Читать книгу Behind the Veil at the Russian Court - Catherine Radziwill - Страница 10

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When, after several years of residence abroad, I returned to St. Petersburg, early in March, 1876, I found that during my long absence a considerable change had taken place in Society. For one thing, people talked more and discussed more freely upon subjects which had been merely whispered before I had left the banks of the Neva. They had got into that habit during the period when the projected and half-accomplished reforms which had heralded the new reign had been the subject not only of conversations, but also of discussion, an unknown thing at the time of the Emperor Nicholas. The Government itself had invited criticism by appealing to the country and asking it to express its opinions by the voice of the zemstvos, or local county councils in every Government.

This establishment of the zemstvos had been received with a general joy. Young men belonging to the best families of the Empire had expressed not only their willingness but even their earnest desire to be appointed members of these assemblies, in the hope that they would thus be allowed to participate in the administration of the country. For a short time everything had gone off brilliantly, just as the introduction of the juges de paix, or mirovoy soudias, as they are called in Russian, gave universal satisfaction. However, very soon the Administration became alarmed at the independence showed by these zemstvos, and began to try to eliminate the independent members, who worked not from necessity, but from conviction that by doing so they were making themselves useful to the country in general. Governors of the different provinces, who in Russia are always taken out of the class of the regular functionaries, or Tchinownikis, as one calls them, were given secret instructions, which they but too gladly followed, of watching the deliberations of the zemstvos and of hindering any attempt made by these assemblies to bring about local self-government, which was particularly dreaded in Court circles, where the system of centralisation of the Government in the hands of the few is to this present day strongly supported and established. But the upshot of it all was that these men—who in the enthusiasm of the first moment had eagerly embraced the opportunities which they imagined had been given to them to serve their country otherwise than by wearing a uniform—returned to St. Petersburg, and began to relate all that they had seen or heard, and thus their talk accustomed the public to hear discussion on questions that had slumbered before. Then the Universities began to move, and the Liberal papers abroad controlled by the Russian political refugees—who by an admirable feeling of patriotism had kept silent in order to allow the Emperor to have a free field for his projected reforms—began to get tired of waiting for a change that never came, though it had been pompously announced; and they once more assumed the task of enlightening the public as to what in their opinion ought to be done. In a word, it was felt that the new system had failed, because no one had been found to carry on loyally the experiment which might have led to something, had it only been tried long enough.

One satisfactory result accrued, however—that of accustoming people to talk and to discuss, and to give up the sleepiness under which Russia had suffered for the previous twenty-five years, although people who were experienced in the political conditions of other countries were soon aware of a certain incoherence of thought and aim in the discussions, which resulted more often than not in confusion and even in absurdities. But one fact was evident, and that was that conversation was no longer confined to Society gossip, but turned on what was being done, or would be done, by the Government.

This did not quite please the Emperor. He did not like to know that his actions were discussed. He could not well say so, but he made his Ministers feel that such was the case, and they, desirous of meeting with his approbation, attempted to bring about a return to the old order of things, and when they found this was no easy task, they looked about to see whether something else could not be found to engross public opinion and form the subject of its conversations.

It is to this cause, and to this alone, that the war with Turkey, which broke out in 1877, can be attributed. It was engaged upon against the wishes of the Sovereign and the desires of the country, simply because an outlet had to be found for the ebullitions of public opinion, weary of waiting for an indefinite something which did not materialise, something which all wanted, but which no one could explain beyond saying that “it had to come.” What was implied by this expression was precisely what nobody knew.

Just at this moment, by ill chance, broke out the insurrection in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Immediately a campaign, on purely religious lines, was begun in Russia against the Turks. The press began saying that Russia had a mission to perform in the Balkans, that it was her duty to help the Orthodox subjects of the Sultan, persecuted in their faith as well as in their nationality. The Slavophil party was started, and God alone knows the harm that it has done to the country.

At first it enjoyed high and even august protection in St. Petersburg. The Empress Marie Alexandrovna, very pious, almost inclined to fanaticism, put herself unofficially at the head of the movement, with which it soon became known that she was thoroughly in sympathy, and it was her lady-in-waiting and intimate friend, the Countess Antoinette Bloudoff, who, with an energy worthy of a better cause, came forward to lend the weight of her name and of her position to the promoters of the liberation of the Slavs from the Turkish yoke.

I must digress for a moment to refer more particularly to the Countess Bloudoff. She was a most remarkable woman. Many statesmen might have envied, and few of them have possessed, the clarity of her often mistaken view as to political events and their consequences. She was the daughter of one of the leading members of the Government during the reign of the Emperor Nicholas I., Count Dmitry Andrieievitch Bloudoff, for many years Procurator of the Holy Synod, and invested with the entire confidence of the monarch, who often used to say: “Bloudoff is the only man who will always do what I wish, in the way I want it done.” He was a man of strong principles, of stronger convictions; often passionate, sometimes unjust, but never mean, never above owning himself to be in the wrong when it was proved to him to be the case, and with a loyalty such as is no longer met with. He was possessed of independence, even with his Sovereign, and was known to have opposed Nicholas on grave questions where he thought him to be wanting either in prudence or in justice. He had plenty of adversaries and but few enemies, which latter he disdained. He died as he had lived, a faithful servant of the Crown, and his daughter inherited the favour which he had enjoyed. She was very much like him in character and even in appearance. Beauty she had none, yet she did not lack charm; while intelligence she possessed in no small degree. She was the only great lady who held a salon, such as was understood by the term in France under the old regime, and that salon was at one time of immense importance. It was there that the idea of sending volunteers to Servia was first broached, and it was she who assured these volunteers that the Emperor would shut his eyes to their departure. It was she who kept the standard of public opinion at a high level; she who persuaded some leading men in Moscow, such as Ivan Aksakoff, to organise these volunteers, and to begin in his paper a campaign in favour of the Orthodox brothers of Holy Russia, done to death by murderous Bashi Bazouks.

Altogether the Countess Antoinette was an enthusiast, an exalted patriot according to old Russian ideas, when nationality and religion meant the same thing. Still her zeal outran her discretion upon many occasions, and she came later on—after the failure of those hopes which she had been the first to raise and the last to give up—to regret the energy which she had expended in trying to realise a programme which was not in accord either with the needs or the desires of her country, and which only brought upon it disaster, both moral and material. She was compelled, much against her wishes, to be convinced that neither Bulgarians, nor Serbs, nor Greeks were worthy of interest; that the majority of them—at that epoch, at least—were grabbing, money-loving, unscrupulous people, full of ingratitude, who never for one single moment thought of admitting Russian influence, which they rejected just as much as they had opposed Turkish rule.

But at the time to which I am referring the Countess Antoinette was in the enthusiastic period of her life and of her political activities. It was to her one went to receive the latest news as to the development of Eastern affairs. She kept up an active correspondence with General Ignatieff, at that time Russian Ambassador in Constantinople; sharing alike his ambitions and his desires to see the Crescent replaced by the Cross on the minarets of St. Sophia. Continually she made reports to the Empress as to what she had heard, and used to explain to that Sovereign that it was her duty to influence her husband not to reject the great mission given to Russia—that of driving back to the confines of Asia Minor the Turk who had dared to raise his tents in the city founded by Constantine the Great and destined by him to remain the bulwark of the Christian faith in the East.

Alas, alas, for all these dreams! Poor Countess Bloudoff survived them, and when she ended her days, long after all of them had been forgotten, she might well have felt all the bitterness of a life’s disappointment. But this was not the case—at least outwardly. She was far too clever not to admit her defeat, but she maintained that her failure had been due to circumstances only, and that one day Russia would fulfil the mission which she had been given by the Almighty. She remained ever the same bright, clever woman, always deeply interested in politics, in literature, in art, even in current gossip, though in a most kindly way. For she was indeed kind—that small, short woman with the piercing eyes and the quick flash of sympathy in them, which made them glisten every time that she was being told something that interested her. Easy to move, she never refused a service, and at the time when her very name was a power she tried always to do good, to bring to the notice of her Imperial mistress every case in which the latter could help, either by a word spoken in season or by money given just when and where it was needed. Towards the end of her life she grew very infirm, and could hardly leave her arm-chair; but she loved seeing people, though her rooms were no longer thronged as during the time when she was all-powerful. She had kept a small circle of old friends, who came to see her almost daily, and through them she remained in touch with that social world in which she had been a leader.

Countess Bloudoff had one bête noire, and that was the famous Mme. Olga Novikoff. Poor “O.K.” never guessed the antipathy which she inspired, and always imagined that her activity in favour of the Slav cause, and her influence over Mr. Gladstone, were highly appreciated by the Countess Antoinette; but the latter had too keen a sense of humour not to feel that Mme. Novikoff was making herself ridiculous, and, what was worse, was involving in that ridicule her country itself. “Je déteste ces ambassadeurs volontaires en jupon,” she used to say, and she was not far wrong. The rôle played by the too celebrated Princess Lieven needs a very great lady, and one with a very large fortune or a great position, not to give rise to calumny and to ironical smiles and comments, and “O.K.” had none of these advantages. It is still a question whether the Princess Lieven could to-day have made for herself a position such as the one she enjoyed in London and in Paris. Society was different then, and fewer outsiders had entered its fold; people well born, and belonging to the upper ten thousand, could still pretend to influence, simply by reason of their being within that charmed circle. Now that classes are mixed, a person like Mme. Novikoff, who is merely a gentlewoman, runs a great risk of being considered in the light of a simple journalist in need of copy, and such only wield that measured influence which they delude themselves into believing they possess. Countess Antoinette knew all this well, and she disliked intensely women of the style of her famous compatriot, about whom she once made the most bitter remark I ever heard her utter against anyone: “Cette femme là fait de la politique,” she said, “comme une saltimbanque ses tours de passe passe.”

These reminiscences have caused me to diverge far from the subject of this chapter. What I wanted to say was that the war of 1877-8 was the natural result of the activity which the ill-executed reforms of Alexander II. had awakened in the country; an activity which a certain circle of St. Petersburg Society, headed by the Countess Bloudoff and the little coterie of the Empress Marie Alexandrovna—in which her confessor, Father Bajanov, was a leading figure—helped to divert from the channel towards which it had been directed: that of the internal administration of the country. The Government, that never for one single instant admitted the possibility of defeat, secretly encouraged this diversion, and, thanks to all these circumstances, the Emperor, who was the only person who sincerely wished that peace might not be disturbed, found himself drawn into a war the consequences of which were to be the disastrous Treaty of Berlin, the extraordinary development of Nihilism, and finally his own assassination. Dark days were about to dawn for Russia, and when again I left St. Petersburg I was far from anticipating the changes that its Society would experience between the day of my departure and that of my return to the capital, when everything was different and another Sovereign upon the Throne.