A SMALL book has lately been published in Russia which perhaps throws more light on the subject of the Russian Administration and the causes of the troubles through which Russia is at present going than any other work which has appeared during the last five years in Russia or elsewhere. This book is a volume of Memoirs by Prince Ourousov. Prince Ourousov took his degree in the Moscow University in 1885, and after being employed in the Zemstvo administration in the government of Kalouga he was appointed Vice-Governor of the province of Tambov in 1902; towards the end of May 1903, he suddenly, and, as far as he was concerned, unexpectedly, received a telegram from the Ministry of Home Affairs appointing him Governor of Bessarabia. The volume which has now appeared from his pen consists of a record of his administrative rule in Bessarabia, which lasted from 1903–4. It is a portion of a larger work covering a period from 1872–1906, the publication of which Prince Ourousov has put off to a later date.

Prince Ourousov writes in the preface that he has been led to publish this section of his Memoirs immediately by the rapid development of political life in Russia; he considers that nothing which can throw any light on the conditions of administrative life, the reform and transformation of which are the main object and task of the thinking population of Russia at this moment, should be concealed, and in publishing these recollections it is his object to give an accurate account, derived from first-hand knowledge, of those administrative proceedings with regard to which Prince Ourousov states there prevails a completely wrong impression, side by side with wild exaggerations. The interest and importance of the book are immense, and it is earnestly to be hoped that the book will speedily be translated into English, because it provides the exact kind of knowledge for which Englishmen are continually asking in regard to Russia.

There are two questions which Englishmen who are interested in Russian political life are continually asking: first, “What is it all about?” and, secondly, “Why are the Jews killed in Russia?” In connection with the first question I have heard Englishmen, after their first journey to Russia, ask questions such as these: “What do the Liberals want? Do they know themselves?” On the other hand, we have been flooded with books of all kinds by Englishmen, by Russians, and by Germans, who have obscured the Jewish and indeed every other question in their zeal to prove that the Central Government in Russia has for the last five years combined the qualities which a Babu journalist in India once attributed to Lord Cromer: “The oiliness of a Chadband and the malignity of a fiend.”

This book of Prince Ourousov’s throws a flood of light on both these questions. It shows, not by any enunciation of doctrinaire principles or political theories but by a record of facts, the causes of the evils of the present administrative system, and it points out (by fact, and not by theory) where reform is needed, why reform is needed, and how it can be effected. It also provides the reader with a clear idea of the Jewish question and its possible solution. Prince Ourousov was a member of the first Duma. The speech he made in a debate on the Jewish question not only made a great stir in Russia and in Europe, but was certainly the most statesmanlike utterance that has proceeded from the lips of a member of the Opposition since the struggle for constitutional reform opened in 1905. Prince Ourousov’s plain speaking on this occasion won for him the applause of the Liberals and the hatred of the reactionaries. It must also be borne in mind that Prince Ourousov was a member of Count Witte’s administration before the opening of the first Duma, which he left owing to his disgust at the proceedings of certain officials connected with the Minister of the Interior. He will not, therefore, be suspected of partiality towards the autocratic régime and its scaffolding of bureaucrats. It is, therefore, all the more remarkable to find in this book no trace of unfairness or exaggeration towards the representatives of the old régime. The book is fair, luminous, and honest, and here at last we have the truth about Russia unleavened by political bias, unvarnished by cheap sensationalism, and not distorted by doctrinaire principles and theory. Besides which the book is in itself, and on account of the facts it records, of surpassing interest and amusement to the ordinary reader.

When Prince Ourousov was appointed Governor of Bessarabia he says that he knew no more about that province than he did of New Zealand. The foreign newspapers had been full of the Jewish Pogrom which had occurred in Kishineff from 7th April to 9th April 1903. They had openly accused the Russian Government of having instigated the disorders, and a letter was published in an English newspaper, said to be written by Plehve, then Minister of the Interior, to the Governor of Bessarabia, von Raaben, containing clear hints not to interfere with the doings of the anti-Jewish rioters. I will quote Prince Ourousov’s appreciation of this letter later on. Before leaving for Kishineff Prince Ourousov was received by Plehve. The Minister’s final injunction to him, he says, was, word for word, the following: “I give you no advice and no directions. You are entirely independent. Act as you please, as long as the results are good. I will say only one final word: Let us have as few speeches as possible, and as little sentimental Hebrophilism.” These words, Prince Ourousov adds, proved Plehve’s perspicacity, since during his Administration he made several speeches, and he left Kishineff with the established reputation of being a Hebrophil.

When Prince Ourousov arrived in Kishineff he was met by his predecessor, General von Raaben. In mentioning him Prince Ourousov writes as follows: “I wish before all things in the clearest possible manner to refute the accusations made against Raaben of complicity in the Jewish Pogrom, and to explode the legend of the letter which he is said to have received on this subject from the Minister of the Interior. Apart from the fact that Plehve insisted on the peremptory dismissal of Raaben, it is improbable that the Minister would have relied in such a case on a man whose gentleness and straightness would have excluded all possibility of his executing such a cruel, diabolical plan. I do not mean to imply that I consider the Minister capable of having been the initiator of the Pogrom. On the other hand, I think that Plehve was too clever and too experienced to have recourse to such means in his struggle with the Jews, in spite of his hatred towards them. But if Plehve might consider that the Pogrom would have disagreeable consequences for the Government, Raaben was incapable, owing to his character and his qualities, of organising and executing a massacre. This is not only my own conviction, but it is shared by all his fellow-workers, and by the local representatives of the Jewish commune whose opinion is of special weight.”

Further on in the book Prince Ourousov deals with the question of the origin of the Kishineff Pogrom in 1903 in greater detail. In the Pogrom of April 1903, forty-two Jews were killed, and the survivors incurred material damage amounting to at least a million roubles (£100,000). What were its causes? Prince Ourousov deals first with the theory that it was directly initiated by the Minister of the Interior. He disbelieves in this theory for two reasons: first, that in the Department of the Secret Police, to which he had access before going to Kishineff, and in which he made a searching investigation in all that related to Kishineff, there was not a hint that the Administration was inclined to consider desirable any anti-Jewish riots whatever or even anti-Jewish demonstrations. Moreover, at this moment this Department was in charge of M. A. Lopouchin, who has become famous for having brought to light the anti-Jewish propaganda of certain police officials in the autumn of 1905, which led to Pogroms, a man who was, and is, well known for his straightness and his strong Liberal bias. Secondly, Prince Ourousov does not believe Plehve to have been capable of such gross thoughtlessness as to place proof of his complicity in the hands of a Governor whom he scarcely knew, and whom he did not trust. Raaben was, moreover, a gentleman; he paid little attention to his superiors, and lived on excellent terms with the Jews, towards whom he acted with great tolerance. Moreover, he was summarily dismissed on account of the Pogrom, and was not rehabilitated in the public service until after the death of Plehve.

Prince Ourousov then considers the theory that the Pogrom was a sudden and irrepressible outburst of long-suppressed fury, a payment of old scores, a movement of elemental force and anger against the Jewish race. He holds that this explanation is one-sided, untrue, and entirely artificial. “It is impossible to deny,” he writes, “that in the governments inhabited by the Jews, Jews will be more easily the objects of assault and robbery than any one else. And the chief causes of this are the special laws which develop among the population a special point of view with regard to the Jews, namely, that they are citizens without rights, and a dangerous element in the State. One can admit that in certain cases questions of race and religion cause the Jews to clash with the rest of the population ... there are also complaints of Jewish exploitation, although they far more often proceed from the outside observers of this exploitation than from among the people exploited. But all these reasons are not sufficient to cause a Pogrom; an immediate cause is necessary for the explosion of popular passions, and it has been impossible to discover that immediate cause; on the other hand, in Kishineff in 1903 certain phenomena were observed. The daily Press played a large part in preparing a suitable frame of mind for a Pogrom among the population, and the preponderant part was played by the local newspaper of Kroushevan (the notorious anti-Jewish agitator), and publications issued in St. Petersburg of similar colour. These newspapers were filled with accusations against the Jews, and with facts and comments calculated to stir up popular passion. The authority of Kroushevan, in the eyes of his readers, was to a certain extent strengthened by the open protection he received from the chief administrative Department dealing with the Press, the result of which made it impossible for the local administration to moderate the anti-Jewish ardour. (Prince Ourousov develops this point at length, pointing out that complaints against the violence of the local Press had no result. The agitators were looked upon by the Press authorities in St. Petersburg as patriots.) The action of the police in Kishineff, as probably in other places, where the Jewish population preponderated, gave rise to the view that anti-Jewish action was looked on with favour, and the conviction became widely spread among the ignorant masses that there was no penalty for hostile action against the Jews; so much so that the legend arose in Kishineff that the Emperor had authorised a three days’ Pogrom in Kishineff, and early on the morning of the third day of the disorders a crowd of peasants was stopped by a police officer; they had come from a neighbouring village in full consciousness of a duty to be performed: to beat the Jews, by order of the Emperor. I am especially anxious to underline this characteristic of the Kishineff Pogrom. The chief motive of the rioters was neither hatred nor revenge, but the fulfilment of such action which in the opinion of some coincided with the aims and desires of the Government, and in the opinion of others was even authorised, and finally in the eyes of the ignorant peasantry was the fulfilment of the Imperial Word. Therefore, in my opinion, it is impossible to absolve the Central Administration from moral responsibility in the Kishineff plunderings and murders. I consider our Government guilty on account of the patronage afforded to a narrow Nationalist idea, on account of its short-sighted and summary dealings towards the provinces inhabited by alien races, and on account of the fact that this policy fostered mutual hatred and distrust among the various nationalities; finally, because the central power encouraged these brutal phenomena, which disappear as soon as the Government openly declares that Pogroms are a crime for which the local administration will have to answer.”

Prince Ourousov concludes, therefore, that whereas the idea that Plehve had deliberately organised anti-Jewish riots is a legend, nevertheless his Government cannot be absolved from the suspicion that it exerted indirect influence on the riots through the action of minor anti-Jewish-minded officials who knew that their action would not meet with disapproval alone, and by its constant refusal to check the violence of the anti-Jewish Press. If one realises, therefore, that the Pogrom was not a natural and fortuitous occurrence, it is morally not difficult to say that it was effected “by order.” But the chief cause of the mischief which makes such riots possible is the existence of the special legislation to which the Jews are subjected in Russia. As long as one part of the population is legally and civilly inferior to another part, the legally superior portion will always, especially if it consists of uneducated peasants, think that it is acting patriotically in ill-treating the legally inferior portion. Moreover, the endless bother incurred by every small official, owing to the carrying out or the neglect of the innumerable preventive regulations respecting the Jews, is sufficient in itself to embitter the local officials against the Jews. I have selected this portion of Prince Ourousov’s book out of many other interesting things, and dwelt upon it at length, because the question is still vital and actual.

Anti-Jewish riots occurred in Odessa in August 1907. The violence of the anti-Jewish Press and the reluctance of the central authorities to keep it in check were as much features then as they were in 1903. When a newly appointed Governor-General declared in Odessa that he was not afraid of protecting the Jews because he considered them equal in the eyes of the law to other citizens, he was considered to have done an act of daring courage. Finally, it is plain not only from Prince Ourousov’s book, but also from the experience of all capable officials in Russia, that as soon as energetic measures are taken against anti-Jewish agitators the riots cease. Only the sad fact remains that, as Prince Ourousov points out, since 1903 there is not a high post in Russia which has not changed hands: but the unfortunate thing is that the changes have one and all been for the worse; for M. Stolypin, or whoever advises him in these matters, lacks even a particle of the quality which Napoleon possessed in the highest degree: an eye for men.⁠[9] The result is that excellent Governors (among them staunch Conservatives) have been dismissed on ridiculous pretexts, and have in some cases been replaced by unamiable and incompetent blunderers.