In those happy weeks when freedom still was young and living, two things ruled the country—speech and the strike, the word and the blow. The strike was everywhere felt. No letter or telegram went or came. Each town in Russia was isolated, and the whole Empire stood severed from the world. Banks sent their money to Europe by special messengers, like kings. Telegrams were carried a twenty-four hours’ journey to the frontier. Almost every night I was down at the Warsaw station watching the passengers, to see if any could be trusted to take a letter home. When I travelled further into Russia, I organized an elaborate private post by stages, engaging hotel-porters, students, lady-doctors, tram-conductors, and barmaids in my service. On one occasion the scheme worked with real success, and brought me a halfpenny paper which cost me three pounds. Later I found it best to give my own letters to Lancashire women, going home for safety—wives of the managers or engineers in cotton-mills—and they posted them under their skirts.

At St. Petersburg, the well-to-do classes, who were losing most by the postal strike, made a heroic effort to assist the Government and themselves. Having first seen that strong patrols of horse and foot were stationed at all corners of the General Post Office, and at every door, they organized a volunteer service of sorters among their own number, and one saw elegant young men and white-haired gentlemen who had passed an honoured existence in avoiding work, now struggling to make out how it was done. Enthusiastic girls, in the prettiest of furs and the smallest possible goloshes, hastened by eleven o’clock to their stools in the stuffy office, and sat there till four, with the self-sacrificing zeal of young ladies at a church bazaar. One must do something for one’s country when the lower classes are giving so much trouble. So with a smile and a flash of rings, they plunged into the honest toil of sorting the stacks of letters which had been arriving by half a million a day; and some of the letters reached the right address.

Other strikes were of almost equal interest. In Moscow the cooks struck, and paraded the streets with songs never heard in the drawing-room. The waiters struck, and heavy proprietors lumbered about with their own plates and dishes. The nursemaids struck for Sundays out. The housemaids struck for rooms with windows, instead of cupboards under the stairs, or sections from the water-closets. Schoolboys struck for more democratic masters and pleasanter lessons. Teachers struck for higher pay and, I hope, for pleasanter pupils. All had one’s sympathy, as all rebels necessarily have. There was a solidarity about the grievances of all, and each movement proved how far the revolutionary spirit had spread. The only danger was that the people were making a good thing too common. The strike was the guillotine of the Russian revolution in those days, and even the guillotine had once been worked too hard.

But at the back of the strikes and all the revolutionary movement lay the motive force of speech. In Russia, even more than in other countries, was seen the power of the creative word. A strain of unwonted idealism has long been audible in all Russian literature, and has led to the hope that when Russia’s hour came she would advance on finer and higher lines than the more material and self-satisfied peoples of Europe. The hour seemed now to have come, and the hope to be justified. The people were drunken with ideas. After these centuries of suppression, all Russia was revelling in a spiritual debauch of words. Meetings were held almost every night. Entrance could only be gained by ticket; but crowds fought at the doors to hear discussions on the first principles of government, taxation, or law, just as eagerly as English people fight for a place at a football match or an indecent farce. To Russians the power of the word was all so new and delightful. I myself remember the first and only time I listened to a debate in the House of Commons. It was the day when Mr. Wyndham was treading “with fairy footstep” through the mazes of Irish statistics. I knew those mazes at least as well as he did, but I have never heard anything so interesting as that debate. And for Russians to listen to a man speaking was like an escape from gaol.

I had noticed it in the Strike Committee and in Gapon’s meetings. Without practice or tradition in public speaking, Russia was suddenly found to be a nation of orators. At all the meetings it was the same: speaker after speaker rose, and not one of them faltered for a moment. There was no muddle, or shyness, or hesitation—none of that weary up-and-down cadence, like riding over ridge and furrow, none of that harking back and beating round the bush for words to which our sporting legislators of the shires have long accustomed us at home. In some cases, no doubt, the speeches were dull; but often, even without understanding a thousandth part of what was said, one could tell how true an orator the speaker was from the breathlessness of his hearers, from the feeling of diffused unity in the crowd, and from the deep gasp of applause which greeted the end.

The high level of thought in the speeches might be sneered at as an idealist level by dull people who do not believe in ideas. But strength was given to the speakers by the continual danger of the moment and the reality of the horror waiting at the door. As though apologizing for his impertinence in taking any part in such a mighty thing as politics, a workman said humbly to me once: “I know nothing but the street, the factory, and the prison. But I would die for the movement.” When his turn came to speak, of course he spoke well. With such a training, he could hardly fail to speak well; and as to law-making, his life was a far more genuine preparation for it than English universities.

There was a similar outburst in newspapers as in speeches. Hitherto most Russian journalists who were not mere hirelings, writing in support of the bureaucracy, had been obliged to work underground, or to write abroad and trust to the ruses of war for a circulation in their own country. During the six weeks after the Manifesto the change was astonishing. For a time there was not a country, except England, where the freedom of the press was so complete. A new paper appeared almost every other day. Now and then a number or two would be confiscated, and sometimes the paper would cease to appear for a while. The first and most notorious case of this suspension was when a little satiric paper, called The Machine Gun (Pulemet), printed a copy of the Tsar’s manifesto with the impression of a bloody hand stamped upon it, and the superscription, “Signed and Sealed.” This was seized as an insult to the dynasty. The editor was imprisoned, the price of the cartoon went up from five farthings to almost as many pounds, and, when the paper appeared again, its fame was established.

But at the time a cartoon of that kind was mainly prophetic, and most of the papers said what they pleased, and said it with seriousness and self-restraint. Among the very best was the workmen’s little paper called The Russian Gazette, sold at one farthing. It had been started soon after Father Gapon’s petition, and since the Manifesto only one number had been confiscated. Written in the common workman’s language which all could understand, it had a very large circulation, but its price kept the funds low, and its news from outside was small. In politics it called itself Social Democratic, but being concerned at first hand with the real workmen and their interests, it touched solid ground, and its tone was the same as one heard at the meetings of the labour delegates.

Next in revolutionary influence came the New Life (Novaya Zhisn), generally known as Maxim Gorky’s paper. He certainly supplied the money and its general policy. Sometimes he wrote a long letter or address in it, and his present wife, the actress of his plays, was nominally editor. But, even when Gorky was in St. Petersburg, which was very seldom, the paper was really conducted by the poet Minsky and a few other Social Democrats of high education and theoretic knowledge. The sternest and most official organ of that sect, it followed Marx with doctrinaire exactness, and its teaching was impeded by the stiffness and pedantry that characterize the Social Democrats even in England. No one could question the skill and enthusiasm of its attacks upon the oligarchy and capitalists, but it often devoted more space to sour depreciation of other good Socialists who doubted if Marx had said the last word in human history. It was like a really clever staff officer who, on the morning of the battle, goes from brigade to brigade telling the soldiers what fools all the other officers have made of themselves, and what an immense disaster will ensue if his own plan of attack is not adopted. So it often happened that the truest friends of the movement were in despair at the vanity and exclusiveness of the New Life, and irretrievable opportunities passed by while its staff of editors were arranging the future of humanity in neat little circles and squares, as though they were the Creator and men were as obedient as the stars. If you work on German first principles, you are likely to arrive at queer conclusions, because mankind was not made in Germany. But still there was no denying the paper’s honesty and zeal, nor its great influence within its own wide circle of well-disposed and intelligent people.

The Son of the Country (Syn Otetchestva) was an old paper; it had been running off and on for nearly a century; but, since the manifesto, it had become extreme in its Liberalism, and could be grouped as a new paper among the Social Democratic organs. All Russians admitted that it was particularly well written, and being far less pedantic than the New Life, it was read by every advanced party and promised to become one of the strongest papers of the revolution.

While I was still in St. Petersburg, at the end of November, some of the famous exiles, who had begun to return to Russia under the promised amnesty, started a paper called the Beginning (Natchalo). It was distinctly Social Democratic, and perhaps the leading spirit on it was Vera Sassoulitch, who had failed in an attempt to assassinate Trepoff’s father during the most gloomy period of tyranny, twenty years before. She had returned from Geneva, old and grey and wrinkled, but almost any night she was to be seen sitting out the revolutionary meetings, talking, writing, or stitching with unflagging energy, and on her face and in her pale grey eyes a fixed and beaming smile, as though at the fulfilment of hopes for which she and so many others had been willing to give their lives.

Not definitely connected with social democracy, but extreme in its opposition to the Government, there was another new paper called Our Life (Nacha Zhisn), which was started in September and at once was recognized for its excellent news and management. It has since increased its reputation, and become one of the leading papers in Russia.

But at that time perhaps the very best of all the papers, both for news and leading articles, was Russia (Russ). It had been founded three years before, but began to redate its numbers from the Manifesto of October 30th. During the war, it won a reputation by an overwhelming exposure of army scandals, and under the movement it was almost universally read for its progressive policy and fearlessness of speech. At the time, it was edited by one of the sons of Suvorin, the famous editor of the Novoe Vremya. Such divergence of political views must have strained the conversation at the family dinner-table, and perhaps it was really a relief at home when the son was shut up in prison, and the paper appeared under the new title of Molva.

The two Jewish papers—the News (Novosti) and the Stock Exchange Gazette (Birshevza Viedomosti)—were both old, one being nearly the oldest paper in Russia, and the other having run twenty-five years, but both had become very Progressive or even revolutionary. For in Russia, Jews are inevitably revolutionists, however much against their own nature, and the Stock Exchange paper was one of the most advanced political organs in the Empire, and had the best news.

At that time, two other Progressive papers had just been started—Dawn (Rassiojet) and Russia Renewed (Obnovlionnaya Rossiu), and at Moscow, Professor Miliukoff was on the point of bringing out his new paper called Life (Zhisn) of which I may speak later on. But there seemed no end to the number of excellent journalists that Russia could supply, just as there seemed no end to the number of excellent speakers. When I think of that sudden outburst of talent, I remember the saying of an Englishman who had lived thirty years in Russia and professed a good-humoured contempt for the whole people from the Court to the dustmen; “But unquestionably,” he always added, “they are the most intelligent race in the world.” In reality, however, it was intensity of conviction and present sense of wrong which converted those inexperienced men into such effective writers and speakers. Where conviction is sincere, habit and training are best away, just as really sincere and original dramas should be performed only by actors unhabituated to the stage.

To oppose these battalions of progress, there were only three or four journals on the reactionary side, and it is significant that none of these were new and nearly all were subsidized. First came the New Time (Novoe Vremya), almost the only Russian paper which is well known by name outside Russia. It is the Times of Russia, steadily on the side of the Government, the reaction, and the moneyed classes. Scornful of enthusiasm, deaf to every idea, incredulous of every hope, always ready to impute the vilest motives to reform, it stands like an impenetrable barrier on the road of human progress. Proclaiming itself the champion of stability, and taking law and order for its motto, and the price of funds for its test, it succeeds in pleasing the financier and the official, and its cynical disregard of humanity is matched by its unquestioned influence for evil. A certain dignity of tone, combined with the excellence of its foreign news, has given it a reputation for sobriety and truth, but against the rights of freedom it is virulent in its animosity, and against a leader of the people it will welcome any libel without reserve. To discover where justice lies, one has but to take the opposite view to its own, and to agree with it is a danger-signal that one’s sense of right has gone astray. Yet in moments of deep indignation against some governmental shame, it will affect the popular tone and act the reformer’s part with whines and deprecations. The scandals of the Japanese war were too flagrant even for its compliant worship of birth and rank, and after the Manifesto had granted freedom of speech it began to demand that freedom with righteous solicitude.

On the same side, though inferior in skill and reputation, stood the Citizen (Grashdanin), heavily subsidized by the Government, and possessing, it was said, a particular influence over the Tsar’s perplexed little mind; and the Petersburg News, also subsidized, but indignant none the less about the war scandals and the Grand Dukes.

Last of this group came the Word (Slovo), once famous for its violent attacks upon errors in high places, and for its fearless defence of freedom, especially on behalf of the Old Believers. But after the Manifesto appeared, the tone of the paper changed, and instead of joining like others in the joy of victory, it grew more and more sullen and distrustful of progress. Whether money was the motive of the change, as rumour said, I did not discover, but the paper’s influence had to be counted among the reactionary forces, and it was a strong paper.

Even more significant than the printed daily papers were the satiric and illustrated sheets, which appeared as suddenly and in greater numbers. Perhaps the best managed and most constant was the Observer (Zritel), but the Signal (same word in Russian) was almost as good, and below them came the Arrows (Streli) and the Libel (Strekoza). The Vampyre (same word in Russian) came later, and so did the Sulphur (Jupel), which was the most artistic of them all, but so bloody and savage that it survived only three numbers. The character of nearly all the cartoons was, indeed, bloody and savage rather than humorous. The satire was hardly ever kindly, as it has become in England now that politics are so seldom a matter of life and death. Sometimes, it is true, in those early weeks, Witte was treated with a raillery that might be called gentle. He would be represented as a cook trying in vain to make the dinner come right; or as a chemist watching an empty bottle labelled “Constitution;” or as a brood hen sitting on an egg with the same label; or as an old nurse cherishing a sickly little figure; or as an acrobat balancing on a slack-rope, while Trepoff held one end, and the red flags of the revolution surged below; or as a cunning old tailor threading his needle to stitch up the two-headed eagle, which lay dead or stuffed on his board, while an inverted imperial diadem held the flat-iron, and the candle stood in a vodka bottle representing Witte’s spirit monopoly. But as a rule the design was far more savage, and the savagery grew as the reaction became stronger, till after the Days of Moscow all the cartoons might have been printed in blood, and most appeared in that colour. Then we were shown the skeleton of death stalking through the devastated streets, or the skeleton of hunger crawling upon the stage from the flies, or the Kremlin floating in blood like an island, or Dubasoff as butcher in a human meat-shop, or foul monsters brooding over the corpses beneath the gallows of freedom. Right through its past history, all Russian art that counts has been either horrible or melancholy—a thing of skeletons and vampires and desolation. The subjects chosen by painters are cruel scenes from war or history, and dreary views of the steppe. The subjects chosen by writers are almost invariably sad. It is part of the unbroken melancholy which pervades all Russian life, and is no less visible on the faces of the people than in the sound of their music. And all this sorrow and savagery and blood lie at the door of a Government which has kept the people poor and depressed, exposed to the constant peril of the scourge, the prison, and secret death.

On the reactionary side, I think, the only satiric paper was the Harlequin (Chout) and though it was fairly clever, there is an eternal law which forbids the service of satire or letters or any other form of art to the enemies of freedom.

The crowd of Liberal and revolutionary papers was but the visible sign of a grace that took many forms. In reality, perhaps, there were even more parties than papers, and certainly there were many parties that had no paper to represent them. The Anarchists, as I have shown already, could hardly be called a party, at all events in the towns, and no paper was occupied with the abolition of the State as a fetish, when all were insisting upon the strengthening of the State as against the government of the few. But even such a large party as the Social Revolutionists had no organ of their own. Next to the Social Democrats, they were the most powerful of the advanced parties. Probably they were even more numerous, but their organization was not so complete, and as they devoted themselves mainly to the peasants, their voice was not so loud in cities. They were the Terrorists of the time; they were what Europe confusedly calls the Anarchists, and it was they who kept the agents of the Government in peril of their lives. Yet they had no paper of their own.

Neither had a large and growing party of the Left Centre, which we may call the Radical as distinguished from the Socialists. They issued a programme which nearly all the advanced parties would have accepted when the time for business came. Like all the rest, they demanded first a Constituent Assembly elected by universal suffrage, and beyond that their ideal of the Russian State consisted in a single chamber, a ministry chosen from the majority, home rule for Poland, Finland, the Caucasus, and the Baltic Provinces, the right of referendum, separation of Church and State, expropriation of Crown and Church lands and of private estates beyond a fixed maximum, free education, and a general militia for defence. Moderate as these demands were, nearly all the revolutionists, except the more starchy among the Social Democrats, would have been content to fight for them and welcome them with joy; but the Radicals had no special organ for their views.

As in all movements of intense and vital interest, the danger to reform came from division. All were united in their final purpose, but as to methods and strategy the divisions of parties were many and violent. It was the same thing as in a restaurant of Polish students to which I was often invited. There was a long, low room, furnished only with benches and tables. At one end was a piano; at the other a counter where the student could buy excellent meals at all hours of the day and night for very small payment. Though the university had long been closed owing to the disturbances, the place was always crowded with young men and girls, living in perfect comradeship and much at their ease. One night, a young girl, with clear grey eyes, a demure little face, and pale hair tightly braided, was giving me a very satisfactory lecture in German upon the minute distinctions between all the Polish parties. I heard afterwards that in her zeal for knowledge, she had gained the necessary passport to St. Petersburg by going through the form of marriage with a student whom she had never seen since the ceremony. It is not an unusual device, and I have known girl-students who have even taken “the yellow ticket” as prostitutes in order to reach a university town.

In the midst of her disquisition, she suddenly burst into an attack upon two or three girls at another table who were suspected of betraying true comradeship by ordinary flirtation. “I suppose they think themselves rather pretty,” she said, “but neither logically nor psychologically do I understand their behaviour.” At that moment a few notes sounded on the piano, and to distract her wrath I suggested she should ask for some Polish music.

“Oh, I couldn’t speak to that end of the room,” she replied; “the other party has captured it, and the piano besides.”

“But you hold the kitchen end,” I remarked consolingly.

“I am sorry to say our possession is not exclusive,” she answered, with a look that was bloodthirsty in its conviction of righteousness. Then she took a shining revolver from her pocket, examined its action, said good-bye to her friends, and stalked through the enemy’s camp without a sign either of fear or pardon.

She was herself a Social Democrat of the most attractive though sternest type, and as such, she believed in international fraternity. But “the other party” were Polish Revolutionists, or Democratic Poles, or something just wrong, and they followed the old-fashioned faith of nationality; and so the room was split by an invisible but impassable barrier. To me it all seemed rather a pity, when I thought of the long years of conflict which must pass before they reached the separating point in their ideals, and how few would live to see a single item in their programme fulfilled. Yet I know that at the first note of the revolution, Social Democrats, Polish Revolutionists, Democratic Poles, flirtatious girls, and all would be ready to die together for Poland’s freedom. And so probably they will have to die.

It was the same throughout the length and breadth of Russia in those happy weeks. Divisions are the evidences of life, and Russia was seething with life like the world in the days of creation. But one thought exhilarated all young and happy minds—the thought of liberty. And if to a middle-aged man and a stranger in the country it was a joy then to be alive, to the young and to the Russian it must indeed have been very heaven.

Diary of Events