The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎643r] (176/239)

PEACE AND INTERNAL POLITICS I A LETTER FROM RUSSIA. 145
month fifteen of these Unions have federated in an all-Russian
League of Leagues, with headquarters at Moscow r , so that the
Liberals have a representative organisation, directed by a single
Committee, and inspired by a single aim. The Soyuzi, indeed,
as their enemies declare mockingly, have hitherto done nothing
but talk. But talk is the essence of all Constitutionalist move
ments; and it was not the Unions, but their indiscreet foreign
friends, w T ho exalted their meetings into “Russian Parliaments,’’
and otherwise cast the discredit which comes from exaggeration
upon a serious and significant movement. More weighty is the
accusation that the Unions, without coming to an agreement upon
a plan of campaign, have spent their time refining upon minute
questions of politics and economics. The leaders of the move
ment declare, however, with justice that before a programme can
be carried out it must be adopted. It is admitted that both the
Zemstvo and the professional-class Progressives have shown an
acquaintance with the problems involved in Constitutionalism
and with the nature of Russia’s vital needs, which has confounded
their enemies, and effaced for ever Dostoyevsky’s much-quoted
reproach that “ Russian Liberalism slides past realities, never
getting near or participating in them, but only denying and titter-
ing.”
The extent of the pressure which Liberalism, now united, will
bring to bear upon the Autocracy is best measured by the attitude
of the dwindling party of retrogrades. For the first time in
Russian history they have had to organise. At Moscow, the
focus of all, has been formed a Soyuz “of Russians of all classes
and callings who profess the imperishable faith that the Ptoly
Church, an Autocratic Tsar, and the Russian people in inseparable
union constitute great and mighty Russia.” The function of this
Union, the leading spirits in which are the Archimandrite Anas-
tasius, Count Scheremetieff, Prince P. N. Troubetskoi, and the
Slavophile M. Khomiakoff, is to “ obey the Tsar’s will ”—which
nobody knows; and to ‘ ‘ oppose by all legal means tendencies
striving to impose on Russia forms of government alien to her.”
It is worth noting that the Moscow Party, now clamouring
against the innovation of alien forms of government, has for
nearly half-a-century been lamenting that Russia, ever since
Peter the Great, has been governed by systems alien to the
mass of the people. Behind the “Union of Russians” rages
and foams a fraction of the Press, led by the Moscow Viedomosti,
which sees in the Tsushima catastrophe punishment of
Heaven for the neglect to establish “ an all-embracing, com
plete, ruthlessly-severe dictatorship, to w T hich all must submit,
before which all must be silent, before which must prostrate
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