacious means of furthering the progressive
movement of mankind toward that better social order
which it is striving after and must eventually attain.
But not only is it advantageous to refuse the partici-
pation in the military service, and not only should the
majority of the men of our time so refuse ; it is, more-
over, impossible not to refuse, if only they are not
hypnotized. To every man there are some actions
which are morally impossible — as impossible as are
certain physical actions. And the promise of slavish
obedience to strangers, and to immoral people who have
the murder of men as their acknowledged object, is, to

CARTHAGO DELENDA EST 87

the majority of men, if only they be free from hypnotism,
just such a morally impossible action. And therefore it
is not only advantageous to and obligatory on every man
to refuse to participate in the military service, but it is
also impossible for him not to do so if only he be free
from the stupefaction of hypnotism.

“ But what will happen when all people refuse military
service, and there is no check nor hold over the wicked,
and the wicked triumph, and there is no protection
against savage people — against the yellow race — who
will come and conquer us ? ”

I will say nothing about the fact that, as it is, the
wicked have long been triumphing, that they are still
triumphing, and that while fighting one another they
have long dominated the Christians, so that there is no
need to fear what has already been accomplished ; nor
will I say anything with regard to the dread of the
savage yellow race, whom we persistently provoke and
instruct in war, — that being a mere excuse, and one-
hundredth part of the army now kept up in Europe
being sufficient for the imaginary protection against
them, — I will say nothing about all this, because the
consideration of the general result to the world of such
or such actions cannot serve as a guide for our conduct
and activity.

To man is given another guide, and that an unfailing
one, — the guide of his conscience, following which he
indubitably knows that he is doing what he should do.
Therefore, all considerations of the danger that threatens
every individual who refuses military service, as well as
what menaces the world in consequence of such refusals
— all these are but a particle of that enormous and
monstrous deceit in which Christian mankind is en-
meshed, and which is being carefully maintained by the
governments who exist by the power of this deceit.

If man act in accordance with what is dictated to him
by his reason, his conscience, and his God, only the very
best can result for himself as well as for the world.

People complain of the evil conditions of life in our
Christian world. But is it possible for it to be otherwise,

88 CARTHAGO DELENDA EST

when all of us acknowledge not only that fundamental
divine law proclaimed some thousands of years ago,
'‘Thou shalt not kill/* but also the law of love and
brotherhood of all men, and yet, notwithstanding this,
every man in the European world practically disavows
this fundamental divine law acknowledged by him, and
at the command of president, emperor, or minister, of
Nicholas or William, arrays himself in a ridiculous
costume, takes an instrument of murder and says,
" Here I am, ready to injure, ruin, or kill any one I am
ordered to ’* ?

What must a society be like which is composed of
such men ? Such a society must be dreadful, and indeed
it is so !

Awake, brethren ! Listen neither to those villains who,
from your childhood, infect you with the diabolic spirit
of patriotism, opposed to righteousness and truth, and
only necessary in order to deprive you of your property,
your freedom, and your human dignity ; nor to those
ancient impostors who preach war in the name of a
cruel and vindictive God invented by them, and in the
name of a perverted and false Christianity; nor, even
less, to those modern Sadducees who, in the name of
science and civilization, aiming only at the continuation
of the present state of things, assemble at meetings,
write books, and make speeches, promising to organize
a good and peaceful life for people without their making
any effort ! Do not believe them. Believe only the
consciousness which tells you that you are neither beasts
nor slaves, but free men, responsible for your actions,
and therefore unable to be murderers either of your own
accord or at the will of those who live by these murders.

And it is only necessary for you to awake in order to
realize all the horror and insanity of that which you
have been and are doing, and, having realized this, to
cease that evil which you yourselves abhor, and which
is ruining you. If only you were to refrain from the
evil which you yourselves detest, those ruling impostors,
who first corrupt and then oppress you, would disappear
like owls before the daylight, and then those new,

CARTHAGO DELENDA EST 89

human, brotherly conditions of life would be established
for which Christendom — weary of suffering, exhausted
by deceit, and lost in insolvable contradictions — is long-
ing. Only let every man without any intricate or sophis-
ticated arguments accomplish that which to-day his
conscience unfailingly bids him do, and he will recog-
nize the truth of the Gospel words : —

** If any man will do his will, he shall know of the
teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of
myself/* ^

* John vii iy»

1899.

SHAME!

T here was a time between 1820 and 1830 when
the officers of the Semenof regiment — the flower
of the youth at that time ; men who were for the most
part Freemasons, and subsequently Decembrists^ — de-
cided not to use corporal punishment in their regiment,
and, notwithstanding the stringent discipline then re-
quired, theirs continued to be a model regiment without
corporal punishment.

The officer in charge of one of the companies of this
same Semenof regiment, meeting Serge Ivanovitch Mu-
ravief — one of the best men of his, or indeed of any,
time, — spoke of a certain soldier, a thief and a drunk-
ard, saying that such a man can only be tamed with
rods. Serge Muravief did not agree with him, and
proposed to transfer the man into his own company.

The transfer was made, and almost the next day the
soldier stole a comrade’s boots, sold them for drink, and
made a disturbance. Serge Ivanovitch mustered the
company, called out the soldier, and said to him : ‘‘You
know that in my company we neither strike men nor
flog them, and I am not going to punish you. I shall
pay, with my own money, for the boots you stole ; but
I ask you, not for my sake, but for your own, to think
over your way of life, and to amend it.” And after giv-
ing the man some friendly counsel. Serge Ivanovitch let
him go.

The man again got drunk and fought, and again he
was not punished, but only exhorted : —

^ Members of the party which attempted, but failed, to secure by force
a liberal constitution for Russia at the time Nicholas I. ascended the
throne. — T r,

90

SHAME!

91

‘‘You are doing yourself great harm. If you will
amend, you yourself will be the better for it. Therefore
I ask you not to do these things any more.''

The man was so struck by this new kind of treatment
that he completely altered, and became a model soldier.

This incident was related to me by Serge Ivanovitch's
brother, Matthew Ivanovitch, who, like his brother, and
all the best men of his day, considered corporal punish-
ment a shameful relic of barbarism, disgraceful to those
who inflict it, rather than to those who endure it. When
telling this story he could never refrain from tears of
emotion and delight. And, indeed, for those who heard
him tell it, it was hard not to follow his example.

That is how educated Russians, seventy-five years ago,
regarded corporal punishment. And in our day, seventy-
five years having gone by, the grandsons of these men
take their places as magistrates at sessions, and calmly
discuss whether such and such a full-grown man (often
the father of a family, or sometimes even a grandfather)
should or should not be flogged, and how many strokes
of the rod he ought to have.

The most advanced of these grandsons, meeting in
committees and local government councils, draw up
declarations, addresses, and petitions, to the effect that,
on certain hygienic or pedagogic grounds,^ it would be
better not to flog all the muzhiks (people of the peasant
class), but only those who have not passed all the classes
of the national schools.

Evidently a great change has occurred in what we call
the educated upper classes. The men of the twenties,
considering the infliction of corporal punishment to be
disgraceful to themselves, were able to get rid of it even
in the military service where it was deemed indispen-
sable ; but the men of our day calmly apply it, not to sol-

^ By petitioning, openly, for the repeal of such laws as that which em-
powers the local magistrates to have peasants flogged, the petitioners would
risk being looked at askance by those in power, and might easily lose any
places they held under government. But as members of local health com-
mittees, or of committees to promote education, it is sometimes possible for
people (while appearing anxious only to further the special cause intrusted
to them) to utter veiled protests with a minimum amount of risk. — >Tr«

92

SHAME !

diers only, but to any man of one special class of Russian
people, and cautiously, diplomatically, in their commit-
tees and assemblies, draw up addresses and petitions to
the government, with all sorts of reservations and cir-
cumlocutions, saying that there are hygienic objections
to punishment by flogging, and therefore its use should
be limited ; or that it would be desirable only to flog
those peasants who have not gone through a certain
school course ; or not to flog peasants referred to in the
manifesto issued on the occasion of the Tsar’s marriage.

Evidently a terrible change has taken place among
the so-called upper classes of Russian society. And
what is most astonishing is, that it has come about just
while, — in the very class which it is considered neces-
sary to expose to this revolting, coarse, and stupid torture
by flogging, — during these same seventy-five years, and
especially during the last thirty-five years (since the
emancipation of the serfs), an equally important change
has taken place in the contrary direction.

While the upper, governing classes have sunk to a
plane so coarse and morally degraded that they have
legalized flogging, and can calmly discuss it, the mental
and moral plane of the peasant class has so risen, that
corporal punishment has become for them, not only a
physical, but also a moral torture.

I have heard and read of cases of suicide committed
by peasants sentenced to be flogged, and I cannot doubt
that such cases occur, for I have myself seen a most
ordinary young peasant turn white as a sheet, and lose
control of his voice, at the mere mention, in the District
Court, of the possibility of it being inflicted on him. I
have seen how another peasant, forty years old, who had
been condemned to corporal punishment, wept, when —
in reply to my inquiry whether the sentence had been
executed — he had to reply that it had been.

I know, too, the case of a respected, elderly peasant
of my acquaintance, who was sentenced to flogging be-
cause he had quarreled with the starosta, not noticing
that the starosta was wearing his badge of office. The
man was brought to the District Court, and from there

SHAME !

93

to the shed in which the punishment is usually inflicted.
The watchman came with the rods, and the peasant was
told to strip.

‘‘ Parmen Ermil’itch, you know I have a married son,''
said the peasant, addressing the starshina, or elder, and
trembling all over. Can't this be avoided ? You know
it's a sin.”

‘‘ It's the authorities, Petrovitch ; I should be glad
enough myself, — but there's no help for it,” replied
the elder, abashed.

Petrovitch undressed and lay down.

“ Christ suffered and told us to,” said he.

The clerk, an eye-witness, told me the story, and said
that every man’s hand trembled, and none of those pres-
ent could look into one another’s eyes, feeling that they
were doing something dreadful. And these are the peo-
ple whom it is considered necessary, and probably for
some reason advantageous, to beat with rods like ani-
mals — though it is forbidden to torture even animals.

For the benefit of our Christian and enlightened coun-
try it is necessary to subject to this most stupid, most
indecent, and most degrading punishment, not all the
inhabitants of this Christian and enlightened country,
but only that class which is the most industrious, useful,
moral, and numerous.

The highest authorities of an enormous Christian em-
pire, nineteen centuries after Christ, to prevent violation
of the law, can devise nothing wiser and more moral than
to take the transgressors, — grown-up, and sometimes
elderly, people, — undress them, lay them on the floor,
and beat their bottoms with birches.^

And people, who consider themselves most advanced,
and who are grandsons of those who, seventy-five years
ago, got rid of corporal punishment, now, in our day,
most respectfully, and quite seriously, petition his ex-
cellency the minister, or whoever it may be, that there

1 And why choose just this stupid, brutal method of causing pain, and
not something else? Why not stick needles into people’s shoulders ot
other parts ? or squeeze their hands and feet in vices ? or do something of
that kind? — Author’s Note.

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SHAME!

should not be so much flogging of grown-up Russians,
because the doctors are of opinion that it is unhealthy ;
or that those who have a school diploma should not be
whipped ; or that those who were to be flogged about
the time of the emperor’s marriage should be let off.
And the wise government meets such frivolous petitions
with profound silence, or even prohibits them.

Can one seriously petition on this matter ? Is there
really any question ? Surely there are some deeds which,
whether perpetrated by private individuals or by govern-
ments, one cannot calmly discuss, and condemn only
under certain circumstances. And the flogging of adult
members of one particular class of Russian people, in our
time, and among our mild and Christianly enlightened
folk, is such a deed. To hinder such crimes against all
law, human and divine, one cannot diplomatically ap-
proach the government under cover of hygienic, or edu-
cational, or loyalistic considerations. Of such deeds we
must either not speak at all, or we must speak straight
to the point, and always with detestation and abhorrence.
To ask that only those peasants who are literate should
be exempt from being beaten on their bare buttocks,
is as if, in a land where the law decreed that unfaith-
ful wives should be punished by being stripped and ex-
posed in the streets, people were to petition that this
punishment should only be inflicted on such as could
not knit stockings, or do something of that kind.

About such deeds one cannot “ most humbly pray,” or
“ lay our petition at the foot of the throne,” etc. ; such
deeds must only, and can only, be denounced. And such
deeds should be denounced, because when an appearance
of legality is given to them, they disgrace all of us who
live in a country in which they are committed. For if
it is legal to flog a peasant, this has been enacted for my
benefit also, to secure my tranquillity and well-being.
And this is intolerable.

I will not, and I cannot, acknowledge a law which in-
fringes all law, human and divine ; and I cannot imagine
myself confederate with those who enact and confirm
such legalized crimes.

SHAME!

95

If such abominations must be discussed, there is
but one thing to say, viz., that no such law can exist ;
that no ukase, or insignia, or seals, or imperial com-
mands, can make a law out of crime. But that, on the
contrary, the dressing up in legal form of such crimes (as
that the grown men of one — only one — class, may at
the will of another, a worse, class, — the nobles and the
officials, — be subjected to an indecent, savage and re-
volting punishment) shows, better than anything else,
that where such sham legalization of crime is possible,
there exist no laws at all, but merely the savage license
of brute force.

If one has to speak of corporal punishment inflicted
on the peasant alone, the needful thing is, not to de-
fend the rights of the local government, or appeal from
a governor (who has vetoed a petition to exempt lit-
erate peasants from flogging) to a minister, — and from
the minister to the senate, and from the senate to the
emperor, — as was proposed by the Tambof local assem-
bly, — but one must unceasingly proclaim, and cry aloud,
that such applications of a brutal punishment (already
abandoned for children) to one — and that the best —
class of Russians, is disgraceful to all who, directly or
indirectly, participate in it.

Petrovitch, who lay down to be beaten after crossing
himself and saying, ‘‘ Christ suffered and told us to,”
forgave his tormentors, and after the flogging remained
the man he was before. The only result of the torture
inflicted upon him was to make him scorn the authority
which decrees such punishments. But to many young
people, not only the punishment itself, but often even
the knowledge that it is possible, acts debasingly on
their moral feelings, brutalizing some men and making
others desperate. Yet even that is not the chief evil.
The greatest evil is in the mental condition of those
who arrange, sanction and decree these abominations, of
those who employ them as threats, and of all who live
in the conviction that such violations of justice and
humanity are needful conditions of a good and orderly
life. What terrible moral perversion must exist in the

96

SHAME!

minds and hearts of those — often the young — who,
with an air of profound practical wisdom, say (as I have
myself heard said) that it won't do not to flog peas-
ants, and that it is better for the peasants themselves
to be flogged.

These are the people most to be pitied for the debase-
ment into which they have sunk, and in which they are
stagnating.

Therefore, the emancipation of the Russian people
from the degrading influence of a legalized crime, is,
from every aspect, a matter of enormous importance.
And this emancipation will be accomplished, not when
exemption from corporal punishment is obtained by
those who have a school diploma, or by any other set
of peasants, nor even when all the peasants but one
are exempted; but it will be accomplished only when
the governing classes confess their sin and humbly
repent.^

December 14, 1895.

1 Though ** Shame” was written by Count Tolsto! in December, 1895,
and incompletely printed soon after in a Russian newspaper, this is not
only the first English translation published of the article, but it is the first
time it has been printed complete in any language ; for the Russian ver-
sion referred to above was mutilated to meet the requirements of the Rus-
sian censor, and failed to convey the author's full meaning.

The brutality against which the article protests continues to be practised
in Russia, and is still legal. The hope of obtaining moral results by flog-
ging those of whose conduct we disapprove is, however, not confined tc
Russia. The question of corporal punishment is one which claims atten-
tion in England and in some parts of America to-day. — Tr.

NIKOLAI PALKIN

W E were spending the night at the house of a sol-
dier ninety-five years old, who had served under
Alexander 1. and Nicholas I.

“ Tell me, are you ready to die ? ”

Ready to die ? How should I be yet ? I used to
be afraid of dying, but now I pray God for only one
thing; that God would be pleased to let me make my
confession and partake of the communion; I have so
many sins on my conscience.’'

What sins ? ”

** How can you ask? Let us see, when was it I
served ? Under Nicholas. Was the service then such
as it is now ? How was it then ? Uh ! it fills me with
horror even to remember it. Then Alexander came.
The soldiers used to praise this Alexander. They
said he was gracious.”

I remembered the last days of Alexander, when twenty
men out of every hundred were beaten to death. Nicho-
las must have been a terror, if in comparison with him
Alexander was called gracious.

“ I happened to serve under Nicholas,” said the old
man, and he immediately began to grow animated and
to give me his recollections.

** How was it then ? At that time fifty blows with
the rod was thought nothing .... one hundred and fifty,
two hundred, three hundred .... they used to whip men

to death, and with cudgels too Never a week went

by that they did not beat one or two men to death from
each regiment. To-day people don’t know what a
cudgel is, but then the word ‘ palka ’ was never out of
men’s mouths. ‘ Palka I ’ ‘ Palka I ’

97

98 NIKOLAI PALKIN

‘Among us soldiers he was called Nikolai Palkin —
Nicholas the cudgeler. He was really Nikolai Pavlo-
vitch, and yet he was called nothing else but Nikolai
Palkin. That was his universal nickname. That's
what I remember of that time," continued the old man.
“Yes, when one has lived out a century, it is time for
one to die, and when you think of it, it becomes hard.

“ I have so many sins on my soul ! It was a subor-
dinate’s work. One had to apply one hundred and fifty
blows to a soldier’’ — the old man had been non-com-
missioned officer and sergeant major, but was now “ kan-
didat’’ — “and you give him two hundred. And the
man died on your hands, and you tortured him to death
.... that was a sin.

“The non-commissioned officers used to beat the
young soldiers to death. They would strike them any-
where with the butt-end of the gun or with the fist, over
the heart or on the head, and the man would die. And
there was never any redress. If a man died, murdered
that way, the authorities would write, ‘ Died by the will
of God,’ and thus it was covered up. And at that time
did I realize what it meant ? One thought only of one-
self. But now when you crawl up on top of the stove
and can’t sleep o’ nights, you keep thinking about it
and living it over again. Good as it is to take the holy
communion in accordance with the Christian law and
be absolved, still horror seizes you. When you remem-
ber all that you have been through, yes, and what others
have suffered on your account, then no other hell is
necessary ; it is worse than any hell."

I vividly imagined what must have been the recollec-
tions of this solitary old man there, face to face with
death, and a pang went through my heart. I remem-
bered other horrors besides the cudgels, which he must
have witnessed : men killed in running the gauntlet, put
to death by shooting, the slaughter and pillage of cities
in war — he had taken part in the Polish war — and I
thought I would question him particularly in regard to
all this : I asked him about running the gauntlet. He
gave full particulars about this horrible punishment;

NIKOLAI PALKIN

99

how they drove the man, with his arms tied, between
two rows of soldiers provided with sharpened sticks,
how all struck at him, while behind the soldiers
marched the officers shouting ‘‘Strike harder/’ When
he told about this the old man gave the order in a com-
manding tone, evidently well satisfied with his memory
and the commanding tone with which he spoke.

He told all the particulars without manifesting the
slightest remorse, as if he were telling how they killed
oxen and prepared fresh meat. He related how they
drove the unhappy victims back and forth between the
lines, how the tortured man would at last stumble and
fall on the bayonets, how at first the bloody wheals be-
gan to appear, how they would cross one another, how
gradually the wheals would blend together and swell
and the blood would spurt out, how the blood-stained
flesh would hang in clots, how the bones would be laid
bare ; how the wretch at first would scream, then only
dully groan at every step and at every blow ; how at
length no sound would be heard, and the doctor, who
was in attendance for this very purpose, would come up,
feel the man’s pulse, examine and decide whether the
punishment could go on, whether he was already beaten
to death, or whether it should be postponed till another
occasion ; and then they would bring him to, so that his
wounds might be dressed, and he might be made ready to
receive the full sum of blows which certain wild beasts,
with Nikolar Palkin at their head, had decided ought to
be administered to him.

The doctor employed his science to keep the man
from dying before he had endured all the tortures which
his body could be made to endure. And the man, when
he could no longer walk a step, was laid flat on the
ground in his cloak, and with that bloody swelling over
his whole back was carried to the hospital to be treated,
so that when he was well again they might give him the
thousand or two blows which he had not yet received,
and could not bear all at one time.

He told how the victims implored death to come to
their relief, and how the officers would not grant it to

lOO

NIKOLAI PALKIN

them, but would heal them for a second and third time,
and at last beat them to death.

And all this because a man had either deserted from
his regiment, or had the courage or the audacity and the
self-confidence to complain in behalf of his comrades
because they were ill fed, and those in command pil-
fered their rations.

He told all this ; and when I tried to draw from him
some expression of remorse for these things, he was at
first amazed and afterward alarmed.

‘‘ No,'* said he, “that was all right; it was the judg-
ment of the court. Was it my fault ? It was by order
of the court and according to law."

He displayed the same serenity and lack of remorse
regarding the horrors of war, in which he had taken
part, and of which he had seen so much in Turkey and
Poland.

He told about children murdered, about prisoners
dying of cold and starvation, about a young boy — a
Polyak — run through by a bayonet and impaled on a
tree. And when I asked him if his conscience did not
torment him on account of these deeds, he utterly failed
to understand me.

“ This is all a part of war, according to law ; for the
Tsar and the fatherland. These deeds are not only not
wrong, but are such as are honorable and brave, and
atone for many sins." The only things that troubled him
were his private actions, the fact that he, when an officer,
had beaten and punished men. These actions tormented
his conscience. But in order to be pardoned for them
he had a resource : this was the holy communion, which
he hoped he should be enabled to partake of before he
died, and for which he was beseeching his niece. His
niece promised that he should have it, because she recog-
nized the importance of it ; and he was content.

The fact that he had helped to ruin and destroy inno-
cent women and children, that he had killed men with
bullet and bayonet, that he had stood in line and whipped
men to death and dragged them off to the hospital and
back to torture again, — all this did not trouble him

NIKOLAI PALKIN

lOI

at all; all this was none of his business, all this was
done, not by him, but as it were, by some one else.

How was it possible that this old man, if he had
understood what ought to have been clear to him, as he
stood on the very threshold of eternity, did not realize
that between him and his conscience and God, as now
on the eve of death, there was and could be no mediator,
so there was and could be none even at that moment
when they compelled him to torture and beat men ?
How is it that he did not understand that now there
was nothing that could atone for the evil he had done
to men when he might have refrained from doing it ?
that he did not understand that there is an eternal law
which he always knew and could not help knowing —
a law which demands love and tenderness for man ; and
what he called law was a wicked and godless deception
to which he should not give credence ?

It was terrible to think of what must have arisen
before his imagination during his sleepless nights on
the oven, and his despair, if he had realized that when
he had the possibility of doing good and evil to men, he
had done nothing but evil ; that when he had learned
the distinctions of good and evil nothing else was now
in his power than uselessly to torment himself and
repent. His sufferings would have been awful !

But why should one desire to trouble him ? Why
torment the conscience of an old man on the very
verge of death ? Better give it comfort. Why annoy
the people in recalling what is already past ?

Past ? What is past ? Can a severe disease be past
only because we say that it is past ? It does not pass
away, and never will pass away, and cannot pass away
as long as we do not acknowledge ourselves sick. To
be cured of a disease, one must first recognize it. And
this we do not do. Not only do we fail to do it, but we
employ all our powers not to see it, not to recognize it.

Meantime, the disease, instead of passing away,
changes its form, sinks deeper into the flesh, the
blood, the bones. The disease is this : that men born
good and gentle, men with love and mercy rooted in

102

NIKOLAI PALKIN

their hearts, perpetrate such atrocities on one another^
themselves not knowing why or wherefore.

Our native Russians, men naturally sweet-tempered,
good, and kind, permeated with the spirit of Christ's
teaching, men who confess in their souls that they
would be insulted at the suggestion of their not sharing
their last crust with the poor, or pitying those in prison,
— these same men spend the best years of their lives in
murdering and torturing their brethren, and not only
are not remorseful for such deeds, but consider them
honorable, or at least indispensable, and just as unavoid-
able as eating or breathing.

Is not this a horrible disease ? Is it not the moral
duty of every one to do all in his power to cure it, and
first and foremost to point it out, to call it by name ?

The old soldier had spent all his life in torturing and
murdering other men. We ask. Why talk about it?
The soldier did not consider himself to blame ; and
those dreadful deeds — the cudgel, the running of the
gauntlet, and the other things — are all past ; why then
recall that which is already ancient history.? This is done
away with.

Nikola'f Palkin is no more. Why recall his regime?
Only the old soldier remembered it before his death.
Why stir the people up about it ?

Thus in the time of Nicholas they spoke of Alexander.
In the same way in the time of Alexander they recalled
the deeds of Paul, Thus in the time of Paul they spoke
of Catharine and all her profligacies, and all the follies of
her lovers. Thus in the time of Catharine they spoke of
Peter, and so on and so on. Why recall it ?

Yes, why ?

If I have a severe or dangerous disease difficult to
cure, and I am relieved of it, I shall always be glad to
be reminded of it. I shall not mention it only when I
am suffering, and my suffering continues and grows
worse all the time, and I wish to deceive myself ; only
then I shall not mention it! And we do not mention
it because we know that we are still suffering. Why
disturb the old man and stir up the people? The

NIKOLAI PALKIN

103

cudgels and the running of the gauntlet — all that is
long past !

Past ? It has changed its form, but it is not past. In
every foregoing period there have been things which we
remember not only with horror, but with indignation.

We read the descriptions of distraining for debt, burn-
ing for heresy, military colonization, whippings and run-
ning of the gauntlet, and are not only horror-struck at the
cruelty of man, but we fail to imagine the mental state
of those who did such things. What was in the soul of
the man who could get up in the morning, wash his face
and hands, put on the dress of a boyar, say his prayers
to God, then go to the torture-chamber to stretch the
joints and whip with the knout old men and women,
and spend in this business his ordinary five hours, like
the modern functionary in the senate ; then return to his
family and calmly sit down to dinner and finish the day
reading the Holy Scripture.^ What was in the souls of
those regimental and company commanders ?

I knew such a man, who one evening danced the
mazurka with a beautiful girl at a ball, and retired
earlier than usual so as to be awake early in the morn-
ing to make arrangements to compel a runaway soldier
— a Tartar — to be killed in running the gauntlet; and
after he had seen this man whipped to death, he returned
to his family and ate his dinner! You see all this took
place in the time of Peter, and in the time of Alexander,
and in the time of Nicholas. There has not been a time
when terrible things of this kind have not taken place,
which we in reading about them cannot understand.
We cannot understand how men could look on such
horrors as they perpetrated, and not see the senseless-
ness of them, even if they did not recognize the bestial
inhumanity of them. This has been so in all times. Is
our day so peculiar, so fortunate, that we have no such
horrors, no such doings, which will seem just as ridicu-
lous and incomprehensible to our descendants ? There
are just such deeds, just such horrors, only we don’t see
them, as our predecessors did not see those in their day.

To us now, it is clear that the burning of heretics, the

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NIKOLAI PALKIN

application of torture for eliciting the truth, is not only
cruel, but also ridiculous. A child sees the absurdity of
it. But the men of those times did not see it so. Sensi-
ble, educated men were persuaded that torture was one
of the indispensable conditions of the life of man, that it
was hard, nay, impossible, to get along without it. So
also with corporal punishment, with slavery. And time
passed ; and now it is hard for us to comprehend the
mental state of men in which such a mistake was possible.
But this has been in all times because so it had to be,
and also in our time, and we must be just as reasonable
in regard to the horrors of our day.

Where are our tortures, our slavery, our whippings ?
It seems to us that we no longer have such things, that
they used to be, but have disappeared. This seems to
us so because we do not wish to comprehend the old,
and we strenuously shut our eyes to it.

But if we look at the past, then our present position is
revealed to us and its causes. If we only called bonfires,
branding irons, tortures, the scaffold, recruiting stations,
by their real names, then we should find also the right
name for dungeons, jails, wars, and the general military
obligation, and policemen. If we do not say, ‘‘Why
mention it ” and if we look attentively at what was done
in old times, then we should take notice of what is doing
now.

If it became clear to us that it was stupid and cruel
to cut men’s heads off on the scaffold, and to elicit the
truth from their lips by means of tearing their joints
asunder, then likewise it would be also equally clear to
us — if not even more so — that it is stupid and cruel to
hang men, or put them into a state of solitary confine-
ment, even worse than death, and to elicit the truth
through hired lawyers and judges.

If it becomes clear to us that it is stupid and cruel to
kill a man who has made a mistake, then also it will be
clear that it is still more stupid to confine such a man in
a jail, in order to finish corrupting him ; if it is clear
that it is stupid and cruel to compel muzhiks into being
soldiers and to brand them like cattle, then it will seem

NIKOLAI PALKIN 105

equally stupid and cruel to make every man who has
reached the age of twenty-one become a soldier. If it
is clear that stupidity and cruelty are the cause of crime,
then still clearer will be the stupidity of guards and
police.

If we only cease to shut our eyes to the past, saying:

Why recall the past ? ” it will become clear to us that
we have the same horrors, only under new forms.

We say that all this is past, — now we have no tortures,
no adulterous Catharines with their powerful lovers, no
more slavery, no more whippings to death, and so on, —
but how is it in reality ? Nine hundred thousand men
in prison and under arrest, shut up in narrow, ill-smelling
cells, and dying by a slow physical and moral death.
Women and children are left without subsistence, and
these men are maintained in caverns of corruption, in
prisons, and in squads ; and only inspectors, having full
control of these slaves, get any advantage from this
senseless, cruel confinement of them.

Tens of thousands of men with dangerous ideas go
into exile, and carry these ideas into the farthest corners
of Russia, go out of their minds, and hang themselves.
Thousands sit in prisons, and either kill themselves with
the connivance of the prison officers, or go mad in soli-
tary confinement. Millions of the people go to rack and
ruin physically and morally in the slavery of the facto-
ries. Hundreds of thousands of men every autumn
leave their families, their young wives, and take lessons
in murder, and systematically go to destruction. The
Russian Tsar cannot go anywhere without being sur-
rounded by a visible cordon of a hundred thousand
soldiers, stationed ninety steps apart all along the road,
and a secret cordon following him everywhere.

A king collects tribute and builds a castle, and in the
castle he constructs a pond, and on the pond dyed with
blue, with a machine which raises a wind, he sails around
in a boat ; but his people are perishing in factories : this
happens in Ireland and in France and in Belgium.

It does not require great penetration to see that in
our day it is just the same, and that our day is just as

io6 NIKOLAI PALKIN

fecund with horrors, — with the same horrors, with the
same tortures, — and that these, in the eyes of succeed-
ing generations, will seem just as marvelous in their
cruelty and stupidity. The disease is the same, and the
disease is not felt by those that profit by these hor-
rors.

Let them profit for a hundred, for a thousand times
more. Let them build their castles, set up their tents,
give their balls, let them swindle the people. Let the
Nikolat Palkins whip the people to death, let them shut
up hundreds of men secretly in fortresses ; only let them
do this themselves, so as not to corrupt the people, so
as not to deceive them by compelling them to take part
in this, as the old soldier was.

This horrible disease lies in the deception : in this fact
that for a man there can be any sanctity and any law
higher than the sanctity and the law of love to one's
neighbor; in the deception, which conceals the fact,
that, though a man in carrying out the demands of men
may do many bad things, only one kind of thing he
ought not to do. He ought never at any one's in-
stigation to go against God, to kill and to torture his
brethren.

Eighteen hundred years ago, to the question of the
Pharisees, it was said : “ Render unto Ccesar the thing^
that are Ceesar^s, and to God the things that are God' sT

If there was any faith among men and they recog-
nized any duty to God, then above all they would
recognize it as their duty before God to do what God
Himself taught man when He said : Thou shalt not
HIV ; when He said, '\Do not tmto others what you
would not have others do to you when He said, Love
thy neighbor as thyself T saying it not in words only,
but writing in ineradicable marks on the heart of every
man — love to one’s neighbor; mercy, horror of murder
and of torture of one's brethren.

If men only believed in God, then they could not
help acknowledging this first obligation to Him, not to
torture, not to kill, and then the words, Render unto
Ccesar the things that are Ccesat^s^ and to God the things

NIKOLAI PALKIN

107

that are God's,' would have for them a clear, definite
significance.

‘‘To the Tsar or to any one all he wishes,*' the believ-
ing man would say, “but not what is contrary to God.”

Caesar needs my money — take it; my house, my
labors — take them; my wife, my children, my life —
take them ; all these things are not God’s. But when
Caesar requires that I apply the rods to my neighbor’s
back, that is God’s affair. My behavior — that is my
life for which I must give an account to God ; and what
God has forbidden me to do that I cannot give to
Caesar. I cannot bind, imprison, whip, kill my fellow-
men ; all that is my life, and it belongs to God alone,
and I may not give it to any one except God.

The words, God the things that are God's," for
us signify whatever they give to God, — kopeks, candles,
prayers, in general everything that is unnecessary to
any one, much less to God ; but everything else ; all
one’s life, all one’s soul which belongs to God, they give
to Caesar ; in other words, according to the significance
of the word Ccesar as understood by the Jews — to some
entire stranger. This is horrible ! Let the people
remember this.

THE FEAST OF ENLIGHTENMENT
OF JANUARY TWENTY-FOUR

can be more horrible than country festi-

V V vals ? ” In nothing can the whole barbarism and
ugliness of the life of the people be shown with such
distinctness as in country festivals. Men live on week-
days ; they eat and drink moderately of wholesome food,
they labor industriously ; they mingle in friendly inter-
course. Thus pass weeks, sometimes months, and sud-
denly this good life is interrupted without any apparent
cause. On some special day all simultaneously knock
off work, and from noontime on begin to eat rich food
to which they are not accustomed ; they begin to drink
beer and vodka. All drink; the aged compel young
men and even children to drink. All congratulate one
another, kiss one another, embrace one another, shout,
sing songs. Now they are affected to tears, now they
boast, now they insult one another, all talk, no one listens ;
voices are raised, quarrels ensue, sometimes fights. By
evening some are staggering, falling prone, and going
into a drunken stupor anywhere ; others are being led
home by those that are still steady enough on their feet,
while still others are wallowing and grimacing, filling
the air with vile alcoholic fumes.

On the next day all these men sleep off their illness,
and when they have somewhat recovered, they again
take up their work until the next day of the same kind
comes.

What does this mean ? Why is it ?

Why, it is a festival — a church festival ; for one place
the Zrameniye,^ in another the Vvedeniye,^ in a third the

1 The Miraculous Appearance of the Virgin Mary.

* The Presentation of the Holy Virgin in the Temple.

108

FEAST OF ENLIGHTENMENT 109

Kazanskaya. What these terms mean no one knows.
They know one thing, that there is an altar and that
they must celebrate. And they look forward to this fes-
tivity, and after a burdensome life of toil are glad to fall
greedily on the food.

Yes, this is one of the very rare expressions of sav-
agery on the part of the working-people. The wine and
carousing constitute for them such a temptation that they
cannot resist it. The festival comes, and almost every
one of them is ready to stupefy himself, and even lose
all semblance of human form.

Yes, the people are savage.

But here comes the twenty-fourth of January, and in
the newspapers is printed the following notice : —

“The social dinner of the former students of the Im-
perial Moscow University will take place on the anni-
versary of its establishment, January 24, at five o'clock
in the afternoon, in the restaurant of the Bolshaya Mos-
kovskaya Hotel, at the principal entrance. Tickets for
the dinner, at six rubles, may be obtained" .... Then fol-
lows a list of places where the tickets may be pur-
chased.

But this is not the only dinner ; there will be a dozen
others in Moscow, and in Petersburg, and in the prov-
inces. The twenty-fourth of January is the festival
of the oldest Russian University, is the festival of
Russian enlightenment. The flower of enlightenment
celebrates its festival.

It would seem that men standing on the two extreme
boundaries of enlightenment — the savage muzhiks and
the most cultivated men of Russia — the muzhiks cele-
brating the “ Presentation," or the Virgin of Kazan, and
the cultivated men celebrating the festival of enlighten-
ment itself, ought to celebrate their celebrations in an
entirely different way. But in reality, it proves that the
festival of the most cultivated of men differs in no re-
spect, save in external form, from the festival of the
most barbarous of men. The muzhiks seize the church
festival without any relation to its meaning, as a pretext
for eating and drinking ; the enlightened take St. Tatya-

no FEAST OF ENLIGHTENMENT

na’s Day ^ as a pretext for eating and drinking to reple-
tion, without the least reference to St. Tatyana.

The peasants eat striden’>jelly and vermicelli ; the en-
lightened eat lobsters, cheeses, soups, fillets, and the like :
the muzhiks drink beer and vodka ; the enlightened
drink liquors of various kinds — wines and brandies and
liqueurs, dry and strong and sweet and bitter and red
and white, and champagne.

The muzhiks* treat costs from twenty kopeks to a
ruble ; the entertainment of the enlightened comes to
anywhere from six to twenty rubles apiece. The mu-
zhiks speak of their love for their godparents, and sing
Russian folksongs ; the enlightened tell how much they
love their alma mater^ and with entangled tongues
sing senseless Latin songs. The muzhiks fall into the
mud ; and the enlightened sprawl on velvet divans. The
muzhiks are carried or led to their places by their wives
and sons ; the enlightened by lackeys, sober and derisive.

No, in reality this is horrible. It is horrible that men
standing, according to their own notion, on the highest
degree of human culture, are not able to signalize the
festival of enlightenment in any other way than by eating,
drinking, smoking, and shouting all manner of nonsense
for several hours in succession. It is horrible that
elderly men, the guides of the young, help poison them
with alcohol — a poison which, like the poison of quick-
silver, never entirely disappears, but leaves traces all
their lives long. Hundreds and hundreds of young
men, egged on by their teachers, have become dead
drunk, and been ruined forever and debauched at this
festival of enlightenment !

But more horrible than all else is the fact that men
who do all this have to such a degree befogged them-
selves by their conceit, that they can no longer dis-
tinguish good from bad, the moral from the immoral.
These men have so persuaded themselves that the situa-
tion in which they are placed is a situation of enlight-
enment and culture, and that enlightenment and culture
confer the right of indulgence of all their weaknesses,
1 January 12, O. S.

FEAST OF ENLIGHTENMENT iii

that they cannot see the beam that is in their eye. These
men, who give themselves up to what cannot be called
anything else than ugly drunkenness, even in the midst
of their ugliness, rejoice in themselves and complain of
the unenlightened people.

Every mother suffers — I don’t say at the sight of
her drunken son, but at the mere thought of such a
possibility ; every master gets rid of a drunken work-
man ; every unspoiled man is ashamed of himself for
having been drunk. All are aware that drunkenness is
bad. But here cultured, enlightened men are getting
drunk, and they are fully persuaded that in this there is
nothing shameful or bad, but that it is very nice, and
they laughingly relate the entertaining episodes of their
past drunkenness.

It has gone so far that we have the most disgusting
orgy, in which old and young get intoxicated together —
an orgy annually repeated in the name of enlightenment
and culture, and no one is offended, and no one is dis-
turbed ; and while they are intoxicated and afterwards,
there is great enthusiasm over their elevated feelings
and ideas, and they boldly criticize and apprize the
morality of other men, and especially of the coarse and
unenlightened people.

The muzhik, to a man, will feel that he was to blame
if he was drunk, and will ask pardon of every one for
his drunkenness. In spite of his temporary fall, he has
a lively sense of what is right and wrong. In our soci-
ety this is beginning to be lost.

Very good, then, you are accustomed to do this and
cannot refrain ; all right, continue to do so if you can-
not restrain yourselves : but understand this only, that
on the twenty-fourth or the twenty -seventh or the
twenty-ninth of January or February or any other
month, this is a vile and shameful thing ; and knowing
this, give yourselves up to your vicious tendencies, lit-
tle by little, but do not do so as you are doing it at the
present time, triumphantly, confusing and vitiating the
young and your so-called youthful confraternity. Do
not confuse the young by the teaching that there is any

112 FEAST OF ENLIGHTENMENT

other civic morality than that founded on self-control, or
any other civic immorality than that not founded on
self-control.

Every one knows and you know that, before all other
civic virtues, continence from vices is necessary ; that all
intemperance is bad ; especially intemperance in the use
of wine is the most dangerous, because it kills body and
soul. All men know this, and, therefore, before speak-
ing of any elevated feelings and objects, it is requisite
for us to free ourselves from the low and savage vice
of drunkenness, and not in drunken wise to talk about
lofty feelings. So do not deceive yourselves and other
men, especially do not deceive the young. The young
understand that, by participating in a savage custom
upheld by you, they are doing what they ought not to
do, and are destroying something very precious and
irredeemable.

And you know this — you know that there is nothing
better or more important than the purity of soul and
body which is destroyed by drunkenness ; you know
that all your rhetoric with your everlasting alma mater
does not touch you when you are half-intoxicated, and
that you have nothing to offer the young in place of
that innocence and purity which they have destroyed
by taking part in your orgies.

Therefore, do not prevent them and do not confuse
them, but know that, as it was with Noah, as it is with
every muzhik, so exactly will it be with every one,
shameful, not only to drink so as to shout, to stagger,
to leap up on tables and commit all sorts of follies, but
shameful also even without any necessity on the occa-
sion of the festival of enlightenment, to eat rich food
and obfuscate yourselves with alcohol. Do not lead
the young astray, do not by your example pervert them
and the servants about you.

Here there are hundreds and hundreds of people
serving you, handing you wines and rich foods, taking
you home — here are all these people, and live people,
before whom, as before all of us, stand the most serious
questions of life: is it right, is it wrong.? Whose

FEAST OF ENLIGHTENMENT 113

example shall they follow? Here it is a fine thing
that all these lackeys, izvoshchiks, Swisses — Russian
men from the country — do not regard you as you
regard yourselves, and would wish others to regard you
as the representatives of enlightenment. If this were so,
they, looking at you, would be disenchanted at every
kind of enlightenment and would despise it ; but even
now, though they do not regard you as the representa-
tives of enlightenment, they nevertheless see in you
learned gentlemen who know everything, and, there-
fore, can and should be followed. And they can put
the question to themselves : What will they, poor things,
learn from you ?

Which is the more powerful : the enlightenment which
is spread among the people by public lectures and
museums ; or the savagery which is sustained and spread
among the people by the spectacle of such festivals as
the celebration of the twenty-fourth of January, sup-
ported by the most enlightened people of Russia ?

I think that if all lectures and museums should be
done away with, and at the same time all such celebra-
tions and dinners should cease, but the cooks and
servant-maids, the izvoshchiks and porters, should
spread among themselves in conversations the announce-
ment that all the enlightened men of Russia whom
they serve never celebrated their festivals with gluttony
and drunkenness, but were able to have good times and
dine without wine, then enlightenment would not suffer
in the least.

It is time to understand that enlightenment is not
spread by a few obscure pictures, nor by verbal and
printed words, but by the infectious example of the
whole life of the people; and that enlightenment not
based on a moral life pever was and never will be
enlightenment at all, but will always be only obfuscation
and perversion.

TO GOD OR MAMMON

•* No servant can serve two masters : for either he will hate the one and
love the other ; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You
cannot serve God and mammonl'* — Luke xvi. 13.

** He that is not with me is against mCy and he that gathers not for me
scatters abroad?' — Matthew xii. 30.

E normous tracts of the very best lands by which
millions of now poverty-stricken families might be
supported are devoted to tobacco, vineyards, barley,
hemp, and especially rye and potatoes, employed in the
production of intoxicating beverages : wine, beer, and
mainly brandy.

Millions of laborers who might be making things
useful for men are occupied in the production of these
things. In England it is estimated that one-tenth of all
the laboring men are occupied in the manufacture of
brandy and beer.^

What are the consequences of the manufacture and
consumption of tobacco, wine, vodka, beer }

There is a terrible story about a monk who laid a
wager with the devil that he would not admit him into
his cell ; if he let him in, he agreed to do whatever the
devil should order him to do. The story tells how the
devil took the form of a wounded raven with its bloody

^ According to the statistics published by the Imperial Bureau, the con-
sumption of beer in Germany during the year 1897-1898 was 1,383,700,000
gallons, while it was 1,237,000,000 gallons in the United States, 1,192-
000,000 gallons in Great Britain, 463,500,000 gallons in Austria-Hungary,
279,000,000 gallons in Belgium, 180,000,000 m France, and a little over
90/xX),000 gallons in Russia. The consumption of beer per head of the
population is estimated at 36 gallons in Belgium, 32 in Great Britain, 25
in Germany, 21 in Denmark, 12 in Switzerland, 10 in the United States,
in Austria-Hungary, 9 in Holland, 5 in France, 3J in Norway, 2J ill
Sweden, and i in Russia. — Ed.

I14

TO GOD OR MAMMON

IIS

wing trailing, and hopped about pitifully at the door of
the monk’s cell. The monk had compassion on the
raven and took him into his cell; and then the devil,
having obtained entrance, gave the monk a choice among
three crimes : murder, fornication, or drunkenness. The
monk chose drunTcehness, thinking that if he got intox-
icated he would harm only himself. But when the
liquor had overcome him, he lost control of his reason, he
went to the village and there, yielding to temptation of a
woman, he committed adultery with her, and then murder
by defending himself from the husband, who returned
and attacked him.

Thus are pictured the consequences of drunkenness
in the old story, and nowise different in real life are
the consequences of the use of intoxicating beverages.
It is an unusual burglar or murderer who perpetrates
his crime while sober. According to the reports of
courts it is seen that nine-tenths of misdemeanors are
accomplished when people are tipsy. The most con-
vincing proof that the large number of misdemeanors
are traceable to liquor is afforded by the fact that in
certain states of America, where wine and the manu-
facture and sale of intoxicating liquors are prohibited,
crimes have almost ceased. There are no robberies, or
thefts, or murders, and the jails are empty.

Such is one consequence of the use of intoxicating
drinks.

Another consequence is the harmful influence pro-
duced by intoxicating beverages on the health of the
people. Besides the fact that from the use of intoxi-
cating drinks arise various painful illnesses peculiar to
drunkards, many of whom die of them, it is to be noted
that men who drink recuperate from ordinary diseases
with greater difficulty than others, so that in life insur-
ance, the insurance companies always prefer the risks
on those that do not make use of intoxicating drinks.

This is the second consequence of the use of intoxi-
cating beverages.

The third and most horrible consequence of intoxi*
eating beverages is that liquor darkens the intellect and

ii6 TO GOD OR MAMMON

conscience of men ; from the use of liquor men grow
coarser, stupider, and wickeder.

What advantage is there from the use of intoxicating
drinks ?

None !

The advocates of vodka, wine, beer, assure us in ad-
vance that these drinks enhance the health and strength,
that they warm and cheer. But now it is indisputably
proved that this is not true. Intoxicating beverages do
not improve the health, because they contain a violent
poison, — alcohol, — and the use of a poison cannot fail
to be injurious.

That wine does not increase a man’s strength has
been proved many times, and by the fact that when the
work of a drinking mechanic and of a mechanic who
does not drink are compared, during the course of
months and years, it is always proved that the non-
drinking man does more work and better work than
the drinker; and by the fact that in those companies
of soldiers which on campaigns use vodka there are
always more incapacitated and more stragglers than in
those where vodka is not used.

In exactly the same way it has been proved that
liquor does not warm, and that the heat felt after drink-
ing liquor does not hold out long, and that the man,
after the brief increase in temperature, soon grows
colder than ever, so that a drinking man always finds it
much harder to endure prolonged cold than a non-
drinker. People who freeze to death every year are
frozen, for the most part, because they warm themselves
with liquor.

It is not necessary to prove also that the gaiety that
comes from wine is not real and not a joyous gaiety.
Every one knows what sort of thing this drunken gaiety
is. All that it requires is to take a look at what is done
in cities on holidays, at the drinking-places, and in the
rural districts ; at what is done on holidays or at wed-
dings and christenings. This drunken gaiety always
ends with insulting words, fights, injured members, all
kinds of crimes, and the loss of human dignity.

TO GOD OR MAMMON in

Wine does not conduce to the health or the strength,
or the warmth or the gaiety, but only brings great injury
to men. And therefore it would seem to be the wise
course for every reasonable and decent man, not only
not to use intoxicating drinks himself and not to set them
before others, but also to try with all his might to stop
the common use of this unprofitable and injurious
poison.

But unfortunately this is not at all the case. Men are
so wedded to old habits and customs, and find it so
difficult to do away with them, that there are in our day
very many good, kind, and reasonable men who not
only do not forswear the use of intoxicating beverages
and the regalement of others with them, but even defend
it with all their ability. ** Wine,** they say, “ is not to
blame, but drunkenness is to be condemned. King
David said, * Wine cheers the heart of man.* Christ in
Cana of Galilee sanctified wine. If it were not for the
drinking habit government would be deprived of its
chief revenue. It is impossible to celebrate a holiday,
to hold a wedding, or a christening, without wine. One
must drink something at the conclusion of a bargain or
a sale, or at the meeting with a dear friend.**

“ In our poverty and in our labor we must drink,**
says the poor laboring man.

If we drink only occasionally and temperately, we do
no harm to any one,’* say well-to-do people.

‘‘ The gayety of Russia is in drinking,** said Prince
Vladimir.

“ By our drinking we do no harm to any one but our-
selves. And if we harm only ourselves then that is our
affair ; we don*t want to teach any one and we don’t
want to be taught by any one ; we did not begin this and
it is not for us to put an end to it,” say frivolous people.

Thus talk drinking men of various conditions and
ages, trying to justify themselves. But these justifica-
tions, which availed some decades of years ago, now no
longer avail. It was well enough to say this when all
men thought that the use of intoxicating drinks was a
harmless pleasure, that intoxicating drinks enhanced a

ii8 TO GOD OR MAMMON

man’s health and strength ; when they did not, as yet,
know that wine contained a poison always injurious to
the health of men ; when men did not, as yet, realize the
terrible consequences of drunkenness, which are now
patent to all eyes.

It was possible to say this when there were not, as
yet, these hundreds and thousands of men prematurely
dying in cruel torments simply because they had learned
to drink intoxicating beverages, and could not, as yet,
abstain from the use of them. It was well to say that
wine is a harmless pleasure before we had seen those
hundreds and thousands of poor tormented women and
children suffering because their husbands and fathers
had learned to drink wine.

It was well enough to say this before we had wit-
nessed these hundreds and thousands of criminals fill-
ing the jails; the exiles, galley-slaves, and ruined women,
who had fallen into this condition owing to wine.

It was well enough to say this before we knew that
hundreds of thousands of men, who might have lived
their lives with delight to themselves and others, have
ruined their energies and their intellects and their souls
simply because intoxicating beverages existed and they
were tempted by them.

And therefore it is no longer possible, in our time, to
say that the drinking or non-drinking of wine is a pri-
vate affair, that we do not consider the moderate use of
wine injurious to ourselves, and do not wish to teach
any one or be taught by any one, that we did not begin
it and it is not for us to end it. It is impossible to say
this now ; the use of wine or abstinence from it is, in
our day, not a private matter, but a public matter.

Now all men — it is all the same whether they wish it
or do not wish it — are divided into two camps : those
in the one camp are fighting against the employment of
a useless poison — intoxicating drinks — both by word
and deed, not using wine and not offering it to others ;
those in the opposite camp uphold both by word and,
more powerfully than all else, by force of example the
use of this poison, and this contest is going on at the

TO GOD OR MAMMON 119

present time in all nations, and now for twenty years
with especial violence in Russia.

‘'As long as you did not know you were without sin,'*
said Christ. But now we know what we are doing and
whom we are serving when we use wine and offer it to
others, and consequently, if we, who know the sin of
using wine, go on drinking or offering it to others, then
we have no justification.

And let not men say that it is impossible to avoid
drinking and offering wine on special occasions — on
holidays and at weddings and similar occasions ; that
all do this, that our fathers and grandfathers did this,
and therefore it is impossible for us alone to stand out
against all the rest.

This is false ; our fathers and grandfathers did away
with those evil and harmful practices, the ill effects of
which became manifest to them ; in the same way also
we are bound to do away with the evil which has be-
come manifest in our day. And the fact that wine has
become a frightful evil in our day is beyond all question.

How, then, if I know that the use of intoxicating
drinks is an evil, destroying hundreds of thousands of
men, can I offer this evil to my friends who come to my
house for a festival, a christening, or a wedding ?

Not always was everything as it is now, but every-
thing has changed from worse to better; and the change
has come about, not of itself, but by people fulfilling
what has been demanded of them by reason and con-
science. And now our reason and our conscience in
the most actual manner demand of us that we cease
drinking wine and offering it to others.

As a general thing men consider worthy of censure
and scorn such drunkards as go to taverns and drinking-
rooms, and get so full that they lose their reason, and
become so addicted to wine that they cannot control
themselves, and drink up all they have. The very men
who buy wine for home use drink every day and in
moderation, and offer wine to their guests in circum-
stances when it is used — and such men are considered
good and honorable and not as doing any harm. And

12 1

TO GOD OR MAMMON

ye! these very people are more worthy of censure than
the drunkards. The drunkards have become drunkards
simply because those that were not drunkards, those
that did themselves no harm, taught them to drink
wine, tempted them by their example.

Drunkards never would have become drunkards if
they had not seen honored men, men respected by every
one, drinking wine and offering it to others. A young
man who has never taken wine will know the taste and
the effect of wine at festivals, at weddings, at the houses
of these honored people who are not themselves drunk-
ards, but who drink and set it before their guests on
certain occasions.

And so he who drinks wine, no matter how moderately,
or offers it in whatever special circumstances, commits
a great sin. He tempts those whom he is commanded
not to tempt, of whom it is said, Woe to him that
tempts one of these little ones.

It is said, We did not begin it, it is not for us to
end it.'’

It is for us to end it if we only understand that for
every one of us the drinking or non-drinking of wine is
not a matter of indifference ; that with every bottle of
wine bought, every glass of wine imbibed, we are serv-
ing that terrible devilish deed whereby the best strength
of humanity is wasted ; but, on the other hand, by re-
fraining from wine for ourselves, and by doing away
with the senseless custom of using wine at festivals,
weddings, and christenings, we are performing a work
of the utmost importance — our soul’s work, God’s work.
As soon as we have understood this, then will drunken-
ness be stopped by us.

And therefore, my reader, whoever you may be — a
young man only just entering upon life, or a grown man
who have already established your life, a master of a
house or a mistress of a house, or an aged man, — for
whom now the time is near for accounting for the deeds
you have done, — whether you are rich or poor, famous
or unknown, whoever you are, it is impossible for you
to stand between these two camps ; you must infallibly

TO GOD OR MAMMON

I2I

choose one of the two : oppose drunkenness or cooperate
with it — serve God or mammon.

If you are a young man who have never as yet taken
liquor, never as yet been poisoned by the poison of wine,
treasure your innocence and freedom from temptation.
If you taste, the temptation will be all the harder for you
to overcome it. And do not believe that wine will increase
your gaiety. At your time of life gaiety is natural,
genuine, good gaiety ; and wine only changes your true,
innocent gaiety into a drunken, senseless, vicious gaiety.

Above all beware of wine, because at your time of life
it will be harder for you to resist other temptations ; wine
weakens in you the force of reason, which is most need-
ful at your age to help you resist temptations. After
you have imbibed you will do what you would not think
of doing when sober. Why subject yourself to such a
terrible risk ? If you are a grown man who have already
got into the habit of using intoxicating drinks, or who are
just beginning to form that habit, make haste while there
is yet time to get out of this awful habit, or else before
you look around it will get control of you, and you may
become like those that are irrevocably drunkards, who
have perished by reason of wine. All of them began
just as you have. Even if you have the ability through-
out your life to use intoxicating drinks in moderation,
and may not yourself become a drunkard, yet if }'0u
continue to drink wine and serve it at your table, you
may perhaps make your younger brother, your wife,
your children, drunkards, for they may not have the
strength as you have to confine themselves to a mode-
rate use of wine.

And above all understand that on you as a man, who
have reached the very prime of life, as the master of
the house, as the controller of the destiny of others,
rests the responsibility of guiding the lives of your
household. And therefore if you know that wine
brings no advantage, but causes great evil to men,
then not only are you not obliged slavishly to do as
your fathers and grandfathers used to do, — to use
wine, to buy it and serve it to others, — but, on the

122

TO GOD OR MAMMON

contrary, you are bound to avoid this habit and keep
it from others.

And be not afraid that the change in the custom of
drinking wine at festivals, christenings, and weddings,
will very deeply humiliate or trouble people. In many
places they have already begun to do this, substituting
for the wine appetizing viands and temperance drinks,
and people only at first, and the very stupidest, wonder,
but quickly get used to it and approve.

If you are an old man, at an age when you will very
shortly be called upon to render your account to God,
how you have served Him, and instead of warning the
young and inexperienced from wine, the terrible evil of
which you must have seen in the course of your life, you
have tempted your neighbor by your example, drinking
wine and offering it to others, you have been commit-
ting a mighty sin.

Woe to the world because of temptations ! Tempta-
tions must come into the world, but woe to him through
whom they come.

Only let us understand that in the matter of using wine
there is no half way, and we either desire it or do not
desire it — we must choose between two courses —
serving God or serving mammon. He that is not with
me is against me^ and he that gathers not for me scat*
ters abroad*^

1895.

* Matthew xii. 30,

WHY DO PEOPLE STUPEFY
THEMSELVES?

I

W HAT is this demand for stupefying things, — •
vodka, wine, beer, hashish, opium, tobacco, and
others less universally used ; ether, morphine, mukho-
mor ^ ? Why did it begin and so quickly spread, and
why does it still spread among all classes of men, sav-
age and civilized alike ? What does it mean that every-
where, if there is not vodka, wine, and beer, there you
find opium or hashish, mukhomor, and other things,
and tobacco everywhere ?

Why must people need stupefy themselves ? Ask a
man why he began to drink wine and still drinks it, and
he will answer you, ‘^Why, it’s agreeable, every one
drinks,” and he will add, ''for gayety’s sake.”

Some who have never once given themselves the
trouble of thinking whether it is right or wrong for
them to drink wine, will add that wine is wholesome
and gives strength ; in other words, they will say what
has long ago been proved to be incorrect. Ask a smoker
why he began to smoke tobacco and still smokes, and he
will reply in the same manner, "Why, to cure low
spirits; every one smokes.”

1 Amanita muse aria. In certain parts of Russia, these mushrooms are
eaten dry and swallowed without mastication, thus producing an extended
intoxication. Made into a decoction with willow runners or whortleberry,
it becomes a social intoxicant, the effects of which are wild exhilaration
and often an increase of strength, so that a man under its influence has
been known to run miles bearing heavy burdens. It is so powerful that
children have been poisoned by the milk of women who had shortly before
been under its influence. Its alkaloid is allied to that of hashish or
Indian hemp. — Ed.

123

124

WHY DO PEOPLE

Thus also will probably reply the devotees of opium,
hashish, morphine, agaricum.

“ Why ! to cure low spirits, for gayety's sake, all
do it.’*

But it is just as good as a cure for low spirits or for
gayety s sake, because all do it, to twirl one’s fingers,
to whistle, to sing songs, to play on the dudka, and
do other things ; in other words, to do anything what-
ever, for which it is not necessary to squander ancestral
wealth or expend great physical powers, to do what does
not bring manifest woe on yourself and on others. But
for the production of tobacco, wine, hashish, opium,
often among settlements needing land, millions and
millions of better lands are occupied with crops of rye,
potatoes, hemp, poppies, grape-vines, and tobacco, and
millions of workmen — in England one-eighth of the
whole population — are engaged their whole lives long
in the production of these stupefying objects.

Moreover, the use of these things is manifestly injuri-
ous, producing terrible evils, known and confessed by
every one, causing the destruction of more human
beings than have perished in all wars and contagious
diseases together.

And men know this ; so that it cannot be that this
is done to keep men’s spirits up, for gayety’s sake,
simply because all do this.

There must be something else in it. All the time
and everywhere you meet with men who love their
children, are ready to make all kinds of sacrifices for
their well-being, and yet squander on vodka, wine, beer,
or spend on opium or hashish, or even on tobacco,
enough to feed their suffering and starving children,
or, at least, keep them from deprivation. Evidently if
a man placed under the necessity of choosing between
subjecting his family which he loves to suffering and
privation, and refraining from stupefying things, never-
theless chooses the first, he is stimulated to this by some-
thing more serious than that every one does it and it is
pleasant. Evidently it is not done to raise spirits, or for
gayety’s sake, but there is some more important reason.

STUPEFY THEMSELVES?

125

This reason, as far as I can understand it from read-
ing about this subject and observations on other men,
and especially on myself when I used to drink wine
and smoke tobacco — this reason, according to my obser-
vations, is as follows : —

During the period of conscious life a man can fre-
quently detect in himself two separate beings : one
blind, physical, and the other gifted with sight, spirit-
ual. The blind animal being eats, drinks, rests, sleeps,
propagates, and moves about like a machine wound up ;
the seeing spiritual being, connected with the animal,
itself does nothing, but only estimates the activity of the
living being by coinciding with it when it approves of
this activity, and by being indignant with it when it
does not approve.

This seeing being may be compared to the needle of
a compass, which points with one end to the north, with
the other in the opposite direction, to the south ; and,
being protected in its whole extent by a strip, is invis-
ible as long as the thing that carries the needle moves
in its direction, but comes out and becomes visible as
soon as that which carries the needle turns from the
direction indicated.

In exactly the same way the seeing spiritual being,
the manifestation whereof in common language we call
conscience, always points with one pole toward the
right, and with the other, its opposite, toward the
wrong, and is not noticed by us until we turn aside
from the direction given to us — that is to say, from
wrong to right. But it requires to perform some action
contrary to the direction of conscience for the conscious-
ness of the spiritual being to appear, showing the devi-
ation of the animal activity from the direction indicated
by conscience. And as a sailor could not continue to
work with oars, machinery, or sails, if he knew that he
was going in the wrong direction, until he gave his
course the direction indicated by the needle of the com-
pass, or else hid from himself the deviation ; just exactly
so every man who is conscious of the duality of his con-
science and his animal activity cannot continue this

126

WHY DO PEOPLE

activity until he either brings it into accordance with
his conscience, or conceals from himself the warnings of
conscience about the injustice of his animal life.

The whole life of man, we may say, consists only of
these two activities: (i) the bringing of one’s activity'
into harmony with conscience ; and (2) the concealing
from oneself of the indications of conscience so as to be
able to continue a certain course of life.

Some do the first, others do the second. For the at-
tainment of the first there is only one means — the moral
enlightenment, an increase of light in oneself, and atten-
tion to that which the light shines on ; for the second —
to hide from oneself the monitions of conscience — there
are two methods : one external, one internal. The ex-
ternal method consists in occupations which draw the
attention away from the monitions of conscience ; the
internal method consists in darkening conscience itself.

As a man may hide from his eyes any object before
him in two ways, by an external turning away of his
eyes to something else more striking, and by shutting
his eyes ; just so a man may hide from himself the
monitions of his conscience by a twofold method — the
external by diverting his attention with all kinds of
occupations, labors, amusements, games ; the internal
by blinding the organ of attention itself.

For men with an obtuse, limited moral sense, it is often
simply sufficient to have external diversions, so as not
to perceive the monitions of conscience about their
irregular lives. But for men morally keen, such a
method is not generally sufficient.

The external methods do not completely divert the
attention from the discordance between life and the de-
mands of conscience ; this consciousness makes it hard
to live, and men in order to be able to live have re-
course to an unquestionable inward method of blinding
conscience itself, and this consists in poisoning the brain
with stupefying things.

Life is not what it should be according to the demands
of conscience. One cannot possibly turn one’s life into
conformity with its demands. The diversions which

STUPEFY THEMSELVES?

127

might distract from a consciousness of this dissonance
are insufficient or they become disgusting, and so as
to be in a condition to prolong existence, notwithstand-
ing the monitions of conscience about its irregularities,
men temporarily cut short its activity by poisoning that
organ through which the monitions of conscience are
manifested, just as a man purposely shutting his eyes
would hide what he would not wish to see.

II

Not in taste, not in pleasure, not in dissipation, not in
gayety, lies the explanation for the universal use of
hashish, opium, wine, tobacco, but wholly in the neces-
sity that men have for concealing from themselves the
monitions of conscience.

I was going along the street once, and as I passed two
izvoshchiks disputing, I heard one say to the other : —

“ It’s a certain fact, on my conscience as sure as I am
sober.”

What appeals to a sober man’s conscience does not
appeal to a drunken man’s. In these words was ex-
pressed the essential fundamental reason, why men have
recourse to stupefying things. Men have recourse to
them either so as not to feel the pricking of conscience
after committing some act contrary to conscience, or so
as to bring themselves into a condition to commit some
act which is contrary to conscience, but to which a man’s
animal nature tempts him.

A sober man has conscientious scruples about going
to dissolute women, about stealing, about committing
murder. A drunken man has no such scruples ; and so,
if a man wishes to commit an act which his conscience
forbids him to do, he stupefies himself.

I remember being struck by the testimony at court of
a cook who had killed a relative of mine, a lady in whose
service he had been. He told how when he had sent
away his mistress, the chambermaid, and the time had
come for him to act, he went with his knife into her

128

WHY DO PEOPLE

sleeping room, but felt that while he was sober he

could not perpetrate the act which he had planned

This was the conscience of a sober man.” He went
back and drank two glasses of vodka which he had
prepared in anticipation of it, and then only did he feel
that he was ready, and acted.

Nine-tenths of all crimes are accomplished in that
way; ‘‘drinking to keep up the courage.”

Half of the women that fall, fall through the influence
of wine. Almost all visits to houses of ill fame are
made by men in a state of drunkenness. Men know
the power of wine in drowning out the voice of con-
science, and deliberately employ it with that end in
view.

Moreover, men stupefy themselves in order to deaden
conscience — knowing how wine acts, they, wishing to
compel other men to commit some act contrary to their
conscience, purposely stupefy them, organize the stupe-
fication of men so as to deprive them of their con-
sciences. In war they always get soldiers drunk when
they are to fight hand to hand. All the French soldiers
in the assault on Sevastopol were thoroughly drunk.

All of us know of men who have become drunkards
in consequence of crimes tormenting their consciences.
All can bear witness that men living immoral lives
are more inclined than others to the use of stupefy-
ing things. Bands of thugs and robbers, prostitutes,
never live without wine. All know and acknowledge
that the use of stupefying things is in consequence of
the reproach of conscience, that in certain immoral pro-
fessions stupefying things are employed for the dead-
ening of conscience. All know and acknowledge that
the use of stupefying things deadens the conscience, that
a drunken man is punished for crimes which he would
never dare to think of when sober. All are agreed in
regard to this : but — strangely enough — when, in conse-
quence of the use of stupefying things, such deeds as
theft, murder, violence, and the like do not make their
appearance ; when stupefying things are taken, not after
terrible crimes, but by men of the professions which

STUPEFY THEMSELVES? 129

are not considered by us as criminal ; and when these
things are not taken all at once in great quantities, but
all the time, in moderation, — then somehow it is sup-
posed that stupefying things do not affect the con-
science, deadening it.

Thus it is taken for granted that the drinking by an
opulent Russian of a glass of vodka every day before
each meal and a glass of wine at each meal, by a French-
man of his absinthe, by an Englishman of his port and
porter, by a German of his beer, and the smoking by a
well-to-do Chinaman of his moderate portion of opium,
and the smoking of tobacco, are done only for pleasure,
and have no influence on the consciences of men.

It is taken for granted that if, after this ordinary stupe-
fying of themselves, men do not commit such crimes as
robbery and murder, but only certain stupid and wicked
actions, then these actions are spontaneous, and are not
produced by the drugging. It is taken for granted that
if these men do not commit some capital crime, then
they have no reason for deadening their consciences,
and that the life which is led by men who are all the
time stupefying themselves is a perfectly good life, and
would be just the same if these men did not stupefy
themselves. It is taken for granted that the con-
stant use of stupefying things does not darken their
consciences.

Notwithstanding the fact that every one knows by
experience that from the use of wine and tobacco the
disposition is changed, and things which without their
incitation would have been shameful, cease to be shame-
ful ; that after every reproach from conscience, however
slight it was then, is such a tendency toward folly that
under the influence of stupefying things it is difficult to
think of one’s life and one’s position ; and that the con-
stant and moderate use of things that stupefy produces
the same physiological effect as the immediate and im-
moderate use of them, — to men who drink and smoke in
moderation it seems that they use stupefying things, not
at all for the deadening of their consciences, but merelf
for their taste and satisfaction.

130

WHY DO PEOPLE

But it requires only to think about this seriously and
dispassionately, without any special pleading, to under-
stand that in the first place, if the use of stupefying
things taken in large quantities at a time deadens a
man's conscience, then the constant use of these things
must produce the same effect, since the stupefying things
always act physiologically in the same way — always ex-
citing and then moderating the activity of the brain,
whether they be taken in large or in small quantities ;
and in the second place, that if stupefying things have
the power of deadening the conscience, then they have
it always, both when under their influence murder, rob-
bery, or violence is perpetrated, and also when under
their influence a word is spoken which would not be
spoken, when thoughts and feelings would be aroused
which without them would not have been aroused. And
in the third place, that if the use of stupefying things is
necessary for robbers, murderers, and prostitutes to stifle
their consciences with, then it is just as necessary for
men occupied in professions of which their consciences
do not approve, even though these professions are called
lawful, and are held in honor by other men. In a word,
it is impossible not to understand that the use of stupe-
fying things in large or in small quantities, periodically
or constantly, in upper or lower circles, is due to one
and the same cause — the need of quieting the voice of
conscience so as not to see the discord between life and
the demands of conscience.

Ill

In this only is the reason for the spread of all kinds
of stupefying things, and among others of tobacco,
perhaps the widest spread and most dangerous of
them all.

It is taken for granted that tobacco enlivens and
clears the mind, that, like every other habit, it allures to
itself, in no case producing that effect of deadening
conscience such as is caused by wine. But all it re-

STUPEFY THEMSELVES? 13 1

quires is to look more carefully at the conditions in
which special temptation to smoke appears, in order to
be convinced that the stupefaction caused by tobacco,
just the same as that caused by wine, affects the con-
science, and that men consciously have recourse to this
form of stupefaction, especially when they need it for
this object.

If tobacco merely cleared the mind and made men
cheerful, then there would not be any of that terrible
necessity of using it and especially in certain definite
circumstances, and men would not say that they had
rather give up bread than their tobacco, and they would
not in reality often prefer smoking to eating.

That cook who murdered his baruinya said that, when
he went into her bedroom and cut her throat, and she
fell back with the death rattle, and the blood spurted
out in a torrent, a panic seized him.

“I could not finish the job,'’ he said; ‘‘I went from
the bedroom into the drawing-room, sat down there,
and smoked a cigarette.”

Only when he had stupefied himself with tobacco,
did he feel sufficiently fortified to return to the bed-
room, and finish despatching the old lady, and examine
her things.

Evidently the need of smoking at that minute was
induced in him, not by the desire to clear or cheer his
mind, but by the necessity of drowning something
which prevented him from accomplishing the deed he
had planned.

Such a definite necessity of stupefying oneself by
tobacco in certain very difficult moments will occur to
every smoker. I remember that in the days when I
smoked I used to feel the special need of tobacco. It
was always at moments when I wanted not to remember
what I remembered, wanted to forget, wanted not to
think.

I am sitting alone, I am doing nothing, I know that
I ought to begin my work, and I do not feel like it. I
smoke and continue sitting idle.

I promised some one to be at his house at five o'clock

ija

WHY DO PEOPLE

and I have stayed too long. I remember that I am late,
but I do not want to remember it, and I smoke. I am
annoyed, and I say something disagreeable to a man,
and I know that I am doing wrong, and I see that I
ought to stop doing so, but I feel an inclination to my
bad temper — I smoke, and I continue to be angry.

I am playing cards, and I am losing more than I
wanted to hazard — I smoke.

I have placed myself in an awkward position, I have
done something wrong, I have made a mistake, and I
must recognize my position in order to escape from it,
but I do not want to do so — I blame others and smoke!
I am writing and am not quite satisfied with what I am
writing. I ought to throw it away, but I want to finish
writing what I had in mind, and I smoke. I am discuss-
ing, and I see that my opponent and I do not under-
stand and cannot understand each other; but I want
to express my thoughts to the end, and I go on speaking,
and I smoke.

The peculiarity of tobacco, distinguishing it from other
stupefying things, besides the faculty which it offers for
stupefying and its apparent harmlessness, includes also
its portability, so to speak, the possibility of applying it
to various minor occasions. To say nothing of the fact
that the use of opium, wine, hashish, is coupled with cer-
tain accessories which cannot always be had, while one
can always take tobacco and paper with one, and that
the smoker of opium, the alcohol user, arouses horror,
while the man that smokes tobacco presents nothing re-
pulsive ; the advantage of tobacco over other intoxicants
is that, whereas the intoxication of opium, hashish, or
wine is spread over all impressions and acts, received
or produced during a sufficiently protracted period of
time, the intoxication of tobacco may be directed to
every separate occasion.

If you want to do what you ought not to do, you will
smoke a cigarette, you will stupefy yourself just as much
as is necessary in order to do what ought not to be done,
and again you are fresh and can think and speak clearly ;
for if you feel that you have been doing what you ought

STUPEFY THEMSELVES?

133

not to have done, again comes the cigarette, and the disa*
greeable consciousness of the wrong or awkward action
is done away with, and you can occupy yourself with
other things and forget.

But to say nothing of the frequent occasions when
every smoker betakes himself to smoking, not for a
gratification of habit and a pastime, but as a means of
deadening conscience for actions which have to be per-
formed, or are already performed, — is not the strenuous
definite interdependence between men’s ways of life
and their passion for smoking evident ?

When do boys begin to smoke ?

Almost always when they lose their childish inno-
cence.

Why do smokers cease to smoke as soon as they come
into more moral conditions of life, and begin to smoke
as soon as they come into perverted environment ? Why
do gamblers almost all smoke ? Why is it that the
women that lead a moral life smoke least of all ? Why
do prostitutes and madmen a// smoke ?

Habit is habit, but evidently smoking is directly de-
pendent on the need of deadening conscience, and it
attains its end. How far smoking deadens the voice of
conscience may be observed in the case of almost any
smoker. Every smoker, yielding to his passion, either
forgets or despises the very first demands of society,
such as he claims from others and observes in all other
circumstances, as long as his conscience is not smothered
by tobacco. Every man of our average education recog-
nizes that it is not proper, polite, or humane for one’s
own pleasure to disturb the comfort and happiness and
still more the health of others. No one permits himself
to wet a room where people are sitting, or to make a
disturbance or shout, or admit a cold, hot, or fetid at-
mosphere, or perform actions which disturb or injure
others. But out of a thousand smokers not one hesi-
tates to puff out volumes of smoke into a room where
women or children that do not smoke are breathing the
atmosphere. Even if smokers are accustomed to ask
of those present, “ Is it disagreeable to you ? ” — they all

^34

WHY DO PEOPLE

know that the usual reply is, ‘‘Oh, we like it!” — not-
withstanding the fact that it cannot be pleasant for one
not smoking to breathe the vitiated air, and to find
stinking cigar-ends in glasses, cups, and plates, on
candlesticks or even in ash-trays.

But even if grown-up non-smokers endure tobacco, at
least for children, of whom no one asks permission, it
cannot possibly be agreeable or advantageous. But,
meantime, respectable people, humane in all the other
relations of life, smoke in the presence of children, at
dinners, in little rooms, vitiating the atmosphere with
tobacco smoke, and not feeling the slightest pricking
of conscience because they do so.

It is generally said, and I used to say, that smoking
conduces to intellectual labor. And undoubtedly this is
so, if one considers only the amount of intellectual labor.
It seems to a man who smokes, and therefore ceases to
value and weigh his thought, it seems as if many thoughts
suddenly occurred to him. But it is not at all that many
thoughts have occurred, but only that he has lost con-
trol of his thoughts.

When a man is working he is always conscious of two
beings in himself ; the one working, the other estimating
the work. The stricter the estimate the slower and the
better the work, and vice versa. If the one that esti-
mates finds himself under the influence of an intoxica-
tion, then there will be more of the work, but its quality
will be worse. “ If I do not smoke, I cannot write. If
I do not drink, I begin, but I cannot go on.”

This is commonly said, and I used to say so. What
does it mean .? Either that you have nothing to write,
or else that what you wish to write is not yet sufficiently
matured in your inner consciousness, but is only con-
fusedly beginning to present itself to you, and the
estimating critic dwelling in you, not being stupefied
by tobacco, tells you so. If you did not smoke you
would put aside what you had begun, and await the
time when what you had in mind became clear to you,
you would try to think out what had dimly presented
itself to you, you would consider the objections that

STUPEFY THEMSELVES?

135

arose, and you would direct your whole attention to
clarifying your thought.

But you smoke, and the critic who has his seat within
you becomes stupefied, and the obstacle in your work is
removed. What seemed to you insignificant when you
were unintoxicated with tobacco again acquires impor-
tance ; what seemed to you obscure, no longer seems
so; the obstacles rising before you are concealed, and
you continue to write, and you write much and rapidly.

IV

“ But,” it is frequently said, ** may not a slight brief
change, like the mild exhilaration produced by a moderate
use of wine and tobacco, bring about some significant re-
sults ? It is comprehensible that if a man smokes opium,
hashish, or drinks so much wine as to fall and lose his
senses, the consequences of such a stupefying of him-
self may be very grave ; but that a man should come
under the exceedingly mild effects of alcoholic exhilara-
tion or tobacco could never have any serious conse-
quences.”

It seems to people that a slight intoxication, a slight
darkening of consciousness, can never produce a serious
effect. But to think so is the same as to think that it
may be injurious to a watch to strike it against a stone,
but that to put an obstacle in its works cannot harm it.

You see the chief work which moves the whole life
of a man proceeds not in the motion of arms and legs,
the physical powers, but in the consciousness. In order
for a man to accomplish something with his arms and
legs, he must first undergo a certain change in his
consciousness. And this change determines all the
man’s subsequent acts. These changes are always brief,
almost unnoticeable. Briillof was correcting an
for a pupil. The pupil, glancing at the changes that
had been made, said : —

“ Here you have scarcely touched the /tude, but it is
entirely changed.”

WHY DO PEOPLE

136

Briillof answered : —

“ Art begins where scarcely begins.”

This observation is strikingly true, not in relation tc
art alone, but to all of life. It may be said that a true
life begins where “ scarcely ” begins, where the scarcely
perceptible, almost infinitely small, changes take place.
The true life is produced, not where the great externals
are effectuated, where men move about, jostle one an-
other, struggle, and fight, but it is produced where the
scarcely differentiated changes are accomplished.

The true life of Raskolnikof^ was not accomplished
when he killed the old money-lender and her sister.
While he was killing the old woman, and especially her
sister, he was not living his true life, but was acting
like a machine, doing what he could not help doing,
discharging the cartridge with which he had long ago
been loaded. One old woman lay killed, the other was
before him there ; the ax was in his hand.

The true life of Raskolnikof was not proceeding at
the time when he met the old woman’s sister, but at the
time when he had not as yet killed even the old woman
herself, had not yet entered another person’s room with
murder in view, had not taken the ax in his hand, had
not the noose under his cloak on which he hung it,
before he had ever thought of the old woman ; but it was
while he was lying on the divan in his own room, not
even thinking of the old woman or even whether he
could or could not at the will of another man wipe from
the face of the earth a useless and dangerous person,
but was deciding whether it was suitable or not for him
to live in Petersburg, whether it was suitable or not for
him to take money from his mother, and other questions
not at all affecting the old woman. And here at that
time, in the animal kingdom, entirely independent of the
reality, were decided the questions whether he should
or should not kill the old money-lender. These ques-
tions were decided, not when he, having killed one old
woman, stood with his ax before the second, but at the

1 The hero of Dostayevsky’s most famous novel, ** Crime and Punish*

looni.”— £ d.

STUPEFY THEMSELVES?

137

time when he had not yet acted, but was only thinking,
when his conscience alone was working, and in this con-
science scarcely perceptible changes were taking place.

Now there is often needed the greatest clearness of
mind, especially important for the regular decision of a
question, and a single glass of wine, a single cigarette
smoked, may prevent the decision of the question, may
turn this question, may stifle the voice of conscience, may
make the decision of the question, to the profit of the
lower animal nature as was the case with Raskolnikof.

The changes are imperceptible, and from them come
the most enormous and awful consequences. From
what happens when a man has decided and begun to act,
great material changes may ensue : houses, property,
men’s bodies, may be destroyed, but nothing can happen
greater than what was hidden in the man’s conscience.
The limits of what may come forth are given to
conscience.

But from the scarcely perceptible changes which take
place in the domain of the conscience may proceed con-
sequences utterly beyond the power of the imagination
to show their importance, and wholly beyond limits.

Let it not be thought that what I say has anything in
common with questions of free will or determinism.

Discussions about these subjects are superfluous for
my purpose or for any other. Without deciding the
question whether a man may or may not act as he wishes
— a question, in my opinion, wrongly stated — I only
say that, as human activity is determined by scarcely
perceptible changes in the conscience, then — it being
all one, whether you do or do not recognize the so-called
freedom of the will — one must be especially attentive
to the state in which these almost imperceptible changes
appear, as it is necessary to be especially attentive to
the condition of the weights by means of which we
weigh objects.

We must, as far as in us lies, try to place ourselves
and others in such conditions that the clearness and deli-
cacy of the thoughts necessary for the regular work of
the conscience may not be disturbed, and not to do the

IJS WHY DO PEOPLE

opposite by trying to make this work of the conscience
more difficult and troublesome by the use of stupefying
things.

A man is both a spiritual and an animal being. A man
may be moved, by influencing only his spiritual nature,
and may be moved by influencing his animal nature, just
as a watch may be moved by a hand and by a main wheel.
And just as, in a watch, it is more convenient to regulate
its movement by an internal mechanism, so a man —
you yourself or any one else — is more conveniently
guided by his conscience. And as in watches it is nec-
essary more than all to observe that by which the central
mechanism is more conveniently moved, so in the case
of a man it is more than all necessary to observe purity,
clearness of conscience, whereby it is more convenient
to move a man. It is impossible to doubt this, and all
men know it. But the necessity arises for men to
stupefy themselves. Men are not so desirous of their
consciences working regularly as for it to seem to them
that what they are doing is regular, and they deliberately
employ such means as prevent the regular work of the
conscience.

V

Men drink and smoke, not to keep their spirits up,
not for gaiety's sake, not because it is pleasant, but in
order to stifle conscience in themselves. And if this is
so, then how terrible must be the consequences. In
fact, just think what kind of a building men would build
if they did not have a straight rule whereby to lay the
walls, or a rectangular rule whereby to square the
corners, but a soft rule which would give at all the irreg-
ularities of the wall, and a square which would bend out
and in for every acute and obtuse angle !

But now by means of this self-stupefaction this very
thing is done in life. Life does not fit conscience —
conscience is made to yield to life. This is done in the
case of individual lives, it is done also in the life of all
humanity which is made up of individual lives.

STUPEFY THEMSELVES? 139

In order to comprehend the full significance of such
a stupefying of conscience, let any man remember care-
fully his spiritual state at every period of his life. Every
man finds that at every period of his life before him stood
certain moral questions which he has had to decide, and
from the decision of which depended all the welfare of
his life. For the decision of such questions great stress
of attention was required. This stress of attention con-
stitutes labor. In every labor, especially at its com-
mencement, there is a period when the labor seems
difficult, painful, but human weakness suggests the
desire to shirk it. Physical labor is painful at first;
still more so is intellectual labor.

As Lessing says, men have the quality of ceasing to
think when thinking begins to present difficulties, and
especially so, I add, when thinking begins to be fruitful.
A man feels that the decision of questions facing him
demands strenuous, often painful, labor, and he wants
to get rid of it. If there were not internal means of
stupefaction, he could not drive away from his conscious-
ness these insistent questions, and willy-nilly he would
be compelled to decide them.

Now the man knows the means of ridding himself of
them whenever they present themselves, and he employs
them. As soon as the questions presenting themselves
for solution begin to torment him, he betakes himself
to these means, and saves himself from the discomfort
caused by the disturbing questions. The consciousness
ceases to demand their decision, and the undecided ques-
tions remain undecided until the next period of enlight-
enment. But at the next period of enlightenment the
same thing repeats itself, and a man for months, for
years, sometimes his life long, continues to face the
same moral problems, having never advanced one step
toward their solution. And meantime on the decision
of these moral questions the whole movement of life
depends.

Something occurs analogous to what a man would do,
who, needing to see the bottom through turbid water, in
order to reach a precious pearl, and not liking to go

140

WHY DO PEOPLE

into the water, should deliberately roil the water as soon
as it began to settle and become transparent. Often
for a whole lifetime a man who has stupefied himself
stands motionless on the same, once adopted, obscure,
contradictory system of philosophy, each time the period
of enlightenment approaches, beating against the same
wall on which he had beaten ten, twenty years before,
and finding it impossible to break through it, because
he had deliberately blunted the keenness of his thoughts
whereby only he could break through it. Let any one
remember how he was at the epoch when he smoked
and drank, and let him verify the same thing in others,
and he will see one constant line of demarcation separat-
ing men who stupefy themselves from men who are free
from the habit ; the more a man stupefies himself, the
more immovable he is morally.

VI

The effects on individuals of opium and hashish, as
described for us by them, are horrible ; horrible for the
drunkard are the consequences of the use of alcohol, as
we well know ; but incomparably more horrible for soci-
ety in general are the consequences of taking brandy,
wine, and tobacco, though the majority of men, and
especially the so-called classes of our world, use them
in moderation, and consider them harmless.

The consequences must necessarily be horrible if it
be granted, as one must grant, that the dominant activ-
ity of society — political, official, scientific, literary, ar-
tistic — is largely carried on by men who find themselves
in an abnormal condition — by intoxicated persons.

It is ordinarily taken for granted that a man who,
like the majority of the people in our well-to-do classes,
uses alcoholic stimulants every time he takes food, finds
himself the next day, when he goes to work, in a per-
fectly normal and sober state. But this is absolutely
false. The man who in the evening drinks a bottle of
wine, a glass of vodka, or two tankards of ale, finds him*

STUPEFY THEMSELVES?

141

self in the customary condition of headachiness or de-
pression which follows exhilaration, and therefore in
a condition of intellectual debasement, which is still
further increased by smoking.

For a man who constantly smokes and drinks in mod-
eration to bring his brain into a normal condition, he
must go for a week, or even more, without drinking
or smoking,^ and this rarely happens.

Thus the large part of all that is produced in our
world, both by men that direct and teach others and by
those directed and taught, is accomplished in a non-sober
condition.

Now do not let this be taken as a jest or as an exag-
geration — the ugliness, and above all the senselessness,
of our lives proceed, primarily, from the constant con-
dition of intoxication in which the majority of men find
themselves. How would it be possible for men not in-
toxicated calmly to do all that is done in our world, from
the Eiffel tower to the general war debt ?

Without the slightest necessity a society is formed ;
capital is paid in, men work, enter into calculations, form
plans ; millions of work-days, millions of puds of iron,
are consumed in building a tower ; and millions of men
consider it their duty to climb up the tower, stay there
a while, and go down again ; and the construction and

^ But why are men that do not drink or smoke often found on an in-
tellectual and moral plane incomparably lower than men that drink and
smoke ? And why is it that men that drink and smoke often display the
very highest intellectual and moral qualities ?

The answer to this is : first, we do not know the height to which
smokers and drinkers might attain if they did not smoke and drink.
From the fact that men of strong moral fiber, though they submit to the
degrading influences of stupefying things, nevertheless produce great
works, we may merely conclude that they would produce still greater ones
if they did not stupefy themselves. It is very evident, as an acquaintance
of mine said to me, that the works of Kant would not have been written in
such a strange and execrable style if he had not smoked so much.

In the second place, we must not forget that the lower a man stands
intellectually and morally, the less he is sensible of the discord between
conscience and life, and therefore the less he feels the necessity of self-stu-
pefaction; and therefore it so often happens that the most sensitive natures
— those that are painfully conscious of the discord between life and con-
science — fall under the influence of narcotics, and are destroyed by thenir
—Author’s Note.

WHY DO PEOPLE

14a

the visiting of this tower arouses in men’s minds no criti-
cism upon it, but only a desire to build still more tall
towers. Could sober people have done such a thing ?

Or again : All the European nations have been oc-
cupied for decades in devising the very best means of
destroying human life, and in training all their young
men that had reached mature growth how to commit
murder. All know that there is no danger of a descent
of barbarians, that these preparations for murder are
meant by Christian and civilized nations against one
another, all know that this is burdensome, painful, in-
convenient, wasteful, immoral, blasphemous, and sense-
less — and yet all prepare for mutual murder : some,
inventing political combinations as to who shall be allied
with whom, and who shall be killed ; others taking the
command of these prospective murderers ; still others
submitting against their will, against the dictates of
their conscience, against reason, to these murderous
preparations.

Could sober men do this ?

Only intoxicated men, not knowing a sober moment,
could do such things, and live in such a horrible state
of discord between life and conscience, as the men of
our day live, not only in this, but in all other respects.

Never, it seems to me, have men lived in such evident
contradiction between the demands of conscience and
their acts.

The humanity of our time is, as it were, fastened to
something. It is as if some external cause prevented
it from taking that position which is natural to it ac-
cording to its conscience. And this cause — if not the
only one, at least the principal one — is the physical
condition of stupefaction in which, by wine or tobacco,
the immense majority of the men of our time bring
themselves.

Emancipation from this terrible evil will be an epoch
in the life of humanity, and this epoch is apparently at
hand. The evil is recognized. The change in conscience
in relation to the use of stupefying things has already
taken place ; men have recognized their terrible harm-

STUPEFY THEMSELVES? 143

fulness and begin to point them out, and this impercep*
tible change in the conscience inevitably brings with it
the emancipation of men from the use of stupefying
things The emancipation of men from stupefying
things opens their eyes to the demands of their con-
sciences, and they begin to lead lives in accordance with
conscience.

And this is apparently beginning to take place. And,
as always, it begins with the upper classes, when all the
lower classes are already infected.

CHURCH AND STATE

W HAT an extraordinary thing it is ! There are peo-
ple who seem ready to climb out of their skins
for the sake of making others accept this, and not that,
form of revelation. They cannot rest till others have
accepted their form of revelation, and no other. They
anathematize, persecute, and kill whom they can of the
dissentients. Other groups of people do the same —
anathematize, persecute, and kill whom they can of the
dissentients. And others again do the same. So that
they are all anathematizing, persecuting, and killing —
demanding that every one should believe as they do.
And it results that there are hundreds of sects all anath-
ematizing, persecuting, and killing one another.

At first I was astonished that such an obvious absurd-
ity — such an evident contradiction — did not destroy
religion itself. How can religious people remain so de-
luded ? And really, viewed from the general, external
point of view it is incomprehensible, and proves irref-
ragably that every religion is a fraud, and that the whole
thing is superstition, as the dominant philosophy of to-
day declares. And looking at things from this general
point of view, I inevitably came to acknowledge that all
religion is a human fraud. But I could not help paus-
ing at the reflection that the very absurdity and obvious-
ness of the fraud, and the fact that nevertheless all
humanity yields to it, indicates that this fraud must rest
on some basis that is not fraudulent. Otherwise we could
not let it deceive us — it is too stupid. The very fact
that all of mankind that really lives a human life yields
to this fraud, obliged me to acknowledge the importance

144

CHURCH AND STATE

HS

of the phenomena on which the fraud is based. And
in consequence of this reflection, I began to analyze the
Christian teaching, which, for all Christendom, supplies
the basis of this fraud.

That is what was apparent from the general point of
view. But from the individual point of view — which
shows us that each man (and I myself) must, in order to
live, always have a religion show him the meaning of life
— the fact that violence is employed in questions of reli-
gion is yet more amazing in its absurdity.

Indeed how can it, and why should it, concern any
one to make somebody else, not merely have the same
religion as himself, but also profess it in the same way
as he does ? A man lives, and must, therefore, know
why he lives. He has established his relation to God ;
he knows the very truth of truths, and I know the very
truth of truths. Our expression may differ ; the essence
must be the same — we are both of us men.

Then why should I — what can induce me to — oblige
any one or demand of any one absolutely to express his
truth as I express it ?

I cannot compel a man to alter his religion either
by violence or by cunning or by fraud — false mira-
cles.

His religion is his life. How can I take from him
his religion and give him another ? It is like taking out
his heart and putting another in its place. I can only
do that if his religion and mine are words, and are not
what gives him life ; if it is a wart and not a heart. Such
a thing is impossible also, because no man can deceive or
compel another to believe what he does not believe ; for
if a man has adjusted his relation toward God and knows
that religion is the relation in which man stands toward
God he cannot desire to define another man’s relation to
God by means of force or fraud. That is impossible, but
yet it is being done, and has been done everywhere and
always. That is to say, it can never really be done, be-
cause it is in itself impossible ; but something has been
done, and is being done, that looks very much like it.
What has been, and is being done, is that some people

146 CHURCH AND STATE

impose on others a counterfeit of religion and others
accept this counterfeit — this sham religion.

Religion cannot be forced and cannot be accepted for
the sake of anything, force, fraud, or profit. Therefore
what is so accepted is not religion but a fraud. And
this religious fraud is a long-established condition of
man’s life.

In what does this fraud consist, and on what is it
based ? What induces the deceivers to produce it ? and
what makes it plausible to the deceived ? I will not dis-
cuss the same phenomena in Brahminism, Buddhism, Con-
fucianism, and Mohammedanism, though any one who
has read about those religions may see that the case has
been the same in them as in Christianity ; but I will speak
only of the latter — it being the religion known, neces-
sary, and dear to us. In Christianity, the whole fraud is
built up on the fantastic conception of a Church ; a con-
ception founded on nothing, and which as soon as we
begin to study Christianity amazes us by its unexpected
and useless absurdity.

Of all the godless ideas and words there is none more
godless than that of a Church. There is no idea which
has produced more evil, none more inimical to Christ’s
teaching, than the idea of a Church.

In reality the word ekklesia means an assembly and
nothing more, and it is so used in the Gospels. In the
language of all modern nations the word ekklesia (or the
equivalent word “ church ”) means a house for prayer.
Beyond that, the word has not progressed in any lan-
guage, — notwithstanding the fifteen hundred years’ ex-
istence of the Church-fraud. According to the definition
given to the word by priests (to whom the Church-fraud
is necessary) it amounts to nothing else than a preface
which says : ‘‘ All that I am going to say is true, and if
you disbelieve I shall burn you, or denounce you, and do
you all manner of harm.” This conception is a soph-
istry, needed for certain dialectical purposes, and it has
remained the possession of those to whom it is neces-
sary. Among the people, and not only among common
people, but also in society, among educated people, no

CHURCH AND STATE

H7

such conception is held at all, even though it is taught
in the catechisms. Strange as it seems to examine this
definition, one has to do so because so many people pro-
claim it seriously as something important, though it is
absolutely false. When people say that the Church is
an assembly of the true believers, nothing is really said
(leaving aside the fantastic inclusion of the dead) ; for if
I assert that the choir is an assembly of all true musi-
cians, I have elucidated nothing unless I say what I
mean by true musicians. In theology we learn that
true believers are those who follow the teaching of the
Church, i,€, belong to the Church.

Not to dwell on the fact that there are hundreds of
such true Churches, this definition tells us nothing, and
at first seems as useless as the definition of choir ” as
the assembly of true musicians. But then we catch
sight of the fox’s tail. The Church is true, and it is
one, and in it are pastors and flocks, and the pastors,
ordained by God, teach this true and only religion. So
that it amounts to saying : By God, all that we are go-
ing to say, is all real truth.” That is all. The whole
fraud lies in that, — in the word and idea of a Church.
And the meaning of the fraud is merely that there are
people who are beside themselves with desire to teach
their religion to other people.

And why are they so anxious to teach their religion
to other people } If they had a real religion they would
know that religion is the understanding of life, the rela-
tion each man establishes to God, and that conse-
quently you cannot teach a religion, but only a counter-
feit of religion. But they want to teach. What for ?
The simplest reply would be that the priest wants rolls
and eggs, and the archbishop wants a palace, fish-
pies, and a silk cassock. But this reply is insufficient.
Such is no doubt the inner, psychological motive
for the deception, — that which maintains the fraud.
But as it would be insufficient, when asking why
one man (an executioner) consents to kill another
against whom he feels no anger, — to say that the
executioner kills because he thereby gets bread and

148 CHURCH AND STATE

brandy and a red shirt, so it is insufficient to say
that the metropolitan of Kief with his monks stuffs
sacks with straw ^ and calls them relics of the saints,
merely to get thirty thousand rubles a year income.
The one act and the other is too terrible and too re-
volting to human nature for so simple and rude an
explanation to be sufficient. Both the executioner and
the metropolitan explaining their actions would have
a whole series of arguments based chiefly on historical
tradition. Men must be executed ; executions have
gone on since the world commenced. If I don’t do
it another will. I hope, by God’s grace, to do it bet-
ter than another would. So also the metropolitan
would say : External worship is necessary ; since the
commencement of the world the relics of the saints
have been worshiped. People respect the relics in the
Kief Catacombs and pilgrims come here ; I, by God’s
grace, hope to make the most pious use of the money
thus blasphemously obtained.

To understand the religious fraud it is necessary to
go to its source and origin.

We are speaking about what we know of Christianity.
Turn to the commencement of Christian doctrine in the
Gospels and we find a teaching which plainly excludes
the external worship of God, condemning it ; and which,
with special clearness, positively repudiates mastership.
But from the time of Christ onward we find a deviation
from these principles laid down by Christ. This devia-
tion begins from the times of the Apostles and espe^
cially from that hankerer after mastership — Paul. And
the farther Christianity goes the more it deviates, and
the more it adopts the methods of external worship
and mastership which Christ had so definitely con-
demned. But in the early times of Christianity the
conception of a Church was only employed to refer to
all those who shared the beliefs which I consider true.

^ The celebrated Catacombs of the Kief Monastery draw crowds of
pilgrims to worship the relics of the saints. It is said that a fire once
broke out in one of the chapels, and that those who hastened to save the
“ incorruptible body ” of one of the saints discovered that the precious

CHURCH AND STATE

149

That conception of the Church is quite correct if it does
not include those that make a verbal expression of
religion instead of its expression in the whole of life —
for religion cannot be expressed in words.

The idea of a true Church was also used as an argu-
ment against dissenters. But till the time of the Em-
peror Constantine and the Council of Nicaea, the Church
was only an idea.

Since the Emperor Constantine and the Council of
Nicaea the Church becomes a reality, and a fraudulent
reality, — that fraud of metropolitans with relics, and
priests with the eucharist, Iberian Mothers of God,^
synods, etc., which so astonish and horrify us, and
which are so odious that they cannot be explained
merely by the avarice of those that perpetuate them.
The fraud is ancient, and was not begun merely for the
profit of private individuals. No one would be such a
monster of iniquity as to be the first to perpetrate it, if
that were the only reason. The reasons which caused
the thing to be done were evil : “ By their fruits ye shall
know them.” The root was evil — hatred, pride, enmity
against Arius and others ; and another yet greater
evil, the alliance of Christianity with power. Power,
personified in the Emperor Constantine, who, in the
heathen conception of things, stood at the summit of
human greatness (he was enrolled among the gods),
accepts Christianity, gives an example to all the people,
converts the people, lends a helping hand against the
heretics, and by means of the Ecumenical Council es-
tablishes the one true Christian religion.

The Catholic Christian religion was established for
all time. It was so natural to yield to this decep-
tion that, to the present day, there are people who
believe in the saving efficacy of that assembly. Yet
that was the moment when a majority of Christians
abandoned their religion. At that turning the great

relic was merely a bag stuffed with straw. This is only a specimen of
many similar tales, some of which are true and others invented. — Tr.

^ The Iberian Mother of God is the most celebrated of the miraculous
ikom in Moscow. — Tr.

CHURCH AND STATE

iSo

majority ot Christians entered the heathen path, which
they have followed ever since. Charlemagne and Vladi-
mir^ continued in the same direction.

And the Church fraud continues till now. The fraud
consists in this : that the conversion of the powers-that-
be to Christianity is necessary for those that understand
the letter, but not the spirit, of Christianity; but the
acceptance of Christianity without the abandonment of
power is a satire on, and a perversion of, Christianity.

The sanctification of political power by Christianity
is blasphemy ; it is the negation of Christianity.

After fifteen hundred years of this blasphemous alli-
ance of pseudo-Christianity with the State, it needs a
strong effort to free oneself from all the complex sophis-
tries by which, always and everywhere (to please the
authorities), the sanctity and righteousness of State-
power, and the possibility of its being Christian, has
been pleaded.

In truth, the words a “ Christian State ” resemble the
words ‘‘hot ice.” The thing is either not a State using
violence, or it is not Christian.

In order to understand this clearly we must forget all
those fantastic notions in which we have been carefully
brought up, and must ask plainly, what is the purpose
of such historical and juridical science as has been taught
us ? Such sciences have no sound basis ; their purpose
is merely to supply a vindication for the use of violence.

Omitting the history of the Persians, the Medes, etc.,
let us take the history of that government which first
formed an alliance with Christianity.

A robbers’ nest existed at Rome. It grew by robbery,
violence, murders, and it subdued nations. These rob-
bers and their descendants, led by their chieftains
(whom they sometimes called Caesar, sometimes Augus-
tus), robbed and tormented nations to satisfy their de-

1 Vladimir adopted Christianity a.d. 988. Many inhabitants of his cap-
ital city, Kief, were disinclined to follow his example, so he “ acted vigo-
rously ” (as a Russian historian remarks), t.e. he had the people driven
into the Dniepr to be baptized. In other parts of his dominions Chris-
tianity was spread among the unwilling heathen population ** by Ere and
sword.” — Tr,

CHURCH AND STATE

151

sires. One of the descendants of these robber-chief Sj
Constantine (a reader of books and a man satiated by
an evil life), preferred certain Christian dogmas to those
of the old creeds : instead of offering human sacrifices
he preferred the mass ; instead of the worship of
Apollo, Venus, and Zeus, he preferred that of a single
God with a son — Christ. So he decreed that this re-
ligion should be introduced among those that were under
his power.

No one said to him : ‘"The kings exercise authority
among the nations, but among you it shall not be so.
Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not lay up
riches, judge not, condemn not, resist not him that is
evil.”

But they said to him : '‘You wish to be called a
Christian and to continue to be the chieftain of the
robbers, — to kill, burn, fight, lust, execute, and live in
luxury } That can all be arranged.”

And they arranged a Christianity for him, and ar-
ranged it very smoothly, better even than could have
been expected. They foresaw that, reading the Gospels,
it might occur to him that all this {t.e. a Christian life)
is demanded — and not the building of temples or wor-
shiping in them. This they foresaw, and they care-
fully devised such a Christianity for him as would let
him continue to live his old heathen life unembarrassed.
On the one hand Christ, God’s Son, only came to bring
salvation to him and to everybody. Christ having
died, Constantine can live as he likes. More even
than that, — one may repent and swallow a little bit of
bread and some wine, and that will bring salvation, and
all will be forgiven.

But more even than that : they sanctify his robber-
chieftainship, and say that it proceeds from God, and
they anoint him with holy oil. And he, on his side,
arranges for them the congress of priests that they
wish for, and orders them to say what each man’s rela-
tion to God should be, and orders every one to repeat
what they say.

And they all started repeating it, and were contented

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152

and now this same religion has existed for fifteen hun-
dred years, and other robber-chiefs have adopted it, and
they have all been lubricated with holy oil, and they
were all, all ordained by God. If any scoundrel robs
every one and slays many people, they will oil him, and
he will then be from God. In Russia, Catharine II.,
the adulteress who killed her husband, was from God ;
so, in France, was Napoleon.

To balance matters the priests are not only from God,
but are almost gods, because the Holy Ghost sits inside
them as well as inside the Pope, and in our Synod with
its commandant-officials.

And as soon as one of the anointed robber-chiefs
wishes his own and another folk to begin slaying each
other, the priests immediately prepare some holy
water, sprinkle a cross (which Christ bore and on which
he died because he repudiated such robbers), take the
cross and bless the robber-chief in his work of slaughter-
ing, hanging, and destroying.^

And it all might have been well if only they had been
able to agree about it, and the anointed had not begun
to call each other robbers, which is what they really are,
and the people had not begun to listen to them and to
cease to believe either in anointed people or in deposi-
taries of the Holy Ghost, and had not learned from
them to call them as they call each other, by their right
names, i.e. robbers and deceivers.

But we have only spoken of the robbers incidentally,
because it was they who led the deceivers astray. It
is the deceivers, the pseudo-Christians, that we have to
consider. They became such by their alliance with
the robbers. It could not be otherwise. They turned
from the road when they consecrated the first ruler
and assured him that he, by his power, could help
religion — the religion of humility, self-sacrifice, and
the endurance of evil. All the history, not of the im-
aginary, but of the real, Church, i.e. of the priests under

1 In England the holy water is not used, but an archbishop draws
up a form of prayer for the success of the queen’s army, and a chaplain is
appointed to each regiment to teach the men Christianity. — Tr.

CHURCH AND STATE

153

the sway of kings, is a series of useless efforts of
these unfortunate priests to preserve the truth of the
teaching while preaching it by falsehood, and while
abandoning it in practice. The importance of the
priesthood depends entirely on the teaching it wishes
to spread ; that teaching speaks of humility, self-sacri-
fice, love, poverty ; but it is preached by violence and
wrong-doing.

In order that the priesthood should have something
to teach and that they should have disciples, they can-
not get rid of the teaching. But in order to whitewash
themselves and justify their immoral alliance with power,
they have, by all the cunningest devices possible, to
conceal the essence of the teaching, and for this purpose
they have to shift the center of gravity from what is
essential in the teaching to what is external. And this
is what is done by the priesthood — this is the source
of the sham religion taught by the Church. The
source is the alliance of the priests (calling themselves
the Church) with the powers-that-be, i.e. with violence.
The source of their desire to teach a religion to others
lies in the fact that true religion exposes them, and
they want to replace true religion by a fictitious reli-
gion arranged to justify their deeds.

True religion may exist anywhere except where it is
evidently false, i.e. violent ; it cannot be a State religion.

True religion may exist in all the so-called sects and
heresies, only it surely cannot exist where it is joined to
a State using violence. Curiously enough the names
“ Orthodox-Greek,” ‘‘Catholic,” or “Protestant” reli-
gion, as those words are commonly used, mean nothing
but “religion allied to power,” — State religion and
therefore false religion.

The idea of a Church as a union of many — of the
majority — in one belief and in nearness to the source of
the teaching, was in the first two centuries of Christianity
merely one feeble external argument in favor of the
correctness of certain views. Paul said, “ I know from
Christ Himself.’' Another said, “ I know from Luke.”
And all said, “ We think rightly, and the proof that we

154 CHURCH AND STATE

are right is that we are a big assembly, ekklesia, the
Church.*' But only beginning with the Council of
Nicaea, organized by an emperor, does the Church
become a plain and tangible fraud practised by some of
the people who professed this religion.

They began to say, “It has pleased us and the
Holy Ghost.” The “Church” no longer meant merely
a part of a weak argument, it meant power in the hands
of certain people. It allied itself with the rulers, and
began to act like the rulers. And all that united
itself with power and submitted to power, ceased to be
a religion and became a fraud.

What does Christianity teach, understanding it as the
teaching of any or of all the churches ?

Examine it as you will, compound it or divide it, — ^
the Christian teaching always falls with two sharply
separated parts. There is the teaching of dogmas :
from the divine Son, the Holy Ghost, and the relationship
of these persons, — to the eucharist with or without wine,
and with leavened or with unleavened bread ; and there
is the moral teaching : of humility, freedom from covet-
ousness, purity of mind and body, forgiveness, freedom
from bondage, peacefulness. Much as the doctors of the
Church have labored to mix these two sides of the teach-
ings, they have never mingled, but like oil and water
have always remained apart in larger or smaller circles.

The difference of the two sides of the teaching is
clear to every one, and all can see the fruits of the one
and of the other in the life of men, and by these fruits
can conclude which side is the more important, and (if
one may use the comparative form) more true. One
looks at the history of Christendom from this aspect,
and one is horror-struck. Without exception, from the
very beginning and to the very end, till to-day, look
where one will, examine what dogma you like, — from
the dogma of the divinity of Christ, to the manner of
making the sign of the cross, ^ and to the question of

1 One of the main points of divergence between the “Old-believers”
and the “ Orthodox ” Russian church was whether in making the sign of
the cross two hngers or three should be extended. — T r.

CHURCH AND STATE 155

serving the communion with or without wine, — the fruit
of mental labors to explain the dogmas has always been
envy, hatred, executions, banishments, slaughter of
women and children, burnings and tortures. Look on
the other side, the moral teaching from the going into
the wilderness to commune with God, to the practice
of supplying food to those who are in prison ; the fruits
of it are all our conceptions of goodness, all that is
joyful, comforting, and that serves as a beacon to us
in history

People before whose eyes the fruits of the one and
other side of Christianity were not yet evident, might
be misled and could hardly help being misled. And
people might be misled who were sincerely drawn into
disputes about dogmas, not noticing that by such dis-
putes they were serving not God but the devil, not no-
ticing that Christ said plainly that He came to destroy
all dogmas ; those also might be led astray who had in-
herited a traditional belief in the importance of these
dogmas, and had received such a perverse mental train-
ing that they could not see their mistake ; and again,
those ignorant people might be led astray to whom
these dogmas seemed nothing but words or fantastic
notions. But we to whom the simple meaning of the
Gospels — repudiating all dogmas — is evident, we be-
fore whose eyes are the fruits of these dogmas in his-
tory, cannot be so misled. History is for us a means
— even a mechanical means — of verifying the teach-
ing.

Is the dogma of the Immaculate Conception neces-
sary or no^ ? What has come of it ? Hatred, abuse,
irony. And did it bring any benefit ? None at all.

Was the teaching that the adulteress should not be
sentenced necessary or not ? What has come of it ?
Thousands and thousands of times people have been
softened by that recollection.

Again, does everybody agree about any one of the
dogmas ? No. Do people agree that it is good to give
to him that has need.^ Yes, all agree.

But the one side, the dogmas — about which every one

156

CHURCH AND STATE

disagrees, and which no one requires — is what the
priesthood gave out, and still gives out, under the name
of religion ; while the other side, about which all can
agree, and which is necessary to all, and which saves
people, is the side which the priesthood, though they
have not dared to reject it, have also not dared to set
forth as a teaching, for that teaching repudiates them.

Religion is the meaning we give to our lives, it is that
which gives strength and direction to our life. Every
one that lives finds such a meaning, and lives on the
basis of that meaning. If man finds no meaning in life,
he dies. In this search man uses all that the previous
efforts of humanity have supplied. And what humanity
has reached we call revelation. Revelation is what
helps man to understand the meaning of life.

Such is the relation in which man stands toward
religion.

NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR

This article is prohibited in Russia, and, though written several
years ago, has never been printed in Russian.

I once asked Tolstoi about this article, in which it seemed to me
that the truth was told somewhat roughly and even harshly. He
explained that it was a rough draft of an article he had planned but
had not brought into satisfactory shape. After it had been put
aside for some time, in favor of other work, a friend borrowed it and
took a copy, and it began to circulate from hand to hand in written
or hectographed form. Tolstoi does not regret the publicity thus
obtained for the article, as it expresses something which he feels to
be true and important.

A translation, made probably from an incorrect copy, or from the
French, has already appeared in English, but a retranslation is not the
less wanted on that account. A little book, professing to be by Count
L. Tolstoi, and entitled ‘‘Vicious Pleasures” (a title Tolstoi never
used) was published in London some years ago. It consisted of
translations, or perhaps I should rather say parodies, of five essays by
Tolstoi. But, to borrow from Macaulay, they were translated much
as Bottom was in “ Midsummer Night’s Dream ” when he had an
ass’s head on. In many places it is impossible to make out what
the essays mean. One does not even know whether it is the
Church or the State, or both, that are “Vicious Pleasures.”

The translator evidently had some qualms of conscience, for he
concludes his preface with the words : “ If fault be found with the
present translator for the manner in which he has reproduced Count

CHURCH AND STATE

157

Tolstoi’s work in English, he would ask his critics to remember that
he too, like Kant, dearly loves his pipe.”

If that be really the explanation of the quality of the work, —
^ Vicious Pleasures ” should be of value to the anti-tobacco league —
as a fearful warning. Excepting for that purpose 1 doubt whether
it can be of use to any one.

The present version will, I hope, be found intelligible by those
who approach it with an open mind.

HOW TO READ THE GOSPELS

T here is so much that is strange, improbable, un-
intelligible, and even contradictory in what pro-
fesses to be Christ’s teaching that people do not know
how to understand it.

It is very differently understood by different people.
Some say redemption is the all-important matter.
Others say the all-important thing is grace, obtainable
through the sacraments. Others, again, say that sub-
mission to the Church is what is really essential. But
the Churches themselves disagree, and interpret the
teaching variously. The Roman Catholic Church holds
that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the
Son ; that the Pope is infallible, and that salvation
is obtainable chiefly through works. The Lutheran
Church does not accept this, and considers that faith
is what is chiefly needed for salvation. The Orthodox
Russo-Greek Church considers that the Holy Ghost
proceeds from the Father only, and that both works
and faith are necessary to salvation.

And the Anglican and other Episcopalian, the Pres-
byterian, the Methodist, not to mention hundreds of
other Churches, interpret Christ’s teaching each in
its own way.

Young men, and men of the people, doubting the
truth of the Church-teaching in which they have been
brought up, often come to me and ask what niy teach-
ing is, and how / understand Christ’s teaching ? Such
questions always grieve, and even shock me.

Christ, who the Churches say was God, came on earth
to reveal divine truth to men, for their guidance in life.
A man — even a plain, stupid man — if he wants to

158

HOW TO READ THE GOSPELS 155

give people guidance of importance to them, will man-
age to impart it so that they can make out what he
means. And is it possible that God, having come on
earth especially to save people, was not able to say
what He wanted to say clearly enough to prevent people
from misinterpreting His words, and from disagreeing
with one another about them ?

This could not be so if Christ were God ; nor even if
Christ were not God, but merely a great teacher, is it
possible that He failed to express Himself clearly. For
a great teacher is great, just because he is able to ex-
press the truth so that it can neither be hidden nor
obscured, but is as plain as daylight.

In either case, therefore, the Gospels which transmit
Christ’s teaching must contain truth. And, indeed, the
truth is there for all who will read the Gospels with a
sincere wish to know the truth, without prejudice, and,
above all, without supposing that the Gospels contain
some special sort of wisdom beyond human reason.

That is how I read the Gospels, and I found in them
truth plain enough for little children to understand, as,
indeed, l:Tie Gospels themselves say. So that when I
am asked what my teaching consists in, and how I un
derstand Christ’s teaching, I reply : I have no teaching,
but I understand Christ’s teaching as it is explained in
the Gospels. If I have written books about Christ’s
teaching, I have done so only to show the falseness of
the interpretations given by the commentators on the
Gospels.

To understand Christ’s real teaching the chief thing
is not to interpret the Gospels, but to understand them
as they are written. And, therefore, to the question
how Christ’s teaching should be understood, I reply : If
you wish to understand it, read the Gospels. Read
them putting aside all foregone conclusions ; read with
the sole desire to understand what is said there. But
just because the Gospels are holy books, read them con-
siderately, reasonably, and with discernment, and not at
haphazard or mechanically, as if all the words were of
equal weight.

i6o HOW TO READ THE GOSPELS

To understand any book one must choose out the
parts that are quite clear, dividing them from what is
obscure or confused. And from what is clear we must
form our idea of the drift and spirit of the whole work.
Then, on the basis of what we have understood, we may
proceed to make out what is confused or not quite
intelligible. That is how we read all kinds of books.
And it is particularly necessary thus to read the
Gospels, which have passed through such a multiplicity
of compilations, translations, and transcriptions, and
were composed, eighteen centuries ago, by men who
were not highly educated, and were superstitious.^

Therefore, in order to understand the Gospels, we
must first of all separate what is quite simple and
intelligible from what is confused and unintelligible,
and afterward read this clear and intelligible part
several times over, trying fully to assimilate it. Then,
helped by the comprehension of the general meaning,
we can try to explain to ourselves the drift of the parts
which seemed involved and obscure. That was how
I read the Gospels, and the meaning of Christ’s teach-
ings became so clear to me that it was impossible to
have any doubts about it. And I advise every one
who wishes to understand the true meaning of Christ’s
teaching to follow the same plan.

Let each man when reading the Gospels select all
that seems to him quite plain, clear, and comprehen-
sible, and let him score it on the margin, say with a
blue pencil, and then, taking the marked passages first,
let him separate Christ’s words from those of the Evan-

1 The Gospels, as is known to all who have studied their origin, far
from being infallible expressions of divine truth, are the work of innumer-
able minds and hands, and are full of errors. Therefore the Gospels
can in no case be taken as a production of the Holy Ghost, as Church-
men assert. Were that so, God would have revealed the Gospel as he
is said to have revealed the commandments on Mount Sinai ; or he would
have transmitted the complete book to men, as the Mormons declare
was the case with their holy scriptures. But we know how these works
were written and collected, and how they were corrected and translated ;
and therefore not only can we not accept them as infallible revelations,
but we must, if we respect truth, correct errors that we find in them. —
Author’s Note.

HOW TO READ THE GOSPELS i6i

gelists by marking Christ’s words a second time with,
say, a red pencil. Then let him read over these doubly
scored passages several times. Only after he has thor-
oughly assimilated these, let him again read the other
words attributed to Christ, which he did not understand
when he first read them, and let him score, in red, those
that have become plain to him. Let him leave un-
scored such words of Christ as remain quite unintelligi-
ble, and also unintelligible words by the writers of the
Gospels. The passages marked in red will supply the
reader with the essence of Christ’s teaching. They will
give what all men need, and what Christ therefore said,
in a way which all can understand. The places marked
only in blue will give what the authors of the Gospels
said that is intelligible.

Very likely in selecting what is, from what is not,
fully comprehensible, people will not all mark the
same passages. What is comprehensible to me may
seem obscure to another. But all will certainly agree
in what is most important, and there are things which
will be found quite intelligible to every one.

It is just this — just what is fully comprehensible to
all men — that constitutes the essence of Christ’s
teaching.^

^ This little article — advising men how to read the Gospels most profit-
ably — is, of course, not allowed to be published in Russia. Hectographed
and photographed copies do, however, circulate from hand to hand. — Tr.

REASON AND RELIGION

T O those who ask my opinion whether it be desirable
to endeavor by the aid of reason to attain complete
consciousness in one's inner spiritual life, and to express
the truths thus attained in definite language, I would
answer positively in the affirmative, that every man, in
order to achieve his destiny on earth, and to attain true
welfare, — the two are synonymous, — must continually
exert all his mental faculties to solve for himself and
clearly to express the religious foundations on which he
lives — that is, the meaning of his life.

I have often found among illiterate laborers who have
to deal with cubic measurements an accepted conviction
that mathematical calculations are fallacious, and not to
be trusted. Whether it arise from their ignorance of
arithmetic, or from the fact that those responsible for
the calculations have often cheated them, with or with-
out intent, the conviction that mathematics is unreliable)
and worthless for purposes of measurement has taken'
root amongst illiterate workmen, and become for the
majority of them an unquestioned fact.

The similar opinion has obtained amongst men, — I
will boldly say, lacking in true religious feelings, — that
reason is unequal to the solution of religious questions,
that the application of reason to such questions is the
most fruitful source of error, and that the solution of
such questions by the aid of reason is sinful pride.

I mention this because the doubt expressed in the
question whether it be needful to strive for distinct con-
sciousness in one’s religious convictions may be merely
the outcome of the belief that reason cannot be applied
to the solution of religious questions.

Man has been given by God one single instrument to

162

REASON AND RELIGION 163

attain knowledge of self and of one's relation to the
universe ; there is no other, and that one is reason.

Yet he is informed that he may use his reason to
solve questions, whether domestic, family, commercial,
political, scientific, artistic, but not for the elucidation
of the problem for which especially it was given him ;
and that for the solution of the most important truths,
of those on an acquaintance with which hangs all his
life, man must on no account employ his reason, but
must acquiesce in their truth independently of his rea-
son, whereas, independently of reason, man cannot be
conscious of anything.

It is said. Accept the truth by revelation, by faith ;
but a man cannot believe independently of reason. If
a man believes this and not that, it is only because his
reason tells him that this is credible, and that is not.
To affirm that a man must not be guided by reason is
equivalent to telling a man who has lost his way in dark
catacombs that, in order to find his way out, he must
extinguish his lamp, and be guided, not by light, but by
something else.

But it may be objected that not every one is endowed
with intellect and a special capacity for expressing his
thoughts, and that, in consequence, an inadequate ex-
pression of these thoughts may lead to error.

To this I would apply the words of the Gospel, —
that ‘‘ things hid from the wise and prudent have been
revealed" unto babes." And this statement is neither
an exaggeration nor a paradox, as people are accustomed
to view such passages in the Gospels as do not please
them, but is an assertion of the simplest and most in-
dubitable truth that unto everything in the universe is
given a law which this being must follow, and that to
enable each to recognize this law every one is endowed
with corresponding organs. Thus every man is endowed
with reason, and to the reason of every man is disclosed
the law which he must follow. This law is concealed
only from those who do not wish to follow it, and who,
in order to avoid it, cast reason aside, and instead of
using it to become acquainted with truth, accept upon

i 64 reason and religion

trust the assertions of those who, like them, have sur*
rendered reason.

Yet the law which men should follow is so plain that
it is accessible to every child, the more so as no man has
to discover anew the law of his life. Those who have
lived before him have discovered and expressed it, and
he has but to verify it with his reason, and to accept or
refuse those propositions which he finds expressed in
tradition ; that is, not, as recommended by those who
would shirk the law, by verifying reason by tradition,
but, on the contrary, by verifying tradition by reason.

Traditions may proceed from men, and be false ; but
reason indubitably comes from God, and cannot be false.
Hence for the recognition and expression of truth no
special extraordinary capacity is required ; one has but
to believe that reason is not only the loftiest sacred
capacity of man, but moreover is the sole instrument for
the understanding of truth.

Particular intellectual qualities are needful, not for the
acquirement and expression of truth, but for the concoc-
tion and expression of error. Having once deviated from
the directions of reason, distrusting it, and believing what
others proclaimed as the truth, men accumulate and ac-
cept by faith — for the most part in the form of laws,
revelations, dogmas — such intricate, unnatural, and con-
tradictory propositions, that, in order to express them
and adapt them to life, great acuteness of mind and
special qualities are indeed required.

Only imagine a man of our world, educated on the
religious basis of any of the Christian confessions, —
Catholic, Greek-Orthodox, Protestant, — who wished to
elucidate for himself and adapt to his life the religious
fundamental ideas with which he has been inoculated in
childhood ! What an involved mental labor he must face
in order to reconcile all the contradictions included in
the faith he has imbibed from his youth.

A righteous God has created evil, persecutes men,
demands redemption, and so forth ; and we, confessing
the law of love and mercy, make war, rob the poor, etc.

In order to disentangle these impossible contradic-

REASON AND RELIGION 165

tions, or rather in order to conceal them from oneself,
much mental capacity and special talent is indeed nec-
essary ; but in order to learn the law of one's life, or, as
already expressed, to bring one’s faith into complete
consciousness, no special mental capacity is required ;
one has but to refuse to admit anything contrary to rea-
son, not to deny reason, religiously to guard one’s reason,
and to rely on it alone.

If the meaning of life is obscure to any one, one must
not therefore conclude that reason is unequal to eluci-
dating that meaning, but merely that too much of what
is unreasonable has been admitted upon faith, and that
everything uncorroborated by reason must be set aside.

Hence my answer to the question, whether one should
try to attain complete consciousness in one’s inner spir-
itual life, is, that this is precisely the most needful and
important business of our lives. Most needful and im-
portant, because the only reasonable conception of life is
the accomplishment of the will of Him who sent us into
the world — that is, the will of God. And His will is
revealed to us, not by any extraordinary miracle, nor by
the divine finger inscribing it on stone, nor by the Holy
Ghost composing an infallible book, nor by the infalli-
bility of any special holy person or collection of persons,
but by the working of the reason of all men, who pass
on to each other by word and deed the truths which are
ever becoming more evident to their consciousness.

This knowledge never has been, and never will be,
complete, but augments continually as the life of man-
kind advances. The longer we live the more clearly
and fully do we learn the will of God, and in conse-
quence what we must do to fulfil it.

Therefore, I am firmly convinced that the elucidation
and verbal expression (which is an unmistakable token
of clearness of idea) of all religious truth accessible to
him by every man, however small he may think himself
or others may consider him — the least being essentially
the greatest — are of the most sacred and most essential
duties of man.

FIRST RECOLLECTIONS

FROM UNPUBLISHED AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORANDA

H ere are my first recollections (which I cannot
reduce to order, not knowing what came first,
what afterward, while of some I know not whether they
were dreams or reality). But here they are.

I am tied down ; I want to raise my arms, but I can-
not do it, and I wail and weep and my cry is disagree-
able to myself ; but I cannot stop. It must be that
some one stands bending over me, but I don’t remember
who. And all this takes place in a semi-darkness.
But I remember that there are two. My crying has an
effect on them, they are alarmed at my cry, but they do
not unloose me as I wish, and I cry louder than ever.
It seems to them necessary (that is, that I be tied
down), while I know that it is not necessary, and I want
to prove it to them, and I burst out into a cry disgust-
ing to myself but unrestrainable.

I am conscious of the injustice and cruelty, not of peo-
ple, because they pity me, but of fate, and feel pity for
myself. I do not know and never shall learn what this
was : whether they swaddled me when I was a suckling
and I pulled out my hands ; or whether they swaddled
me when I was more than a year old so that I might
not scratch the tetter; or whether I have gathered
many impressions into one as happens in dreams, — but
apparently this was my first and most powerful impres-
sion of life. And it was not my crying or my suffering
that I retain in my recollection, but the complication,
the contradiction, of the impression. I wanted freedom ;

i66

FIRST RECOLLECTIONS 167

it would not disturb any one, and I who needed the
strength was weak while they were strong.

The second impression was pleasurable. I am sitting
in a tub, and I am surrounded by a new and disagree-
able odor of some object by which my small body is
galledT Apparently this was bran, and apparently in
the water and in the trough, but the novelty of the im-
pression made by the bran awakened me, and I for the
first time noticed and observed my little body, with the
ribs plainly outlined, and the smooth, dark tub, and
the nurse with her arms tucked up, and the dark, warm,
threatening water, and the swash of it, and especially
the feeling of smoothness of the wet edges of the tub
when I put my little hands on it. Strange and terrible
to think that from my birth up to my third year, all the
time while I was nursing, while I was weaned, when I
was beginning to creep, to walk, to speak, however I rack
my memory, I can find no impression except these two.

When did I begin ? When did I begin to live ? And
why is it pleasant to imagine myself as I was then, but
it used to be terrible to me, as now it is terrible to many,
to imagine myself as I shall be when I again enter into
that condition of death from which there will be no
recollections expressible in words ? Was I not alive
when I was learning to look, to hear, to understand, to
talk, when I slept, when I pressed my lips to my
mother’s breast, and laughed and rejoiced my mother ?
I was alive and blissfully alive. Did I not then get all
that whereby I live now, and get in such abundance, and
so rapidly, that in all the rest of my life I have not got
a hundredth part so much ?

jFrom a five-year-old child to me is only a step. From
the new-born baby to the five-year-old child there is a
terrible gap. From the embryo to the new-born baby
there is an abyss j And from non-existence to the em-
bryo there is nof'an abyss, but incomprehensibility^
Moreover space and time and cause are forms of thought
and the existence of life outside of these forms, but all
bW' life is "a "coritinually increasing subjection to these
forms and then again emancipation from them.

1 68 FIRST RECOLLECTIONS

The following recollections of mine refer to my fourth
and fifth years, but even of these there are very few, and
not one of these refers to life outside of the walls of my
home.

Nature up to the age of five does not exist for me.
All that I remember refers to bed and chamber. No
grass, no leaves, no sky, no sun exist for me. It can-
not be that they did not let me play with the flowers
and leaves, or see the grass, that they did not protect
me from the sun, but up to five years, up to six years,
there is not one recollection of what we call Nature.
Apparently it is necessary to go away from her in order
to see her, and I was N ature !

The recollection that comes after that of the tub ih
that of Yeremeyevna. ** Yeremeyevna '' was a word with
which they used to frighten us children. And appar^
ently they began early to frighten us with it, but my
recollection of it is as follows : —

I am in my little bed and feeling good and happy as
always, and I should not remember this but suddenly
my nurse, or some one of those that constituted my life,
says something in a voice entirely new to me, and goes
out, and I begin to feel a sensation of terror besides
that of gaiety. And I remember that I am not alone,
but some one is there with me very much the same as I.

This must have been my sister Mashenka, a year
younger than I, for our beds stood in one room
together.

And I remember that there is a canopy over my bed,
and my sister and I used to share our pleasures and
terrors — whatever unexpected thing happened to us —
and I used to hide in the pillow, and I would hide and
peek out to look at the door from which I expected any-
thing new and gay. And we used to laugh and hide
and be full of expectations. And here comes some one
in a gown and head-dress such as I had never seen before,
but I know that it is the person who is always with me
— a nurse or auntie, I don’t know which, and this some
one speaks in a deep voice which I recognize, and says
something terrible about naughty children, and about

FIRST RECOLLECTIONS 169

Yeremeyevna ! I squjeal with terror and delight, and I
am terrified, and at the same time delighted because I
am terrified, and I wish that the one who frightened me
did not know that I know her ! We become silent, but
soon again we begin to whisper on purpose to bring
back Yeremeyevna.

Similar to the recollection of Yeremeyevna is another,
apparently later in time because it is more distinct, but
it always remains incomprehensible to me. In this re-
membrance the chief r61e is played by a German, Feodor
Ivanovitch, our teacher; but I know assuredly that I
was not as yet under his supervision, consequently this
must have taken place before I was five. And this is
my first impression of Feodor Ivanovitch. And it hap-
pens so early that I do not remember any one — my
brothers, nor my father, nor any one. If I have an
idea of any person whatever besides, it is only of my
sister, and solely because she and I were associated in
terror of Yeremeyevna.

With this recollection is connected also my first con-
ception that our house had an upper story. How I
got there, whether I went there by myself or who took
me there, I do not remember at all ; I only remember
that there were several of us, we all took hold of hands
in a khorovod ; among those holding one another by
the hand were several strange women, — because I rec-
ollect that these were the laundry girls, — and we all
began to turn and spring, and Feodor Ivanovitch ca-
pered about, lifting his legs very high and making a
terrible noise and thumping, and I had a conscious-
ness that this was not the right thing to do, that it was
bad, and I noticed him and I seemed to burst out
crying, and it all came to an end.

This is all I remember up to my fifth year. I remem-
ber nothing of my nurses, my aunties, my brothers, my
sisters, or of my father, or my rooms, or my toys — noth-
ing at all. My recollections grow more definite from
the time when I was taken down to Feodor Ivanovitch
and to the older boys.

When I was taken down to Feodor Ivanovitch and

170

FIRST RECOLLECTIONS

the other boys, I experienced, for the first time, and
therefore more strongly than ever again, the feeling
called the sense of duty, called the sense of the cross,
which every man is called upon to wear. I felt sorry
to leave what I had grown accustomed to — accustomed
to from eternity ! — I felt melancholy, poetically melan-
choly to leave, not so much the people, my sister, my
nurse, my aunt, as the bed, the canopy, the pillows ; and
the new life into which I had entered was terrible to
me. I tried to find something cheerful in the new life
which was before me ; I tried to credit the flattering
speeches with which Feodor Ivanovitch allured me to
himself. I tried not to see the scorn with which the
boys received me, their younger brother; I tried to
think that it was disgraceful for a big boy to live with
girls, and that there was nothing good in the up-stair
life with the nurse ; but in the depths of my soul I was
terribly homesick, and I knew that I had irrevocably
lost my innocence and joy, and only a feeling of per-
sonal dignity, a consciousness that I was doing my duty,
sustained me.

Many times since in life it has been my fortune to
undergo such moments at the dividing of the ways,
where new paths opened out before me. I experienced
a gentle grief at the irrevocableness of what was lost.
And still I did not believe that it would be. Though
they told me that I was to be taken down to the boys,
I remember that my khalat with its belt, sewed to the
back, which they put on me, seemed to separate me for-
ever from the upper rooms, and I now, for the first time,
noticed others besides those with whom I had lived up-
stairs, but the chief personage was the one at whose
house I was living and whom I do not remember before.

This was my Aunt T A I remember her as

short, stout, with black hair, kind, affectionate, gentle.
She put on me my khalat, tightened the belt and fastened
it, kissed me, and I saw that she was experiencing the
same feelings as I was, that she was sorry, awfully
sorry, but it had to be.

^ Probably Tatyana Alektandreyevna Eyclskaya.

FIRST RECOLLECTIONS 171

For the first time I realized that life is not play, but
hard work. Not otherwise shall I feel when I come to
die ; I shall discover that death or the future life is not
play, but hard work.

May 17, 187&

THE DEMANDS OF LOVE

AN EXTRACT FROM TOLSTOFS DIARY

Y esterday, 24th June, 1893, i thought : —

Let us imagine people of the affluent class (for
clearness’ sake say a man and a woman : husband and
wife, brother and sister, father and daughter, or mother
and son) who have vividly realized the sin of a luxurious
and idle life, lived amidst people crushed by work and
want. They have left the town ; have handed over to
others (or in some way rid themselves of) their super-
fluities ; have left themselves stocks and shares yielding,
say, ;^I5 a year for the two of them (or have even left
themselves nothing), and are earning their living by
some craft, say, e.g., by painting on china or translating
first-rate books, and are living in the country, in a
Russian village.

Having hired or bought themselves a hut, they culti-
vate their plot of ground or garden, look after their bees,
and at the same time give medical assistance (as far as
their knowledge allows) to the villagers, teach the chil-
dren, and write letters and petitions for their neighbors,
etc.

One would think no kind of life could be better. But
this life will be hell, or will become hell, if these people
are not hypocrites and do not lie, i.e, if they are really
sincere.

If these people have renounced the advantages and
pleasures of life which town and money gave them, they
have done so only because they acknowledge men to be
brothers — equals before their Father. Not equals in

172

THE DEMANDS OF LOVE 173

ability, or, if you please, in worth ; but equals in their
right to life, and to all that life can give.

It may be possible to doubt the equality of people
when we look at adults, each with a different past, but
doubt becomes impossible when we see children. Why
should this boy have watchful care and all the assistance
knowledge can give to assist his physical and mental
development, while that other charming child, of equal
or better promise, is to become rickety, crippled, or
dwarfed from lack of milk, and to grow up illiterate,
wild, hampered by superstitions, a man representing
merely so much brute labor-power.^

Surely, if people have left town life, and have settled,
as these have, to live in the village, it is only because
they, not in words only, but in very truth, believe in the
brotherhood of man, and intend, if not to realize it, at
least to begin realizing it in their lives. And just this
attempt to realize it must, if they are sincere, inevitably
bring them to a terrible position.

With their habits (formed from childhood upwards)
of order, comfort, and especially of cleanliness, they, on
moving to the village, after buying or hiring a hut,
cleared it of insects, perhaps even papered it them-
selves, and installed some remains, not luxurious but
necessary, of their furniture, say an iron bedstead, a
cupboard, and a writing-table. And so they begin living.
At first the folk shun them, expecting them (like other
rich people) to defend their advantages by force, and
therefore do not approach them with requests and de-
mands. But presently, bit by bit, the disposition of the
newcomers gets known ; they themselves offer disinter-
ested services, and the boldest and most impudent of the
villagers find out practically that these newcomers do not
refuse to give, and that one can get something out of them.

Thereupon, all kinds of demands on them begin to
spring up, and constantly increase.

A process begins comparable to the subsidence and
running down to a level of the grains in a heap. They
settle down till there is no longer any heap rising above
the average level.

174 the demands OF LOVE

Besides the begging, natural demands to divide up
what they have more than others possess make them-
selves heard, and, apart from these demands, the new
settlers themselves, being always in close touch with the
village folk, feel the inevitable necessity of giving from
their superfluity to those who are in extreme poverty.
And not only do they feel the need of giving away their
superfluity until they have only as much left as each
one (say as the average man) ought to have ; there is
no possible definition of this ''average” — no way of
measuring the amount which each one should have;
there is no stopping, for crying want is always around
them, and they have a surplus compared to this destitu-
tion.

It seems necessary to keep a glass of milk; but
Matrena has two unweaned babies, who can find no
milk in their mother’s breast, and a two-year-old child
which is on the verge of starving. They might keep a
pillow and a blanket, so as to sleep as usual after a busy
day ; but a sick man is lying on a coat full of lice, and
freezes at night, being covered only with bark-matting.
They would have kept tea and food, but had to give it
to some old pilgrims who were exhausted. At least it
seemed right to keep the house clean, but beggar-boys
came and were allowed to spend the night, and again
lice bred, after one had just got rid of those picked up
during a visit to the sick man.

Where and how can one stop ? Only those will find
a point to .stop at who are either strangers to that feel-
ing of the reality of the brotherhood of men which has
brought these people to the village, or who are so accus-
tomed to lie that they no longer notice the difference
between truth and falsehood. The fact is, no point of
stoppage exists; and if such a limit be found, it only
proves that the feeling which prompted these people’s
act was imaginary or feigned.

I continue to imagine these people’s life.

Having worked all day, they return home; having
no longer a bed or a pillow, they sleep on some straw
they have collected, and after a supper of bread they

THE DEMANDS OF LOVE 175

lie down to sleep. It is autumn. Rain is falling, mixed
with snow. Some one knocks at the door. Should they
open it ? A man enters wet and feverish. What must
they do ? Let him have the dry straw ? There is no
more dry, so either they must drive away the sick man,
or let him, wet as he is, lie on the floor, or give him the
straw, and themselves (since one must sleep) share it
with him.

But this is still not all : a man comes who is a drunk-
ard and a debauchee, whom you have helped several
times, and who has always drunk whatever you gave
him.

He comes now, his jaw trembling, and asks for six
shillings to replace money he has stolen and drunk, for
which he will be imprisoned, if he does not replace it.
You say you only have eight shillings, which you want
for a payment due to-morrow. Then the man says :
“Yes, I see, you talk, but when it comes to acts, you Te
like the rest ; you let the man you call a ' brother ' per-
ish, rather than suffer yourselves !

How is one to act in such cases ? Let the fever-
stricken man have the damp floor and lie in the dry
place oneself, — and you will be farther from sleep than
the other way. If you put him on your straw and lie
near him, you will get lice and typhus. If you give
the beggar six of your last shillings, you will be left
without bread to-morrow; but to refuse means, as he
said, to turn from that for the sake of which one lives.

If you can stop here, why could you not stop sooner.^
Why need you help people ? Why give up your prop-
erty and leave the town ? Where can one draw the
line ? If there is a limit to the work you are doing,
then it all has no meaning, or it has only the horrible
meaning of hypocrisy.

How is one to act.^ What is one to do? Not to
draw back means to lose one's life, to be eaten by lice,
to starve, to die, and — apparently — uselessly. To stop
is to repudiate that for the sake of which one has acted,
for which one has done whatever of good one has accom-
plished. And one cannot repudiate it, for it is no inven-

176 THE DEMANDS OF LOVE

tion of mine, or of Christ's, that we are brothers and
must serve one another ; it is real fact, and when it has
once entered, you cannot tear that consciousness out of
the heart of man. How is one to act ? Is there no
escape ?

Let us imagine that these people, not dismayed by
the necessity of sacrifice which brought them to a posi-
tion inevitably leading to death, decided that the position
arose from their having come to help the villagers with
means too scanty for the work, and that the result would
have been different, and they would have done great
good, had they possessed more money. Let us imagine
that they find resources, collect immense sums of money,
and begin to help. Within a few weeks the same thing
will repeat itself. Very soon all their means, however
great they may be, will have flowed into the pits formed
by poverty, and the position will be the same as before.

But perhaps there is a third way ? Some people say
there is, and that it consists in assisting the enlighten-
ment of the masses, and that this will destroy inequality.

But this path is too evidently hypocritical ; you can-
not enlighten a population which is constantly on the
verge of perishing from want. And, moreover, the in-
sincerity of people who preach this is evident from the
fact that a man eager for the realization of equality (even
through science) could not live a life the whole structure
of which supported inequality.

But there is yet a fourth way : that of aiding the
destruction of the causes which produce inequality —
aiding in the destruction of force which produces it.

And that way of escape must occur to all sincere
people who try in their lives to carry into effect their
consciousness of the brotherhood of man.

The people I have pictured to myself would say : ‘‘ If
we cannot live here among these people in the village ;
if we are placed in the terrible position that we must
necessarily starve, be eaten by lice, and die a slow death,
or repudiate the sole moral basis of our lives, this is be-
cause some people store up accumulations of wealth
while others are destitute ; this inequality is based on

THE DEMANDS OF LOVE 177

force; and therefore, since the root of the matter is
force, we must contend against force ! ''

Only by the destruction of force, and of the slavery
which results from force, can a service of man become
possible which will not necessarily lead to the sacrifice
of life itself.

But how is force to be destroyed ? Where is it ? It
is in the soldiers, in the police, in magistrates, and in
the lock which fastens my door. How can I strive
against it ? Where, and in what ?

We even find people, revolutionists, who strive against
force, while they depend altogether on force to maintain
their own lives — fighting force by force.

But for a sincere man this is not possible. To fight
force by force means merely to replace the old violence
by a new one. To help by “culture,” founded on force,
is to do the same. To collect money, obtained by vio-
lence, and to use it in aid of people impoverished by
force, means to heal by violence wounds inflicted by
violence.

Even in the case I imagined : not to admit a sick man
to my hut and to my bed, and not to give six shillings
because I can, by force, retain them, is also to use force.
Therefore, in our society, the struggle against force
does not, for him who would live in brotherhood, elimi-
nate the necessity of yielding up his life, of being eaten
by lice and dying, while at the same time always striving
against violence ; preaching non-resistance, exposing
violence, and above all giving an example of non-resis-
tance and of self-sacrifice.

Dreadful and difficult as is the position of a man liv-
ing the Christian life, amidst lives of violence, he has
no path but that of struggle and sacrifice — and sacrifice
till the end.

One must realize the gulf that separates the lousy,
famished millions from the overfed people who trim
their dresses with lace ; and to fill it up we need sacri-
fices, and not the hypocrisy with which we now try to
hide from ourselves the depth of the gulf.

A man may lack the strength to throw himself into

178 THE DEMANDS OF LOVE

the gulf, but it cannot be escaped by any man who
seeks after life. We may be unwilling to go into it,
but let us be honest about it, and say so, and not deceive
ourselves with hypocritical pretences.

And, after all, the gulf is not so terrible. Or, if it is
terrible, yet the horrors which await us in a worldly
way of life are more terrible still.

News reached us lately, correct or not (for in such
cases people are apt to exaggerate), that Admiral Try on
for honor’s sake (the honor ” of a fleet designed for
murder) declined to save himself and persisted like a
hero (like a fool rather) with his ship.

There is less danger of death from lice, infection, or
want after giving away one’s last crust to help others,
than there is of being killed at the manceuvers or in war.

Lice, black bread, and want seem so terrible. But
the bottom of the pit of want is not so deep after all,
and we are often like the boy who clung by his hands
in terror all night to the edge of the well into which he
had stumbled, fearing the depth and the water he sup-
posed to be there, while a foot below him was the dry
bottom. Yet we must not trust to that bottom, we
must go forward prepared to die. Only that is real
love, which knows no limit to sacrifices — even unto
death.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

Tolstoi keeps a diary in which he notes down what he has been
thinking. Much of this diary is hastily written and unsatisfactory
to Tolstoi himself, so that he frequently inserts such remarks as:
“ these thoughts are confused and need restating,” or “ this is non-
sense,” etc. But the diary contains much that is valuable, and Tol-
stoi has yielded to a friend’s request to be allowed to make extracts
for publication. The Demands of Love” is a good example of
one of the longest and most finished passages.

On a first perusal this extract has a depressing effect on most
readers. But is it not true that, looking at the matter objectively —
as a problem outside ourselves — we can imagine no position in
which one would be justified in stopping and refusing to go farther
along the path of self-abnegation ? Judged by the demands of love
we are all sinners, even the best must say : Why callest thou me
good ? none is good, save one, even God.”

THE DEMANDS OF LOVE 179

Considering the matter subjectively, as a question of personal
conduct, surely we may, however, walk the path of progress, humbly
confessing our sins and shortcomings. It is right to continue to
move toward a perfection we shall not reach here.

Viewing other aspects of life, Tolstoi would be one of the last
to denounce as hypocritical ” the feeble efforts of imperfect men to
live better than before. ^‘The bruised reed he would not break,
the smoking flax he would not quench.” But here he is showing
how the evils of our social state rest on the use of violence between
man and man, and that the struggle to right this wrong calls for
absolute self-sacrifice, even unto death. To be contented with what
we have attained to and to stagnate is never right.

THREE PARABLES

I

PARABLE THE FIRST

A WEED had spread over a beautiful meadow. And
in order to get rid of it the tenants of the meadow
mowed it, but the weed only increased in consequence.
And now the kind, wise master came to visit the ten-
ants of the meadow, and among the other good counsels
which he gave them, he told them they ought not to
mow the weed, since that only made it grow the more
luxuriantly, but that they must pull it up by the roots.

But either because the tenants of the meadow did
not, amongst the other prescriptions of the good master,
take heed of his advice not to mow down the weed, but
to pull it up, or because they did not understand him, or
because, according to their calculations, it seemed fool-
ish to obey, the result was that his advice not to mow
the weed but to pull it up was not followed, just as if
he had never proffered it, and the men went on mow-
ing the weed and spreading it.

And although, during the succeeding years, there
were men that reminded the tenants of the meadow of
the advice of the kind, wise master, they did not heed
them, and continued to do as before, so that mowing of
the weed as soon as it began to appear became not only
a custom but even a sacred tradition, and the meadow
grew more and more infested. And the matter went
so far that the meadow grew nothing but weeds, and
men lamented this and invented all kinds of means to
correct the evil ; but the only one they did not use was

i8o

THREE PARABLES

i8i

that which had long ago been prescribed by their kind,
wise master.

And now, as time went on, it occurred to one man
who saw the wretched condition into which the meadow
had fallen, and who found among the master’s forgotten
prescriptions the rule not to mow the weed, but to pull
it up by the root — it occurred to the man, I say, to
remind the tenants of the meadow that they were acting
foolishly, and that their folly had long ago been pointed
out by the kind, wise master.

But what do you think ! instead of putting credence
in the correctness of this man’s recollections, and in
case they proved to be reliable ceasing to mow the
weed, and in case he were mistaken proving to him
the incorrectness of his recollections, or stigmatizing
the good, wise master’s recommendations as impracti-
cable and not obligatory upon them, the tenants of the
meadow did nothing of the sort ; but they took excep-
tion to this man’s recollections and began to abuse him.
Some called him a conceited fool who imagined that he
was the only one to understand the master’s regula-
tions ; others called him a malicious false interpreter
and slanderer ; still others, forgetting that he was not
giving them his own opinions, but was only reminding
them of the prescriptions of the wise master whom
they all revered, called him a dangerous man because
he wished to pull up the weed and deprive them of
their meadow. “He says we ought not to mow the
meadow,” said they, purposely suppressing the fact that
the man did not say that it was not necessary to destroy
the weed, but said that they should pull it up by the
roots instead of mowing it, “but if we do not destroy
the weed, then it will spread and wholly ruin our
meadow. And why was the meadow granted to us if
we must train the weed in it ”

And the general impression that this man was either
a fool or a false interpreter, or had the purpose of
injuring the people, became so deeply grounded that
every one cast reproaches and ridicule upon him. And
however earnestly he asseverated that he not only did

1 82 THREE PARABLES

not desire to spread the weed, but on the contrary con-
sidered that the destruction of the weed was one of the
chief duties of the agriculturist, just as it was meant by
the good, wise master whose words he merely repeated,
still they would not listen to him because they had
definitely made up their minds that he was either a
conceited fool misinterpreting the good, wise master’s
words, or a villain trying to induce men not to destroy
the weeds but to protect and spread them more widely.

The same thing took place in my own case when I
pointed out the injunction of the evangelical teaching
about the non-resistance of evil by violence. This rule
was laid down by Christ and after Him in all times by
all His true disciples. But either because they did not
notice this rule, or because they did not understand it,
or because its fulfilment seemed to them too difficult,
as time went the more completely this rule was for-
gotten, the farther the manner of men’s lives departed
from this rule ; and finally it came to the pass to which
it has now come that this rule has already begun to
seem to people something new, strange, unheard-of, and
even foolish. And I, also, have the same experience as
the man had who reminded men of the good, wise mas-
ter’s prescription to refrain from mowing the weed, but
to pull it up by the roots.

As the tenants of the meadow purposely shut their
eyes to the fact that the counsel was not to give up
destroying the weed, but to destroy it by a different
method, and said, ** We will not listen to this man, he is
a fool ; he forbids us to mow down the weeds and tells
us to pull them up ” — so in reply to my reminder that
according to Christ’s teaching in order to annihilate evil
we must not employ violence against it, but must de-
stroy it from the root with love, men said: ‘‘We will
not listen to him, he is a fool ; he advises not to oppose
evil to evil so that evil may overwhelm us.”

I said that, according to Christ’s teaching, evil cannot
be eradicated by evil ; that all resistance of evil by vio-
lence only intensifies the evil, that according to Christ’s
teaching evil is eradicated hy good. B/ess the m that

THREE PARABLES

183

curse yoUy pray for them that abuse you^ do good to them
that hate you^ love your enemies ^ and you will have no
enemies ! ^

I said that, according to Christ's teaching, the whole
life of man is a battle with evil, a resistance of evil by
reason and love, but that out of all the methods of re-
sisting evil Christ excepted only the one unreasonable
method of resisting evil with violence, which is equiva-
lent to fighting evil with evil.

And I was misunderstood as saying that Christ
taught that we must not resist evil. And all those
whose lives were based on violence, and to whom in con-
sequence violence was dear, were glad to take such a
misconstruction of my words, and at the same time of
Christ's words, and it was avowed that the teaching of
non-resistance of evil was incredible, stupid, godless, and
dangerous. And men calmly continue under the guise
of destroying evil to make it more widely spread.

II

PARABLE THE SECOND

Men were trafficking in flour, butter, milk, and all
kinds of food-stuffs. And as each one was desirous of
receiving the greatest profit and becoming rich as soon
as possible, all these men got more and more into the
habit of adulterating their goods with cheap and inju-
rious mixtures : with the flour they mixed bran and lime,
they put oleomargarin into their butter, they put water
and chalk into their milk. And until these goods
reached the consumers all went well : the wholesale
traders sold them to the retailers, and the retailers dis-
tributed them in small quantities.

There were many stores and shops, and the wares,
it seemed, went off very rapidly. And the tradesmen
were satisfied. But the city consumers, those that did
not raise their own produce and were therefore obliged

1 “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.”

184

THREE PARABLES

to buy it, found it very harmful and disagreeable. The
flour was bad, the butter and milk were bad, but as
there were no other wares except those adulterated to
be had in the city markets, the city consumers con-
tinued to buy them, and they complained because the
food tasted bad and was unwholesome ; they blamed
themselves, and ascribed it to the wretched way in
which the food was prepared. Meantime the trades-
people continued more and more flagrantly to adulter-
ate their food-stuffs with cheap foreign ingredients.
Thus passed a sufficiently long time. The city "people
were all suffering, and no one had the resolution to
express his dissatisfaction.

And it happened that a housekeeper who had always
given her family food and drink of her own make came
to the city. This woman had spent her whole life in the
preparation of food, and though she was not a famous
cook, still she knew very well how to bake bread and to
cook good dinners.

This woman bought various articles in the city and
began to bake and cook. Her loaves did not rise, but
fell. Her cakes, owing to the oleomargarin butter,
seemed tasteless. She set her milk, but there was no
cream. The housekeeper instantly came to the conclu-
sion that her purchases were poor. She examined them,
and her surmises were confirmed. She found lime in
the flour, oleomargarin in the butter, chalk in the milk.
Finding that all the materials she had bought were adul-
terated, the housekeeper went to the bazaars and began
in a loud voice to accuse the tradesmen, and to demand
that they should either stock their shops with good,
nutritious, unadulterated articles, or else cease to trade,
and shut up shop.

But the tradesmen paid no attention to the house-
keeper, but told her that their goods were first class,
that the whole city had been buying of them for so many
years, and that they even had medals, and they showed
her their medals on their signs. But the housekeeper
did not give in.

don't need any medals," saiAshe, " but wholesome

THREE PARABLES 185

food, so that I and my children may not have stomach
troubles from it.’*

‘‘ Apparently, my good woman, you have never seen
genuine flour and butter,” said the tradesmen, showing
her the white, pure-looking flour in varnished bins, the
wretched imitation of butter lying in neat dishes, and
the white fluid in glittering transparent jars.

‘‘Of course I know them,” replied the housekeeper,
“ because all my life long I have had to do with them,
and I have cooked with them and have eaten them, I
and my children. Your goods are adulterated. Here
is the proof of it,” said she, displaying the spoilt bread,
the oleomargarin in the cakes, and the sediment in the
milk. “You ought to throw all this stuff of yours into
the river or burn it, and get unadulterated goods instead.”

And the woman, standing in front of the shops, kept
incessantly crying her one message to the purchasers
who came by, and the purchasers began to be troubled.

Then perceiving that this audacious housekeeper was
likely to injure their wares, the tradesmen said to the
purchasers : —

“ Look here, gentlemen, what a lunatic this woman
is ! She wants people to perish of starvation. She
insists on our burning up and destroying all our pro-
visions. What would you have to eat if we should heed
her and refuse to sell you our goods ? Do not listen to
her, she is a coarse countrywoman, and she is no judge of
provisions, and it is nothing but envy which makes her
attack us. She is poor, and wants every one else to be
as poor as she is.”

Thus spoke the tradesmen to the gathering throng,
purposely blinking the fact that the woman wanted, not
that all provisions should be destroyed, but that good
ones should be substituted for bad.

And thereupon the throng fell upon the woman and
began to beat her. And though she assured them all
that she had no wish to destroy the food-stuffs, that, on
the contrary, she had all her life been occupied in feed-
ing others and herself, but that she only wanted that
those men that took upon themselves the feeding of the

1 86 THREE PARABLES

people should not poison them with deleterious adul-
terations pretending to be edible. Though she pleaded
her cause eloquently, they refused to hear her because
their minds were made up that she wanted to deprive
people of the food which they needed.

The same thing has happened to me in regard to the
art and science of our day.

All my life long I have been fed on this food, and to
the best of my ability I have attempted to feed others
on it. And as this for me is a food and not an object
of traffic or luxury, I know beyond a question when food
is food and when it is only a counterfeit. And now
when I made trial of the food which in our time began
to be offered for sale in the intellectual bazaar under the
guise of art and science, and attempted to feed those
dear to me with it, I discovered that a large part of
this food was not genuine. And when I declared that
the art and the science on sale in the intellectual bazaar
are margarined or at least contain great mixtures of
what is foreign to true art and true science, and that I
know this because the produce I have bought in the
intellectual bazaar has been proved to be, not merely
disadvantageous to me and those near and dear to me,
but positively deleterious, then I was hooted at and
abused, and it was insinuated that I did this because I
was untrained and could not properly treat of such
lofty objects.

When I began to show that the dealers themselves in
these intellectual wares were all the time charging one
another of cheating, when I called to mind that in all
times under the name of art and science much that was
bad and harmful was offered to men, and that conse-
quently in our time also the same danger was threaten-
ing, that this was no joke, that the poison for the soul
was many times more dangerous than a poison for the
body, and that therefore these spiritual products ought
to be examined with the greatest attention when they
are offered to us in the form of food, and everything
counterfeit and deleterious ought to be rejected, — when
I began to say this, no one, no one, not a single man in

THREE PARABLES 187

a single article or book made reply to these arguments,
but from all the shops there was a chorus of cries against
me as against the woman: ‘‘He is a fool! He wants
to destroy art and science which we live by ! Beware
of him and do not heed him ! Hear us, hear us I We
have the very latest foreign wares 1 ”

III

PARABLE THE THIRD

Travelers were making a journey. And they hap-
pened to lose their way, so that they found themselves
proceeding, not on a smooth road, but across a bog,
among clumps of bushes, briers, and fallen trees, which
blocked their progress, and even to move grew more
and more difficult.

Then the travelers divided into two parties ; one
decided not to stop, but to keep going in the direction
that they had been going, assuring themselves and the
others that they had not wandered from the right road,
and were sure to reach their journey’s end.

The other party decided that, as the direction in which
they were now going was evidently not the right one —
otherwise they would long ago have reached the jour-
ney’s end — it was necessary to find the road, and in order
to find it, it was requisite that without delay they should
move as rapidly as possible in all directions. All the
travelers were divided between these two opinions :
some decided to keep going straight ahead, the others
decided to make trials in all directions ; but there was
one man who, without sharing either opinion, declared
that before continuing in the direction in which they
had been going, or beginning to move rapidly in all
directions, hoping that by this means they might find the
right way, it was necessary first of all to pause and
deliberate on their situation, and then after due delib-
eration to decide on one thing or the other.

But the travelers were so excited by the disturbance,

i88 THREE PARABLES

were so alarmed at their situation, they were so desirous
of flattering themselves with the hope that they had not
lost their way, but had only temporarily wandered from
the road, and would soon find it again, and, above all,
they had such a desire to forget their terror by moving
about, that this opinion was met with universal indigna-
tion, with reproaches, and with the ridicule of those of
both parties.

“ It is the advice of weakness, cowardice, sloth,” they
said.

“ It is a fine way to reach the end of our journey,
sitting down and not moving from the place ! ” cried
others.

“For this are we men, and for this is strength given
us, to struggle and labor, conquering obstacles, and not
pusillanimously giving in to them,” exclaimed still others.

And fn spite of what was said by the man that dif-
fered from the rest, “ how if we proceeded in a wrong
direction without changing it, we should never attain our
goal, but go farther from it, and how we should never
attain it either if we kept flying from one direction to
another, and how the only means of attaining our goal
was by taking observation from the sun or the stars and
thus finding what direction we must take to reach it, and
having chosen it to stick to it — and how to do this it
was necessary first of all to halt, and to halt not for the
purpose of stopping, but to find the right way and then
unfalteringly to go in it, and how for either case it was
necessary to stop and consider” — in spite of all this
argument, they refused to heed him.

And the first division of the travelers went off in the
direction in which they had been going, and the second
division kept changing their course ; but neither division
succeeded in attaining their journey’s end, but up to the
present time, moreover, they have not yet escaped from
the bushes and the briers, but are still lost.

Exactly the same thing happened to me when I at-
tempted to express my doubts as to whether the road
which we have taken through the dark forest of the labor
question and through the all-swallowing bog of the end-

THREE PARABLES

189

less armament of the nations is exactly the right route
by which we ought to go, that it is very possible that
we have lost our way, and that, therefore, it might be
well for us for a time to stop moving in that direction
which is evidently wrong, and first of all to consider, by
means cf the universal and eternal laws of truth revealed
to us, what the direction is by which we intend to go.

No one replied to this, not a person said, “ We are not
mistaken in our direction and we are not gone astray ;
we are sure of this for this reason and for that.”

Not a person said, “ Possibly we are mistaken, but
we have an infallible means of correcting our error with-
out ceasing to move.”

No one said either the one thing or the other. But
all were indignant, took offense, and hastened to quench
my solitary voice with a simultaneous outburst.

‘‘ We are so indolent and backward ! And this is the
advice of indolence, sluggishness, inefficiency ! ”

Some even went so far as to add : —

“ It *s all nonsense ! Don't listen to him. Follow us.”

And they shouted like those that reckon that salva-
tion is to be found in unchangedly traveling a once
selected road, whatever it may have been ; like those
also that expect to find salvation in flying about in all
directions.

‘‘Why wait Why consider Push forward! Every-
thing will come out of itself ! ”

Men have lost their way and are suffering in conse-
quence. It would seem that the first main application
of energy which should be put forth ought to be di-
rected, not to the confirmation of the movement that
has seduced us into the false position where we are, but
to the cessation of it. It would seem clear that as soon
as we stopped we might, in a measure, comprehend our
situation, and discover the direction in which we ought
to go in order to attain true happiness, not for one man,
not for one class of men, but that general good of hu-
manity toward which all men are striving and every
human heart by itself. But how is it.^^ Men invent
everything possible, but do not hit upon the one thing

190

THREE PARABLES

that might prove their salvation, or if it did not do that,
might at least ameliorate their condition ; I mean, that
they should pause for a moment and not go on increas*
ing their misfortunes by their fallacious activity. Men
are conscious of the wretchedness of their condition, and
are doing all they can to avoid it, but the one thing that
would assuredly ameliorate it they are unwilling to do,
and the advice given them to do it, more than anything
else, rouses their indignation.

If there were any possibility of doubting the fact that
we have gone astray, then this treatment of the advice
to ** think it over '' proves more distinctly than anything
else how hopelessly astray we have gone and how great
is our despair.

1895.

A TERRIBLE QUESTION*

I S there in Russia sufficient grain to feed the people
until the new crop is gathered ?

Some say there is, others say there is not ; but no one
knows this absolutely. But this must be known, and
known definitely now before the beginning of the winter
— just as it is necessary for men who are going off on a
long voyage to know whether the ship has a sufficient
supply of fresh water and food or not.

It is terrible to think what would happen to the officers
and passengers of the ship when in the middle of the
ocean it should transpire that all the provisions had gone.
It is still more terrible to think what will happen to us
if we believe in those that assure us that we have grain
enough for all the starving, and it should prove before
spring that they were mistaken in their assurances.

It is terrible to think of the consequence of such a
blunder. Why, the consequence of this blunder would
be something awful : the death of millions by starvation,
and, worst of all misfortunes, the exasperation and anger
of men. It is good merely by cannon-shots to warn
the inhabitants of Petersburg that the water is rising,
because that is all that can be done. No one knows,
no one can know, how high the water will rise ; whether
it will stand where it stood the year before, or reach
its limit of four and twenty years ago, or rise still
higher.

The famine of this year, moreover, is a misfortune
incomparably greater than the misfortune of the flood,

1 The ** terrible question ” was decided pr^itiously, so that in Russia
there was an abundance of grain. — Publisher’s Note.

191

A TERRIBLE QUESTION

192

incomparably more universal, it threatens all Russia ; it
is misfortune the degree of which may and should, not
only be foreseen, but may and should be foreseen and
prevented.

“ Ah ! that will do ! For Russia there will be suffi-
cient, and more than sufficient, of every kind of grain
for all,’* is said and written by certain people, and others
who like freedom from bother are inclined to believe
this. But it is impossible to believe what is said at hap-
hazard, or by conjecture, regarding an object of such
awful importance.

If it is said that in regard to the doubtful solidity of
a bath in which people go once a week on a Saturday,
the beams still stand, and there is no need of replacing
them, one may believe them and risk leaving the bath
without repairs ; but if it concerns the dubious ceiling
of a theater in which thousands are sitting every evening,
the unanimous decision will be, that though the proba-
bilities are it will not fall this evening, still one cannot
feel confidence and be at ease. The threatened danger
is too great.

Now the danger threatening Russia is that the grain
necessary for the sustenance of the people is not to be
had at any price, and this danger is so awful that the
imagination refuses to depict what would happen if this
was so ; and therefore to content ourselves with the un-
supported assurances of those that declare that in
Russia we have enough grain, not only would not follow,
but would be senseless and criminal.

But does such a danger exist ? Is there any likelihood
that there will not be enough bread ?

The following observations may serve as an answer
to this question : —

In the first place, it is a fact that a whole third of
Russia is attacked by famine, and that third is the
very one which has always supported a large part of
the other two-thirds. Kaluga, Tver, Moscow, all the
“black earth” and northern governments, even the
“black earth” districts of these governments, where
there was no failure in the crops, have never lived on

A TERRIBLE QUESTION 193

their own products, but have always bought it of those
that now must live on foreign grain.

Therefore, if it is reckoned, let us suppose, that each
person must have ten puds — well, let us say there are
only twenty millions — though they are reckoned as
high as forty millions — of inhabitants in these famine-
stricken districts, then two hundred million puds of grain
will be needed, and this is far from representing the whole
amount of grain necessary for the sustenance of all
Russia. To this figure must be added all that is needed
besides for those that have subsisted in former years on
the grain of the famine-stricken localities, and this very
probably will constitute as much again.

The failure of the harvest in the most fertile places
accomplishes something like what happens when you
shorten the arm of a lever : you not only diminish the
power of the shorter end, but you increase as many times
the power of the larger end. A third of Russia is at-
tacked by famine, the most fertile part, which has fed
the other two-thirds, and therefore it is very probable
that there will not be enough grain for all. This is one
consideration.

The second consideration is that the countries border-
ing on Russia will suffer in the same way from failure
of harvest, and that therefore a great amount of grain
has been exported, and now in the form of wheat con-
tinues to be exported abroad.

The third consideration is that in absolute contrariety
to what happened during the famine year, 1840, this
year there is, and can be, no stores of grain.

In Russia something has happened like what hap-
pened according to the Bible tale in Egypt ; only with
this difference, that in Russia there was no Joseph to
foretell, and there have been no provident and orderly
men like Joseph; but there have been mills, railways,
banks, and both the authorities and private persons have
suffered from great lack of money. In all the years
preceding, more than seven, there has been much grain,
prices have been low ; but the lack of money has grown
and grown as it regularly increased amongst us, and the

194

A TERRIBLE QUESTION

conveniences of trade, mills, railways, and buying agents
encouraged to trade, and brought it about that wheat
was wholly sold by autumn.

If during the last years, when wheat had reached an
especially low price, certain y^nders began to lay in a
store of grain, waiting for a price, then this storage was
so difficult that, as soon as the prices advanced at the
beginning of the spring of this year, and reached fifty
and sixty kopeks a pud, then all the grain was sold and
cleaned out, and nothing remained of the provisions of
previous years. In 1840 not only had the proprietors
and tradesmen plenty of provisions, but everywhere
among the muzhiks were from three to five years’ stores
of old grain. Now this custom has gone by, and there
is nothing like it anywhere. In this consists the third
consideration : that grain this year will not be sufficient

But not only is there a probability of this, but there
are also symptoms, and sufficiently definite symptoms,
that this lack exists.

One of these symptoms is the every day more and
more frequently repeated phenomenon that there is
no bread on sale in the depths of the famine-stricken
localities, as in that in which I am now — in the Dan-
kovsky District, there is no rye on sale. The muzhiks
cannot get flour.

Yesterday I saw two muzhiks of the Dankovsky Dis^
trict, who had been driving around a radius well known
to them, of twenty versts, to all the mills and shops, to
buy for money two puds of flour, and they could not
find it. One begged for some at the d^pdt of another
district ; the other obtained some.

And this phenomenon is not exceptional; it is con-
stantly repeated, and everywhere. Millers come to ask
for Christ’s sake — Khrista radi — to let them have
flour at the zemstvo d^pots^ because they have no flour,
and cannot get any. Of tradesmen in the cities, of the
railway, it may be bought in bulk, at least a half a car-
load or a carload ; but at retail there is none to be had.
The great merchants who have a supply will not sell at
all, they are waiting ; the small tradesmen, storekeepers.

A TERRIBLE QUESTION

195

buy up all they can, and sell it again at a profit to the
wholesale merchants. Retail trade is only in bazaars,
on market days, and then, if the purchaser comes too
late, there is none to be had.

This symptom, it seems to me, shows with sufficient
plainness that there is not as much grain as is needed.
The same thing is proved partly, also, by the prices,
although this year, hitherto, there are reasons which
do not permit prices to be a legitimate proof of the
conformity of demand with supply. The prices are
lower than they ought to be, and are maintained on this
lower level artificially : in the first place by the inter-
diction of exporting grain abroad ; in the second place
by the action of the zemstvos, which sell rye and meal
at reduced prices. I am speaking of the price of rye,
supposing that the prices of other food products —
beets, potatoes, millet, oats — more or less correspond
to the price of rye.

The prohibition of foreign exportations reduced prices,
in other words, caused prices to be an unreliable indica-
tion of the amount of any given commodity. Just exactly
as the height of the level of the water in a dammed river
cannot be an indication of its actual level, so the present
price of rye cannot accurately mark the relation of the
demand to its supply. The prohibition of the export
of other breadstuffs has the same effect. The prices
now existing are prices not self-sustaining, and are in
any case reduced temporarily, in consequence of the
prohibition of export. This is one cause of the fact that
prices are lower than they ought to be.

Another cause is the action of the zemstvos.

The zemstvos everywhere buy only in small quanti-
ties, rarely one-fourth part of the grain needed for
nourishment according to their lists, and they sell the
grain at a reduced price. This action of the zemstvos
also reduces the price, since if there were no sale from
the dipots of the zemstvos, this sale would come
from the large dealers who, according as the demand
increased, would raise the prices. And therefore I
think the price now maintained is not the actual price.

ig6 A TERRIBLE QUESTION

The price at the present time I think is far lower than
what it would be if it were not for the action of the
zemstvos. And this price would immediately rise with
extraordinary rapidity if only it should occur to the
zemstvos to buy the remaining three-fourths of the
grain they need.

We might say that the price will not rise if the
zemstvos had bought now the whole quantity needed,
and rye were on sale at that price. But according to
the present state of things there is no likelihood that
this was so. According to the present state of circum-
stances, that is to say, at the price of one ruble seventy
kopeks, when the zemstvos did not buy even one-fourth
of the necessary grain, and when there was no rye
offered for sale anywhere, even in small quantities,
there is, on the contrary, a probability that by reason
of the zemstvos buying the whole quantity they needed
the price would suddenly rise to a price which would
show that there was none of the grain in Russia. The
price even now in our localities has risen to the highest
notch to which it has ever attained, to one ruble seventy
kopeks, and still continues to rise regularly.

All these symptoms show that there is a great proba-
bility that Russia has not the grain she needs.

But besides these symptoms there is still another
phenomenon which ought to compel us to take all
possible measures to avert the misfortune that threatens
us. This phenomenon is the panic which has seized
society, that is to say, the undefined obscure terror of
some expected misfortune — the terror which people
communicate to one another, the terror which deprives
people of the capability of working to any purpose.
This panic is expressed even in the prohibition of ex-
porting first rye, then of the other breadstuffs, except
for some reason of millet, and in such measures, on the
one hand, as assigning great sums for the starving,
and on the other hand, the collecting by the local au-
thorities of assessments from those who can pay, as if
the extraction of money from the country were not a
direct enhancement of the poverty of the country.

A TERRIBLE QUESTION 197

A rich muzhik holds a mortgage on a poor one’s
ungathered crops. He would not push him, but the
taxes are demanded from him, so he has to demand
payment from the poor man, and ruins him.

This panic is particularly noticeable in the contro-
versies between the various local departments. There
is a repetition of what always takes place in a panic
terror ; ^some pull in one direction, some in another.

This panic is also noticeable in the amusements and
activities of the people. I will adduce one example,
the movement of the people toward wage-earning.

The people toward the end of October of this year
go to seek occupation in Moscow and Petersburg, at
the time when all the labors for the winter have ceased,
when provisions are three times more expensive than
usual, and every householder has got rid of all the super-
fluous persons he can, at a time when everywhere there
is a multitude of laboring men thrown out of work —
then people, who never had any position in the cities,
go and seek those situations.

Is it not evident to every one that in such conditions
there is more likelihood of every proprietor of a lottery
ticket drawing two hundred thousand rubles than of a
muzhik who comes to Moscow from the country finding
a place, and that every journey, even though very inex-
pensive, with the expenses incidental to travel, where
there is some drinking, is only a supernumerary difficulty
rushing on the poor ?

It would seem as if it ought to be evident, but all
come — come back and come again. Is not this a
symptom of the absolute senselessness which seizes
the throng at every panic

All these symptoms, and chiefly the phenomenon of
the panic, are very significant, and therefore one cannot
help fearing. It is impossible to say, as is generally
said about the enemy before our forces are compared
with his, we can catch him with our hats. The enemy,
the terrible enemy, stands here before us, and we
cannot say we do not fear him, because we know what
he is, and more than all, we know that we fear him.

198 A TERRIBLE QUESTION

But if we fear him, then it is necessary for us before
all to know his strength. It is impossible for us to
remain in this ignorance in which we find ourselves.

Let us admit that Russian society, the people that live
outside the famine-stricken localities, find their solidarity
both spiritual and material with the unfortunate people,
and undergo actual serious sacrifices for the help of the
starving. Let us admit that the activity of these peo-
ple, who live now amid the starving, laboring for them,
according to the measure of their ability, will continue
till the end, and that the numbers of these people will
increase; let us admit that the people themselves are
not down-hearted, and will fight with poverty, as they
are now fighting with it, by all negative and positive
means — in other words restraining themselves and
increasing their energy and inventiveness for the attain-
ment of the means of life; let us admit that all this
has been done and will be done for a month, two, three,
six months — then suddenly the price goes up, goes up,
just as it has been going up, from forty-five kopeks to
one ruble seventy kopeks, regularly from bazaar to
bazaar, and in a few weeks reaches two or three rubles
a pud, and it transpires that there is no grain, and that
all the sacrifices endured, both by those that gave money
and by those that have been living and laboring amid
the sufferers, were wasted expenditures of means and
forces, and chiefly that all the energy of the people
was expended in vain, and in spite of all their efforts
they, that is a part of them, would nevertheless have
to die of starvation, then how could we know and pre-
vent it ?

It is impossible, impossible, and again impossible to
remain in this uncertainty, impossible for us, wise,
learned people to remain so. The muzhik whom I saw
yesterday was doing about all that he could. He had
procured money, and had gone to seek for grain. He
had been to Mikhail Vasilyef's, he had been to the mill,
he had been to Chernavo — nowhere could he obtain meal.
After he had gone to all the places where meal might
possibly be, he knew that he had done his best ; and if

A TERRIBLE QUESTION 199

after this he could not get meal anywhere and he and
his family should be attacked by famine, he would know
that he had done to the best of his ability, and his con-
science would be at rest.

But for us, if it is shown that there is no grain to be
had, and our labors are brought to naught, and we and
the people maybe are perishing together, our consciences
will not be at rest. We might have known how much
grain would be needed by us, and might have got it.
If our learning and our science are of any use to us,
then for what more important purpose than to enable
us to help in such a universal tribulation as ours to-day }
Let us decide how much grain is necessary for the nour-
ishment of those that have none this year and how
much there is in Russia, and if there is not as much as
is necessary, then let us order from foreign lands as
much grain as is needed ; this is our direct business, and
just as natural as what the muzhik did yesterday when
he made a circuit of twenty versts. And our con-
sciences will be at rest only when we make our circuit
and do in it all that we can. For him the circuit is
Dankof, Klekotki ; for us the circuit is India, America,
Australia. We not only know that these countries
exist, we are already in friendly intercourse with their
inhabitants.

But how can we estimate what we need and the grain
which we have ? Can this be so difficult } We who can
count how many kinds of beetles there are in the world,
how many microbes there are in such and such a space,
how many millions of versts it is to the stars, and how
many puds of iron and hydrogen there are in each one
— we, forsooth, are not able to reckon up how much peo-
ple need to eat so as not to perish of starvation, and how
much grain has been garnered by the people from the
fields whereby we have* been, and still are, nourished.
We who with such wealth of detail have collected such
a mass of statistical materials — so far as I know up to
the present time of no use to any living person — details
as to the percentage of births as compared to marriages
and deaths and the like — we suddenly find ourselves

200 A TERRIBLE QUESTION

not in a condition to collect the only information which
in the course of a century is helpful, is really useful.
This cannot be. To collect these details — accurate ones
and not conjectural, and not approximate — details like
those furnished in regard to the number of the popula-
tion in a one day's census, is possible.

Information is needed as to how much more than the
ordinary amount of grain bought for the support of the
Russian people must be furnished this year for the in-
habitants of the famine-stricken localities, and how much
grain there is in Russia.

Whether the answers to these questions are easy or
difficult, they are indispensable for the prevention, not
only of the panic, — that is, of that confusedly con-
tagious terror of approaching misfortune in which men
are now living, — but principally for the averting of the
misfortune itself.

And not approximate, not haphazard, answers are
required, but systematic ones ; the matter is too serious
for us to be able to do it merely sketching the head, in
other words, to build this vault which we do, not know-
ing whether the stone will suffice to complete it.

These details the government may receive ; the zems-
tvo may receive them on the spot, and more trustworthy
than all, a private society constituted for this purpose
may receive them. There is not a district where there
would not be found, not merely one, but many men, who
would be able and would willingly serve in this business.

It seems to me not excessively difficult. In a week's
time, without much trouble, an active man can traverse
a quarter or a fifth of a district, especially if he lives in
it ; and with a possibility of error of from ten to fifteen
per cent can determine the amount of grain requisite
for subsistence, and the amount on hand above and
beyond that required by each person. I, at least, will
undertake personally to furnish such information within
a week's time regarding a quarter of the district in
which I live. The same is said and can be done by the
majority of the country people with whom I have talked
in regcird to this. To organize a central bureau in which

A TERRIBLE QUESTION aoi

could be collected and grouped all the separate items,
and which might send its members with this object in
view into places where volunteers were not forthcoming,
I imagine would be feasible and not difficult. There
might be mistakes, there might be concealments — con-
cealments on the part of those having grain — there
might be transfers of grain from one place to another,
causing errors ; but the errors of reckoning I imagine
would not be great, and the information received in this
way would be sufficiently precise to answer the chief
question, painful as it is, even if not expressed but felt
by all : Is there, or is there not, enough grain in Russia ?

If, let us suppose, it is shown that this year, accord-
ing to the reckoning of the grain employed generally
for the army and for liquor-distilling, the abundance
against that which is necessary for the sustenance
of the people constitutes one hundred or fifty million
puds, supposing that a part of these one hundred million
might be kept by dealers, a part spoilt, a part burned,
a part might constitute a mistake in reckoning, we might
calmly and resolutely go on living. If there was no
superfluity at all, and it was shown that in Russia there
was not as much grain as was necessary, the state of
things would be dubious and dangerous ; but, neverthe-
less, it might be that, by not ordering grain from abroad,
only by modifying the amount of grain used, for ex-
ample, on liquor-distilling, giving out some of the grain
gratuitously, it might be possible to go on living and
working.

But if it were proved that we are one hundred or fifty
million puds of grain short, the situation would be dan-
gerous. It would be analogous to what takes place when
a fire flashes out and catches a building. But if we
know this now it would be as if when the fire first burst
out, it was still possible to extinguish it.

If we should find this out only when the last ten thou-
sand puds were going, then it would be like the fire
which should have already caught the building and there
was now little hope of escaping from it.

If we now knew that we had an insufficiency of grain^

202

A TERRIBLE QUESTION

let it be fifty or one hundred or even two hundred mil-
lion puds, all this would not be so terrible. We could
now buy that amount of grain in America and it could
always be paid for by governmental, social, or popular
funds.

The people who are working ought to know that their
work has a meaning and is not wasted.

Without this consciousness hands fall idle. But in
order to know this for that work in which now are em-
ployed an enormous number of Russian people, it is
necessary to know now, instantly, within two or three
weeks, whether we have enough grain for this year, and
if not, then where we can get enough to remedy the
deficit.

Byegichevko, November 13, 1891.

MEANS OF HELPING THE POPULA-
TION SUFFERING FROM
BAD HARVESTS

H elp for the population suffering from bad har-
vests may have two objects : support of the peas-
ant proprietors and prevention of people running the
risk of illness, and even death, from want and from the
bad quality of food.

Are these objects attained by the aid now extended in
the form of twenty or thirty pounds of flour a month to
each consumer, reckoning or not reckoning laborers ? I
think not. And I think not from the following consid-
erations : —

All the peasant families of all agricultural Russia
may be distributed under three types. First, the
wealthy farm with eight or ten souls, on the average
twelve souls to a family, with from three to five hired
men, on the average four, from three to five horses, on
the average four, and from three to nine desyatins of
land, on the average six. That is a rich farmer. Such
a muzhik not only feeds his family with his grain, but
frequently hires one or two laborers, buys up land of
those worse off than himself, and sells them grain and
seed. All this, maybe, is done on conditions not favora-
ble for the poor, but the result is that in the country,
where there are ten per cent of these rich men, the land
is not idle, and in case of necessity the poor man may
have the means of obtaining grain, seed, even money.

The second type is that of the average muzhik, with
great difficulty making the ends of the year meet by
means of his two parcels of land, and one or two

203

204

MEANS OF HELPING

** hands/’ and one or two horses. This dvor is almost
wholly supported by its own grain. Wh^ it lacks is
obtained by a member of the family living out.

And the third type is the poor fellow with a family of
from three to five “ souls,” with one laboring man, and
frequently with no horse. This kind never has grain
enough ; every year he is obliged to invent some means
of getting himself out of his tight place, and he is
always within a hair’s breadth of being a pauper, and at
the slightest misfortune he will beg.

The aid given in the form of flour to the inhabitants
of the famine-stricken places is distributed by means of
lists of peasant families according to their means. By
means of these lists calculations are made as to how
much help is to be afforded to any particular family.
And this help is given only to the very poorest, — that
is to say, to the families of the third type.

A **dvor” of the first type, — belonging to the rich
or well-to-do peasant who still has several chetverts^
of oats, who has two horses, a cow, sheep, receives
no help. But investigation into the condition, not only
of the average, but of the rich muzhik, makes one see
that if the peasant agricultural class is to be sustained,
these are the very farmers that need help most.

Let us suppose that a rich peasant has still a little rye
left, he has twenty or more chetverts of oats, he has
five horses and two cows and eighteen sheep, and be-
cause he has all this he receives no help. But reckon
up his income and his expenses, and you will see that
he is in just as much need as the poor man. In order
to support the rotation which he has undertaken with
his hired land, he must sow about ten chetverts. What
grain remains, at forty, fifty, even sixty rubles, is nothing
in comparison with what he needs for his family of twelve
souls. For twelve souls he needs fifteen puds at one
ruble fifty kopeks — twenty-two rubles fifty kopeks a
month — two hundred and twenty-five rubles for ten
months. Moreover, he needs forty, fifty, or seventy

1 A chetvert is J.77 bushels ; a pud is 40 Russian, or 36 . 1 1 avoirdupois
pounds ; a desyatin of land is 2.7 acres. — Ed.

MEANS OF HELPING 205

rubles to satisfy the rent on his hired land; he has to
pay his taxes. The members of his family living out
this year either receive less than before, by grain being
high, or are entirely paid off. He needs diree hundred
and fifty rubles, but he receives even less than two hun-
dred, and therefore one thing is left for him to do, — to
give up his hired land, to sell his seed oats, to sell a

part of his horses, for which there is no price, — in

other words, to descend to the level of the average
muzhik, and even lower, because the average muzhik
has a smaller family.

But no help, or very little, is given to the average
muzhik if he has any oats left or a horse or two. So
that he is obliged to sell his land to the exceptionally
rich, to eat his seed oats, and then also his horse. So

that by the distribution of help as it obtains now, the

rich must infallibly descend to the level of the average
and the average to the level of the poor. And by the
conditions obtaining this year, almost all, except the
unusually rich, are obliged to descend in this way.
The distribution of flour, not attaining its object of sup-
porting the peasant husbandry, does not attain its second
object either — that of safeguarding the people from
famine diseases. The distribution of flour by “ souls ”
does not secure this for the following reasons : —

In the first place, because in such a distribution of
flour there is always a possibility that the person receiv-
ing it will yield to the temptation of squandering what
he has received, and selling it for drink, and this has
happened, though not in many instances.

In the second place, because this help, falling into
the hands of the poor, saves them from starvation only
in case the family has some means of its own. The
largest apportionment amounts to thirty pounds to each
man. And if thirty pounds of flour, together with
potatoes and some admixture with the flour for baking
bread, may support a man for the period of a month,
then in complete poverty, when they have not the where-
withal to buy even lebeda-weed to mix with their bread,
thirty pounds of flour is used up in the form of unmodi-

2o6 means of helping

fied bread in the course of fifteen or twenty days, and
the people, left in an absolutely starving condition for
ten days, are likely to become sick and even to die from
lack of food.

In the third place, the distribution of flour among
poor families, even among those that still have means
of their own, does not attain the purpose of forefending
men from famine diseases, because in a family where
strong men easily get along with poor food, the weak,
the young, and the old contract disease from want and
the poor quality of food.

In all famine-stricken places all families, both rich
and poor, eat miserable bread made with lebeda-weed.

Strange to say now in a large number of cases the very
poor, on receiving grain from the zemstvo, eat unmodi-
fied bread, while almost all the rich families eat it with
orach, with this year’s disgusting unripe lebeda-weed.^

And it all the time happens that while the stronger
members of a rich family thrive on the lebeda-weed
bread, the weaker, older members pine away and die
of it.

Thus a sick woman comes from a rich farm, carrying
in her hand a piece of black lebeda-weed bread constitut-
ing her principal article of food, and asking admission
in the eating-room simply because she is sick, and then
only while she is sick.

Another example : I come to a muzhik who is not
receiving assistance and considers himself rich. He
lives alone with his wife ; they have no children. I find
them at dinner. Potato soup and bread with the lebeda-
weed. In the trough is new bread, likewise adulterated
with a large proportion of the lebeda. The husband
and wife are healthy and happy, but on the stove is

^ The fact that this year lebeda, orach, or pig-weed is universedly em-
ployed in food may be explained by the tradition that they have eaten this
weed before, — and there is a proverb to the effect that “ it is no misfor-
tune to have lebeda in the rye,^' — and the fact that it grows in the rye-
field and is ground up with the rye. It seems to me that if it were not for
this tradition and if it were not found in the rye-fields they would sooner
adulterate their bread with oats, straw, or sawdust than with this deleter!*
ouB weed. But they mix it in everywhere. — Author’s Note.

MEANS OF HELPING 207

an old woman who is ill from the effects of the lebeda-
weed bread, and declares that it is better to eat once
a day only to have good bread to eat, but that this
does not keep up one’s strength.

Or a third case : a peasant woman comes from a rich
farm to ask for her thirteen-year-old daughter admis-
sion to the eating-room because they cannot feed her at
home. This daughter is of illegitimate birth, and there-
fore she is not liked and is not willingly fed. There
are many similar cases, and therefore the distribution of
help in flour from hand to hand does not keep the
old, the feeble, and the unpopular members of the fam-
ily from sickness and death, in consequence of the un-
suitability or lack of food.

Painful as it is to say this, notwithstanding the re-
markable energy and even self-control of the majority
of provincial workers, their activity, consisting in the
distribution of help in corn, does not fulfil its purpose
of supporting the agricultural peasantry or of preventing
the possibility of diseases from famine.

But if what is done now is not good, what is good ?
What should be done ?

Two things in my opinion are necessary, not for the
support merely of the agricultural peasantry, but to
prevent them from ultimate ruin : the organization of
work for every community able to work ; and the estab-
lishment of free refectories for the young, the old, the
feeble, and the sick in all country places suffering from
the famine.

The organization of labor ought to be such that it
should be accessible, well-known, and familiar to the
population, and not such as the people have never occu-
pied themselves with or even seen, or else such as they
are often unable to perform ; as, for instance, by com-
pelling the members of the families who have never
gone away to leave home, or undergo other adverse con-
ditions, such as lack of clothing.

Work ought to be such that, besides their work out of
doors, to which all the capable and able-bodied muzhiks
can resort for wages, there should be domestic work

2o8 means of helping

suitable for the whole population of the famine-stricken
places — men, women, hale old men, and half -grown
children.

This year's distress is due not only to lack of grain,
but also to the no less absolute lack of both money and
chances of earning money — there is no work, and sev-
eral millions of the population are condemned to enforced
idleness.

If the grain necessary for the support of the popula-
tion is at hand, in other words can be placed where it is
needed, at a price within their reach, then the starving
people might earn this grain for themselves, provided
only there was an opportunity of work, and materials
for work and sale.

But if they do not have this opportunity, hundreds of
millions will be irrevocably wasted in the distribution of
gratuitous aid, but the misery will not be relieved. The
matter is not wholly in the material loss ; the idleness
of a whole population receiving gratuitous food has a
terribly demoralizing tendency.

Outside industries may be organized in the most
varied ways, both for winter and still more for summer-
time, and God grant that these industries may be or-
ganized as speedily as possible and on the largest
possible scale. But besides these great private indus-
tries, it is a matter of immediate necessity and enormous
importance that the population be furnished with the
opportunity of doing their own familiar work, without
leaving their homes and their accustomed surroundings,
and of getting pay for it, even though it be at a very
cheap rate.

In the famine-stricken country districts neither hemp
nor flax grew, oats almost wholly failed, and the women
have no yarn and nothing to weave. The wives, the
girls, and the old women, ordinarily occupied, sit idle.
Moreover, the muzhiks, who stay at home and have no
money to buy linden bark, also sit without their usual
winter avocations — the weaving of laptiy or bark shoes.
The children, as well, waste their time idly, for the
schools are for the most part closed. The population,

MEANS OF HELPING

209

having to face only the trying scenes of a more exag-
gerated need, deprived of their ordinary and more than
ever indispensable means of recreation and forgetful-
ness, — of work, — sit for whole days at a time with folded
hands, discussing various rumors and propositions about
help given and to be given, but especially about their
poverty ; ** they grow gloomy and lose their spirits, and
that is the reason more than anything else that they
get sick,” said a sensible old man to me.

Not to mention the economical significance of work
for this year, its moral significance is enormous. Work,
any kind of work which should employ the idle people
this year, is a most pressing necessity.

Until we shall see organized the great industries for
which there were various very sensible plans, now,
it is rumored, being established, and destined to confer
inestimable blessings, if only in the establishment of
them the habits and convenience of the population are
taken into consideration, — if only in all the famine-
stricken districts the opportunity is given for all the
remaining people to work at the work they are accus-
tomed to, the men to pleat lapti and the women to
spin and weave, and the opportunity is given to sell
what they make by this labor, — then this would be, at
least, a great help against the decline of the Russian
husbandry, even if it did not entirely stop it.

If it be granted that a place can be obtained for cloth
at eight kopeks the arshin — and this is possible when
it is produced in large quantities — and that lapti which
will last for years will be bought at ten kopeks a pair,
then each man’s earnings will be at the very least five
kopeks, that is to say one ruble fifty kopeks a month.
If in addition to this it is admitted that in every family
on the average not more than one-fourth of the mem-
bers are unable to work, then it seems that for every
person in a family there will be earned one-fourth of
4.50 kopeks, in other words 1.12 kopek; that is to say,
considerably more than what now comes from the
zemstvo with such strain, bickerings, and quarrels, and
producing such general discontent.

210

MEANS OF HELPING

Such would be the calculation, if work familiar to all
the country population, unquestionably accessible, and
the very cheapest, were performed.

Means would be received exceeding that which is
now received from a gratuitous or loan distribution, to
say nothing of the insoluble difficulty of giving it out,
and especially the discontent which is produced by indi-
vidual distribution. For the attainment of this it would
be necessary to spend comparatively small sums for the
purchase of materials for labor — flax and linden bark,
and secure a place for these productions.

In the organization of these industries, and the fur-
nishing the women with materials for spinning and the
sale of the fabric spun by them, many people are
already interested, but as yet only on a very small
scale. We have also begun this work, but up to the pres-
ent time have not yet the flax, wool, and bast ordered.
Our proposition to the peasants to occupy themselves
with work for the sale of lapti and cloth was everywhere
received with enthusiasm. They would say to us : —

‘‘If we earn only three kopeks a day it is far better
than to sit idle.”

Of course this refers only to the five winter months ;
during the four summer months, till the first fruits, their
industries might be vastly more productive.

For the attainment of our purpose, not, perhaps, the
support of peasant husbandry, but at least the stoppage
of its decay, there is in my opinion only this means —
the organization of industries.

For the attainment of our second purpose, the salva-
tion of the people from disease consequent on bad and
insufficient food, in my opinion, the only infallible means
is the organization in every village of a free table at
which every man may have enough to eat if he is
hungry.

The organization of free tables, begun by us more
than a month ago, is now carried on with a success
exceeding our expectations. These eating-rooms are
arranged in the following way : —

On my arrival at Yepifansky District, toward the end

MEANS OF HELPING

21 1

of September, I met my old friend, I. I. Rayevsky, to
whom I communicated my intention of establishing free
tables in the famine-stricken districts. He invited me
to take up my quarters at his house, and while not de-
sisting from all other forms of help, not only approved
my plan of establishing free tables, but undertook to
assist me in this work; and with that love for the people,
resolution, and simplicity characteristic of him, immedi-
ately, even before our arrival at his house, began this
business, opening six such eating-rooms in his own
vicinity.

The method employed by him consisted in his pro-
posing to widows or the poorest inhabitants of the poor-
est villages to feed those that should come to them, and
in furnishing the necessary provisions for this purpose.

The starosta and his assistants made out a list of the
children and old people deserving of maintenance at the
free table, and these eating-rooms were opened in six
villages. These eating-rooms, in spite of the fact that
they were opened by the starostas and Rayevsky’s stew-
ard, without his personal superintendence, went very
well and were maintained about a month.

Toward the time of our arrival, which coincided with
the first distribution of help from the government, five
of the free eating-rooms were closed, because the per-
sons frequenting them began to receive a monthly al-
lowance, and consequently did not need double help.

Very soon, however, in spite of the distribution of
aid, the need had so increased that it was felt to be
necessary to reopen the closed eating-rooms and estab-
lish new ones. In the course of the four weeks spent
by us here we opened thirty.

At first we opened them in accordance with informa-
tion received concerning the most poverty-stricken vil-
lages, but now for more than a week, from various
directions, petitions have come to us in regard to open-
ing new eating-rooms, but we have not yet had time to
grant them.

The act of opening eating-rooms is as follows — we
at least have proceeded in this way : Having learned

212

MEANS OF HELPING

of a particularly needy village, we drive to it, go to the
starosta, and having explained our purpose, we call in
some of the old men and question them about the actual
condition of the farms from one end of the village to
the other. The starosta, his wife, the old men, and per-
haps one or two more who have come out of curiosity
to the izba, describe to us the state of affairs in the
village.

‘'Well, on the left hand side: Maksim Aptokhin.
How is he

“ His is a hard case. He has children, seven of
them. And no bread this long time. We must relieve
him of his old woman and one child.''

We write down, “From Maksim Aptokhin — two.'*
Then comes Feodor Abramof.

“ They are in a bad case too. Still, they can get
along.” But here the starosta's wife puts in a word,
and says that he is in a bad state and we must relieve
him of one child. Then comes an old man, a soldier of
Nicholas’s time.

“ He is almost dead of starvation.”

Demyon Sapronof — “they are subsisting.”

And thus the whole village is scanned.

A proof of the justice and lack of caste feeling shown
by the peasants in appraising the needs of the villagers
may be seen in this : that notwithstanding the fact that
many peasants were not admitted in the first village,
in the village of Tatishchevo in Ruikhotskaya Volost',
where we opened an eating-room, in the number of the
unquestionably poor whom we had to admit to the free
table, the peasants nominated, without the slightest hesi-
tation, the widow of a pope and her children and the
wife of a diachok or sexton.

Thus all the enumerated forms were generally divided
according to the report of the starosta and the neighbors
into three classes: those unquestionably hard up, some
of whom ought to be admitted to the free table ; those
that were unquestionably well off, such as could sup-
port themselves; and thirdly, those concerning whom
there was some question. This doubt was generally set-

MEANS OF HELPING

213

tied by the number of people coming to the eating-room.
To feed more than forty persons is no easy matter for
the hosts. And therefore, if the number of those apply-
ing is less than forty, the doubtful ones are admitted;
but if more, then some have to be turned away. Gen-
erally some persons unquestionably deserving of suste-
nance at the public tables seem left out, and according
to the force of testimony changes and additions are
made. If it is learned that in a village there are very
many unquestionably needy persons, then a second and
sometimes even a third eating-room is opened.

On the average, both at our establishments as well as
at those of our neighbor, N. F., who is acting indepen-
dently of us, the number of persons getting their meals
at the public table always constitutes about one-third
of all the effective population.

There are many — almost every householder — willing
to keep the eating-room, that is, to bake bread, to cook,
to boil, to serve the pensioners, in exchange for the right
of having free food and fuel. To such a degree are
they desirous of keeping the eating-rooms, that in both
of the first villages where we established eating-rooms,
the starostas, both of them rich peasants, proposed to
have them at their houses. But as those that keep the
eating-houses are guaranteed all fuel and food, we usu-
ally select the poorest, provided they live near the cen-
ter of the hamlet, so that the distance to be traversed
shall not be disproportionate in either direction. On
the place itself we do not lay much stress, as even in a
tiny six-arshin izba there is room enough to feed thirty
or forty men.

The next thing to do is to get the food to each eating-
room. It is managed in this way : In one place, taken
as the central point of the institutions, there is arranged
a storehouse of all necessary provisions. Such a store-
house was for us at first found in Rayevsky’s ‘‘ Ekono-
mia ” ; but as our work widened, three other storehouses
were arranged, or rather selected, on the estates of wealthy
landowners where there were granaries and some pro-
visions for sale.

214

MEANS OF HELPING

As soon as the location of the eating-room was se*
lected and the persons privileged to avail themselves of
it were inscribed ojn a list, the day was designated on
which the keepers ^ of the eating-room or the cart whose
turn it was should go for the provisions. As now in a
large number of eating-rooms, it was a trouble to give
out the provisions every day, two days each week —
Tuesday and Friday — were set apart for that purpose.
At the storehouse the keeper of the eating-room was
given a little book or schedule in this form : —

Credit Book for Eating-Room No..

Month

and

Date.

At Whose
House
Opened

Flour,

Bran.

Potatoes

Cabbage.

i

Oatmeal.

1

Salt.

Number
of Pen-
sioners

Nov. 20.

Lukerya

Kolovaya

4 P

a p

6p.

30

heads

ap.

* P

10 p.

10 Ib.

According to this book the provisions are received
and entered. Besides the provisions, on a designated
day from all the hamlets where the free tables are estab-
lished come carts after fuel ; at first this was peat, but
now, as there is no more peat, firewood. On the same
day the provisions are taken the loaves are made, and
on the third day the eating-rooms are opened. The
question as to the cooking utensils, the bowls, spoons,
tables, is decided by the keepers of the rooms. Each
eating-room keeper uses his own dishes. But if he has
none, he gets them of those that come to him. Each
person brings his own spoon.

The first eating-room was opened at the house of a
blind old man who had a wife and orphan grandchildren.
When, on the day it was opened, I went to this blind
man’s izba at eleven o’clock, the wife had everything
all ready. The loaves had come out of the oven and
were placed on the table and on the benches. On the
stove, which was heated and closed, stood shchi, potatoes,
and beet soup.

1 Kho%yaeva.

MEANS OF HELPING

215

In the izba, besides the blind man and his wife, were
two neighbors and a homeless old woman who had
begged permission to come there so as to get something
to eat and warm herself. There were no people as yet.
It seemed that they were expecting us, and no announce-
ments had been made. A boy and a muzhik were dele-
gated to spread the news. I asked the woman how all
would find seats.

‘‘ I will arrange it all satisfactorily, don't be troubled,"
said the woman.

This housekeeper was a thick-set woman of fifty, with
timid and anxious, but intelligent, eyes. Until the open-
ing of the eating-room she had begged, and had thus
supported herself and her family. Her enemies de-
clared that she drank too much. But, notwithstanding
these reports, she attracted due favor by her attentions to
her husband’s orphan grandchildren, and to the blind
old man himself, lying half dead with consumption on
the sleeping-bunk.

The mother of the orphans had died the year before,
the father had deserted them, and gone to Moscow,
where he had disappeared. The children — a boy and
a girl — were very pretty, especially the boy, who was
about eight; and, notwithstanding their poverty, were
well clothed and shod, and they clung to their grand-
mother, and kept asking things of her, as spoiled chil-
dren generally do.

“ All will be in good order," said the mistress of the
house. “ And I will get a table. And those that can’t
sit down may eat afterward. Nine loaves," she con-
fided to me, “ took four pounds, and moreover I squeezed
out some kvas. Only I had a hard time with the peat,"
she said. It doesn’t heat. I had to get some of our
own straw from the shed. I opened the shed, and then
the peat would not bum."

As there was nothing for me to do there, I went behind
the ravine to the eating-room of the next hamlet, fearing
that they might be expecting me also there. And in real-
ity they were waiting here also. And here was the same
thing — the same ^or of hot bread, the same round

2i6 means of helping

loaves on the tables and benches, the same pots and
kettles on the stove, and the same inquisitive people in
the izba. In the same way the benevolent ran around
to make the announcements.

Having talked with the mistress of the house, who also
complained that the peat did not heat, and that she had
split her trough in making the loaves, I went back to the
first eating-room, thinking that I might find some mis-
understanding or difficulty which might need regulating.
I went to the blind man’s. The izba was full of people,
^nd was swarming with restrained motion like a beehive
open on a summer night. Steam was pouring out of
the door. There was an odor of bread and shchi, and
the sound of eating was heard. The izba was tiny and
dark with two diminutive windows, and on the outside a
great heap of manure on both sides. The floor was of
earth, very uneven. So dark, especially from the peo-
ple obstructing the windows with their backs, that at
first you could distinguish nothing.

But, notwithstanding these inconveniences and the nar-
row quarters, the meal was proceeding with the greatest
good order. Along the front wall, at the left of the door,
were two tables, around which on all sides the people
eating sat in order. In the middle of the izba, from
the outside wall to the stove was a bunk on which the
emaciated blind man was, not lying as before, but sitting
clasping his naked knees, listening to the conversation and
the sounds of eating. At the right, in an empty corner
before the stove door, stood the mistress of the house
and her benevolent assistants. They were all watching
the wants of the pensioners and serving them.

At the table in the front corner under the images
stood the soldier of Nicholas’s time, then an old man of
the hamlet, then an old woman, then the children. At
the second table nearer the stove, with their backs lean-
ing against the wall, a pope’s wife, withered looking,
with children grouped around — boys and girls and the
pope’s daughter, a grown-up girl. On each table was a
bowl of shchi, and the pensioners were taking sips of it,
eating the fresh, savory bread with it. The cups of

MEANS OF HELPING 217

shchi were emptied. “ Eat your fill, eat your fill ! ” ex-
claimed the mistress of the house, gaily and hospitably,
passing slices of bread over the heads. “ There's still

enough To-day we have nothing but shchi and

potatoes," said she to me ; “ there was not time for
svekol’nik. We’ll have it for dinner.'’

An old woman, scarcely alive, standing near the stove,
asked me to give her some bread to carry home ; she had
managed to drag herself there that day, but she could
not come every day, but her boy would be eating there
and he could bring it to her. The mistress of the house
cut her off a piece. The old woman stored it carefully
away behind her apron and expressed her thanks, but
she did not offer to go. The sexton’s wife, a lively
woman, standing near the stove and helping the mistress
of the house, eloquently and vivaciously expressed her
thanks for her daughter, who was also eating there, sit-
ting near the partition, and timidly asked if she herself,
the diachikha, might not eat there.

‘‘ It is long since I have tasted any pure bread ; you
see this is like sweet honey to us ! ’’

Having received permission, the sexton’s wife crossed
herself, and crawled over the plank which was stretched
from a stool to a bench. A boy, her neighbor on one
side, and an old woman on the other made room and the
diachikha sat down. The mistress of the house gave
her bread and a spoon. After the first course of shchi,
she had some potatoes. From the common salt-cellar
each person took a little salt and heaped it up on the
table and dipped the peeled potato into it.

All this — the service at the table and the acceptance
of the food and the disposition of the people — was
done with deliberation, politeness, and dignity, and at
the same time in such a matter-of-fact way that it
seemed as if it had always been done so, would be done
so, and could not be done otherwise. There was some-
thing in it like a natural phenomenon.

Having finished his potatoes and carefully laid aside
his remaining morsel of bread, the Nikolayevsky soldier
was the first to get up and come out from behind the

2i8 means of helping

table, and all the rest followed his example, turning to
the images and saying their prayer ; then uttering their
thanks, they left the house. Those that were waiting
their turn deliberately took their places, and the mistress
again cut off the slices of bread, and once more filled up
the cups with shchi.

Exactly the same thing took place at the second eat-
ing-room ; the only peculiarity was that there were very
many people — as many as forty — and the izba was
still darker and smaller than the first. But there was
the same politeness on the part of the pensioners, the
same calm and joyous, somewhat proud, relation of the
mistress to her work. Here a man served as master of
ceremonies,^ helping his mother, and the work went on
faster.

And exactly the same thing took place at the other
free tables established by us — there was the same ele-
gance and naturalness. In some instances the zealous
mistresses prepared three and even four courses :
svekol’nik, shchi, pakhliobka,^ and potatoes.

The work of the eating-rooms is accomplished with
the same simplicity as many other of the muzhik’s
industries, in which all the details, even very compli-
cated ones, are left to the peasants themselves. In the
matter of transport, for example, in which muzhiks are
employed, no employer ever bothers himself about the
canvas coverings or the nails, or the linden baskets, or
the buckets, and many other things essential for trans-
port work. It is taken for granted that all this sort of
thing will be provided by the peasants themselves ; and
in reality all this is always and everywhere uniformly
and intelligently and simply done by the peasants them-
selves, who need no aid or direction from their em-
ployer.

Exactly the same thing occurred also at the free eat-
ing-rooms. All the details of the business were carried
out by the keepers of the rooms themselves, and so

^ Khozyain,

* SvekoPnik is a cold soup made with beets; shchi is a cabbage soup;
pakhliobka is almost any kind of soup except shchi.

MEANS OF HELPING 219

thoroughly and circumstantially that nothing was left
for the inspector except the general business of the
rooms. There were four such chief duties for the in-
spector of the eating-rooms to attend to : first, the get-
ting of the provisions to a central location from which
they could be distributed among the eating-rooms;
secondly, care that the stores should not be wasted ;
thirdly, care that no persons among the most needy
should be forgotten, and their places taken by those
that could get along without free food ; and fourthly,
trial and use in the eating-rooms of new and little used
means of alimentation, such as pease, lentils, millet,
oats, barley, different kinds of bread, vegetables, and
the like.

A sufficient number of workers furnished us with the
list of people receiving rations. Some of the members
of the families receiving insufficient quantity were ad-
mitted ; some turned in their rations to the eating-rooms
so as to have their meals there. In regard to this we
were guided by the following considerations : in the
uniform distribution as it was carried out in our locality,
at the rate of twenty pounds to each person, we gave
preference to the large families. In the insufficiency of
the distribution these twenty pounds a month apiece the
larger the family, the more entirely inadequate they were
for the support of the people.

The theory of the free tables was therefore this : in
order to open from ten to twenty eating-rooms, for the
feeding of from three to eight hundred men, it is un-
avoidable in the center of this locality to collect the
necessary provisions. In such a center there may al-
ways be the establishment of some opulent proprietor.
Provisions for such a number, let us say five hundred
men, will consist, — if it is proposed to keep up the eat-
ing-rooms till the season of first fruits, — reckoning by
the pound of flour mixed with bran for each person for
three hundred days, will be one hundred and fifty thou-
sand pounds for five hundred persons, or three thousand
seven hundred and fifty puds, or two thousand five hun-
dred puds of rye and one thousand two hundred and

220

MEANS OF HELPING

fifty of bran ; the same amount of potatoes, twelve saz*
hens ^ of wood, a thousand puds of beets, and twenty^
five puds of salt, two thousand heads of cabbage, and
eight hundred puds of oatmeal.

The cost of all this at present prices amounts to fifty-
eight hundred rubles. That is to say, with the increase
of expense for oaten kisel at the rate of one ruble sixteen
kopeks a person.

Having established such a storehouse, around it, at a
distance of from seven to eight versts, one can open as
many as twenty eating-rooms which will be supplied at
this center. It is necessary to open the eating-rooms
first of all in the very poorest of communities. It is
necessary to select a place for this eating-room at the
house of one of the very poorest inhabitants. The
dishes and everything needed for the preparation of the
food and the tables must be furnished by the person
who keeps the eating-room. The list of persons ad-
missible to the free tables must be made up with the
assistance of the village starosta, and if possible of well-
to-do peasants whose families are not represented among
those applying for aid. The supervision of the eating-
rooms, should there be very many of them, may be in-
trusted to the peasants themselves. But it is a matter
of course that in proportion to the direct part in the
matter taken by those that open the tables, the closer
will be their relations both to the keepers of them and
to those that frequent them, the better the business will
go, the less waste of money there will be, the less dis-
satisfaction, the better the food, and, above all, the more
cheery will be the disposition of the people.

But it may be boldly said that even under the most
distant supervision, even when they are intrusted to the
people themselves, the eating-rooms will satisfy great
needs, and by reason of throwing the supervision on the
interested parties, the needless waste of provisions will
never amount to more than ten per cent, if you can call
needless waste the bread which the people carry home
with them, or share with those that have none.

^ A cubic sazhen of wood is 2.68 cords.

MEANS OF HELPING

221

Such is the plan of establishing free tables, and every
one who wishes to make a trial of it will see how easily
and naturally this is accomplished.

The advantages and disadvantages of the free eating-
rooms are as follows : —

The first disadvantage of the free eating-rooms is that
provisions in them cost a little more than in the hand-to-
hand distribution of flour. If relief amounts even to
thirty pounds of flour to each consumer, then in the eat-
ing-rooms you must reckon on the same thirty pounds,
and besides, the soups, potatoes, beets, salt, fire, and
now also oatmeal. This disadvantage, apart from the
fact that the eating-rooms provide for people more than
hand-to-hand distribution, has its compensation in this,
that by the introduction of new, cheap, and wholesome
articles of diet, such as lentils, pease in various forms,
oat-kisel, beets, Indian meal kasha, sunflower and hemp
oils, the quantity of bread used may be diminished and
the food itself improved. A second disadvantage is that
the eating-rooms keep from starvation only some of the
feebler members of a family, and not the young and
average peasant, who does not frequent the free table
on the ground that it is humiliating for him. So that
in the designation of those that are subject to support at
the free tables, the peasants always exclude grown-up
lads and girls on the ground that it would be disgraceful
to them. This disadvantage has its compensation in the
fact that precisely this sense of shame at accepting
charity at the free tables prevents the possibility of
misusing them. A peasant, for example, comes with
the request for a share in the rations, and declares that
he has not had anything to eat for two days. He is
invited to come into the eating-room. His face turns
red and he declines to do so, while a peasant of the same
age, being left without resources and unable to find work,
will take his place in the eating-room.

Or another example : a woman complains of her
condition and asks rations. They propose to her that
she send her daughter. But her daughter is already a
promised bride, and the woman refuses to send her.

222

MEANS OF HELPING

But meantime the bride-daughter of the priest's wife^
of whom I have spoken, comes to the eating-room.

The third disadvantage, and the most serious, is that
some of the feeble, the old, and the little ones, and very
ragged children, cannot get to the eating-room, especially
in bad weather. This inconvenience is obviated by
neighbors or those from the same farm carrying the food
to those unable to be present.

I know no other disadvantages or inconveniences.

The advantages of the free tables are the following : —

The food is incomparably better and more varied than
that which is prepared in families. There is opportu-
nity of getting food-stuffs cheaper and wholesomer. The
food is provided at much cheaper rates. Fuel for bak-
ing loaves is saved. The poorest of families — those at
whose houses the free tables are established — are per-
fectly provided for. Any possibility of inequality in
receiving food, such as is often found in families in re-
lation to unloved members, is done away with ; the aged
and children receive food proportioned to their needs.
The eating-rooms induce kindly feelings instead of dis-
sensions and hatred. Abuses, that is, the acceptance
of help by such persons as are less needy, will be found
less frequent than in any other form of help. The
limits of the abuses, which can be found in taking ad-
vantage of the free tables, is confined to the capacity
of a stomach. A man may carry off as much flour as
he can, but no one can eat more than a very limited
quantity.

And the chief and most important advantage of the
eating-rooms, for which, if for nothing else, they can
and should be established, is that in that community
where there are free tables no man can get sick or die
from the lack or wretchedness of food; nor can there
be, what unfortunately is constantly happening over and
over again, that an old man, feeble, a sick child, to-day,
by taking poor or insufficient food, languishes, pines
away, and dies, if not absolutely from hunger, yet from
the lack of good food. And this is the most im-
portant.

MEANS OF HELPING 223

Lately, wishing to avoid the discussions which arose
when the eating-rooms were first opened, as to who
should have admittance to them and who not, we took
advantage, at a newly opened eating-room, of the throng
that was attracted by the affair, and proposed to the
peasants to decide for themselves who should be ad-
mitted. The first opinion expressed by many was that
is was impossible, that there would be disputes and
quarrels, and they would never come to a decision.
Then the proposition was made that one person from
every dvor might be admitted. But this proposition
was quickly put aside. There were homes where no
one would need to come, and there were others where
there was not one, but several, feeble members. And
therefore they agreed to accept our proposal, to leave it
to their consciences.

“ Places will be prepared for forty persons, and who-
ever comes — ‘ we beg your pardon, but everything is
eaten up' — you won’t get anything.”

They accepted this plan. One said that he was a
healthy, strong man, and was ashamed to come and eat
up the portion of orphans. To this, however, one dis-
contented voice replied: ‘‘You would not go away
happy, no, you would go away unhappy, if, like me a
little while ago, you had not had anything to eat for
two days.”

This very thing constitutes the chief advantage of the
free tables. Any one whosoever, whether inscribed or
not inscribed in the peasant society, household peasant,
soldier’s son, soldier of Nicholas’s or Alexander’s time,
priest’s wife, burgess, noble, old, young, or healthy
muzhik, lazy or industrious, a drunkard or sober, but
having gone two days without eating, would receive the
food of the commune. In this is the chief advantage of
the free tables. Wherever they are no one can either
die of hunger or, being hungry, can be compelled to
work. Everything you can think of can be a stimulus
to work, but not starvation. You can train animals by
starving them, and compel them to do things contrary
to their nature ; but it is time to realize that it is shame-

224

MEANS OF HELPING

ful to compel men by starving them to do what they
do not wish to do, but what we wish them to do.

But is it possible to establish eating-rooms every-
where ? Is this a general measure which may be ap-
plied universally and on a great scale ?

At first it would seem that it was not, that it was only
a partial, local, accidental measure, which might be
applied only in certain places where men were found
especially adapted to this sort of thing. So I thought
at first, when I imagined that for such an eating-room
one would have to hire a place and a cook, to buy the
dishes, to plan and to foresee what kind of food and
when and for how many persons one would have to pre-
pare ; but the form of free eating-rooms which, thanks
to I. 1. Rayevsky, have now been established, did away
with all these difficulties and made this measure most
effectual, simple, and popular.

With our small resources and without special effort,
we opened and started, within four weeks, in twenty
localities, thirty eating-rooms at which about fifteen hun-
dred persons got their meals. Our neighbor N

F alone in the course of a month opened and is

conducting in the same conditions sixteen eating-rooms
at which not less than seven hundred persons are
fed.

The opening of eating-rooms and superintending them
present no difficulties ; their support costs only a little
more than the distribution of flour, if it is given out in
the quantity of thirty pounds a month.^

This measure of establishing eating-rooms, not arous-
ing any bad feelings in the people, but, on the contrary,
perfectly satisfying them, attains the chief object which
now faces society — the guaranteeing people against
the possibility of dying of hunger; and, therefore, it
ought to be adopted everywhere. If the authorities of
the zemstvo, the guardians and the administration, can

^ We had not yet learned by experience, but we took for granted that
the support of one man at the free table would not in any case exceed
one ruble fifty kopeks a month. — Author's Parenthetical Noth
IN Text.

MEANS OF HELPING

225

persuade themselves of the need of the peasantry, and,
supplying bread, give it to the needy, then incompara-
bly the least troublesome method would be for the same
people to provide d^pdts for provisioning the free tables,
and free tables as well.

A few days since we were visited by a native of Ka-
luga, who brought to our place the following proposi-
tion : Some of the landed proprietors and peasants of the
Kaluga government, rich in feed for their cattle, sym-
pathizing with the situation of the peasants in our region
who were obliged to part with their horses at a very
low price, and not likely to be able to buy them at ten
times the price the following spring, proposed to take
for the winter for their board ten wagons — that is to
say, eighty horses — from our region. The horses should
be accompanied by certain trusty men from the hamlets
from which the horses were taken, to take them there
and then come back. In the spring they would go for
the horses and fetch them home.

The day following this proposition, in two hamlets
where it was explained, all the eighty horses, all young
and good, were entered for the transfer, and every day,
from that time forth, peasants kept coming, begging
that their horses also might be taken.

Nothing could be a stronger or more decisive answer
to the question whether there is famine or not, and in
what proportions. There must be great need when
peasants so easily give up their horses, trusting them to
strangers. Moreover this proposition and its acceptance
was to me peculiarly touching and instructive. The
peasants of Kaluga, not wealthy people, for the sake of
brother peasants, strangers to them, people whom they
had never seen, out of pity take upon themselves no
small expense and labor and trouble ; and the peasants
of this locality, evidently understanding the impulse of
their Kaluga brethren, evidently conscious that in case
of need they would have done the same, without the
slightest hesitation intrust to strangers almost their last
possession, their good young horses, for which even at

MEANS OF HELPING

226

present prices they might get as much as five, ten, or
fifteen rubles.

If even a hundredth part of such vital brotherly con-
science, of such unity of men in the name of God, were
in all men, how easily, yet not only easily, but also joy-
fully, we should endure this famine and all other mate-
rial misfortunes.

Byegitchevko, Dankovsky Distwct,

December 8, 1891.

HELP FOR THE STARVING

(JANUARY. 1892)

I

T he questions, whether there is famine in Russia
or not, and if there is, to what an extent, remain as
yet unanswered. As an answer to them let a description
of what I have seen and heard in four districts of the
Government of Tula, suffering from failure of the crops,
suffice.

The first district I visited was Krapivensky, which is
suffering in its black earth belt.

The first impression, answering in its fundamental
sense the question whether the population finds itself
this year in especially trying circumstances, was the fact
that the bread used by almost all was adulterated with
lebeda-weed, in proportions of one-third, and in some
cases one-half, lebeda, black bread of inky blackness,
heavy and bitter. This bread was eaten by all — chil-
dren and pregnant women and nursing mothers and sick
people.

The second impression, pointing to the peculiarity of
the situation this year, is the general complaint of the
lack of fuel. At that time — it was still in the early
part of September — people had nothing to warm them-
selves with. It was said that they had cut up the young
sprouts on the threshing-floors, and I myself saw that;
it was said they had cut down and split up for fire-wood
all the posts, everything that was of wood. Many bought
wood in the clearing of a proprietor's forest and in the
grove which ran in that vicinity. They would go from

227

228 HELP FOR THE STARVING

seven to ten versts after fire-wood. The cost of split
aspen wood was ninety kopeks per shkalik, that is to
say, for one-sixteenth of a cubic sazhen.^

The shkalik lasts a peasant’s establishment about a
week, so ths:t his fuel for the winter, if he has to buy it,
will stand him about twenty-five rubles.

The poverty is beyond question : the bread is un-
wholesome mixed with lebeda-weed, and they have no
fuel. But if you look at the people and judge from ex-
ternals, their faces look healthy, cheerful, and contented.
All are at work ; no one is at home. One is threshing,
another teaming. The proprietors complain because
they cannot get people to work for them. When I was
there, the digging of potatoes and threshing was going
on. On the church festival there was more drinking
than usual, and even on working-days there was much
drunkenness. Moreover, the bread itself, made with
lebeda-weed, when you examine why and how it is
used, receives another significance.

At the farm where I was first shown bread made with
lebeda-weed, in the back-yard the man’s own threshing-
machine was threshing for four horses, and there were
sixty ricks of oats on his own land and that which he
hired, yielding at the rate of nine measures, that is to
say, at the present prices three rubles.

Rye, it is true, was scarce — he had only about eight
chetverts — but besides the oats he had at least forty
chetverts of potatoes, and buckwheat also. Yet the whole
family, consisting of twelve souls, ate lebeda-weed bread.
So that it seemed that, in this case at least, the lebeda-
weed bread was not a symptom of poverty, but a stern old
man’s measure of economy, so that they might eat less
bread ; since with this end in view even in plentiful
years the economical muzhik never gives any warm food
or even soft bread, but always stale crusts.

“ Flour is high ; so why should you waste it on these
rascals ? People eat bread made with lebeda-weed, then
why should we try to be such noblemen ? ”

The lack of fuel finds compensation in the fact that

^ A cubic sazhen is 2.68 cords.

HELP FOR THE STARVING 229

this year, although there is less straw than usual, yet it
is grassy, with small ears, and makes excellent fodder.
That they do not use straw for fuel is not' only because
it is so scarce, but because this year it partly takes the
place of the meal usually given to cattle.

This was so where there was any straw at all. But
in many districts there was no straw at all.

The situation of the majority of the farms under a
superficial observation is such that the failure of the
rye crop finds its compensation in the good crop of oats,
which bring a high price, and in a good crop of potatoes.
They sell oats, they buy rye, and feed principally on
potatoes.

But not all have oats and potatoes. When I made a
list of the whole locality, it seemed that out of fifty-
seven dvors there were twenty-nine where no rye was
left, or only a few puds — from five to eight — and little
oats, so that in an exchange at the rate of two chetverts
for one chetvert of rye, there would not be enough food
to last them till Christmas. Such was the case in twenty-
nine dvors.

Fifteen were in a very bad condition. These dvors
were bad, not from the bad harvests this year, but from
the perpetual conditions of their lives, both inwardly and
outwardly, from their isolation, their lack of strength,
and the feebleness of the character of the housekeepers ;
and these have been wretched even in previous years.
These dvors had not this year their principal means of
support — oats, as they had no seeds and the soil was
exhausted. Even now some of them are begging. Ap-
proximately as bad off are other villages of the Krapi-
vensky District suffering from the bad harvests. The
percentage of the rich, of the middling well-to-do, and of
the wretched is almost one and the same : fifty-nine
per cent or thereabouts of the middling well-to-do, that
is to say of those who this year will eat up all their pro-
visions by Christmas ; twenty per cent of the rich, and
thirty per cent of the perfectly wretched, who either now
or within a month will have nothing to eat.

The situation of the peasants of the Bogoroditsky

230 HELP FOR THE STARVING

District is worse. The harvest, especially that of rye,
was worse here. Here the percentage of the rich, that
is of those who can subsist on their own bread, is the
same; but the percentage of the utterly destitute is
greater : out of sixty dvors, seventeen middling, thirty-
two utterly destitute, corresponding to the fifteen utterly
destitute in the first locality of the Krapivensky District.
And exactly as in the Krapivensky District, the poverty-
stricken condition of these destitute dvors depended, not
on the famine of this year alone, but on a whole series of
both internal and external conditions long in operation,
the same isolation, large families, weakness of char-
acter

Here in the Bogoroditsky District the question of
fuel was still more difficult to decide, as the forests were
sparser. But the general impression was the same as
in the Krapivensky District. As yet, there was nothing
peculiar indicating famine; the people were alert, in-
dustrious, gay, healthy. The clerk of the vplost com-
plained that drunkenness in Uspenye, the chief city, was
more pronounced than ever.

The farther one penetrated into the depths of the
Bogoroditsky District and the nearer to the Yefremov-
sky, the worse grew the situation. In the threshing-
floors grain and straw kept diminishing, and there were
more and more abodes of destitution. On the borders
of the Yefremovsky and Bogoroditsky districts the situa-
tion was particularly bad, because, in addition to all the
misfortunes such as befell the Krapivensky and Bogo-
roditsky districts, and besides, the sparsity of forests,
the potato crop had failed. There were scarcely any ;
even on the best soil only a return of seed was produced.
In almost all families bread adulterated with lebeda-
weed was used. The lebeda here failed to ripen, it was
green. Of that white substance which is generally
found in it, there was not a trace, and therefore it is not
fit to eat. Bread of lebeda-weed it is impossible to eat
alone. If it is eaten on an empty stomach it causes
vomiting. People grow crazy from the kvas made from
flour mixed with lebeda-weed.

HELP FOR THE STARVING 231

Here there are poverty-stricken dvors which, having
been greatly reduced in previous years, have eaten up
everything.

But even this is not the worst locality. Worse ones
are in the Yefremovsky and Yepifansky districts. Here
is a large neighborhood in the Yefremovsky District.
Out of seventy homes there are ten which are still
self-supporting. The rest have just gone to begging
on horseback ! Those that are left eat bread mixed with
lebeda-weed or with bran, which is sold to them at the
storehouse of the zemstvo at the rate of sixty kopeks
a pud.

I went into one house to see the bread made with
bran. The muzhik had received three measures for
seed, when he had already done his sowing, and mix-
ing these three measures with three measures of bran,
ground it together, and the result was sufficiently good
bread, but it was his last.

The woman told me how her daughter had eaten
bread made with lebeda-weed, and it had caused vomit-
ing and diarrhea, and she had ceased to cook that kind
of bread. The main room of the izba was full of horse-
dung and fagots. The women go to the pasture to
collect dung, and to the forest to get bits of twigs as
long and as thick as their finger. The filth of the habi-
tations, the raggedness of the clothing, in this neighbor-
hood was very great ; but it could be seen that it was
nothing new, because it was the same even in the bet-
ter homes. In this neighborhood there was a little clus-
ter of ten dvors occupied by soldiers’ children who had
land.

At the last hovel of this cluster where we stopped, a
thin, ragged woman came out to us, and began to tell
us her condition. She had five children. The oldest
daughter was ten. Two were sick — it must have been
from the influenza. A three-year-old child was sick in a
high fever, had been brought outdoors, and lay on the
bare ground, on the pasture, eight paces from the hovel,
and covered by the ragged remains of a cloak. It was
thirsty, and would be chilly as soon as the fever passed,

232 HELP FOR THE STARVING

but still it was better off than it would have been in tho
tiny hovel with a heated stove, the filth, the dust, and
the other four children.

This woman's husband had gone off somewhere and
disappeared. She subsisted and fed her sick children
on crusts which she got by begging. But it was hard
for her to beg, because her neighbors had little to give.
She had to wander away twenty or thirty versts and
abandon her children. If she got crusts she would re-
main at home, and, when they began to fail her, she
would start out again.

Now she was at home. She had come that afternoon,
and she had brought enough crusts to last till the next
day after. In such a condition she had been for two
years, and things were much worse off than they had
been, because this third year she had been burnt out,
and her eldest girl was away, so that there was no one
with whom to leave the little ones. The only difference
was that they kept eating more and more of the bread
mixed with lebeda-weed. And she was not the only one
as bad off. In this condition, not only this year, but
always, are all the families of weak, drinking men, all
families of those in jail. Such a state of things is more
easily borne in good years.

II

There are many such neighborhoods as this, both in
the Bogoroditsky and the Yefremovsky districts. But
there are still worse ones. And such neighborhoods are
found in the Yepifansky and Dankovsky districts.

Here is one of them. Along the six versts from one
locality to the other there is no village or habitation —
only the farms of proprietors are to be seen. Between
steep banks, a large beautiful river ; on both sides, set-
tlements. On one side that belonging to the Yepifan-
sky District, the smaller; on the other that belonging
to the Dankovsky, the larger. Yonder is a church with
a belbtower, and a cross glittering in the sun. Along

HELP FOR THE STARVING 233

the hill on this side extend, in the distance, the pretty
little houses of the peasants.

I approach the edge of the settlement on this side.
The first izba is not an izba, but four stone walls, of gray
stone laid in clay, covered with a ceiling on which are
spread potato leaves. There is no yard.^ This is the
dwelling of the first family. There, in the middle of
this residence, stands a cart without wheels ; and not
back of the yard where the threshing-floor generally is,
but directly in front of the izba, is a small cleared place,
called a tok^ where the oats are threshed and winnowed.
A tall muzhik in bark shoes, with a shovel and his hands,
is shoveling the newly winnowed oats from a pile into
plaited seed-baskets; a barefooted peasant woman of
fifty, in a filthy black skirt torn at the side, is carrying
these baskets away and setting them into the wheelless
cart, and keeping count. An unkempt little girl of seven,
in a skirt gray with grime, clings to the woman, ham-
pering her. The muzhik is the woman’s neighbor, who
has come over to help her winnow and garner the oats.
The woman is a widow ; her husband has been dead two
years, and her son has gone to the army for the au-
tumn drill. In the ibza is the daughter-in-law with her
two little children, one a baby at the breast, the other,
two years old, with bare legs, is sprawling on the thresh-
old and screaming — something discontents him.

The whole harvest of this year consists of oats, all of
which is stored in the cart, and amounts to four chet-
verts — about twenty-three bushels. Of rye, for seed,
there remained, carefully stored away in the punkuy or
grain-closet, one bag mixed with lebeda-weed — about
three puds. No millet, no buckwheat, no lentils, no po-
tatoes, had been planted or sowed. The bread they used
was made with lebeda-weed, and it was so bad it was im-
possible to eat it ; and on the morning of this particular
day, the woman had gone begging to the village — eight
versts. In the village it was a festival, and she had col-
lected five pounds of pieces of pirog free of the lebeda-
weed. She showed it to me. In a linden-bark basket

234 HELP FOR THE STARVING

were collected four pounds of crusts and pieces as big
as one's palm. This was her whole property and all
her visible means of support.

Another izba was the same, only a little better pro-
tected and had a small court. The crop of rye was the
same. The same bag with lebeda-weed stood in the
entry and represented the granary with stores. At this
place they had not sowed oats at all, as they had had no
seed in the spring. They had three chetverts of potatoes
and there were two measures of millet. To the rye which
was left over from the distribution for seed, the woman
had added an equal quantity of lebeda-weed, and they
were using it for food. A slice and a half of it was
left. With potatoes, they said they might get along for
a month, but what remained for them after that they
did not know. The woman had four children and a
husband. The husband, when I was at the izba, was
not at home. He had built the hut, laying the stone in
clay. He was at a neighbor’s at the next dvor.

The third place was the same, the condition the same.
While I was there and talking with the mistress of the
establishment, another woman came in and began to re-
late to her neighbor how her husband had been beaten,
how she did not expect to have him live, and how they
had administered the last communion to him that morn-
ing. Evidently the neighbor knew it all long before,
and it was repeated for my benefit. I proposed to come
and look at the ailing man and help him, if there was
any possible way. The woman went out and speedily
returned to show me the way. The sick man lay in the
next izba. This izba was large, timbered, with a stone
pufikay or grain-room, and a yard. But the destitution
was the same. The owner, evidently, had been tempted
to build after a fire. That is all he had done. He had
built, then he had taken sick and been reduced to beg-
gary. Two other families, unrelated and homeless, had
lodgings in this izba. The head of one of these families
was also stricken with illness.

On a bunk between the stove and the wall lay the sick
man, covered with a corn-cloth, and groaning piteously.

HELP FOR THE STARVING 235

I went to him and cautiously turned back the covering.
He was a thick-set, healthy muzhik of forty, with a
bloodstained face and well-developed muscles on his
bare arm. I proceeded to question him, and he, striv-
ing to groan, in a feeble voice told me that three days
before they had held a reunion and he and a comrade
had taken billets, passports, to go down the river, and
then he had told one of the muzhiks that he ought not
to swear ; and in reply to this the muzhik had knocked
him down and “walked all over him'’; that is, had
given him a regular trouncing, striking him on his head
and on his chest. It seemed that, having taken out
their passports, they had bought liquor on shares ; and
then the former starosta, squandering fifty rubles
of the commune’s funds, treated them to one-half a
vedro, or bucket, because they postponed the payment
for three terms, and the peasants got drunk.

I felt of the wounded man and examined him. He
was perfectly well, and was perspiring powerfully under
his covering. There were no marks on him, and evi-
dently he was in bed and they had given him the
Holy Communion in order to induce the authorities, one
of whom he supposed me to be, to inflict punishment on
the man with whom he had quarreled. When I told him
that he need not be tried, and that I thought he was
not dangerously beaten and might get up, he remained
discontented, and the women, who had attentively fol-
lowed me and filled the izba to overflowing, began with
displeasure to remark that, if that were so, then they
would beat them all to death.

The poverty of all these three families living here
was as absolute as in the first dvors. No one had any
rye. One had two pounds of buckwheat ; another had
enough potatoes to last a fortnight or a month. All
had still a little bread made of rye mixed with lebeda-
weed, but not enough to last any length of time.

The people were almost all at home. One was plas-
tering his house, another was rebuilding his, another
was sitting still, doing nothing. All the threshing had
been done ; the potatoes were all dug.

236 HELP FOR THE STARVING

Such was the whole village of thirty places, with
the exception of two families which were in easy cir-
cumstances. This village had been half burned down
the year before, and had not been rebuilt. The first
dvor, with the woman threshing oats, and eight others
had been immediately settled in a new place on the
outskirts, so as to fulfil the rules of insurance. The
majority are so poor that, so far, they are living in lodg-
ings. In the same condition of feebleness are also
those that had not been burnt out, though those that
had been burnt out are, on the whole, rather worse off.
The condition of the village is such, that out of thirty
dvors twelve have no horses.

The village is in destitute condition, but it is evident
that the failure of this year’s harvest is not the princi-
pal misfortune. In almost every family, its special
cause is something far more significant than the mis-
fortune of this year’s crop.

The misfortune of the former starosta is that he has
to pay fifty rubles in three instalments, and he is selling
all his oats to pay this debt. The present starosta, an
excellent carpenter, had the special misfortune that he
had been appointed to that office and cannot go out to
work. His salary is fifteen rubles a year, and he de-
clares that he could easily earn sixty, and would not
mind the failure of the harvest.

A third muzhik has the misfortune of having got into
debt long ago, and now the time to pay it has come,
and he has been obliged to sell the three walls of his
wooden izba, leaving himself one for fuel. Now he
has nothing to live in, and he is constructing for himself,
out of stone, a tiny cell in which he will live with his
wife and children.

A fourth has the misfortune of having quarreled
with his mother, who had been living with him, and she
has left him, dismantled her izba, and gone to another
son, taking her share with her. And he had nowhere
to live and nothing to live on.

Still a fifth has the misfortune of having gone to the
city with oats, where, in a spree, he had spent for drink

HELP FOR THE STARVING 237

all that he got for his oats. The universal, chronic
causes of poverty are also many times more powerful
than the poor crops. As always, conflagrations, quar-
rels, drunkenness, low spirits

Before taking my departure from the village, I stopped
near one who had just brought from the field some
potato vines — botovya they call them — and who was
piling them up against the walls of his izba. Quickly
six muzhiks also came up, and we had a talk. Their
women stood listening at a little distance. Children
munching inky black, sticky bread made with lebeda-
weed were running around us, gazing at me, and trying
to catch a word. I repeated several questions, credit-
ing the starosta’s testimony. It all seemed credible.
Even the number of those without horses proved to be
greater than the starosta had claimed. They related
the whole story of their poverty, not with any satisfac-
tion, but with a certain irony. ‘‘ Why is it that you are
so wretched; have you become poorer than other peo-
ple ? ” I asked.

Several answered at once in various voices, so definite
was the reply.

But what shall we do ? In the summer half the vil-
lage was burned up as a cow licks dew with her tongue.
And then the crop failed. And the summer was bad,
and now to-day we are all cleaned out.”

Well, how are you going to live ? ”

“ We shall live all right. We shall sell what we have,
and then whatever God gives.”

What does this mean ? Can it be that these men
do not in reality understand their condition, or do they
so hope for aid from outside that they do not want to
put forth any effort ? I may be mistaken, but it seems
like this.

And here I remembered two somewhat intoxicated
old muzhiks of the Yefremovsky District, who were
coming from the volost headquarters, where they had
gone to ask when they would employ their sons for the
autumn drill ; and at my question how their harvest had
been and how they got along, they replied, notwithstand*

238 HELP FOR THE STARVING

ing that they were from the very wretchedest locality,
that, glory to God, they had distributed seed for sowing,
and now they would continue to distribute grain also for
provisions, till Lent at the rate of thirty pounds a man,
and after Lent at the rate of a pud and a half. Why,
the fact that the people of this Yefremovsky village can-
not live through the winter unless they undertake some-
thing, is as palpable as that a hive of bees without honey,
left for the winter, will die before spring. But this is
the very question : Shall they undertake anything or
not ? So far it is likely that they will not. Only one
of them sold all that he had and went to Moscow. The
rest apparently do not realize their situation. Do they
really not comprehend their situation, or are they wait-
ing for help from outside, or do they, like children who
have slipped into an ice-hole or lost their way, in the first
moment, not comprehending all the dangers of their sit-
uation, find amusement in its unusualness Maybe both
are true. But it is unquestionable that these people are
in a condition where they make scarcely any effort to
help themselves.

Ill

Well, then, is there famine or is there not famine?
And if there is, in what degree ? And in what degree
must help be given ? All the columns in which the
possessions of the peasants are entered give no answer,
and can give no answer, to these questions.

Many represent to themselves the task of feeding the
starving people exactly as they will represent to them-
selves the same task of feeding a given number of cattle.
For so many oxen they need for two hundred winter
days so many puds of hay, straw, malt, grain. They
get ready this amount of feed, furnish it for the herd of
cattle, and have the assurance that the creatures will
weather the winter. With human beings the calcula-
tion is entirely different.

In the first place, for the ox and all kinds of cattle,
the minimum and maximum of indispensable food are

HELP FOR THE STARVING 239

not very far separate from each other. Having eaten
their necessary amount of feed, cattle cease to eat, and
that is all that is required for them ; but if they do not
have all they need, they soon sicken and die.

For a human being the difference between the mini-
mum and the maximum of what he requires — not only
as regards food, but other necessities also — is enor-
mous. A man may live on wafers like the fasters, on a
handful of rice like the Chinese, may go without food
for forty days like Dr. Tanner, and preserve his health;
and he may swallow down enormous quantities of costly
and nutritious food and drink, and besides this bodily sus-
tenance he requires many things besides, which may wax
to great proportions and be limited to very narrow ones.

In the second place, the ox in the stall cannot earn
its own feed; while a man does earn his food, and that
man whom we are proposing to feed is the chief earner
of food, the very one who in the most difficult conditions
earns what we are preparing to feed him with. To feed
a muzhik is just the same as in springtime, when the
grass is pushing and the cattle can already crop it, to
keep the creatures in the stall and pull up this grass for
them ; in other words, to deprive the herd of that enor-
mous power of crop-gathering, and thereby ruin it.

Something analogous would happen with the muzhik
if we proceeded to feed him in the same way, and he
should believe in this.

The muzhik’s budget does not meet the requirements
- — there is a deficit, he has nothing to live on — he must
be fed.

Now, if you feed every average muzhik, not in a famine
year, but in an ordinary year, when as in our localities,
in these very localities where there is famine, often the
grain from the allotted land will not last till Christmas,
you will see that in ordinary years, according to the
returns of the harvest, he will have nothing to live upon,
and the deficit will be such that he will infallibly have
to kill his cattle and have only one meal a day himself.
Such is the budget of the average muzhik — of the desti-
tute there is nothing to be said ; but, lo ! he not only

240 HELP FOR THE STARVING

does not kill his cattle, but he has married off his son
or his daughter, celebrated a festival, and smoked up
five rubles’ worth of tobacco.

Who has not seen conflagrations that cleaned every-
thing up ? It would seem as if the sufferers were utterly
ruined. Lo, and behold ! one is helped by a kinsman,
an uncle; some one furnishes a jug, another takes a
place as a laborer and another goes a-begging; much
energy is put out, and lo I within two years they are no
worse off than they were before.

But how about emigrants, who go with their families,
subsisting for years on their labor while lacking any
definite place of settlement ? At one time I was occu-
pied with the question of a former settlement of the
Samara border. And it is a fact, which all the old
inhabitants of Samara can substantiate, that the majority
of the emigrants who were assisted as they came along
the main traveled roads went to ruin and poverty, while
the majority of the deserters reached their journey’s
end, and settled down successfully, and became rich.
But how about landless peasants, household servants,
soldiers’ children ? All have been supported, and are
supported, even in years when bread was higher than it
is now. They say there is no work. But here are
others who keep saying that they have work to offer,
but there are no workmen. And the men who say this
are just as correct, or just as incorrect, as those that
complain that there is no work. I know definitely that
proprietors have offered work but no laborers came;
that, to the work furnished by the forestry commission,
so far, no laborers appeared ; and this is true also of othei
undertakings described in the newspapers.

For a miserable workman there is never any work,
but for a good workman there is always work. It is
true this year there is less work than usual, and there-
fore more poor workmen remain without work ; but still,
whether a man has work or not depends, not on any
external causes, but on the workman’s energy — on
whether he seeks work wisely, is eager for work, and
works well.

HELP FOR THE STARVING 241

I say all this, not for the purpose of proving that we
ought not to help miserable workmen and their families,

— on the contrary, they need help most of all, — but only
to show how impossible it is to reckon the budget of a
peasant’s home, the income of which may be stretched
from three to thirty and more rubles a month, according
to the peasant’s energy in seeking and satisfying employ-
ment, while the outgo may be curtailed to two pounds
of meal a day with bran for each person, and wasted in
a luxury capable of ruining the richest muzhik in i
year’s time.

The difference of opinion as to whether there is
famine or not, and to what a degree, arises from the
fact that as a basis for estimating the peasant’s situa-
tion they take his property, whereas the chief items of
his budget are determined, not by his property, but his
labor.

In order to determine the degree of poverty which
might be taken as a guide in distributing aid, there were
placed in all the zemstvos throughout the volost’-districts
specific inventories containing lists of consumers, labor-
ers, land “allotments ; the quality of different grains
sowed, and the crops, the number of cattle, the average
harvest, and many other things. These lists were made
up with an extraordinary wealth of columns and par-
ticulars. But any one who knows the peasants’ ways
of housekeeping, knows that these lists tell very little.
To think that the peasant household receives only what
it gets from the allotted land, and spends only on what
it eats, is a great mistake. In the majority of cases
what is got from the allotted land constitutes only a
small part of what it receives. The peasant’s chief
wealth is what he and his household earn by working

— whether they earn it on hired land, or by laboring for
some proprietor, or by living out at service, or by various
vocations. Why, the muzhik and his family all are
working always. The condition of physical idleness is
misery for the muzhik. If there is not work enough
for all the members of the muzhik’s family, if he him*
self and his people are eating, but not working, he con?

242 HELP FOR THE STARVING

siders that he has reached absolute poverty, just as if
from a shrunken the wine leaks, and generally by
all possible means he seeks and always finds some way
of warding off this poverty — he finds work. In a
muzhik’s family all the members work from childhood
to old age, and support themselves by work. A lad of
twelve already earns something as a shepherd-boy or in
the care of horses ; the little girl spins and knits stock-
ings or little mittens ; the muzhik goes out to service
either at some distant provincial city, or works as a day
laborer, or works on shares for some proprietor, or him-
self hires land ; the old man plaits bark shoes, and that
is a very common resource. "

Then besides, there are extraordinary cases : a lad
leads the blind, a girl gets a place as a nurse with some
rich muzhik, a boy is taken to learn a trade, the mu-
zhik presses bricks or makes seed baskets, the woman
practises as a midwife or as a doctor, a blind brother
begs, one who has got learning reads the psalter for
the dead, the old man rubs tobacco, some widow sells
vodka. Moreover a peasant’s son may get a place as
a coachman, a conductor, an uryadniky or village police-
man ; or his daughter may become a chambermaid or
a nurse ; another’s uncle becomes a monk or an over-
seer, and all these relations take hold and help support
the establishment. From such items, not entered on the
lists, comes the principal income of a peasant’s family.

The items of expenditure are still more varied, and
are by no means confined to provisions : taxes of vari-
ous kinds, regulation of army service, firearms, black-
smith work, plowshares, bolts, wheels, axes, forks, parts
of harnesses and carts, buildings, stoves, clothing, foot-
gear for himself and his children, holidays, the sacra-
ments for himself and his family, weddings, christenings,
funerals, doctor’s hire, gifts for his children, tobacco,
kitchen utensils, dining-room ware, salt, tar, kerosene,
pilgrimages.

Every man, moreover, has his own peculiarities of
character, his weaknesses, his charities, his vices, which
cost him money. In the very poorest families of five

HELP FOR THE STARVING 243

or six souls, from fifty to seventy rubles a year, in an
opulent family from seventy to three hundred, in an
average family from one hundred to one hundred and
twenty, are thus involved. And every householder can
without very much increase of energy make this hun-
dred rubles’ income one hundred and fifty, and by some
slackening of energy reduce it from one hundred to
fifty, and by economy and close calculation reduce a
hundred rubles of expenditure to sixty, and by slackness
and inefficiency increase it from a hundred to two
hundred.

How then in these circumstances reckon the budget
of a muzhik, and decide the question whether he is
suffering from poverty or not, and to what a degree,
and if he is, to decide which of them is to be helped and
how much ?

In the zemstvos inspectors have been appointed —
persons whose duty it was to administer the distribution
of help among the volost’-districts. In one of the zems-
tvos there have been instituted councils held by the
inspectors, — of priests, the siarshina, or head man of the
village, the ecclesiastical starosta, and to delegates, — and
these were to decide who were to be helped. But even
these councils could not help in the matter of distribu-
tion, because, according to the lists and what is now
known of peasant families, it is impossible to tell in
advance those who will be needy ; and therefore regu-
larly to determine gratuitous assistance for the people
is not merely difficult, but quite impossible.

Many think that if only the wealthy would give the
poor a part of their riches, all would be beautiful. But
this is a great mistake. Try to give money to the poor
in the city, and they will try even this. And what will
be the result ?

Seven years ago in Moscow, by the will of a deceased
tradesman, six thousand rubles were distributed among
the poor, giving two to each. Such a crowd collected
that two were crushed to death, and the largest part
of the money got into the hands of healthy pleaders,
while the poor and the weak got nothing.

244 help for the STARVING

The same thing results and will result also in the
country, and wherever money is distributed as a gratuity.
It is generally thought that all it requires is to distribute
it, but to distribute and to determine is not easy. Let
us allow, they generally think, that there are abuses
and deceptions, but we must be on the lookout for such,
take care to investigate, and then one can get rid of
those that do not need, and give only to the destitute.

In this also there is an error. The essence of the
matter is such that it cannot be done. To distribute
gratuitous help among the needy only is impossible
because there are no external marks whereby one could
determine the needy, and the distribution of gratuities
itself elicits the most evil passions, so that even those
signs which were, are annihilated.

The administration and the zemstvo are engaged in
trying to find out those that are really needy. All
muzhiks, even those that are not at all destitute, know-
ing that there is going to be a gratuitous distribution,
try to seem destitute, and even make themselves so, in
order to get help without working for it. Jill are aware
that to gain by means of labor is good and praise-
worthy — without labor is bad and shameful. And
suddenly appears a method of obtaining without labor
and free from anything reprehensible. Evidently such
a confusion in ideas is produced by the appearance of
this new way of getting.

But how can we wait when they are dying of starva-
tion ? Here in the country, where there is no grain till
next November, and where, through laziness, errors of
judgment, or what not, the muzhiks declare there is no
work and they are not working; within a week’s time
unquestionably actual starvation confronts the women,
the aged, and the young, and possibly the laziest and
most mistaken, but actually living people.

Evidently it is impossible not to give ; but if we give,
how shall we give, to whom shall we give ?

If we give to all as the peasants everywhere demand,
claiming, with reason, that they must be answered by a
reciprocal bond, then it is necessary at least to give to

HELP FOR THE STARVING 245

all in equal shares, so that there may be something to
answer for. If we give to all in equal shares and
enough so as to furnish all the destitute with sustenance,
of course it would require not far from a milliard of
rubles, a sum which evidently it is impossible to find.
If it was distributed to all, a little at a time, then for the
rich it would be an unnecessary addition, and for the
poor not enough to save them from ruin. If we give
only to the destitute, then the question is how to distin-
guish those that are really destitute from those that are
not destitute at all.

The main thing is that the more is given the less the
people will work for themselves, and the less they work
the more their poverty will increase.

And it is impossible to help ! What is to be done,
then ?

IV

If a man in society really wants to help the people,
the first thing that he must do is clearly to comprehend
his relation to them. When we have once come to un-
derstand our true relationship to them, we cannot begin
to serve them in any other way than by ceasing to do
what harms them.

My idea is that only love will save the people from all
their misfortunes, including famine. Love cannot be
defined in a word, but is always expressed in deeds. The
deeds of love in relation to the starving consists in shar-
ing one’s morsel with them.

And therefore I think that the best thing that can be
done now for the help of the destitute consists in settling
in the midst of the starving, and living with them.

I do not say that every one who wishes to help the
starving must immediately go and settle in an unwarmed
izba, feed on bread made with lebeda-weed, and die within
two months or two weeks, or that every one who does
not do this does not do anything helpful. I say that the
nearer a man comes to doing this the better it will be for

246 HELP FOR THE STARVING

him and for others, but that any one does well who ap-
proaches this ideal.

There are two extremes : one is to give one's life for
one’s friends ; the other is to live on without changing
the conditions of one’s life.

All men, who comprehend that the means of helping
those that are now starving consists in overthrowing the
barriers separating us from the people, and consequently
who change their lives, unavoidably, according to the
measure of their moral and physical powers, are distrib-
uted between these two extremes. Some, going into
the country, so arrange their lives that they will live and
eat and sleep together with the destitute ; others will
live and eat separately, but will establish eating-rooms
and work in them ; still others will help by distributing
food and grain ; others again will give money ; a fifth
class — I can imagine these — will live in a starving vil-
lage, spending their income there, only occasionally
helping the poverty which will once in a while be
brought to their notice.

** Whether the people, the whole people, shall be sup-
ported or not supported, I do not know and I cannot
know,” — a man looking at it from this standpoint will
say to himself. ** To-morrow a pestilence or an invasion
may befall us, and the people will die, but not from starva-
tion ; or to-morrow some new form of sustenance may be
discovered which will feed every one ; or — what is more
likely — I may die to-morrow myself, and I shall know
nothing of whether the people are to be fed or not fed.
The main thing is that no one appoints me superinten-
dent of the task of feeding forty millions of the people
living in such extremes, and I evidently cannot attain the
external aim of feeding all these people and safeguard-
ing them from misfortunes ; but am appointed over my
own soul in order to lead my life as near as possible to
what my conscience inculcates, and I can do only one
thing — as long as I live, I can employ my powers for
the service of my brethren, considering as my brethren
all without exception.”

And, wonderful to relate, a man has only to turn

HELP FOR THE STARVING 247

from the task of solving these external problems, and
put to himself the only true internal question peculiar
to man — how best to live during this year of painful
experience — and all these questions receive their very
wisest solution.

External activity, setting for its object the feeding
and maintaining the prosperity of forty millions of men,
as we have seen, meets in its way certain obstacles with
difficulty overcome : —

(1) To determine the degree of the actual need for
the population, able to manifest in this supporting of
themselves the greatest energy and absolute apathy, is
out of the bounds of possibility.

(2) If it is granted that this determination is possi-
ble, then the amount of the money required and of the
grain is so great that there is no likelihood of obtaining
them.

(3) If it is granted that these sums will be supplied,
then the gratuitous distribution of money and grain
among the population will slacken the energy and self-
reliance of the people, and these, more than anything
else, have the possibility of upholding their prosperity in
these trying times.

(4) If it is granted that the distribution will be pro-
moted in such a way as not to enfeeble the self-reliance
of the people, then there is no possibility of regularly
determining the assistance, and those that do not need
will grasp the share of those that do need, so that the
majority of them will still remain without help and will
perish.

The activity, however, which has the internal aim for
the soul, and always united with sacrifice, avoids these
obstacles, and attains enormous results not allowed by
the other form of activity.

This is the activity which this year of famine — as
I have seen more than once in these famine-stricken
places — causes a peasant woman, the mistress of a
house, at the words Khrista radiy — “for Christ’s sake,”
— heard under her window, to shrug her shoulders, to
knit her brows, and then after all to get down from the

24 .S HELP FOR THE STARVING

shelf her last loaf, already begun, and cut from it a slice,
and, crossing herself, give it.

For this activity the first obstacle does not exist —
the impossibility of separating the destitution from the
destitute. Mavra’s orphans ” beg in Christ’s name.
She knows that they have nowhere to get anything, and
she gives.

Neither does the second obstacle exist — the enormous
multitude of the needy. The needy always have been
and still are. The question is merely how much of my
own resources I can give to them. The mistress of a
house giving alms does not need to reckon how many
millions are starving in Russia, or what is the price of
wheat in America, how much at our ports and at our
grain elevator, and how much may be taken under war-
rant. For her there is one question : how to put the knife
through the loaf, cutting off a thick slice or a thin one ;
but whether thin or thick, she gives it, and firmly, assur-
edly, knows that if each one takes from his own, there
will be enough for all, however much is needed.

The third obstacle still less exists for the mistress of
the house. She is not afraid that the giving of this
morsel will enfeeble the energy of Mavra’s children,”
and encourage them to idleness and constant beggary,
because she knows that even these trapips understand
how valuable to her is the slice which she cuts off for
them.

Neither is there a fourth obstacle. The mistress of
the house has no occasion to vex her mind over the
question whether it is right to give to those that are
standing now under her window, whether there are not
others more needy to whom she ought to give that slice.
She pities ” Mavra’s children ” and she gives to them,
and knows that if all will do the same thing, then no
one will ever die of hunger either in Russia or anywhere
else in the world.

Only such activity always has saved, saves, and will
save men. This is the kind of activity that must be
adopted by men who wish to serve others in this present
time of adversity.

HELP FOR THE STARVING 249

This activity saves men because it is the smallest seed
of all, and grows into the tallest of trees. So insig-
nificant is what one, two, or a dozen men can do, living
in the country among the starving, and helping them
according to the measure of their ability. But this
is what I saw in my journey.

Some boys were leaving Moscow, where they had
been working. And one was taken sick and fell behind
his companions. He had been waiting for five hours,
and was lying on the edge of the road, and a dozen
muzhiks passed him. Among those that were passing
was one peasant with a potato, and he asked the sick
youth some questions, and finding that he was sick,
took compassion on him and carried him to his village.

‘‘ Who is that ? ” Whom has Akim brought } ”

Akim told that the lad was sick, that he had been
fasting, and had eaten nothing for two days — he could
not help pitying him.

Then one woman brought some potatoes, another a
patty, a third some milk.

“^^‘Akh! dear heart, he has been starving. Why, of
course we pity him. He’s only a boy ! ”

And this very lad by whom, notwithstanding his
wretched appearance, a dozen men had passed without
taking pity on him, became an object of pity to all, dear
to all, because one had taken pity on him.

Loving activity gains its importance from the fact
that it is contagious. External activity expressed in
gratuitous gifts of grain and money, according to de-
scriptions and lists, calls forth the worst emotions :
greediness, hatred, deception, unkind criticism ; private
activity calls forth, on the contrary, the best sentiments :
love and the desire of sacrifice.

“ I have worked, I have struggled, they give me
nothing ; but they give a reward to that lazy dog, that
drunkard ! Who told him to get drunk ? The thief de-
serves all he gets ! ” says the rich and the average
muzhik to whom they refuse assistance.

With no less anger speaks the poor man of the rich
who demands an equal share : —

250 HELP FOR THE STARVING

We are the poor ones. They suck us dry, and then
give them our share. They are so mean,'’ and the like.

Such feelings are elicited by the distribution of gra-
tuitous assistance. But, on the contrary, if one sees how
another is sharing with a neighbor, is working for an
unfortunate, one has the desire to do likewise. In this
lies the strength of loving activity. Its strength is that
it is contagious, and, as soon as it becomes contagious,
then there is no limit to its spread.

As one candle kindles another, and thousands are
lighted from that one, so also one heart inflames an-
other and thousands are set a-glowing. Millions of
rubles will do less than will be done by even a small
diminution of greediness and increase of love in the
mass of the people. If only the love is multiplied —
then the miracle is accomplished which was performed
at the distribution of the five loaves. All are satisfied,
and still much remains.

I will say more definitely how this activity presents
itself to me. A person from the rich classes, wishing
this trying year to share in the general poverty of these
people, comes to one of the suffering localities and be-
gins to live there. Spending there on the spot, in the
Lukoyanovsky or Yefremovsky district, in a starving
village, the tens of thousands, thousands, or hundreds,
of rubles which he usually spends every year, he con-
secrates his leisure, employed by him in the city"^on
amusements, in some activity for the advantage of the
starving people, according to his abilities. The very one
fact that he is living there and expending there what he
usually spends in the city, brings a material help to the
people. And the fact that he is to live in the midst
of this people, even without self-sacrifice but with disin-
terestedness, already brings a moral advantage to him
and to the people.

Evidently a person coming to a starving locality for
the purpose of being of advantage to the people cannot
be limited by the fact of living only for his own pleas-
ure amid a starving population. I imagine to myself
such a person — man or woman or a family with mode-

HELP FOR THE STARVING 251

rate means, let us say with a thousand rubles a year — -
coming in this way to a locality where the crops had
failed. This person or family hires or buys from some
proprietor of his acquaintance a habitation, or selects
and hires an izba, settles down in it according to his
circumstances and demands, with the intention of bear-
ing the inconveniences of life, lays in fuel, provisions,
provides himself with horses, fodder, and the like. All
this means bread for the people, but this cannot limit
the relation of this family or this person to the people.

To the kitchen come beggars with wallets; and one
must give to them. The cook regrets Ithat the bread is
mostly gone. She must either refuse them their crusts,
or bake new loaves. An extra supply of bread is
baked; more people begin to come. From families
where the bread is gone and there is nothing to eat,
they come asking for help ; here again they must give.
Their own cook proves not to be able to do the work.
And the oven is small. They have to hire an izba for
baking, and hire a special cook. This costs money.
They have no money. But the family settling there
have friends or acquaintances who know that they have
settled in a destitute locality. The friends who know
them send them money, and the work is broadened
and grows. Bread is distributed from the hired izba.
But some people come for bread and sell it. Cheating
begins. And in order that there may be no temptation to
take advantage of the bread distributed, instead of dis-
tributing it they give it to be eaten on the premises by
those that come for it. They cook soups and oatmeal ;
an eating-room is established.

It seems to me that such eating-rooms as these places,
where those that come may get fed, is the form of help
which develops itself from the relations of the rich to
the starving and brings the greatest advantage. This
form more than all calls forth the direct activity of the
helper, more than all unites him to the population, less
than anything else brings about abuses, and gives the
opportunity with the smallest means of feeding the
greatest number of people.

252 HELP FOR THE STARVING

In the Dankovsky and Yepifansky districts such
eating-rooms were opened in September. The people
called them the ‘‘ Orphans' Aids," and apparently this
very name prevented any abuse of these institutions. A
healthy muzhik, with some opportunity of supporting
himself, will not come to these eating-rooms, to eat up
the orphans’ food, and as far as I could observe re-
garded it as a shameful thing to do. Here is a letter
which I received from a friend of mine, an agent of the
zemstvo and one who lives constantly in the country,
in regard to the efficacy of these “orphans’ aids."

“ Six* orphans" aids ’ have been opened not more than
ten days, and already about two hundred persons have fed
at them. The manager of the eating-rooms, with the
advice of the village starosta, has to use his discretion in
admitting persons to the latter — so many needy ones
present themselves. It seems that the peasants do not
let their whole families come, but that the destitute fami-
lies send their candidates — almost exclusively old women
and children. Thus, for example, the father of six chil-
dren in the village of Pashkovo sent two of them to be
admitted, and two days later brought still a third. The
starosta said that it was particularly desirable to keep a
sharp eye on them, as the stronger boys especially liked
beet soup. The same starosta told me that sometimes the
mothers would bring their children, they would fib, say-
ing it was to encourage them, but if he looked around
they would eat something. When you hear these words
of the starosta, then you understand that it is not a lie,
and that it is impossible to think so. Can it be that the
famine has not touched them yet } We of course know
that the wolf is at the door ; but it is a pity that this
wolf is simultaneously threatening so many families —
may he not get hold of our resources ! The calculation
shows that each consumer gets away with one pound
of bread and one pound of potatoes a day ; but in addi-
tion to this must be reckoned fuel and all sorts of trifles
— salt, onions, beets, and the like. Fuel gives more
trouble than anything else, it represents in itself more
expense for materials. The peasants have arranged

HELP FOR THE STARVING 253

to take turns in sending their teams after provisions.
The organization demands an active man and a careful
economical storing of provision ; the ‘ orphans* aids *
do not need any supervision of the distribution of provi-
sions : the mistress of the establishment is so used to
living on crumbs, and all the partakers so carefully
follow what goes on at the tables, that the slightest
negligence would be instantly noised abroad and there-
fore it would correct itself. I have had dug two new
cellars and in them stored three hundred chetverts of
potatoes, but this supply is very small, since the demand
is increasing every day. It would seem that the help
had fallen in a very necessary moment. A man is
appointed in charge of six eating-rooms, but time
enlarges the circle of the activity of the free tables, and
the limit has not been reached.

** I think how comfortable will be the work in the
dining-rooms ; here you experience a delight in pouring
water over the thirsty plant ; what ought to be the rap-
ture in every day feeding hungry children ! ’*

I feel that this form of activity is convenient and
feasible, but I repeat that this form does not include all
other forms. Persons living in the country will have a
chance to help with money, and grain, and flour, and
bread, and horses, and food pure and simple.

All it needs is to be men ! And such men really
there are. I have been in four districts, and in each
there were people ready for this activity, and in some
already beginning it.

UNPRINTED CONCLUSION*

O UR two years* experience in distributing among
the needy population the contributions that came
into our hands, more than anything else confirmed our
long-established conviction that the chief part of the
need, the privation, and the consequent suffering and
sorrow, which we almost vainly tried by external methods
to combat in one little corner of Russia, proceeded not
from any exclusive, temporal causes independent of us,
but from the most universal, constant causes, wholly de-
pendent on ourselves, — causes found only in the anti-
Christian, unfraternal relationship which we men of
culture hold toward the poor, the working-men, those
who everywhere endure this poverty and deprivation,
and the suffering and affliction which merely have been
accentuated more than usual during the last two years.

If this year we may not hear about the poverty, cold^
and famine, the death of grown men and women, worn
out by excessive labor, and of insufficiently nurtured old
people and children by the hundreds of thousands, this
results, not from the fact that this state of things does
not exist, but from the fact that we shall not see it, we
shall forget about it, we shall persuade ourselves that it
is not so, or if it is, that it is a necessary condition of
things and cannot be otherwise.

But this is untrue ; it is not only not necessary, but it
ought not to be, and it will cease to be, and it will soon
cease to be.

However well concealed may seem to us the cup of
wine from before the working-people, however clever,
long-established, and universally accepted the arguments

1 From Geneva edition.

254

UNPRINTED CONCLUSION 255

whereby we justify our luxurious life amid the working-
people, tormented with labor, and half fed, and servants
to this luxury of ours, the world will more and more
penetrate our relationship to the people, and we shall
speedily appear in that disgraceful and dangerous posi-
tion in which the criminal finds himself when the morn-
ing light, unexpectedly to him, overtakes him on the
scene of his crime.

If it were possible beforehand for the merchant who
sold the working-people the unnecessary and often
harmful and unprofitable wares, striving to take as
much as possible, or at least the good bread so needful
to the laborer, buying it at low prices and selling it at
high prices, to say that he served the needs of the peo-
ple in honorable trade ; or the manufacturer of calicoes,
of mirrors, of cigarettes, or the seller of spirits or beer,
to say that he was feeding the people by giving them
wages ; or for the functionary who receives a salary of
thousands, collected from the last kopeks of the people,
to persuade himself that he is working for the advan-
tage of the people; or — what in these last years has
been especially manifest in places attacked by the fam-
ine — if it had been possible for the owner of the land,
for a rent less than the price of bread, letting his land
to the starving peasants, or giving this land to the same
peasants for a price put to uppermost notch, to say that
he, in conducting a perfected agriculture, is working
for the advantage of the rural population ; then, now,
when the people are dying of hunger from lack of land,
though the proprietors have such enormous holdings
around them planted with potatoes, sold for spirits or for
starch, — then this could not be said.

Amid this people, degenerating from lack of food and
from excessive labor on all sides of us, it is impossible
not to see that all our absorption of the fruits of the
people's labor on the one hand deprives them of what is
essential for their sustenance, on the other adds in the
highest degree to the strain of their labor. To say
nothing of the insensate luxury of parks, flower-gardens,
hunting expeditions, every glass of vodka swallowed,

2s6 unprinted conclusion

every lump of sugar, every piece of butter or of meat,
represents so much food taken from the mouths of the
people, and so much labor added to their share.

We Russians in this respect are in the most favorable
conditions clearly to see our situation.

I remember how once, long before the famine years,
there happened to be visiting me in the country a mor-
ally sensitive young savant from Prague; and as we
came out one winter’s day from the hovel of a compara-
tively well-to-do muzhik, in which we had been calling,
and in which, as everywhere, there was a woman, half
worked to death and prematurely old, dressed in rags,
a child sick with a rupture crying for her, and, as every-
where else in the spring, a calf fastened, and a lambing
sheep, and filth and dampness — I remember how, as
we came out, my young acquaintance tried to say some-
thing, and suddenly his voice broke and he burst into
tears. He for the first time, after some months spent
in Moscow and Petersburg, — where, as he walked along
the asphalted sidewalks past luxurious shops, from one
rich house to another, from one magnificent museum
and library, palaces and buildings each more magnifi-
cent than the other, — for the first time he saw those
people whose labor is the basis of all this luxury, and it
horrified him and amazed him.

He, in his rich and learned Bohemia, as well as
every European, especially every Swede, Swiss, or
Belgian, may imagine, though he may be wrong, that
there, where there is relative freedom, where educa-
tion is widely diffused, where every one has the op-
portunity of entering the ranks of the cultured, luxury
is only a legitimate reward of labor, and does not
destroy the lives of others. Somehow one may for-
get about those generations of men working in the
mines for the sake of producing a large part of the ob-
jects of one’s luxury ; may forget, not seeing them, those
other races of men who in distant colonies are perish-
ing, working for our caprices ; but for us Russians there
is no excuse for having these notions ; the bond be-
tween our luxury and the sufferings and privations of

UNPRINTED CONCLUSION 257

the people who are of one race with us is too manifest,
we cannot help seeing the price, paid outright in human
life, whereby our comforts and luxury are purchased.

For us the sun has risen, and it is impossible to hide
what is in full sight. It is impossible to strive for
power, for the necessity of ruling over the people, for
science, for art, supposed to be indispensable for the
people, for the sacred rights of personal property, for
the necessity of upholding tradition, and the like. The
sun has risen, and all these transparent excuses hide
nothing at all. All see and know, that a man who
serves the government, does this, not for the good of
the people who never asked him to, but simply because
he needs the salary ; and that men who are occupying
themselves with the arts and sciences, are occupying
themselves with them, not for the enlightenment of the
people, but for the sake of the honorariums and the
pensions ; and men who keep the land away from
the people and put a high price on it do this, not for
the support of any sacred rights, but for the enhance-
ment of the income needed by them for the gratification
of their caprices. It is no longer possible to avoid this
and lie.

Before the dominant, rich, idle classes are only two
possible ways of escape : One is to turn aside, not only
from Christianity in its true meaning, but also from any-
thing that resembles it, to turn away from humanity,
from justice, and say: I have control of these advan-
tages and privileges, and I will cling to them whatever
befalls. Whoever wishes to take them from me will
have an account to settle with me. I have the power
in my hands, — soldiers, gibbets, dungeons, knouts, and
methods of capital punishment.

The other method is in recognizing one’s injustice, in
ceasing to lie, in repenting, and neither by words, nor by
money extorted from the people under suffering and
pain, coming to their help as has been done in the last
few years, but in breaking down the artificial bar which
stands between us and the laboring people; not by
words, but in fact, recognizing them as our brethren;

258 UNPRINTED CONCLUSION

and with this end in view changing our lives, renounc-
ing those advantages and privileges which we have; and
having renounced them, to stand on equal conditions
with the people, and together with them to attain those
blessings of government, science, civilization, which we
now, from without and not asking their permission,
pretend to wish to confer upon them.

We stand at the parting of the ways, and a choice is
inevitable.

The first alternative means that we must devote our-
selves to a perpetual lie, to a perpetual fear of what that
lie may hide, and nevertheless the consciousness that
surely sooner or later we shall be deprived of that posi-
tion to which we so obstinately cling.

The second alternative means a voluntary recognition
and carrying out into practice of what we ourselves
preach, of what is demanded by our hearts and our
minds, and what sooner or later, if not by us, then by
others, will be fulfilled, because only by those who have
power renouncing it is the only possible escape from
those torments wherewith our pseudo-Christian human-
ity is suffering. The escape is only in the renunciation
of a false, and the recognition of a genuine, Christianity,

IN THE MIDST OF THE
STARVING

I

O UR activity since the time of the last report has
been as follows : —

First, and foremost, our work has consisted in the
establishment and carrying on of free eating-rooms.

The eating-rooms, which at the time of our last report
numbered seventy-two, continued to multiply, and now,
in four districts,^ amount to one hundred and eighty-
seven. This increase has proceeded, and still proceeds, in
the following manner : from villages, contiguous to those
in which we have established eating-rooms, either indi-
vidual peasants or men selected with the starosta, come to
us and petition us to open free dining-rooms for them.

One of us goes to that particular village from which
the petitioners have come, and after making a tour of the
homes, draws up a list of the property of the poor in-
habitants. Sometimes, though very rarely, it seems
that the village from which the deputies have come is not
so very poor, and that there is no actual need of giving
aid ; but in the majority of cases the one of us who visits
the village, finds as it always happens in a careful ex-
amination of peasant poverty that the situation of the
poor families is so bad that help is indispensable, and
this help has been given by means of establishing free
eating-rooms, in which are admitted the weakest mem-
bers of the poor families. In this way the number of
free eating-rooms has increased and still continues to in-

1 Yepifansky, Yefremovsky, Dankovsky, and Skopinsky Uyezdui.

259

a6o IN THE MIDST OF THE STARVING

crease in the direction where need is greatest and less
provided against, but notably toward the Yefremovsky
District and especially toward the Skopinsky District,
where assistance is particularly lacking.

The eating-rooms were one hundred and eighty-seven
in all, one hundred and thirty of which give the pen-
sioners privarok^ or stew and bread, and fifty-seven
where they get only stew. This division into dining-
rooms that give bread arid dining-rooms that do not has
been instituted since March, in consequence of the fact
that since that month, in the Dankovsky District, in the
poorest villages where our eating-rooms have been es-
tablished, the zemstvos began to advance grain in the
form of a loan at the rate of thirty pounds to each per-
son, and in the Yepifansky District even more than thirty
pounds, so that in these districts the poor population was
almost or wholly supplied with grain and lacked only
the privarok — potatoes, cabbage, and other vegetables
which, even if some of the poor people had been having
it, by March had entirely disappeared. For these poor
people our “breadless eating-rooms'’ were opened, to
which the pensioners come, bringing their own bread.
Accustomed to receive bread also at the eating-rooms,
the peasants were at first dissatisfied at this change,
and declared that the advantage obtained from these
dining-rooms did not compensate for their labor in car-
rying fuel from the forest to the dining-rooms, and that
they did not want to use these dining-rooms. But this
dissatisfaction did not last very long. Only the rich
ones refused, and then very soon they also began to ask
to be admitted to the tables.

The expense of the distribution of provisions for these
“ breadless ” dining-rooms for ten persons a week was
as follows : —

Rye meal, for kvas 5 lbs.

Wheat flour, for preparing porridge . . . 2

Pea meal, oatme^, or Indian meal, for kisel . . 10

Pease 10

Millet, for kasha gruel or kulesh . • . . 10

Potatoes • • 2 measures

Beets •••••»«•• 1 measure.

IN THE MIDST OF THE STARVING 261

Sauerkraut J vedro.

Hempseed oil J lb.

Salt 4 lbs.

Onions i lb.

Moreovei during the winter each eating-room con-
sumed a pound ^ and a half of kerosene a week, and
sixty puds of firewood a month.

With this distribution comes to every man two pounds
of vegetables, that is potatoes, cabbage, and beets, and
a half pound of flour food, that is to say, millet, pea, or
rye meal, which gives when boiled more than four pounds
a day for each person.

The eating-rooms are especially interesting, from the
fact that they are an ocular proof of the mistaken notion
obtaining among the majority of the peasants themselves
that rye bread is the most nourishing, the wholesomest,
and at the same time the cheapest food. These eating-
rooms have shown beyond a peradventure that pease, mil-
let, maize, potatoes, beets, cabbage, oat and barley kisel,
constitute a more nourishing and a wholesomer and a
cheaper food than bread. Persons who come to the
“breadless” eating-rooms bring very small pieces of
bread, and sometimes come without any bread at all, and
they passed the winter satisfied and healthy, eating every
day two kopeks’ worth of broth and two or three kopeks*
worth of bread, when, if they had fed on bread only, it
would have cost them at least seven and a half kopeks*
worth.

Here is the bill of fare for a week, compiled by one
of our assistants : —

Monday — Shchi (cabbage soup), kasha-gruel.

Tuesday — Potato soup (^pakhUobka) , kisel of pease ; for supper
the same.

Wednesday — Pea soup, boiled potatoes ; for supper, pease.

Ihursday — Shchi, kisel of pease; for supper, the same with
kvas.

Friday — Potato soup, kulesh of millet ; for supper, the same.

Saturday — Shchi, boiled potatoes ; for supper, potato with kvas.

Sunday — Pea soup, kasha ; for supper, gorokh with kvas.

1 A pound is one sixty-fourth of a chetverik, which is 5.77 gallons of
leepid water; a vedro is 2.70 gallons.

262 IN THE MIDST OF THE STARVING

The compiler of this bill of fare was guided by those
products which were to be had at his disposal at any
given time. With beets, out of which all winter long the
svekolnik, so much liked by every one, can be prepared,
and with oatmeal, the bill of fare may be more varied,
without making the food any more expensive.

Our eating-rooms are now distributed in localities
thus:^ In all the eating-rooms of the four districts at
the present time nine thousand ninety-three men are
being fed. Such was one of our undertakings, and the
principal one.

Another of our undertakings in the last winter months
consisted in furnishing wood to the needy population.
This need, with each winter month, became more and
more noticeable, and by the middle of the winter espe-
cially, when provisions had already been more or less dis-
tributed, had become our chief lack. In the localities
hereabouts, where there is no firewood or peat, and it was
out of the question to think of straw for ovens, this scarcity
after the middle of winter became very great. Very
frequently it was possible to find, not only children, but
even grown persons, not on the oven, but in the oven,
that had been heated the evening before and still re-
tained a little heat ; and in many homes they had burnt
up the woodwork, the barns, the sheds, even the hay,
employing straw and wattles and rafters for fuel.

Owing to the generous contributions of wood which
we received from various persons, we were enabled to
distribute more than three hundred sazhens^ of wood
among the population, besides what is required for our
eating-rooms. The method of distribution was this : —

To the more opulent peasants we sold the wood at
our own price — reckoning the average price for wood
bought in the forest or at Smolensk at five kopeks a
pud ; to the average peasant we let it go on shares at
the station called ‘‘ Klekotki,” thirty versts away, so

^ The list of eating-rooms according to districts, villages, as well as the
contributors and the amounts contributed, were included in Count Tolstot’s
original “ Report for April 24, 1892,*^ but are omitted in the reprint, and
noted accordingly. — Ed. * Seven hundred and four cords.

IN THE MIDST OF THE STARVING 263

that one half they took for themselves, and the other
half they delivered to us. To the poor peasants who
had horses we gave wood gratuitously, but on condi-
tion that they should themselves get it to their homes
from the station. For the poorest of all the peasants
who had no horses we delivered the wood at their
homes — the same wood which was brought by those
who got it for us on shares.

Our third undertaking was the sustenance of the
peasants’ horses. Besides the eighty horses which in the
early winter were sent to the government of Kaluga,
twenty were taken to board by Prince D. D. O., ten by a
merchant, Mr. S., and forty were put into Mr. E.’s yard,
where they were fed on two carloads of hay contributed
by P. A. Y. and on old straw given by the owner, and
on some additional feed purchased.

Before spring, from the month of February on, two
places were arranged for taking care of and feeding the
peasants’ horses : one at Mr. S.’s dvor, the other at Mr.
M.’s in the Yefremovsky districts. For the feed of
the horses ten thousand puds of straw, two carloads of
chaff, were bought, three hundred puds of millet meal
were laid in for scattering over it By these means two
hundred and seventy-six horses were kept during the
course of the past two months.

Our fourth undertaking consisted in the gratuitous
distribution of flax and linden-bark for working up, for
those that need foot-gear and cloth. One carload of
flax at six hundred and sixty rubles was distributed
among the needy without payment being required, and
another eighty puds and one hundred puds, contribu-
ted, was distributed on shares. The linen cloth which
should come to our share has not hitherto been re-
ceived; so that we have not as yet been able to sup-
ply the demand of Mrs. N. N. who sent us one hundred
and twenty rubles for cloth, of that of Mrs. K. M. who
also proposed to buy the peasants’ cloth for furnishing
remunerative work to peasant women.

Linden bark was contributed to us : one car-load by
P. A. Y., one hundred puds by L., and one thousand

264 IN THE MIDST OF THE STARVING

puds were bought for two hundred and nineteen rubles.
A part of this linden bark was sold at a low price, a part
was given gratuitously to the most needy, another part
was distributed on shares for the pleating of lapti.

The lapti brought to us have been partly distributed,
and are being distributed. This undertaking, the fur-
nishing of material for remuneration later, was less suc-
cessful than anything else. The business is so petty, so
inconvenient to us, who stand toward the peasants in
the relation of distributers of contributions standing in
the position of employers demanded such a strict account
of the use of the employment of the material, that this
part of our work was a bad failure, eliciting only unwar-
ranted expectations, envy, and unkind feelings. Much
the better way would have been to do as we are now
doing — selling these articles at very low prices to those
that can buy them, and giving them gratuitously to
those that cannot afford them — to the poor.

Our fifth undertaking, begun in February, consisted in
establishing eating-rooms for very small children, those
of a few months, nursing babies, and up to three years of
age. We thus arranged these eating-rooms : —

Having inscribed all the homes where there are chil-
dren of this age, and where there is no milk, we selected
a matron who had a milch cow, and proposed to her in
return for a compensation of fifteen puds of firewood,
four puds of bran a month — equivalent to a wage of
three rubles — to take her milk and make kasha gruel
enough for ten children, out of millet for children from
a year and a half to three years old, and of buckwheat
for babies. For a child a year and a half to three years
old, two pounds of millet is required a week, and for
babies a pound of buckwheat.

In the large villages, these eating-rooms were thus
arranged : milk is bought at the rate of forty kopeks
a vedro ; a pound of millet a week is allowed to each
baby up to a year ; two pounds to children from a year
to two years old ; a glass of milk a day is given to each
very young child, two glasses to those older; those
that have no cows receive milk and millet in the form

IN THE MIDST OF THE STARVING 265

of kasha ; those that have a cow receive the kasha, giv-
ing milk in exchange.

The mothers come sometimes alone after their gruel
and carry it home ; sometimes they bring their children
and feed them there. Generally at the arrangement of
these asylums,” the mothers, yes, and all the peasants,
propose, instead of a free eating-room at one house, a
personal distribution of millet and buckwheat, declaring
that milk is always to be found at the houses of decent
people. But we think that for the security of health
for little children our arrangement is precisely the one
that is requisite. Having received her five or ten pounds
of millet and wheat, every peasant woman, however good
a mother she might be, would look on this millet and
wheat as on a store of provisions belonging to the whole
household, and would use it as her whim or her appetite
or the will of her husband might dictate ; so that in
many cases this millet and wheat would not get to the
children at all. But if every day she receives a portion
of milk kasha already prepared for her child, then she
infallibly gives it to him and feeds him.

We have now established about eighty of these asy-
lums, and new ones are being established every day.
These asylums, which at first called forth considerable
doubt, have now come into regular evidence, and almost
every day women come with babies from villages in
which there are none and beg us to establish them.
These asylums cost about sixty kopeks a month for
each child.

Thus it is entirely impossible in such a complicated
and constantly varying enterprise as we are engaged
in to tell once and for all how much money we shall
need for carrying on till the new harvest all that we
have undertaken to do; and, therefore, we do not be-
gin a work which we cannot bring to a conclusion.
Then, according to all probability, there will remain in
our hands unexpended funds from the newly received
contributions and from the money which we have lent
and may be returned in the autumn. The very best
disposition to make of these surplus funds, I think,

266 IN THE MIDST OF THE STARVING

would be in the continuation of such asylums for little
children for the coming year also. If, as I am per-
suaded, money is provided for this work and people,
then why should they not became a perpetual institu-
tion ? The establishment of such institutions every-
where might in a high degree diminish infant mortality.
Such was our fifth enterprise.

Our sixth undertaking, which is now begun and which
apparently will be carried through in one way or another,
consists in distributing among needy peasants for sowing
a sufficient quantity of oats, potatoes, hemp, and millet.
This distribution of seed is especially needful in our
locality because, over and above the sowing of the corn-
field, there was an unexpected need of sowing over again
a considerable portion — about one-third — of the rye,
which failed in several places.

These seeds were distributed by us among the need-
iest of the peasants, among those whose land would
remain infallibly unproductive if they did not receive
the seed; yet we did not absolutely give them away,
but only on the condition that they should return an
equal quantity from the new crop, independently of the
present price and that which should then be attached
to such commodities. The money received for these
commodities might be employed for the establishment
of the infant asylums for the coming winter.

The purchase and distribution of horses constitutes our
seventh form of activity. Besides the large percentage
of those lacking horses, who always lack horses, reaching
one-third in many villages, this year there are many
peasants who have eaten up their horses, and who must
now infallibly fall into absolute poverty, or practical
servitude, unless they get horses. To such peasants
we sell horses. Since spring we have bought sixteen such,
and it is essential that we buy about one hundred more
in the places where we have established our free tables.
We sell these horses for about twenty-five rubles apkee
on these conditions : the one receiving the horse enters
into an obligation to cultivate two portions of land for the
widows and orphans, or peasants who have no horses.

IN THE MIDST OF THE STARVING 267

Our eighth undertaking was the sale of rye, meal, and
baked bread at low prices. This enterprise — the sale
of bread — continuing on a small scale through the winter,
now with the approach of spring is enlarging. We have
established and are establishing bakeshops for the sale
of bread at a low price, at the rate of sixty kopeks a pud.

Besides these separate departments, for which we have
used, and are still using, the contributions of money, small
sums have been used by us in outright gifts to the needy
for imperative necessities : funerals, the payment of
debts, for the maintenance of minor schools, the pur-
chase of books, building, and the like. Such expenses
were very few, and may be seen from the financial
report.

Such in general outlines were our undertakings during
the course of six months. Our principal enterprise during
this time was the feeding of the needy by means of free
eating-rooms. In the course of the winter months this
form of help, in spite of abuses, which were met with,
in its principal purpose, that of insuring a perfectly
poverty-stricken and enfeebled population — the chil-
dren, the old people, the sick, and the convalescent —
from starvation and poor food, was entirely successful.

But with the approach of spring considerations pre-
sent themselves, demanding a change in the existing
method of arranging and conducting the free eating-
rooms.

With the approach of spring we are confronted in the
first place with the new condition that many who now
come to the eating-rooms will be at work or off after
horses, and it will be impossible for them to be present
at dinner or supper time ; in the second place, that in
summer, owing to the increased heat in the dining-rooms,
fires will be likely to break out. If as a consequence of
this our activity changes, we will report upon it if it is
possible.

Together with this we present a brief report of the
contributions received by us and the use we made of
them. A detailed report we will furnish if we have
time, and have printed afterward.

268 IN THE MIDST OF THE STARVING

II

REPORT ON THE USES MADE OF THE CONTRIBUTIONS OP
MONEY FOR THE STARVING^

Our work during the course of the summer has con-
sisted in the following : —

I. In maintaining the former eating-rooms and estab-
lishing new ones ;

II. In arranging for the asylums for babies and little
children ;

III. In distributing seed for the spring sowing;

IV. In the purchase of horses ; and,

V. In the establishment of bakeshops and the sale
of bread.

Our first enterprise, the free eating-rooms, continued
from April 24th till the third of August in almost the
same form as in the preceding months, with only this
difference, that, fearing the risk of fires from hot ovens,
we gave up the baking of bread in the dining-rooms.
Wherever we could do so, we furnished baker’s bread ;
and where it was impossible to prepare a sufficient
quantity of bread, we distributed meal in rations. In
many villages some of our coadjutors proposed to give
out rations also of privarok.^

This change was at first welcomed with delight, but
very speedily in the most of the villages the peasants
themselves desired to return to the old way.

The need of free dining-rooms was felt in summer in
the long days and the hard work more than in winter.
Very often in many villages the women begged that in
place of the dinner, to which they had a right, in the
evening they might bring their husbands and their
fathers who came late from their work.

The number of free eating-rooms at this time notably
increased.

The whole number of eating-rooms was two hundred

^ Between April 24 and August 3, 1892.
* Privarok is boiled beef and broth.

IN THE MIDST OF THE STARVING 269

and forty-six, and there were simultaneously fed in them
from ten to thirteen thousand persons more or less.

Our second enterprise — the arrangement of priyutui^
or asylums, for by this incorrect term we called the
kitchens for the preparation of milk porridge for babies
— continued on the former basis and was widely devel-
oped. For some of the asylums, in villages where
there were few cows — and in our circuit there were
villages where sixty out of a hundred homes had no
cows at all, — we purchased cows on the stipulation that
those that received them should furnish milk for the
children assigned to them. For some, where this was
possible, we bought milk.

In one hundred and twenty-four of these asylums
between two and three thousand were fed.

Our third enterprise, consisting in the distribution of
seeds, — oats, potatoes, millet, hemp, — we arranged as
follows : —

Arriving at a village from which petitioners had come,
we would invite three or four well-to-do householders
who needed no assistance, and assign to them the duty
of making a list of such persons as needed seed ; and
according to the representations of these inspectors we
indicated the quantity necessary for each petitioner.
Sometimes we made it more, sometimes less ; sometimes
we erased some names and substituted others not in-
cluded on the lists.

Our fourth occupation — the distribution of horses to
those who were carrying on farming, but had either
eaten up their horse or had met with some unfortunate
accident — was made especially difficult by the fact
that the help given to any one person was dispropor-
tionately large, and therefore elicited envy, reproaches,
and dissatisfaction among those whom we had to refuse.
We determined this assistance just as in the case of the
seeds, by the reports of the referees of the village from
which the petitioners came.

In these two activities we saw with especial clearness
the sharp distinction between the charity which has for
its purpose the feeding of the hungry and attained by

270 IN THE MIDST OF THE STARVING

the free eating-rooms, and the charity having for its
purpose the giving of assistance to the peasant hus-
bandry in wl\ich we were involved in distributing oats,
millet, hemp, potatoes, and horses.

Having taken as our object the relieving of the in-
habitants of a certain locality from the danger of pining
away, of becoming sickly, and perishing from lack of
food, we would first establish free eating-rooms in this
locality, and thus completely attain our end. Even if
there were occasionally abuses — that is, if there were
people able to subsist at their own homes, who yet got
food at the eating-rooms — these abuses were of small
importance where the cost of food amounted to no more
than from two to five kopeks a day.

But, having taken as our object to help the peasant
husbandry, we were immediately confronted, in the first
place, with the insurmountable difficulty of determining
whom to help, how to help, and in what way ; in the
second place, with the magnitude of the need to cover,
which would require a hundred times more means than
we had at our disposal ; and in the third place, with the
possibility of the greatest abuses, such as always accom-
pany a gratuitous, or even a loan, distribution.

Neither of these undertakings, notwithstanding the
great efforts which we made to carry them out, confirmed
in our minds the consciousness that by so doing we had
conferred any real benefit on the peasants of our locality.

Our fifth activity was the baking of bread and selling
it at a low price. At first we sold it at eighty kopeks,
then at sixty kopeks, a pud, and this has continued to
be the price till now.

This enterprise went, and is still going, very well.
The people very gladly prize the opportunity of always
having cheap bread at hand. Often, especially in
summer, people came for it ten versts or more, and if
they were not in time for the first baking, which would
be already disposed of, they would have their names
entered, as at the box office of the theaters, for ten
pounds of the next baking, and they would wait till noon
for their share.

IN THE MIDST OF THE STARVING 271

By the end of July we planned to discontinue the free
tables, keeping on only with the bakeries and the chil-
dren’s asylums, which were still needed, and on which
we still spent the money remaining at our disposal.
But we did not succeed in discontinuing the free tables,
because in consequence of the cessation of the activities
of the “ Red Cross,” it was essential to arrange imme-
diately to establish eating-rooms for all those who had
been under the care of the Red Cross,” and who had
been since the first of August without oversight. From
the first of August we established seventy eating-rooms,
for the most needy of the “ Red Crossites,” who were
very speedily joined by the poorest of the territorial
peasants. Their number has been constantly increasing.

The harvest this year in the region of our activity has
been like this : in a circle with a diameter of about fifty
versts, in the center of which we are established, the
harvest of rye is worse than a failure. In many villages
along the Dona, — Nikitskoye, Myasnovka, Pashkovo,

— where I was early in September, there was no rye at
all. What there was had been sowed and eaten up.
Oats had not grown at all ; rarely had any one enough
for seed. There were fields of oats which had not been
mowed. Potatoes and millet were good, but not every-
where. Moreover, not all sowed millet.

To the question as to the economical situation of the
people this year, I could not answer accurately. I could
not answer it because, in the first place, all of us who
were busied last year in helping to feed the people had
got into the condition of a doctor who, having been
summoned to a man with a dislocated leg, should see
that the man was thoroughly diseased. What answer
would the doctor give, if he were asked as to the pa-
tient’s condition ? What do you want to know about ? ”
the doctor will ask, in return. “ Do you inquire about
his leg, or his general condition ? The leg is of no
consequence, it is merely dislocated, — it is an accident,

— but his general condition is bad.”

But, moreover, I could not answer the question as to
the situation of the people, “whether it is serious, very

IN THE MIDST OF THE STARVING

serious, or not serious ? because all of us who live near
to the people are too much accustomed to their con-
tinually and gradually deteriorating condition.

If any inhabitant of a city should come, in bitter cold
weather, to an izba which had been slightly warmed
the evening before, and should see the occupants of the
izba crawling down, not from the top of the stove, but
from the oven itself, in which they will take turns in
spending the day, that being their only means of getting
warm, or burning the roofs of their homes and hay for
fuel, living on nothing but bread made of equal parts
of meal and the worst kind of bran, and grown men
quarreling and fighting because the slice cut off the
loaf did not reach the designated weight by an eighth
of a pound, or men unable to leave the izba because
they had nothing to wear or nothing to put on their
feet, then he would be struck by what he saw. We
have got so accustomed to such things that they do not
impress us. And so the question, in what condition the
people of our locality are, would be answered better by a
person who should come here for the first time than by
us. We have grown hardened, and no longer see any-
thing.

Some idea of the situation of the people in our local-
ity may be gathered from the following statistical data,
extracted from the Tula Gazette}

In the four districts, Bogoroditsky, Yepifansky, Ye-
fremovsky, Novosil’sky, during the four fruitful years
from 1886 to 1890, on the average, in the five months
from February to June inclusive, there were 9.761 deaths
and 12.069 births. During the famine year, 1892, in
these same districts during the same five months, there
were 14.309 deaths and 11.383 births. In ordinary
years the birth rate exceeds the death rate, on the aver-
age, by 2.308 ; in this unfruitful year the death rate
exceeds the birth rate by 2.926. So that, in consequence
of the failure of the crops in these four districts, the
diminution of the population, as opposed to ordinary
years, was 5.234. In comparison with other districts in

1 TuVsktya Gubermkiya Vyedomostu

IN THE MIDST OF THE STARVING 273

fruitful years, the following results are obtained : In
the four fertile districts, TuFsky, Kashirsky, Odoyev-
sky, Byelevsky, in 1892, in the course of the same five
months, there were 8.268 births and 6.468 deaths. In
these districts, when the harvest failed, there were
11.383 births and 14.309 deaths, so that in those dis-
tricts that fruitful year the birth rate, compared to the
death rate, was approximately as four to three, while in
those districts when there was loss of the crop, the
death rate was to the birth rate as seven to five ; in
other words, when the districts had good harvests to
every four births there were three deaths, when the crops
failed there were, to every seven deaths, only five births.

In the percentage of these relations the condition of
the localities under the failure of the crops is shown
with especial distinctness by the death rate in the month
of June. In the Yepifansky District sixty per cent more
died in 1892 ; in the Bogoroditsky District one hundred
and twelve per cent, and in the Yefremovsky district one
hundred and sixteen per cent more than in ordinary years.

Such were the consequences of the failure of the
crops last year, notwithstanding the increased assistance
rendered by government, by the “ Red Cross,” and by pri-
vate charity. What will happen this year in our region,
where rye has turned out worse than last year, oats have
entirely failed, fuel is lacking, and the last energies of
the population were exhausted a year ago ?

How is it ? Must they starve again ? Starve ? Free
tables ! free tables ! Starve ! This is an old story, and
so terribly wearisome. It is a bore to you in Moscow
and Petersburg, but here, — when from morning till
evening they stand under your windows or at your door
and you cannot go along the street without hearing
always the same sentence: ‘‘We have not tasted food
for two days ; we have eaten our last oats ; what shall
we do ? the last end has come ; must we die ? ” and so
on, — here, however shameful it is to acknowledge it,
it has already become so irksome that you begin to
look on them as your enemies !

I get up very early ; ’tis a clear, frosty morning with

274 IN THE MIDST OF THE STARVING

a beautiful sunrise ; the snow creaks under my feet ; I
go outdoors, hoping that no one is as yet out, so that
I may have time to take a turn. But no ; as soon as
I have opened the door, already there are two there :
one a tall, broad-shouldered muzhik in a short, ragged
sheepskin jacket, in broken linden-bark shoes, with an
emaciated face, with a bag over his shoulder, — they
all have emaciated faces, so that these faces have be-
come typical of the muzhik. And with him is a lad
of fourteen without any shuba, in a ragged little jacket,
also wearing linden shoes and also carrying a bag and
a stick.

I try to go past them ; the low bows begin and the
usual colloquy. There is nothing for it. I have to re-
turn indoors. They follow me.

“ What do you want ?

Have pity on us 1
What.?”

** Have pity on us ! ’’

“ What do you need ? **

We come for help.”

** What kind of help ? ”

“To save our lives.”

“ But what do you need ? ”

“ We are starving to death. Help us a little ! ”

“ Where are you from ? ”

“From Zatvornoye.”

I know that is a miserable rundown community, where
we have not, as yet, opened a free eating-room. Beg-
gars come from there in dozens, and I immediately
reckon this man as one of these professional beggars,
and I feel indignant at him, and indignant because they
bring their children with them and spoil them.

“ What do you ask for ? ”

“ Give us your advice ! ”

“ But how can I give you my advice.? We here can't
do anything. We have nothing here to eat.”

But he pays no attention to me ; and once more be"
gin the same old stories heard a hundred times, and
seeming to me to be made up out of whole cloth : — *

IN THE MIDST OF THE STARVING 275

** Nothing grew; eight in the family; I am the only
worker ; the old woman has died ; last summer we had
to eat the cow, at Christmas the last horse died ; wher-
ever I go there is nothing, the children are crying for
hunger ; there is nowhere to turn to ; we have not any-
thing to eat for three days.’’

This is the usual story. I wait, wondering if he will
soon end it. But he keeps speaking.

“ I thought I could live somehow ; but I have strug-
gled till I have no strength left. I never expected to
have to beg, but God has brought me to it ! ”

“ Very good, very good ; we will come ; then we will
see what can be done,” I say, and I wish to go, and
my eyes suddenly rest on the boy. The boy is looking
at me piteously with his beautiful brown eyes full of
tears and hope, and one bright tear-drop already hangs
on his nose, and at the same instant falls off and drops
on the wooden floor covered with trampled snow. And
his pretty, agonized face, with ruddy hair blown by the
breeze around his head, is all convulsed with restrained
sobs. For me, the father’s words are the old well-worn
yarn. But to him that repetition of the horrible time
which he and his father had experienced together, and
the repetition of it all in the triumphant moment when
they had at last reached me, reached help, affected his
nerves so shaken by famine. To me all this was only
a bore, a bore; all I can think of is how soon they
would squander what I should give.

To me it is an old story, but to him it is frightfully
new.

Yes, to us it is a bore. But still, they have such a
longing to eat, such a longing to live, such a longing for
happiness, for love, as I could see by his charming tear-
brimming eyes fastened on me, that he had — this good,
pitiful lad, tormented by poverty and full of an innocent
pity for himself !

Byegitchevka, September 23, 1892,

FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE

T his winter I received a letter from Mrs. Sokolof
with an account of the needs of the peasants in the
Voronezh Government, and I transmitted this letter,
together with a memorandum of my own, to Russkiya
Vyedomosti^ and since then several persons have sent

1 The memorandum addressed to the editor of the Russian Gazette
was as follows : —

Dear Sir, — I opine that the publication of the enclosed private letter
from a person who evidently knows the peasantry very intimately, and
accurately describes their situation on the spot, may be useful. The situa-
tion of the peasants in the places described is not exceptional ; as I well
know it is the same with the peasants in many places in the Kozlovsky,
Yeletsky, Novosil’sky, Chernsky, Yefremovsky, Zemlyansky, Nizhnedyevit-
sky districts, and many others in the zone of the “black earth” — the
chernozyom. The person who wrote the letter had no notion of its being
published, and only consented to it at the solicitation of her friends.

It is true that the situation of the larger part of our peasantry is such
that it is sometimes very difficult to draw the line between what may be
called famine and their normal condition, and that the aid especially
needed this year is of the same kind that was needed last year and every
year, though in a less degree; it is true that charitable aid for the popula-
tion is a very difficult question, since it often stimulates a desire to take
advantage of it even in those that might exist without such aid ; it is true
that what can be done by private persons is only a drop in the ocean of
the peasants’ need; it is true, also, that aid in the form of dining-rooms,
selling grain at reduced prices or distributing it, furnishing fodder for
cattle, and the like, is only a palliative and does not overcome the funda-
mental causes of the catastrophe. All this is true, but it is also true that
aid extended temporarily may save the life of an old man, or a child, may
convert a ruined man’s despair or animosity into a feeling of trust in the
goodness and brotherly love of his fellow-men. And what is more impor-
tant than all, it is unquestionably true that if every man of our circle who,
instead of thinking of his amusements, theaters, concerts, subscription din-
ners, races, exhibitions, and the like, would think of that extreme poverty
(as compared with anything to be seen in the city) in which now, at this
particular minute, many and many of our brethren are living, and if every
such man would strive, even though ignorantly, by sacrificing the smallest
part of his pleasure, to help this dire need, he would unquestionably help
himself in the most important thing in the world — in a reasonable under-

276

FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE 277

me their contributions to aid the starving peasants.
These small contributions I have forwarded partly to a
good acquaintance of mine in the Zemlyansky District,
two hundred rubles ; the monthly contribution of Smo-
lensk physicians and certain other small offerings I
despatched to the Chernsky District in the government
of Tula, to my son and his wife, for the distribution of
help in their locality. But in April I received new and
quite important contributions : Mrs. Mevius sent four
hundred rubles ; three hundred came in small sums ;
S. T. Morozof gave one thousand rubles ; so that about
two thousand were collected, and considering that I
had no right to refuse to serve as medium between the
contributor and the needy, I decided to go to the
locality so as to distribute this aid in the very best way.
As in 1891 I came to the conclusion that the very best
form of helping was by eating-rooms} because only by
the organization of eating-rooms could be assured good
every-day food for old men, old women, the sick, and
the children of the poor, and this, I consider, met the
desires of the contributors.

In distributing provisions by hand this end was not
attained, because every good manager on receiving meal,
always first of all gave some to his horse with which he
had to plow, and in doing so, he does what is perfectly
reasonable, because he must plow so as to support his
family, not only this year, but the next; the feeble
members of his family will not have enough to eat this
year any more than before the distribution, so that the
object of the contributors will not be attained.

Moreover, only in the form of eating-rooms for the
feeble members of families is there any limit on which

standing of the meaning of life, and by the fulfilling in it of his human
destination.

Mrs. SokoloPs letter gives a vivid account of the pitiful destitution of
the peasantry caused by the failure of their crops and their inability to
earn anything to pay for rent, for saving their cattle, for seed, or even for
food and clothing. — Ed.

1 The vvrord stolovaya^ plural stolovuiya, from stolj a table, uniformly
used in the original, is here translated eating-room, free eating-room, free
tables. — T r.

278 FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE

to take a stand. By distribution by hand, the aid goes
to the farm,^ and in order to satisfy the demands of a
ruined peasant farm, it is impossible to decide what is
most necessary and what is not. Most necessary is a
horse, is a cow, is the redemption of a pawned shuba,
and payment of taxes, and seed, and repairs. Thus in
the distribution of help one has to give it arbitrarily at
haphazard, or else to all equally without distinction.
Therefore I decided to distribute the help, as I had
done in 1891, 1892, in the form of rations.

In order to determine the neediest families and the
number of persons in each of them deserving to be ad-
mitted to the public tables, I was guided as before by
the following considerations : —

1. The amount of cattle ;

2. The number of parcels of land ;

3. The number of members of each family capable
of working for wages ;

4. The number of consumers ; and

5. Exceptionally unfortunate circumstances reducing
any family, — a fire, illness of members, the death of a
horse, and the like.

The first village to which I came was Spasskoye,
well known to me as having once belonged to Ivan
Sergey evitch Turgenief. Having inquired of the sta-
rosta and the other old men of the village as to the
condition of the peasants in that vicinity, I became con-
vinced that it was far from being as bad as had been
the condition of the peasants among whom we had
organized public tables in 1891. At all the farms
there were horses, cows, sheep, potatoes, and there
were no ruined houses. So that, judging by the condi-
tion of the Spasskoye peasants, I thought that proba-
bly the reports of the year's poverty were exaggerated.

But my visit to Malaya Gubarevka and other vil-
lages to which I was directed as being very poor, con-
vinced me that Spasskoye was in exceptionally fortu-
nate circumstances, both on account of having good

^ KhozyautvOf housekeeping, farming, anything connected with domes*
tic economy.

FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE 279

land and on account of having enjoyed a good harvest
the year before. Thus in the first village which I went
to from Spasskoye, Malaya Gubarevka, on ten farms
there were four cows and two horses, two families were
begging, and the poverty of all the inhabitants was ter-
rible. Such also was the condition of many villages,^
though some were rather better off than others. In all
these fourteen or fifteen villages, though there was no
adulteration of the bread as was the case in 1891, still
the bread, while pure, was not to be had as desired.
Broths — of millet, cabbage, potatoes — were entirely
lacking to the majority. The food consisted of herb
shchi made of grass, colored with milk where there was
a cow, but not where there was no cow, and nothing but
bread. In all these villages the majority of the inhabi-
tants had sold or hypothecated everything that could be
sold or hypothecated. So that there was so much of
extreme poverty in the places around us in a radius of
seven or eight versts that, after we had established four-
teen public tables, we received each day petitions for
help from new villages in the same situation. Where
the eating-rooms were established they went very well
and cost about one ruble fifty kopeks a month for each
person and apparently met the requirements which we
set for ourselves, — keeping up the life and health of
the feeble members of the poorest families.

In the afternoon of June 6, I reached the village of
Gushchino, which consists of forty-nine homes, twenty-
four of which lacked horses. It was dinner-time : out-
doors under two well-cleaned sheds at five tables sat
eighty pensioners; the old men mixed with the old
women on stools at large tables, at small tables the
children on deal boards laid across blocks. They had
just finished the first course, potatoes with kvas; and
the second, cabbage soup, was coming on. The peas-
ant women were pouring the smoking, well-prepared
shchi into wooden bowls ; a waiter with a loaf of bread

1 Bolshaya Gubarevka, Matsnevo, Protosovo, Chapkino, Kukuyevka,
Gushchino, Khmyelinok, Shelamkovo, Lopashino, Siderovo, Mikhallovo
Brod, Bobriko, and the two Ramenkos.

a8o FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE

and a knife went around the table, and holding the loaf
against his chest, cut off slices of nice-looking, fresh,
savory bread to any one who had eaten his.^ The
grown-up people were served by the matron ^ and a
woman from among the pensioners, the children by a
young girl, the matron’s daughter. Everything went off
in an orderly, dignified manner, exactly as if this condi-
tion of things had existed for centuries.

The pensioners were for the most part wrinkled
old women and emaciated, feeble old men with thin
beards, gray hair, or bald heads, and wearing tattered
clothing. On all their faces there was an expression of
tranquillity and satisfaction. All these people evidently
found themselves in that peaceful and joyous and even
somewhat enthusiastic frame of mind induced by the
supply of sufficient food after long deprivation of it.
You could hear the sounds of eating, of subdued con-
versation, and occasionally a laugh at the children’s
tables. Two tramps were present, and the manager
apologized for admitting them to the dinner.

From Gushchino I proceeded to the hamlet of
Gnyevuishevo, from which two days before some peasants
had come asking for aid.

This hamlet, like Gubarevka, consists of ten homes,
and for these ten homes there were four horses and four
cows and almost no sheep. All the houses were so old
and wretched that they barely stood. All the people
were poor and begged us for help.

‘‘Though the very little children have gone to sleep,”
said a peasant woman, “yet they begged for papki
(bread), and as there was none to give them, they went
to bed without any supper.”

I know that here there is a bit of exaggeration,
but what a muzhik in a kaftan with the shoulder torn
said was surely no exaggeration, but the sober truth:

1 We succeeded in securing on the South Eastern R. R., two carloads
of flour at seventy-six kopeks when its price was ninety, and this flour proved
to be so unusually good that both the women who made the loaves and
those who were at the tables were enthusiastic over it, declaring that the
bread made from it was like gingerbread, — Author’s Note.

* Khozyatka.

FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE 281

"There might be enough bread for two or threifik chil-
dren,’* said he, “but here I carried to the city my last
outside garment — my shuba has been there for a long
time — and brought back only three pudiks for eight
persons. How long would that last ? And now I don’t
know what next I can pawn ! ”

I asked for change for three rubles. In the whole
hamlet there was not a ruble of money.

Evidently it was necessary to establish a free table
there. And it was equally necessary to do the same in
other hamlets from which came petitions.

Moreover, we were informed that in the southern part
of the Chernsky District, on the borders of the Yefre-
movsky, the need was very great, and that so far no
help had been afforded. It would seem evident that we
must go and widen our operations, and this was ren-
dered possible by the receipt of quite considerable dona-
tions : five hundred rubles from the Princess Kudashef,
a thousand rubles from Mrs. Mansurof, two thousand
rubles from theatrical managers.

But it proved that it was almost impossible to con-
tinue the work, much less to widen its scope. It was
impossible to continue it for the following reasons :
The governor of Orlof would not permit the free eating-
rooms to be opened, first, without the consent of the
local wardenship ; secondly, without the decision of the
question as to the establishment of every eating-room
by the zemsky nachalnik ; and thirdly, without sometime
previously notifying the governor as to the number of
eating-rooms which would have to be opened in any
given place.

In the government of Tula the stanovoY had already
appeared with an order prohibiting the establishment of
eating-rooms without the governor’s consent; without
the cooperation of helpers specially occupied in the
rather complicated and laborious business of the free
tables their establishment is impossible.

Thus, notwithstanding the unquestionable need of the
people, notwithstanding the means contributed by the
philanthropic for the relief of this need, our work not

282 FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE

only could not be enlarged, but was in danger of being
entirely stopped. As a result of this the money re-
cently received by me, and especially the thirty-five
hundred rubles above mentioned, and certain other
small contributions remained unexpended, and will have
to be returned to the donors, unless they wish to make
some other disposition of them.

On the third day of June the account of receipts and
disbursements was as follows : —

Receipts.

Rubles. Kopeks.

From the physicians of Smolensk .

“ Mr. Mevius .

. 323

27

. 400

Prince T

. 100

« A. Z

•

. 200

Baumann • « • •

•

. 25

« M. K

•

. 40

« C

•

. 25

Through “ R. V.’’ .

•

. 112

48

From A woman” through D. «

•

. 16

“ Kasatkin . • . •

•

25

Through ‘‘ R. V/*

•

. 200

From Baumann . . • .

. 20

A woman ” . . •

. 250

“ gymnasium pupils

• 18

By the sale of a medal from C. N. Shil .

. 99

From Olimpiada Kolalevskaya

•

• 4

« S. T. M

•

• 1000

E. F. Younge

•

15

3012

75

Disbursements.

Rubles.

Kopeks.

Flour (2584 puds)

. 2061

18

Millet (150 puds)

•

. 140

..

Pease (75 puds) ....

•

60

..

Potatoes 031 chetverts)

•

I7I

24

Cabbage (56 puds, 35 lb.) .

•

. 27

50

Transport of millet, butter, salt •

•

• 3

10

Firewood

•

56

75

Butter (5 puds) . . • •

•

. 27

80

Salt (10 puds) . • » •

•

. 2

40

2549

97

FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE 283

Such has been my personal work. Now I will try to
answer those general questions to which my activity has
led me — questions which, if one judges by the news-
papers, have occupied society also of late. These ques-
tions are as follows : —

Is there famine this year or is there not famine ?

Why is there so often such widespread need among
the people?

And what is to be done to prevent this need from re-
curring, and would not especial measures be demanded
for overcoming it ?

To the first question the answer is this : —

There are statistical reports to prove that the Russian
nation in general are not eating within thirty per cent
of what a man needs for his normal support. Moreover,
there is information to the effect that the young men of
the black earth zone during the last twenty years have
been growing less and less able to fulfil the require-
ments of a good physique for military service ; the
general census has shown that the increase of the pop-
ulation, twenty years ago the largest in the agricultural
region, has been constantly diminishing, and of late has
come to zero in these governments.

But even without studying statistical data, it requires
only to compare the average peasant farmer of the cen-
tral regions — skeleton-like in his emaciation and with
his unhealthy complexion — with the same peasant who
has secured a situation as a dvornik or a coachman
where he has a good table, and to compare the motions
of this dvornik or coachman, and the work which he
can do, with the motions and work of the peasant, liv-
ing at home, to see how much the peasant has become
enfeebled.

When, as used to be the case with extravagant mana-
gers and is still the case, cattle are kept for manure,
feeding them somewhere in the cold yard simply that
they may not perish, it results that from all this cattle,
only those which are in full strength endure without
loss to their organism, while the old and the feeble, the
young ones that have not yet attained strength, either

284 FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE

perish, or if they survive, it is at a loss of their increase
and their strength, and in the case of the young at a loss
of size and development and in exactly the same con-
dition are the Russian peasantry of the black earth
center.

So that if by the word ** golod '' — hunger — is meant
that insufficiency of food in consequence of which men
are subject to disease and death, as was the case recently
in India according to reports, then such a famine did
not exist in Russia in 1891 nor does it to-day.

But if by the word golod is meant insufficiency of
food, — not the kind that people actually die of, but the
kind where people live, but live miserably, dying pre-
maturely, growing disfigured, not begetting children,
and degenerating, — then, indeed such a famine has ex-
isted for the past twenty years for the largest part of the
black earth center, and is this year particularly violent.

Such is my answer to the first question. To the sec-
ond question. What is the cause of this } my answer is
that it is mental and not material.

Military men know the meaning of the term ‘‘the
spirit of the army,'" know that this intangible element
is the first and foremost condition of success, that if this
element is absent, all others are unavailing. Let soldiers
be handsomely dressed, well fed and armed, let them
have the most advantageous position, the battle will be
lost if this intangible element called “ the army spirit
is lacking.

It is the same thing in the battle with nature. As
soon as a people lack vigor, faith, hope in an ever in-
creasing amelioration of their circumstances, but on the
contrary become conscious of the idleness of their en-
deavors, of dejection, that people will not conquer nature,
but will be conquered by it. And such in our day has
come to be the condition of our peasantry, and especially
that of the agricultural center. They feel that their po-
sition as agriculturists is miserable, almost inextricable,
and having become wonted to this inextricable situation,
they no longer struggle with it, but merely exist and ac-
complish only as much as the instinct of self-preserva-

FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE 285

tion leads them to do. Moreover, the wretchedness of
the condition into which they have fallen still further
enhances the depression of their spirits.

The lower the economical prosperity of the population
sinks, like a weight on a lever, the harder it is for them
to rise, and the peasants, conscious of this, give up all
effort.

The symptoms of this depression of spirit are very
many. The one first and foremost is their complete
indifference to all spiritual interests. The religious
question is absolutely lacking in the agricultural center,
and not in the least because the peasant holds firmly to
orthodoxy, — on the contrary, all the reports and advices
of the priests confirm the fact that the people are
growing more and more indifferent to the Church,
— but because he feels no interest in spiritual ques-
tions.

A second symptom is their inertia, their unwillingness
to change their habits and their position. For all these
years at a time when in the other governments of Russia
European plows, iron harrows, new methods of sowing
seeds, improved horticulture, and even mineral manures
were coming into use, in the center everything remained
the same — the wooden sokha, and all the habits and
customs of Rurik’s time. Even the emigration is less
from the black earth district.

A third symptom is their aversion to rustic industry,
not through laziness, but the languid, dejected, unpro*
ductive labor ; labor, the emblem of which might be rep-
resented by the well from which the bucket is drawn,
not by a sweep, nor by a wheel, as used to be done, but
by the rope alone and by the hands, and with a leaky
bucket, so that a third of the water is lost before it
reaches the top. Such is almost all the labor of the
black earth muzhik, who labors sixteen hours in plow-
ing a field with a horse scarcely able to drag one leg
after another, while with a good horse, well fed, and
a good iron plow he might accomplish it in half a
day. Together with this is the natural desire to forget
his troubles, and then wine and tobacco are more and

286 FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE

more extensively used, so that lately even young boys
drink and smoke.

A fourth symptom of dejection of spirits is the unduti-
fulness of sons to their parents, of younger brothers to
their elders, the retention of money earned away from
home, and the endeavor of the younger generation to
avoid the heavy, hopeless rustic life, and to get situa-
tions in the city. A striking symptom of this degene-
racy during the last seven years was the fact that in
many hamlets mature and, it would seem, well-to-do
peasants would come begging to the free eating-rooms,
and enter them if they were permitted.

This was not so in 1891. Here, for example, is an
incident which shows the whole degree of the poverty
and distrust of their own resources to which the peasants
have come.

In the village of Shushmino, Chernsky District, a
lady owning an estate sold the peasants some land
through the bank. She asked of them a money pay-
ment at the rate of ten rubles a desyatin, and even
then gave them two terms of payment at the rate of
five rubles each, letting them have the land with the
seed in at the rate of two chetverts of oats on the
spring yield. And in spite of these remarkably advan-
tageous conditions, the peasants hesitated and would
not undertake it.

So that my answer to the second question is that the
cause of the situation to which the peasants are reduced
is that they have lost their energy and confidence in'
their own forces, and hope for the amelioration of their
circumstances ; they have lost spirit.

The answer to the third question, — how to help the
peasants in their wretched condition ? — is an outcome
of this second answer. In order to help the peasantry
one thing is necessary — to raise their spirits, to over-
come what is crushing them.

The spirits of the peasantry are crushed by the lack
of recognition on the part of those that govern them of
their human dignity, considering the peasant, not a man
like others, but a coarse, unreasonable creature which

FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE 287

ought to be guarded and directed in every action, and
consequently utter constraint and extinction of his per-
sonality. Thus in religion, the most important of all
things, every peasant feels that he is not a free mem-
ber of his Church, having freely chosen, or, at least,
having freely acknowledged the faith that has been
preached to him, but a slave to that Church, obliged
absolutely to fulfil the duties laid upon him by his reli-
gious superiors, who are sent to him and appointed
independently of his will or choice. That this is an
important cause for the dejected condition of the people
is proved by the fact that always, everywhere, as soon
as peasants are emancipated from ecclesiastical tyranny,
falling away, as happens, into a sect, immediately the
spirits of this population rise and immediately, without
exception, their economical prosperity is established.^
Ruinous for the people is this anxiety about them, dis-
played in the special laws for the peasantry, leading in
reality to the absence of all laws, and to the full discre-
tion of functionaries placed in control of the peasants.

For the peasants there exist nominally certain special
laws both for the control of the land and their allot-
ments and for their obligations — they have no rights;
and in reality there is an inconceivable mass of decrees,
explanations, of common law, of cassation decisions, and
the like, in consequence of which the peasants, with per-
fect justification, feel that they are absolutely dependent
on the whim of their numberless chiefs.

The peasant recognizes as his chief, not only the
sotsky, the starosta, the starshina, the secretary, the
uryadnik, the stanovof, the ispravnik, the insurance
agent, the surveyor, the arbitrator of disputes, the vet-
erinary and his assistant, the doctor, the priest, the
judge, the magistrate, and every functionary and even
landowner, but also every gentleman, because he knows
by experience that every such gentleman can do with him
what he pleases.

More than by anything else is the peasant’s spirit
crushed — although this is not visible — by the shame-

^ This passage is not found m the Moscow edition.— Ed.

a88 FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE

ful torture of flogging, which, like the sword of Damo*
cles, hangs over every peasant.

Thus to my three questions propounded at the begin-
ning — is there famine or is there not famine.'^ what is
the cause of the people’s poverty ? and what must be done
to help this poverty ? — my answers are as follows : —

There is no famine, but in the whole population there
is chronic lack of food, and this has lasted already
twenty years, and is all the time increasing, and is es-
pecially felt this year owing to the poor harvest of a
year ago, and will be still worse the year to come be-
cause the rye harvest this year is poorer than it was a
year ago. There is no famine, but the situation is far
worse. It is just the same as would be the case of a
physician who was asked if a patient had typhus, and
replied no, not typhus, but galloping consumption.

To the second question my answer is, that the cause
of the poverty of the people is not material, but is spirit-
ual, that the chief cause is the loss of their spirits, that
until the people shall recover their spirits there will be
no help by external means — coming from the ministry
of agriculture,^ or exhibitions, or agricultural colleges, or
changes of tariff, or deliverance from redemption pay-
ments (which should have been done long ago, since
the peasants long ago paid up their obligations if the
rate per cent now employed is taken into consideration),
or the withdrawal of duties from iron and machinery ^ —
nothing will help the people if their mental state re-
mains the same. I do not say that these measures are
not all advantageous, but that they will be advantageous
only when the people are cheered in spirit and con-
sciously and freely desire to take advantage of them.

The answer to my third question — what to do that
this poverty may not be repeated — is that it is neces-
sary, I will not say to esteem the people, but to cease
to scorn and insult them by treating them as if they

1 “And all his fictions.” Geneva edition.

2 The Geneva edition adds : “And the establishments for the undoubted
healing of all diseases, and parochial schools, not too much loved by them
now.”

FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE 289

were animals ; it is necessary to subject them to gen-
e^ral, not to exclusive laws ; it is necessary to give them
freedom of education,^ freedom of religion, ^ freedom of
movement, and above all to remove the brand of igno-
miny which lies on the past and present reigns, the
practice® of barbarous torture — the castigation of
grown men simply because they happen to be in the
class of peasants.

If it is said to me : ‘‘ Here you wish the people well
— choose one of two things : to give the whole ruined
population three horses, two cows, and three well ma-
nured desyatins, and a stone house for each family, or
only freedom of worship, of instruction, of migration,
and the abrogation of all special laws for the peasants,
then I should without hesitation choose the second, be-
cause I am persuaded that with whatever material bless-
ings the peasant is loaded, if they remain with the
same clergy, the same parochial schools, the same crown
liquor saloons, the same army of functionaries pretend-
ing to be working for their advantage, then within
twenty years they would have spent everything, and
would be left the same poor wretches which they were.**

If the peasants should be freed from all these dealings
and humiliations by which they are bound, then within
twenty years they would acquire all the riches with which
we should wish to reward them, and far more besides.

I think this will be so in the first place, because I
have always found more reason and actual knowledge, such
as is needful to people, among the peasants than among
the functionaries, and because I think that the peasants
themselves devise better and more quickly what is need-
ful for them ; in the second place because it is more rea-
sonable to suppose that the peasants — the very persons
whose welfare is in question — know better in what it
consists than the functionaries, who are engaged chiefly
in getting their salaries ; and in the third place, because
the experience of life constantly and unmistakably

1 Not in Geneva edition. 2 Moscow edition.

8 The twelve words preceding are not m the Moscow edition.

* This paragraph is not found in the Moscow edition. — Ed.

290

FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE

shows that the more the peasants are subjected to the
influence of the chinovniks, as is the case in the centers,
the poorer they grow, and on the other hand,^ the
farther peasants live from the functionaries, as for ex-
ample, in the governments of Samara, Orenburg, Viatka,
Vologda, Olenezh, and Siberia, the more prosperous
they are, without exception.

Here are the thoughts and feelings which were aroused
in me by a new and close observation of the peasants’
poverty, and I consider it my duty to express them, so
that true men, actually desirous of compensating the
people for all that we have received and are receiving
from them, might not spend our energies in vain in a
second-rate and often false activity, and that all our
energies might be expended on that without which no
help is efficacious — the destruction of all that depresses
the spirit of the people, and the restoration of all that
may raise it.

June 7, 1898.

Before despatching this article I resolved to go once
more to the Yefremovsky District, the wretched condi-
tion of a part of which I had learned from persons
worthy of the fullest confidence. On my way to this
locality it was my fortune to traverse the Chernsky Dis-
trict from one end to the other. The rye in that region
where I lived, that is, in the northern part of the Chern-
sky and Mtsensky districts, this year was thoroughly
bad, worse than in the past, but what I saw on the way
to the Yefremovsky District was perfectly unexpected.^

The region which I traversed — about thirty-five versts
in a straight line, from the village of Gremyachevo to the
boundary of the Yefremovsky and Bogoroditsky dis-
tricts, and, as I was told, twenty versts in width — was
looking forward to awful poverty for the year before
them. The rye over the whole space of this quadrilat-
eral — almost one hundred thousand desyatins^ — had

^ The fifty words preceding are not in the Moscow edition.

* “ Surpassed my gloomiest forebodings.” Geneva edition.

* This sentence not so definite in Moscow edition.

FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE 291

been an absolute failure. If you go one verst, two, ten,
twenty versts, on either side of the road on land belong-
ing to various estates, you will find instead of rye an
abundance of the lebeda-weed ; on the peasants’ land
not even that ! So that in the year to come the situa-
tion of the peasants in this locality will be incomparably
worse than it is now, and I was told that the rye had
failed in many other places."

I speak of the situation of the peasants only, and not
of the farmers in general, because only for the peasants,
who are supported directly and immediately by their
grain, and especially by their rye-fields, does the crop
of rye have a decisive answer to the question of life and
death.

When in a peasant’s home the supply of grain is not
sufficient for his household or a large part of it, and
bread is high, as it is this year (about a ruble), then his
situation becomes desperate, like the situation, let us
say, of a functionary deprived of his place and his sal-
ary, and still continuing to support his family in the city.
For the chinovnik to exist without his salary, he must
either spend his earnings or sell his possessions, and
each day of life brings him nearer to absolute ruin.
Exactly so it is with the peasant who is obliged to buy
costly bread, apart from the usual quantity secured by
his definite earnings, with this difference, that, as he
sinks lower and lower, the chinovnik, as long as he lives,
is not deprived of the possibility of securing a place and
getting his position back again; while the peasant, de-
prived of his horse, his field, his seed, is definitely
deprived of any possibility of recovering himself.

In this ruin-threatening situation are most of the peas-
ants in this locality. Next year this situation will be
not only threatening, but, for the majority, will bring
actual ruin. And therefore assistance, both from the
government and from private persons, will be even
more essential than it is this year.

And meantime, now, at the present moment, in our
government of Tula, as well as in the governments of
Orlof, Riazan, and Voronezh, and others, the most en-

292 FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE

ergetic measures are taken to prevent application of pri-
vate aid, in any of its forms, — measures, it would seem,
universal and constant.

Thus, in this Yefremovsky District where I went,
persons from outside were absolutely prohibited from
coming in to render assistance to the needy. A bake-
shop, opened there by a person who came with contri-
butions from the Free- Economical Society, was closed
under my own eyes, and the person himself was expelled.
And others who had come before me were also expelled.
It was taken for granted that there was no need in this
district, and that help was not required. So that, even
if from private reasons I could not have fulfilled my
intentions and driven through the Yefremovsky District,
my visit there would have been useless, or would have
brought about unnecessary complications.

In the Chernsky District during my absence, accord-
ing to the reports of my son, who went there, the fol-
lowing took place. The police authorities, coming to a
hamlet where a free eating-room had been opened, pre-
vented the peasants from going to it for their dinners
and suppers ; to prove their fidelity to duty, they broke
up the tables where the food was served, and calmly
rode away, not substituting for the crust of bread which
they took away from these starving men anything ex-
cept a recommendation to resigned obedience !

It is difficult to realize what comes into the minds and
hearts of people compelled to submit to this arbitrary
prohibition, or of those that know about it. It is still
more difficult, for me at least, to realize what comes
into the minds and hearts of others — of those that con-
sider it necessary to enact and carry out such measures ;
that is to say, without knowing what they are doing, to
take the bread of charity out of the mouths of starving
old men and children.

1 know the considerations which are urged in defense
of such measures. In the first place, it is necessary to
show that the condition of the population committed to
our charge is not so bad as the men of the party op-
posed to us try to make it appear — as if the matter did

FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE 293

not concern the aid of the starving, but the outcome of
a contest. In the second place, every establishment —
and free eating-rooms and bakeshops, in the opinion of
the stanovor — must be subjected to the control of the
police authorities.^ In the third place, the direct and
immediate relations of those that are assisting the pop-
ulation might arouse in them undesirable thoughts and
feelings.

But all these considerations, even if they had any rea-
son — and they are all false — are so petty and insignifi-
cant that they can have no weight in comparison with
what is done by the free eating-rooms and bakeshops,
in giving bread to the needy.

Why, the whole matter consists in the following:
there are people, we will not say dying, but suffering
from want; there are others living in abundance and
out of the goodness of their hearts willing to share their
superfluity with these sufferers ; there are still others
who are willing to be the mediators between these two
classes and to give their labor to this end.

Can such activities be subjected to the interdiction of
the authorities ? ^

I can understand why the soldier in the Borovitsky
Gates, when I was going to give alms to a beggar,
forbade me to do so, and paid no attention to my
reference to the Gospels, but asked me if I had read
the military code ; he was a watchman. But the
government authorities cannot be ignorant of the Gos-
pels and forbid the fulfilment of the most fundamen-
tal morality — that is to say, that men should help
one another.

The government, on the contrary, exists only so as to
remove everything that prevents this help. So that
the government has no grounds for its opposition to
this activity. If the mendaciously guided organs of the
government should demand subjection to such a pro-

1 “ And yet in 1891 and 1892 such subjection was not required.” Omit-
ted in Moscow edition.

* “ Can such activities be harmful to any one and can it be a part of the
duties of the government to oppose them? ” Geneva edition.

294 FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE

hibition, a private citizen would be under obligations not
to submit to such a demand.^

When the policeman who came to us said that it was
my duty to apply to the governor with a petition to be
allowed to establish the eating-rooms, I replied to him
that I could not do that, since I did not know any statute
whereby the establishment of free tables was interdicted ;
even if there had been any such I could not be subjected
to it, because if I were subjected to such a law, the next
day I might be reduced to the necessity of submitting
to a prohibition against distributing flour, of giving any
kind of alms without the permission of the government.

They may close the eating-rooms and bakeshops,
they may send from one district to another those that
come to help the population, but it is impossible to pre-
vent those thus expelled from one district, from living
in another among their friends or in some peasant izba,
and serving the people in some other way, thus sharing
with them their means and their labor. It is impossi-
ble to herd away one class of the people from another.
Every attempt at such divisions induces the very conse-
quences which this separation is intended to prevent.
It is impossible to prevent communication among men ;
one can only interfere with the regular course of this
communication, and give it a dangerous tendency
where otherwise it would be beneficent.

To help the present, as indeed every, human need,
only a spiritual elevation of the people can avail — I
mean by the people, not only the peasantry, but the
whole people, both the working-classes and the rich —
and this elevation of the people will be only in one
direction — in a greater and greater fraternal unity of
men ; and therefore, to help the people it needs to en-
courage this unity and not to stand in its way. Only
by such a brotherly unity — greater than ever before —

^ These two paragraphs are not in the Moscow edition : instead the
following inoffensive sentences are substituted : Moreover the govern-
ment cannot do this. It is as impossible to prevent a man from eating
when he is hungry as to prevent another man from giving this hungry one
the superfluity of his bread, his property, or his labor.’*

FAMINE OR NOT FAMINE 295

will the actual poverty of this year and the prospective
poverty of the year to come be relieved, and also the
general prosperity of the ever declining peasantry be
restored, and the possibility of a repetition of the mis-
fortune of 1891 and 1892, and of the present year, be
averted.

June 16, 1898.

PERSECUTION OF CHRIS-
TIANS IN RUSSIA

** In the worlds ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheery I havi
overcome the world — John xvi. 33.

T he Dukhobors^ settled in the Caucasus have
been subjected to cruel persecutions by the Rus-
sian authorities; and these persecutions, described in
the report of one who made inquiries on the spot,^
are now, at this moment, being carried on. These
Dukhobors were beaten, whipped, and ridden down ;
quartered upon them in ‘‘executions” were Cossacks
who, it is proved, allowed themselves every license with
these people ; and everything they did was with the
consent of their officers. Those men who had refused
military service were tortured, in body and in mind ;
and it is entirely true that a prosperous population, who
by tens of years of hard toil had created their own pros-
perity, were expelled from their homes and settled,
without land and without means of subsistence, in the
Georgian villages.

The cause of these persecutions is, that for certain
reasons three-fourths of the Dukhobors (that is, about
15,000 people, their whole population being about
20,000) have this year returned with renewed force and
earnestness to their former Christian profession, and have

^ The Russian word Dukhobortsui — from Dukhy “spirit,” and barets,
“ a wrestler ” — is the nickname popularly applied to the dissidents who
refuse to use carnal weapons of defence. The simpler form “ Dukhobors ”
is now generally employed. — Ed.

2 A detailed report of those persecutions, drawn up from personal
observation by a friend and agent of Count Tolstoi, was published in the
London Times of October 23, 1895.

296

PERSECUTION IN RUSSIA 297

resolved to comply in practice with Christ’s law of non-
resistance to evil by violence. This decision has caused
them, on one hand, to destroy all their weapons, which
are considered so needful in the Caucasus, thus renounc-
ing the possibility of fighting, and putting themselves at
the mercy of every marauder ; and, on the other hand,
to refuse, under all circumstances, participation in acts
of force which may be demanded from them by the
government; which means that they must refuse ser-
vice in the army or wherever else violence is used. The
government could not permit so many thousands of
people such a desertion of the duties established by
law, and a struggle broke out. The government de-
mands compliance with its requirements; the Dukho-
bors will not obey.

The government cannot afford to yield. Not only
because this refusal of the Dukhobors to comply with
the requirements of government has, from the official
standpoint, no legal justification, and is contradictory to
the existing time-consecrated order; but such refusals
must be discountenanced at once, for the sole reason
that, if allowed to ten, to-morrow there will be a thou-
sand, ten thousand, others who wish to escape the bur-
den of the taxes and the conscription. And if this is
allowed, there will spring up marauding and chaos in-
stead of order and security ; no one’s property or life
will be safe. Thus reason the authorities ; they cannot
reason otherwise ; and they are not in the least at fault
in so reasoning. Even without any such selfish consid-
eration as that these desertions might deprive him of his
means of subsistence, now collected from the people by
means of compulsion, every official, from the Tsar down
to the uiyad?iik or village police-commissioner, must be
deeply indignant with the refusal of some uncivilized,
unlettered people to comply with the demands of the
government, which arc obligatory upon all. '' How dare
these mere ciphers of people,” thinks the official, “ deny
that which is recognized by every one, that which is
consecrated by the law, and is practised everywhere t ’*
As officials, they cannot be shown to be in error for

298 PERSECUTION IN RUSSIA

acting as they do. They use force, brute force. And
they cannot avoid so doing.

In point of fact, how can you, by reasonable and hu^
mane means, compel men who profess the Christian
religion to join another body of men who are learning
how to kill, and practising for that purpose ? The de-
ception of deceived people can be maintained by various
kinds of stupefactions — by administration of oaths, by
theological, philosophical, and judicial sophistries. But
as soon as the deception is by some means broken, and
people like the Dukhobors, calling things by their right
names, say, “ We are Christians, and therefore we can-
not kill,” then the lie is exposed ; and to persuade such
men by arguments of reason is impossible. The only
means of inducing them to obey are blows, “ executions,”
deprivation of shelter, cold and hunger in their families.
Just these means are used. As long as the officials are
not conscious of their wrong position they can do noth-
ing else ; and therefore are not at fault. But still less
are those Christians at fault who refuse to participate
in murderous exercises, and to join a body of men who
are trained to kill any whom the government orders to
be killed. They, also, cannot act otherwise. The nomi-
nal Christian, baptized and brought up in Greek ortho-
doxy, Catholicism, Protestantism, might continue to
follow violence and murder, as long as he does not
discover the deception put upon him.

But as soon as he discovers that every man is respon-
sible to God for his acts, and that this responsibility
cannot be shifted to some one else or excused by the
oath, and that he must not kill, or prepare himself to
kill, then participation with the army at once becomes
to him as impossible morally as it is physically impos-
sible for him to lift a ton weight.

This fact of the Christian religion makes its relation
to government a terrible tragedy. The tragedy arises
from this, that the governments have to rule over
nations which are Christian, though not yet wholly en-
lightened, but still every day and hour becoming more
and more illumined with the teaching of Christ. All

PERSECUTION IN RUSSIA 299

civilized ” governments, from the days of Constantine,
have known and felt this, and from the instinct of self-
preservation have done everything they could to obscure
the true idea of Christianity, and to destroy its spirit.
They have known that when men become alive to this
spirit, force will be abolished, together with government
itself. Therefore the governments have continued to
pursue their vocation by creating State institutions, by
piling up laws and institutions one on the other, hop-
ing under these to bury the undying spirit of Christ in-
fused into the hearts of men. The governments have
continued their labor, but at the same time the Chris-
tian teaching has done its work, more and more pene-
trating the minds and hearts of men. And now comes
the time — which, Christianity being the work of God,
opposed to government, which is man's work, was
bound to come — when the effect of Christianity over-
comes the effect of governments.

Just as in the burning of a pile there comes a moment
when the fire which long worked obscurely within, only
now and then by flashes and smoke proving its pres-
ence, suddenly wins its way on every side with a burn-
ing no longer to be subdued, so in the conflict of the
Christian spirit with the pagan laws and institutions,
there comes the time when this Christian spirit bursts
forth everywhere, no longer to be kept under, and every
moment threatening to destroy the institutions under
which it was buried.

Indeed, what can, what must, government do with
these 15,000 of the Dukhobors who refused military
service ? What is to be done with them ? They can-
not be let alone. Even now, at the beginning of the
movement, there have appeared Greek Orthodox people
who follow the example of the Dukhobors. What then,
does the future hold ? What if similar action is taken
by the Molokans, Stundists, Shaloputy, Khlysty, the
Pilgrims, all those sectarians who hold the same views
as to government and military service, and who do not
act as the Dukhobors have done, merely because they
have not resolution to take the initiative, and fear

300

PERSECUTION IN RUSSIA

to suffer ? Of such people there are millions ; not in
Russia only, but in all Christian countries ; not only in
Christian, but in Moslem countries ; in Persia, Turkey,
and Arabia, for instance, there are the Karidshity and
the Babisty. It is needful to prevent contagion from
these ten of thousands who acknowledge no govern-
ment, and do not wish to take part in government. But
how ? Certainly they cannot be killed. They are too
many. It is no less difficult to put them in prison. It
is only possible to ruin and torture them. And just this
is done.

But what if these tortures have not the desired
effect, and these people still persist in declaring the
truth, and by so doing attract more adherents.^ The
position of governments is crucial ; the more so that
they can take no certain stand. You cannot denounce
as bad the deeds of men like Drozhin, who was tortured
to death in prison ; or Izyumchenko, still suffering in
Siberia ; or Dr. Skarvan, imprisoned in Austria ; or like
all those others at present in prisons, — men who are
ready to suffer and to die, only to be faithful to the
most simple, universally comprehensible and approved
religious principles, which prohibit murder and partici-
pation in murder.

By no device of logic can you demonstrate the acts
of these men to be bad or unchristian ; and not only
are you unable to disapprove, but you cannot help
admiring them. Because you must admit that men
who so act, act in the name of the noblest qualities
of man’s soul, — qualities which, if you do not recognize
their nobility, you reduce man’s life to the level of ani-
mal existence. Therefore, however government acts
toward these men, it must inevitably forward, not their,
but its own, destruction. If government refrains from
persecuting these people who, like the Dukhobors, Stun-
dists, Nazarenes, and isolated individuals, refuse to take
part in the acts of government, then the advantages of
the peaceful Christian lives of these men will attract to
them not only sincerely convinced Christians, but also
those who will become Christians externally ; and the

PERSECUTION IN RUSSIA 301

number of people who do not comply with the require-
ments of government will grow more and more.

On the other hand, if the government continues its
cruelty as at present, then this very cruelty, to men whose
only fault is that they lead a more moral and righteous life
than others do, and seek to apply practically the law of
righteousness which is professed by all, this very cruelty
will more and more repel men’s sympathy from govern-
ment, and finally there will be no men ready to support
it by force. The half-savage Cossacks who beat the
Dukhobors by order of the officers, ‘‘ very soon began
to be tired of it,” as they said when they were quartered
in the villages of the Dukhobors. That means, con-
science began to agitate them ; and the authorities,
fearing the influence of the Dukhobors upon them, has-
tened to withdraw them.

Never was a persecution of innocent people which has
not ended in the persecutors receiving the principles of
the persecuted ; as it was with the warrior Simeon, who
exterminated the Paulicians and then adopted their
creed. The more indulgent the government, the
quicker the numbers of true Christians will grow. The
more cruel the government, the quicker the numbers of
those that yield to the requirements of government di-
minishes. Thus, whether indulgent or cruel toward
men who by their lives proclaim Christianity, govern-
ment is forwarding its own destruction. Now is the
judgment of this world ; now shall the prince of thiSs
world be cast otitr ^ And this judgment was pro-
nounced eighteen hundred years ago — that is, at the
time when, in place of the principle of external justice,
the principle of love was asserted.

However much wood one throws on the burning pile of
sticks, thinking thus to put out the fire, the inextinguish-
able flame, the flame of truth, will only be temporarily
smothered, and will burn up still more strongly, consum-
ing everything heaped upon it. Even though it happen
(as it always happens) that some of the contenders for
truth become weak in the strife, and yield to the govern-
1 John xii, 31.

302 PERSECUTION IN RUSSIA

ment, that, nevertheless, would not in the least change
the position. If to-day the Dukhobors in the Caucasu^'.
should yield, being unable any longer to bear the suf-
ferings which overcome their old men and women, theii
wives and children, still, to-morrow, there would arise
other contenders, ready on all hands, more and more
boldly proclaiming their principles, and less and less
liable to yield. Does truth cease to be truth because
the men who professed it become weak under the pres-
sure of torture ? That which is of God must conquer
that which is of man.

“ But what will happen if government is brought to
an end } I hear the question which is always put by
those who think that if we lose that which we now have,
then there will remain nothing, everything will be lost.

There is always the one answer to this question.
There will be the thing which ought to be, that which
is well-pleasing to God, which is according to the law
He has put in our hearts and revealed to our minds.
If government should be abolished by us in the way of
revolution, certainly the question as to what will be
after government is done away with would require an
answer from the abolitionists. But the abolition which
is now in process is taking place, not because some one,
or some body of men, have resolved upon it, but govern-
ment is being swept away because it is not according to
the will of God which He has revealed to our minds
and put into our hearts.

A man who refuses to kill and imprison his brother man
does not purpose to destroy government ; he merely
wishes not to do that which is contrary to the will of God ;
he is merely avoiding that which not only he, but every one
who is above the brute, undoubtedly considers evil. If
through this, government be destroyed, it only shows that
the demands of government are contrary to God’s will —
that is, they are evil; and thus government, being in
itself an evil, comes to be destroyed. The change which
is now taking place in the social life of the nations,
although we cannot exactly tell what form it will take in
the future, cannot be bad, because it proceeds, and will

PERSECUTION IN RUSSIA

303

be wrought out, not through man’s arbitrary will, but as
the result of a divine principle common to us all and
resident in our hearts. A process of birth is going on,
and our whole action must be directed not to thwart,
but to help, this process. And such help is given,
certainly not by resisting the divine truth revealed to
us, but, on the contrary, by an open and fearless ad-
mission of it. Such admission of truth gives not only
full satisfaction to the conscience of those who so pro-
fess, but also the greatest possible welfare to all ; to the
persecuted and to the persecutors as well. Salvation is
not in retrogression, but in progression.

The crisis in the change of the form of our social life
and in the replacement of forcible government by some
other socializing principle, has passed already ; and the
solution before us is not by stoppage of the process, or
by reversal of it, but by nothing else than a forward
movement along that road which the law of Christ
points out to the hearts of men.

Yet another effort, and the Galilean will conquer.
Not in that ruthless sense understood by the pagan
emperor, but in that true sense in which He Himself
spoke of His conquest of the world. “ In the world yon
shall have tribulation ; but be of good cheerf said He,
“/ have overco7ne the world.'' ^

He has actually overcome the world; not in a mysti-
cal sense of invisible victory over sin, as these words are
interpreted to mean by the theologians, but in the sim-
ple, clear, and comprehensible sense that, if we will
only have courage and boldly profess Him, soon not
only will those horrible persecutions of the body of true
disciples of Christ who carry out His teaching practi-
cally in their lives disappear, but there will remain no
more prisons or gallows, no wars, corruption, idleness,
or toil-crushed poverty, under which Christian humanity
now groans.

John xvi. 33.

HELPI*

T he facts related in this Appeal, ^ composed by three
of my friends, have been repeatedly verified, revised,
and sifted ; the Appeal itself has been several times re-
cast and corrected ; everything has been rejected from
it which, although true, might seem an exaggeration ; so
that all that is now stated in this Appeal is the real,
indubitable truth, as far as the truth is accessible to men
guided only by the religious desire, in this revelation of
the truth, to serve God and their neighbor, both the
oppressors and the oppressed. But, however striking
the facts here related, their importance is determined,
not by the facts themselves, but by the way in which
they will be regarded by those who learn about them.
And I fear that the majority of those who read this
Appeal will not understand all its importance.

‘‘Why, these fellows are a set of rioters; coarse,
illiterate peasants ; fanatics who have fallen under evil
influence. They are a noxious, anti-governmental sect,
which the Government cannot put up with, but evi-
dently must suppress, as it suppresses every movement
injurious to the general welfare. If women and chil-
dren, innocent people, have to suffer thereby, well, what
is to be done ? ”

This is what, with a shrug of the shoulders, people
who have not penetrated the importance of this event
will say.

On the whole, this phenomenon will, to most people,
seem devoid of interest, like every phenomenon whose

1 Published in Christian Martyrdom in Russia.

2 Early in 1897, an Appeal on behalf of the Dukhobors was drawn up
by three friends of Count Tolstoi’s. The latter added this article to what
his friends had written. His three friends were all banished for their offenscr

304

HELP!

305

place is strongly and clearly defined. Smugglers ap-
pear — they must be caught; anarchists, terrorists —
society must get rid of them ; fanatics, self-mutilators —
they must be shut up, transported ; infringers of public
order appear — they must be suppressed. All this
seems indisputable, evident, decisive, and therefore un-
interesting.

And yet such an attitude toward what is related in
this Appeal is a great error.

As in the life of each separate individual (I know this
in my own life, and every one will find similar cases in
his own), so also in the life of nations and humanity,
events occur which constitute turning-points in their
whole existence ; and these events, like the still small
voice” (not the great and strong wind”) in which
Elijah heard God, are always not loud, not striking,
hardly remarkable ; and in one’s personal life one al-
ways afterward regrets that at the time one did not
guess the importance of what was taking place.

‘‘ If I had known it was such an important moment
in my life,” one afterward thinks, I should not have
acted in such a way.’*

It is the same in the life of mankind. A Roman
emperor enters Rome in noisy, pompous triumph —
how important this seems ; and how insignificant, it
then seemed, that a Galilean was preaching a new
doctrine, and was executed therefor, just as hundreds
of others were executed for apparently similar crimes.

And so now, too, how important in the eyes of re-
fined members of rival parties of the English, French,
and Italian parliaments, or of the Austrian and German
diets, and in the eyes of all the business men in the
city and of the bankers of the whole world, and their
press organs, are the questions as to who shall occupy
the Bosporus, who shall seize some patch of land in
Africa or Asia, who shall triumph in the question of
bimetallism, and so on; and how, not only unimpor-
tant, but even so insignificant that they are not worth
speaking about, seem the stories which tell that, some-
where in the Caucasus, the Russian government has

HELP!

306

taken measures for crushing certain half-savage fanatics*
who deny the obligation to submit to the authorities.

And yet, in reality, how not merely insignificant, but
comic, beside the phenomena of such immense impor-
tance as are now taking place in the Caucasus, is the
strange anxiety of full-grown people, educated, and
illuminated by the teaching of Christ (or at least ac-
quainted with this teaching, and capable of being illu-
minated by it), as to which country shall have this or
that patch of land, and what words were uttered by
this or that erring, stumbling mortal, who is merely a
production of surrounding conditions.

Pilate and Herod, indeed, might not understand the
importance of that for which the Galilean, who had dis-
turbed their province, was brought before them for
judgment ; they did not even think it worth while learn-
ing wherein consisted His teaching ; even had they
known it, they might have been excused for thinking
that it would disappear (as Gamaliel said); but we —
we cannot but know the teaching itself, as well as
the fact that it has not disappeared in the course of
eighteen hundred years, and will not disappear until it
is realized. And if we know this, then, notwithstand-
ing the insignificance, illiterateness, and obscurity of
the Dukhobors, we cannot but see the whole importance
of that which is taking place among them. Christ's
disciples were just such insignificant, unrefined, un-
known people, and other than such the followers of
Christ cannot be. Among the Dukhobors, or rather,

Christians of the Universal Brotherhood," as they
now call themselves, nothing new is taking place, but
merely the germinating of that seed which was sown
by Christ eighteen hundred years ago, the resurrection
of Christ Himself.

This resurrection must take place, cannot but take
place, and it is impossible to shut one’s eyes to the fact
that it is taking place, merely because it is occurring
without the firing of guns, parade of troops, planting of
flags, illuminated fountains, music, electric lights, bell-
ringing, and the solemn speeches and the cries of people

HELP!

307

decorated with gold lace and ribbons. Only savages
judge of the importance of phenomena by the outward
splendor with which they are accompanied.

Whether we wish to see this or not, there has now
been manifested in the Caucasus, in the life of the
“Universal Brotherhood of Christians,” especially since
their persecution, a demonstration of that Christian
life toward which all that is good and reasonable in
the world is striving. For all our State institutions, our
parliaments, societies, sciences, arts, — all this only ex-
ists and operates in order to realize that life which all
of us, thinking men, see before us as the highest ideal
of perfection. And here we have people who have
realized this ideal, probably in part, not wholly, but
have realized it in a way we did not dream of doing
with our complex State institutions. How, then, can
we avoid acknowledging the importance of this phe-
nomenon ? For that is being realized toward which
we are all striving, toward which all our complex
activity is leading us.

It is generally said, that such attempts at the realiza-
tion of the Christian life have been made more than
once already ; there have been the Quakers, the Men-
nonites, and others, all of whom have weakened and
degenerated into ordinary people, living the general life
under the State. And, therefore, it is said such attempts
at the realization of the Christian life are not of impor-
tance.

To say so is like saying that the pains of labor which
have not yet ended in birth, that the warm rains and
the sun-rays which have not as yet brought spring, are
of no importance.

What, then, is important for the realization of the
Christian life.? It is certainly not by diplomatic negoti-
ations about Abyssinia and Constantinople, papal en-
cyclicals, socialistic congresses, and so on, that mankind
will approach to that for which the world endures.
For, if the kingdom of God, z.e. the kingdom on earth
of truth and good, is to be realized, it can be realized
only by such attempts as were made by the first disciples

3o8

HELP!

of Christ, afterwards by the Paulicans, Albigenses,
Quakers, Moravian Brethren, Mennonites, all the true
Christians of the world, and now by the Christians
of the Universal Brotherhood.”

The fact that these pains of labor continue and in-
crease does not prove that there will be no birth, but, on
the contrary, that the birth is near at hand. People say
that this will happen, but not in that way, — in some
other way, by books, newspapers, universities, theaters,
speeches, meetings, congresses. But even if it be ad-
mitted that all these newspapers and books and meet-
ings and universities help to the realization of the
Christian life, yet, after all, the realization must be ac-
complished by living men, good men, with a Christian
spirit, ready for righteous common life. Therefore, the
main condition for the realization is the existence and
gathering together of such people as shall even now
realize that toward which we are all striving. And
behold, these people exist !

It may be, although I doubt it, that the movement of
the ''Christian Universal Brotherhood” will also be
stamped out, especially if society itself does not under-
stand all the importance of what is taking place, and
does not help them with brotherly aid ; but that which
this movement represents, that which has been expressed
in it, will certainly not die, cannot die, and sooner or
later will burst forth to the light, will destroy all that is
now crushing it, and will take possession of the world.
It is only a question of time.

True, there are people, and, unfortunately, there are
many, who hope and say, " But not in our time,” and
therefore strive to arrest the movement. Yet their
efforts are useless, and they do not arrest the move-
ment, but by their efforts only destroy in themselves the
life which is given them. For life is life, only when it
is the carrying out of God’s purpose. But, by opposing
Him, people deprive themselves of life, and at the same
time, neither for one year, nor for one hour, can they
delay the accomplishment of God’s purpose.

And it is impossible not to see that, with the outward

HELP!

309

connection now established among all the inhabitants of
the earth, with the awakening of the Christian spirit
which is now appearing in all corners of the earth, this
accomplishment is near at hand. And that obduracy
and blindness of the Russian government, in directing
persecution against the ''Christians of the Universal
Brotherhood,” a persecution like those of pagan times,
and the wonderful meekness and firmness with which
the new Christian martyrs have endured these perse-
cutions, — all these facts are undoubted signs of the
nearness of this accomplishment.

And therefore, having understood all the importance
of the event that is taking place, both for the life of the
whole of humanity and for the life of each of us, remem-
bering that the opportunity to act, which is now pre-
sented us, will never return, let us do that which the
merchant in the Gospel parable did, selling all he pos-
sessed that he might obtain the priceless pearl ; let us
disdain all mean, selfish considerations, and let each of
us, in whatever position he be, do all that is in his
power, in order, — if not directly to help those through
whom the work of God is being done, if not to partake
in this work, — at least not to be the opponents of the
work of God which is being accomplished for our good.

December 14, 1896.

THE EMIGRATION OF THE
DUKHOBORS^

A POPULATION of twelve thousand people —
Christians of the Universal Brotherhood,” as the
Dukhobors, who live in the Caucasus, call themselves —
are at the present moment in the most distressing cir-
cumstances.

Without entering into argument as to who is right :
whether it be the governments who consider that Chris-
tianity is compatible with prisons, executions, and above
all, with wars and preparations for war ; or whether it
be the Dukhobors, who acknowledge as binding only the
Christian law (which renounces the use of any force
whatever, and condemns murder), and who therefore re-
fuse to serve in the army, — one cannot fail to see that this
controversy is very difficult to settle. No government
could allow some people to shun duties which are being
fulfilled by all the rest, and to undermine thereby the
very basis of the State. The Dukhobors, on the other
hand, cannot disregard that very law which they con-
sider as divine, and, consequently, as supremely obliga-
tory.

Governments have hitherto found a way out of this
dilemma, either by compelling those who refuse military
service (on account of their religious convictions) to ful-
fil other duties, more difficult, but not in conflict with
their religious beliefs, as has been done, and is still be-
ing done, in Russia with the Mennonites (who are com-
pelled to do the usual term of service at government

^ First published in the Daily Chronicle^ London.

310

THE DUKHOBORS

311

works) ; or else the governments do not recognize the
legality of a refusal for religious reasons, and punish
those that fail to obey a general law of the State, by
putting them into prison for the usual term of service,
as is done in Austria with the Nazarenes. But the
present Russian government has found yet a third way
of treating the Dukhobors — a way which one might
have expected would be dispensed with in our time.
Besides subjecting those that refuse military service to
the most painful tortures, it systematically causes suf-
fering to their fathers, mothers, and children, probably
with the object of shaking — by the tortures of these
innocent families — the resoluteness of the dissentients.

Not to mention the floggings, incarcerations, and
every kind of tortures to which the Dukhobors who re-
fused to serve in the army were subjected in the penal
battalions, where many died, and their banishment to
the worst parts of Siberia ; not to mention the two hun-
dred reserves, who, during the course of two years, lan-
guished in prison, and are now separated from their
families, and exiled, in pairs, to the wildest parts of the
Caucasus, where, deprived of every opportunity of earn-
ing a living, they are literally dying of starvation, — not
to mention these punishments of those guilty of having
refused to serve in the army, the families of the Dukho-
bors are being systematically ruined and exterminated.

They are all deprived of the right to leave the place
where they live, and are heavily fined and impris-
oned for non-compliance with the strangest demands
of the authorities ; for instance, for calling themselves
by a different name from the one they are ordered to
adopt, for fetching flour from a neighboring mill, for
going from the village to a wood to gather fuel ; a
mother is even punished for visiting her son. And so
the last resources of inhabitants formerly well-to-do are
being quickly exhausted. In this way four hundred
families have been expelled from their homes and set-
tled in various Tartar and Georgian villages, where they,
being obliged to pay for their lodgings and food, and
not having any land or other means of subsistence, have

312

THE EMIGRATION OF

found themselves in such difficult circumstances that in
the course of the three years since their removal, the
fourth part of them, mostly old people and children,
have already died from want and disease.

It is difficult to imagine that such a systematic exter-
mination of a whole population of twelve thousand people
should enter into the plans of the Russian government.
It is probable that the superior authorities are unaware
of that which is in reality going on, and even if they
suspect it, they would not desire to know the details,
feeling that they ought not to allow such a state of
things to continue, and yet at the same time recog-
nizing that what is being done is necessary.

At all events, it is certain that the Caucasian admin-
istration has been during the last three years regularly
torturing, not only those that refuse to serve in the army,
but also their families, and that in the same systematic
way it is ruining and starving to death all the Dukho-
bors who were exiled.

All petitions in favor of the Dukhobors, and any as-
sistance rendered them, have hitherto only led to the
banishment from Russia of those who have interceded
in their behalf, and to the expulsion from the Caucasus
of those who have attempted to help these victims.
The Caucasian administration has surrounded with a
kind of Chinese wall the whole of an unsubmissive pop-
ulation, and this population is gradually dying out ; an-
other three or four years and probably not one of the
Dukhobors will survive.

This would actually have happened, but for an inci-
dent, apparently unforeseen by the Caucasian govern-
ment — namely, when last year the dowager-empress,
having come to the Caucasus on a visit to her son, the
Dukhobors succeeded in submitting to her a petition,
asking for permission to be settled all together in some
remote place, and if this should be impossible, to allow
them to emigrate. The empress handed over this peti-
tion to the superior authorities, and the latter acknowl-
edged the possibility of allowing the Dukhobors to
emigrate.

THE DUKHOBORS

313

It seems as if the problem were now solved, and that
a way has been found out of a position burdensome for
both sides. This, however, is only apparently the case.

The Dukhobors are now in a position which makes it
impossible for them to emigrate. At present they have
not sufficient means to do so, and being confined within
their villages, they are unable to make any preparations.
Formerly they were well-to-do, but during the last few
years the greater part of their means has been taken
away from them by confiscations and fines, or has been
spent in maintaining their exiled brethren. As they are
not allowed to leave the vicinity of their homes, and as
nobody is allowed to see them, there is no possibility
whatever for them to confer and decide upon the way
of emigrating. The following letter describes, better
than anything else could do, the position in which the
Dukhobors now find themselves.

This is what a man, highly respected among them,
writes to me : —

We inform you that we submitted a petition to her Imperial
Majesty, the Empress Maria Feodorovna, who handed it over
to the Senate. The result was the decree expressed in the en-
closed official notification.

On February 10, I went to Tiflis, and there met our brother
St. John ; ' but our meeting was of very short duration ; they
soon arrested both of us. I was put into prison, and he was
immediately expelled from Russia.

I intimated to the chief of police that I had come on busi-
ness to the governor. He said : ‘‘We will first imprison you,
and afterward we will report you to the governor.” On the
1 2th 1 was put into prison, and on the 19th I was taken to the
governor, escorted by two soldiers. The chief clerk in the gov-
ernor’s office asked me, “ Why were you arrested ? ” I said,
“I don’t know.” “Was it you who were in Signakh lately?”
“ Yes, I was there.” “ And what did you come here for ? ”
“ I wish to see the governor ; last summer we submitted a
petition to the Empress Maria Feodorovna during her stay at
Abostuman. I received an answer to the petition through the

1 This is an ex-captain of the English army who took the Dukhobors
some money collected for them in Englaad.

THE EMIGRATION OF

3H

head official of the Signakh district. I asked for a copy, but
he refused, saying that he could not give one without the gov-
ernor’s permission — and this is why I have now come here.”

He announced me to the governor, the governor called me
in, and I explained to him the position of affairs. He said :

Instead of seeing me you made haste to meet the English-
man.” I replied : The Englishman is also our brother.”

The governor talked to me kindly, and advised us to emi-
grate as soon as possible ; he added : ‘‘ You can all go, except
those of you who are liable to be summoned at the next call to
military service.”

He also gave orders for me to be released from prison, and
sent back to Signakh. We are, just now, meeting in council,
and, with God’s help, we will try to prepare for our emigration
to England or America. And in this matter we ask for your
brotherly assistance.

As to the position of our brethren, we inform you that Peter
Vasilyevitch Verigin ^ has been ordered to remain for another
term of five years. The brethren in the province of Kars are
still, as before, being fined at every opportunity ; they are still
forbidden to leave their places of residence, and for non-com-
pliance with this order they are put into prison for a term of
one to two weeks. Diseases continue as before ; but there are
fewer deaths. Material want is most acutely experienced by the
brethren of the Signakh district ; those of the other districts,
however, are somewhat better off.

And here is the official notification : —

The Fasting-Dukhobors,^ who were expelled in the year 1895
from the district of Akhalkalak, and transported into other dis-
tricts of the government of Tiflis, having submitted a petition
to her Imperial Majesty the Empress Maria Feodorovna, asking
either to be grouped and settled in one place, and to be exempt
from the duties of military service, or to be allowed to emigrate,
the following instructions have been received : —

I. The request for exemption from military service is re-
fused.

^ Verigin is one of their brethren who was at first banished to the govern-
ment of Archangel, and afterward to Siberia, and who is now for the
eleventh year in exile.

2 The government thus designates those Dukhobors that have not con-
sented to military service, and who also refrain from flesh foods.

THE DUKHOBORS

315

2. The Fasting- Dukhobors — with the exception, of course,
of those that have reached the age at which they can be sum-
moned to the duties of military service, and of those who have
failed to fulfil those duties — may emigrate under these con-
ditions : — (a) That they provide themselves with a foreign
passport, in accordance with the established order ; (d) that
they leave Russia at their own expense ; and (c) that before
leaving they sign an agreement never to return within the bor-
ders of the empire, understanding that in the case of non-com-
pliance with this last point the offender will be condemned to
exile to remote places.

As to their request to be settled in one village, it is refused.

This notification is issued by order of the governor of Tiflis
to one of the petitioning Fasting-Dukhobors, Vasili Potapof, in
answer to his personal application.

Tiflis, February 21, 1898.

People are permitted to emigrate, but they have pre-
viously been ruined, so that they have nothing to emi-
grate with, and the circumstances in which they find
themselves are such as to render it absolutely impossi-
ble for them to know where to go and how to arrange
the migration, and they are even unable to make use of
the assistance extended to them from outside, since all
those that attempt to help them are immediately ex-
pelled, and the Dukhobors themselves are put into prison
for each absence from their homes.

Thus, if no assistance can be rendered them from
outside, they will in the end be completely ruined, and
will all die out, notwithstanding the permission given
them to emigrate.

I happen to know the details of the persecutions and
sufferings of these people ; I am in communication with
them, and they ask me to help them. Therefore I con-
sider it my duty to address myself to all good people,
whether Russian or not Russian, asking them to help
the Dukhobors out of the terrible position in which they
now are. I have attempted to address myself, through
the medium of a Russian newspaper, to the Russian
public, but do not know as yet whether my appeal will be
published or not ; and I now address myself once more

3i6 the DUKHOBORS

to all sympathizers, asking for their assistance — first, in
the form of money, of which much will be needed for
the removal to a distant place of ten thousand people ;
and secondly, of advice and guidance in the difficulties
of the coming emigration of people who do not under-
stand any foreign language and have never left Russia
before.

I trust that the leading authorities of the Russian
government will not prevent such assistance from being
rendered, and that they will check the excessive zeal of
the Caucasian administration, which is, at the present
moment, not admitting any communication whatever
with the Dukhobors ^

April I, 1898.

1 Count Tolstoi's appeal was heeded. A considerable sum of money was
collected ; the English and American Quakers with especial alacrity came
to the aid of those who were persecuted for practising the Qualcer prin-
ciples of non-resistance; a large tract of land was granted by the Dominion
of Canada for their settlement. Ships were chartered to bring the exiles
across the ocean, and finally, in the spring of 1899, the Dukhobors were
landed on the shores of America and, like the Pilgrim fathers, given free-
dom to worship God in their own manner and to wrest a living from the
abttiidant though latent resources of the as yet unbroken wilderness. — Ed.

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES*

PREFACE

**They that take the sword shall perish by the sword.**

N early fifteen years ago the census in Moscow
evoked in me a series of thoughts and feelings
which I expressed as best I could in a book called What
Must We Do Then? Towards the end of last year ( 1899)
I once more reconsidered the same questions, and the
conclusions to which I came were the same as in that
book. But as I think that during these ten years I have
reflected on the questions discussed in What Must We
Do Then? more quietly and minutely in relation to the
teachings at present existing and diffused among us, I
now offer the reader new considerations, leading to the
same replies as before. I think these considerations may
be of use to people who are honestly trying to elucidate
their position in society and clearly to define the moral
obligations flowing from that position. I, therefore,
publish them.

The fundamental thought both of that book and of this
article is the repudiation of violence. That repudiation
I learnt and understood from the Gospels, where it is
most clearly expressed in the words : It was said to you.
Eye for an Eye, . . . — that is, you have been taught
to oppose violence by violence, but I teach you : turn the
other cheek when you are struck — that is, suffer violence,
but do not employ it. I know that the use of those great
words — in consequence of the unreflectingly perverted

♦ Published 1900, by Dodd, Mead & Company, and reprinted by
permission.

317

3i8 the slavery OF OUR TIMES

interpretations alike of Liberals and of Churchmen, who
on this matter agree — will be a reason for most so-called
cultured people not to read this article, or to be biassed
against it; but, nevertheless, I place those words as the
epigraph of this work.

I cannot prevent people who consider themselves
enlightened from considering the Gospel teaching to be an
obsolete guide to life — a guide long outlived by humanity.
But I can indicate the source from which I drew my
consciousness of a truth which people are as yet far from
recognising, and which alone can save men from their
sufferings.

And this I do.

II July, 1900.

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

“Ye have heard that it was said. An Eye for an Eye,
and a Tooth for a Tooth'' (Matt. v. 38; Ex. xxi. 24).
“But I say unto you. Resist not him that is evil; but
whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him
the other also" (Matt. v. 39). “And if any man would
go to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have
thy cloak also" (Matt. v. 40). “Give to every one that
asketh thee ; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask
them not again" (Luke vi. 30). “And as ye would that
men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise" (Luke
vi. 31).

“And all that believed were together, and had all things
common" (Acts ii. 44)." “And Jesus said, When it is
evening, ye say, It will be fair weather, for the heaven is
red" (Matt. xvi. 2). “And in the morning, It will be foul
weather to-day: for the heaven is red and lowering. Ye
hypocrites, ye know how to discern the face of the
heaven; but ye cannot discern the signs of the times"
(Matt. xvi. 3).

“The system on which all the nations of the world are
acting is founded in gross deception, in the deepest
ignorance, or a mixture of both; so that under no possi-

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 319

ble modification of the principles on which it is based
can it ever produce good to man ; on the contrary, its
practical results must ever be to produce evil continually/'
— Robert Owen.

^'We have much studied and much perfected of late the
great civilised invention of the division of labor, only we
give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labor
that is divided, but the men — divided into mere segments
of men, broken into small fragments and crumbs of life ;
so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a
man is not enough to make a pin or a nail, but exhausts
itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail.
Now, it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many
pins a day; but if we could only see with what crystal
sand their points were polished — sand of human souls —
we should think there might be some loss in it also.

“Men may be beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like
cattle, slaughtered like summer flies, and yet remain in
one sense, and the best sense, free. But to smother their
souls within them, to blight and hew into rotting pollards
the suckling branches of their human intelligence, to
make the flesh and skin . . . into leathern thongs to yoke
machinery with — this is to be slave-masters indeed. . . .
It is verily this degradation of the operative into a
machine which is leading the mass of the nations into
vain, incoherent, destructive struggling for a freedom of
which they cannot explain the nature to themselves. Their
universal outcry against wealth and against nobility is not
forced from them either by the pressure of famine or the
sting of mortified pride. These do much and have done
much in all ages ; but the foundations of society were
never yet shaken as they are at this day.

“It is not that men are ill-fed, but that they have no
pleasure in the work by which they make their bread,
and, therefore, look to wealth as the only means of
pleasure.

“It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper
classes, but they cannot endure tlieir own ; for they feel
that the kind of labor to which they are condemned is
verily a degrading one, and makes them less than men.

320 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

Never had the tipper classes so much sympathy with the
lower, or charity for them, as they have at this day, and
yet never were they so much hated by them .” — From
**The Stones of Venice/* by John Ruskin, VoL 11. , Chap.

VI. §§

CHAPTER I

GOODS-PORTERS WHO WORK THIRTY-SEVEN HOURS

A n acquaintance of mine who works on the Moscow-
L Kursk Railway as a weigher, in the course of
conversation mentioned to me that the men who load the
goods on to his scales work for thirty-seven hours on end.

Though I had full confidence in the speaker's truth-
fulness I was unable to believe him. I thought he was
making a mistake, or exaggerating, or that I misunder-
stood something.

But the weigher narrated the conditions under which
this work is done so exactly that there was no room left
for doubt. He told me that there are two hundred and
fifty such goods-porters at the Kursk station in Moscow.
They were all divided into gangs of five men, and were
on piece-work, receiving from one rouble to iR. 15 (say
two shillings to two and fourpence, or forty-eight cents
to fifty-six cents) for one thousand poods (over sixteen
tons) of goods received or despatched.

They come in the morning, work for a day and a night
at unloading the trucks, and in the morning, as soon as
the night is ended, they begin to re-load, and work on for
another day. So that in two days they get one night's
sleep.

Their work consists of unloading and moving bales of
seven, eight, and up to ten poods (say 252, 280 and
up to nearly 364 pounds). Two men place the bales
on the backs of the other three who carry them. By
such work they earn less than a ruble (two shillings,
or forty-eight cents) a day. They work continually
without holiday.

The account given by the weigher was so circumstan-

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 321

tial that it was impossible to doubt it, but, nevertheless, I
decided to verify it with my own eyes, and I went to the
goods-station.

Finding my acquaintance at the goods-station, I told
him that I had come to see what he had told me about.

‘'No one I mention it to believes it,'' said I.

Without replying to me, the weigher called to some
one in a shed. “Nikita, come here."

From the door appeared a tall, lean workman in a torn
coat.

“When did you begin work?"

“When? Yesterday morning."

“And where were you last night ?"

“I was unloading, of course.'^

“Did you work during the night ?" asked I.

“Of course we worked."

“And when did you begin work to-day ?"

“We began in the morning — when else should we
begin ?"

“And when will you finish working?"

“When they let us go ; then we shall finish !"

The four other workmen of his gang came up to us.
They all wore torn coats and were without overcoats,
though there were about — 20° Reaumur of cold (13°
below zero, Fahrenheit).

I began to ask them about the conditions of their work,
and evidently surprised them by taking an interest in such
a simple and natural thing (as it seemed to them) as their
thirty-six hour work.

They were all villagers; for the most part fellow-
countrymen of my own — from Tula; some, however,
were from Aria, and some from Voronezh. They lived
in Moscow in lodgings, some of them with their families,
but most of them without. Those who have come here
alone send their earnings home to the village.

They board with contractors. Their food costs them
ten rubles (say £i is., or five dollars per month). ^ They
always eat meat, disregarding the fasts.

Their work always keeps them occupied more than
thirty-six hours running, because it takes more than half

1 Normal rate of exchange.

322 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

an hour to get to their lodgings and from their lodgings,
and, besides, they are often kept at work beyond the time
fixed.

Paying for their own food, they earn, by such thirty-
seven-hour-on-end work, about twenty-five rubles a
month.

To my question, why they did such convict work, they
replied :

Where is one to go to V*

“But why work thirty-six hours on end? Cannot the
work be arranged in shifts

“We do what we're told to.''

“Yes; but why do you agree to it?"

“We agree because we have to feed ourselves. Tf you
don't like it — ^be off !' If one's even an hour late, one has
one's ticket shied at one, and is told to march ; and there
are ten men ready to take the place."

The men were all young, only one was somewhat older,
perhaps about forty. All their faces were lean, and
had exhausted, weary eyes, as if the men were drunk.
The lean workman to whom I first spoke struck me
especially by the strange weariness of his look. I asked
him whether he had not been drinking to-day.

“I don't drink," answered he, in the decided way in
which men who really do not drink always reply to that
question.

“And I do not smoke," added he.

“Do the others drink ?" asked I.

“Yes; it is brought here."

“The work is not light, and a drink always adds to
one's strength," said the older workman.

This workman had been drinking that day, but it was
not in the least noticeable.

After some more talk with the workmen I went to
watch the work.

Passing long rows of all sorts of goods, I came to some
workmen slowly pushing a loaded truck. I learned
afterwards that the men have to shunt the trucks them-
selves and to keep the platform clear of snow, without
being paid for the work. It is so stated in the “Condi-
tions of Pay." These workmen were just as tattered and

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 323

emaciated as those with whom I had been talking. When
they had moved the truck to its place I went up to them
and asked when they had begun work, and when they had
dined.

I was told that they had started work at seven o'clock,
and had only just dined. The work had prevented their
being let off sooner.

“And when do you get away?"

“As it happens ; sometimes not till ten o'clock," replied
the men, as if boasting of their endurance. Seeing my
interest in their position, they surrounded me, and, prob-
ably taking me for an inspector, several of them speaking
at once, informed me of what was evidently their chief
subject of complaint — namely, that the apartment in
which they could sometimes warm themselves and snatch
an hour's sleep between the day-work and the night-work
was crowded. All of them expressed great dissatisfaction
at this crowding.

“There may be one hundred men, and nowhere to lie
down; even under the shelves it is crowded," said dis-
satisfied voices. “Have a look at it yourself. It is close
here."

The room was certainly not large enough. In the
thirty-six- foot room about forty men might find place to
lie down on the shelves.

Some of the men entered the room with me, and they
vied with each other in complaining of the scantiness of
the accommodation.

“Even under the shelves there is nowhere to lie down,"
said they.

These men, who in twenty degrees of frost, without
overcoats, carry on their backs 240-pound loads during
thirty-six hours; who dine and sup not when they need
food, but when their overseer allows them to eat; living
altogether in conditions far worse than those of dray-
horses, it seemed strange that these people only com-
plained of insufficient accommodation in the room where
they warm themselves. But though this seemed to me
strange at first, yet, entering further into their position,
I understood what a feeling of torture these men, who
never get enough sleep, and who are half- frozen, must

324 the slavery OF OUR TIMES

experience when, instead of resting and being warmed,
they have to creep on the dirty floor under the shelves,
and there, in the stuffy and vitiated air, become still
weaker and more broken down.

Only, perhaps, in that miserable hour of vain attempt
to get rest and sleep do they painfully realise all the
horror of their life-destroying thirty-seven-hour work,
and that is why they are specially agitated by such an
apparently insignificant circumstance as the overcrowding
of their room.

Having watched several gangs at work, and having
talked with some more of the men and heard the same
story from them all, I drove home, having convinced
myself that what my acquaintance had told me was true.

It was true that for money, only enough to subsist on,
people considering themselves free men thought it neces-
sary to give themselves up to work such as, in the days of
serfdom, not one slave-owner, however cruel, would have
sent his slaves to. Let alone slave-owners, not one cab-
proprietor would send his horses to such work, for
horses cost money, and it would be wasteful, by excessive,
thirty-seven-hour work, to shorten the life of an animal
of value.

CHAPTER II

society's indifference while men perish

To oblige men to work for thirty-seven hours continu-
ously without sleep, besides being cruel is also uneco-
nomical. And yet such uneconomical expenditure of
human lives continually goes on around us.

Opposite the house in which I live ^ is a factory of silk
goods, built with the latest technical improvements.
About three thousand women and seven hundred men
work and live there. As I sit in my room now I hear the
unceasing din of the machinery, and know — for I have
been there — what that din means. Three thousand

^This evidently relates to his son’s house in Moscow, where
Tolstoi spent the winter months. — Tr,

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 325

women stand, for twelve hours a day, at the looms amid
a deafening roar; winding, unwinding, arranging the silk
threads to make silk stuffs. All the women (except those
who have just come from the villages) have an unhealthy
appearance. Most of them lead a most intemperate and
immoral life. Almost all, whether married or unmarried,
as soon as a child is born to them send it off either to the
village or to the Foundlings’ Hospital, where eighty per
cent, of these children perish. For fear of losing their
places the mothers resume work the next day, or on the
third day after their confinement.

So that during twenty years, to my knowledge, tens of
thousands of young, healthy women — mothers — have
ruined and are now ruining their lives and the lives of
their children in order to produce velvets and silk stuffs.

I met a beggar yesterday, a young man on crutches,
sturdily built, but crippled. He used to work as a navvy,
with a wheelbarrow, but slipped and injured himself
internally. He spent all he had on peasant-women healers
and on doctors, and has now for eight years been home-
less, begging his bread, and complaining that God does
not send him death.

How many such sacrifices of life there are that we
either know nothing of, or know of, but hardly notice,
considering them inevitable !

I know men working at the blast-furnaces of the Tula
Iron Foundry who, to have one Sunday free each fort-
night, will work for twenty-four hours — that is, after
working all day they will go on working all night. I have
seen these men. They all drink vodka to keep up their
energy, and obviously, like those goods-porters on the
railway, they quickly expend not the interest, but the
capital of their lives.

And what of the waste of lives among those who are
employed on admittedly harmful work — in looking-glass,
cartridge, match, sugar, tobacco, and glass factories; in
mines or as gilders ?

There are English statistics showing that the average
length of life among people of the upper classes is fifty-
five years, and the average of life among working people
in unhealthy occupations is twenty-nine years.

326 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

Knowing this (and we cannot help knowing it), we
who take advantage of labor that costs human lives
should, one would think (unless we are beasts), not be
able to enjoy a moment’s peace. But the fact is that we
well-to-do people, liberals and humanitarians, very sensi-
tive to the sufferings not of people only, but also of
animals, unceasingly make use of such labor, and try to
become more and more rich — that is, to take more and
more advantage of such work. And we remain perfectly
tranquil.

For instance, having learned of the thirty-seven-hour
labor of the goods-porters, and of their bad room, we at
once send there an inspector, who receives a good salary,
and we forbid people to work more than twelve hours,
leaving the workmen (who are thus deprived of one-third
of their earnings) to feed themselves as best they can;
and we compel the railway company to erect a large and
convenient room for the workmen. Then with perfectly
quiet consciences we continue to receive and despatch
goods by that railway, and we ourselves continue to
receive salaries, dividends, rents from houses or from
land, etc. Having learned that the women and girls at
the silk factory, living far from their families, ruin their
own lives and those of their children, and that a large
half of the washerwomen who iron our starched shirts,
and of the typesetters who print the books and papers that
while away our time, get consumption, we only shrug our
shoulders and say that we are very sorry things should be
so, but that we can do nothing to alter it, and we continue
with tranquil consciences to buy silk stuffs, to wear
starched shirts and to read our morning paper. We are
much concerned about the hours of the shop assistants,
and still more about the long hours of our own children
at school ; we strictly forbid carters to make their horses
drag heavy loads, and we even organise the killing of
cattle in slaughter-houses, so that the animals may feel it
as little as possible. But how wonderfully blind we
become as soon as the question concerns those millions of
workers who perish slowly, and often painfully, all
around us, at labors the fruits of which we use for our
convenience and pleasure !

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 327

CHAPTER III

JUSTIFICATION OF THE EXISTING POSITION BY SCIENCE

This wonderful blindness which befalls people of our
circle can only be explained by the fact that when people
behave badly they always invent a philosophy of life
which represents their bad actions to be not bad actions at
all, but merely results of unalterable laws beyond their
control. In former times such a view of life was found
in the theory that an inscrutable and unalterable will of
God existed which foreordained to some men a humble
position and hard worlc and to others an exalted position
and the enjoyment of the good things of life.

On this theme an enormous quantity of books were
written and an innumerable quantity of sermons
preached. The theme was worked up from every possible
side. It was demonstrated that God created different
sorts of people — slaves and masters ; and that both should
be satisfied with their position. It was further demon-
strated that it would be better for the slaves in the next
world; and afterwards it was shown that although the
slaves were slaves and ought to remain such, yet their
condition would not be bad if the masters would be kind
to them. Then the very last explanation, after the eman-
cipation of the slaves,^ was that wealth is entrusted by
God to some people in order that they may use part of it
in good works, and so there is no harm in some people’s
being rich and others poor.

These explanations satisfied the rich and the poor
(especially the rich) for a long time. But the day came
when these explanations became unsatisfactory, especially
to the poor, who began to understand their position.
Then fresh explanations were needed. And just at the
proper time they were produced.^ These new explana-
tions came in the form of science — political economy,

^ The serfs in Russia and the slaves in the United States of
America were emancipated at the same time, 1861-1864. — Tr,

2 The first volume of Karl Marx’s Kapital appeared in 1867. —
Tr.

328 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

which declared that it had discovered the laws which
regulate division of labor and of the distribution of the
products of labor among men. These laws, according
to that science, are that the division of labor and the
enjoyment of its products depend on supply and demand,
and capital, rent, wages of labor, values, profits, etc. ; in
general, on unalterable laws governing man's economic
activities.

Soon, on this theme as many books and pamphlets
were written and lectures delivered as there had been
treatises written and religious sermons preached on the
former theme, and still unceasingly mountains of pamph-
lets and books are being written and lectures are being
delivered ; and all these books and lectures are as cloudy
and unintelligible as the theological treatises and the ser-
mons, and they, too, like the theological treatises, fully
achieve their appointed purpose — that is, they give such
an explanation of the existing order of things as justifies
some people in tranquilly refraining from labor and in
utilising the labor of others.

The fact that, for the investigations of this pseudo-
science, not the condition of the people in the whole
world through all historic time was taken to show the
general order of things, but only the condition of people
in a small country, in most exceptional circumstances —
England at the end of the Eighteenth and the beginning of
the Nineteenth Centuries ® — this fact did not in the least
hinder the acceptance as valid of the result to which the
investigators arrived ; any more than a similar acceptance
is now hindered by the endless disputes and disagreements
among those who study that science and are quite unable
to agree as to the meaning of rent, surplus value, profits,
etc. Only the one fundamental position of that science is
acknowledged by all — namely, that the relations among

3 Compare Walter Bagehot’s words : “The world which our po-
litical economists treat of is a very limited and peculiar world
also. They (people) often imagine that what they read is ap-
plicable to all states of society and to all equally, whereas it is
only true of — and only proved as to — states of society in which
commerce has largely developed, and where it has taken the form
of development or something near the form which it has taken
in England" {The Postulates of Political Economy). — Tr.

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 329

men are conditioned, not by what people consider right or
wrong, but by what is advantageous for those who occupy
an advantageous position.

It is admitted as an undoubted truth that if in society
many thieves and robbers have sprung up who take from
the laborers the fruits of their labor, this happens not
because the thieves and robbers have acted badly, but
because such are the inevitable economic laws, which can
only be altered slowly by an evolutionary process indi-
cated by science ; and therefore, according to the guidance
of science, people belonging to the class of robbers, thieves
or receivers of stolen goods may quietly continue to utilise
the things obtained by thefts and robbery.

Though the majority of people in our world do not
know the details of these tranquilising scientific explana-
tions any more than they formerly knew the details of
the theological explanations which justified their position,
yet they all know that an explanation exists ; that scien-
tific men, wise men, have proved convincingly, and con-
tinue to prove, that the existing order of things is what it
ought to be, and that, therefore, we may live quietly in
this order of things without ourselves’ trying to alter it.

Only in this way can I explain the amazing blindness
of good people in our society who sincerely desire the,
welfare of animals, but yet with quiet consciences devour
the lives of their brother men.

CHAPTER IV

THE ASSERTION OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE THAT RURAL
LABORERS MUST ENTER THE FACTORY SYSTEM

The theory that it is God’s will that some people
should own others satisfied people for a very long time.
But that theory, by justifying cruelty, caused such cruelty
as evoked resistance, and produced doubts as to the truth
of the theory.

So now with the theory that an economic evolution is
progressing, guided by inevitable laws, in consequence of
which some people must collect capital, and others must
labor all their lives to increase those capitals, preparing

330 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

themselves meanwhile for the promised communalisation
of the means of production; this theory, causing some
people to be yet more cruel to others, also begins (espe-
cially among common people not stupefied by science) to
evoke certain doubts.

For instance, you see goods-porters destroying their
lives by thirty-seven hours' labor, or women in factories,
or laundresses, or typesetters, or all those millions of
people who live in hard, unnatural conditions of monoto-
nous, stupefying, slavish toil, and you naturally ask. What
has brought these people to such a state? And how are
they to be delivered from it? And science replies that
these people are in this condition because the railway
belongs to this company, the silk factory to that gentle-
man, and all the foundries, factories, typographies,
and laundries to capitalists, and that this state of
things will come right by work-people forming unions,
co-operative societies, strikes, and taking part in govern-
ment, and more and more swaying the masters and the
government till the workers first obtain shorter hours and
increased wages, and finally all the means of production
will pass into their hands, and then all will be well.
Meanwhile, all is going on as it should go, and there is no
need to alter anything.

This answer must seem to an unlearned man, and par-
ticularly to our Russian folk, very surprising. In the first
place, neither in relation to the goods-porters, nor the
factory women, nor all the millions of other laborers
suffering from heavy, unhealthy, stupefying labor does
the possession of the means of production by capitalists
explain anything. The agricultural means of production
of those men who are now working at the railway have
not been seized by capitalists : they have land, and horses,
and plows, and harrows, and all that is necessary to
till the ground ; also these women working at the factory
are not only not forced to it by being deprived of their
implements of production, but, on the contrary, they have
(for the most part against the wish of the elder members
of their families) left the homes where their work was
much wanted, and where they had implements of produc-
tion.

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 331

Millions of work-people in Russia and in other coun-
tries are in like case. So that the cause of the miserable
position of the workers cannot be found in the seizure of
the means of production by capitalists. The cause must
lie in that which drives them from the villages. That, in
the first place. Secondly, the emancipation of the workers
from this state of things (even in that distant future in
which science promises them liberty) can be accomplished
neither by shortening the hours of labor, nor by increas-
ing wages, nor by the promised communalisation of the
means of production.

All that cannot improve their position, for the misery
of the laborer's position — alike on the railway, in the
silk factory and in every other factory or workshop —
consists not in the longer or shorter hours of work
(agriculturists sometimes work eighteen hours a day, and
as much as thirty-six hours on end, and consider their
lives happy ones), nor does it consist in the low rate of
wages, nor in the fact that the railway or the factory is
not theirs, but it consists in the fact that they are obliged
to work in harmful, unnatural conditions often dangerous
and destructive to life, and to live a barrack-life in towns
— a life full of temptations and immorality — and to do
compulsory labor at another's bidding.

Latterly the hours of labor have diminished and the
rate of wages has increased; but this diminution of the
hours of labor and this increase in wages have not
improved the position of the worker, if one takes into
account not their more luxurious habits — watches with
chains, silk kerchiefs, tobacco, vodka, beef, beer, etc. —
but their true welfare — that is, their health and morality,
and chiefly their freedom. “

At the silk factory with which I am acquainted, twenty
years ago the work was chiefly done by men, who worked
fourteen hours a day, earned on an average fifteen rubles
a month, and sent the money for the most part to their
families in the villages. Now nearly all the work is done
by women working eleven hours, some of whom earn as
much as twenty-five rubles a month (over fifteen rubles
on the average), and for the most part not sending it
home, but spend all they earn here chiefly on dress.

332 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

drunkenness and vice. The diminution of the hours of
work merely increases the time they spend in the taverns.

The same thing is happening, to a greater or lesser
extent, at all the factories and works. Everywhere, not-
withstanding the diminution of the hours of labor and
the increase of wages, the health of the operatives is
worse than that of country workers, the average duration
of life is shorter, and morality is sacrificed, as cannot but
occur when people are torn from those conditions which
most conduce to morality — family life, and free, healthy,
varied and intelligible agricultural work.

It is very possibly true that, as some economists assert,
with shorter hours of labor, more pay, and improved
sanitary conditions in mills and factories, the health of
the workers and their morality improve in comparison
with the former condition of factory workers. It is
possible also that latterly, and in some places, the position
of the factory hands is better in external conditions than
the position of the country population. But this is so
(and only in some places) because the government and
society, influenced hy the affirmation of science, do all
that is possible to improve the position of the factory
population at the expense of the country population.

If the condition of the factory- workers in some places
is (though only in externals) better than that of country
people, it only shows that one can, by all kinds of restric-
tions, render life miserable in what should be the best
external conditions, and that there is no position so
unnatural and bad that men may not adapt themselves to
it if they remain in it for some generations.

The misery of the position of a factory hand, and in
general of a town-worker, does not consist in his long
hours and small pay, but in the fact that he is deprived of
the natural conditions of life in touch with nature, is
deprived of freedom, is compelled to compulsory and
monotonous toil at another man's will.

And, therefore, the reply to the questions, why factory
and town workers are in a miserable condition, and how
to improve their condition, cannot be that this arises
because capitalists have possessed themselves of the means
of production, and that the workers' condition will be

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 333

improved by diminishing their hours of work, Increasing
their wages, and communalising the means of production.

The reply to these questions must consist in indicating
the causes which have deprived the workers of the natural
conditions of life in touch with nature, and have driven
them into factory bondage, and in indicating means to
free the workers from the necessity of foregoing a free,
country life, and going into slavery at the factories.

And, therefore, the question why town-workers are in
a miserable condition includes, first of all, the question.
What reasons have driven them from the villages, where
they and their ancestors have lived and might live, where,
in Russia, people such as they do now live? and. What it
is that drove and continues to drive them against their will
to the factories and works?

If there are workmen, as in England, Belgium, or
Germany, who for some generations have lived by factory
work, even they live so not at their own free will, but
because their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfa-
thers were, in some way, compelled to exchange the
agricultural life which they loved for life which seemed
to them hard, in towns and in factories. First, the
country people were deprived of their land by violence,
says Karl Marx, were evicted and brought to vagabond-
age, and then, by cruel laws, they were tortured with
pincers, with red-hot irons, and were whipped, to make
them submit to the condition of being hired laborers.
Therefore, the question how to free the workers from
their miserable position should, one would think, natur-
ally lead to the question how to remove those causes
which have already driven some, and are now driving or
threatening to drive, the rest of the peasants from the
position which they considered and consider good, and
have driven and are driving them to a position which they
consider bad.

Economic science, although it indicates in passing the
causes that drove the peasants from the villages, does not
concern itself with the question how to remove these
causes, but directs all its attention to the improvement of
the worker's position in the existing factories and works,
assuming, as it were, that the worker's position at these

334 the slavery OF OUR TIMES

factories and workshops is something unalterable, some-
thing which must at all costs be maintained for those who
are already in the factories, and must absorb those who
have not yet left the villages or abandoned agricultural
work.

Moreover, economic science is so sure that all the
peasants have inevitably to become factory operatives in
towns, that though all the sages and all the poets of the
world have always placed the ideal of human happiness
in the conditions of agricultural work; though all the
workers whose habits are unperverted have always pre-
ferred, and still prefer, agricultural labor to any other;
though factory work is always unhealthy and monoto-
nous, while agriculture is the most healthy and varied;
though agricultural work is free ^ — that is, the peasant
alternates toil and rest at his own will — while fac-
tory work, even if the factory belongs to the workmen,
is always enforced, in dependence on the machines;
though factory work is derivative, while agricultural
work is fundamental, and without it no factory could
exist — yet economic science affirms that all the country
people not only are not injured by the transition from the
country to the town, but themselves desire it and strive
towards it.

CHAPTER V

WHY LEARNED ECONOMISTS ASSERT WHAT IS FALSE

However obviously unjust may be the assertion of the
men of science that the welfare of humanity must consist
in the very thing that is profoundly repulsive to human
feelings — in monotonous, enforced factory labor — the
men of science were inevitably led to the necessity of
making this obviously unjust assertion, just as the theo-
logians of old were inevitably led to make the equally
evident unjust assertion that slaves and their masters

^In Russia, as in many other countries, the greater part of
the agricultural work was done at the time of this writing, by
peasants working their own land on their own account. — Tr.

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 335

were creatures differing in kind, and that the inequality
of their position in this world would be compensated
in the next.

The cause of this evidently unjust assertion is that
those who have formulated, and who are formulating,
the laws of science belong to the well-to-do classes, and
are so accustomed to the conditions, advantageous for
themselves, among which they live, that they do not admit
the thought that society could exist under other condi-
tions.

The condition of life to which people of the well-to-do
classes are accustomed is that of an abundant production
of various articles necessary for their comfort and
pleasure, and these things are obtained only thanks to the
existence of factories and works organised as at present.
And, therefore, discussing the improvement of the work-
ers’ position, the men of science belonging to the well-
to-do classes always have in view only such improvements
as will not do away with the system of factory-production
and those conveniences of which they avail themselves.

Even the most advanced economists — the Socialists,
who demand the complete control of the means of pro-
duction for the workers — expect production of the same
or almost of the same articles as are produced now to
continue in the present or in similar factories with the
present division of labor.

The difference, as they imagine it, will only be that in
the future not they alone, but all men, will make use of
such conveniences as they alone now enjoy. They dimly
picture to themselves that, with the communalisation of
the means of production, they, too — men of science, and
in general the ruling classes — will do some work, but
chiefly as managers, designers, scientists or artists. To
the questions. Who will have to wear a muzzle and make
white lead? Who will be stokers, miners, and cesspool-
cleaners? they are either silent, or foretell that all these
things will be so improved that even work at cesspools
and underground will afford pleasant occupation. That
is how they represent to themselves future economic
conditions, both in Utopias such as that of Bellamy and
in scientific works.

336 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

According to their theories, the workers will all join
unions and associations, and cultivate solidarity among
themselves by unions, strikes, and participation in Parlia-
ment till they obtain possession of all the means of
production, as well as the land, and then they will be so
well fed, so well dressed, and enjoy such amusements on
holidays that they will prefer life in town, amid brick
buildings and smoking chimneys, to free village life amid
plants and domestic animals ; and monotonous, bell-regu-
lated machine work to the varied, healthy, and free
agricultural labor.

Though this anticipation is as improbable as the antici-
pation of the theologians about a heaven to be enjoyed
hereafter by workmen in compensation for their hard
labor here, yet learned and educated people of our
society believe this strange teaching, just as formerly
wise and learned people believed in a heaven for workmen
in the next world.

And learned men and their disciples, people of the
well-to-do classes, believe this because they must believe
it. This dilemma stands before them: either they must
see that all that they make use of in their lives, from
railways to lucifer matches and cigarets, represents
labor which costs the lives of their brother men, and
that they, not sharing in that toil, but making use of it,
are very dishonorable men ; or they must believe that all
that takes place takes place for the general advantage in
accord with unalterable laws of economic science. Therein
lies the inner psychological cause, compelling men of
science, men wise and educated, but not enlightened, to
affirm positively and tenaciously such an obvious untruth
as that the laborers, for their own well-being, should
leave their happy and healthy life in touch with nature,
and go to ruin their bodies and souls in factories and
workshops.

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 337

CHAPTER VI

BANKRUPTCY OF THE SOCIALIST IDEAL

But even allowing the assertion (evidently unfounded
as it is, and contrary to the facts of human nature) that
it is better for people to live in towns and to do compul-
sory machine work in factories rather than to live in
villages and work freely at handicrafts, there remains, in
the very ideal itself, to which the men of science tell us
the economic revolution is leading, an insoluble contra-
diction. The ideal is that the workers, having become the
masters of all the means of production, are to obtain all
the comforts and pleasures now possessed by well-to-do
people. They will all be well clothed, and housed, and
well nourished, and will all walk on electrically lighted,
asphalt streets, and frequent concerts and theaters, and
read’ papers and books, and ride on motor cars, etc. But
that everybody may have certain things, the production
of those things must be apportioned, and consequently it
must be decided how long each workman is to work.

How is that to be decided ?

Statistics may show (though very imperfectly) what
people require in a society fettered by capital, by compe-
tition, and by want. But no statistics can show how much
is wanted and what articles are needed to satisfy the
demand in a society where the means of production will
belong to the society itself — that is, where the people will
be free.

The demands in such a society cannot be defined, and
they will always infinitely exceed the possibility of satis-
fying them. Everybody will wish to have all that the
richest now possesses, and, therefore, it is quite impossible
to define the quantity of goods that such a society will
require.

Furthermore, how are people to be induced to work at
articles which some consider necessary and others con-
sider unnecessary or even harmful ?

If it be found necessary for everybody to work, say
six hours a day, in order to satisfy the requirements of

338 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

the society, who in a free society can compel a man to
work those six hours, if he knows that part of the time
is spent in producing things he considers unnecessary or
even harmful?

It is undeniable that under the present state of things
most varied articles are produced with great economy of
exertion, thanks to machinery, and thanks especially to
the division of labor which has been brought to an
extreme nicety and carried to the highest perfection, and
that those articles are profitable to the manufacturers, and
that we find them convenient and pleasant to use. But
the fact that these articles are well made and are pro-
duced with little expenditure of strength, that they are
profitable to the capitalists and convenient for us, does
not prove that free men would, without compulsion,
continue to produce them. There is no doubt that Krupp,
with the present division of labor, makes admirable
cannons very quickly and artfully; N. M. very quickly
and artfully produces silk materials ; X. Y. and Z.
produce toilet-scents, powder to preserve the complexion,
or glazed packs of cards, and K. produces whiskey of
choice flavor, etc.; and, no doubt, both for those who
want these articles and for the owners of the factories in
which they are made it is very advantageous. But
cannons and scents and whiskey are wanted by those who
wish to obtain control of the Chinese market, or who like
to get drunk, or are concerned about their complexions ;
but there will be some who consider the production of
these articles harmful. And there will always be people
who consider that besides these articles, exhibitions,
academies, beer and beef are unnecessary and even harm-
ful. How are these people to be made to participate in
the production of such articles?

But even if a means could be found to get all to agree
to produce certain articles (though there is no such
means, and can be none, except coercion), who, in a free
society, without capitalistic production, competition, and
its law of supply and demand, will decide which articles
are to have the preference? Which are to be made first,
and which after? Are we first to build the Siberian
Railway and fortify Port Arthur, and then macadamise

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 339

the roads in our country districts, or vice-versa? Which
is to come first, electric lighting or irrigation of the fields ?
And then comes another question, insoluble with free
workmen, Which men are to do which work ? Evidently
all will prefer hay-making or drawing to stoking or cess-
pool-cleaning. How, in apportioning the work, are people
to be induced to agree ?

No statistics can answer these questions. The solution
can be only theoretical ; it may be said that there will be
people to whom power will be given to regulate all these
matters. Some people will decide these questions and
others will obey them.

But besides the questions of apportioning and directing
production and of selecting work, when the means of
production are communalised, there will be another and
most important question, as to the degree of division of
labor that can be established in a socialistically organised
society. The now existing division of labor is condi-
tioned by the necessities of the workers. A worker only
agrees to live all his life underground, or to make the
one-hundredth part of one article all his life, or to move
his hands up and down amid the roar of machinery all his
life, because he will otherwise not have means to live.
But it will only be by compulsion that a workman, owning
the means of production and not suffering want, can be
induced to accept such stupefying and soul-destroying
conditions of labor as those in which people now work.
Division of labor is undoubtedly very profitable and
natural to people ; but if people are free, division of
labor is only possible up to a certain very limited extent,
which has been far overstepped in our society.

If one peasant occupies himself chiefly with boot-
making, and his wife weaves, and another peasant
plows, and a third is a blacksmith, and they all, having
acquired special dexterity in their own work, afterwards
exchange what they have produced, such division of
labor is advantageous to all, and free people will natur-
ally divide their work in this way. But a division of
labor by which a man makes one one-hundredth of an
article, or a stoker works in 150° of heat, or is choked
with harmful gases, such divisions of labor is disadvan-

340 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

tageous, because though it furthers the production of
insignificant articles, it destroys that which is most
precious — the life of man. And, therefore, such division
of labor as now exists can only exist where there is
compulsion. Rodbertus ^ says that communal division of
labor unites mankind. That is true, but it is only free
division, such as people voluntarily adopt, that unites.

If people decide to make a road, and one digs, another
brings stones, a third breaks them, etc., that sort of
division of work unites people.

But if, independently of the wishes, and sometimes
against the wishes, of the workers, a strategical railway
is built, or an Eiffel tower, or stupidities such as fill the
Paris Exhibition, and one workman is compelled to
obtain iron, another to dig coal, a third to make castings,
a fourth to cut down trees, and a fifth to saw them up,
without even having the least idea what the things they
are making are wanted for, then such division of labor
not only does not unite men, but, on the contrary, it
divides them.

And, therefore, with communalised implements of pro-
duction, if people are free, they will only adopt division
of labour in so far as the good resulting will outweigh the
evils it occasions to the workers. And as each man
naturally sees good in extending and diversifying his
activities, such division of labor as now exists will evi-
dently be impossible in a free society.

To suppose that with communalised means of produc-
tion there will be such an abundance of things as is now
produced by compulsory division of labor is like suppos-
ing that after the emancipation of the serfs the domestic
orchestras ^ and theaters, the home-made carpets and laces
and the elaborate gardens which depended on serf-labor
would continue to exist as before. So that the supposi-
tion that when the Socialist ideal is realised every one will
be free, and will at the same time have at his disposal

leader of German scientific Socialism (1805-1875). — Tr.

2 Before the emancipation of the serfs in Russia some pro-
prietors had private theaters of their own and troups of mu-
sicians and actors composed of their own serfs. On many
estates the serfs produced a variety of handmade luxuries for
their proprietors. — Tr.

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 341

everything, or almost everything, that is now made use of
by the well-to-do classes, involves an obvious self-
contradiction.

CHAPTER VII

CULTURE OR FREEDOM

Just what happened when serfdom existed is now being
repeated. Then the majority of the serf-owners and of
people of the well-to-do classes, if they acknowledged the
serf’s position to be not quite satisfactory, yet recom-
mended only such alterations as would not deprive the
owners of what was essential to their profit ; now, people
of the well-to-do classes, admitting that the position of
the workers is not altogether satisfactory, propose for its
amendment only such measures as will not deprive the
well-to-do classes of their advantages. As well-disposed
owners then spoke of “paternal authority,’’ and, like
Gogol,^ advised owners to be kind to their serfs, and to
take care of them, but would not tolerate the idea of
emancipation,^ considering it harmful and dangerous,
just so the majority of well-to-do people to-day advise
employers to look after the well-being of their work-
people, but do not admit the thought of any such altera-
tion of the economic structure of life as would set the
laborers quite free.

And just as advanced Liberals then, while considering
serfdom to be an immutable arrangement, demanded that
the government should limit the power of the owners, and
sympathised with the serfs’ agitation, so the Liberals of
to-day, while considering the existing order immutable,
demand that government should limit the powers of
capitalists and manufacturers, and they sympathise with
unions, and strikes, and, in general, with the workers’
agitation. And just as the most advanced men then

^ N. V. Gogol (1800-1852), the author of the famous play
Tke Inspector and the celebrated novel Dead Souls. — Tr.

2 It should be remembered that the author himself set an
example by voluntarily emancipating all his serfs. — Tr.

342 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

demanded the emancipation of the serfs, but drew up a
project which left the serfs dependent on private land-
owners, or fettered them with tributes and land-taxes, so
now the most advanced people demand the emancipation
of the workmen from the power of the capitalists, the
communalisation of the means of production, but yet
would leave the workers dependent on the present appor-
tionment and division of labor, which, in their opinion,
must remain unaltered.

The teachings of economic science which are adopted,
though without closely examining their details by all
those of the well-to-do classes who consider themselves
enlightened and advanced,^ seem on a superficial exami-
nation to be liberal and even radical, containing as they
do attacks on the wealthy classes of society; but essen-
tially that teaching is in the highest degree conservative,
gross and cruel. One way or another the men of science,
and in their train all the well-to-do classes, wish at all
cost to maintain the present system of distribution and
division of labor, which makes possible the production of
that great quantity of goods which they make use of. The
existing economic order is, by the men of science and,
following them, by all the well-to-do classes, called
culture; and in this culture — railways, telegraphs, tele-
phones, photographs, Roentgen rays, clinical hospitals,
exhibitions, and, chiefly, all the appliances of comfort —
they see something so sacrosanct that they will not allow
even a thought of alterations which might destroy it all,
or but endanger a small part of these acquisitions. Every-
thing may, according to the teachings of that science, be
changed except what it calls culture. But it becomes
more and more evident that this culture can exist only
while the workers are compelled to work. Yet men of
science arc so sure that this culture is the greatest of

^ It should be borne in mind that educated Russians, though
politically much less free, are intellectually far more free than
the corresponding section of the English population. Views on
economics and on religion, which are here held only by very
advanced people, have been popular among Russian university
students for a generation past. In particular, the doctrines of
Karl Marx, and of German scientific Socialism in general, were
much earlier disseminated there than in England. — Tr.

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 343

blessings that they boldly proclaim the contrary of what
the lawyers once said, Fiat justitia, per eat mundus! *
They now say, Fiat cultura, per eat justitia!

And they not only say it, but act accordingly. Every-
thing may be changed in practice and in theory, but not
culture; not all that is going on in workshops and fac-
tories, and certainly not what is being sold in the shops.

But I think that enlightened people, professing the
Christian law of brotherhood and love to one's neighbor,
should say just the contrary.

Electric lights and telephones and exhibitions are excel-
lent, and so are all the pleasure-gardens, with concerts
and performances, and all the cigars, and match-boxes,
and braces, and motor cars, but they may all go to per-
dition, and not they alone, but the railways, and all the
factory-made chintz stuffs and cloths in the world, if to
produce them it is necessary that ninety-nine per cent, of
the people should remain in slavery and perish by
thousands in factories needed for the production of these
articles. If, in order that London or Petersburg may be
lighted by electricity, or in order to construct exhibition-
buildings, or in order that there may be beautiful
paints, or in order to weave beautiful stuffs quickly
and abundantly, it is necessary that even a very few lives
should be destroyed, or ruined, or shortened — and statis-
tics show us how many are destroyed — let London or
Petersburg rather be lit by gas or oil ; let there rather be
no exhibition, no paints, or materials, only let there be no
slavery, and no destruction of human lives resulting from
it. Truly enlightened people will always agree rather to
go back to riding on horses and using pack-horses, or
even to tilling the earth with sticks or with one's hands,
than to travel on railways which regularly every year
crush so many people — as is done in Chicago — merely
because the proprietors of the railway find it more profit-
able to compensate the families of those killed than to
build the line so that it should not kill people. The
motto for truly enlightened people is not, Fiat cultura,
pereat justitia, but Fiat justitia, pereat cultura.

But culture, useful culture, will not be destroyed. It

^Let justice be done, though the world perish.

344 the slavery OF OUR TIMES

will certainly not be necessary for people to revert to
tillage of the land with sticks or to lighting up with
torches. It is not for nothing that mankind, in their
slavery, have achieved such great progress in technical
matters. If only it is understood that we must not
sacrifice the lives of our fellow-men for our pleasure, it
will be possible to apply technical improvements without
destroying men’s lives, and to arrange life so as to profit
by all such methods giving us control of nature as have
been devised and can be applied without keeping our
brother men in slavery.

CHAPTER VIII

SLAVERY EXISTS AMONG US

Imagine a man from the country quite different from
our own, with no idea of our history or of our laws, and
suppose that, after showing him the various aspects of
our life, we were to ask him what was the chief differ-
ence he noticed in the lives of people of our world? The
chief difference which such a man would notice in the
way people live is that some people — a small number —
who have clean, white hands, and are well nourished and
clothed and lodged, do very little and very light work, or
even do not work at all, but only amuse themselves,
spending on these amusements the results of millions of
days devoted by other people to severe labor; but other
people, always dirty, poorly clothed and lodged and fed,
with dirty, horny hands, toil unceasingly from morning
to night, and sometimes all night long, working for those
who do not work, but who continually amuse themselves.

If between the slaves and slave-owners of to-day it is
difficult to draw as sharp a dividing line as that which
separated the forrner slaves from their masters, and if
among the slaves of to-day there are some who are only
temporarily slaves and then become slave-owners, or some
who, at one and the same time, are slaves and slave-
owners, this blending of the two classes at their points of
contact does not upset the fact that the people of our time
are divided into slaves and slave-owners as definitely as,

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 345

in spite of the twilight, each twenty-four hours is divided
into day and night.

If the slave-owner of our times has no slave, John,
whom he can send to the cesspool, he has five shillings,
of which hundreds of such Johns are in such need that
the slave-owner of our times may choose any one out of
hundreds of Johns and be a benefactor to him by giving
him the preference, and allowing him, rather than another,
to climb down into the cesspool.

The slaves of our times are not all those factory and
workshop hands only who must sell themselves completely
into the power of the factory and foundry-owners in
order to exist, but nearly all the agricultural laborers are
slaves, working, as they do, unceasingly to grow another’s
corn on another’s field, and gathering it into another’s
barn; or tilling their own fields only in order to pay to
bankers the interest on debts they cannot get rid of. And
slaves also are all the innumerable footmen, cooks,
porters, housemaids, coachmen, bathmen, waiters, etc.,
who all their life long perform duties most unnatural to a
human being, and which they themselves dislike.

Slavery exists in full vigor, but we do not perceive it,
just as in Europe at the end of the Eighteenth Century
the slavery of serfdom was not perceived.

People of that day thought that the position of men
obfiged to till the land for their lords, and to obey them,
was a natural, inevitable, economic condition of life, and
they did not call it slavery.

It is the same among us: people of our day consider
the position of the laborer to be a natural, inevitable
economic condition, and they do not call it slavery.

And as, at the end of the Eighteenth Century, the peo-
ple of Europe began little by little to understand that
what formerly seemed a natural and inevitable form of
economic life — namely, the position of peasants who were
completely in the power of their lords — was wrong, unjust
and immoral, and demanded alteration, so now people
to-day are beginning to understand that the position of
hired workmen, and of the working classes in general,
which formerly seemed quite right and quite normal, is
not what it should be, and demands alteration.

346 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

The question of the slavery of our times is just in
the same phase now in which the question of serfdom
stood in Europe ^ towards the end of the Eighteenth
Century, and in which the questions of serfdom among
us and of slavery in America stood in the second
quarter of the Nineteenth Century.

The slavery of the workers in our time is only begin-
ning to be admitted by advanced people in our society;
the majority as yet are convinced that among us no
slavery exists.

A thing that helps people to-day to misunderstand their
position in this matter is the fact that we have, in Russia
and in America, only recently abolished slavery. But in
reality the abolition of serfdom and of slavery was only
the abolition of an obsolete form of slavery that had
become unnecessary, and the substitution for it of a firmer
form of slavery and one that holds a greater number of
people in bondage. The abolition of serfdom and of
slavery was like what the Tartars of the Crimea did with
their prisoners. They invented the plan of slitting the
soles of the slaves’ feet and sprinkling chopped-up bristles
into the wounds. Having performed that operation, they
released them from their weights and chains. The aboli-
tion of serfdom in Russia and of slavery in America,
though it abolished the former method of slavery, not
only did not abolish what was essential in it, but was only
accomplished when the bristles had formed sores in the
soles, and one could be quite sure that without chains or
weights the prisoners would not run away, but would
have to work. (The Northerners in America boldly
demanded the abolition of the former slavery because
among them the new, monetary slavery had already
shown its power to shackle the people. The Southerners
did not perceive the plain signs of the new slavery, and,
therefore, did not consent to abolish the old form.)

Among us in Russia serfdom was abolished only when
all the land had been appropriated. When land was
granted to the peasants it was burdened with payments,

^ I have left the distinction between Europe and Russia (quite
Xiatural and customary to a Russian writer) as it stands in the
original . — T r.

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 347

which took the place of the land-slavery. In Europe
taxes that kept the people in bondage began to be abol-
ished only when the people had lost their land, were
unaccustomed to agricultural work and, having acquired
town tastes, were quite dependent on the capitalists.

Only then were the taxes on corn abolished in England.
And they are now beginning, in Germany and in other
countries, to abolish the taxes that fall on the workers
and to shift them on to the rich, only because the majority
of the people are already in the hands of the capitalists.
One form of slavery is not abolished until another has
already replaced it. There are several such forms. And
if not one, then another (and sometimes several of these
means together) keeps a people in slavery — that is, places
it in such a position that one small part of the people has
full power over the labor and the life of a larger
number. In this enslavement of the larger part of the
people by a smaller part lies the chief cause of the miser-
able condition of the people. And, therefore, the means
of improving the position of the workers must consist
in this : First, in admitting that among us slavery exists
not in some figurative, metaphorical sense, but in the
simplest and plainest sense; slavery which keeps some
people — the majority — in the power of others — the
minority; secondly, having admitted this, in finding the
causes of the enslavement of some people by others; and
thirdly, having found these causes, to destroy them.

CHAPTER IX

WIIAT IS SLAVERY?

In what does the slavery of our time consist? What
are the forces that make some people the slaves of others ?
If we ask all the workers in Russia and in Europe and in
America alike in the factories and in various situations
in which they work for hire, in towns and villages, what
has made them choose the position in which they are
living, they will all reply that they have been brought to it
either because they had no land on which they could and

348 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

wished to live and work (that will be the reply of all the
Russian workmen and of very many of the Europeans),
or that taxes, direct and indirect, were demanded of them,
which they could only pay by selling their labor, or that
they remain at factory work ensnared by the more lux-
urious habits they have adopted, and which they can
gratify only by selling their labor and their liberty.

The first two conditions, the lack of land and the taxes,
drive men to compulsory labor; while the third, his in-
creased and unsatisfied needs, decoy him to it and keep
him at it.

We can imagine that the land may be freed from the
claims of private proprietors by Henry George’s plan,
and that, therefore, the first cause driving people into
slavery — the lack of land — may be done away with. With
reference to taxes (besides the single-tax plan) we may
imagine the abolition of taxes, or that they should be
transferred from the poor to the rich, as is being done
now in some countries; but under the present economic
organization one cannot even imagine a position of things
under which more and more luxurious, and often harmful,
habits of life should not, little by little, pass to those of
the lower classes who are in contact with the rich as
inevitably as water sinks into dry ground, and that those
habits should not become so necessary to the workers
that in order to be able to satisfy them they will be ready
to sell their freedom.

So that this third condition, though it is a voluntary
one — that is, it would seem that a man might resist the
temptation — and though science does not acknowledge it
to be a cause of the miserable condition of the workers,
is the firmest and most irremovable cause of slavery.

Workmen living near rich people always are infected
with new requirements, and obtain means to satisfy these
requirements only to the extent to which they devote
their most intense labor to this satisfaction. So that
workmen in England and America, receiving sometimes
ten times as much as is necessary for subsistence, continue
to be just such slaves as they were before.

Three causes, as the workmen themselves explain, pro-
duce the slavery in which they live; and the history of

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 349

their enslavement and the facts of their position confirm
the correctness of this explanation.

All the workers are brought to their present state and
are kept in it by these three causes. These causes, acting
on people from different sides, are such that none can
escape from their enslavement. The agriculturalist who
has no land, or who has not enough, will always be
obliged to go into perpetual or temporary slavery to the
landowner, in order to have the possibility of feeding
himself from the land. Should he in one way or other
obtain land enough to be able to feed himself from it by
his own labor, such taxes, direct and indirect, are de-
manded from him that in order to pay them he has again
to go into slavery.

If to escape from slavery on the land he ceases to
cultivate land, and, living on some one else’s land, begins
to occupy himself with a handicraft, or to exchange his
produce for the things he needs, then, on the one hand,
taxes, and on the other hand, the competition of capital-
ists producing similar articles to those he makes, but with
better implements of production, compel him to go into
temporary or perpetual slavery to a capitalist. If work-
ing for a capitalist he might set up free relations with
him, and not be obliged to sell his liberty, yet the new
requirements which he assimilates deprive him of any
such possibility. So that one way or another the laborer
is always in slavery to those who control the taxes, the
land, and the articles necessary to satisfy his require-
ments.

CHAPTER X

LAWS CONCERNING TAXES, LAND AND PROPERTY

The German Socialists have termed the combination
of conditions which put the worker in subjection to the
capitalists the iron law of wages, implying by the word
‘'iron"' that this law is immutable. But in these condi-
tions there is nothing immutable. These conditions
merely result from human laws concerning taxes, land,
and, above all, concerning things which satisfy our re-

350 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

quirements — that is, concerning property. Laws are
framed and repealed by human beings. So that it is not
some sociological “iron law,’' but ordinary, man-made
law that produces slavery. In the case in hand the
slavery of our times is very clearly and definitely pro-
duced not by some “iron” elemental law, but by human
enactments about land, about taxes, and about property.
There is one set of laws by which any quantity of land
may belong to private people, and may pass from one
to another by inheritance, or by will, or may be sold ;
there is another set of laws by which every one must
pay the taxes demanded of him unquestioningly ; and there
is a third set of laws to the effect that any quantity of
articles, by whatever means acquired, may become the
absolute property of the people who hold them. And in
consequence of these laws slavery exists.

We are so accustomed to all these laws that they seem
to us just as necessary and natural to human life as the
laws maintaining serfdom and slavery seemed in former
times; no doubt about their necessity and justice seems
possible, and no one notices anything wrong in them. But
just as a time came when people, having seen the ruinous
consequences of serfdom, questioned the justice and nec-
essity of the laws which maintained it, so now, when the
pernicious consequences of the present economic order
have become evident, one involuntarily questions the jus-
tice and inevitability of the legislation about land, taxes
and property which produces these results.

As people formerly asked. Is it right that some people
should belong to others, and that the former should have
nothing of their own, but should give all the produce of
their labor to their owners? so now we must ask our-
selves, Is it right that people must not use land accounted
the property of other people ; is it right that people should
hand over to others, in the form of taxes, whatever part
of their labor is demanded of them? Is it right that
people may not make use of articles considered to be
the property of other people?

Is it right that people should not have the use of land
when it is considered to belong to others who are not
cultivating it?

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 351

It is said that this legislation is instituted because landed
property is an essential condition if agriculture is to flour-
ish, and if there were no private property passing by
inheritance people would drive one another from the land
they occupy, and no one would work or improve the land
on which he is settled. Is this true? The answer is to
be found in history and in the facts of to-day. History
shows that property in land did not arise from any wish
to make the cultivator's tenure more secure, but resulted
from the seizure of communal lands by conquerors and
its distribution to those who served the conqueror. So
that property in land was not established with the object
of stimulating the agriculturalists. Present-day facts show
the fallacy of the assertion that landed property enables
those who work the land to be sure that they will not be
deprived of the land they cultivate. In reality, just the
contrary has everywhere happened and is happening. The
right of landed property, by which the great proprietors
have profited and are profiting most, has produced the
result that all, or most — that is, the immense majority of
the agriculturalists — are now in the position of people
who cultivate other people’s land, from which they may
be driven at the whim of men who do not cultivate it. So
that the existing right of landed property certainly does
not defend the rights of the agriculturalists to enjoy the
fruits of the labor he puts into the land, but, on the
contrary, it is a way of depriving the agriculturalists of
the land on which they work and handing it over to those
who have not worked it ; and, therefore, it is certainly not
a means for the improvement of agriculture, but, on the
contrary, a means of deteriorating it.

About taxes it is said that people ought to pay them
because they are instituted with the general, even though
silent, consent of all, and are used for public needs to the
.advantage of all. Is this true?

The answers to this question is given in history and in
present-day facts. History shows that taxes never were
instituted by common consent, but, on the contrary
always only in consequence of the fact that some people
having obtained power by conquest, or by other means
over other people, imposed tribute not for public needs.

352 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

but for themselves. And the same thing is still going on.
'Taxes are taken by those who have the power of taking
them. If nowadays some portion of these tributes, called
taxes and duties, are used for public purposes, for the
most part it is for public purposes that are harmful
rather than useful to most people.

For instance, in Russia one-third of the revenue is
drawn from the peasants, but only One-Fiftieth of the
revenue is spent on their greatest need, the education of
the people ; and even that amount is spent on a kind of
education which, by stupefying the people, harms them
more than it benefits them. The other Forty-nine-
Fiftieths are spent on unnecessary things harmful for the
people, such as equipping the army, building strategical
railways, forts and prisons, or supporting the priesthood
and the Court, and on salaries for military and civil
officials — that is, on salaries for those people who make
it possible to take this money from the people.

The same thing goes on not only in Persia, Turkey
and India, but also in all the Christian and constitutional
states and democratic republics ; money is taken from the
majority of the people quite independently of the consent
or non-consent of the payers, and the amount collected is
not what is really needful, but as much as can be got (it
is known how Parliaments are made up, and how little
they represent the will of the people), and it is used not
for the common advantage, but for what the governing
classes consider necessary for themselves — on wars in
Cuba or the Philippines, on taking and keeping the riches
of the Transvaal, and so forth. So that the explanation
that people must pay taxes because they are instituted
with general consent, and are used for the common good,
is as unjust as the other explanation that private property
in land is established to encourage agriculture.

Is it true that people should not use articles needful to
satisfy their requirements if these articles are the property
of other people?

It is asserted that the rights of property in acquired
articles is established in order to make the worker sure
that no one will take from him the produce of his labor.

Is this true ?

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 353

It is only necessary to glance at what is done in our
world, where property rights are defended with especial
strictness, in order to be convinced how completely the
facts of life run counter to this explanation.

In our society, in consequence of property rights in
acquired articles, the very thing happens which that right
is intended to prevent — namely, all articles which have
been, and continually are being, produced by working
people are possessed by, and as they are produced are
continually taken by, those who have not produced them.

So that the assertion that the right of property secures
to the workers the possibility of enjoying the products of
their labor is evidently still more unjust than the asser-
tion concerning property in land, and it is based on the
same sophistry; first, the fruit of their toil is unjustly and
violently taken from the workers, and then the law steps
in, and these very articles which have been taken from the
workmen unjustly and by violence are declared to be the
absolute property of those who have taken them.

Property, for instance, a factory acquired by a series
of frauds and by taking advantage of the workmen, is
considered a result of labor and is held sacred; but the
lives of those workmen who perish at work in that
factory and their labor are not considered their property,
but are rather considered to be the property of the factory-
owner, if he, taking advantage of the necessities of the
workers, has bound them down in a manner considered
legal. Hundreds of thousands of bushels of corn, col-
lected from the peasants by usury and by a series of
extortions, are considered to be the property of the
merchant, while the growing corn raised by the peasants
is considered to be the property of some one else if he has
inherited the land from a grandfather or great-grand-
father who took it from the people. It is said that the
law defends equally the property of the mill-owner, of the
capitalist, of the landowner, and of the factory or country
laborer. The equality of the capitalist and of the
worker is like the equality of two fighters when one has
his arms tied and the other has weapons, but during the
fight certain rules are applied to both with strict impar-
tiality. So that all the explanations of the justice and

354 the slavery OF OUR TIMES

necessity of the three sets of laws which produce slavery
are as untrue as were the explanations formerly given of
the justice and necessity of serfdom. All those three sets
of laws are nothing but the establishment of that new
form of slavery which has replaced the old form. As
people formerly established laws enabling some people to
buy and sell other people, and to own them, and to make
them work, and slavery existed, so now people have
established laws that men may not use land that is con-
sidered to belong to some one else, must pay the taxes
demanded of them, and must not use articles considered
to be the property of others — and we have the slavery of
our times.

CHAPTER XI

LAWS THE CAUSE OF SLAVERY

The slavery of our times results from three sets of
laws — those about land, taxes, and property. And, there-
fore, all the attempts of those who wish to improve the
position of the workers are inevitably, though uncon-
sciously, directed against those three legislations.

One set of people repeal taxes weighing on the working
classes and transfer them on to the rich; others propose
to abolish the right of private property in land, and
attempts are being made to put this in practice both in
New Zealand and in one of the American States (the
limitation of the landlord's rights in Ireland is a move in
the same direction) ; a third set — the Socialists — propose
to communalise the means of production, to tax in-
comes and inheritances, and to limit the rights of capi-
talist-employers. It would, therefore, seem as if the
legislative enactments which cause slavery were being
repealed, and that we may, therefore, expect slavery to
be abolished in this way. But we need only look more
closely at the conditions under which the abolition of
those legislative enactments is accomplished or proposed
to be convinced that not only the practical, but even the
theoretical projects for the improvement of the workers^

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 355

position are merely the substitution of one legislation
producing slaveiy for another establishing a newer form
of slavery. Thus, for instance, those who abolish taxes
and duties on the poor, first abolishing direct dues and
then transferring the burden of taxation from the poor
to the rich, necessarily have to retain, and do retain, the
laws making private property of landed property, means
of production, and other articles, on to which the whole
burden of the taxes is shifted. The retention of the laws
concerning land and property keeps the workers in
slavery to the landowners and the capitalists, even though
the workers are freed from taxes. Those who, like Henry
George and his partisans, would abolish the laws making
private property of land, propose new laws imposing an
obligatory rent on the land. And this obligatory land-
rent will necessarily create a new form of slavery, because
a man compelled to pay rent, or the single tax, may at
any failure of the crops or other misfortune have to
borrow money from a man who has some to lend, and he
will again lapse into slavery. Those who, like the Social-
ists, in theory, wish to abolish the legislation of property
in land and in means of production, retain the legalisa-
tion of taxes, and must, moreover, inevitably introduce
laws of compulsory labor — that is, they must re-estab-
lish slavery in its primitive form.

So that, this way or that way, all the practical and
theoretical repeals of certain laws maintaining slavery in
one form have always and do always replace it by new
legislation creating slavery in another and fresh form.

What happens is something like what a jailer might do
who shifted a prisoner’s chains from the neck to the arms,
and from the arms to the legs, or took them off and sub-
stituted bolts and bars. All the improvements that have
hitherto taken place in the position of the workers have
been of this kind.

The laws giving a master the right to compel his slaves
to do compulsory work were replaced by laws allowing
the masters to own all the land. The laws allowing all
the land to become the private property of the masters
may be replaced by taxation-laws, the control of the taxes
being in the hands of the masters. The taxation-laws are

356 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

replaced by others defending the right of private property
in articles of use and in the means of production. The
laws of right of property in land and in articles of use
and means of production it is proposed to replace by the
enactment of compulsory labour.

So it is evident that the abolition of one form of
legalisation producing the slavery of our time, whether
taxes, or landowning, or property' in articles of use or in
the means of production, will not destroy slavery, but will
only repeal one of its forms, which will immediately be
replaced by a new one, as was the case with the abolition
of chattel-slavery, of serfdom, and with the repeals of
taxes. Even the repeal of all three groups of laws
together will not abolish slavery, but evoke a new and as
yet unknown form of it, which is now already beginning
to show itself and to restrain the freedom of labor by
legislation concerning the hours of work, the age and
state of health of the workers, as well as by demanding
obligatory attendance at schools, deductions for old-age
insurance or accidents, by all the measures of factory-
inspection, the restrictions on co-operative societies, etc.

All this is nothing but the transference of legalisation —
preparing a new and as yet untried form of slavery.

So that it becomes evident that the essence of slavery
lies not in those three roots of legislation on which it now
rests, and not even in such or such other legislative enact-
ments, but in the fact that legislation exists; that there
are people who have power to decree laws profitable for
themselves, and that as long as people have that power
there will be slavery.

Formerly it was profitable for people to have chattel-
slaves, and they made laws about chattel-slavery. After-
wards it became profitable to own land, to take taxes, and
to keep things one had acquired, and they made laws
correspondingly. Now it is profitable for people to main-
tain the existing direction and division of labor; and
they are devising such laws as will compel people to work
under the present apportionment and division of labor.
Thus the fundamental cause of slavery is legislation, the
fact that there are people who have the power to make
laws.

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 357

What is legislation? and what gives people the power
to make laws ?

CHAPTER XII

THE ESSENCE OF LEGISLATION IS ORGANISED VIOLENCE

What is legislation ? And what enables people to make
laws?

There exists a whole science, more ancient and more
mendacious and confused than political economy, the
servants of which in the course of centuries have written
millions of books (for the most part contradicting one
another) to answer these questions. But as the aim of
this science, as of political economy, is not to explain
what now is and what ought to be, but rather to prove
that what now is is what ought to be, it happens that in
this science (of jurisprudence) we find very many disser-
tations about rights, about object and subject, about the
idea of a state and other such matters which are unintel-
ligible both to the students and to the teachers of this
science, but we get no clear reply to the question. What
is legislation?

According to science, legislation is the expression of the
will of the whole people; but as those who break the
laws, or who wish to break them, and only refrain from
fear of being punished, are always more numerous than
those who wish to carry out the code, it is evident that
legislation can certainly not be considered as the expres-
sion of the will of the whole people.

For instance, there are laws about not injuring tele-
graph posts, about showing respect to certain people,
about each man performing military service or serving as
a juryman, about not taking certain goods beyond a cer-
tain boundary, or about not using land considered the
property of some one else, about not making money-
tokens, not using articles which are considered to be the
property of others, and about many other matters.

All these laws and many others are extremely complex,
and may have been passed from the most diverse motives,
but not one of them expresses the will of the whole
people.

358 the slavery OF OUR TIMES

There is but one general characteristic of all these
laws — namely, that if any man does not fulfil them, those
who have made them will send armed men, and the armed
men will beat, deprive of freedom, or even kill the man
who does not fulfil the law.

If a man does not wish to give as taxes such part of
the produce of his labor as is demanded of him, armed
men will come and take from him what is demanded, and
if he resists he will be beaten, deprived of freedom, and
sometimes even killed. The same will happen to a man
who begins to make use of land considered to be the
property of another. The same will happen to a man
who makes use of things he wants, to satisfy his require-
ments or to facilitate his work, if these things are con-
sidered to be the property of some one else. Armed men
will come and will deprive him of what he has taken, and
if he resists they will beat him, deprive him of liberty, or
even kill him. The same thing will happen to any one
who will not show respect to those whom it is decreed
that we are to respect, and to him who will not obey the
demand that he should go as a soldier,^ or who makes
monetary tokens.

For every non-fulfilment of the established laws there is
punishment: the offender is subjected by those who make
the laws to blows, to confinement, or even to loss of life.,

Many constitutions have been devised, beginning with
the English and the American, and ending with the
Japanese and the Turkish, according to which people are
to believe that all laws established in their country are
established at their desire. But every one knows that not
in despotic countries only, but also in the countries nomi-
nally most free — England, America, France — the laws are
made, not by the will of all, but by the will of those who
have power; and, therefore, always and everywhere are
only such as are profitable to those who have power,
whether they are many, a few, or only one man. Every-
where and always the laws are enforced by the only
means that has compelled, and still compels, some people

^ It must not be forgotten that the conscription, with which we
in England are only threatened, was long an institution in Russia.

— Tr.

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 359

to obey the will of others — that is, by blows, by depriva-
tion of liberty, or by murder. There can be no other
way.

It cannot be otherwise; for laws are demands to
execute certain rules; and to compel some people to
obey certain rules (that is, to do what other people
want of them) cannot be done except by blows, by depri-
vation of liberty, or by murder. If there are laws, there
must be the force that can compel people to obey them^
and there is only one force that can compel people to
obey rules (that is, to obey the will of others), and that is
violence ; not the simple violence which people use to one
another in moments of passion, but the organised violence
used by people who have power, in order to compel others
to obey the laws they (the powerful) have made; in
other words, to do their will.

And so the essence of legislation does not lie in the
subject or object, in rights or in the idea of the dominion
of the collective will of the people, or in other such
indefinite and confused conditions ; but it lies in the fact
that people who wield organised violence have the power
to compel others to obey them and to do as they like.

So that the exact and irrefutable definition of legisla-
tion, intelligible to all, is that: Laws are rules made by
people who govern hy means or organised violence, for
non-compliance with which the non-complier is subjected
to blows, to loss of liberty, or even to being murdered.

This definition furnishes the reply to the question.
What is it that renders it possible for people to make
laws ? The same thing makes it possible to establish laws
as enforces obedience to them— organised violence.

CHAPTER Xni

WHAT ARE GOVERNMENTS? IS IT POSSIBLE TO EXIST
WITHOUT GOVERNMENTS?

The cause of the miserable condition of the workers is
slavery. The cause of slavery is legislation. Legislation
rests on organised violence.

36o the slavery OF OUR TIMES

It follows .that an improvement in the condition of the
people is possible only through the abolition of organised
violence.

‘‘But organised violence is government, and how can
we live without governments? Without governments
there will be chaos, anarchy; all the achievements of
civilisation will perish, and people will revert to their
primitive barbarism.*’

It is usual, not only for those to whom the existing
order is profitable, but even for those to whom it is
evidently unprofitable, but who are so accustomed to it
they cannot imagine life without governmental violence,
to say we must not dare to touch the existing order of
things. The destruction of government will, say they,
produce the greatest misfortunes — riot, theft, and murder
— till finally the worst men will again seize power and
enslave all the good people.

But not to mention the fact that all — that is, riots,
thefts and murders, followed by the rule of the wicked
and the enslavement of the good — all this is what has
happened and is happening, the anticipation that the dis-
turbance of the existing order will produce riots and
disorder does not prove the present order to be good.

“Only touch the present order and the greatest evils
will follow.”

Only touch one brick of the thousand bricks piled into
a narrow column several yards high and all the bricks
will tumble down and smash! But the fact that any
brick extracted or any push administered will destroy
such a column and smash the bricks certainly does not
prove it to be wise to keep the bricks in such an unnatural
and inconvenient position. On the contrary, it shows that
bricks should not be piled in such a column, but that they
should be rearranged so that they may lie firmly, and so
that they can be made use of without destroying the
whole erection.

It is the same with the present state-organisations. The
state-organisation is extremely artificial and unstable, and
the fact that the least push may destroy it not only does
not prove that it is necessary, but, on the contrary, shows
that, if once upon a time it was necessary it is now

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 361

absolutely unnecessary, and is, therefore, harmful and
dangerous.

It is harmful and dangerous, because the effect of this
organisation on all the evil that exists in society is not to
lessen and correct, but rather to strengthen and confirm
that evil. It is strengthened and confirmed by being
either justified and put in attractive forms or secreted.

All that well-being of the people which we see in
so-called well-governed states, ruled by violence, is but an
appearance — a fiction. Everything that would disturb the
external appearance of well-being — all the hungry people,
the sick, the revoltingly vicious — are all hidden away
where they cannot be seen. But the fact that we do not
see them does not show that they do not exist; on the
contrary, the more they are hidden the more there will be
of them, and the more cruel towards them will those be
who are the cause of their condition. It is true that
every interruption, and yet more, every stoppage of gov-
ernmental action — that is, of organised violence — disturb
this external appearance of well-being in our life, but
such disturbance does not produce disorder, but merely
displays what was hidden, and makes possible its amend-
ment.

Until now, say till almost the end of the Nineteenth
Century, people thought and believed that they could not
live without governments. But life flows onward, and the
conditions of life and people’s views change. And not-*
withstanding the efforts of governments to keep people in
that childish condition in which an injured man feels as
if it were better for him to have some one to complain to,
people, especially the laboring people, both in Europe
and in Russia, are more and more emerging from child-
hood and beginning to understand the true conditions of
their life.

‘‘You tell us but that for you we shoiild be conquered
by neighboring nations — by the Chinese or the Japan-
ese — ” many of the people now say, “but we read the
papers, and know that no one is threatening to attack us,
and that it is only you who govern us who, for some aims,
unintelligible to us, exasperate one another, and then,
under pretence of defending your own people, ruin us

362 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

with taxes for the maintenance of the fleet, for arma-
ments, or for strategical railways, which are required only
to gratify your ambition and vanity; and then you
arrange wars with one another, as you have now done
against the peaceful Chinese. You say that you defend
landed property for our advantage ; but your defence has
this effect — that all the land either has passed or is pass-
ing into the control of rich banking companies, which do
not work, while we, the immense majority of the people,
are being deprived of land and left in the power of those
who do not labor. You have your laws of landed
property do not defend landed property, but take it from
those who work it. You say you secure to each man the
produce of his labor, but you do just the reverse; all
those who produce articles of value are, thanks to your
pseudo-protection, placed in such a position that they not
only never receive the value of their labor, but are all
their lives long in complete subjection to and in the power
of non-workers.''

Thus do people, at the end of the century, begin to
understand and to speak. And this awakening from the
lethargy in which governments have kept them is going
on in some rapidly increasing ratio. Within the last five
or six years the public opinion of the common folk, not
only in the towns, but in the villages, and not only in
Europe, but also among us in Russia, has altered amaz-
ingly.

It is said that without governments we should not have
those institutions, enlightening, educational and public,
that are needful for all.

But why should we suppose this? Why think that
non-official people could not arrange their life themselves
as well as government people arrange it, not for them-
selves, but for others ?

We see, on the contrary, that in the most diverse
matters people in our times arrange their own lives incom-
parably better than those who govern them arrange for
them. Without the least help from government, and often
in spite of the interference of government, people organ-
ise all sorts of social undertakings — workmen's unions,

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 363

co-operative societies, railway companies, artels,^ and
syndicates. If collections for public works are needed,
why should we suppose that free people could not without
violence voluntarily collect the necessary means, and carry
out all that is carried out by means of taxes, if only the
undertakings in question are really useful for everybody?
Why suppose that there cannot be tribunals without vio-
lence? Trial by people trusted by the disputants has
always existed and will exist, and needs no violence. We
are so depraved by long-continued slavery that we can
hardly imagine administration without violence. And
yet, again, that is not true : Russian communes migrating
to distant regions, where our government leaves them
alone, arrange their own taxation, administration, tribu-
nals, and police, and always prosper until government
violence interferes with their administration. And in the
same way, there is no reason to suppose that people could
not, by common consent, decide how the land is to be
apportioned for use.

1 have known people — Cossacks of the Ural — ^who
have lived without acknowledging private property in
land. And there was such prosperity and order in their
commune as does not exist in society, where landed
property is defended by violence. And I now know com-
munes that live without acknowledging the right of
individuals to private property.

Within my recollection the whole Russian peasantry did
not accept the idea of landed property.^

The defence of landed property by governmental vio-
lence not merely does not abolish the struggle for landed

^^The artel in its most usual form is an association of vrork-
men, or employees, for each of whom the artel is collectively
responsible . — T r.

2 Serfdom was legalised about 1597 by Boris Godunof, who
forbade the peasants to leave the land on which they were settled.
The peasants' theory of the matter was that they belonged to
the proprietor, but the land belonged to them. “We are yours, but
the land is ours,” was a common saying among them till their
emancipation under Alexander II., when many of them felt them-
selves defrauded by the arrangement which gave half the land
to the proprietors. — Tr.

364 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

property, but, on the contrary, strengthens that struggle,
and in many cases causes it.

Were it not for the defence of landed property, and its
consequent rise in price, people would not be crowded
into such narrow spaces, but would scatter over the free
land, of which there is still so much in the world. But as
it is, a continual struggle goes on for landed property; a
struggle with the weapons government furnishes by means
of its laws of landed property. And in this struggle it is
not those who work on the land, but always those who
take part in governmental violence, that have the
advantage.

It is the same with reference to things produced by
labor. Things really produced by a man’s own labor,
and that he needs, are always defended by custom, by
public opinion, by feelings of justice and reciprocity, and
they do not need to be protected by violence.

Tens of thousands of acres of forest-lands belonging to
one proprietor, while thousands of people close by have
no fuel, need protection by violence. So, too, do factories
and works where several generations of workmen have
been defrauded, are still being defrauded. Yet more do
hundreds of thousands of bushels of grain, belonging to
one owner, who has held them back till a famine has come,
to sell them at triple price. But no man, however
depraved, except a rich man or a government official,
would take from a countryman living by his own labor
the harvest he has raised or the cow he has bred, and
from which he gets milk for his children, or the sokhds,^
the scythes, and the spades he has made and uses. If
even a man were found who did take from another
articles the latter had made and required, such a man
would rouse against himself such indignation from every
one living in similar circumstances that he would hardly
find his action profitable for himself. A man so immoral
as to do it under such circumstances would be sure to do
it under the strictest system of property defence by
violence. It is generally said, ‘‘Only attempt to abolish
the rights of property in land and in the produce of

sThe sokhd is a light plough, such as the Russian peasants
make and use. — Tr,

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 365

labor, and no one will take the trouble to work, lacking
the assurance that he will not be deprived of what he has
produced/’ We should say just the opposite : the defence
by violence of the rights of property immorally obtained,
which is now customary, if it has not quite destroyed, has
considerably weakened people’s natural consciousness of
justice in the matter of using articles — that is, the natural
and innate right of property — without which humanity
could not exist, and which has always existed and still
exists among all men.

And, therefore, there is no reason to anticipate that
people will not be able to arrange their lives without
organised violence.

Of course, it may be said that horses and bulls must be
guided by the violence of rational beings — men ; but why
must men be guided, not by some higher beings, but by
people such as themselves? Why ought people to be
subject to the violence of just those people who are in
power at a given time? What proves that these people
are wiser than those on whom they inflict violence ?

The fact that they allow themselves to use violence
toward human beings indicates that they are not only not
more wise, but are less wise than those who submit to
them. The examinations in China for the offlce of man-
darin do not, we know, ensure that the wisest and best
people should be placed in power. And just as little is
this ensured by inheritance, or the whole machinery of
promotions in rank, or the elections in constitutional
countries. On the contrary, power is always seized by
those who are less conscientious and less moral.

It is said, “How can people live without governments —
that is, without violence ?” But it should, on the contrary,
be asked, “How can people who are rational live, acknowl-
edging that the vital bond of their social life is violence,
and not reasonable agreement ?”

One of two things — either people are rational or irra-
tional beings. If they are irrational beings, then they are
all irrational, and then everything among them is decided
by violence; and there is no reason why certain people
should and others should not have a right to use violence.
And in that case governmental violence has no justifica-

366 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

tion. But if men are rational beings, then their relations
should be based on reason and not on the violence of
those who happen to have seized power; and, therefore,
in that case, again, governmental violence has no justifi-
cation.

CHAPTER XIV

HOW CAN GOVERNMENTS BE ABOLISHED?

Slavery results from laws, laws are made by govern-
ments, and, therefore, people can be freed from slavery
only by the abolition of governments.

But how can governments be abolished ?

All attempts to get rid of governments by violence have
hitherto, always and everywhere, resulted only in this :
that in place of the deposed governments new ones
established themselves, often more cruel than those they
replaced.

Not to mention past attempts to abolish governments
by violence, according to the Socialist theory, the coming
abolition of the rule of the capitalists — that is, the com-
munalisation of the means of production and the new
economic o,rder of society — ^is also to be carried out by a
fresh organisation of violence, and will have to be main-
tained by the same means. So that attempts to abolish
violence by violence neither have in the past nor, evi-
dently, can in the future emancipate people from violence
nor, consequently, from slavery.

It cannot be otherwise.

Apart from outbursts of revenge or anger, violence is
used only in order to compel some people, against their
own will, to do the will of others. But the necessity to
do what other people wish against your own will is
slavery. And, therefore, as long as any violence, designed
to compel some people to do the will of others, exists there
will be slavery.

All the attempts to abolish slavery by violence are like
extinguishing fire with fire, stopping water with water, or
filling up one hole by digging another.

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 367

Therefore, the means of escape from slavery, if such
means exist, must be found, not in setting up fresh vio-
lence, but in abolishing whatever renders governmental
violence possible. And the possibility of governmental
violence, like every other violence perpetrated by a small
number of people upon a larger number, has always
depended, and still depends, simply on the fact that the
small number are armed while the large number are
unarmed, or that the small number are better armed than
the large number.

That has been the case in all the conquests: it was
thus the Greeks, the Romans, the Knights, and Pizarros
conquered nations, and it is thus that people are now
conquered in Africa and Asia. And in this same way in
times of peace all governments hold their subjects in
subjection.

As of old, so now, people rule over other people only
because some are armed and others are not.

In olden times the warriors, with their chiefs, fell upon
the defenceless inhabitants, subdued them and robbed
them, and all divided the spoils in proportion to their
participation, courage and cruelty; and each warrior saw
clearly that the violence he perpetrated was profitable to
him. Now, armed men (taken chiefly from the working
classes) attack defenceless people; men on strikes, rioters,
or the inhabitants of other countries, and subdue them
and rob them — that is, make them yield the fruits of their
labor — not for themselves, but for people whoi do not
even take a share in the subjugation.

The difference between the conquerors and the govern-
ments is only that the conquerors have themselves, with
their soldiers, attacked the unarmed inhabitants and have,
in cases of insubordination, carried into execution their
threats to torture and to kill; while the governments, in
cases of insubordination, do not themselves torture or
execute the unarmed inhabitants, but oblige others to do
it who have been deceived and specially brutalised for the
purpose, and who are chosen from among the very people
on whom the government inflicts violence.

Thus, violence was formerly inflicted by personal effort,
by the courage, cruelty and agility of the conquerors

368 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

themselves, but now violence is inflicted by means of
fraud.

So that if formerly, in order to get rid of armed vio-
lence, it was necessary to arm one's self and to oppose
armed violence by armed violence, now when people are
subdued, not by direct violence, but by fraud, in order to
abolish violence it is only necessary to expose the decep-
tion which enables, a small number of people to exercise
violence upon a larger number.

The deception by means of which this is done consists
in the fact that the small number who rule, on obtaining
power from their predecessors, who were installed by
conquest, say to the majority: ‘‘There are a lot of you,
but you are stupid and uneducated, and cannot either
govern yourselves or organise your public affairs, and,
therefore, we will take those cares on ourselves ; we will
protect you from foreign foes, and arrange and maintain
internal peace among you ; we will set up courts of justice,
arrange for you and take care of public institutions —
schools, roads, and the postal service — and in general we
will take care of your well-being; and in return for all
this you only have to fulfil those slight demands which we
make, and, among other things, you must give into our
complete control a small part of your incomes, and you
must yourselves enter the armies which are needed for
your own safety and government.

And most people agree to this, not because they have
weighed the advantages and disadvantages of these con-
ditions (they never have a chance to do that), but because
from their very birth they have found themselves in con-
ditions such as these.

If doubts suggest themselves to some people as to
whether all this is necessary, each one thinks only about
himself, and fears to suffer if he refuses to accept these
conditions ; each one hopes to take advantage of them for
his own profit, and every one agrees, thinking that by
paying a small part of his means to the government, and
by consenting to military service, he cannot do himself
very much harm. But, in reality, submission to the
demands of government deprives him of all that is valu-
able in human life.

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 369

And when the soldiers are enrolled, and hired, and
armed, they are subjected to a special training called
discipline, introduced in recent times, since soldiers have
jceased to share the plunder.

Discipline consists in this, that by complex and artful
methods, which have been perfected in the course of ages,
people who are subjected to this training and remain
under it for some time are completely deprived of man^s
chief attribute, rational freedom, and become submissive,
machine-like instruments of murder in the hands of their
organised hierarchical stratocracy. And it is in this disci-
plined army that the essence of the fraud dwells which
gives to modern governments dominion over the peoples.

As soon as the government has the money and the
soldiers, instead of fulfilling their promises to defend
their subjects from foreign enemies, and to arrange
things for their benefit, they do all they can to provoke
the neighboring nations and to produce war; and they
not only do not promote the internal well-being of their
people, but they ruin and corrupt them.

In the Arabian Nights there is a story of a traveler
who, being cast upon an uninhabited island, found a little
old man with withered legs sitting on the ground by the
side of a stream. The old man asked the traveler to
take him on his shoulder and to carry him over the
stream. The traveller consented ; but no sooner was the
old man settled on the traveller's shoulders than the
former twined his legs round the latter's neck and would
not get off again. Having control of the traveler, the
old man drove him about as he liked, plucked fruit from
the trees and ate it himself, not giving any to his bearer,
and abused him in every way.

This is just what happens with the people who give
soldiers and money to the governments. With the money
the governments buy guns and hire or train up by educa-
tion subservient, brutalised military commanders. And
these commanders, by means of an artful system of stupe-
faction, perfected in the course of ages and called
discipline, make those who have been taken as soldiers
into a disciplined army. When the governments have in
their power this instrument of violence and murder, that

370 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

possesses no will of its own, the whole people are in their
hands, and they do not let them go again, and not only
prey upon them, but also abuse them, instilling into the
people, by means of a pseudo-religious and patriotic
education, loyalty to and even adoration of themselves —
that is, of the very men who keep the whole people in
slavery and torment them.

It is not for nothing that all the kings, emperors, and
presidents esteem discipline so highly, are so afraid of
any breach of discipline, and attach the highest impor-
tance to reviews, manoeuvres, parades, ceremonial marches
and other such nonsense. They know that it all main-
tains discipline, and that not only their power, but their
very existence, depends on discipline.

A disciplined army is not even required for a defensive
war, as has often been shown in history and as was again
demonstrated the other day in South Africa. A disci-
plined army is needed only for conquest — that is, for
robbery, or for fratricide or parricide, as was expressed
by that most stupid or insolent of crowned personages,
William II., who made a speech to his recruits telling
them they had sworn obedience to him, and ought to be
ready to kill their own brothers and fathers, should he
desire it. Disciplined armies are the means by which
they, without using their own hands, accomplish the
greatest atrocities, the possibility of perpetrating which
gives them power over the people.

And, therefore, the only means to destroy governments
is not force, but it is the exposure of this fraud. It is
necessary people should understand : First, that in
Christendom there is no need to protect the peoples one
from another; that all the enmity of the peoples, one to
another, are produced by the governments themselves,
and that armies are needed only by the small number of
those who rule ; for the people it is not only unnecessary,
but it is in the highest degree harmful, serving as the
instrument to enslave them. Secondly, it is necessary that
people should understand that the discipline which is so
highly esteemed by all the governments is the greatest of
crimes that man can commit, and is a clear indication
of the criminality of the aims of governments. Discipline

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 371

is the suppression of reason and of freedom in man, and
can have no other aim than preparation for the perform-
ance of crimes such as no man can commit while in a
normal condition. It is not even needed for war, when
the war is defensive and national, as the Boers have
recently shown. It is wanted and wanted only for the
purpose indicated by William II. — for the committal of
.the greatest crimes, fratricide and parricide.

The terrible old man who sat on the traveler's shoul-
ders behaved in the same way: he mocked him and
insulted him, knowing that as long as he sat on the
traveler's neck the latter was in his power.

And it is just this fraud, by means of which a small
number of unworthy people, called the government, have
power over the people, and not only impoverish them, but
do what is the most harmful of all actions — pervert
whole generations from childhood upwards — ^just this ter-
rible fraud which should be exposed, in order that the
abolition of government and of the slavery that results
from it may become possible.

The German writer Eugen Schmitt, in the newspaper
Ohne Stoat, which he published in Buda-Pest, wrote an
article that was profoundly true and bold, not only in
expression, but in thought. In it he showed that govern-
ments, justifying their existence on the ground that they
ensure a certain kind of safety to their subjects, are like
the Calabrian robber-chief who collected a regular tax
from all who wished to travel in safety along the high-
ways. Schmitt was committed for trial for that article,
but was acquitted by the jury.

We are so hypnotised by the governments that such a
comparison seems to us an exaggeration, a paradox, or a
joke ; but in reality it is not a paradox or a joke ; the only
inaccuracy in the comparison is that the activity of all the
governments is many times more inhuman and, above all,
more harmful than the activity of the Calabrian robber.

The robber generally plundered the rich, the govern-
ments generally plunder the poor and protect those rich
who assist in their crimes. The robber doing his work
risked his life, while the governments risk nothing, but
base their whole activity on lies and deception. The

372 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

robber did not compel any one to join his band, the
governments generally enrol their soldiers by force. All
who paid the tax to the robber had equal security from
danger. But in the state, the more any one takes part in
the organised fraud the more he receives not merely of
protection, but also of reward. Most of all, the emperors,
kings and presidents are protected (with their perpetual
body-guards), and they can spend the largest share of the
money collected from the taxpaying subjects; next in the
scale of participation in the governmental crimes come the
commanders-in-chief, the ministers, the heads of police,
governors, and so on, down to the policemen, who are least
protected, and who receive the smallest salaries of all.
Those who do not take any part in the crimes of govern-
ment, who refuse to serve, to pay taxes, or to go to law,
are subjected to violence, as among the robbers. The
robber does not intentionally vitiate people, but the gov-
ernments, to accomplish their ends, vitiate whole genera-
tions from childhood to manhood with false religions and
patriotic instruction. Above all, not even the most cruel
robber, no Stenka Razin,^ no Cartouche,^ can be com-
pared for cruelty, pitilessness and ingenuity in torturing,
I will not say with the villain kings notorious for their
cruelty — John the Terrible, Louis XI., the Elizabeths, etc.
— ^but even with the present constitutional and liberal
governments, with their solitary cells, disciplinary bat-
talions, suppressions of revolts, and their massacres in
war.

Towards governments, as towards churches, it is im-
possible to feel otherwise than veneration or aversion.
Until a man has understood what a government is and
until he has understood what a church is he cannot but
feel veneration towards those institutions. As long as he
is guided by them his vanity makes it necessary for him
to think that what guides him is something primal, great
and holy ; but as soon as he understands that what guides
him is not something primal and holy, but that it is a

^ The Cossack leader of a formidable insurrection in the latter
half of the Seventeenth Century. — Tr.

2 The chief of a Paris band of robbers in the early years of
the Eighteenth Century. — Tr.

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 373

fraud carried out by unworthy people, who, under the
pretence of guiding him, make use of him for their own
personal ends, he cannot but at once feel aversion towards
these people, and the more important the side of his life
that has been guided the more aversion will he feel.

People cannot but feel this when they have understood
what governments are.

People must feel that their participation in the criminal
activity of governments, whether by giving part of their
work in the form of money, or by direct participation in
military service, is not, as is generally supposed, an indif-
ferent action, but, besides being harmful to one's self and
to one's brothers, is a participation in the crimes unceas-
ingly committed by all governments and a preparation for
new crimes, which governments are always preparing by
maintaining disciplined armies.

The age of veneration for governments, notwithstand-
ing all the hypnotic influence they employ to maintain
their position, is more and more passing away. And it is
time for people to understand that governments not only
are not necessary, but are harmful and most highly
immoral institutions, in which a self-respecting, honest
man cannot and must not take part, and the advantages
of which he cannot and should not enjoy.

And as soon as people clearly understand that, they will
naturally cease to take part in such deeds — that is, cease
to give the governments soldiers and money. And as
soon as a majority of people ceases to do this the fraud
which enslaves people will be abolished. Only in this
way can people be freed from slavery.

CHAPTER XV

WHAT SHOULD EACH MAN DO ?

“But all these are general considerations, and whether
they be correct or not, they are inapplicable to life," will
be the remark made by people accustomed to their posi-
tion, and who do not consider it possible, or who do not
wish, to change it.

374 the slavery OF OUR TIMES

‘‘Tell us what to do, and how to organise society/' is
what people of the well-to-do classes usually say.

People of the well-to-do classes are so accustomed to
their role of slave-owners that when there is talk of
improving the workers’ condition, they at once begin, like
our serf-owners before the emancipation, to devise all
sorts of plans for their slaves ; but it never occurs to them
that they have no right to dispose of other people, and
that if they really wish to do good to people, the one
thing they can and should do is to cease to do the evil
they are now doing. And the evil they do is very definite
and clear. It is not merely that they employ compulsory
slave-labor, and do not wish to cease from employing it,
but that they also take part in establishing and maintain-
ing this compulsion of labor. That is what they should
cease to do.

The working people are also so perverted by their
compulsory slavery that it seems to most of them that if
their position is a bad one, it is the fault of the masters,
who pay them too little and who own the means of pro-
duction. It does not enter their heads that their bad
position depends entirely on themselves, and that if only
they wish to improve their own and their brothers’ posi-
tions, and not merely each to do the best he can for
himself, the great thing for them to do is themselves to
cease to do evil. And the evil that they do is that,
desiring to improve their material position by the same
means which have brought them into bondage, the work-
ers (for the sake of satisfying the habits they have
adopted), sacrificing their human dignity and freedom,
accept humiliating and immoral employment or produce
unnecessary and harmful articles, and, above all, they
maintain governments, taking part in them by paying
taxes and by direct service, and thus they enslave them-
selves.

In order that the state of things may be improved, both
the well-to-do classes and the workers must understand
that improvement cannot be effected by safeguarding
one’s own interests. Service involves sacrifice, and, there-
fore, if people really wish to improve the position of

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 375

their brother men, and not merely their own, they must
be ready not only to alter the way of life to which they
are accustomed, and to lose those advantages which they
have held, but they must be ready for an intense struggle,
not against governments, but against themselves and
their families, and must be ready to suffer persecution for
non-fulfilment of the demands of government.

And, therefore, the reply to the question. What is it
we must do ? is very simple, and not merely definite, but
always in the highest degree applicable and practicable
for each man, though it is not what is expected by those
who, like people of the well-to-do classes, are fully con-
vinced that they are appointed to correct not themselves
(they are already good), but to teach and correct other
people; and by those who, like the workmen, are sure
that not they (but only the capitalists) are in fault for
their present bad position, and think that things can be
put right only by taking from the capitalists the things they
use, and arranging so that all might make use of those
conveniences of life which are now only used by the rich.
The answer is very definite, applicable, and practicable,
for it demands the activity of that one person over whom
each of us has real, rightful, and unquestionable power —
namely, one's self — and it consists in this, that if a man,
whether slave or slave-owner, really wishes to better not
his position alone, but the position of people in general,
he must not himself do those wrong things which enslave
him and his brothers.

And in order not to do the evil which produces misery
for himself and for his brothers, he should, first of all,
neither willingly nor under compulsion take any part in
governmental activity, and should, therefore, be neither a
soldier, nor a field-marshal, nor a minister of state, nor a
tax collector, nor a witness, nor an alderman, nor a jury-
man, nor a governor, nor a member of Parliament, nor, in
fact, hold any office connected with violence. That is one
thing.

Secondly, such a man should not voluntarily pay taxes
to governments, either directly or indirectly; nor should
he accept money collected by taxes, either as salary, or as

376 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

pension, or as a reward; nor should he make use oj\
governmental institutions, supported by taxes collected by
violence from the people. That is the second thing.

Thirdly, a man who desires not to promote his own
well-being alone, but to better the position of people in
general, should not appeal to governmental violence for
the protection of his own possessions in land or in other
things, nor to defend him and his near ones; but should
only possess land and all products of his own or other
people's toil in as far as others do not claim them from
him.

But such an activity is impossible ; to refuse all partici-
pation in governmental affairs means to refuse to live, is
what people will say. A man who refuses military service
will be imprisoned; a man who does not pay taxes will
be punished and the tax will be collected from his prop-
erty; a man who, having no other means of livelihood,
refuses government service, will perish of hunger with
his family; the same will befall a man who rejects gov-
ernmental protection for his property and his person ; not
to make use of things that are taxed or of government
institutions, is quite impossible, as the most necessary
articles are often taxed ; and just in the same way it is
impossible to do without government institutions, such as
the post, the roads, etc.

It is quite true that it is difficult for a man of our times
to stand aside from all participation in governmental
violence. But the fact that not every one can so arrange
his life as not to participate in some degree in govern-
mental violence does not at all show that it is not possible
to free one’s self from it more and more. Not every man
will have the strength to refuse conscription (though
there are and will be such men), but each man can
abstain from voluntarily entering the army, the police-
force, and the judicial or revenue service; and can give
the preference to a worse paid private service rather than
to a better paid public service. Not every man will have
the strength to renounce his landed estates (though there
are people who do that), but every man can, understand-
ing the wrongfulness of such property, diminish its extent.
Not every man can renounce the possession of capital

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 377

(there are some who do) or the use of articles defended
by violence, but each man can, by diminishing his own
requirements, be less and less in need of articles which
provoke other people to envy. Not every official can
renounce his government salary (though there are men
who prefer hunger to dishonest governmental employ-
ment), but every one can prefer a smaller salary to a
larger one for the sake of having duties less bound up
with violence; not every one can refuse to make use of
government schools (though there are some who do), but
every one can give the preference to private schools, and
each can make less and less use of articles that are taxed,
and of government institutions.^

Between the existing order, based on brute force, and
the ideal of a society based on reasonable agreement con-
firmed by custom, there are an infinite number of steps,
which mankind are ascending, and the approach to the
ideal is accomplished only to the extent to which people
free themselves from participation in violence, from
taking advantage of it, and from being accustomed to it.

We do not know and cannot see, still less, like the
pseudo-scientific men, foretell, in what way this gradual
weakening of governments and emancipation of people
will come about ; nor do we know what new forms man’s
life will take as the gra^dual emancipation progresses, but
we certainly do know that the life of people who, having
understood the criminality and harmfulness of the activity
of governments, strive not to make use of them, or to take
part in them, will be quite different and more in accord
with the law of life and our own consciences than the
present life, in which people themselves participating in
governmental violence and taking advantage of it, make a
pretence of struggling against it, and try to destroy the
old violence by new violence.

The chief thing is that the present arrangement of life

With reference to schools, the circumstances were different
in Russia at the time of this writing, from what they were in
England. Free England has compulsory education ; Russia had
not. But in Russia the Government hindered the establishment
of private schools, and reduced even the universities to the posi-
tion of government institutions watched by spies. — Tr.

378 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

is bad ; about that all are agreed. The cause of the bad
conditions and of the existing slavery lies in the violence
used by governments. There is only one way to abolish
governmental violence: that people should abstain from
participating in violence. And, therefore, whether it be
difficult or not, to abstain from participating in govern-
mental violence, and whether the good results of such
abstinence will or will not be soon apparent, are super-
fluous questions ; because to liberate people from slavery
there is only that one way, and no other !

To what extent and when voluntary agreement, con-
firmed by custom, will replace violence in each society
and in the whole world, will depend on the strength and
clearness of people’s consciousness and on the number of
individuals who make this consciousness their own. Each
of us is a separate person, and each can be a participator
in the general movement of humanity by his greater or
lesser clearness of recognition of the aim before us, or
he can be an opponent of progress. Each will have to'
make his choice : to oppose the will of God, building upon
the sands the unstable house of his brief, illusive life, or
to join in the eternal, deathless movement of true life in
accordance with God’s will.

But perhaps I am mistaken, and the right conclusions
to draw from human history are these, and the human
race is not moving toward emancipation from slavery;
perhaps it can be proved that violence is a needful factor
of progress, and that the state, with its violence, is a nec-
essary form of life, and that it will be worse for people if
governments are abolished and if the defence of our
persons and property is abolished.

Let us grant it to be so, and say that all the foregoing
reasoning is wrong ; but besides the general considerations
about the life of humanity, each man has also to face the
question of his own life; and notwithstanding any con-
siderations about the general laws of life, a man cannot do
what he admits to be not merely harmful, but wrong.

“Very possibly the reasonings showing the state to be a
necessary form of the development of the individual, and
governmental violence to be necessary for the good of
society, can all be deduced from history, and are all

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 379

correct/' each honest and sincere man of our times will
reply ; ‘‘but murder is an evil, that I know more certainly
than any reasonings; by demanding that I should enter
the army or pay for hiring and equipping soldiers, or for
buying cannons and building ironclads, you wish to make
me an accomplice in murder, and that I cannot and will
not be. Neither do I wish to, nor can I, make use of money
you have collected from hungry people with threats of
murder; nor do I wish to make use of land or capital
defended by you, because I know that your defence rests
on murder.

“I could do these things when I did not understand all
their criminality, but when I have once seen it, I cannot
avoid seeing it, and can no longer take part in these
things.

“I know that we are all so bound up by violence that
it is difficult to avoid it altogether, but I will, nevertheless,
do all I can not to take part in it ; I will not be an accom-
plice to it, and will try not to make use of what is obtained
and defended by murder.

“I have but one life, and why should I, in this brief life
of mine, act contrary to the voice of conscience and
become a partner in your abominable deeds ?

“I cannot, and I will not.

“And what will come of this ? I do not know. Only I
think no harm can result from acting as my conscience
demands."

So in our time should each honest and sincere man
reply to all the arguments about the necessity of govern-
ments and of violence, and to every demand or invitation
to take part in them.

So that the supreme and unimpeachable judge — the
voice of conscience — confirms to each man the conclusion
to which also general reasoning should bring us.

AN AFTERWORD

But this is again the same old sermon: on the one
hand, urging the destruction of the present order of
things without putting anything in its place ; on the other

38o the slavery OF OUR TIMES

hand, exhorting to non-action, is what many will say on
reading what I have written. ‘‘Governmental action is
bad, so is the action of the landowner and of the man of
business ; equally bad is the activity of the Socialist and
of the revolutionary Anarchists — that is to say, all real,
practical activities are bad, and only some sort of moral,
spiritual, indefinite activity which brings everything to
utter chaos and inaction is good.” Thus I know many
serious and sincere people will think and speak !

What seems to people most disturbing in the idea of no
violence is that property will not be protected, and that
each man will, therefore, be able to take from another
what he needs or merely likes, and to go unpunished. To
people accustomed to the defence of property and person
by violence it seems that without such defence there will
be perpetual disorder, a constant struggle of every one
against every one else.

I will not repeat what I have said elsewhere to show
that the defence of property by violence does not lessen,
but increases, this disorder. But allowing that in the
absence of defence disorder may occur, what are people
to do who have understood the cause of the calamities
from which they are suffering ?

If we have understood that we are ill from drunken-
ness, we must continue to drink, hoping to mend matters
by drinking moderately, or continue drinking and take
medicines that shortsighted doctors give us.

And it is the same with our social sickness. If we have
understood that we are ill because some people use vio-
lence to others, it is impossible to improve the position of
society either by continuing to support the governmental
violence that exists, or by introducing a fresh kind of
revolutionary or socialist violence. That might have been
done as long as the fundamental cause of people's misery
was not clearly seen. But as soon as it has become
indubitably clear that people suffer from the violence
done by some to others, it is already impossible to improve
the position by continuing the old violence or by intro-
ducing a new kind. The sick man suffering from alco-
holism has but one way to be cured : by refraining from
intoxicants which are the cause of his illness ; so there is

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES 3811

only one way to free men from the evil arrangement of
society — ^that is, to refrain from violence — the cause of
the suffering — from personal violence, from preaching
violence, and from in any way justifying violence.

And not only is this the sole means to deliver people
from their ills, but we must also adopt it because it
coincides with the moral consciousness of each individual
man of our times. If a man of our day has once under-
stood that every defence of property or person by vio-
lence is obtained only by threatening to murder or by
murdering, he can no longer with a quiet conscience make
use of that which is obtained by murder or by threats of
murder, and still less can he take part in the murders or
in threatening to murder. So that what is wanted to free
people from their misery is also needed for the satisfac-
tion of the moral consciousness of every individual. And,
therefore, for each individual there can be no doubt that
both for the general good and to fulfil the law of his
life he must take no part in violence, nor justify it, nor
make use of it.

PASCAL

N O one passion holds men so long in its power, or
hides so continuously, sometimes to the very end,
the vanity of temporal mundane life or so completely
keeps men from understanding the significance of human
existence and of its real beneficence, as the passion for
worldly glory, in whatever form it may manifest itself:
petty vanity, love of glory, ambition.

Every overweening desire involves its own punishment,
and the sufferings that attend its satisfaction are proof
of its worthlessness. Moreover, every overweening de-
sire grows feeble with the passage of time; ambition,
however, flares up more and more with the years. The
main thing is that solicitude for human glory is always
coupled with the thought of service to men, and a man
when he seeks the approbation of others, is easily de-
ceived into thinking that he is living not for himself
but for the good of those whose approbation he seeks
to obtain. And therefore this is the most insidious and
dangerous of passions and more difficult than all others
to exterminate. Only men of great spiritual powers
deliver themselves from this passion.

Great spiritual powers give these men the possibility of
quickly attaining great glory and these spiritual powers
likewise give them the possibility of recognizing the
nothingness of it.

A man of this quality was Pascal. Such a man also
was our own Russian, Gogol. I think that through Gogol
I came to understand Pascal. And each of them, al-
though so entirely different in their characteristics, so
absolutely different in their mental make-up and capacity,
went through exactly the same experience.

Both very quickly attained that glory which they pas-

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383

sionately desired; both, having once attained it, immedi-
ately realized all the worthlessness of what had seemed
to them the highest, the most precious advantage in the
world, and both of them were terrified by that delusion,
in the power of which they had found themsleves. They
exerted all the powers of their souls in order to prove
to men the complete horror of that delusion from which
they had managed to escape, and proportionate to the
magnitude of the disenchantment seemed to them the
necessity of such a purpose, of such a direction of life,
as that nothing could transcend it.

Both Gogol and Pascal found this in a passionate de-
votion to religion ; in this too they found a reason for
scorning all that they had hitherto attained, for all that
they had done for the sake of glory. Well, glory had
come to them and there was nothing in it but deception,
consequently whatever had been done for its attainment
had been unnecessary and nugatory. Only one thing was
important: what that was was obscured by worldly de-
sires for glory. The one important and necessary thing
was that faith which gives the significance to life as it
proceeds and a firm direction of all its activity. And
this recognition of the necessity of faith and of the im-
possibility of living without it so overwhelms such men
that they can not cease from marvelling how they them-
selves, how people in general can live without the faith
which explains for them the significance of their lives
and of death so inevitably awaiting them. And when
they recognize this, such men direct all the powers of
their intellects and of their souls to save men from this
horrible delusion, from which they themselves have
barely escaped, and of proving to them that it is impos-
sible to live without faith, that faith is their only salva-
tion; they strive to snatch from the hands of men this
screen, which, as Pascal says, men hold before them
while they are running to destruction.

Such a man was Pascal and herein consists his vast,
his inestimable and far-reaching service.

Pascal was born in Clermont in 1623. His father was
a well-known mathematician. The boy, from his first
youth, taking, like all children, after his father, became

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interested in mathematics, and displayed unusual ability.
His father, anxious to avoid precocious development in
the child, gave him no mathematical books ; but the boy,
listening to the conversations of his father with his
learned friends began on his own incentive to develop
a system of geometry. The father, realizing that such
a work was extraordinary In a child, was so astonished
and enraptured that he wept from emotion, and from
that moment began to instruct his son in mathematics.

The boy was not only quick to take in what his father
put before him but also went on to making independent
discoveries in the domain of mathematics. His achieve-
ments attracted the attention not only of his neighbors
but also of scholars; and Pascal, while still very young,
became famous as a remarkable mathematician. The
increasing fame of his scholarship, so much beyond his
years, stimulated him to take part in affairs; his vast
abilities afforded him the possibility of increasing his
fame, and Pascal devoted all his time and strength to
scienFific matters and investigations. But from child-
hood his health had been feeble. Moreover his ever-
increasing labors still further weakened him and while
still a young man he fell seriously ill. After this illness,
at the request of his father, he restricted his labors to
two hours a day, while the rest of his time he spent in
reading philosophical writings.

He read Epictetus, Descartes and the Essays of Mon-
taigne. Montai^e’s book impressed him : it confirmed
him in his skepticism and in his indifference to religion.
Pascal had always been religiously-inclined and as a child
had believed in the Catholic teaching in which he had
been trained. Montaigne’s book, while causing him to
doubt, stimulated him to ponder over questions of belief,
especially as to how far faith was essential for the intel-
lectual life of man, and he began more strictly than ever
to fulfil his religious duties and while still reading philo-
sophical works, he took up books of a religious character.
Among those of this sort he came across the treatise of
the Dutch theologian, Jansen, ''Regeneration of the Inner
Man.” ^

In this book It was argued that besides carnal desire,

PASCAL

38s

there is also a sinful desire of the soul, consisting in the
satisfaction of human inquisitiveness, at the basis of
which lies the same essence as is found in every desire:
egotism and selfishness, and that such a subtle desire
more than any other separates man from God. This
book powerfully affected Pascal. With the sincerity
characteristic of great minds, he felt the truth of this
argument as applied to himself, and although the re-
nouncing of his scientific occupations and of the fame
that they would bring him were for him a great depri-
vation, or rather for the very reason that they were a
great deprivation, he resolved to cease his fascinating
scientific occupations and to expend all his powers in
solving for himself and for others those questions of
faith which more and more insistently preoccupied him.

Nothing is definitely known as to Pascal’s relations to
women or as to the influence on his life exerted by the
temptations of woman’s love. As he wrote a small work
entitled Discours sur les passions de V amour in which he
says that the greatest happiness vouchsafed to man, love,
is a pure spiritual feeling and ought to serve as the foun-
tain of all the highest blessings, his biographers assume
that Pascal in his youth was enamoured of a woman
belonging to a social station superior * to his and that his
love was not returned. At all events, even if there were
such a love, it had no consequences in Pascal’s life. The
chief interests of his youth were involved in the struggle
between his aspirations for scientific studies and for the
fame brought to him by them and the realization of the
emptiness, the futility of these occupations and the harm-
fulness of the seductions of vanity, and the desire of
devoting all his powers to the service of God only.

So, even at this period of his life, when he had decided
to forswear scientific occupations, he happened to read
about Toricelli’s investigations into the vacuum. Feeling
that this problem was incorrectly decided and that a more
accurate determination of it might be obtained, Pascal
could not restrain his desire to verify these experiments.

♦ Charlotte de Roannez, sister of the due de Roannez, one of
Pascal’s most intimate friends. Extant letters from Pascal to
the young duchess show no traces of sentimentality. — Tr.

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PASCAL

Having verified them he made his famous discoveries
regarding the weight of the atmosphere. These discov-
eries attracted to him the attention of the whole scientific
world. He received many letters; savants^Jraame to visit
him, and he was praised to the skies. And the struggle
with the temptations of worldly glory became more vio-
lent than ever.

To assist him in this struggle, Pascal wore next his
body a belt with nails which tore into his flesh, and every
time when it seemed to him that in his reading or in his
hearing expressions of praise a feeling of pride, or
vanity, awoke in him, he pressed his elbow against the
belt so that the nails might stick into his flesh and remind
him of the whole train of thoughts and feelings which
had turned him away from the temptation of glory.

In the year 1651 he met with an accident, not appar-
ently very important in itself, but destined to have a
great influence on his spiritual condition. On the bridge
of Neuilly he fell from his carriage and narrowly escaped
death. About this same time his father died. This two-
fold reminder of death influenced Pascal even more than
before to study deeply into the problems of life and of
death.

Pascal’s life became more and more absorbed in re-
ligious occupations until, in 1655, he entirely shut him-
self off from the world. He joined the Jansenists in the
Society of Port Royal and began to live an almost mo-
nastic life, thinking out and preparing his great treatise,
in which he tried to prove, first, the absolute necessity
of religion for the reasoning life of mankind, and, sec-
ondly, the verity of that religion which he himself pro-
fessed. But even here the temptations of human glory
did not leave Pascal in peace.

The Jansenist Society of Port Royal, in which Pascal
was living, attracted the enmity of the powerful Jesuit
order, whose intrigues availed to close the schools for
men and for women conducted there, and the monastery
itself was threatened by the danger also of being sup-
pressed.

Residing in the midst of the Jansenists and sharing
their beliefs, Pascal could not remain indifferent to the

PASCAL

387

situation of his coreligionists, and being involved in the
controversy with the Jesuits, he wrote in defence of the
Jansenists, a book entitled Letters to a Provincial. In
this work JEa^'^al did not so much explain and defend the
teachings of the Jansenists as he criticized their enemies,
the Jesuits, proving the incorrectness of their doctrines.
This book had an enormous success, but the fame which
it obtained did not deceive Pascal.

His whole life was now devoted to the service of God.

He devised for himself rules for the conduct of his
life and strictly followed them, not deviating from them
either through indolence or through illness. Poverty
he considered the basis of virtue. '‘Not only is there no
evil,’’ he said, "in poverty and in lowliness, but in them
lies our happiness. Christ was poor and lowly and had
nowhere to lay his head.” Pascal, by renouncing every-
thing possible and reducing himself to poverty, lived
with only what was absolutely necessary. He dispensed
as far as possible with service, availing himself of help
only when through illness he could not move. His
quarters were of the simplest and so were his table and
his dress. He took care of his own room and got his
own meals.

He was in constantly increasing ill health and his suf-
ferings never ceased; but he endured his sufferings not
only with patience but even with a joy and happiness
amazing to his intimates. "Do not pity me,” he would
say to those that expressed sympathy with him, "illness
is the natural condition of the Christian, because in this
state the Christian is such as he ought always to be. It
accustoms him to the lack of all good things and to
sensual pleasures, it accustoms him to refrain from the
passions which beset a man all his life long, to be with-
out pride, without greed, to be always in the expectancy
of death.”

The luxury with which his loving relatives tried to
surround him was burdensome to him. He besought his
sister to place him in a hospital for incurables in order
that he might with them live out the last days of his
life ; but his sister was unwilling to heed his request and
he died at home.

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PASCAL

Before his death he lay for some hours unconscious.
Only just before the end he lifted himself up from his
couch and with a joyous expression said : *^Do not leave
me, Lord/' These were his last words.

He died August 19, 1662.

% 3|t ♦ ♦

Man requires for his happiness two beliefs: one, the
belief that there is an explanation of the meaning of life,
and the other — that he can find in this the very best
explanation of life.

Pascal, better than anyone else, accomplished the first
of these. Fate — God — did not grant him to accomplish
the second.

Like a man who is dying of thirst and plunges inta
the water lying before him without investigating its
qualities, so Pascal, without investigating the character-
istics of that Catholicism in which he had been educated,
saw in it the truth and the salvation of men. Satisfied
that it was water, satisfied that it was the faith !

It stands to reason that no one has the right to sur-
mise as to what might have been, but it is impossible to
picture to oneself a man of genius like Pascal justifying
himself in a belief in Catholicism. He did not succeed
in exposing it to that mental force which he directed
toward the proof of the necessity of faith and therefore
in his soul dogmatic Catholicism remained complete.
Without touching it he leaned on it. He was torn on
that which it possesses of truth. He drew from it the
intensive labor of self-improvement, the struggle with
temptations, his aversion to riches and his firm belief in
a merciful God, to which he surrendered his soul when
he came to die.

He died, having accomplished only one part of his
work, without having completed, without having even
begun to do the other. But in spite of this second part
of his labors not having been accomplished, no less
precious is the first: the marvellous book of Pensees,
made up from scattered fragments of paper, on which
the great dying Pascal jotted down his thoughts.

Wonderful fate of this book !

PASCAL

389

A prophetic book appears ; the multitude stand in per-
plexity, dum founded by the force of the prophetic word ;
alarmed, they want to comprehend, to have it explained,
to learn what to do.

And here come those men, who, as Pascal says,
think that they know and therefore torment the world;
these men come and say: “Here it is useless to compre-
hend, to explain; it is all very simple. This Pascal (it
was the same with Gogol), as you see, believed in the
Trinity, in the Holy Communion; it is plain that he was
a sick, abnormal man; and therefore in his weakness
and sickness, he misunderstood everything. A better
proof of this is that the repudiated, abjured even that good
which he had accomplished and which delights us (be-
cause we understand this), and laid the greatest stress
on absolutely useless ‘mystical* ratiocinations about the
fate of man, about the life to come. Consequently it is
necessary to take from him not what he himself consid-
ered important, but what we can understand and what
pleases us.**

And the multitude rejoiced; but did not comprehend
that power was they needed to mount to that height
to which Pascal wanted to lift them; and here it was
perfectly simple. Pascal discovered the law by which
pumps work. Pumps are very useful and this was an
excellent thing: but all that he said about God, about
immortality, all this is mere emptiness, because he be-
lieved in God, in the Bible. Effort is not needed by us
to attain to this ; on the contrary we can from the height
of his abnormality patronizingly and indulgently ac-
knowledge his services, in spite of his abnormality!

Pascal showed that men without religion are either
animals or madmen; he led them by the nose into their
deformity, into their senselessness, he proved to them
that no science could take the place of religion. But
Pascal believed in God, in the Trinity, in the Bible, and
therefore it was to them a settled fact that what he said
to them about the senselessness of their lives and about
the vanity of science was false. Science itself, the sub-
ject of life itself, this senselessness itself, which so irre-
sistibly appealed to them, this very subject, this very

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science, this very senselessness they considered as real
life, as truth, while they considered Pascal's reasoning
to be the fruit of his sick abnormality. It was impossible
for them to understand the force of the thought and of
the word of this man and while they numbered him with
the classics, the subject-matter of his book was not ap-
preciated by them. It seemed to them that they stood
immeasurably higher than that higher spiritual state of
religious consciousness to which only man can attain and
on which Pascal stood, and consequently the significance
of this marvellous book was hopelessly hidden from
them.

Yes, nothing is so pernicious, so destructive to the true
progress of humanity as these arguments, adroitly
adorned with every kind of contemporary ornament, put
forward by men qui croyent savoir — who think they
know, and who in Pascal's opinion bouleversent le monde,
upset the world!

But the light shines even in the darkness and there
are men who, without sharing Pascal's belief in Catholi-
cism and yet comprehending that he, in spite of his mighty
intellect, might believe in Catholicism, preferring to be-
lieve in it rather than not to believe in anything, under-
stand the significance of his marvellous book, which irre-
sistibly proves to men the essential necessity of faith, the
impossibility of human life without faith, that is to say,
the steadfast relation of man to the world and its origin.

And comprehending this men can not fail to find that
the questions raised by Pascal will be answered by faith
in accordance with the degrees of their moral and intel-
lectual development.

1906.