SOCIAL CONDITION OF RUSSIA.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XX, Issue 3938, 29 June 1877, Page 3

SOCIAL CONDITION OF RUSSIA.

The Melbourne Argus in a recent issue thus refers to the social condition of the modern Russian Empire : — If, as the French proverb says, " nothing happens but the unforeseen," the issue of the present war on the shores of the Black Sea may be sucli as to stultify the wisest forecast. It must prove calamitous to ' Turkey, by the loss of blood and treasure which it will entail ; but it may be also terribly disastrous to her opponent. For it should not be forgotten that there are two Rusaias. There is the Russia of the popular imagination ; and there is the ''Russia of sober reality. The former is a portentous Colossus, projecting its sombre shadow over the northern and central portions of two continents ; a one-man power, which holds within its grasp a territory of nearly 8,000,000 square miles ' and a population of 82,000,000, with an army of a million and a half, and a policy that is steadily aggressive, and that aims at territorial aggrandisement in every direction. On the other hand, the Russia of realityis a vast congeries of heterogeneous states and peoples, conquered by force or by fraud, held together by the rigorous compression of autocratic and military rule. It is a nation without a middle class, and without an enlightened popular sentiment ; a nation which represses its industrial development by adhering to the ruinous delusions of protection, which con-, ducts its administrative affairs by the instrumentality of the most corrupt body of officials in Europe, and which conceals the inherent barbarism of its people and its institutions — its Asiatic character and habits—^beneath a thin veneer of western civilisation. Seventeen years ago, Prince Dolgoroilkow, a high Russian functionary, was so much impressed with the condition of his country, in which he perceived every vice that was consistent with corruption and decay, and was so firmly convinced, by experience, of the hopelessness of effecting any amendment in its condition by remonstrating with the Emperor and the bureaucracy, that he went to Paris and published his La Veriie sur la JRussie, in which he said, " I have come abroad for the express purpose of publishing all I know about the evil ways of the public functionaries of my country, and I have taken care to place myself and my papers in a place of safety, in order to do so with impunity." In that book the Prince made use of the following impressive words :— " At this hour Russia is at the point where France was in 1789. She is marching to her 1789, a date that would have been so happy and so brilliant for France but for the obstinancy of shortsighted men. In God's name, save us, save us from 1793 !" Since this was written the serfs have been emancipated, but so far from such a really benevolent and well-intentioned concession having laid the gaunt spectre of Socialism, it has become more ominous and appalling than ever it was. Owing to the communal land system of the country, the Russian peasantry— constituting 92 per cent, of the population — are ready for socialism : and for many years past there has existed a secret and wide-spread organisation having for its object tho overthrow of the political institutions of the nation. This organisation covers no less than thirty-seven out of the forty departments into which Great and Little Russia are divided. Men of wealth and large landed proprietors are implicated in this conspiracy, and the reason assigned for .their revolutionary action is that their estates have been rendered worthless by the emancipation of the serfs. And when, a short time ago, there appeared to be some grounds for anticipating a war between Russia and Germany, it is stated to have been the intention of the Nihilists, as the revolutionary party calls itself, to have raised an insurrection with a view to the reorganisation of society, the re-dis-tribution of property, and the establishment of the Russian Mir or Commune. If statements like these rested on the authority of foreign journalists, of unfriendly travellers in Russia, or even of numerous newspapers which Russian socialists publish abroad, we should be disposed to regard them with considerable suspicion as probably exaggerated, and k possibly false. But they are to be found in two reports addressed by the of Education, and the Crown Prosecutor respectively, to the Government in St. Petersburg, and published a short time since in the Daily News, which cannot be suspected of any unfriendy feeling to the Czar, whose interests that journal has been steadily advancing for some months past. Count Tolstoy, the Minister of Education, was so much impressed with the dangers of the situa- ■ tion that he issued a circular to the subordinate heads of the department throughout the Empire, in which he made the following significant admissions : — , "It has been proved that the revolutionists have determined to convert into a tool of their infamous propaganda that which is the special object of the care and protection of every honorable man, viz;. , youth and the school. What is deplorable is that these children and youths, instead of finding in their families and in their surroundings any check of resistance torevolutionary incitements and anarchical fancies, sometimes, on the contrary, find encouragement and support. Only through this is it to be explained that socialist theories which have long since been condemned by sound science have been able to disseminate themselves through thirtyseven governments." The Crown Prosecutor concurs with Count Tolstoy in his definition of the area of the conspiracy, and asserts that the plan of the revolutionists is so perfect, and the secrecy with which it conducts its movements is so complete that the Government is baffled in its attempts to discover all the " circles" while the conspirators are found to belong to every grade of society, from the prince to the peasant. In such a crisis of the national liistory, what more natural than that the Court party at St. Petersburg should adopt the policy which Henry the Fourth impressed upon his son ? — " Be it thy course to l>usy giddy minds With foreign quarrel." For there is just a bare chance that a war against the " infidel" may arrest the process of social decomposition at home. But, on the other hand, there is no slight risk that an insurrection in the Caucasus, on the one side of Russia, and in Poland on the other, may operate like a torch in a powder magazine, and occasion an explosion capable of shivering the northern Colossus to fragments ; while neither Scandinavia, nor Germany, nor Austria, nor England, much less Turkey, would have the slightest reason to bewail the overthrow of this huge Dagon, with its golden head, and feet of clay. [It is a remarkable fact that since this article was published in the Argus, one of its predictions has already been fulfilled, for an insurrection has actually taken place among the Circassians.— Ed.]