The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎643v] (177/239)

146 PEACE AND INTERNAL POLITICS : A LETTER FROM RUSSIA.
themselves the courts and every branch of administration
from top to bottom—not to mention those elements of rottenness :
Poles and Suedo-Finns, Armenians and Jews, false Zemstvo-
workers and false-intelligents, who defile Moscow with their
trickery. . . . We must exterminate without delay the gang of
political hooligan-traitors who are demoralising our country.”
Such being the temper of the educated adherents of Autocracy,
it is not surprising to find little restraint among their lower-class
allies, and, in fact, all over south and south-west Russia the
“ hooligans ” (the word is now more Russian than English) and
the ‘‘black hundred” are at work, circulating incendiary pam
phlets, bludgeoning to death or mutilation students, Jews, and
anyone cursed with what they choose to consider an ‘ ‘ intelligent ’ ’
face. While the Liberals daily become more comprehensive in
their sympathies and more indifferent to religion and race, the
retrograde party grows more and more exclusive and national;
and it is precisely the same spirit which demands the extermina
tion of the intelligents, as clubs Jews at Zhitomir and butchers
Armenians in the Caucasus. Within the last few weeks party
intolerance has reached a stage of ferocity almost incredible.
Denunciation is no longer directed against classes and races.
Thus the St. Petersburg branch of Moscow’s “patriotic league ”
solemnly presented M. Buluigin with a memorandum in which,
after calling for the trial of the so-called kramolniki or sedition-
mongers, under martial law, gave a black-list of over three thou
sand “traitors,” chiefly professors, lawyers, and publicists, in
cluding among the latter a large part of the editorial staffs of the
ie\ie\\s Russkoe Bagatstvo, Mir Bozhi, and of the newspapers
Nasha Zhizn, and Syn Otetechestva. Exasperation and intoler
ance, it must be admitted, are not confined to the adherents of
Absolutism. The Liberals are equally incensed ; every publicist
\\ho opposes their cause is denounced as a “ scoundrel,” or a
man who can be bought,” or an “ informer,” whereas in reality,
the majority are muddle-headed but quite honest men, at the worst
inspired by nothing more criminal than class interest or class
prejudice, and usually quite unconscious even of that.
But the extravagances of the Liberals have not been able to
stop the progress of their cause. Russia, despite temporary set
backs, has marched farther during the last six months than during
the preceding forty years. In practice, the Press has secured a
large measure of freedom. Though the Press Commission has
™ y 0 *'. wor k, and though M. Buluigin, working
behind its back, has practically secured for himself unrestricted
power to suppress any newspaper, the written word is freer than
it ever was before save under the brief regime of Prince Sviatopolk-