Count Tolstoi’s Reforms.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 896, 3 May 1889, Page 9

Count Tolstoi’s Reforms.

(The Spectator.) There is some interest, if not much importance, in tho struggle now going on in Russia between tho Czar and the Council of the Empire upon local institutions. We call it ‘ struggle ’ though perhaps the word is wrong, for tho autocracy is in Russia tho only real force except military opinion, and the written order of the recluse of Gatschina will overbear the resistance even of his own family and the greatest nobles. There is, however, at any rate, a difference of opinion, and it is reported, or, indeed, announced, for tho news comes from Vienna as well as St. Petersburg, that tho Czar has overruled the vast majority of his own Council, and has insisted on tho ‘ reactionary ’ project of Count Tolstoi being carried out. Under this projeeb, the rural District Councils in Russia, which wore established by Alexander 11., aud which are elective, are to a great extent set aside in favour of Sub-Prefects who will be invested with practically absolute power over all agrarian affairs, aud especially over all questions arising between the landlords and the peasantry. They are not to interfere whore the peasants are not concerned, and are not to be the general, only the agrarian agents of the Government, to which afone, through the Governors, they are made responsible, and which it is conceived they will guide. As the Russian system does not allow such an agent to be overridden by any popular force, it is believed that the appointment of Sub-Prefects will be fatal to the independence of the District Councils, which, moreover, are henceforth to have official Chairmen, and may even terminate their present freedom of debate and representation. The measure, therefore, greatly irritates Liberal society in St. Petersburg, besides Borne very high personages, including three Grand Dukes, and has now been denounced through tho correspondent of tho Tfmes all over Europe as ‘reactionary,’and an illustration of the dangerous counsels which provail with the Czar. It is even hinted that the decision may be very ‘serious,’ - that is, may evoke some kind of formidable opposition to the Imperial authority. The measure is undoubtedly reactionary, for Alexander 11. intended these Councils to be safety valves for local opinion, and their partial suppression or supersession is a step back in the internal hGtory of Russia. They were, moreover, filled and ruled in the main by an educated class, whose members spoke sometimes with much freedom, and there can be little doubt that in striking at them, the Czar’s advisers are continuing that campaign against the educated which has marked the whole history of the present reign, and which is only partly justified, if at all, by the wide alienatiou of that class from the autocratic system. They hate it, not to much from hatred of the Czardom, which many of them believe indispensable to Russia, but because they dread and detest the officials to whom an absolute master is compelled to delegate so much of his overgrown authority. To seo the number of theso officials increased, and placed in positions which enable them to interfere with the management of every property in the country, is most galling to the landlords, while the comparative silence which their presence will secure annoys, and, so to speak, snffbeates the Liberals, who in Russia ask first of all froe speech, and are content that Councils should be deliberative if only they may speak out. The auger of both classes seems perfectly reasonable to Englishmen, and probably, in the main, is reasonable ; but if we understand the contest at all, there is another side to the matter which should be takeu into account by all who caro to study that strangest of problems, the internal progress of Russia. The Czar is not doing anything new, much less displaying a sudden caprice, but continuing an old and very remarkable line of policy, which he and his counsellors believe essential to the safety alike of the Throne and the State,

The decrees of emancipation, benevolent as they were in feeling, and unavoidable os they were in policy, left bitter agrarian dissensions behind. The landowners thought themselves half-ruined, and though the effect of the measure varied with each family, a large proportion of them were reduced to serious straits. Europe at the time was filled with complaints, and we have talked to Russians who in all sincerity thought the measure mors confiscatory than the proclamation from John Brown’s grove. The village communities, on the other band, who had for ages believed that they owned the soil, though the nobles owned them, were discontented with the proportion of laud assigned to them, and irritated to the last degree with the pecuniary compensations which they were compelled, under the decrees and tho explanatory legislations which followed them, to pay to the landlords So grave did this discontent become, that the Czar’s Government, which never forgets that its true foundation is the reverence of the peasantry, temporarily appointed ‘ Mediators ’ all over Russia to hold the balance between the peasants and the owners, and to prevent violence on either side. These Mediators were pronounced by the landlord partial ; bat a general arrangement was at last arrived at—-facilitated by State advances —which prevented insurrection, and the Mediators were removed ; bub the ultimate causes of tho discontent were not abolished. These have for some time passed revived, the actual ground of quarrel being, we believe, heavy and growing arrearages, and have become so fierce that, little as is reported

from the interior of Russia, we have noted one or two riots large enough to be officially called insurrections—one in particular in ■which many landlords perished. The riots have probably been numerous, though so little heard of in Western Europe, and the first object of the new appointment is to prevent them, and soothe the exasperated feeling of the peasantry by stationing a Government agent in every district, with power to compel compromises between the owners and the village communities. These compromises will not, we maj' be sure, he favourable to the landlords. The latter are quite powerless when the cultivators are hostile ; and the Government, as we have said, never forgets that the soldiers are peasants’ sons, and that the autocracy reposes on the rock provided by the devotion of the cultivators, SO per cent of the entire population of the Empire. That devotion gives to the Czardom all its moral claim ; it ba3 hitherto defied every shock, even the unwearying Nihilist proselytism ; but it might he shaken if the peasants starved, or ifjthey were once convinced that their ‘God on earth’ paid no attention to their miseries, and only enforced the claims of their opponents. As theZomtsvo, or District Councils, are not entirely trustworthy in this respect—or, ns Russian Liberals would say, are too impartial for the peasants—we should not be surprised to hear that the ‘ reactionary ’ measure was nearly unavoidable, and that Count Tolstoi, who has before him reports from every province in European Russia, had discerned an imminent and a growing danger. The majority in the Council of the Empire may havo abstract right on their side —we do not know enough of the details to deny or affirm that plea—but they sra biassed in favour of the landlords. and can hardly be as well informed as the Ministry of the Interior. The idea that the Czar is acting in defence of his own power, shaken by the District Councils, is, we believe, unfounded, for it is hot shaken ; but it is quite possible that for political reasons, and in pursuance of the policy which induced hia father to decree emancipation, he is swerving towards the peasants further than strict justice would permit. An absolute government is usually too favourable towards the power it dreads, whether it be the peasantry or the soldiers, or, as in Pekin and Constantinople, the mob of the capital ; and in Russia the Sovereign is traditionally taught to regard himself as holding some special relation, very nearly, in theory, divine, towards that huge silent mass whose weight, in spite of all attacks, keeps his throne upright. It should be noted that the common people on the Continent, outside the cities, at all -events, are by no means so attached to local self-government as Englishmen suppose themselves to be. They have learned, partly, no doubt, from tradition, to regard the central authority as protective against local oppression ; and we do not find that in France, or Italy, or Germany, or anywhere where they elrct representatives, they make a serious effort to cripple the powers of the agents of authority. The 1 Prefects,’ by whatever name they are called, survive every revolution, while the police seem to many observers to grow distinctly strongsr. That c>m hardly be wholly due, especially in France and Italy, to the encroachment of •the central authority ; and we imagine the real feeling of the people about officials resembles closely the real feeling of Londoners about the police. They have a superficial dislike of them, which rises on occasion into a sort of exasperation ; but they would not be without them for the world. That feeling may have additional strength in Russia, where for centuries the only authority distinctly favourable to the ‘ bearded people ’ has been that of the Czar. '