Читать книгу Behind the Veil at the Russian Court - Catherine Radziwill - Страница 8

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When Alexander II. ascended the Throne, it was known—and, what is more, it was felt—that by the force of circumstances alone his reign was bound to be one of serious reforms. It was known also both at home and abroad that these reforms would be strenuously opposed by all his father’s friends, Ministers, and advisers. People wondered whether the young Sovereign would prove to have sufficient energy to change an order of things which it was to the interests of many old servants of the Imperial regime to retain as they were. Public opinion, however, was soon enlightened as to the intentions of the Emperor, because when he received deputations of the nobility, on the occasion of his Coronation, he publicly declared to them his intention to grant liberation to the serfs. His announcement caused a great sensation, but as time went on and the great reform, though discussed everywhere, was delayed, it was thought that the Government and Alexander himself feared the consequences of such a revolutionary measure. The problems which it raised were of the most serious character and threatened to shake the very foundations of the empire. The matter was especially complicated in its agrarian aspect, for the very right of property, as it had hitherto been understood in Russia, was jeopardised. One cannot wonder, therefore, that even a Liberal monarch hesitated before making the fateful stroke of his pen that would irrevocably settle the matter.

As is usual in Russia, a committee was appointed to study the question, and, thanks to the efforts of Prince Gortschakov, who was one of his strongest supporters, Nicholas Milioutine was appointed, under General Lanskoi, to bring into order the different propositions submitted to the committee; he was to endeavour to evolve a scheme that would be acceptable both to the enthusiastic supporters and the indignant opponents of the reform, the principle of which, nevertheless, the latter felt could not be avoided any longer.

It is not within the limits of this book to deal with the individuality of Milioutine, nor of the influence exercised by him during the eventful years which followed the accession of Alexander II. to the Throne. He was a most remarkable man, both as regards intellect and character, but he was one of the most disliked personages in Russia. By a strange stroke of destiny, after having borne the reputation of being an extreme Radical, and being under suspicion of the Emperor himself, who for a long time refused to employ him, Milioutine, thanks to the protection of the Grand Duchess Hélène and of Prince Gortschakov, found himself called to collaborate with the Sovereign in the most important act of his reign. Later on, as soon as the reform over which they had both worked had become an accomplished fact, Milioutine fell once more under his Sovereign’s displeasure and was rudely dismissed before he had been able to show what he could do towards regulating the machine which he had set in motion.

The dismissal of Milioutine was typical of Alexander II. and of the indecision which was one of the defects in his character. He never had the patience nor the necessary endurance to wait for the natural development of events and for the consequences of his actions; he considered that they were bound to be successful, simply because he wished them to be so. His was a nature that expected praise and gratitude not only from individuals but from nations. He had nursed big dreams of glory, and would have been perfectly happy had the enthusiasm with which he was greeted by his subjects on that eventful day of February 19th, 1861, lasted for ever. That it did not do so made him angry, all forgetful of the fact that the brightest day is sometimes followed by the blackest night.

Alexander, indeed, had a great deal of childishness in his character. As a child breaks his playthings, so he would treat people who had ceased to please him; and this fatal trait of character, which so often made him withdraw to-day what he had given yesterday, was one of the many causes that shattered the popularity which at one time seemed so deep and lasting.

No one who was in St. Petersburg at the time of the emancipation of the serfs will ever forget the morning of that great day in February, 1861. The excitement in the capital was intense. Up to the last moment people had doubted whether the Sovereign would have the courage to put his name to the measure. Even the most Liberal among the upper classes, those who for a long time had wished for the day when slavery would be abolished, were fearful of the manner of its accomplishment. It must not be supposed that the old Russian nobility were entirely against the emancipation. What they objected to was the lines upon which the Emperor wanted it to be brought about, and the forced expropriation of what belonged to the landlords in order to give it to the peasants. Those who knew these peasants well felt how very dangerous it was to imbue these ignorant people with the idea that the Sovereign could take from his nobles lands to give to the peasants. Events have proved that these adversaries of the great reform were right; it was this fatal mistake that spoiled the great work which, conducted differently, would have immortalised Alexander II. not only as a humane, but also as a wise Sovereign.

All this was discussed on the eve of that February 19th, and everybody knew that frantic efforts were being made on both sides to delay or to hasten the important decision. It was said that some of the promoters of the projected reform, in order to break down the last hesitations of the Sovereign, had tried to frighten him with the threat of an insurrection of the masses if it was not promulgated. A curious note from the Grand Duchess Hélène to Milioutine shows us the apprehensions felt in high quarters as to what might follow a deception of the hopes raised among the peasant class.

“I think it right to warn you that my servants have told me that if there was nothing for the 19th, the tchern (populace) would come before the Palace and ask for a solution. I think one ought to pay some attention to that piece of gossip, because at the present moment a demonstration would be fatal for our hopes.”

As a matter of fact, no demonstration was ever planned, or could have taken place in view of the precautions taken by the police; but this apprehension of the Grand Duchess was typical of the nervous excitement among the upper classes at the time.

The Emperor, however, had made up his mind, though it seems that at the very last moment some kind of fear had taken hold of him. On February 18th, the anniversary of his father’s death, he had driven to the fortress and for a long time prayed at his father’s tomb. Did he remember then the words spoken by the dying Nicholas when, with that sense of prophecy given to people at their last hour, he had told his son that if he brought about all the Liberal measures of which he was dreaming he would not die in his bed? On his return to the Winter Palace, however, Alexander II. seemed unusually grave and silent.

Whether he slept or not no one knows, and the next morning was brought to him the famous manifesto composed by the Metropolitan of Moscow, the venerable Philaret, which began with the words, “Make the sign of the Cross, thou Russian people.” When Count Lanskoi, then Minister of the Interior, handed the momentous document to the Emperor, he took it from him with hands that trembled in spite of his efforts to remain calm, and asked to be left alone for a few moments.

What passed in his mind during those minutes? Did he see, as in a dream, the past and his father’s wishes and his father’s hopes, and the future with its hideous end, the day when, maimed and bleeding, he would be brought back to that same room to die, struck by one of those whom his hand was going to free? He never told anyone the struggles of his soul on that day, and when he recalled Lanskoi there was no sign of emotion on his face. He signed the manifesto with a firm hand, and it was at once made public.

A few hours later Alexander II. left the Winter Palace in a victoria, alone and without escort. The square in front of the old building was crowded with people, and when the Sovereign appeared, such a cry of greeting arose as Russia had never heard until that day. The enthusiasm cannot be described, people surrounded the Imperial carriage and pressed round their liberator, women sobbed and children wept, and even among the onlookers emotion was intense. Many had come there attracted by mere curiosity to witness the scene, many who deplored the occasion that had given rise to it, and even they were seized with the general emotion. One lady alone kept cool. It was the old Countess Koutaissow, whose sister had been the mistress of Paul I., who was the representative of the old Conservative element in St. Petersburg society, and bitterly opposed to the reforms of the new reign. When asked whether she had not felt affected by the general enthusiasm she replied, quietly: “No; I only rejoiced that I am too old to see the masses that have just been emancipated rise against their Sovereign and his successors, and I mourned the fate of my children who will see the consequences of to-day’s folly.”

None of the reforms which marked the reign of Alexander II. was completed, but it is certain that, notwithstanding their faults, they signalled the dawn of a new era in which it was no longer possible to step back; but they brought neither peace to the country nor glory to the Sovereign, who had believed, in his ignorance of men and things, that they would ensure him a place among the rulers of his country next to that of the Great Peter. But Peter had a will of his own, and Alexander II. had merely fancies.

It cannot be denied, however, that at the beginning of his reign he was surrounded by clever men and by gentlemen, which is more than can be said of his two successors. La noblesse, to use the old French word, had still something to say, and it is doubtful whether Alexander would have accomplished what he did had he not been helped by a section of that much maligned class of society.

Foremost among his Ministers was the brother of Milioutine, to whose efforts the emancipation of the serfs owed so much, General Dmitry Alexieievitch Milioutine, who for more than twenty years held the portfolio of War Minister. To his efforts was due the reorganisation of the Army, as well as the introduction of compulsory military service, another of the measures that raised a storm of indignation throughout the whole country. Milioutine was perhaps the most remarkable personality in the group of men who thought to immortalise themselves together with the Sovereign whom they served. He was a small, quiet individual, with sad, grey eyes, and with an iron will beneath his frail appearance. He was the only one among Alexander II.’s advisers that came to power with a definite plan, from which, in all justice it must be said, he was never known to swerve aside. He had at heart the welfare not only of his country but also of the soldier whose fate lay in his hands. He tried to ameliorate that fate, and to him must be ascribed the abolition of corporal punishment in the Army and a whole list of measures which had for their purpose the training and education of the soldier. Military schools were one of his principal cares; he wanted to establish a regular system of training not only for officers, but for the non-commissioned officers, who in his opinion were the pillars of a proper organisation of the Army. He was an indefatigable worker, who entered into every detail, and who never neglected the most insignificant points. Had he been ably seconded, there is no doubt that the beginnings of the war of 1877 would not have been so disastrous as they were, but the Grand Duke Nicholas was his enemy, and did all that he could to counteract the measures adopted by the Minister, who often had to do, in obedience to the Emperor’s personal orders, what he secretly disapproved.

Milioutine was not liked. All the old generals who had fought during the previous reign reproached him for what they called his “revolutionary ideas,” and the younger generation, who through his reforms found itself burthened with new and unpleasant duties, was vigorously opposed to him. The old warrior, however, paid no attention to the outcry raised, and allowed the personal attacks of which he was made the subject to pass unnoticed. He never tried to revenge himself on his foes; never made use of the power which he wielded to harm anyone, and always listened to criticism, being of opinion that one can always learn something from it. He was hated by the Heir to the Throne, and when Alexander III. succeeded his father in the tragic circumstances which everybody knows, it was felt that Milioutine’s days as Minister were numbered. He knew it himself, and had the situation been less grave he would at once have offered his resignation. A few short months, however, saw it become an accomplished fact, when the Liberal Cabinet, headed by Count Loris Melikoff, of which he was a member, had to retire before the autocratic programme which M. Pobedonostseff had induced the young Emperor to adopt.

Milioutine never returned to St. Petersburg after that day. He retired to the Crimea, where he possessed a villa, and never more turned his attention towards public affairs, preserving a dignified silence both as to his wrongs and to his political activity in the past. The present Sovereign made him a Count, and later on conferred upon him the dignity of Field-Marshal. When the Count was in the Crimea, Nicholas II. never forgot to visit the old veteran, living so quietly amongst his roses and the many flowers of his garden. There he died at the beginning of 1912, two days after his wife, at the advanced age of ninety-four, having kept unimpaired to the last his brilliant qualities and his remarkable intelligence. Few statesmen have had the dignity of Count Milioutine; few have known better how to behave when in power, and to live when out of it.

Of a different type from the General was Count Panine, who at the time of the emancipation of the serfs held the portfolio of Justice. He was a grand seigneur in the fullest sense of the term, un homme d’autrefois immutable in his principles, and who, when he saw he could no longer please his Sovereign, retired rather, as he himself said, “than bow his grey head before the idol of progress.” Panine was the embodiment of that type of Russian functionary that will not admit a change of regime, and that look upon every reform as a danger. He was thoroughly retrogressive in all his opinions, and Liberalism or Liberty meant for him merely Revolution. He firmly believed that every concession made to the spirit of modern times was a danger to the Throne, and he was perhaps the only man who had the courage to tell Alexander II. so, and to retire from power rather than lend his hand to what he considered to be the degradation of that system of autocracy which he had defended during the whole of his long life.

By a strange freak of destiny, and one of those contrasts one only meets with in Russia, his only son was one of the first to adopt the new ideas of Liberalism. Together with some of his University comrades, he was arrested in 1861 under an accusation of Nihilism. Released on account of his father’s services, Vladimir Panine married a charming woman, Mademoiselle Maltseff, and imbued her with his own revolutionary opinions. When he died quite young, leaving an only daughter, who found herself the sole heiress of the enormous fortune of the old Count Panine, the widow of the latter implored the Emperor to take the child away from her mother and to have her confided to her own care. In spite of the tears of the young Countess Panine, her daughter was taken forcibly away from her and placed in the institute for girls at Smolna, whence she was allowed to go out only to visit her grandmother. The relatives of the heiress tried to instil into her entirely different ideas from those of her father and mother. When out of sheer isolation the Countess Vladimir Panine married a young doctor named Petrounkevitch, whose Liberal opinions were in accordance with her own, everything possible was done to compromise both, and to effect thus the complete separation of little Sophie Panine from her mother. The latter, with her second husband, was forbidden to visit the capital, and they settled in Odessa. Meanwhile the heiress grew up, and, as so often happens in such cases, retained in the depths of her heart a perfect adoration for her mother and a thorough dislike for her father’s sisters, who were among those who had tried most to isolate her from everything that was not in accordance with the principles in which they wanted her to be brought up. At length the child who had been the object of all this strife was married at seventeen to a very rich man, not, perhaps, her equal by birth, but whose financial position put him above the suspicion of having wanted her for her money. After a few years the couple were divorced, and the Countess Sophie Panine, by special permission of the Emperor, was allowed to resume her maiden name. She still lives in St. Petersburg, entirely devoted to good works; the revenues of her immense fortune are consecrated to the relief of poor students and to the building of cheap kitchens and night refuges. During the troubled times of 1905 it was rumoured that the Countess Sophie Panine was seriously compromised; and it was even said that she had been arrested. This proved to be incorrect, but it is evident that, in spite of the efforts made to imbue her with strict Conservative principles, the granddaughter of the most autocratic Minister of Alexander II. is in open sympathy with the very ideas against which he fought during the whole of his long life.

Prince Lieven and M. Valouieff were also remarkable personalities of the time of which I am writing. The former fell into terrible disgrace under Alexander III., and was ordered to leave St. Petersburg. This event caused a great scandal at the time, for the Prince and Princess were both prominent in society. For the Princess the blow was a terrible one, and she did not scruple openly to attack the new Sovereign until it was made evident to her that she had better refrain.

M.—afterwards Count—Valouieff and M. Abaza had a better fate. The first of these gentlemen, who for a long time had held the portfolio of Home Affairs, exchanged it for that of the Imperial Domains, and though he lost his influence he retained his position. He had the common sense not to try to go against the tide, and to give up of his own accord the power which otherwise would have been snatched from him. He was a pleasant, quiet man, and generally liked.

M. Abaza for some time was a very considerable personage in St. Petersburg society. He was one of the intimate friends of the Grand Duchess Hélène and of Baroness Editha Rhaden, and it was their influence that brought him before the notice of Alexander II. He was supposed to be a great authority on all financial matters, and twice had the portfolio of that department entrusted to his care. He was one of those who had submitted to the influence of the Princess Dolgorouky; and when she became the Sovereign’s morganatic wife and received the title of Princess Yourievsky, Abaza tried to induce her to persuade the Emperor of the necessity of granting a Constitution to the nation. Ryssakoff’s bomb put an end to those dreams in the most shocking and unexpected manner. With the death of Alexander II. the duties of his Ministers came to an end. His successor never forgave M. Abaza, not only his Liberal principles, but also his friendship with the Princess Yourievsky; and though he continued to be a member of the Council of State, and presided over many commissions, though he was granted orders and dignities, and even often consulted in grave matters of State, yet the political career of M. Abaza was practically ended on that eventful March 1st, 1881. When he died, many years later, leaving an enormous fortune, the event was noticed by only the usual obituary in the newspapers, and a remark made by Alexander III., who, having been told that the Princess Ouroussoff, daughter and heiress of the deceased statesman, inherited seven millions, said, “Only that! I thought he had stolen much more!”