THE fundamental error underlying the main theories of people who write with indignation on the massacres of Jews in Russia seems to me to contain in itself everything which makes it difficult for Englishmen to understand current events in Russia. The error is that the Russian Government, which such writers would be the first to proclaim incompetent, imbecile, stupid, ineffectual, purposeless, without a policy, shifting, distracted, fickle, wavering, unstable, weak, corrupt, insolvent, dislocated, tottering, and rotten to the core, should at the same time be so competent, so united, so perfect a machine, so drastically single-minded, so unfaltering in design, and so masterly in execution that one man in St. Petersburg can by pressing a button have his anti-Semitic will carried out in the smallest detail in any village of the immense Russian Empire. The great error is to think that attacks on Jews or anything else which has occurred in Russia during the last three years has been the result of one policy conceived by one master mind and executed by well-trained and perfectly organised instruments responding directly to that one mind. The truth is that there has been no policy in Russia during the last few years, but an ever-shifting mass of contradictory currents. During the last three years[7] it can be said that there has been no Government at all; nothing but the anarchy resulting from civil war, a civil war which is not fought in pitched battles—as that which was waged in England between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads—but carried on in the ordinary course of everyday life by what are termed peaceful citizens of the community, during their everyday avocations, by every means at their disposal. The anarchy resulting from such a state of things is rendered doubly anarchial because one of the sides in the conflict is recruited in some degree from the very officials and public servants on whose service the proper administration of the State depends.
[7] 1904–7.
But why, it will be asked, are the Jews killed? First of all, at the root of the matter, there is the following cause: In a country which is as politically unripe and undeveloped as other European countries were in the sixteenth century, in a country which is at the present moment engaged in fighting for its Magna Charta, you are certain to find the phenomena which accompanied similar conditions and processes in other countries. And one of the phenomena inseparable from political immaturity, in a country where the desire for reform is struggling to get the upper hand, is a prejudice against Jews and a desire to render them responsible for the evils and disorders which are the natural result of all processes of change. It was so in England in the days of King John. It was so in France at the beginning of the French Revolution. With the exception of the peasants, who follow their own line, the whole of Russia, as well as the whole of the administration, is a blend like pepper and salt of a numerically large mass of people without any political knowledge and a strong Liberal enlightened but inexperienced faction. In the administration, at all events, the Liberal element is in the minority, since it has been drilled during ages by the old régime to a system of prejudice and reaction. The conflict which is being fought at the present moment between the obscurantist majority and the enlightened minority (beneath which the proletariat seethes independently, and from which the peasants hold aloof in the special groove of their own particular interests) is the cause of the present state of anarchy. The one consoling element in the situation is that revolutions have always been carried out by influential or energetic minorities who have finally rallied the people round them. In the obscurantist element all political prejudices have strong roots. One of the strongest of these prejudices is the anti-Semite prejudice, which all Europe shared in the sixteenth century, deeds of violence being the result, and which many countries still share at the present day. Only in such countries now (as in Hungary, for instance, where the natural anti-Semitism is stronger than it is in Russia) the Government is strong enough to quell it and to prevent its finding its natural expression.
In Russia there is no government. In Russia there is civil war. The civil war is being carried on between two parties, one which desires reform and one which does not; one which is nationalistic, and one which is not. The Jews form one of the most effective and capable factors of the former. Therefore it is scarcely surprising that the Nationalists should attribute the whole evil to the Jews. They wage war with equal violence against all their opponents, all the “intellectuals,” only it is simpler to label the whole side as consisting of Jews, and say that the whole revolution and the whole desire for reform is the work of the Jews. When these people therefore strike a blow, the first people whom they attack are the Jews. That is one reason why the Jews are killed.
The Government depends for its existence, as I have already said, on a multitude of instruments steeped in prejudice and possessing no political knowledge or experience; one fact is obvious to these people, namely, that they are being violently attacked by a formidable opponent, in which they know there is a considerable Jewish element. When they see on the other hand their own partisans attack these enemies, and in attacking them massacre the Jews, it is scarcely likely that they will interfere to prevent the massacre of the people whom they rightly regard as playing the most prominent part in blowing them up. The attitude of the Central Government can only have an indirect influence, since it is plain, at the present moment, that there is not a Central Government strong enough to impose its will on its subordinates. If the Government were capable and strong, it could, of course, prevent the Jewish massacres, but if the Government were capable and strong there would be no revolution, and probably also no massacres to prevent. Another point lies in the fact that anti-Semitism in Russia is more artificial than in other countries. The greatest anti-Semites are men who have probably never seen a Jew in their lives. In the middle-classes in Russia the Jews assimilate themselves rapidly to the rest of the population. Among the peasants there are no Jews in the north and centre of Russia at all, and it is where they do not exist that the prejudice against them is strongest. In a word, therefore, anti-Semitism in Russia is the reflection of the present politically uncultivated condition of a great mass of people who are concerned in the administration of the country. The massacres are the result not of any individuals, but of the general state of anarchy and civil war that exists at present in Russia.
Here is a striking example of the powerlessness of individuals in the matter. When Count Witte took office it is obvious by his acts that he tried to come to terms with all parties. He wished to restore order and to obtain a foreign loan. It would therefore be childish to suppose that he can have desired his administration to start off with a series of Pogroms, or that he would not have prevented it, had it been in his power.
But now we come to the question of the “Power” behind the throne which is supposed to have organised these massacres. That such a power or powers existed, apart from the Government, working against it obscurely, is a fact. In October 1905 this power consisted, in practice, of a police officer of inferior rank who carried on a work of printing Anti-Jewish propaganda, in which Count Witte was violently abused without the knowledge of his superiors or his colleagues. It is also a fact that they encouraged anti-Jewish riots and attempted to organise them by distributing printed proclamations. But the existence of these powers would not have been sufficient in themselves to cause the massacres. Any one who was travelling in Russia at that moment, as I was, and who is impartial in the matter, will testify to the fact that no organisation was necessary. There existed a spontaneous counter-revolution against the “strikers,” as all the “intellectuals,” and not only the Jews, were then called. That the officials and the police sympathised with this counter-revolution is not surprising, since they represent the thing against which the revolution was being made. Neither General Trepoff nor any one else could, however much he had wished, have created this sporadic counter-revolution, nor could any individual in the central administration have prevented it. The counter-revolution was the logical sequence and the indispensable attendant factor of the revolution. Only the officials who did sympathise with this counter-revolution whenever massacres occurred, took no steps to prevent them, knowing that their inactivity would be approved, even if it was not actually encouraged and directly instigated by the Dark Powers behind or alongside of the Government, and knowing also that the Government itself would be powerless to punish them. They felt they were on the Right side and that, whoever might be blamed, they would be immune.
With regard to the Jewish massacres, which took place in the south-west of Russia before the revolutionary movement, there is more to be said. The anti-Jewish riots there are mainly the result of the special legislation to which the Jews are subjected. But I will discuss this matter in the next chapter.