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The train I met on the 9th of September going with soldiers,
guns, cartridges, and rods, to confirm the rich landowner in
the possession of a small forest which he had taken from the
starving peasants, which they were in the direst need of,
and he was in no need of at all, was a striking proof of how
men are capable of doing deeds directly opposed to their
principles and their conscience without perceiving it.
The special train consisted of one first-class carriage for
the governor, the officials, and officers, and several
luggage vans crammed full of soldiers. The latter, smart
young fellows in their clean new uniforms, were standing
about in groups or sitting swinging their legs in the wide
open doorways of the luggage vans. Some were smoking,
nudging each other, joking, grinning, and laughing, others
were munching sunflower seeds and spitting out the husks
with an air of dignity. Some of them ran along the platform
to drink some water from a tub there, and when they met the
officers they slackened their pace, made their stupid
gesture of salutation, raising their hands to their heads
with serious faces as though they were doing something of
the greatest importance. They kept their eyes on them till
they had passed by them, and then set off running still more
merrily, stamping their heels on the platform, laughing and
chattering after the manner of healthy, good-natured young
fellows, traveling in lively company. They were going to
assist at the murder of their fathers or grandfathers just
as if they were going on a party of pleasure, or at any rate
on some quite ordinary business. The same impression was
produced by the well-dressed functionaries and officers who
were scattered about the platform and in the first-class
carriage. At a table covered with bottles was sitting the
governor, who was responsible for the whole expedition,
dressed in his half-military uniform and eating something
while he chatted tranquilly about the weather with some
acquaintances he had met, as though the business he was upon
was of so simple and ordinary a character that it could not
disturb his serenity and his interest in the change of
weather. At a little distance from the table sat the
general of the police. He was not taking any refreshment,
and had an impenetrable bored expression, as though he were
weary of the formalities to be gone through. On all sides
officers were bustling noisily about in their red uniforms
trimmed with gold; one sat at a table finishing his bottle
of beer, another stood at the buffet eating a cake, and
brushing the crumbs off his uniform, threw down his money
with a self-confident air; another was sauntering before the
carriages of our train, staring at the faces of the women.
All these men who were going to murder or to torture the
famishing and defenseless creatures who provide them their
sustenance had the air of men who knew very well that they
were doing their duty, and some were even proud, were
"glorying" in what they were doing. What is the meaning
of it? All these people are within half an hour of
reaching the place where, in order to provide a wealthy
young man with three thousand rubles stolen from a whole
community of famishing peasants, they may be forced to
commit the most horrible acts one can conceive, to murder or
torture, as was done in Orel, innocent beings, their
brothers. And they see the place and time approaching with
untroubled serenity. To say that all these government
officials, officers, and soldiers do not know what is before
them is impossible, for they are prepared for it. The
governor must have given directions about the rods, the
officials must have sent an order for them, purchased them,
and entered the item in their accounts. The military
officers have given and received orders about cartridges.
They all know that they are going to torture, perhaps to
kill, their famishing fellow creatures, and that they must
set to work within an hour. To say, as is usually said,
and as they would themselves repeat, that they are acting
from conviction of the necessity for supporting the state
organization, would be a mistake. For in the first place,
these men have probably never even thought about state
organization and the necessity of it; in the second place,
they cannot possibly be convinced that the act in which they
are taking part will tend to support rather than to ruin the
state; and thirdly, in reality the majority, if not all, of
these men, far from ever sacrificing their own pleasure or
tranquility to support the state, never let slip an
opportunity of profiting at the expense of the state in
every way they can increase their own pleasure and ease. So
that they are not acting thus for the sake of the abstract
principle of the state. What is the meaning of it? Yet
I know all these men. If I don't know all of them
personally, I know their characters pretty nearly, their
past, and their way of thinking. They certainly all have
mothers, some of them wives and children. They are certainly
for the most part good, kind, even tender-hearted fellows,
who hate every sort of cruelty, not to speak of murder; many
of them would not kill or hurt an animal. Moreover, they are
all professed Christians and regard all violence directed
against the defenseless as base and disgraceful.
Certainly not one of them would be capable in everyday life,
for his own personal profit, of doing a hundredth part of
what the Governor of Orel did. Every one of them would be
insulted at the supposition that he was capable of doing
anything of the kind in private life. And yet they are
within half an hour of reaching the place where they may be
reduced to the inevitable necessity of committing this
crime. What is the meaning of it? But it is not only
these men who are going by train prepared for murder and
torture. How could the men who began the whole business, the
landowner, the commissioner, the judges, and those who gave
the order and are responsible for it, the ministers, the
Tzar, who are also good men, professed Christians, how could
they elaborate such a plan and assent to it, knowing its
consequences? The spectators even, who took no part in the
affair, how could they, who are indignant at the sight of
any cruelty in private life, even the overtaxing of a horse,
allow such a horrible deed to be perpetrated? How was it
they did not rise in indignation and bar the roads,
shouting, "No; flog and kill starving men because they won't
let their last possession be stolen from them without
resistance, that we won't allow!" But far from anyone doing
this, the majority, even of those who were the cause of the
affair, such as the commissioner, the landowner, the judge,
and those who took part in it and arranged it, as the
Governor, the ministers, and the Tzar, are perfectly
tranquil and do not even feel a prick of conscience. And
apparently all the men who are going to carry out this crime
are equally undisturbed. The spectators, who one would
suppose could have no personal interest in the affair,
looked rather with sympathy than with disapproval at all
these people preparing to carry out this infamous action. In
the same compartment with me was a wood merchant, who had
risen from a peasant. He openly expressed aloud his sympathy
with such punishments. "They can't disobey the authorities,"
he said; "that's what the authorities are for. Let them have
a lesson; send their fleas flying! They'll give over making
commotions, I warrant you. That's what they want." What
is the meaning of it? It is not possible to say that all
these people who have provoked or aided or allowed this deed
are such worthless creatures that, knowing all the infamy of
what they are doing, they do it against their principles,
some for pay and for profit, others through fear of
punishment. All of them in certain circumstances know how to
stand up for their principles. Not one of these officials
would steal a purse, read another man's letter, or put up
with an affront without demanding satisfaction. Not one of
these officers would consent to cheat at cards, would refuse
to pay a debt of honor, would betray a comrade, run away on
the field of battle, or desert the flag. Not one of these
soldiers would spit out the holy sacrament or eat meat on
Good Friday. All these men are ready to face any kind of
privation, suffering, or danger rather than consent to do
what they regard as wrong. They have therefore the strength
to resist doing what is against their principles. It is
even less possible to assert that all these men are such
brutes that it is natural and not distasteful to them to do
such deeds. One need only talk to these people a little to
see that all of them, the landowner even, and the judge, and
the minister and the Tzar and the government, the officers
and the soldiers, not only disapprove of such things in the
depth of their soul, but suffer from the consciousness of
their participation in them when they recollect what they
imply. But they try not to think about it. One need only
talk to any of these who are taking part in the affair from
the landowner to the lowest policeman or soldier to see that
in the depth of their soul they all know it is a wicked
thing, that it would be better to have nothing, to do with
it, and are suffering from the knowledge. A lady of
liberal views, who was traveling in the same train with us,
seeing the governor and the officers in the first-class
saloon and learning the object of the expedition, began,
intentionally raising her voice so that they should hear, to
abuse the existing order of things and to cry shame on men
who would take part in such proceedings. Everyone felt
awkward, none knew where to look, but no one contradicted
her. They tried to look as though such remarks were not
worth answering. But one could see by their faces and their
averted eyes that they were ashamed. I noticed the same
thing in the soldiers. They too knew that what they were
sent to do was a shameful thing, but they did not want to
think about what was before them. When the wood merchant,
as I suspect insincerely only to show that he was a man of
education, began to speak of the necessity of such measures,
the soldiers who heard him all turned away from him,
scowling and pretending not to hear. All the men who,
like the landowner, the commissioner, the minister, and the
Tzar, were responsible for the perpetration of this act, as
well as those who were now going to execute it, and even
those who were mere spectators of it, knew that it was a
wickedness, and were ashamed of taking any share in it, and
even of being present at it. Then why did they do it, or
allow it to be done? Ask them the question. And the
landowner who started the affair, and the judge who
pronounced a clearly unjust even though formally legal
decision, and those who commanded the execution of the
decision, and those who, like the policemen, soldiers, and
peasants, will execute the deed with their own hands,
flogging and killing their brothers, all who have devised,
abetted, decreed, executed, or allowed such crimes, will
make substantially the same reply. The authorities, those
who have started, devised, and decreed the matter, will say
that such acts are necessary for the maintenance of the
existing order; the maintenance of the existing order is
necessary for the welfare of the country and of humanity,
for the possibility of social existence and human progress.
Men of the poorer class, peasants and soldiers, who will
have to execute the deed of violence with their own hands,
say that they do so because it is the command of their
superior authority, and the superior authority knows what he
is about. That those are in authority who ought to be in
authority, and that they know what they are doing appears to
them a truth of which there can be no doubt. If they could
admit the possibility of mistake or error, it would only be
in functionaries of a lower grade; the highest authority on
which all the rest depends seems to them immaculate beyond
suspicion. Though expressing the motives of their conduct
differently, both those in command and their subordinates
are agreed in saying that they act thus because the existing
order is the order which must and ought to exist at the
present time, and that therefore to support it is the sacred
duty of every man. On this acceptance of the necessity
and therefore immutability of the existing order, all who
take part in acts of violence on the part of government base
the argument always advanced in their justification. "Since
the existing order is immutable," they say, "the refusal of
a single individual to, perform the duties laid upon him
will effect no change in things, and will only mean that
some other man will be put in his place who may do the work
worse, that is to say, more cruelly, to the still greater
injury of the victims of the act of violence." This
conviction that the existing order is the necessary and
therefore immutable order, which it is a sacred duty for
every man to support, enables good men, of high principles
in private life, to take part with conscience more or less
untroubled in crimes such as that perpetrated in Orel, and
that which the men in the Toula train were going to
perpetrate. But what is this conviction based on? It is
easy to understand that the landowner prefers to believe
that the existing order is inevitable and immutable, because
this existing order secures him an income from his hundreds
and thousands of acres, by means of which he can lead his
habitual indolent and luxurious life. It is easy to
understand that the judge readily believes in the necessity
of an order of things through which he receives a wage fifty
times as great as the most industrious laborer can earn, and
the same applies to all the higher officials. It is only
under the existing regime that as governor,
prosecutor, senator, members of the various councils, they
can receive their several thousands of rubles a year,
without which they and their families would at once sink
into ruin, since if it were not for the position they occupy
they would never by their own abilities, industry, or
acquirements get a thousandth part of their salaries. The
minister, the Tzar, and all the higher authorities are in
the same position. The only distinction is that the higher
and the more exceptional their position, the more necessary
it is for them to believe that the existing order is the
only possible order of things. For without it they would not
only be unable to gain an equal position, but would be found
to fall lower than all other people. A man who has of his
own free will entered the police force at a wage of ten
rubles, which he could easily earn in any other position, is
hardly dependent on the preservation of the existing
regime, and so he may not believe in its immutability.
But a king or an emperor, who receives millions for his
post, and knows that there are thousands of people round him
who would like to dethrone him and take his place, who knows
that he will never receive such a revenue or so much honor
in any other position, who knows, in most cases through his
more or less despotic rule, that if he were dethroned he
would have to answer for all his abuse of power - he cannot
but believe in the necessity and even sacredness of the
existing order. The higher and the more profitable a man's
position, the more unstable it becomes, and the more
terrible and dangerous a fall from it for him, the more
firmly the man believes in the existing order, and therefore
with the more ease of conscience can such a man perpetrate
cruel and wicked acts, as though they were not in his own
interest, but for the maintenance of that order. This is
the case with all men in authority, who occupy positions
more profitable than they could occupy except for the
present regime, from the lowest police officer to the
Tzar. All of them are more or less convinced that the
existing order is immutable, because - the chief
consideration - it is to their advantage. But the peasants,
the soldiers, who are at the bottom of the social scale, who
have no kind of advantage from the existing order, who are
in the very lowest position of subjection and humiliation,
what forces them to believe that the existing order in which
they are in their humble and disadvantageous position is the
order which ought to exist, and which they ought to support
even at the cost of evil actions contrary to their
conscience? What forces these men to the false reasoning
that the existing order is unchanging, and that therefore
they ought to support it, when it is so obvious, on the
contrary, that it is only unchanging because they themselves
support it? What forces these peasants, taken only
yesterday from the plow and dressed in ugly and unseemly
costumes with blue collars and gilt buttons, to go with guns
and sabers and murder their famishing fathers and brothers?
They gain no kind of advantage and can be in no fear of
losing the position they occupy, because it is worse than
that from which they have been taken. The persons in
authority of the higher orders - land owners, merchants,
judges, senators, governors, ministers, tzars, and officers
- take part in such doings because the existing order is to
their advantage. In other respects they are often good and
kind-hearted men, and they are more able to take part in
such doings because their share in them is limited to
suggestions, decisions, and orders. These persons in
authority never do themselves what they suggest, decide, or
command to be done. For the most part they do not even see
how all the atrocious deeds they have suggested and
authorized are carried out. But the unfortunate men of the
lower orders, who gain no kind of advantage from the
existing regime, but, on the contrary, are treated
with the utmost contempt, support it even by dragging people
with their own hands from their families, handcuffing them,
throwing them in prison, guarding them, shooting them.
Why do they do it? What forces them to believe that the
existing order is unchanging and they must support it?
All violence rests, we know, on those who do the beating,
the handcuffing, the imprisoning, and the killing with their
own hands. If there were no soldiers or armed policemen,
ready to kill or outrage anyone as they are ordered, not one
of those people who sign sentences of death, imprisonment,
or galley-slavery for life would make up his mind to hang,
imprison, or torture a thousandth part of those whom,
quietly sitting in his study, he now orders to be tortured
in all kinds of ways, simply because he does not see it nor
do it himself, but only gets it done at a distance by these
servile tools. All the acts of injustice and cruelty
which are committed in the ordinary course of daily life
have only become habitual because there are these men always
ready to carry out such acts of injustice and cruelty. If it
were not for them, far from anyone using violence against
the immense masses who are now ill-treated, those who now
command their punishment would not venture to sentence them,
would not even dare to dream of the sentences they decree
with such easy confidence at present. And if it were not for
these men, ready to kill or torture anyone at their
commander's will, no one would dare to claim, as all the
idle landowners claim with such assurance, that a piece of
land, surrounded by peasants, who are in wretchedness from
want of land, is the property of a man who does not
cultivate it, or that stores of corn taken by swindling from
the peasants ought to remain untouched in the midst of a
population dying of hunger because the merchants must make
their profit. If it were not for these servile instruments
at the disposal of the authorities, it could never have
entered the head of the landowner to rob the peasants of the
forest they had tended, nor of the officials to think they
are entitled to their salaries, taken from the famishing
people, the price of their oppression; least of all could
anyone dream of killing or exiling men for exposing
falsehood and telling the truth. All this can only be done
because the authorities are confidently assured that they
have always these servile tools at hand, ready to carry all
their demands into effect by means of torture and murder.
All the deeds of violence of tyrants from Napoleon to the
lowest commander of a company who fires upon a crowd, can
only be explained by the intoxicating effect of their
absolute power over these slaves. All force, therefore,
rests on these men, who carry out the deeds of violence with
their own hands, the men who serve in the police or the
army, especially the army, for the police only venture to do
their work because the army is at their back. What, then,
has brought these masses of honest men, on whom the whole
thing depends, who gain nothing by it, and who have to do
these atrocious deeds with their own hands, what has brought
them to accept the amazing delusion that the existing order,
unprofitable, ruinous, and fatal as it is for them, is the
order which ought to exist? Who has led them into this
amazing delusion? They can never have persuaded
themselves that they ought to do what is against their
conscience, and also the source of misery and ruin for
themselves, and all their class, who make up nine-tenths of
the population. "How can you kill people, when it is
written in God's commandment: 'Thou shalt not kill'?" I have
often inquired of different soldiers. And I always drove
them to embarrassment and confusion by reminding them of
what they did not want to think about. They knew they were
bound by the law of God, "Thou shalt not kill," and knew too
that they were bound by their duty as soldiers, but had
never reflected on the contradiction between these duties.
The drift of the timid answers I received to this question
was always approximately this: that killing in war and
executing criminals by command of the government are not
included in the general prohibition of murder. But when I
said this distinction was not made in the law of God, and
reminded them of the Christian duty of fraternity,
forgiveness of injuries, and love, which could not be
reconciled with murder, the peasants usually agreed, but in
their turn began to ask me questions. "How does it happen,"
they inquired, "that the government [which according to
their ideas cannot do wrong] sends the army to war and
orders criminals to be executed." When I answered that the
government does wrong in giving such orders, the peasants
fell into still greater confusion, and either broke off the
conversation or else got angry with me. "They must have
found a law for it. The archbishops know as much about it as
we do, I should hope," a Russian soldier once observed to
me. And in saying his the soldier obviously set his mind at
rest, in the full conviction that his spiritual guides had
found a law which authorized his ancestors, and the tzars
and their descendants, and millions of men, to serve as he
was doing himself, and that the question I had put him was a
kind of hoax or conundrum on my part. Everyone in our
Christian society knows, either by tradition or by
revelation or by the voice of conscience, that murder is one
of the most fearful crimes a man can commit, as the Gospel
tells us, and that the sin of murder cannot be limited to
certain persons, that is, murder cannot be a sin for some
and not a sin for others. Everyone knows that if murder is a
sin, it is always a sin, whoever are the victims murdered,
just like the sin of adultery, theft, or any other. At the
same time from their childhood up men see that murder is not
only permitted, but even sanctioned by the blessing of those
whom they are accustomed to regard as their divinely
appointed spiritual guides, and see their secular leaders
with calm assurance organizing murder, proud to wear
murderous arms, and demanding of others in the name of the
laws of the country, and even of God, that they should take
part in murder. Men see that there is some inconsistency
here, but not being able to analyze it, involuntarily assume
that this apparent inconsistency is only the result of their
ignorance. The very grossness and obviousness of the
inconsistency confirms them in this conviction. They
cannot imagine that the leaders of civilization, the
educated classes, could so confidently preach two such
opposed principles as the law of Christ and murder. A simple
uncorrupted youth cannot imagine that those who stand so
high in his opinion, whom he regards as holy or learned men,
could for any object whatever mislead him so shamefully. But
this is just what has always been and always is done to him.
It is done (1) by instilling, by example and direct
instruction, from childhood up, into the working people, who
have not time to study moral and religious questions for
themselves, the idea that torture and murder are compatible
with Christianity, and that for certain objects of state,
torture and murder are not only admissible, but ought to be
employed; and (2) by instilling into certain of the people,
who have either voluntarily enlisted or been taken by
compulsion into the army, the idea that the perpetration of
murder and torture with their own hands is a sacred duty,
and even a glorious exploit, worthy of praise and reward.
The general delusion is diffused among all people by means
of the catechisms or books, which nowadays replace them, in
use for the compulsory education of children. In them it is
stated that violence, that is, imprisonment and execution,
as well as murder in civil or foreign war in the defense and
maintenance of the existing state organization (whatever
that may be, absolute or limited monarchy, convention,
consulate, empire of this or that Napoleon or Boulanger,
constitutional monarchy, commune or republic) is absolutely
lawful and not opposed to morality and Christianity. This
is stated in all catechisms or books used in schools. And
men are so thoroughly persuaded of it that they grow up,
live and die in that conviction without once entertaining a
doubt about it. This is one form of deception, the
general deception instilled into everyone, but there is
another special deception practiced upon the soldiers or
police who are picked out by one means or another to do the
torturing and murdering necessary to defend and maintain the
existing regime. In all military instructions
there appears in one form or another what is expressed in
the Russian military code in the following words:
Article 87. To carry out exactly and without comment the
orders of a superior officer means: to carry out an order
received from a superior officer exactly without considering
whether it is good or not, and whether it is possible to
carry it out. The superior officer is responsible for the
consequences of the order he gives. Article 88.
The subordinate ought never to refuse to carry out the
orders of a superior officer except when he sees clearly
that in carrying out his superior officer's command, he
breaks [the law of God, one involuntarily expects; not at
all] his oath of fidelity and allegiance to the Tzar.
It is here said that the man who is a soldier can and ought
to carry out all the orders of his superior without
exception. And as these orders for the most part involve
murder, it follows that he ought to break all the laws of
God and man. The one law he may not break is that of
fidelity and allegiance to the man who happens at a given
moment to be in power. Precisely the same thing is said
in other words in all codes of military instruction. And it
could not be otherwise, since the whole power of the army
and the state is based in reality on this delusive
emancipation of men from their duty to God and their
conscience, and the substitution of duty to their superior
officer for all other duties. This, then, is the
foundation of the belief of the lower classes that the
existing regime so fatal for them is the regime
which ought to exist, and which they ought therefore to
support even by torture and murder. This belief is
founded on a conscious deception practiced on them by the
higher classes. And it cannot be otherwise. To compel the
lower classes, which are more numerous, to oppress and ill
treat themselves, even at the cost of actions opposed to
their conscience, it was necessary to deceive them. And it
has been done accordingly. Not many days ago I saw once
more this shameless deception being openly practiced, and
once more I marveled that it could be practiced so easily
and impudently. At the beginning of November, as I was
passing through Toula, I saw once again at the gates of the
Zemsky Courthouse the crowd of peasants I had so often seen
before, and heard the drunken shouts of the men mingled with
the pitiful lamentations of their wives and mothers. It was
the recruiting session. I can never pass by the
spectacle. It attracts me by a kind of fascination of
repulsion. I again went into the crowd, took my stand among
the peasants, looked about and asked questions. And once
again I was amazed that this hideous crime can be
perpetrated so easily in broad daylight and in the midst of
a large town. As the custom is every year, in all the
villages and hamlets of the one hundred millions of
Russians, on the ist of November, the village elders had
assembled the young men inscribed on the lists, often their
own sons among them, and had brought them to the town. On
the road the recruits have been drinking without
intermission, unchecked by the elders, who feel that going
on such an insane errand, abandoning their wives and mothers
and renouncing all they hold sacred in order to become a
senseless instrument of destruction, would be too agonizing
if they were not stupefied with spirits. And so they have
come, drinking, swearing, singing, fighting and scuffling
with one another. They have spent the night in taverns. In
the morning they have slept off their drunkenness and have
gathered together at the Zemsky Court-house. Some of
them, in new sheepskin pelisses, with knitted scarves round
their necks, their eyes swollen from drinking, are shouting
wildly to one another to show their courage; others, crowded
near the door, are quietly and mournfully waiting their
turn, between their weeping wives and mothers (I had chanced
upon the day of the actual enrolling, that is, the
examination of those whose names are on the list); others
meantime were crowding into the hall of the recruiting
office. Inside the office the work was going on rapidly.
The door is opened and the guard calls Piotr
Sidorov. Piotr Sidorov starts, crosses himself,
and goes into a little room with a glass door, where the
conscripts undress. A comrade of Piotr Sidorov's, who has
just been passed for service, and come naked out of the
revision office, is dressing hurriedly, his teeth
chattering. Sidorov has already heard the news, and can see
from his face too that he has been taken. He wants to ask
him questions, but they hurry him and tell him to make haste
and undress. He throws off his pelisse, slips his boots off
his feet, takes off his waistcoat and draws his shirt over
his headland naked, trembling all over, and exhaling an odor
of tobacco, spirits, and sweat, goes into the revision
office, not knowing what to do with his brawny bare arms.
Directly facing him in the revision office hangs in a great
gold frame a portrait of the Tzar in full uniform with
decorations, and in the corner a little portrait of Christ
in a shirt and a crown of thorns. In the middle of the room
is a table covered with green cloth, on which there are
papers lying and a three-cornered ornament surmounted by an
eagle - the zertzal. Round the table are sitting the
revising officers, looking collected and indifferent. One is
smoking a cigarette; another is looking through some papers.
Directly Sidorov comes in, a guard goes up to him, places
him under the measuring frame, raising him under his chin,
and straightening his legs. The man with the cigarette -
he is the doctor - comes up, and without looking at the
recruit's face, but somewhere beyond it, feels his body over
with an air of disgust, measures him, tests him, tells the
guard to open his mouth, tells him to breathe, to speak.
Someone notes something down. At last without having once
looked him in the face the doctor says, "Right. Next one!"
and with a weary air sits down again at the table. The
soldiers again hustle and hurry the lad. He somehow gets
into his trousers, wraps his feet in rags, puts on his
boots, looks for his scarf and cap, and bundles his pelisse
under his arm. Then they lead him into the main hall,
shutting him off apart from the rest by a bench, behind
which all the conscripts who have been passed for service
are waiting. Another village lad like himself, but from a
distant province, now a soldier armed with a gun with a
sharp-pointed bayonet at the end, keeps watch over him,
ready to run him through the body if he should think of
trying to escape. Meantime the crowd of fathers, mothers,
and wives, hustled by the police, are pressing round the
doors to hear whose lad has been taken, whose is let off.
One of the rejected comes out and announces that Piotr is
taken, and at once a shrill cry is heard from Piotr's young
wife, for whom this word "taken" means separation for four
or five years, the life of a soldier's wife as a servant,
often a prostitute. But here comes a man along the street
with flowing hair and in a peculiar dress, who gets out of
his droskhy and goes into the Zemsky Court-house. The police
clear a way for him through the crowd. It is the reverend
father " come to administer the oath, And this father," who
has been persuaded that he is specially and exclusively
devoted to the service of Christ, and who, for the most
part, does not himself see the deception in which he lives,
goes into the hall where the conscripts are waiting. He
throws round him a kind of curtain of brocade, pulls his
long hair out over it, opens the very Gospel in which
swearing is forbidden, takes the cross, the very cross on
which Christ was crucified because he would not do what this
false servant of his is telling men to do, and puts them on
the lectern. And all these unhappy, defenseless, and deluded
lads repeat after him the lie, which he utters with the
assurance of familiarity. He reads and they repeat after
him: "I promise and swear by Almighty God upon his holy
Gospel," etc., "to defend," etc., and that is, to murder
anyone I am told to, and to do everything I am told by men I
know nothing of, and who care nothing for me except as an
instrument for perpetrating the crimes by which they are
kept in their position of power, and my brothers in their
condition of misery. All the conscripts repeat these
ferocious words without thinking. And then the so-called
"father" goes away with a sense of having correctly and
conscientiously done his duty. And all these poor deluded
lads believe that these nonsensical and incomprehensible
words which they have just uttered set them free for the
whole time of their service from their duties as men, and
lay upon them fresh and more binding duties as soldiers.
And this crime is perpetrated publicly and no one cries out
to the deceiving and the deceived: "Think what you are
doing; this is the basest, falsest lie, by which not bodies
only, but souls too, are destroyed." No one does this. On
the contrary, when all have been enrolled, and they are to
be let out again, the military officer goes with a confident
and majestic air into the hall where the drunken, cheated
lads are shut up,and cries in a bold, military voice: " Your
health, my lads congratulate you on I serving the Tzar!" And
they, poor fellows (someone has given them a hint
beforehand), mutter awkwardly, their voices thick with
drink, something to the effect that they are glad.
Meantime the crowd of fathers, mothers, and wives is
standing at the doors waiting. The women keep their tearful
eyes fixed on the doors. They open at last, and out come the
conscripts, unsteady, but trying to put a good face on it.
Here are Piotr and Vania and Makar trying not to look their
dear ones in the face. Nothing is heard but the wailing of
the wives and mothers. Some of the lads embrace them and
weep with them, others make a show of courage, and others
try to comfort them. The wives and mothers, knowing that
they will be left for three, four, or five years without
their breadwinners, weep and rehearse their woes aloud. The
fathers say little. They only utter a clucking sound with
their tongues and sigh mournfully, knowing that they will
see no more of the steady lads they have reared and trained
to help them, that they will come back not the same quiet
hard-working laborers, but for the most part conceited and
demoralized, unfitted for their simple life. And then all
the crowd get into their sledges again and move away down
the street to the taverns and pot-houses, and louder than
ever sounds the medley of singing and sobbing, drunken
shouts, and the wailing of the wives and mothers, the sounds
of the accordion and oaths. They all turn into the taverns,
whose revenues go to the government, and the drinking bout
begins, which stifles their sense of the wrong which is
being done them. For two or three weeks they go on living
at home, and most of that time they are "jaunting," that is,
drinking. On a fixed day they collect them, drive them
together like a flock of sheep, and begin to train them in
the military exercises and drill. Their teachers are fellows
like themselves, only deceived and brutalized two or three
years sooner. The means of instruction are: deception,
stupefaction, blows and vodka. And before a year has passed
these good, intelligent, healthy-minded lads will be as
brutal beings as their instructors. "Come, now, suppose
your father were arrested and tried to make his escape?" I
asked a young soldier. "I should run him through with my
bayonet," he answered with the foolish intonation peculiar
to soldiers; "and if he made off, I ought to shoot him," he
added, obviously proud of knowing what he must do if his
father were escaping. And when a good-hearted lad has
been brought to a state lower than that of a brute, he is
just what is wanted by those who use him as an instrument of
violence. He is ready; the man has been destroyed and a new
instrument of violence has been created. And all this is
done every year, every autumn, everywhere, through all
Russia in broad daylight in the midst of large towns, where
all may see it, and the deception is so clever, so skillful,
that though all men know the infamy of it in their hearts,
and see all its horrible results, they cannot throw it off
and be free. |
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