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EXPERIMENTELLE (iRUNDLEGUNG DEK Gk-
DACUTNisspsYCHoixxjiE, (iotliiigen, 1905.
General Psychology, Novi Sad. 1908 (in Serbian).
Expebhoental Pbtcholoot, Zagreb, 1008-9, ft vob. (in Croatian).
ExPBBiMSiiTAL Pedagoot, Zagreb, 1910 (in Cruatian).
EzPKBiiCENTAL DiDACTiGB, Zagreb, 1911 (in Croatian).
Biblical Pbdagogt and Modern Educa- tion, KarioEiti, 1012 (in Serbian).
HmOBT OF EXPSBIMKNTAL PbTCHOLOGT,
Novi Sad, lOU (in Serbian).
New Movementb in Education, Petrograd, 1012 Cm Riudan).
Pbofebbob Boab'b New Thbobt of the FoBM OF the Head, — ^A Critical Contri- bution TO School Antbbopologt, Tianra»- ler. Pa., 1011.
Die Entwicklung deb Ejndeb Ivnebhalb deb schuuahbe, 1018.
WhoAbetheGebmanb? A CoNTBIBOnOlf TO Race PbTCHOLOOT. (Beidj lor PabttMtioaO
.Ammi
THB WfiW Y«7!tK
PUBLIC UBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX A.ND TIU>fiN FOUNDATIOMal
Nikola Kopgbnik {Copernicus)
Pole; the author of our modem Solar System. He, and his Serbian cousin, Nikola Teala, are two leg^ of the Modem Era, two greatest genial minds in the history of
WHO ARE THE SLAVS?
A CONTRIBUTION TO RACE PSTCHOLOGT
PAUL R. RADOSAVLJEVICH, Ph.D., Pd.D.
Prt^efor at Ntu York Unmrtit^ Mt^tr ef Ae Ammean Ptychaioffical Atoeialiom, «to.
IN TWO yxyLVlSES VOLUME TWO
BOSTON
RICHARD G. BADGER
THE OOBHAM PRESS
r
m
i».
CorrusBr. MM. «T Bioiahb G. Bam
THE HEW YORK PUBUC LIBRARY
83968SA
Umib in the Unilrf SUU* o( Amerfc* Tlie Goriiun Ftch, BorioD, U. S. A.
CONTENTS TO VOLXME n
XVU. SiATic REuaiona Tbarb
Effect of ChristiBnit7^~Anti-ChiiKhi(m — The Bohemian f>r MorsviaD Brethren (Unitaa Fntnun) — The South ^vic Bogumili— The Serbian Nasareui — The Russuui Kulaputni— The Rusaian Molokani— The Busaian StUDt^ta— The Ruuian Rasbkol oiks— The Russian Vagranta— The Rusaian Molchahuki — The Russian Deniera— The Ruaaian Shakuny or Shakers—The Bus- nan Dukbobortzi or Spirit Wrestlcrs^The Russian Baptiita— The Russian Pashkovists—Tbe Russian Joho- hes— The Russian Prophels— The Russian Free F^th— The Russian Kayukl— The Russian Skoptay— The Russian Sutayevs— The Russian Non-Prayers— The Russian Khlysty— The Ra^sian Malovantzi— The Rus- sian Theodoaians — He Ruanan Philippovtakj — The Russian Pomoi^ane — The Russian Cbrist-Seekeni — The Russian Subotniki — llie Russian Diaconvtduni — The Russian Tolstony— Conclusion.
Xvill. Slavic Ethical-Morui loEau)
XIX. SociaL-PoLincAi. Tbaitb .
1 "Artel" and "Svietelka"— Serbian "Zadruga," "Moba," "PoEaymitza" and "Esnaf" — MonteneKrin "Bratatvo" — Conclusim.
XX. S1.AVIC Ideal of Wohak IN
XXI. Slavic Ideal or National Unitt IM
XXII. Pan-Slavic Ideal . 812
The Causes of Pan-Slavism — Hegel ianism— ^National- istic idea — Reforms of Peter the Great — Roman Catholicism — German "Kultur" — Russian Slavism — Slavophiles— "Westemists" or "Liberals"— The Es- ■eoce of Russian Slavism — Pan-Slavism of Other Slavs and South Slavdom (Jugoslavija) — Conclution.
JUUlI. Explanation or Slavic Chabacter 283
XXIV. Genebal Concldsion 893
13- r^n
15- mirni
.viu(-l):II.LAnsBtci:F Lu: (>) Gr»l RtuiuB (-11
iHHiiHUrin (-IT). NitioHl k
THEiisv or--: PDBUC tlERARY
ASTOR. L^NOK AND TIJJJEM FOUNDATIONS
WHO ABE THE SLAVS?
14 Who Are the, Slavit
of time had become obecured and confused by the infusion of foreign dements, and thus degenerated into polytheism, and finally pantheism. Before the Slavs took Christianity they had their own gods just like all other people. The forces and phenomena of nature were personified and worshipped as gods. The Sun and the Lightning accompanied by thunder naturally impressed the primitive people most deeply. According to this Slavic mythological hierarchy we might conclude the earthly relations of gods to men and men to gods. Just as the relation between Zeus or Jupiter and other gods is pictured in the conditions of state chiefs in ancient Greek and Roman accounts, so also the Gromovnik Perun of the Dniester (Russian) Slavs and Svetovid, or Swintevit, supreme god of the Baltic Slavs, personify the main characteristics of the Slavic tribes. Military and agri- cultural traits of the Slavs are personified in the Supreme God of the Baltic Slavs. Accordingly the horses and arms have been especially dear objects, and the field and agricul- tural products held a high place in the estimation of the people, particularly in the ceremonies which were devoted to the celebration of Svetovid. From German and Scandi- navian sources we learn that the Slavic dwellers of the lower Laba (Elbe) and Odra (Oder) basins worshipped a number of divinities of a military character. Thus Suarasiz ( Svaro- zich) was the god of the Lutitians ; Svantovit ("the mighty") was worshipped at Arcona (the capital of Riigen) and Trig- lav ("the three-headed") at Stettin. These divinities had their statues, temples, and attendants and received a por- tion of the spoils of battle. The old Russian chroniclers state that the Varangian Russ prince took oath by the gods Perun and Volos. When St. Vladimir "began to reign in Kiev, he put on a hill outside his palace yard the wooden Perun with the silver head and golden mustaches, and Khors, Dazhbog, Stribog, Simargi, and Mokosh, and the people brought them sacrifices." When Vladimir (972-1015),
Slavic Retigiout Traits 15
biuband of a Greek princess (his ^andmother Olga, the wife of Igor, had already received baptism at Byzantium ; so her name is venerated in the Russian calendar), was converted by Greek missionaries, and he, in turn, forcibly imposed his religion on his subjects and the chief of pagan idols, Ferun was scourged at Kiev and thrown into the river.
Of the relations of these early gods, it is strangely difficult to gain any r«al information. It is to be regretted that no one as yet has made a complete study of the vexed question of Slavic mythology. The word Bog or Bogu (God) is reckoned a loan word from the Iranian "Braga."
The Slavic gods mentioned in the chronicle of a monk Nestor (about 1100 A. D.) included Perjunes or Ferun (the Thunder, or the Sky), the chief diety,^ personifying the lightning and the thunder like the Skandinavian god Thor; Svarog, the heavens, and the earth as the wife of Ferun.' The god of fire was Dabog or Dai-bog (the god of Bun and sunshine, the ^ver of life and of all good things, the god of prosperity, light and every progress) and Stri- bog (a hostile deity, god of storms or winds, the Greek ^olus) ; Mokosh was a Venus, and Simargi the god of ocean. Voles or Volos, "the beast god," may have been a god of cattle (herds) and patron of merchants. In the Song of Igor't Band be is said to be the grandfather of boianp or bards. Chors or Khors was a Mars. Ferun curses those who break their oaths; and weapons and gold are dedicated to him. His images were of wood, with a sUver head and golden mustaches. Sacrifices were offered to wooden legs or mounds ; and the three great rivers, Dnieper, Don, and Bug, were also represented by images, and adored. Of the other Russian divinities nothing is known with cer- tainty, for the view that they were personifications of nat- ural phenomena is not sufficiently supported by early evi- dence. It is interesting to note, however, that in an old Russian source Hephaestus is glossed with Svarog and the
•-_ «^
16 Who Are the Slavif
fire, moreover, is called Svftiozich (i.e., ion of STarog), recalling the Suarasiz of the Latitian Slavs, This seems to pomt to the identification of fire and buq worship. With the advent of Christianity the old gods were regarded as devils. The pagan Russians had medicine men (so-called "vlsvi") and cremated tbeir dead.
The personification of wisdom and cunning is Volga Sviatoslovich, who ii the son of a princess by a serpent. Sviatogov is the personification of strength — so huge that the earth can scarcely carry him, a character found in the Rustem of the Persian story.
There seem to have beoi no priests, temples or images among the early Slavs. As there was no priestly caste among the Slav pagans to garner up those religious traditions which have formed the basis of every great school of poetry, there is a lack of recorded tradition. In Russia Vladimir the Great (who towards the close of the tenth century in- troduced Christianity) set up idols and pulled them down upon his conversion to Christianity. Only the Folab Slavs have a highly developed cult with a temple and statues and a definite priesthood. But this may have been in imitation of Norse or even Christian institutions. The chief god, whose worship seems to have been common to all the Slavic tribes, was called Triglav ("the three-headed**) ; he was the same as Svetovid, apparently a sky god in whose name the monks naturally recognized Saint Vitus. With Sviatovid were associated on a nearer footing of equality than the other gods, Perun and Radegast — if, indeed, these three names do not merely denote different personifications or manifestations of the same power. In this trinity Svetovid or Sviatovid, is considered as most analogous to Mars and Zeus, Perun to Jupiter and Thor, and Radegast to Mer- cury and Odin, These personages, like the Titans of the Greek legend, symbolize the struggle of man with the ele- ments of nature. Many Slavic national poems and customs
SUwic ROigiout TrtUta Vt
odicate a reminucence of fire worship, such as Slavs of >riginal Slavdom conceived the essence of human ori^. ?ire, the son, and the mountain-top were pictured as the lauldron from which has sprung the great Slav race. Glo- rious the sun was conceived as provider, nourisher, and Teator who, dail; weaving destiny, climbed the high-hung leavens where mountains did him honor and Time and the esser gods, dwelling in regions of snow, bowed in servile lubjection, recalcitrant acolytes in wondrous love of the lun. Of fire, and the counterpart of good and evO, of ight and darkness did the old balladry sing.
Of the numerous gods of an inferior order we may name Prove (god of justice), Priya (Frey), Bjelobog (the white ptd), Chemobog (the black god), Koleda (god of festivals), iCupala (god of the fruits of the earth), etc. The goddesses >f the old Slavs are colorless personifications such as Vesna [spring), and Morana (the goddess of death and winter). !)n the whole the survival of old rites and ritualistic cus- x>ms are the most fruitful source of information on early religion. Ancestor worship, e.g., clearly survives in the ^dsiady" festivals of the white Russians, while various aol- ititial and equinoctial rites point to an early Slavic re- i^on of agricultural magic. The old Slavs also believed n vilas (Serbs ' have their own Fallas Athena — ^Vila Raviy- }yla, or mountain nymph), and rusalki, n3rmphs of stream uid woodlands ; also in the Baba-Jaga, a kind of man-eating iritch (vethtitza) and in Besy, evil spirits, as well as in vam- pires, dragons ("halla") and were wolveS) together with multitudes of other demons and spirits, good and bad. In ftddition to their gods, good and evil, demons of different kinds, they believed in the immortality of the soul, but had no rerj clear ideas as to its fate. It was mostly supposed to go a long journey to a paradise (raj) at the end of the rorld and had to he equipped for this. The dead of the old Slavs were burned, and their ashes preserved in urns. The
18 Who Are the, Slavif
old Serbs stuffed wadding into the mouth, nose and ears of the corpse to prevent evil spirits taking possession of the dead body, which would then become what the Magyars ccdl a vampire. Also the soul of the ancestor seems to have developed into the house or hearth god {Domovoj^ Krei) who guarded the family. The popular belief knows of nu- merous other sprites ("lesye"), fate and birth divinities (old Russian "rozhanitza," "rodjenitze'* and "sudjenitze" of the Serbs), were wolves ("vlkodlatzi'* or "vukodlahzi"), etc. Nevertheless, many beliefs and practices have been bor- rowed from the neighboring peoples, not a few being in- ' troduced along with Christianity. To Christian influence ' are due the burial ceremony ("marzana") of the Poles, most of the Christmas ceremonies and practices of the South- ' Slavs, belief in devils, witchcraft, relics, etc. The survivals of pagan festivals at the solstices and equinoxes have con- tinued under the form of church festivals. The Serbs, only among the Slavs, have their immemorial national fete called Slava^ meaning ^^glorification," when a baptismal rite (Krgna-^me) used to be celebrated, and the family god wor- shipped. The patron saint, Nicholas, John, George, Peter, Paul, Stephen, or Michael, now takes his place. What Slava is to a family, that Zavetina (from "zavet," a vow) is to a village. Every Serbian village has a saint whom it celebrates as its special patron. It is interesting that Serbian families who have the same saint or who are related by god-fathership do not intermarry.
Worship of the old Slavs was performed in forest groves and temples, cattle and fruits being offered by the priests, whose office must have been originally performed by the head of the family or chieftain, as the common name for priest and prince {knez or knyaz) shows. The images of the Slavic divinities (a stone statue of Svetovid was in recent times dis- covered in eastern Galicia) had a striking resemblance to those of India. Svetovid had four heads, Rugevit (the god
sister in tlie person of the Ognjcna Marija or Orrnyena ya (Saint Mary of the fire), we may guess that the old 1 had a sister, too, probably Munja (the lightning). :ms that the pagan Serbs had a special flower dedicated run, as the purple iris is to these days called pervmka flower of Penm), without which there is no garden in ^rbian villages (probably a part of worship of Ferun sted in the cultivation of perunica). Sempervivum tecto^ or the Serbian Chuvar-kutya (the house guardian) is ler plant which was dedicated to the God of the Pro- r of houses, and is planted on the house roof and is be- 1 to protect it against the lightning strokes. Serbs 88 great love for nature and lovely things. The names »men given in honor of flowers and fruits illustrate do- c beauty. So, for example, Basilium gives the name jka ; Cametia, or Karanfil in its Turkish dress, is made ne, Karanfila, which means stock of flowers. Likewise 8ome fruits are formed women's names, as for example, oa (blackberry), and Yagoda (strawberry). Men, in
are called Golub (pigeon), Dobrinko (good one), Mi-
(dear one), Srechko (lucky one), etc. ere was a Serbian goddess Lada or Leda^ probably Mldess of love and pleasure (her name is involved in cer- ierbian popular lyric songs, coming there as a refrain : O9 oy Lado-le!"). Doda or Dodola is a goddess who
the waters and the rain. Frazer, in his The Gold- 'ough (London, 1900, S volumes; second edition), 1: **In time of drought the Serbians strip a girl J
ir skin and clothe her from head to foot in grass, }
so Who Ar§ ik$ Slamt
herbs, and flowersy efen her fmoe bong hidden behind a tcQ of living green« Thuf dingiiiied she is called the Dodolat and goes throng the Tillage with a troop of girls. Tlwj stop before every house. The Dodola keeps turning hendf round and dancing, while the other girls form a ring about her singing one of the Dodola songs, and the housewife poors a pail of water over her. One of the songs they sing runs thus: —
We go throu|^ the village;
The clouds go in the sky;
We go faster.
Faster go the clouds;
They have overtaken us.
And wetted the com and the vine.
On Mid-Summer Eve the herdsmen light torches and march round the sheep-folds and cattle-stalls. Frazer says : 'Nowhere in Europe is the old heathen ritual of the Yule log preserved to the present day more perfectly than in Serbia ; the children and young people go from home to home singing special songs called CoUeda, because of an old pagan divinity, who is invoked in every line. In one of them she is spoken of as a beautiful little maid; in another she is im- plored to make the cows yield milk abundantly." We hear that: ''Even to-day Serbian peasants believe that eclipses of the sun and moon are caused by their becoming the prey of a hungry dragon, who tries to swallow them." Of other superstitions 'Hhere is ample abundance in Serbian folk-lore. In fact, in Serbia, as in most other countries, there is still a large task before Knowledge, the fair sister of Freedom, be- fore Tennyson's distant golden dream is realized, till every Soul be free !" Vishnyi or Sve-Vishnyi is used nowadays by the Serbs as an adjective and epithet to God (Sve-Vishnyi Bog, the Most High God), but in all likelihood the name stood once for a supreme divinity, reminding us forcibly of
Slavic Rdigiotu TraUt 21
the Hindu's Vithim.
The inner constitution of tbe old Serbian Olympus is re- echoed in one of the Serbian popular ballads {The Saintt Partition the Treatwes or The Sainti and the Bletied Maria), and evidently there was a place where the gods of both sexes met, discussed the terrestial affairs, and brought their own decisions. This ballad is remarkable in more than one point, giving us a picture of the old Serbian Olympus, substituting only for the old gods the Christian saints. It shows a curious remembrance of a great catastrophe in In- dia. The faithful translation of this ballad is as follows :
**The Saints met at the gate of heaven to confer among themselves how to divide the j^fts which God gave them. Saint Peter received the keys of the heavens, and together with him St. Paul took (under their power and protection) wine and wheat; St. Elijah took as his own the thunder; *Mary of the Fire' (Ognyena Mariya) took the lightning and the arrows ; St. Thomas took the seal of the clouds ; Archan- gel Michael got as his own the weather of the autumn ; St. Nicholas the seas and the rivers and the ships saihng on them; St. Saviour was satisfied with the cornflower as his portion; St. Sava took to himself snow and ice; St. Fan- tbeleymon took the scorching beats of the summer; St. John the Baptist took to himself the brotherhoods and 'koom- sbips,' and St. George was satisfied to take for himself the flowers of tbe spring. — Just then the Blessed Maria — tears running down her white cheeks, — stepped into this assembly of saints. Elijah the Thunderer asked her: 'Our sister, Blessed Maria, what great misfortune hast thou met, that thou sheddest now tears down thy white faceP' And the Blessed Maria answered, 'How can I help shedding these tears when I am arriving from the country of India, from India, a cursed country! There an extreme lawlessness is reigning, younger men do not respect the older ones, nor tbe children obey their parents, and parents tread down
22 Who Ar§ th§, Slamt
with their heels their children 1 Koom (=God-fatlier) prosecutes his koom (or kum) before judges, and Iningt against him false witnesses without faith and without pore souls, and convicts him in heavy damages; a brother pro- vokes his brother to duel; the brother-in-law works to dis- honor his sister-inrlaw, and the brother does not call his sis- ter a sister P
^^Thereupon the Thunderer Elijah consoled their sister^ the Blessed Maria, by telling her that they all — after they had finished dividing the treasures God had given then^^ would go together to the Hrue Grod' to ask His permission to punish that lawless and cursed country, India. The Saints then went together to HSod's Councfl HalL' There they prayed for three days and three nights without ceasing, and succeeded in obtaining God's permission to punish the lawless people of India. They began by closing (probably with the keys of which St. Peter was the keeper), all the seven heavens. Then St. Elijah began to strike the sinners with his thunder, while the Blessed Maria began to kill them with lightnings and arrows. But all that hardly made an impression on the people of India. Thereupon St. Archan- gel sent down bad weather, Peter and Paul took away all the wine and wheat, and therewith all prosperity, and for three years no wine and no wheat grew on earth; St. Thomas sealed the clouds, so that not a drop of rain or of morning dew watered the thirsty earth; St. Pantheleymon let loose the burning heat to scorch the earth for fully three years, so that the brain was boiling in the heads of the people, the rocks were burning and breaking up, and the earth was bursting into deep crevices into which men and horses were disappearing. Then St. Sava let deep snows fall and pre- vented them melting for three years, so that the shepherds lost all their sheep, and even the bees fled away from that country. But all those terrible scourges did not move the people of India to repentance. Then God sent a terrible
Slamc Religiout TraiU 2S
sickness iriiich carried away young and old, and separated those who were dear to each other. Then at last those few who remained alive hegan to repent and regain faith in Giod." As it was long ago, so it 13 nowadays.
"God Adored, may our thanks reach Thee. What has heen, may it never happen again,"
It would be, no doubt, worth while to 6nd out how such a legend found its way among the Serbs. It shows at least how the heaven of the Serbian people probably looked before they were converted to Christianity. This ballad is in all probability a remnant of the mythological traces of a great prehistoric catastrophe, and it illustrates more than any other ancient memorial of the poetic Serbian nation, the striking analogy in the beliefs of peoples.
Serbian viU (plural of cila) are very poetical and sym- pathetic creatures, for they are eternally young and beauti- ful fair girls, robed in white gauze, with long golden hair, milk-white complexions and white wings. Vile sing beauti- fully and like to dance, especially during the moonlight nights. VSe Brodaritze live near the streams and fords; FJiff Oblakmjfe prefer to Hve in the clouds. Both of them are not only harmless generally, but they are distinctly pa- triotic and take a lively interest in national heroes and na- tional affairs of the Serb. In some cases a Vila seems to have taken up the position of a guardian angel, and attached herself to one particular human being. So for instance we read in the Serbian folksongs of the Vila who came to Marko Kraljevich, telling him of his impending death. The speed of the Vila was extraordinary, and many passages in these folksongs descriptive of her flight rival the lines in Lalla Rookh:
"Rapidly as comets run To the embraces of the sun: —
}rm
>
t
24 Who Are the Slamf
Fleeter ihan the starry brands
Flung at night from angel hands
At those dark and daring sprites
Who would dimb th' empyreal heights.^
Serbians as well as other South-Slavs have also their drag- on, but it is not represented as the ancient Greeks did, i. e,, as a monster in the form of a huge lizard or serpent, with crested head, wings and great strong daws, for they know this outward form is merely used as a misleading mask. The Serbian people paint the true character of a dragon as a handsome youth, possessing superhuman strength and cour- age, and he is usually represented as in love with some beau- tiful princess or empress. (This is nicely indicated in the Serbian ballad, *^The Tzaritza Militza and Zmay of Yastre- batz.'')
Chedo Miyatovich also thinks that according to the out- ward signs of the religion of the Serbs in their pre-Christian period we are justified in concluding that the old faith was very popular, entering deeply into the life of the people. The Greek and the Roman Catholic propagandas, aggressive and powerful, backed by political and military influences as they were, needed nearly two hundred years to decide the Serbs to abandon their old religion and accept the teach- ings of Jesus. Even then the Greek and Latin missionaries could succeed only after they had made many concessions to the people's attachment to their old belief. The folk-lore of the Serbians is re-echoing to this day with religious senti- ments and rites from their pre-Christian days. Some of the Serbian students of the Serbs (like Professor M. Milovano- vich of Belgrade in Serbia) are sorry that the Christian monotheism spoiled the beautiful phantasy or imagination of the Serbians in the formal shaping of the tribal myth- ology.
To conclude. The main deities of the Slav may be conr
Slavic Religious Traits
ts
nected with a tree whose root is God — called Bog or Swan- towit (Svetovid). All subordinate gods are in pairs, as Belbog and Chemobog (good and evil) and Razi and Zinitra (councillors and magicians), etc. This hierarchical relation may be sunmiarized in the following schematic pre- sentation:
Svetovid, Triglav, or Bog-Grod
Belbog
Flins (Zimitra)
Radegast Rasiyia (Ziraitrat) (Razi)
Proye Podaga Hierovit Slebog Sieva Zilsbog
CHlbog Jutrbog Rugievit Karevit
Perinm
f
Swaixtix
Chemebog
Hela Nemisa
I (Zirnitra)
Mita (Razi)
Berstuk Gasto (Razi) (Razi)
Siska Gudji Masowit
This schematic presentation assumes that the main seat of the old Slavic religions was at Arcona, since Svetovid was there and venerated as the supreme deity ; at Kiev and Ro- mova Perun stood first, and at Rhetra-Radegast ; but Sve- tovid was at all events the principal divinity worshipped among all the Western Slavic tribes, and was esteemed as one of the nain gods among the Eastern Slavic tribes as well* The Russians and the Poles residing nearest to Kiev or Novgorod distinguished the gods into four classes, which contrasted with each other, and whose respective members were similarly various in their natures. So for example there were gods of men and of beasts. In the former class were found gods of love and of pain ; in the latter, gods of
26 Who Ar0 th0 Slant
«
growth and destructioii. The other dastet were ffaat of nature and that of inanimate nature — ^the one including gods of war and of peace ; the other, goda of the law and of fhe water, of the house and of the fiUL To these deities of fhe general populace must be added innumerable private and local gods ; especially among the Poles, and Serbs, each tribe^ town or institution having its own patron divinity, and cadi one regarding its own god as superior to others of his class. The most insignificant divinities, such as the lifting of lamps, the cutting of bread, the tapping of a fresh bandy etc., were under the guidance of the gods. A numenms priesthood conducted the religious rites, which generally took place in front of the temples. The devastating campaign of Henry the Lion (in the twelfth century) destroyed the tem- ples of the Western Slavs and brought the prevalent pagan- ism to an end, though certain superstitious customs have been preserved in the regions of their former occupancy to this day. At any rate the Slavic mythological traits are not inferior to those of other people.**
Effect of Chriitianity
As is well known, the Slavs became Christians after the separation of the Greek (Eastern Orthodox) and Latin (Ro- man Catholic) churches in 864 A. D., and the bulk of them (Russians, Serbs and Bulgars) adhere to the rites and beliefs of the Greek Eastern Orthodox Church to which church also belong the Greeks, Rumanians, Syrians and Armenians ; the rest (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats) belong to the Roman Catholic Faith.^ (The first Slavic church still main- tains the old calendar, which is now 14 days behind that in use in Western European countries.)
Prince Serge Wolkonsky gives an interesting account of how the Russians took Christianity from Byzantium, intro- duced by St. Vladimir (980-1054) who has been compared to
Slavic Religious Traits 27
CloYis, In his Pictures of Russian History and Russian Literature (London, Paul, Trent & Co., 1898, pp. S7-S9) he says :
"In 967 Princess Olga, mother of the ruling Prince Svia- toslav (Rurik's grandson) goes to Byzantium to be baptized in the Christian faith ; the Emperor himself is her godfather. Her son did not consent to give up the paganism of his fore- fathers, but her grandson. Prince Vladimir, sent ambassadors to investigate the religions of foreign countries. When they came back, they said to their prince : ^No man would like to eat bitter after having tasted honey, so we cannot think of returning to our gods after having witnessed the divine service of the Greek.* The service which made such a pro- found impression on Vladimir's ambassadors was the solenm liturgy celebrated by the Patriarch of Constantinople in the presence of the two brother-emperors, Constantine and Basil, under the dome of St. Sophia. Vladimir decided to embrace the Christian religion and to request the Byzantine emperors that they would provide for the baptism of his people. But he did not care to take up the part of a simple solicitor; so he marched with his soldiers against Chersone- sos, a Greek colony, on the coast of the present Crimea, in- tending in case of success to make of the new religion a sort of military contribution. The plan was carried out, Cherso- nesos was taken, and ambassadors were sent to Constanti- nople to ask the Emperor's sister Anna in marriage for Prince Vladimir. The change of religion was required as the condition from the Emperor's side, and when Vladimir as- sented, a Greek bishop, came over to Chcrsonesos. A iSne church at a short distance from Sebastopol contains in our days the marble basin wherein the baptizer of Russia was baptized in the Christian faith. When Vladimir returned to Kiev the whole population was gathered into the Dnieper, parted in different groups, every group received a new name, and all were baptized in the Christian faith. This was in
28 Who Are the Slavit
987. When in the next century the dissensions between Con- stantinople and Rome brought about the great scission of the Christian Church, Russia, as the god-daughter of Byian- tium, followed her example and ever since has refused ac- knowledgment of the Pope's supremacy.*' Hore, in his Eighteen Centuries of the Orthodow Church (p. 7), says: **The Conversion of Russia by the Greek Church is the mightiest conquest the Christian Church has made since the time of the Apostles." ^ This Christianity had by the time of Ivan Yasilyevich Third (1468-1506) blossomed forth as the national religion of the Russians, so that we can date the foundation of ^^Holy Russia" of to-d^y in all her greatness from the age of Ivan Yasilyevich the Third, who was the first Russian ruler to assume the title of ^Tzar of all the Rus- sians." ® The first Russian Metropolitan was Ilarion (1051- 1064), who is the most original writer of his time. He and Kyril Surovski are representative of genuine oratory. In the thirteenth century Daniel the Exile wrote a "Prayer" which was intended to soften the heart of Yaroslav Vsyevolo- ditch, who imprisoned him on Lake Lachc. At a council held at Moscow (1557) at the command of Tzar Ivan the Fourth it was enacted that only revised books were henceforth to be used in the church. As no one in Russia was capable of undertaking the task of redaction, Maxim the Greek (1480- 1666) was intrusted with the work.
Of course, the Christianity of the early Russians was not thoroughly assimilated. Miss Isabel Florence Hapgood is right when she says (in her book. The Epic Songs of Russia^ New York, Scribner, 1886) that "it was not only established as the State religion, but the people, at Vladimir's command, accepted the new faith, permitted their idols to be destroyed and themselves to be baptized by thousands forthwith. Though they had idols representing the powers of Nature which they worshipped, there were neither temples nor priests to interfere with this summary change. But their old be-
Slavic ReligiauM TraiU 29
liefs could not be so readily set aside, and finding themselves thus provided with two faiths, they solved the difficulty in the most natural manner, — by subjecting their heathen gods to baptism also. Thus, for instance, Perun the Thunderer be- came Bya (Elijah) the Prophet, the hero By a of Murom of the Songs. This furnishes the key to the cycle of Vladimir, and shows how the epithet ^two-faithed,' often applied to the Russian people by their old writers, was earned."
The eastern Slavs received Christianity from Byzantium through the instrumentality of Cyril and Methodius. Clem- ent (916), one of their first disciples, introduced Christianity and the Slavic liturgy among the Balkan (Byzantine or Southern) Slavs. Bulgars were converted to Christianity by the earliest of Byzantine missionaries, their first Christian Tzar being Boris I, in 1064. It is said that he hesitated in his choice between the Latin and Greek churches, for the former had previously been active among the Slav countries of the Balkans, and the political and religious controversy between East (Byzantium) and West (Rome) had already begun. The Serbs were Christianized in the same century as the Bulgars and Moravians, in the ninth century. Ac- cording to Constantine Porphyrogenete, the Serbs adopted Christianity at two different periods: (1) during the reign of the Emperor Heraclius (610-641 A. D.), who had re- quested the Pope to send a number of priests to convert those peoples to Christianity. The second conversion of the Serbs who had remained pagans was effected, about 879, by the Em]>eror Basil the First. The first Archbishop of Serbia was the youngest son of Stephan Nemanya, the first sove- reign of the united Serbian province. The name of this prince was Rastko, and his baptismal name is St. Sava or St. Sabbes (b. 1176). Under him the Serbian Church had become auton- omous, and was raised to the dignity of a Patriarchate. He established nine bishoprics in the Serbian kingdom, en- couraged schools and education, and to this day is wor-
so Who Are tM SUmt
shipped among the Serbs of all the Serbian profiueea (Ser- bia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegorina, SlaTonia, Croatiay Dalmatia, Istria, Bachka, Banat, Baranya, Macedonia) as the Patron Saint of the schools. We may say that St Sava* is the Serbian St. Patrick. When a boy of hardly 17, having heard that his royal parents were look- ing for a bride for him, Prince Rastko joined some monks and with them went secretly to Mount Athos, which at that time was not only a republic composed entirely of monas- teries and monks, but also the highest divinity school of the Eastern Orthodox faith. He there became a monk (SaTa), and a few years later he induced his old royal father to ab- dicate the throne, and to come to finish his days as monk in the Sveta Gora (= "Holy Mount"). There they two raised up a Serbian monastery'— Chilendary (or, as the Serbs pre- fer to call it — VUmdarj "the gift of a fairy"), which prac- tically became the high divinity institution for the Serbian theologians and ecclesiastics, and the metropolis of the Ser- bian learning and literature in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. What the ideals of the Serbian people are can be judged from the following lines of a Serbian ballad (trans- lated by Vlad. Savich) :
''Counsel held the mighty Christian Princes, Near the white-walled church of Grachanitza^ Spake they thus^ the mighty Christian Princes: 'God^ what strange event! what wondrous marvel! Where have vanished all the vast possessions, Towers seven filled with gold and silver^ Of the great and wealthy Tzar Nemanya?' By chance^ Nemanyich Sava stood there with them. Spake thus to the high Christian Princes: 'Speak not words like these^ oh noble princes. Sooth 'twere a sin to speak such words. Sirs Never did my father spend his treasures Buying arms and chargers bold for battle. Buying lances forged of steel and maces.
Slavic ReUgiout Traits 81
No, mj father spent bis vast possessions BnUding white abodes for God's high presence. Where God's hynuu be sung through all the ages Bringing healing to m; father's spirit' Up then spake the mighty Christian Princes; 'Blessed be thy holy Father's memory, Bleased be thy sool, Nemanyich Sava.' "
The Western Slavs (Poles and Czecho-Slovaks) and k small number of South-Slavs (Croatians and Slovenes) re- ceived Christianity from Rome and Germany. Poland ranks among the European nations after the conversion to Chris- tianity of Mieczyslav the First (962-992), prince of the fam- ily of the Fiosts. (From about 84<0 dates the legendary origin of the First Dynasty of Dukes which in the male line ruled over Polish territory till 1S70. Ziemovit, the supposed sec- ond ruler of the Piast Dynasty, was the 6rst whose history is to any extent to be relied upon; and it was not till a century after, when his descendant Mieczyslav the First oc- cupied the throne and became through marriage to Dabrov- ka, a Czech Princess, a convert to Christianity, that Poland really came into the field of European history.) The Croa- tians already belonged to the Roman Church at the time when its priests were converting the Serbs '° to the Christian faith between 64i2 and 7S1, i.e., after the death of Pope John the Fourth and before Leon of Isauria had broken off his rela- tions with Rome.^' No doubt, the Christian faith spread grad- ually from the Roman cities to Dalmatia and to the various Slavic lands.^^ However, the Western Slavs unwillingly and with great resistance accepted the Christian faith. Neander in his AUegemeine Geichichte der CkrittUchen Religiom v/nd Kirche (Leipzig, 1826) shows how difficult it was to convert the Lusatian Serbs and Poles to the Christian faith. The attempts of the German missionaries to bring Christianity to the Czechs in the ninth century were not successful. It was, as has been said before, through the Greek Eastern Church
S4 Who An ihe SUnmf
which has been one of ita miifortunef.
The Cyrillic alphabet *' is in conatant use to-day in the eastern churches of the Rusaian, Serbian and Bulgarian churches at the present time. The Bulgarian Tear Boria was baptized by them, who also introduced the Slav litnrgy in Bulgaria." The Slavic dialect spoken between Constas' tinople and Salonika was adopted as the literary language, and the Glagolithic alphabet and eventually the Cyzillia were introduced — on this foundation rests the whole aubae- quent intellectual derelopment of Eastern Europe. The Czechs also eagerly received the estaUishment of a Slavic national church of the Greek eastern rite.' A German Ro- man Catholic Archbishop of Salzburg protested against the extension of this Slavic Eastern rite, but Pope John VUlth gave (in 880) permission to use the Slavic tongue for- ever in the mass and the whole liturgy and offices of the Slavic Church, and Methodius was appointed Bishop of Fan- nonia (Bohemia and Moravia). In 973 Prague was made the seat of a bishop. Unfortunately in 1308 Servius was appointed Bishop of Prague, and he devoted all his energies to abolishing the Slavic rite, and organized the church on the model of the German Roman Catholic Church. In 1076 Pope Gregory VII finally condemned the Slavic liturgy and withdrew it from the Church, declaring that "the use of the vernacular was conceded only on account of temporary cir- cumstances which have passed away." The use of Slavic liturgies within the Glagolitic alphabet, a very ancient privi- lege of the Roman Catholics in Dalmatia and Croatia, caused much controversy during the first years of the twentieth cen- tury.^' Archbishop of Zadar (or Zara), in discussing the "Glagolitic controversy," had denounced the movement in- troduced by Panslavism to make it easy for the Catholic clergy, after any great revolution in the Balkan States, to hnak with Latin Rome. (See lUt/ricam Sacrum written by Farlati, "Episcopi Bosncnsis.")
Slanc Rtligiotu Traitt 86
The colter of the reli^ous reviTal of the Slovenei vaa the little town of Ljubljana (Laibach), where, by a caprice of Napoleon, Francis Nodier became librarian. In Ljubljana the Hapsburga and the Jesuits burned — in 1616 — thousands of volumes written and collected bj the school of religious and political reformers who echoed the Czech revolt against Catholicism and Germanism, being deeply influenced by Lu- ther and the Grerman Reform. (See PiitdoT, J., Die protes- tanische Literatur der Siidslawen in 16> Jahrhundert, id: JahTh. f. Geih. d. protest, Oexterreicht, vol. 23.)
Many severe, quarrels among the Slavs ( especially those be- tween the Russi&s and the Poles, the Serbians and Croa- tians) are really due to the propaganda of their respective churches, stimulated very skillfully by the Germans, Jesuits and Slavic thinkers. Andrew Modrzewski, a Polish Prot- estant, recommended, in his work, De Republica Emendanda (Ififil), the establishment of a national Fohsh church which should be independent of the Roman Pope, something upon the model of the Anglican. Another Pole, Orzechowski, in his curious work called QvincunjE, is also concerned with religious problems. Stanislaus Orzechowski even dared to address Pope Juhus the Third in the following strain :
Consider, O Julius, and consider it well, with what a man yon will have to do; not with an Italian, indeed, but with a Russian (be was a native of Little Bnsaia). Not with one of your mean Popish subjects, but with the citizen of a kingdom where the monarch himself is obliged to obey the law. You may condemn me, if you like, to death, but yon will not have done with me; the king will not execute your sentence. The cause will be submitted to the Diet Your Homans bow their knees before the crowd of your menials \ they bear on their necks the degrading yoke of the Roman scribes ; but such is not the case with UB. Where the law rules, even the throne, the king, our lord, cannot do what he tikes; he must do what the law prescribes. He will not say as soon as you shall give him a sign with your finger — 'Stanislans Orsechowski, Pope Julius wishes yon to go into exile; therefore go.' I assure you that the king cannot wish that
68 Who Are the Skmt
tions of the one nor the other. Placed m if outnde of the times, we have not been charged with the education of the human specief • We only live in a very narrow preaent, without past and without fatore^ amidst a cafan • • • flat.
As we are isolated by a strange destiny of the anirersil movement of humanity we have gained nothing, not even the traditional ideas of the human species. There is with as no intimate development of natural progress; the new ideas brush away the old ones, for the former do not spring from the latter, because they fall to us from I do not know where. The best ideas owing to the lack of links or consequence are sterile dazzling flashes which paralyze in our brains. Isolated as we are in this world, we have in no wise contributed to the progress of the human mind, and all that which has reached us from that progress we have mutilated • • . not a single useful thought has germinated in the sterile soil of our coun- try, not a single great verity Kas sprung up from our midst. • • • We bear in our blood a principle that is hostile and refractory to civilization. We have been born into the world like illegitimate children. . • . We grow, but we do not ripen. • • • We advance, but sideways, and towards no spe- cial goal. • • •*'
In other words : Chadayev thinks that up to the present Russia has been no more than a parasite branch of the Euro- pean tree, which has rotted because it drew its sap from By- zantium, useless to the cause of civilization, a stranger to the great religious structure of Western Middle Ages, and after- wards to the lay enfranchisement of modem society.
Some prominent Russians went even so far as to pusillani- mously renounce all holy Russian traditions and kiss the Pope's toe, becoming Catholics; for example, Princess Yol- konsky, who entertained Gogol at Rome, a great nobleman, e. g.. Prince Gagarin (afterwards a Jesuit, and editor of the works of Chadayev), Vladimir Solovyev. Solovyev believes like Dostoyevky, in the universality of the historic mission the
Skanc Rdigums Traits 89
performance of wiiich devolves upon Russia, but thinks that to reach its realization through the universal organization of human life on the lines of truth, Russia should carry out Chadayev's theory, and consent to the union of the Graeco* Byzantine and Latin Roman churches. (See: Gagarin's Rtu- nan Clergy^ London, 1872; Prince A. Gallitzin's UJ^gUse GrSco-RusiCf Paris, 1861; and H. Lutteroth's Russia and the Jesuits, from 1772 to 1820, London, 1858; C. G. v. Murr, Merkwiirdige Nachrichten von den Jesuiten in Weiss- russen, Frankfort & Leipzig, 1785.) He believes that the Eastern and Western worlds represent the two highest phases of the development of the human organization — mon- ism, in the iSrst fusing together of the three vital principles (feeling, thought, and will) and atomism, in the second, fol- lowing on the other, decomposing these three elements of life into science and art, and stirring them up to conflict. The recomposition and reorganization of these elements into a third and last phase of historic evolution, calls for the inter- vention of a superior conciliating principle. And this must be the destiny of the Slavic Race.*®
A Croatian patriot, a personal friend of VI. Solovyev, Bishop Juraj Strossmayer (1815-1905), the famous oppo- nent— at the Vatican Council in 1870 — to the ea: cathedra, infallibility of the Pope ^* tried to make a compromise be- tween two Slavic Churches, suggesting especially a plan for the unification of the Serbian Greek Orthodox and Croatian Roman Catholic Churches into a Slavic Church (knowing that the future of his people could never be realized within the confines of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy). Stross- meyer (a son of the Croatian people) was in constant cor- respondmce with Prince Michael of Serbia, with Michael, Metropolitan of Belgrade, and with Gladstone. He, as the great Croatian Bishop, gave a living example to several other South-Slavic bishops who sided with their clergy in the national struggle. Thus Uccelini, the Catholic Bishop of
40 Who Ar0 the Skmt
Kotor (Cattaro) translated the Divina Ccmidim mad dedi- cated his translation to the Serbo-Croatian nationj nd lie- cause of his wish to introduce the Slavic language into the liturgy Bishop Dvomik had to flj from hia native tova of Zadar (Zara, Dahnatia) to Constantinople, where In died. In Zadar, where Bishop Dvornik had lived and woiked another priest, Dum Bianchini (his brother Ante, is a lead- ing physician in Chicago, and a leader of the Soath-Savi in the United States), preached South-Slavic muftQation with religious fervor. At present the Prince Arehfaiahop of Carniolia is following the example of the venerated Stross- maycr as a leader of the South for union and freedom. Before Strossmaycr another Serbo-Croat, Juraj Krixameh^ die ftret Fan-Slavist, suggested a wonderful scheme for uniting the churches of the Slavs. He was, however, exiled to Sibcxia for his schemes of reform and European propaganda in Russia.
The Fanslavists defend the Russian Greek-Orthodox Church in this way : ^'The European world was represented as being composed of two hemispheres^ — ^the Eastern, or Graeco-Slavic, on the one hand, and the Western, or Roman Catholic and Protestant, on the other. These two hemi- spheres are distinguished from each other by many funda- mental characteristics. In both of them Christianity formed originally the basis of civilization," but in the West it be- came distorted and gave a false direction to the inteUectual development. By placing the logical reason of the learned above the conscience of the whole Church, Roman Catholi- cism produced Protestantism, which proclaimed the ri^t of private judgment and consequently produced innumerable sects. The dry, logical spirit which was thus fostered cre- ated a purely intellectual, one-sided philosophy, which inevi- tably leads to utter skepticism, by blinding men to those great truths which lie above the sphere of reasoning and logic. The Gra?co-Slavic world, on the contrary, having
Db. Anton Bianeini
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Slavic Religious Traits 41
accepted pure Orthodoxy and true enlightenment, was thus saved alike from Papal tyranny and from Protestant free- thinking. Hence the Eastern Christians have preserved faithfully not only the ancient dogmas, but also the ancient spirit of Christianity — that spirit of pious humility, resig- nation, and brotherly love, which Christ taught by precept and example. If they have not yet a philosophy, they will create one, and it will far surpass all previous systems, for in the writings of the Greek Fathers are to be found the germs of a broader, a deeper, and a truer philosophy than the dry, meager rationalism of the West — ^a philosophy founded not on the logical faculty alone, but on the broader basis of human nature as a whole." The ideal of many older Panslavists is ^^One Church, one Empire," which also was an ideal of Charlemagne, of Otto, of Barbarossa, of Hilde- brand, of Thomas of Aquinas, of Dante, etc.^^
It is a remarkable fact that no Slavic nation which em* braced the Roman Church has ever b^icA abk to maintain its independence (Poles, Czechs^ Slovaks, Croatians, Slovenes). All Slavic states of Greek Orthodox Eastern faith (Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro) have been able up to the pres- ent time to retain their independence or to regain it when lost. It is not true that the Slavs are stationary in their religious life. Even many Slavophiles, especially their deepest repre- sentative, mystic philosopher, Vladimir Solovyev, who used to dream of the union of the churches under the pope as the spiritual head, the greater synthesis of universal realization is to be found in a rejuvenated Christianity, for in it we have an universalism that is positive, not negative. In his book, The Crins of Western Philosophy^ he says : "The realiza- tion of the universal synthesis of science, philosophy, and religion must be supreme aim, and last result of the evolu- tion of thought."
It is a fact that the modern era in religious movement was opened by John Hus.^^ The Czech people have continued
42 Who At€ ih€ SUmf
to worship their nmtional hero, H1U9 who wu fhe gnrt leader of Catholic refonnatioii between John Wi6Gt or Wj^ lif and Martin Lather and whose teachings led Boiiemia (Us Czech land) to ])olitical and religious freedom for five osnte- ries. The yearly pilgrimage to Constance, where *%o was burned, but not the truth with him," is still made bj tiios* sands. Hus precipitated the struggle to return at kaat to the freedom of the old Slavic Church of the people. Widifs teaching coincided with the Slavic religious spirit, Wibiif had, however, not escaped the charge of heresy, and ao in 1408 Jan Hus was forbidden by the university authorities to discuss 46 theses which he had derived mostly from Wkfi^ and in 1409, when the Pope (Alexander the Fifth) had in sued his bull against the teachings of l/Hclif and tlie Axdh bishop of Prague had burned WicliPs writings, Hus felt the effect of the opposition he had stirred up on the part of the Catholic hierarchy, the priests, and the monks by denouncing, in imitation of Wiclif , the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church. Hus attacked certain ceremonies: auricular con- fession, the worship of images, and fasting. In his two books {The Abomination of Monks^ and Th^ Members of Anti-^ Christ) the monks and the Pope with his court were the objects of his most violent diatribes. Hus insisted upon the following points of vital importance: (1) the appeal to Scripture as the only infallible authority; (2) the necessity of bringing the clergy back to a life of discipline and purity^ whether by depriving them of all interference in tem- poral affairs, or by taking from them the property of which they made a bad use; (S) the dispensation of spiritual power to the priests by the Holy Spirit, by reason of their inner purity and only in so far as they were qualified to receive it and worthy of it. In 1410 Hus and his followers were put under the ban. Undeterred, Hus kept on preaching as before. In 1411 he openly attacked the Pope, John XXIU, when he offered indulgences to those volunteers who would take arms
Slavic Religious Traits 4S
against Eong Ladislaus of Naples in behalf of France. In 141S Hus gave out an university debate upon the question of indulgences, which only widened the breach between him- self and luiiversity authorities and the clergy. In 1412 a Papal interdict was issued against him. In reply Hus wrote his book, On the Churchy appealing from the Pope to a gen- eral council and to Christ ; and then, feeling no longer safe in Prague, he withdrew to the castles of certain friendly noble- men. When in 1414 the "Articles of Prague" were presented to Rome, demanding that the word of God be freely preached, that the Sacrament or Communion be administered to the people in both kinds and that the clergy possess no property nor temporal power, — a new edict was issued and Jan Hus was summoned before the Council of Constance. Obedient to summons and with a safe conduct to go and return given by the Emperor Sigismund, of the Holy Roma/n Empire^ .Hus arrived at Constance (Nov. 8, 1414), where the General Council of the Roman Catholic Church had been convened. His journey thither was a triumph, and he entered the city in great state. At first he was a free man, but on November 28 he was apprehended on the trumped-up charge of at- tempting to leave the city, and cast into prison, in spite of the indignant protests of the Czech and Polish nobles. Hus may have fancied that he would have opportunity to defend his views in open debate, but he quickly learned that the Council intended to try him as a "recusant heretic*" He was, however, long kept in suspense, for it was not till June 6, 1416, that he was first formally accused. On June 8th, 89 charges were exhibited against Hus, some of which he acknowledged as fairly based upon his teachings, while oth- ers he declared to be misrepresentations. Being required to recant his alleged mistakes, Hus refused to do so until they should be proved to be mistakes. On June 18th the articles of his condemnation were prepared. On June 24th his books were burned ; on June 81st his attempts to come to an under-
I
.ui ine tJzechs ; namely, follow King Wcncesluus of Bohemia, people rose in rebellion in wi wars.''' These struggles again: the Holy Roman Empire lasted 1436, when Sigismund granted dom and a year earlier Fope J mands of the "Articles of Praj sporadically until 1486, when t the confinnation by Emperor 1 1436.
But the triumph of the Cathol battle of the Bilohora (the Whitt — in 1620 — gave a fatal How to left Bohemia at the mercy of tl First (1619-1697). who inflicted enemies, and in 1627 declared Bol hereditary kingdom of the Hapi fewer than 30,000 families are si and the population which was e reduced to 800,000. The best went into exile. The leading me ecuted, exiled, or imprisoned; tl abolished. -^.A *v-
SUmc Religious Traits 45
books they could find; and this destruction did not ntn the close of the eighteenth century. Among the emigrants who continued to write in their foreign Jan Amos Komensky surpassed all others. When at persecution of the Protestants broke out he fled md, and in exile, like his countryman, Karl Zerotin, SS6, he published several several pedagogical, philo- .1 and philological works in Latin and in Czech, dis- ced for the classical perfection of their style. Co- was the last bishop of the Moravian Church.^* Co-
strongly influenced Schleiermacher's Discourses on n (1797) in laying stress on inward feeling and the f personal dependence on Grod. (He wrote three im- k books: 1. Ecdesiae Slavonicae historiola, Amster- 360 ; 2. Historia fratrum, edited by Buddeus ; 8. Mar- m Bohevicum oder die bohndsche Verfolgungsge- e, 894-16S2, Berlin, 1766.)
teachings of the martyrdom of Jan Hus, the valor .1 of his Czech brother, Count Zizka, appeared to have
vain. Yet they were not so, for the seeds of liberal t had been sown far and wide during the struggle, the century to come they would grow into a great re- Reformation, a permanent triumph of freedom of hu- ought. The spirit of Hus spread far beyond, being ip by Luther and leading to the breaking of the power nediaeval Catholic Church. In the main it was the doc- f Wycklife transplanted to Bohemia and Moravia by at in the preaching and writing of Luther effected the :ant Reform. Luther appeared before the Diet of
with the example of Hus in his mind. His friends
him, but Luther said as he entered Worms : **Hus rned, but not the truth with Am." Yes, Luther was successor of Jan Hus, and completed his work — the as finished what the Slavs had begun. Only a few facts : puary, 1529, Luther, after having considered the mat-
46 Who Are the Slavst
ter with Melanchthon, wrote to Spalatin : Ego impudens omr nia Johanms Hru et docui et tenuis breviter stunwu omnee Huritae ignorantes, Schwarze writes about the same: ^^I have hitherto taught and held all the opinions of Hus with* out knowing it. With like unconsciousness has Staupitz taught them. We are all of us Hussites without knowing it*' (Schwarze, John Huss, p. 93). This translation is, however, wrong. Professor Schaff translates it correctly as follows: ^^Shamelessly I both taught and held all the teachings of Huss, in short, we are all Hussites without knowing it." Luther wrote to Melanchthon on June 27, 1680 : "John Huss and many others waged harder battles than we do. If our cause is great, its author and champion is great also." H. St. Chamberlain admits that the Slavs began to fight for the Reformation more than two hundred years before Martin Luther. He says in his Fowndations of the Nineteenth Cenr tury (1, pp. 616-617) : "Even a hundred years before the birth of Luther every third man in England was an anti- Papist, and Wyclif's translation of the Bible was known throughout the whole land. Bohemia did not lag behind; al- ready in the thirteenth century the New Testament was read in the Czech language, and at the beginning of the fifteenth century Hus edited the complete Bible in the language of the people. But the most quickening influence was that of Wyclif, he was the first to open the eyes of the Slavs to evangelic truth, so that Hieronymus of Prague could say of him: ^Hitherto we have had only the shell, Wyclif has revealed the kernel.' We get an altogether false idea of the Slavic reformation if we direct attention principally to Hus and Husite wars; the predominance of political com- binations, as well as of the enmity between Czechs and Germans from that time forth confused men's minds and obscured the pure object of their endeavor which at first had been so clear. Even a hundred years be- fore Hus Hvcd Milich, who, though an orthodox Catholic and
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«STOB, LFNOX AND TIU>EN «JUNBAM«»8
Slavic Religious Traiti 47
disinclined by his interest in practical ministTy to all specu- lation concerning dogma, invented the expression Antichrist for the Roman Church ; in the prison at Rome he wrote hia treatise, De Antickriito, in which he shows that the Anti- christ will not come in the future, but is already here, he is heaping up 'clerical' riches, buying prebends and selling sacraments. Mathias von Janov then expands this thought and thus paves the way for the real theological Reforma- tion; he certainly champions the one sacred Church, but it must be thoroughly purified and built up anew: 'It remains for us now only to wish that the Reformation may be made possible by the destruction of the Antichrist, let us raise our heads, for salvation is already near at hand !' ( 1389) . He is followed by Stanislaus von Znaim, who defends before the University of Prague the forty-iive theses of Wyclif ; Hus, who makes a clear distinction between the 'Apostolic* and the 'Papal* and declares that he will obey the former, but the latter only in as far as it agrees with the Apostolic ; Niko- laus von Welenowich, who denies the position of the priests aa privileged intercessors with God ; Hieronymus, that splen- did kni^t and martyr, who moved even the indifferent Papal secretary Poggio, who was more^terested in Hellenic litera- ture than in Christianity and chiefly known as a collector and editor of obscene anecdotes, to utter the words, '0 what a man, worthy of immortal fame 1* And many others. Clear- ly we have not the achievement of a single, perhaps erratic mind in all this ; on the contrary it is the soul of a nation — at least everything that was genuine and noble in that people — that expresses itself. It is well known what fate overcame this noble section, how it was wiped off the face of the earth. The Pope and the Roman bishops had bribed the army of international mercenaries, and from them received its death-blow at the White Mountain. Nor is it a question of a Czech idiosyncrasy; the other Catholic Slavs adopted exactly the same attitude. Thus, for example, the hymns of
48 Who Ar9 «k# Skmf
Wyclif were printed in the first Poliah printinf pww; Br' land sent to the Councfl of Trent hiihops vhow were so distinctly Protestant that the Pope eccosed before the king of being rabid heretics. But the Piolisii Par* liament was not intimidatedf it demanded from the Kipf a complete reorganisation of the Polish Church upon tlie of the Holy Scriptures. At the same time it mirabile diciul — ^tiie 'equal ri|^ts of all sects.' Hie aoUilj of Poland and all the intellectual aristocracy were Protest ant. But the Jesuits profited by the politiesl tmdxmam^ which soon arose, to gain a firm footing in the land* and tihey were supported by France and Austria; the process was not ^bloody and speedy,' as Canisius had demanded, but the Prok- estants were nevertheless persecuted more and more emdly and finally banished; with the downfall of its religion tiie Polish nation also fell.''
Chamberlain refers to a book of Count Valerian S. Kra- sinski {Geschichte der Ursprwngs^ ForischrUts und Verfdtti der Reformation in Polen^ Leipzig, 1841)^® where ^is to be foimd so complete, abundant, convincing and perfectly treat- ed materials as in Poland, to see how religious intolerance and especially the influence of the Jesuits completely ruined a land which was advancing towards a brilliant future in every intellectual and industrial sphere. We can best see the atti- tude of the Poles to Rome before the time of Luther in the speech delivered by Johann Ostrorog in the assembly of the States in the year 1459, in which he said, ^We cannot object to the recommending of this island as a Catholic one to the protection of the Pope, but it is imbecoming to promise him unbounded obedience. The King of Poland is subject to no one, and only God is over him ; he is not the vassal of Rome. • • • etc., etc. ; then he inveighs against the shameless simony of the Papal stool, the sale of indulgences, the greed of the priests and monks, etc. This whole Polish movement is like the Bohemian, distinguished by a fresh breath of independ-
Slaoic Rdigiotu Traitt 49
ence and national feeling and at the same time indifference to and depreciation of dogmatic questions (the Poles never were Utraquista) ." (See also: Ch. E. Edwardt, Protestant- ism in Poland, I^iladelphia, Westminster Press, 1901 ; Pitcher, Reformation in Foknd, London, 1896.)"
Among the coadjutors of Hus was Jerome of Prague, a professor in the same university where Hus was dean of the facultj, who in his erudition and eloquence surpassed his friend, Hus, whose doctrinal views he adopted, but he had not the mildness of disposition nor the moderation of conduct which distinguished Jan Hus. He wrote several works for the instruction of the Czech people, and translated some of the writings of Wicklif into the Czech. On hearing of the dangerous position of his friend Hus he hastened to Con- stance to assist and support him. He, too, was arrested, and even terrified into temporary submission; but at the next audience of the council he reaffirmed his faith, and declared solemnly that of al] his sins he repented of none more than his apostasy from the doctrines he had main- tained. In consequence of this avowal he was condemned to the same fate as his friend Hus, suffering at the stake. May 80, 1416. "Bring thy torch hither; do thine office before my face ; had I feared death I might have avoided it." These brave words were addressed to the executioner who was about to kindle the fire behind him. (Some give his last words thus : "This soul in flames I ofFer, Christ, to thee.") These two illustrious martyrs were, with the exceptions of WicUf, the first advocates of truth a century before the Ref- ormation. Since then, in no language has the Bible been read with more zeal and devotion than in the Czech. The long contest for freedom of conscience which desolated the coun- try until the extinction of the nation is one of the great tragedies of human history. It is rightly said that Catholi- cism is not a Slav national religion, and can never become a part of the soul of the Slav. Only the Catholic Church knows
60 Who Ar9 lk# Skmf
the jui dkoinum which ou^t to be tht soaree and inAas rf every jus profamim, and the Slavic Christimiiity waa ftifrtti by the fanaticism of the Roman Catholic Chofchf beeoaim synonymous with militancy and the spirit of the wfel
AntirChurehiim
Churchism or mere clerical religion never appealed to the Slav. That the religious spirit of Hub is not dead even to-day is shown by his followers beginning from the BohemiaB or Moravian Brethren and the South-Slavic Bogumili up to Tolstoy and his followers, who formed many religioiui organ- izations,— ^numbering, at least, over SO millions of members ** — ^which bear the following strange names: RoiMmki (Schismatics, Old Rituals or Old Believers), Paihkoviii, Po' moriane (Sea-Dwellers), Fedoseievsky and FUipovisky^ the Bieguni^ Strardki, Moltchalniki^ Shakuni^ Molokane, Shakh putiniy Dukhobortsy^ Khlysty^ Skopani^ MartinisUt Mo^ reshikif Netovtchins^ Niconiant, Roshobshiki^ Sttgolmki, Yedinovertzy (Coreligionists), Blagosloveni (the Blessed), Malovantzi, Peremeyanovtchini, Deniers^ VctgranU^ Bogvk- mSJi^ StwridtstSy the Nazareni, Free Faith (or Readers), White Doves^ the New Israel^ Non-prayers, Kayuks Tctr stovsy (followers of Count L. Tolstoy), Prophet s, JohmUs, mystics and rationalists, wrestlers with the spirit and morti' flers of the flesh, Bezpopovshtina, Sighers ("Vozdykhantsy*; a late sect), Self-cremators ("Samosojigateli"), Skits (erem- etic colonies or settlements of Schismatics), Samohoghi ("Self-Gods"), Computers ("Tchislenniki"; an eccentric sect of late days). Spiritual Brethren, Nameiess^ S^k- batniki, Theodosians, Iskali Khrista (Christ-seekers), Diaconshchini, Efefanoftchini, Tchernoltzi (Wjetkaers), Pastuchkol (Adamantovci), Spasova (Euzminchini), De- tubeichini (Infanticides), Bezslovestni (the Dumb), JTa-
Slavic Religious Traits 51
rahliki Izbramki (Company of the Elect), etc.®^ Strange doctrines some of them are known to have, the tenets of most of them are obscure, but persecution has been the lot of alL Even those essentially orthodox in doctrine but op- posed to episcopal church government, were treated harshly until the reign of Tzar Alexander the Second (1865-1881), who decreed that dissenting priests must be ordained by priests of the established church.
I think a brief description of these sects will help us to get a slight insight into the religious mind of these strange people. A special attention wiU be given to the teaching of Count Tolstoy's followers.
7^ Bohemian or Moravian Brethren {Vmtas Fratrwm)
The Bohemian or Moravian Brethren'^ ("Bohemian Brotherhood" or "Unity of the Brethren," the National Church of Bohemia, 1420-1620) are so well known to the English-speaking public that it is not necessary to say more than to state the fact that they are faithful follow- ers of Jan Hus. It was founded by the more peaceful ele- ment among the war-like Hussite party. The leaders of this movement were firm believers in constructive pacifism. Abhorring war and all strife they retired from the turmoils of the world, and protested against warfare, against train- ing of soldiers in the arts of war and destruction. They were against the destruction of hiunan life, declared it un- christian, against the law of God, and believed that all men are brethren and should love each other. They repudiated war, and preached the gospel and settlement of grievances in peaceful ways without armed force. Nevertheless this church was persecuted most violently, chiefly by Emperor Ferdinand the Second. The members of this wonderful denomination went into voluntary exile, went to Saxony, Prussia, Hol- land, and America. They developed into the Moravian
62 Who Are the Slavs?
Church, and influenced by their teaching John Wesley (the founder of Methodism), whose ideals do not diflfer very much from those of Chelcicky, the Czech dreamer of a religion of Fraterrdty. (In England the parliament exempted the mem- bers of this denomination from military service.) (See also: W, G. MaJlin, Catalogue of Books relating to or illustrating the History of the Unitas Fratrum or United Brethren now generally known as the Moravian Church, Philadelphia, 1881 ; J. MiiUery Die deutsche Eatechismen der bohmischer Brttder, Berlin, 1887 ; B. Seifferth, Church Constitution of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren : The Original Latin with a Translation, London, 1866; J. Zahn^ Die geistliche Lieder der Briider in Bohmen, Mahren und Polen, Niimberg, 1876 ;C. A, G. V. Zezschwitz, Die Katechismen der der Wal- denser und bohmischer Briider, Erlangen, 186S. For Church order see : Ratio disciplinac ordinisqua ecclesiastici in unitate fratrimi Bohcmorum, Leszno, 163S, Amsterdam, 1666 ; Hal- le, 1732.) The following data show a few main points in the struggle of the Czecli Church. In 1500, the Pope Alexander Vlth, Borgia, sends inquisitors to cope with the Bohemian Brothers, who deny the Real Presence and refuse oaths, and who exercise commanding influence, in part owing to the preaching of Lukas of Prague. In 1522 the Bohemian Cate- chism is published, probably by Lukas of Prague, who is strongly influenced by a visit to the Waldensians. In 16S6 the First Bohemian Confession, probably by John Augusta, is composed and sent to King Ferdinand and to Dr. Martin Luther. In 1522 a few Bohemian Brethren enter Russia, but neither Protestantism nor Rome, where the Jesuit Possevin is sent to champion, gives any foothold. In 1564, owing to the concession by the Pope Pius IV (Medici) of the cup to the laity, Utraquists became merged in the Catholic Church. At the same time the Bohemian Brothers, under the leader- ship of Blahoslav, obtain toleration from the Emperor Maxi- milian II. In 1568, Blagoslav translates the Bible, adds
Slavic Religious Traits 5S
nmentaries, and composes hymns, his writings exercising )rofound influence over the Bohemian Brethren. In 1575, \ Second Bohemian Confession, based on the Augsburg and ! First Czech Confession, is drawn up by. Lutherans, Cal- ists, Utraquists and Bohemian Brethren. In 1602, the iperor Rudolf Ilnd revives the edicts of persecution ilnst Protestants. In 1647, the colloquy of Thorn, from ich Unitarians are excluded, discusses reunion, and attended by the Lutherans, Calixtus, Calov, by the Mo- rian, Jan Amos Comenius, and by Catholics, but serves y to widen the gulf. In 1722, Count N. L. ZInzendorf rOO-1760) collects the remnants of the Bohemian Broth- and forms the Moravian Brotherhood at Herenhut. In S4, Spangenberg reforms the constitution of the Mora- nsy and suppresses the ^^extravagance" of the brother- >d.
The SouthrSlavic BogtunuU
The South-Slavic Bogumili ("Friends of God", or «Hhe oved or the dear ones to God" ; Bog = Lord, God ; mlli dear) among the South Slavs of the fourteenth century leir work of enlightenment spread from Bulgaria over * whole of the Slavic South) stick to a form of teaching led to the movement among the Albigeneses In the twelfth itury, the first Protestant movement on the European ritory. They are also known as Pavlikani or PatdicianSf :ause they resemble Paulicians and Katharl. The Bogu- ii or Bogumiles are also called New Mamcheans. In ! beginning of the twelfth century, a priest by me Bogumil began to preach (In Bulgaria) against the ablished State Church, condemning openly the conduct the bishops, priests and monks. They were averse to all Ages, even to the cross. They sufi^ered persecution from exius Commenus, who put to death their leader, Basilius, i they were condemned by a synod of Constantinople in
64 Who Arw the SImmf
1140. But it is a fact that erai their bittomt acknowledged that they Kved pure and Turtiioiii fivcty ttift they were truth-loving and moral people. ProfeMOg TadA says this about tbem : **The Bogumili were Strang opponi to the poetic glorification of the Crosades, became tfcqf grasped the fact that the extolling of such an ideal can aevcr open the mind to heretic culture — ^the culture baaed on fm choice according to conscience — ^which wae eventoaUy to m- dermine the fotmdations of sacrosanct Roman Empire aid lay the first solid foundations of true culture. Boguadi taught that true culture is not spread bj crasadeB» but springs from Christian, human contemplation. Tbey depre- cated personal worship, and replaced it by a worahip of ideals, of spirit, and of thought. Wydif, Hus and LaHwr are always quoted as the foremost apostles of the herelied culture. But in the Hungarian Crusades the Bogumili found bitter enemies. Bogumilist activity in Bosnia and Croatia was stifled in blood, and the people, who were beginning to protest against the lying cult of Oesarism wedded to Papii- try, were simply butchered in the name of the Cross. The blood-baths on the fields of Bosnia filled the people with con- sternation, but could not stifie Bogumilism. True its prog- ress was checked in the Southern Slav region, but it secretly penetrated westward, whence the Patarenes in Italy and the Catharists, Albigeneses and Waldenses in France spread it all over the world. It is interesting to note that at the very moment when Bogumilist culture was destroyed among the Slavs themselves, they bequeathed this very Bogumilism to the rest of Europe — ^the first and only gift from the Southern Slav race as a whole to the spiritual life of Europe. It was the true "antemurale Christianitatis'* — ^the outworks of Christianity — ^purified from Byzantine and Roman de- ments. What they gave was perhaps not so much their own as the vigor with which they translated the ideal and the doc- trine of a spiritual life, from the mountains of Asia Minor
Slavie Religumt Traits 55
to the West. Th»rs was the work of emissaries and out- posts." " H. S. Chamberlain, in his Foundattoju of the Nineteenth Century (vol. I, p. 511), says this about the Ser- Inan Bogumili in Bosnia and Herzegovina :
**Very characteristic is the attitude ... of those genu- ine, still almost pure, Slavs in Bosnia and Herzegovina. At an earlier period the influential part of the nation adopted the doctrines of Bogumil (allied to those of Catharists or Patarenes); that is, thej rejected everything Jewish in ChristiaDity and retained besides the New Testament only the Prophets and the Psalms, they recognized no sacraments and above all no priesthood. Though increasingly opposed and crushed from two sides simultaneously by the orthodox Serbians and the Hungarians who obeyed every sign of the Roman Pope— though they were thus the bloody victims of a doable and continuous crusade — this little people never- theless cinng to its faith for centuries; the graves of the heroic followers of Bogumil still adorn the peaks of the hills, to which the corpses were borne to avoid the danger of dese- cration. It was the Mohammedans who, by forcible conver- sion, first did away with this sect."
Three South-Slavic sons were merely Bogumili in heart, nothing more — Marco Marulich (1450-1524), a highly edu- cated and intensely reli^ouB Serbian nobleman of Spalato, whose works were translated from the Latin into all the prin- cipal European languages; Flaviua Illyricum (a Slav by birth), whom, after Martin Luther, the Germans consider one of their greatest teachers; and John of Raguso, who led the whole Council of Basel (or Bale) against the Pope and pro- posed to negotiate calmly and justly with the Husites and Manichees.
The basis of the Bogumil creed was as follows:
Out of the eternal divine essence or being sprang two prin- ciples— Satane] and Logos ; the former, at first good, after- wards rebelled, and created in opposition to the original spir-
66 Who Are the Slamf
Itual universe a world of matter and human bemgs. Tbesa human beings, however, received from the Supreme Father a life-spirit ; but this was kept in slavery by Satanel until the Logos or Christ came down from heaven, and assuming a phantom body, broke the power of the evil spirit, who wu henceforth called only Satan.
The Bogumiles, like all similar sects, practiced a severe ascetism, despised images, and rejected sacraments. Unlike the Paulinists, they rejected water baptism, and allowed only the baptism of Christ as a spiritual baptism called ewhotiih tioTL Instead of baptism, they placed their hands and an apocryphal gospel of St. John on the head of the neophyte, singing at the same time the Lord's Prayer, which they re- peated seven times during the day, and five times during the night. They accepted the whole of the New Testament bat of the Old Testament only the Psalms and Prophets, which they interpreted allegorically.
In 1118, that vehement hater of heretics, Alexius Corn- menus, burned their leader, Basilius. (In Euthtftnius, Pano- phia, Tit. 23, Narratio de Bogomilis, we read that the Prin- cess Anna Connsie will not describe the tenets of the Bogu- miles lest she should "pollute her lips.") At the end of the twelfth century, Stephan Nemanya, king of Serbia, perse- cutes the Bogumils and expelled them from the country. Large numbers took refuge in Bosnia, where they were known under the name of Patarenes ("Patareni'*). The Hungarians undertook many crusades against the heretics in Bosnia, but toward the close of the fifteenth century the conquest of that country by the Turks put an end to their persecution. At the time of the Mohammedan conquest of Bosnia (sixteenth century), we find that the greatest num- ber of the regenade Christians who embraced the religion of conquerors belonged to this sect. Few or no remnants of Bogiimili have survived in Bosnia. A Bogumil ritual in Slavic written by the Bosnian Radoslavov, and published in
Slavic Religioui Traits 67
ToL XVth of the Starine of the South-Slavic Academy at ZsLgreh (Agram, Croatia), shows great resemblance to the Canthar ritual published by Cunitz in 1853. [See Fr. Rachki's article on BogumiU and Patareni in the Rod (Work) of the South-Slavic Academy at Zagreb, vols. VII, Vni, X, 1870 ; also : Karapet Ter-Urkrtschian, Die PauUr leaner in hyzantischen Kaiserreichs^ Leipzig, 1893 ; A. Lom- bard, PauUciens, Bulgares et Bons-Hommes en Orient et Oc- cident, Geneve, 1879.]
The Serbian Nazarem
The Serbian Nazarenes ("Nazareni") form a Christian sect, originated about the middle of the last century, in the "Serbian Voyvodina" (Southern Hungary and Srem, a dis- trict of Slavonia) and spread rapidly among the Serbs of that country and less rapidly among the people of the king- dom of Serbia. They are absolutely honest and truth-loving. They have several points of resemblance to the old bosanska vera (Bogumili) : they have no churches and no priests, re- pudiate the worship of the Madonna and the Saints as idola- try, consider it as the- greatest sin to kill a man, and, there- fore, refuse to bear arms and serve in the army. Mr. Chedo Miyatovich says that in Serbia some of them have been con- demned to twenty years' imprisonment for having refused to comply with the lawful duty of every citizen to serve in the Army, but they have cheerfully undergone that heavy sen- tence for conscience's sake, never murmuring a word of pro- teat.
The Russian Shalaputni
The Russian ShaXaputni or the Extravagants are preach- ing and practicing a communistic gospel like Tolstoy. With- in a score of years they won over all the common people, all the rustic class, of the south and south-west of Russia.
68 Who Ar§ ih§ SOamf
Judicious observers, wdl-iiifoniied eeonomutiy ft complete and immediate spread of the doctrine in Hie classes through Russia. In 188S Abramor pnMiihfid a wf curious study of this sect in the Anmah of lft# Camttrg. Turgenyev was greatly struck by it, and said: ^^Tben is the peasant getting op steam; before long he will mahs a general up-turning."
The Ruiiitm Mctokmd
The Russian Milk-drinkers or Molokani are considewd harmless by the Russian Orthodox ChurcL They call tbcn- selves the people of Christ. Their creed allowa no cercmaaies; there is no Eucharist. The feast days which they are the Sundays, and the days peculiarly assodated the Lord's name, such as Nativity, the Passion, and the As- cension. They look upon all saints, including the Apostles, as simply good men. They are In fact, Bible Christians, taking all their dogma from the New Testament. Most of them live away in the Caucasus, where they are a strong and prosperous body. Their Bible is the New Testament in Russian and also in Old Church Slavic tongue; it is the same as that used in the Russian, Serbian and Bulgarian Orthodox Church.
Wallace, in his well-known book on Russia, speaks espe- cially of the Moravians and of the Russian Molokang (^Hnilk- drlnkers," a branch of Dukhoborts) in Russia who are stub- born '^quakers of the steppes," preaching conununism, and distributing their goods, like Popov, among the poor; they have often been exiled for their faith to Siberia. (See also: T. Pcch, Die Molokane, Historisches Taschenbuch, 6 ser. VIII, p. 803, Leipzig, 1878.) They tried to combine with the evangelical Christianity, accepting some of the injunc- tions of the Old Testament (such as the prohibition of eat- ing pork and fishes without scales, and to celebrate the
'i ^. ^ I-
Slavic Religiofis Traits 69
SatuTclay instead of the Sunday). They are said to be named Molokam or Milk-drinkers because of their habit of taking milk and food preserved from milk on the fast days when it is prohibited by the Russian Orthodox Church; but more probably so called after the name Molochnaya, a river in the south of Russia, in the neighborhood of which they once flourished. They can be compared with the Presbyter- ians. They ascribe origin of their movement to the visit of an English physician to Moscow in the reign of Ivan the Terrible who introduced the reading and study of the Bible. They call themselves "True Christians.'
»
The Russian Stundists
The Russian Stundist is a rationalistic sect of Protes- tant origin. It is numerically and intellectually of greatest significance. It has its beginning in the south-east of Russia (1858), in the neighborhood of German colonies, near Odes- sa, where the religious fervor of the Nazaraens and Jumpers (Shakers or Shakuny) found their expression in home-meet- ings, known as Stvmde (hour). They approximate to Lu- theran doctrine and reject ceremonial form of any sect. They have itinerant priests, who much resemble in their teaching Greorge Fox, the founder of the English Quakers in the seventeenth century. This earnest evangelic sect was founded by German Protestants in Russia, about 1855-1866. The first preacher was a poor Russian of Osnova, Michael Ratuzny or Rotushny, called Ouishtashenko, who was con- verted from an evil life by hearing the Gospel read. He became a shoemaker, and learned to read himself. In 1877 **the famous Sutaev" established the sect, which now numbers several millions. They have gradually simplified their creed, and their religion now consists in practical goodness of life, with reading of the New Testament and prayer, as far as constant prosecution permits. From the day of conversion
60 Wlu> Art <ft« mm>a
till death the Stundut ainki hii indrridtulify in that af humanitj generally, beliering- in the brotlwriiood of ■■■. The Stundist thinka that Chriit la atill vamkriiig wmmig miUionB of planets, teaching by word and eramplr. Db- cord is the root of all aina, and he who f ollowa the law of lofe finds life full of charm, while death has for him no tnran. He does not merely diitTibute his money and gooda : he wiB mow hay for the prisoner or the aiek, reap hia com, xepairhii ' hut, and care for hia children. Crime is almost anknowB among them, and yet he always says : **It is not I iriw woifc, bat God within me : we must live for others and die to sdf* The Stundists are persecuted and banished (in 1898) \^ the Russian government. (See: H. Dalton, Z>«r SfitmB»mu in iZtw«IatuI, Giittersloh, 1896; A. Roschdastrenakg, Dw* ftidriMswcAtf f fwufiranM, St. Fetersbarg, 1689.)
The Ruinan RaikoMkt
The oldest and most powerful sect is that of the Russian Riultobuks (the Russian word raikdl means "diTision" or "schism"), DUienUrs, Separatists or as they prefer to caU themselves, Men of the Old Faith (Storo-iwry), Old Believ- eri or Old Ritualists, Starobriadzy, who even claim descent from the Slavic Apostles, Cyril and Methodius, and will not allow either Greek or Latin words to sully their Slav liturgy. They are intensely conservative, but only one Greek bishop was faithful to the sect in early days, and they have thus come to deny the Apostolic succession of all bishops. In 1652, Nicon becomes Patriarch, and, secure in the support of the Tzar Alexis, introduces many small changes in the Russian church, allowing western music and art, reviving preaching and revising the Rible. Then the Raskolniki leave the church, owing to this liturgical change. Only ia I 1883 they are allowed to hold office in the Russian govern* i ment. They are convinced that the essence of religion 1
Staioic R^igiout Traitt 61
not in templei antl Teasds, but in acta. They hold the world generally to be in the power of Satan ; and extremists think aDjthing that rescues a soul from the devil to be allowed, even the killiog of a new-bom babe, which is thus saved from pollution. Others thought it right to hasten the death of sick relations — an Eskimo idea^ — and whole families have burned themselves, inside carefully-made barricades, follow- ing the legend of the pious Allehuia, who thrust her infant into the fire in obedience to a supposed divine command. A peasant in 1870 kUled his son, whom he had bound to an altar, in imitation of Abraham. Avakhum Petrovich, an ardent preacher of the doctrines of this sect, was burned alive — ^in 1681 — for his persistent heretical propaganda. '^ Melnikov's studies of the life of the Raskolmks gave a true conception of them.
Old Believers reimited to the Established Orthodox Church of Russia are called Yedinaviirtsff.
The Ruintm Vagranit
The belief in the reign of Antichrist produced the Rus- sian vagrants {Biegum, Straniki or "Runners," "Deserters," "Tramps," "Wanderers," "PUgrims," "Fuptives"), who ^-obeying the Gospel behests — have left houaes and lands, and wander in the villages. They refused to have any fixed abode in this world of Antichrist. They were pilgrims and strangers, constantly running from place to place. They have no chapels, but adore images (ikom) hung on trees in the forests. Some will not drink water that has been polluted by the presence of man.
The Rusrian Molchalniki
The Russian Molchahaki (the "Silent") or Bezslovestni (the Dumb) in Bessarabiii, on the lower Volga, and in Siberia, will not communicate with the wicked world by either word
62 Who An ihe 8kmf
or sign. They refused to speak» even iiii3er tortarei b that sense they may be compared with the Bomaii Catiiflilie order of Trappiiii,
The Rmwm Demen
The Russian Demer$ (""Netovtzl," ^^NyetordiieUBp cff ^'Netovstchini'' ) say that since the early days of Hift patriarch Nikon, who attempted to reform tlw 6re^ Chmcht nothing sacred remains on earth. They seek refuge in mjt* tic intercourse with Christ.
The Ruiiian ShaJnt/hff or Shakert
The Russian Shakany,Skakuni or Dancers (^THamn^-^ a branch — sect of the Khlysty ) are Shakers, or Jumpers, ap- jiearing first under the Tzar Alexander the First. They meet at night for cononesive dances and are suspected of licen- tiousness and vile cruelty. The exact relation of this sect to Khlysty is problematical. Some claim that ^^The Mad Monk niodor*' (N. Y., Century Co., 1918) belonged to this sect
The Russian Dukhobortzi or Spirit Wresilere
The Russian Dukhobortzi or Spirit Wrestlers are char- acterized by Aylmcr Maude (in his A peculiar people: the Doukhoborsy London, 1904, p. S31) :
*^It would be hard to find a community consisting of an equal number of men, among whom there is less crime, and more industry, honesty, and hospitality, or more personal at- tention by the hale adults to the needs of the old people and the children. They are sober, temperate, healthy, and there is no prostitution (and apparently little looseness in sex- ual matters) among them. Compared with the fancy pic- tures drawn by some enthusiasts they are disappointing, but compare well with ordinary human beings; tiiey are a
Slavic ReUghfu Traits 63
irorthy and estimable folk in spite of their obstinacy, sec- tarian exclusiveness, and their too great dependence on a very fallible authority.''
They have their origin in the second half of the eighteenth century in the propaganda of a Prussian soldier who was supposed to be Skovoroda, a Quaker, and in the writings of a Little Russian philosopher and mystic. This sect seems to be founded in Kharkov, though all their early history is wrapped in uncertainty. They wrote no books, partly be- cause most of their members were illiterate and partly be- cause secrecy compelled their propaganda to be carried on by word of mouth. It is a fact that Skovoroda drew his in- spiration from the teachings of the Czech sect of Abraham- ites, and taught that Jesus Christ was not to be sought without, but within one's own soul: ^'If you do not first of all seek within you, you will in vain seek in other places." The Dukhobors believe that man had fallen from original purity and *^ust cleanse himself in the home of his spirits, so that he may not go far to the pool in Jerusalem." They say : ^^6od is Spirit, and images are but idols. A picture is not Christ; it is but a bit of painted board. We believe in Christ, not a Christ of brass, nor of silver, nor of gold, the work of men's hands, but in Christ, the son of God, Saviour of the world." They may be compared with the Society of Friends. The main thing was to them to practice love to God and to one's neighbors — the Gospel, the sacra- ments ; their religious observances had not meaning to them externally, but only in a spiritual way. The Dukhobors seem to have held that Christ was merely a godlike man, and that His spirit was migrated into many persons. All people, they hold, are equal as children to God, and there is no need of there being any rulers. The only law is to do what is right. Dukhobors accept the Ten Commandments and the "useful" parts of the Bible. All else is allegory to theoiy though they have no symbols, forms, creed, or eccles-
M Who An f Jk# Slamf,
iaatical organizatioiii. Tbey call themidra liUtdf Jlfif #iaiw ("^rue^' or "^Spiritual Chriitiuis'*). Tbejnj:*Ili Raskolnik will die a martyr for the ri^^t to make tbe ■%»«! the cross with two fingers; we do not crow (rartdwi at J^ either with two or with three flngen ; we ftrive to attain a bet- ter knowledge of God.** Dokhobors have no marriage eeie- moniesy believing marriage to be a question of the mcKiiatioa of the heart only. (Wives and husbands are aisten aal brothers, and are called ''old man,^ and '^old wonma."*)
Dukhobors spread rapidly in Russia, and in 1797 aome of them were sent to the mines by the govemmenii AWandrr the First becoming Tsar in 1801, favored tokrationy bnt m 1826, under a new Tsar, persecution was renewedt and ia 18S7 they were banished to the Caucasus. However, hm the Mohammedans treated them well, because it was evidcfll that they were not '^Christians,*' since they would not fi^t After years of quiet growth, persecution began again; in 1897 they have been persecuted for refusing to undergo military service. Peter Verigin was their leader in this, and has since continued leader. Pobyedonostzev, the procu- rator of the Holy Synod of the Russian Church, also at this time undertook to bring all the religious elements of the Rus- sian Empire into conformity with the Russian Church. Now a severe persecution resulted — ^many of the Dukhobors* were killed, imprisoned, banished, flogged, fined. Only throu|^ the friends of these sufiPering people (like Count Tolstoy, D. A. Hilkov, Aylmer Maude, etc.) many thousands of tUs sect were enabled to emigrate to Canada, so that in 1900 some 7,000 Dukhobors were settled in three different colonies in Manitoba, or over 600 sq. m., provided on nominal terms by the Canadian government. Verigin himself came to Can- ada in 190S (some of the Dukhobors emigrated at first to Canada). This sect has not always practiced conununisnif and some of the Canadian colonies are much more commu- nistic than others, but their SO different villages are now
Slavic ReUgiotu TraiU 8S
largelj and some of them almost wholly communiBtic (at least thej buy and sell and conduct business coUectiTelj) — the mly power among them is vested in an assembly of the dden.**
T%« Ruttitm Baptitts
In 1860 the peasants of two Russian Governments (Kiev and Kherson) formulated a Baptist dogma, uniting the evangelic conception with the dominant spiritual ideas oi the Milk-drinkers and similar sects.
The Ruitian FoMhkovuti
Tb.6 Russian Fashkovists ( founded by an intellectual, by name Fashkov of North Russia) base their belief on the Protestant principle of justification by faith, to unite with the Stundists into one great sectarian revival. They propar gate the evangelical Christian ideals of the school of Lord Radstock, given to the singing of Sankcj's hymns, and to the inculcation of the familiar doctrine of English evangel- icalism. (In 1870, Lord Radstock visited Petrograd on an evangdical mission.)
7^ Riuaian Johnites
The Russian Johnites believe that the Frotohierais of the Cathedral of Kronstadt, John Sergiev, called by the Tota.ries of Russian Orthodoxy the Thaumaturge, is the incarnation of the Divinity. This sect originated in the city of Orien- banm in 1901.
The Ru$tian Prophett
The Russian Prophets repudiate the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, and cause its members in their exaltation to commit strange acts. They substitute the
66 Who Are ike SUmf.
Saturiday for the day of rest. This sect mto&t m 1901 ii the Baltic Proyinoes.
The Rueiiam Free FaiiU
The Russian Free Faith or Readere is a sect witb laAaem tendencies which alBfects a great ayersioii agaiiiA the vss cC tobacco and spiritaous beverages.
The RuiiUm KayM The Russian Eayuki or Khekhuliijf do not admit the wor»
ship of the sacred images ; deny the real value of tba ments; consider it absolutely contrary to the law of God to kiss the icons, to prostrate oneself in church, or to li^ the lamps; practice in their assemblies a public confessioa of sins, those present placing their hands on the shoulders of the penitents and pronouncing a brief formula of abao* lution. It was formed in 1901 at Petrograd.
The Russian Skopizy
The Russian Skoptzy or Eunuchs or Self-Castrators or Self-Mutilators first appeared about 1770, a sect which grew rapidly in 1757. Their Messiah has been an illiterate per- son named Sclivanov (his real name is unknown), and their prophetess Akulina Ivanoya. Sclivanov declared himself to be Peter the Ilird and son of God. Banished to Siberia, he was permitted to return by Paul 1st, but was confined as insane until released by Alexander 1st. He then enjoyed quasi-divine honor in St. Petersburg, but in 18S0 he was again placed in confinement in the monastery of Susdal* where he died in 183S, a centenarian ! In opposition to the licentiousness of some Ehlysty Skoptzy lend all stress on Matth. XIX, 12, XVIII, 8-9 distinguishing between the royal seal and second purity (partial castration). Women
Stacic Sdigioui Trait» 61
usually have the breast amputated. They preferred to abide by the ascetic practices of the earlier KMysts and saw no other way to escape from carnal sin except by self -mutilation. The members may be recognized by their pallid face, thin T<Hces, and unmanly bearing. Many Skoptzy are **wbite doTes** or "pure spirits" only after they have begotten chil- dren, and others are nominally married, (See: K. K. Grass, Die geheime heUiffe Schrift der Skopeen, Leipzig, 1904 ; B. Felika, Geschichtlichmedizinische Untersuchungen iiber das Skopiaitum in Ruasland, Giessen, 1876.)
TTig Ruitian Suta^evi .
A more (aTorable example of such sects is fonnd in Rua- sian Sutat/ev — the reputed teacher of Tolstoy — who dis- pated the right of the village popes (parsons) to burial dues. His son declined to be a soldier, on account of the command "thou shalt not kill"
The Suiiian Non-Pratfert ^
In the nineteenth century a Don Cossack founded the tfo»- prayers (Ni^oli&ki), so that the latest outcome of Raskol- nik reformation is Rationalism, for they say that we are now in the fourth — or winter — age of the worid," when prayers and rites have become useless. They respected only the prayer of the heart, and even regarded oil prayer as an affront to the divine omniscience, and explained all Christian doctrines as allegoricaL
The ButMtan Khlytty
the Russian SMyity or Chiytty are Flagellants, founded by Daniel Philipovich and a serf named Ivan Suslov, who professed to "see God": the mediaeval custom of flagel-
»S». the ve.„ r K ' '"'' I hor.ot^f''""-"' lived b,
folirilio. 7 ^"' °°' '■Mr; P«ni« about ; "Prawd in ,
Slavic RdigiouM Traiti 69
That I may not behold the vanit; of the encbantments of thi«
world. That I may not desire the glory that comes from man? Then would I bitterly weep for the heavy sin that is in me."
The Rtution MalovantH
This is a subsect of the Stundists, named from its founder, the peasant Kourat Molovan, who is supposed to be the Messiah. They resemble the Khiysty (according to their ac- count God descended in 1645 on Mount Gorodin in the Goremment of Vladimir, and took up his abode in Fhilop- poricb, who chose as his son, "Christ," the peasant Suslor, who in turn chose a "Mother of God," end twelve apostles. SoaloT is said to have been crucified twice, to have risen, and been manifested to bis followers, and to have lived until 1716. Since that time the Eblysty have had many ^'ChriBts").
7%a Buttian Theodotiotu
The membcrfl of this hez-popoviky (or **no priest-peo- ple*") sect would not eat or drtnk with the profane. They have not the sli^^test alliance with Bacchus or Calliope.
The Rutiian PhOippovttkg
This sect sou^t redemption by suicide. Whole families, lAole villages, put themselves to death. From them, toward the end arose the Pilffrim* (Straniki) or "Fu^tives" (Bye- gam).
The Butsian Pomoryane
ITie Russian Pomoryane (Pomortsky or ^'Sea-Dwellerfl") could not pray for the *'imperator," for that would be to make the tzar Antichrist. But they would pray for the **tzar" under this more modest title, Tbcy form the north"
Tho Russian Subotniki I C'' ""■'""".ion Md Ob,
(Wjctk.c„) b,l„„g, ,„ H,^
Alexander the DeacdL"' TAtf Suttian 1
Slavic Religious Traits 71
the unlimited application of Christ's direction to give to all who ask for help, the abolition of war, oaths, law courts, prisons and punishments, wealth and luxurj; and the prac* tice of universal brotherhood in peace and charity. Accord- ing to the Tolstovsy and their great teacher, our supreme law is love, from which they derive the commandment not to resist evil by force. For love's sake, particularly on the ground of the commandment not to resist evil by force, this sect rejects law — ^not unconditionally indeed, but as an insti- tution for the more highly developed peoples of our time. According to the Tolstovsy love requires that in place of law it itself be the law of men. Together with law, the Tolstovsy reject also, for the more highly developed nations of our time, the legal institution of the State, for (1) it is ^Hhe rule of the bad, raised to the highest pitch," (2) it is based **on physical force of the ruled." The followers of Tolstoy claim with their master: love requires that a social life based solely on its commandments take the place of the State because even after the State is done away, men are to live in societies. Together with law they reject also the legal institutions of property, because (1) it means ^Hhe dominion of the possessors over the non-possessors,'' (S) ^Hhe dominion which property involves of possessors over non-possessors, is based on physical force of the ruled." The way in which the change required by Christian love is to take place, according to Count Leo Tolstoy, is that those men who have learned to know the truth are to con- vince as many others as possible how necessary the change is for love's sake, and that they, with the help of the refusal of obedience, are to abolish law, the State, and property, and bring about the new condition — Christian Humanity. As this sect includes also a large number of intelligent people, it is advisable to present Tolstoy's teaching more in detaiL A very good summary of Tolstoy's teaching is given by Professor Paul Eltzbacher of Halle University, a
/
72 Who Are the Slavit
Bomiiiary idiich is produced here wiih slight modifications:
ChrUtianity is the basic principle of Tolstoy^s teaching. But by Christianity he means not the doctrine of one of the Christian churchesj neither the Roman Catholic nor Greek (Eastern) Ortho- dox nor that of any of the Protestant bodies, bat the pure teadi- ing of Jesus Christ. He says: "Strange as it may sound, the churches have always been not merely alien but downright hostOe to the teaching of Christy and they must needs be so. The churches are not^ as many think^ institutions that are based on a Christian origin and have only erred a little from the right way; the churches as such, as associations that assert their infallibility, are anti-Christian institutions. The Christian churches, and Christianity have no fellowship except in name ; nay, the two are utterly opposite and hostile elements. The churches are arro- gance, violence, usurpation, rigidity, death; Christianity is hu- mility, penitence, submissiveness, progress, life." According to Tolstoy, the church has "so transformed Christ's teaching to suit the world that there no longer resulted from it any demandi, and that men could go on living as they had hitherto lived. The church yielded to the world, and having yielded, followed it The world did everything that it chose, and left the church to hobble after as well as it could with its teachings about the meaning of life. The world led its life, contrary to Christ's teaching in each and every point, and the church contrived sub- tleties to demonstrate that in living contrary to Christ's law men were living in harmony with it. And it ended in the world's beginning to lead a life worse than the life of the heathen, and the church's daring not only to justify such a life but even to assert that this was precisely what corresponded to Christ's teaching."
Particularly different from Christ's teaching is the church "creed," i. e., the totality of the utterly incomprehensible and therefore useless "dogmas." Tolstoy says: "Of a God, external creator, origin of all origins, we know nothing"; "Grod is the spirit in man," "his conscience," "the knowledge of life," "every man recognizes in himself a free rational spirit independent of the flesh; this spirit is what we call God." According to Tol- stoy, Christ was a man, "the son of an unknown father; as he did not know his father, in his childhood he called Ood his father" and he was a son of a God as to his spirit, as every man is a son of God ; he embodied "Man confessing his sonship
Slavic Religious Traits 7S
of God." Tolstoy says that those who "assert that Christ pro- fessed to redeem, with his blood mankind fallen by Adam^ that God is a trinity^ that the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles and that it passes to the priest by the laying on of hands^ that seven mysteries are necessary to salvation, etc./' — "preach doc- trines utterly alien to Christ.'* . . . Tolstoy says plainly: "Never did Christ with a single word attest the personal resurrection and the immortality of man beyond the grave/' which indeed is "a very low and coarse idea*' ; the Ascension and the Resurrection are to be counted among "the most objectionable miracles."
Count Tolstoy accepts Christ's teaching as valid not on the basis of faith in a revelation, but solely for its rationality, for faith in a revelation "was the main reason why the teaching was at first misunderstood and later mutilated outright." Faith in Christ is "not a trusting in something related to Christ, but the knowl- edge of the truth." Tolstoy says: " 'There is a law of evolution, and therefore one must live only his own personal life and leave the rest to the law of evolution/ is the last word of the refined culture of our day, and at the same time, of that obscuration of consciousness to which the cultured classes are a prey." But, continues Tolstoy, "human life, from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night, is an unbroken series of actions; man most daily choose out from hundreds of actions possible to him those actions which he will perform; therefore, man cannot live without something to guide the choice of his actions." Accord- ing to Tolstoy, reason alone can offer him this guide: "Reason is that law, recognized by man, according to which his life is to be accomplished. . . •" "If there is no higher reason, — and such there is not, nor can anything prove its existence, — ^then my reason is the supreme judge of my life. . . ." "The ever- increasing subjugation . . ." "of the bestial personality to the rational consciousness" is "the true life," is "life" as opposed to mere "existence." "It used to be said, 'Do not argue, but believe in the duty that we have prescribed to you; reason will deceive yon ; faith alone will bring you the true happiness of life.' And the man exerted himself to believe, and he believed. But intercourse with other men showed him that in many cases these believed something quite different, and asserted that this other faith be- stowed the highest happiness. It has become unavoidable to de<dde the question which of the many faiths is the right one; and only reason can decide this. . . ." "If the Buddhist who has learned to know Islam remains a Buddhist, he is no longer a
74 Who Are the Slavif
Buddhist in faith but in reason. As soon as another faith cmnes up before him, and with it the question whether to reject his faith or this order^ reason alone can give him an answer. If he has learned to know Islam and has still remained a Buddhist^ then rational conviction has taken the place of his former Uind faith in Buddha. . . ." "Man recognizes truth only by reason, not by faith. . . ." "The law of reason reveals itself to men gradually. . . ." "Eighteen hundred years ago there appeared in the midst of the pagan Roman world a remarkable new teaching, which was not comparable to any that had preceded itj and which was ascribed to a man called Christ." This teaching, says Tol- stoy, contains the very strictest, purest and completest "appre- hension of the law of reason to which the human mind hu hitherto raised itself." He says that Christ's teaching is "reason itself"; it must be accepted by men because it alone gives those rules of life "without which no man ever has lived or can live, if he would live as a man, — ^that is with reason." Man haSj "on the basis of reason, no right to refuse allegiance to it.*'
Tolstoy sets up Cliristian love as the supreme law of man. He says: "What men who do not understand life call love' is only the giving to certain conditions of their personal comfort a preference over any others. When the man who does not un- derstand life says that he loves his wife or child or a friend, he means by this only that his wife's, child's or friend's presence in his life heightens his personal comfort." But," says Tolstoy, "True love is always renunciation of one's personal comfort," for a neighbor's sake. True love "is a condition of wishing wdl to all men, such as commonly characterizes children but is pro- duced in grown men only by self-abnegation. . . ." "What liv- ing man does not know the happy feeling, even if he has fdt it only once and in most cases only in earliest childhood, of that emotion in which one wishes to love everybody, neighbors and father and mother and brothers and bad men and enemies, and dog and horse and grass ; one wishes only one thing, that it were well with all, that all were happy; and still more does one wish that he were himself capable of making all happy, one wishes he might give himself, give his whole life, that all might be well off and enjoy themselves. Just this, this alone, is that love in which man's life consists." According to Tolstoy true love is "an ideal of full, infinite divine perfection. . . ." "Divine perfection is the asymptote of human life, toward which it constantly strives, to which it draws nearer and nearer^ but which can be attained
Slavic Religious Traits 75
y at infinity. . • ." "True life^ according to previous teach- s, consists in the fulfilling of commandments^ the fulfilling of law ; according to Christ's teaching it consists in the maximum iroach to the divine perfection which has been exhibited^ and Ich is felt in himself by every man."
Tesus Christ expressly derived the commandment not to re- ; evil by force from the law of love. He gave numerous com- adments^ among which five in the Sermon on the Mount are able. Tolstoy claims that these commandments do not consti- e the teachings "they only form one of the numberless stages approach to perfection" — they "are all negative, and only w" what "at mankind's present age" we "have already the L possibility of not doing, along the road by which we are ving to reach perfection." The first of the five command- its of the Sermon on the Mount reads : "Keep the peace with
and if the peace is broken use every efi'ort to restore it";
second says, "Let the man take only one woman and the nan only one man, and let neither forsake the other under r pretext" ; the third, "make no vows" ; the fourth, "endure in- y, return not evil for evil" ; the fifth, "break not the peace to lefit thy people." Among these commandments the fourth is
most important, says Tolstoy. It is enunciated in the fifth pter of Matthew, verses 88-9: "Ye have heard that it was i. Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. But I say to you. Resist
evil." Tolstoy tells how to him this passage "became the ' of the whole." He says : "I needed only to take these words iply and downrightly, as they were spoken, and at once rytbing in Christ's whole teaching that had seemed confused Due, not only in the Sermon on the Mount but in the Gospels igether, was comprehensible to me, and everything that had n contradictory agreed, and the main gist appeared no longer less but a necessity; everything formed a whole, and the one [firmed the other past a doubt, like the pieces of a shattered mnn that one has rightly put together." Tolstoy points out arly that the principle of non-resistance binds together "the ire teaching into a while; but only when it is no mere dictum t a peremptory rule, a law . . •" "It is really the key that ms everyiliing, but only when it goes into the inmost of the k."
According to Tolstoy, we must necessarily derive the com- ndment not to resist evil by force from the law of love, for 8 demand^ jkhat either a sure, indisputable criterion of evil
7d Who Are the Slavif
nymph Egeria; and man in general so long as he regarded the princes who gave him laws as God's anointed^ or believed that the legislating assemblies had the wish and the capacity to make the best laws." But, says Tolstoy^ "as early as the time when Christianity made its appearance men were beginning to comprehend that human laws were written by men^ that men, whatever outward splendor may enshroud them, cannot be In- fallible, and that erring men do not become infallible even by getting together and calling themselves 'Senate' or something else." . . • "We know how laws are made; we have all beoi behind the scenes, we all know that the laws are products of selfishness, deception^ partisanship, that true justice docs not and cannot dwell in them." Therefore, says Tolstoy, **flic recognition of any special laws is a sign of the crassest ignor- ance."
Tolstoy claims that instead of law Christ's commandments should be our rule of action, because Christ's love requires that in place of law it itself be the law for men. But, says Tolstoy, this is "the Kingdom of God on earth." . . . "When the day and the hour of the Kingdom of God appear, depends on men themselves alone." . . . "Each must only begin to do what we must do, and cease to do what we must not do, and the near future will bring the promised Kingdom of God." • . • "If only everybody would bear witness, in the measure of hh strength, to the truth that he knows, or at least not defend fts truth the untruth in which he lives, then in this very year 1893 there would take place such changes toward the setting up of truth on earth as we dare not dream of for centuries to come." . . . "Only a little effort more and the Galilean has won." According to Tolstoy, the Kingdom of God is not outside in the world, but in man's soul." . . . "The Kingdom of God Com- eth not with outward show; neither will men say, "Lo here!' or 'There !' for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17. 20)." . . . "The disciple of Christ will be poor; that is, he will not live in the city but in the country; he will not sit at home, but work in wood and field, see the sunshine, the earth, the sky, and the beasts; he will not worry over what he is to eat to tempt his appetite, and what he can do to help his digestion, but will be hungry three times a day; he will not roll on soft cushions and think upon deliverance from insom- nia, but sleep; he will be sick, suffer, and die like all men — the poor who are sick and die seem to have an easier time of it
Slavic Religious TraiU 79
he rich — **; he "will live in free fellowship with all men"; Kingdom of God on earth is the peace of men with each
thus it appeared to the prophets^ and thus it appears to hmnan heart.*' stoy's rejection of the legal institution of the State is
on the following reasoning. "Perhaps there was once i when^ in a low state of morality with a general inclina- f men to mutual violence^ the existence of a power limit- is violence was advantageous — ^that is^ in which the State ce was less than that of individuals against each other, och an advantage of State violence over its non-existence not last; the more the individuals' inclination to violence ised and manners grew milder^ and the more the gov- nts degenerated by having nothing to check them^ the worthless did State violence grow. In this change — in the
evolution of the masses on the one hand and the degra- [ of the governments on the other lies the whole history
last two thousand years." ... "I cannot prove either the il necessity of the State or its general perniciousness/' 'I know only that on the one hand the State is no longer Ary for me^ and that on the other hand I can no longer i things that are necessary for the existence of the State." ding to Tolstoy "Christianity in its true significance abol- the State/' for the State offends against love^ particularly it the commandment not to resist evil by force. And then, mding a dominion the State offends against the principle for love "all men are God's sons and there is equality 5 them all"; it is therefore to be rejected, says Tolstoy, aside from the violence on which it is based as a legal ttion. He says: "That the Christian teaching has an eye to the redemption of the individual, and does not relate blic questions and State affairs, is a bold and founded ion." . . . "To every honest, earnest man in our time it be clear that true Christianity — the doctrine of humility, 'eness, love — is incompatible with the State and its haughti- its deeds of violence, its capital punishments and wars/* "The State is an idol," its objectionableness is independ- * its form, be this "absolute monarchy, the Convention, the date, the Empire of a first of third Napoleon or yet of a nger, constitutional monarchy, the Commune, or the re- ;." . . . "All governments, the despotic and the liberal
have in our time become what Herzen has so aptly called
80 Who Are the Slavs?
a Genghis Khan with telegraphs.
According to Tolstoy the state is rule; its goFermneiit is "an association of men who do violence to the rest." The men in whom the power is vested "practise violence not in order to overcome evil^ but solely for their advantage or from caprice; and the other men submit to the violence not because they be- lieve that it is practised for their good^ — ^that is, in order to liberate them from evil, — ^but only because they cannot free themselves from it." . . . "If Nice is united with France, Lor- raine with Germany, Bohemia with Austria, if Poland is divid- ed, if both Ireland and India are subjected to the English dominion, if people fight with China, kill the Africans, expd the Chinese from America, and persecute the Jews in Rusda, it is not because this is good or necessary or useful for men and the opposite would be evil, but only because it so pleases those in whom the power is vested." Tolstoy points the statement of the defenders of State rule who say: "If the State power were to be annihilated, the wicked would rule over the less wicked." But has the power, when it has passed from some men to some others in the State, really always come to the better men? Tolstov savs: "When Louis the Sixteenth, Robes- pierre. Napoleon, came to power, who ruled then, the better or the worse? When did the better rule, when the power was vested in Versailles or in the Communards, when Charles the First or Cromwell stood at the head of tlie government? WTien Peter the Third was tzar, and when after his murder the authority of tzar was exercised in one part of Russia by Catherine and in another by Pugachcv, who was wicked then and who was good? All men who find tliemselvcs in power assert that their power is necessary in order that the wicked may not do violence to the good, and regard it as self-evident that they are the good and arc giving the rest of the good protection against the bad/'
Tolstoy admits that in reality those who grasp and hold the power cannot possibly be the better. He says: "In order to obtain and retain power, one must love it. But the effort after power is not apt to be coupled with goodness, but with the op- posite qualities, pride, craft, and cruelty. Without exalting self and abasing others, without hypocrisy, lying, prisons, fort- resses, penalties, killing, no power can arise or hold its own." . . . "It is downright ridiculous to speak of Christians in power." Tolstoy claims that to this it is to be added "that the possession of power depraves men." . . . "The men who have
sialic Religious Traits 81
the power cannot but misuse it; they must infallibly be unsettled by such frightful authority." . . . "However many means men have invented to hinder the possessors of power from subordi- nating the welfare of the whole to their own advantage^ hither- to not one of these means has worked. Everybody knows that those in whose hands is the power — ^be they emperors^ ministers, ehiefa of police, or common policemen — are, just because the power is in their hands, more inclined to immorality, to the subordinating of the general welfare to their advantage, than tliose who have no power; nor can it be otherwise." Tolstoy elaims that we shall always find "that the scheming of the pos- sessors of authority — nay, their unconscious effort — ^is directed toward weakening the victims of their authority as much as possible; for, the weaker the victim is, the more easily can he be held down«" • • • "To-day there is only one sphere of human activity left that has not been conquered by the authority of government: the sphere of family, of housekeeping, private life, labor. And even this sphere, the governments are already be- ginning to invade, so that soon, if the reformers have their way, work and rest, housing, clothing, and food, will likewise be fixed and regulated by the governments." . . . "The most fearful band of robbers is not so horrible as a State organiza- tion. Every robber chief is at any rate limited by the fact that the men who make up his band retain at least a part of human liberty, and can refuse to commit acts which are repugnant to their consciences." But, says Tolstoy, In the State there is no such limit — "no crime is so horrible that it will not be com- mitted by the officials and the army at the will of him — Bou- langer, Pugachev^ Napoleon — ^who accidentally stands at the head."
In order to prove that the rule in the State is based on physical force, Tolstoy g^es to show that there are in the State armed men who are ready to execute the government's will by physical force, a class "educated to kill those whose killing the authorities com- mand." According to him, such men are the police and especially the army, which is nothing else than a collectivity of "disciplined murderers," its training is "instruction in murdering," its victories are "deeds of murder." . . • "The army has always formed the basis of power, and does to this day. The power is always in the hands of those who command the army, and, from the Roman Caesars to the Russian and German emperors, all possessors of power have always cared first and foremost for their armies."
82 Who Are the Slavs?
He points out the fact that the army upholds the govemment'f rule against external assaults. It protects it against having tiw rule taken from it by another government According to Tot stoy, war is nothing but a contest of two or more govenimeiits for the rule over their subjects. He says that it is "impossihk to establish international peace in a rational way> by treaty or arbitration^ so long as the insensate and pernicious sobjectiflB . of nations to governments continues to exist." In conseqaenoe of this importance of armies^ Tolstoy says^ "every State fa oomr pelled to increase its army to face the others^ and this increase has the effect of a contagion^ as Montesquieu observed a hun- dred and fifty years since." But, if one thinks armies are kqpt hy governments only for external defence, he forgets, aays Tolstoy, "that governments need armies particularly to protect them against their oppressed and enslaved subjects." • • . "In the German Reichstag lately, in reply to the question why mon^ was needed in order to increase the pay of the petty officers, the chancellor made the direct statement that reliable petty off- cers were necessary for the combating of Socialism. Caprifi merely said out loud what everybody knows, carefully as it ii concealed from the peoples, — ^the reason why the French kings and the popes kept Swiss and Scots, why in Russia the recruits are so introduced that the interior regiments get their continr gents from the frontiers and the frontier regiments theirs from the interior. Caprivi told, by accident, what everybody knows or at least feels, — ^to wit, that the existing order exists not be- cause it must exist or because the people wills its existence, but because the government's force, the army with its bribed petty officers and officers and generals keeps it up."
Tolstoy says that the unchristianncss of the State comes to light most plainly in the general obligation to military service-^ "every man has to take in hand deadly weapons, a gun, a knife; and, if he does not have to kill, at least he does have to load the gun and sharpen the knife, — ^that is, be ready for killing.'* He says that such things are possible only by "a highly artificial organization, created with the help of scientific progress, in which all men are bewitched into a circle of violence from which they cannot free themselves." Tolstoy says that at present this circle consists of four means of influence, (1) *Uhe hypnotisatum of the people'* which leads men to "the erroneous opinion that the existing order is unchangeable and must be upheld, while in reality it is unchangeable only by its being upheld" (this hypno-
Stanjic Religious Traits 89
ion is accomplished "by fomentiiig the two forms of super- n called religion and patriotism"; it "begins its influence in childhood^ and continues it till death") ; (2) ''bribery** "in taking from the laboring populace its wealthy by money \, and dividing this among the officials^ who^ for this pay^ maintain and strengthen the enslavement of the people") ; ^intimidation** which "consists in setting down the present J order — of whatever sort, be it a free republican order or ; the most grossly despotic — ^as something sacred and nn- g^ble, and imposing the most frightful penalties upon r attempt to change it;" and (4) to "separate a certain of all the men whom they have stupefied and bewitched le three first means, and subject these men to special strong- »rms of stupefaction and bestialization, so that they become less tools of every brutality Yind cruelty that the govem- sees fit to resolve upon." Tolstoy says this is done in irrny, to which, at present, all young men belong by virtue le general obligation to military service, ilstoy says, "To-day every man who thinks, however little, the impossibility of keeping on with the life hitherto lived, the necessity of determining new forms of life," for the istian humanity of our time must unconditionally renounce leathen forms of life that it condemns, and set up a new m the Christian bases that it recognizes." But how can Chris- love take the place of the State which protects us against Mid men in our midst? Tolstoy retorts: "But who are the nen among ns? If there once were such men three or four iries ago, when people still paraded warlike arts and equip- 8 and looked upon killing as a brilliant deed, they are to-day anyhow; nobody any longer carries weapons, every- acknowledges the commands of philanthropy. But, if by nen from whom the State must protect us we mean the nals, then we know that they are not special creatures like rolf among the sheep, but just such men as all of us, who committing crimes as little as we do; we know that the ity of governments with their cruel forms of punishment, 1 do not correspond to the present stage of morality, their ns, tortures, gallows, guillotines, contribute more to the irixing of the people than do their culture, and lead rather te multiplication than to the diminution of such criminals." e are Christians and start from the principle that "what our exists for is the serving of others^ then no one will be
64 Who Are the Slavs?
foolish enough to rob men that serve him of their means of sup- port or to kill them. Miklucho-Maday settled among the wild- est so-called 'savages/ and they not only left him alive hot loved him and submitted to his authority^ solely becanse he did not fear thcm^ asked nothing of them, and did them good.*'
How in the future societary condition (without the State) can we find protection against external enemies? Tolstoy reasons as follows: But we do know "that the nations of Europe pio- fess the principles of liberty and fraternity^ and therefore need no protection against each other; but, if it were a protection against the barbarians that was meant, a thousandth part of the armies that are now kept up would suffice. State authority nd merely leaves in existence the danger of hostile attacks, bat even itself provokes this danger." But^ says Tolstoy, "if there exist* ed a community of Christians who did evil to nobody and ^ve to others all the superfluous products of their labor, then no enemy, neither the Germans nor the Turk nor the savage, would kill or vex such men; all one could do would be to take from them what they were ready to give voluntarily without distin- guishing between Russians, Germans, Turks, and savages."
But how in the future societary condition — without the State- are institutions of education, popular culture, religion, com- merce, etc., to be possible? Tolstoy says: "Perhaps there was once a time when men lived so far apart, when the means for coming together and exchanging tlioughts were so nndeveloped, that people could not, without a State center, discuss and agree on any matter either of trade and economy or of culture. But to-day tliis separation no longer exists; the means of inter- course have developed extraordinarily; for the forming of socie- ties, associations, corporations, for the gathering of congresses and the creation of economic and political institutions, govern- ments are not needed; nay, in most cases they are rather a hindrance than a help toward the attainment of such ends."
What will be the future without the State? Tolstoy answers: "The future will be as circumstances and men shall make it." • • • "Men sa}', 'What will the new orders be like, that are to take the place of the present ones ? So long as we do not know what form our life will take in future we will not go forward, we will not stir from this spot'." . . . "If Columbus had gone to mak- ing such observations, he would never have weighed anchor. It ;was insanity to steer across an ocean that no man had ever yet sailed upon toward a land whose existence was a question.
Slavic Religiotu Traits 85
With this insanity, he discovered the New World. It would certainly be more convenient if nations had nothing to do but move out of one ready-furnished mansion into another and a better; only, by bad luck, there is nobody there to furnish the new quarters." But what disquiets men in their imagining of the fntore, says Tolstoy, is "less the question 'What will be?* They are tormented by the question, 'How are we to live without all the familiar conditions of our existence, that are called •cience, art, civilization, culture?' • • . But all these, bear in mind, are only forms in which truth appears. The change that lies before us will be an approach to the truth and its realiza- tioiL. How can the forms in which the truth appears be brought to nanght by an approach to the truth? They will be made different, better, higher, but by no means will they be brought to nanght. Only that which was false in the forms of its ap- pearance hitherto will be brought to naught; what was genuine will but unfold itself the more splendidly." . . • "If the in- dividual man's life were completely known to him when he passes from one stage of maturity to another, he would have no reason for living. So it is with the life of mankind too ; if at its entrance upon a new stage of growth a programme lay before it already drawn up, this would be the surest sign that it was not alive, not progressing, but that it was sticking at one point. The de- tails of a new order of life cannot be known to us, they have to be worked out by us ourselves. Life consists only in learn- ing to know the unknown, and putting our action in harmony with the new knowledge. In this consists the life of the in- dividual, in this the life of human societies and of humanity." In regard to property Tolstoy says it offends against love, especially against the commandment not to resist evil by force; it is also against the maxim that for love "all men are God's sons and there is equality among them all." Tolstoy says that the rich are under "guilt by the very fact that they are rich." He says that it is "a crime," that tens of thousands of "hungry, cold, deeply degraded human beings are living in Moscow while I with a few thousand others have tenderloin and sturgeon for dinner and cover horses and floors with blankets and carpets." He claims that property divides men into "two castes, an op- pressed laboring caste that famishes and suffers and an idle oppressing caste that enjoys and lives in superfluity. . . . We are all brothers, and yet every morning my brother or my sister carries out my dishes. We are all brothers, but every morning
86 Who Are the Slavit
I have to biave my cigar^ my sugar^ my mirror, and other siusK things, m whose production healthy brothers and sisters, people like me, have sacrificed and are sacrificing their health." • • • "I spend all my whole life in the following way: I ea^ talk and listen; eat, write, and read — ^that is, talk and listen again; cat and play, eat, talk, and listen again, eat and go to bed; and so it goes on, one day like another. I cannot do, do not know how to do, anything beyond this. And, that I may be able to do this, the porter, the farmer, the cook, the cook's maid, the lackey, the coachman, the laundress, must work from moniing till night, not to speak of the work of other men which is neces- sary in order that those coachmen, cooks, lackeys, and so on may have all that they need when they work for me — the axes, bsi^ rels, brushes, dishes, furniture, likewise the wax, the blacking, the kerosene, the hay, the wood, the beef. All of them haTe to work day and day, early and late, that I may be able to taDc^ cat, and sleep." . . • "There can be no farmer without land that he tills, without scythes, wagons, and horses; no shoemaker is possible without a house built on the earth, without water, air, and tools ;" but, says Tolstoy, property means that in many cases "the farmer possesses no land, no horses, no scythe, the shoemaker no house, no water, no awl; that somebody is keeping these things back from them." This leads, says Tolstoy, to the con- sequence "that for a large fraction of the workers the natural conditions of production are deranged, that this fraction is necessitated to use other people's stock," and may by the owner of the stock be compelled "to work not on their own accom^ but for an employer."
Tolstoy points also how the significance of property as msk- ing the poor dependent on the rich becomes especially prominent in the case of money. He says: "Money is value tiiat remains always equal, that always ranks as correct and legal," and con- sequently, as the saying is, "he who has money has in his pocket those who have none." • . . Money is a new form of slavery, distinguished from the old solely by its impersonality, by the lack of any human relation between the master and the slave*'; for "the essence of all slavery consists in drawing the benefit of another's labor-force by compulsion, and it is quite immaterial whether the drawing of this benefit is founded upon property in the slave or upon property in money which is indispensable to the other man." . . . "Now, honestly, of what sort is my money, and how have I come by it? I got part for the land
Slavic Religious Traits 87
at I inherited from my father. The peasant sold his last leep^ his last cow^ to pay me this money. Another part of my sets consists of the sums which I have received for my literary ■odnctions^ my books. If my books are harmful^ then by them liaye seduced the purchasers to evil and have acquired the cmey by bad means. If^ on the contrary^ my books are useful
people^ the case is still worse; I have not given them without remony to those who had a use for them^ but have said 'Give e seventeen rubles and you shall have them/ and, as in the her case, the peasant sold his last sheep, so here the poor stu- nt or teacher, and many other poor person, have denied them- Ives the plainest necessities to give me the money. And thus I ive piled up a quantity of such money, and what do I do with f I bring it to the city and give it to the poor here on con- tion that they satisfy all my whims, that they come after me to the city to dean the sidewalks for me, and to make me mps, shoes, and so forth, in the factories. With my money I ke all their products to myself, and I take pains to give them
little as possible and get from them as much as possible for And then all at once, quite unexpectedly, I begin to dis- ibate to the poor this same money gratis — ^not to all, but arbi- arily to any whom I happen to take up at random." Tolstoy says that property is upheld by the police and the my: "We may act as if we did not see the policeman walk- g ap and down before the window with loaded revolver to pro- ct us while we eat a savory meal or look at a new play, and
if we had no inkling of the soldiers who are every moment ady to go with rifle and cartridges where any one tries to fringe on our property. Yet we well know, if we can finish ir meal and see the new play in peace, if we can drive out or tnt or attend a festival or a race undisturbed, we have to thank r this only the policeman's bullet and the soldier's weapon, liich are ready to pierce the poor victim of hunger who looks K>ii our enjoyments from his comer with grumbling stomach, \d who would at once disturb them if the policeman with his volver went away, or if in the barracks there were no nger any soldiers standing ready to appear at our first .U.** . . . "If there did not exist these men who are ready to scipline or kill any one whatever at the word of command, no te would dare assert what the non-laboring landlords now do all ' them so confidently assert, — that the soil which surrounds the iasants who die off for lack of land is the property of a man
88 Who Are the Slavs?
who docs not work on it"; it would "not come into the head of the lord of tlie manor to take from tlie peasants a forest that has grown up under their eyes/' nor would any one say "that the stores of grain accumulated by fraud in the midst of a starv- ing population must remain unscathed that the merchant may have his profit'*
According to Tolstoy^ every man who works as he has strength should have so much as he needs and no more. This is a cor- ollary from two precepts which follow from the law of love. The first of these precepts says^ Man shall *'atk no work from others, hut himself devote his whole life to work for others, Man lives not to he served hut to serve/' The second precept says, "Share what you have with the poor; gather no riehes," Tolstoy adds: "To the question of his hearers, what they were to do, John the Baptist gave the short, clear^ simple answer^ 'lie who hath two coats, let him share with him who hath none; and he who hath food let him do likewise' (Luke 8. 10-11). And Christ too made the same declaration several times^ only still more unambiguously and clearly. He said, 'Blessed are the poor, woe to the rich.' He said that one could not serve God and Mammon at once. He not only forbade his disciples to take money, but also to have two garments. He told the rich young man tliat because he was rich he could not enter into the Kingdom of God, and that a camel should sooner go through a needle's eye than a rich man come into heaven. He said that he who did not forsake everything — house, children, lands — to follow him could not be his disciple. He told his hearers the parable of the rich man who did notliing bad except that he- like our rich men — clothed himself in costly apparel and fed him- self on savory food and drink, and who plunged his soul into perdition by this alone, and of the poor Lazarus who did noth- ing good and who entered into tlie Kingdom of Heaven only because he was a beggar."
In order to give a concrete example of Christian distribution of goods, Tolstoy cites the Russian colonists. He says: "These colonists arrive on tlie soil, settle, and begin to work, and no one of them takes it into his head that any one who does not begin to make use of the land can have any right to it; on the con- trary, the colonists regard the ground a priori as common prop- erty, and consider it altogether justifiable that everybody plows and reaps where he chooses. For working the fields, for start- ing e:nr(]ens, and for building houses, they procure implements;
Slavic Religious Traits 89!
and here too it does not suggest itself to them that these could of themselves produce any income — on the contrary, the colonists look upon any profit from the means of lahor, any interest for grain lent^ etc., as an injustice. They work on masterless land with their own means or with means borrowed free of in- terest, either each for himself or all together on joint account. In talking of such fellowship I am not setting forth fancies, but only describing what has gone on at all times, what is even at present taking place not only among the Russian colonists but everywhere where man's natural condition is not yet deranged by some circumstance or other. I am describing what seems to everybody natural and rational. The men settle on the soil and go each one to work, make their implements, and do their labor. If they think it advantageous to work jointly, they form a labor company." But, in individual business, as well as in col- lective industry, says Tolstoy, "neither the water nor the ground nor the garments nor the plow can belong to anybody save bim who drinks the water, wears the garments, and uses the plow; for all these things are necessary only to him who puts them to use." He says that one can call "only his labor his own," but if one has as much as one needs.
How to realize this dream of Count Tolstoy? The first step in realization of it is "that an order of life corresponding to onr knowledge may take place of the order contrary to it, the present antiquated public opinion must first be replaced by a new and living one." According to Tolstoy^ t^ is not deeds of all sorts that bring to pass the grandest and most significant changes in the life of humanity, "neither the fitting out of armies a million strong nor the construction of roads and engines, neither the organization of expositions nor the formation of trade-unions, neither revolutions, barricades, and explosions nor inventions in aerial navigation — but the changes of public opin- ion, and these alone/* Tolstoy says that this liberation is pos- sible only "by a change in our conception of life"; ever3rthing depends on the force with which each individual man becomes conscious of Christian truth"; "know the truth and the truth shall make you free."
The best means for bringing about the necessary revolution In public opinion is that the men who have learned to know the truth should testify to it by deed, for according to Tolstoy, "The Christian knows the truth only in order to testify to it before those who do not know it," and that "by deed." Another
90 Who Are the Slavs?
means^ though a less effective one^ for bringing about the revo- lution in public opinion, and this "jou can always'* employ, if that the men who have learned to know the truth should ''speak it out frankly." Tolstoy says: "Not billions of rubles, not mil- lions of soldiers, no institutions, wars, or revolutions, have lo much power as the simple declaration of a free man that he considers something to be right or wrong. If a free man speaks out honestly what he thinks and feels, in the midst of thousands who in word and act stand for the very oontraiy, one might think he must remain isolated. But usually it is other- wise; all^ or most, have long been privately thinking and feel- ing in the same way ; and then what to-day is still an individual's new opinion will perhaps to-morrow be already the general opfn- ion of the majority. "Men are to bring about the change tihem- selves; they are "no longer to wait for somebody to come and help them, be it Christ in the clouds with the sound of the trumpet, be it a historic law or a differential or integral law of forces. Nobody will help us if we do not help onrselves.** But it is not by violence that men are to bring about the change, for Tolstoy clearly says: "Revolutionary enemies fight the gov- ernment from the outside; Christianity does not fight at all but wrecks its foundations from within." . . . "The Christian frees himself from all human authority by recognizing as sole plnmb- line for his life and the lives of others the divine law of love that is implanted in man's soul and has been brought into con- sciousness by Christ." The individual must not think it will be useless if he alone conforms his life to Christ's teaching. The impulse given by individuals will provoke a movement that goes on faster and faster, wider and wider, avalanche-like, suddenly sweeps along the masses, and brings about the new order of life Then the time, says Tolstoy, is come "when all men are filled with God, shun war, beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks ; that is, in our language, when the prisons and fortresses are empty, when the gallows, rifles, and cannon are out of use. What seemed a dream has found its fulfilment in a new form of life."
No doubt, these dreams of Tolstoy are very hard to realize at present. If he were alive to-day he would, like his noble son Ilya, not agree with the peace Russia made with the Germans. Many call Tolstoy's ideas "anarchistic,'*
Slavic Religious Traits 91
because Tolstoy like all great prophets preaches what ought to be rather than what can be done. Nevertheless, the spirit of the Tolstoys and their great teacher is similar to that of other Slavic religious sects — a strife for better, Christian living, a realization of real Christian Humanity.
Other Russian sects, taking a more moderate course, but influenced by the same principle, fled from the contaminated haunts of civilization and buried themselves in deep recesses of the forests. In 1850 Tzar Nickolas 1st had the cells of the forest dissenters destroyed. Formerly some of them maintained that the true Peter, "the White Tzar" {helyj Car) 9 had perished at sea, and that a Jew, a son of Satan married to a Grerman wife, had usurped his place. It is diffi- cult to trace the origin of these sects. In 1710 Procopius Lu- ]Hn was condenmed for asserting that the Church had lost the true spirit of Christianity; and in 1714 Dmitri Tvaritenev was convicted by a synod of spreading Calvinistic ideas. Senator Laputkin wrote in 1806; "No sect has up to this time been so earnestly persecuted as the Dukhobortzi; and this is certainly not because they are the most harmful."
Conclusion
In principle all these sects are "pure Christians" as Count Tolstoy, for both of them have the same "tone of soul." The sombre tales of Turgenyev, Tolstoy, Gogol and Dos- toyevsky, and others, "reflect pathetic struggles, melancholy experiments, often made in remote villages, and among rude simple souls." The natural melancholy and deeply religious character of the Slavic temperament, the vast monotonous landscapes and the miseries of the peasants' lives make them eager for the emotional outlets of their respective sects. Without praising or condemning theological doctrines of these souls which are, no doubt, exhibiting a dying-cry for Religion, the psychologists have here a strange phenomenon
92 Who Are the Slavit
to explain, and to make clear in order to understand the ligious instincts of the Slavs. If the form of these instincts is rather crude, we have to take into account that the Slavs have formed the bulwark of Christendom against the invasions of Iluns, Avars, and Turks, and have again and again re- pelled the infidel, saving Europe from destruction. Shall the Slavs say: *^Undank ist der Welt Lohnr^ or to quote the spirit of Schiller's words : ^^The negro has done his duty, so the negro can go now.'' . • . The Slav patiently says, with the Czech proverb : ^'Time will show who meant and who did not mean faithfully with us." • • •
Do we have the right to condemn the Russian Church? Baring says that ^^Religion in Russia is a part of patriot- ism. The Russian considers that a man who is not Orthodox is not a Russian. He divides humanity, roughly into two categories — the Orthodox and the heathen — just as the Greeks divided humanity into Greeks and Barbarians. Not only is the Church of Russia a national church, owing to the large part which the State, the Emperor, and the civil au* thority play in it, but in Russia religion itself becomes a question of nationality, nationalism, and patriotism." '* This Church has been able to give a people who could contem- plate with mingled reverence and admiration the noble traits of pastors such as Cyril, Nikon, Philip Martyr, Hcrmogenes, and Philaret, or of pious asceticism such as were Anthony, Theodosius, Sergius, and Sozius, or of princes like Vladimir Monomachus, Alexander Nevsky, and Michael Romanov. This church showed its willingness to cooperate with ear- nest Christian churches. (In 1840, Palmer visits the Russian Church to discuss reunion.)
In his recent visit to Russia, H. G. Wells '^ writes :
^^Italy abounds in noble churches because the Italians are
artists and arcliitccts, and a church is an essential part of
the old English social system, but Moscow glitters with two
thousand crosses because the people arc organically Chris*
Hussian; the g^i^'cs^ iLiithor of inoilern ages; the only man who m able to reconcile the EaKt (the mother of all great religions) with the West (the Euroi>ean philosophy and science).
THE h'EW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Slavic Religious Traits 93
ian. I feel in Russia that for the first time in my life I m in a country where Christianity is alive. The people I aw crossing themselves whenever they passed a church, the learded men who kissed the relics in the Church of the As- umption, the unkempt, grave-eyed pilgrim, with his ragged lundle on his back and his little tea-kettle slung in front of lim, whom I saw standing quite still beside a pillar in the ame church have no parallels in England.''
Rathay Reynolds writes (in his Mtf Russian Teaff Lon- Ion, Mills, 191S, XII4-S04) in much the same strain:
^*In Russia God and His Mother, saints and angels, seem tear; men rejoice or stand ashamed beneath their gaze, rhe people of the land have made it a vast sanctuary, per- umed with prayer and filled with the memories of heroes of he faith. Saints and sinners, believers and infidels, are af- ected by its atmosphere ; and so it has come about that Rus- ia is the land of ideals.**
Stephen Graham (in his Undiscovered Russia^ London, ^Ane, 1912, XVI+867) speaks with glowing admiration of he Russian Church:
**The Holy Church is wonderful. It is the only fervid iving church in Eurdpe. It lives by a virtue of the people rho compose it. If the priests were wood, it would still be preat. The worshippers are always there with one accord, rhere are always strangers in the churches, always pil- grims. God is the Word that writes all men brothers in lussia and all women sisters. The fact behind that word is he fountain of hospitality and friendship.'*
Selma Lager loef (the only woman winner of the Noble *rize for Literature — a prize awarded to Kipling, Maeter- inck, and Hauptmann), G. Ferrero, Stephen Graham *^ and »thers give many touching descriptions of the deep religious eelings of Russians and other Slavs. Prof. H. A. Miller ays that the Russian Eastern Orthodox Church ^^has de- cloped in the same democratic way despite efi^orts to ally it
94 Who At^ ike Slavs f
with the autocracy. The Orthodox Church is magnificent in equipment and ritual, yet it offers a marked contrast to the aristocratic system of the Roman Catholic Church. The Russian most devoutly takes his hat off when passing a church or holy picture, but keeps it on when passing a priest. In the church priest and people mingle freely, and the high and low worship standing and kneeling side by side. This democracy was no part of the original ecclesiasti- cal purpose, but is an adaptation to the customs of the people." Dr. John R. Mott, head of the War Council of the Y. M. C. A., who knows Russia well, believes that Amer- ica's careless attitude toward Russia was not Christian. He says: "The Russians are the greatest people I have met in the forty-six nations I have visited. Russians are the most religious people I have visited. The Russians also are great idealists — ^more so than any other people. They are the most patient people and the people with the greatest willingness to make sacrifice. I found less disorder in Rus- sia than in the United States. I agree with Senator Root that Russia up to this date has been more orderly than some of the countries that are criticising her." (Dr. Mott was a member of the Root commission).
The Slav does not care very much for church custmns, as it is beautifully expressed in the words of a Serbian poet, Petar Petrovich-Njegush, Prince and Bishop of Montene- gro: ^^Do not ask how a man crosses himself, But whose the blood that warms his heart. And whose the blood that nourished him." This is in accordance with a Serbian prov- erb, "Love your brother, whatever his faith." Bishop Nje- gush did not speak thus from a lack of reverence, but rather because of his heartfelt piety. He conceived religion as a force for unifying, not for disuniting, and it grieved him to see in his country everywhere the destructive results of religious discord.
The Slavs are religious in a simple way, but not fanatical
Slavic Religious Traits 95
and tfie influence of the priesthood is limited. Many ancient superstitions linger, no doubt, among the peasantry, such as the belief in the vampire and the evil eyes; witches and necromancers are numerous and are much consulted, but all these things are insignificant before the deep religious feeling, they are the principal matters of popular religion. L. E. Van Norman rightly observes that the artistic, imaginative temperament of the Slav is peculiarly fertile for the growth of a religious fervor and devotion perhaps unparalleled in the history of humanity. Like the Celt, he is a poet and musician by nature, seeing poetry and music in stones, trees, and rocks where the more ^^practical" people can discern only material facts and forces. Selma Lagerloef, a Prot- estant, has understood (in her touching description of Rus- sian pilgrims in Palestine) the true significance of the relig- ious impulse which leads poor Russian muzhiks to the Holy Land, and which draws them to the numberless churches of the vast Russian Empire. Yes, these simple people cling to the belief that there is something else in God's world besides toil and greed — they flock towards the Light, and find in it the justification of their human craving for peace and mercy.
To conclude : the main significance of the religious church development of the Slav is the extent to which it became identified with his national aspirations, in the higher, broader sense of the word. Archibald R. and Ethel Colquhoun say rightly in their The Whirlpool of Europe (New York, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1907) :
'?t is not surprising that so democratic a people would not submit easily to a tyranny in matters temporal and spir- itual alike by a power which was upheld more by tradition and superstition than by the personal force behind it. In this respect the Slavs differ utterly from the German, Gallic and Latin races to whom the name of Rome represented a power which in time they came to regard as sacred. When the temporal Empire fell the spiritual one succeeded it, until.
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Who An %}m SUumf
in 800 A. D., the remal of the Lnperiid tiHe in die of the Frankish king, Charlemagnet etarted a of sentiment and divided moi'a allfgiancf< mriiead of coilcf-! ing it still more firmly on Bomey aa the Pope had hopad. llt| Slavic part of the popuUtion alwaja leaiated tUa tion» whether by Pope or Emperor, and thna m find thi- seeds of the Reformation, sown in England by WycUif, takr j ing root in Bohemia, whence they were never eradicntrd» leading to a national strag|^ with German inflnmrfa. the German reformation waa looked at with great by the Bohemian Protestants, who are more in with Calvin than with Lather. The nnhappy so large a portion of the Slavs by the Turks kept the influence of the Reformation period ; hence the the Bulgarians belong to the Greek or the Latin It is interesting to note that the members of a reUgiou aed of Asiatic origin known as Bogumiles, whose doctrines had spread through the Balkans and even throu^ aoutheni Europe to France, being obliged after the Turkish invasions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to live under Tnrkidi rule, embraced Mohammedanism rather than become Roman Catholics, as, indeed, did many Serbo-Croatian families."* The multiplication of religious sects in Russia may be best regarded as a vent for spiritual life, as a striving, in the ab- sence of political freedom, for a certain freedom of thought
CHAPTER XVm
SLAVIC ETHICAIi-MORAIi IDEAUI
rHE Slavic Ethical and Moral Ideals are very hard to separate from those of their religious life. Those who idied Slavic folk without prejudice, and those who know s works of Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Sienkiewicz, xa K. Lazarevich, and other great Slavic writers, will agree th tihe statement of Gogol, that the main characteristics d value of the Slavic nature consist in this: 'Hhat it is paUe, more than any other, of receiving the noble word the Gospel, which leads men toward perfection.** Pro- moT Tugan-Baranovsky says rightly, ^^Religion always M and remains up to the present time, one of the most werful of historical forces."
Slavic capacity for the Gospel does not consist so much the verbal preaching of a church or in propagating relig- 18 dogmas as in living righteously. Many Slavic proverbs f that there is no religion without good deeds, for the estion is not so much to think well as to live well. Such a religious attitude is the basis of Slavic upright- is, kindness and purity, sensations which are experienced all individuals of the Slavic melancholic temperament, all meditative peoples. This melancholy religious trait the Slav is expressed by Zhukovsky :
"To speak the truth, the grave for me has no terrors. And my heart with sad yearning awaits the hour. When I most render to Him who gave it. The life that has heen to me a joyless hurden That has brought with it no single joy. And long has lost the gulden promise of hope."
97
98 Who Are the, Slavs?
Slavic peoples exhibit the Christian patience in suffer- ing; their pity for the poor and oppressed is more than a mere occasional manifestation of individual feeling. With- out the inner motive, all outer manifestations of creed are valueless. ^^^Esthetic is the Cain who killed his brother Abd (Ethics)," declared the great Slavic critic, Mikhailovskj.
Count Leo Tolstoy, in his passion for morality, denied and despised his own splendid achievements in art, by say- ing: ^^Let art and the whole tremendous fabric of modwn civilization perish, only let the soul of man find salvation and peace." ^ He says that, ^^The mission of art in our times consists in transferring from the sphere of reason mto the sphere of feeling that truth that the good of men is in their union among themselves, and in establishing in place of the now existing violence that kingdom of God, that is love^ which to us appears as the highest aim of the life of human- ity." ^ Many educated Slavs do not believe in the popular conception of God, or Law, or civil government, or mar- riage, or any of the fundamental inhibitions of present so- ciety, but their daily life is as regular and as conventional as a New Englander's, says Professor W. L. Phelps of Tak University.* The Polish nation, says Brodzinski, is the Copernicus of the moral world ; it has discovered the law of the attraction of all races to the central moral point — ^the idea of humanity ; it was granted to this nation to bring the rights of the throne and of the people into equilibrium on scales the beam of which stood fast in Heaven itself. And Turgcnyev gives the following moral-ethical advice to his Slavic brothers and sisters: "On every occasion, when you are obliged to enter upon an understanding, ask yourself: are you serving Civilization in the exact and strict sense of the word?"
Slavs have been always the most tolerant people in mat- ters of belief, hence the readiness with which they adopted Christianity. A Serbian proverb says : "I love my brother.
SUmc EtJdcal'Moral Ideals 99
whatever his faith." But the Slavs are also trying to avoid a confusion of real religion and real Christianity as a his- torical reality, for the ethical ideals of Jesus are quite differ- ent from the Christianity of the dark ages. As the Saviour said: ^^No man can serve two masters." The Slavs are anxious for a religion according to the form of Auguste Compte's — **reUgion de VhamariiU** (religion of humanity) or Robespiere's **religion of reason," or the "religion of mor- als" offered by the Society for Ethical Culture, or perhaps the ^'Neo-Buddhism," etc. Such an ideal is in truth the ideal of all mankind — ^it is called Messiah among the Jews ; hero among the Greeks; among the Christians, Christ; and chUi/n, the superior man, or to use Nietzsche's expression, der Vebermensch (the overman or superman), among the Chi- nese. And for that reason (but apparently the godlessness of the modem world is really a wrestling with God like that of Jacob, and modem men are wrestling with God, not with the Father but with the Son), the godless men of to-day, the wrestlers with Jesus Christ are nearer to Christ than the Christians are. Here is the "message" of Mcrezhkovsky : ^And Christ seeing that he has not prevailed against the world will tfay to it: *Let not go for the day breaketh.* And the world will say to Christ: ^I will not let thee go except thou bless me; and Christ will bless it in the morn- ing dawn, in the revelation of the Spirit, in the third cove- nant and will give mankind a new name, the name of God- Sonhood, God-Mankind." (In 1833, Ivanov paints the Ap- pearance of the Messiah among the People).
This is also the spirit of Tolstoy's words : "I see hope for us all only in the return of Christianity." Tolstoy, who did not beheve in the divinity of Jesus, denied the same things which are denied by Christ Himself, i.e., everything which is only verbal belief, which is pure Churchism. If there is anything magical in the white man which is able to unite pll nations on earth, it is the rolirnous-moral life and life
B^^^^'Ji
100 Who Are the Slamt
teachings, a religion which is cosmopolitan rather than eth- nic or national. The philanthropic work during the faminct of 1873 and 1891 gave Tolstoy an impulse for the ^'Simpli- fication of Life" which filled the foreign periodicals with sen- sational pictures and descriptions of him in a cheap shirt- blouse, girded with a rope, with his hands on a plow, tilliii^ his estate, at Yasnaya Polyana. The principle of simfdi- fication was carried into his religious beliefs—^ t^^fWng not coming from Jesus Christ Himself was ruthlessly dis- carded, and a New Grospel reconstructed from the old. (In March, 1901, the Russian Holy Synod issued the excom- munication with which he had been threatened for about thirty years.) Tolstoy, who accepted Christianity in the terms of the Sermon on the Mount, reduced the teachings of Christ to the following five commandments :
(1) Never fall into a rage^ viz., be at peace with every- body ; do not allow yourself to consider any one as low or stupid.
(2) Do not violate the rights of wedlock — Do not commU aduLtery.
(3) Take no oath^ for it impels men to sin; know that it is wrong, and bind not yourself by any promise.
(4) Use no violence in self-defense, for human vengeance or justice is an evil; do not, under any pretext, practice it; bear with insults, and render not evil for eviL
(5) Make no war; know that all men are brothers, the sons of one father; do not break the peace with any on ac- count of difference of nationality.
Tolstoy's What I Believe (also known in English as My Religion, 1884) is a socialistic and communistic explana- tion of the Gospel, which really forms the ethics of the Slavic common people. Tolstoy declares here that non-re- sistance is the central point of Christ's teaching and urges a literal fulfilment of His precepts. According to this re- ligion the most dangerous enemy of society is the monarchical
Slaioic EtJiicd^TitotdL Ideals. 101
I Church, because it supports with all its power the errors
which it had read into its interpretation of Jesus's doctrine. In place of this false light of Church dogma, which misleads believers and lets them ^^go into the pit," must be substi- tuted the light of conscience; one's whole conduct must be irradiated bj it, by submitting each of his acts to the ap- probation of the judge which we feel within us, ^4n our inner tribunaL'* Instead of written law Tolstoy substituted the supreme law of love, fraternity, and equal opportunity. For personal commands he wrote : ^^Be pure," ^^Love mankind." Then, with the full force of peasantism upon him, he said: **Do thou labor" (this precept dates from the writing of Anna Karenina, which appeared in 1875). Christ gave him the principle of the new life, the peasant showed how it may be accomplished. He says : ^^o not lead a life which makes it so difficult to refrain from wrath, from not committing adfultery, from not taking oaths, from not defending your- self by violence, from not carrying on war : lead a life which would make all that difficult to do." Then he suggests not to crush at pleasure the very conditions of earthly happi- ness ; do not break the bond which unites man to nature, i. e., lead lives so as to enjoy ^Hhe sky, the sun, the pure air, the earth covered with vegetation and peopled with animals,"-^ become a rustic instead of being the busy, weary, sickly ur- ban. Return to the natural law of labor; — of labor freely chosen and accomplished with pleasure, of physical labor, the source of appetite and sleep. Have a family, but have the joys of it as well as the cares, which means — ^keep your children near you, do not intrust their education to stran- gers ; do not imprison them ; do not drive them ^^into physi- cal, moral and intellectual corruption." Then, have free and affectionate intercourse with all men, whatever their rank, their nationality : **The peasant and wife are free to enter into brotherly relations with eighty millions of workingmen, from Arkhangel to Astrakhan, without waiting for ceremony .
102 Who Are the Slamf
or instruction. A clerk and his infe find hundreds <iff pecfb , who are their equals ; but the clerks of hi^ier statioil do recognize them as their equals, and they in their torn their inferiors. A wealthy man of society and Ins wife hu^ only a few score families of equal distinctiont idl tlie otttti are unknown to them. The cabinet minister and the nSBkmr aire hare only a dozen people as rich and as in^NSitaBl as they are. For emperors and kings, the cirde is at31 rower. Is it not like a prison, where each prisoner m cell has relations only with one or two jailers?^ TbmBjf Tolstoy asks us to live in a community, in hygienie eondr tions, with moral habits, which bring you the nearest posnUt to that ideal which is the very foundation of happinesay as long as you live, death without disease^ when eaostenoe hu reached its limits. t
Tolstoy points out that the higher one rises in the social scale, the farther one departs from this ideaL The pic- ture which he paints of the physical pains and tortures of the wealthy and of the aristocratic, of those whom he calls *Hhe martyrs of the religion of the world,'' is remarkably vigorous. J. J. Rousseau's declamation against the pre- tended benefits of civilization here finds a powerful inter- preter, for in Tolstoy's conviction that the simplest folk were far more often possessed of the essence of religion than those who had been spoiled by civilization, we see simply am- plified the belief of Rousseau, expressed in his *^tum to Nature." That Count Tolstoy was influenced by the iUus- trious Frenchman, there is no doubt. Tolstoy confessed to a lifelong admiration for Rousseau. Just five years before his dramatic death, Tolstoy wrote: ^^Rousseau has been my teacher ever since I was a boy of fifteen. Rousseau and the Bible have been the two greatest influences in my life." Tolstoy's infatuation for the Emile ou iur Veducation and its inspiring influence upon his unique educational experi- ment at Yasnaya Polyana is well-known throughout the
Slavic Ethicat-Moral IdedU 103
; world* Every reader of Tolstoy's autobiographical stories, \ especially CJUldhood and Youths will have noticed how much r their author owed to Rousseau's famous Confessions. I Tolstoy loved and worshipped Rousseau's La NouveUe ; Hdoise. Tolstoy might be called the ^^Russian Rousseau." Ernest Dupuy, in his Les grands maitres de la LittSraiure Russe (Paris, 1885, 862 ppOi &sks, ^^Does that mean that Tolstoy declaims?" and answers: *^No one is more in earnest. It is not only in words that he declares war on the organiza- tion of society recognized and defended by the government of his country. He puts the doctrine into practice; he is ready to suffer all things to affirm the cause of Jesus. His refusal to take the oath, which is one of the articles of his creed, has already brought upon him a condemnation from one of those tribunals which he himself condemns in the name of the maxim of the Gospels, ^Judge not.' It is not credible that the old hero of the wars of the Caucasus and Crimea compels his son to refuse military service, as was done once by the son of Sutayev, the raskolnik of Tver. He would have liked to strip himself of his property, in order to conform to the socialistic dogma forbidding inheritance and property. He was hindered only by the fear of trampling upon the liberty and the conscience of others. But amid the luxury of his family Count Tolstoy lives the life of a poor man. He has dropped his pen as a novelist. Clad like a muzhik, he wields the scythe or drives the plow; between seedtime and harvest, he preaches his evangel." And in this epoch, when the hurricane of madness is sweeping the earth, it is indeed proper to consider the gigantic work of Count Leo Tolstoy in giving humanity the Gospel of Love and Non-Resistance.
According to Count de Vogiic (b. 1848; member of the Academy and Neo-Catholics) all the great efforts of the present time are under the spell of the words, Miserior super iurbam. And this drop of mercy falling on the miseries of
104 Who Art tTu Slaaif
the old world, has softened buinan tuture and evolved mod- em man, giving him conceptions of moralitji festhetic politics and compaBsion, This evangelic influence on Ibe past is denied b^ many civilixed non-Slavic thinkers. The irords of Vogii^ just fit here: "The Koran contains a beau- tiful saying, 'How shall we know that the end of the world has coineP' asked the Prophet. It is when one soul can do more help another,* was the answer. Praj Heaven that the Russian soul may yet do much for ours !"( See i E. M. it Yogiie, Le Roman Russe, Paris, 1886.)
Sicnkiewicz's Quo V(xdU is nothing more but a wonderfiil glorification of pure Christianity, of Christian ethics aod Christian morality. The despised Christian people of Ne- ro's time have discovered the secret of earthly life, whicb the Roman culture of Petronius sought in vain — it was hid- den from the learned and prudent and revealed imta babes. . . .
The key of Slavic morality is not the cold-blooded bubar- ism or narrow-minded nationalism advocated by Bembaidi, Treitachke, Hasse, Bismarck, Billow, Niebuhr, Munmseiii Droysen, H&usser, H. von Sybel, Lexis, Lamprecht, von Halle, Albrecht Wirth, H. St Chamberlain, Wagner, Lar garde, Waitz, Maurer and others, but a high religious moral postulate expressed so beautifully in the Serbian heroic bal- lads, where a queen-mother, Yevrosima (Euphrosjne), says to her only son. Prince Marko, who was called to decide to whom belonged the Serbian king's crown (to bis father, to fail uncles, or to the real heir, a poor orphan) :
"Let not my rearing be accursed In thee, the son I bore,
For thy father or thy brethren speak not false, wbate'er tbe
stress. But according to the living God speak out his ri^teonaness. Hart not spirit, Marko, tave thou the iomI my son. Bather late life than the $oul ihould have a itatn thereon."
Slavic Ethical-Moral Idedtk 105
The words of Christ, ^^Whosoe'er will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, shall save it," are realized here. This Serbian hero, Marko Kraljevich, when he met his death in the battle of Rovina (in 1S99), in Rumania, is said to have pronounced the following memora- ble words : **May Grod grant the victory to the Christians, even if I have to perish amongst them first." * Many Ser- bian proverbs point out this great ethical ideal : ^^It is better to suffer injustice than to commit it." ^^It is better that our body be in rags and the soul in silk, than to have a body in silk and the soul in rags" ; ^^It is better to die for the truth, than to live and be guilty"; ^^Be the father to virtues and father-in-law to vices"; "A nice hope is better than poor behavior"; ^^Better to die honestly than to live dishon- estly" ; ^It is better to have a good reputation than to have a golden belt" ; ^*It is better to be poor and honest than rich and dishonest"; ^^As long as a man honours himself nobody can dishonour him" ; *^If a man cannot be handsome or rich as he would wish, he can be good and honest" ; ^^It is better to fight with a brave man than to embrace and kiss with a coward"; *^Do good and you will not have to repent it, do evil, and you will have to expect it" ; "Who does good will re€5eive better, who does evil will receive worse"; **In evil days the man shows what he is" ; "It is better to weep with the wise than to sing with the fool" ; "If a man is difficult to . be known, find out with whom he associates and you will then know him" ; "Where there is no fear of God there is no shame of men" ; "It is better to serve a good man than to give orders to a bad man," etc. Moral ideal of Vladimir Solovyev is: "Have God in thyself' and "Treat everything in the manner of God." Nikola Pashich, the Serbian Premier, the great South-Slavic statesman, and the political eye of the Jugo- slavia or South-Slavdom (b. 1846), says: "It is better to die in beauty than to live under disgrace." Serbia has in- deed well and bravely answered the great question. He asked:
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Who An tk$. Skmt
^What shall it profit a man if he gaini the uliQle woiU
lose his own soul?**
In a Serbian hallad entitled ^SlaTa Slavi Marko" we see Prince Marko * honoring his mothcTt so so that he did not take arms (onlj to satisfy Us mother), although he knew that in this way his life is gered to death. In another poem» '^Sastala se detiri bora,** from which we have taken the just cited linc% Marko, who puts his father into rage (because he did m(^ say that the Serbian's kingdom belongs to him» hot to • peot orphan, who is the only real successor to it), and his fetihir tries to kill him, — he, Prince Marko^ who could, to the people's imagination, conquer the whde anqy, away like a small boy before his father, for it is not mee te fight his father. Unlike Mflosh Obilich and Banovich Stnr hinja, who are personifications of perfect virtue. Prince Marko is a burly spoiled child, strong, self-willed, capridoiis, at times cruel, but always brave, always kind to the weak, poor and friendless, whether they be fair maidens or mere birds of prey, and, above all, always a devoted son to his old mother.®
Is there a scientific reason for the above mentioned atti* tudes of the best known and the best beloved hero of the Serbian ballads. Prince Marko? Russian proverbs say: ^^Shame is worse than death," *^A good conscience is God's eyes," ^^an carries his superiority inside, animals carry theirs outside," ^^If God does not desert you, the pigs won't eat you" (an historical fact), etc. Serbian proverbs say: **Where the elders are not heard, there Grod does not help,** ^^God shuts sometimes one door, in order to open a hundred other doors"; ^^When God wills not, all the saints together cannot help." A Polish proverb says : "Faith pierces the very wall," and many other Slavic proverbs sound like that, and there is truth in folk-philosophy, as is well-known. Td- stoy's gospel "Resist not evil" means nothing more than ft
1
Slavic EthicaJrMoral IdedU, 107
y of the spirit over the body. That the Slavs are liv- ider the dominion of religion more or less clearly in- ited and understood is shown by their daily greetings : help you on your way," **Go with God,*' "May God it," etc. But this God is not the Jehovah of the Old ment who throws boiling water and fiery stones on 1 and Gomorrah ; He is not the one who in the name of I killed many Jews when he returned from Mt. Sinai; not the one who sent the flood to destroy men, — He is rho is patient, quiet, slow and still, just and righteous, oes not forget anything that is done by any individual irowd or nation or race, or as a Serbian proverb says : does not settle His accounts with men every Saturday, le day comes on which He settles them." igion and morality cannot be separated in Slavic na- The moral-ethical sense of a Slavic hero is illustrated ^ Serbian Wilhelm Tell, Prince Marko, who on vanquish- [usa Kesedziya,'' exclaims: "Woe unto me, for I have a better man than myself!" The words of the Serbian p-poet, Petar Petrovich Njegosh, are very fitting for X hero : "Happy is he who lives for ever, such an one ndeed good cause to be bom." Compare the Slavic I attitude of Prince Marko with that of the famous : Achilles, who mutilates the dead body of his rival.® he Hiad is one long recital of how Diomedes and Ajax, don and Hector killed.
5 well-known electrical inventor, Nikola Tesla, men- another earlier incarnation of Serbian heroism: "It t the Kosovo Polje ^ that Milosh Obilich, the noblest of in heroes, fell, after killing the Sultan Marat II in the nidst of his great army. Were it not that it is an his- .1 fact, one would be apt to consider this episode a myth, d by contact with the Greek and Latin races. For in h we see both Leonidas ^^ and Mucius,^^ and more than I martyr, for he does not die an easy death on the bat-
CHAPTER XIX
SOCLAX-FOLinCAL TRAITS
SOCIAL-POLITICAL traits of the Slavs might be best illustrated by their social and political ideals as indi- cated in their social institutions, marriage and love, liberty < and war, woman-question, patriotism, etc. Although some \j hints of these traits are mentioned above, we are now to treat j specifically the social-political traits of the Slavs under ' four headings, classification of which is, no doubt, m ab^ stracto^ for it is impossible to make a sharp distinction be* tween the social-political and religious-moral traits, and both of them are many times very hard to separate from the in- tellectual-cultural and temperamental traits.
The civic ideals of the Slav are best exemplified in the Russian league called ^^Mir" (communal or parish village), or in the Russian "Artel," or in the Serbian "Zadruga** (communal household) or in the Montenegrin "Bratstvo** (brotherhood) and "pleme" (clan) — all of which represent the real world of Slavic peasants and their fatherland. And, in general, the Slavs are more democratic than the inhabi- tants of any other country.
Professor A. H. Miller points but very effectively the fact that the Russian Empire is freer than Grermany and Austro^ Hungary, when he says :
"Harmonious human relationships arise from qualities ' which seem to have no relation to efiiciency. It has been a shock to the Germans to discover that in spite of their su- perlative efficiency so few people love them. Efficiency de- pends on complex organization with authority and subor*
110
SociaJrPoUticdL Traits 111
Kxiation, while democracy consists in self-direction, and its atccess demands the acquiescence of individuals to the will IT others after all have had an opportunity of expressing ilcmselves freely. Eventually such a democratic organiza- ^n will become ^cient, but this is a secondary rather than primary aim. What a Russian common citizen will bring C^ the new era of civilization are a familiarity with demo- mile practice and a habit of mutual aid and co-operation ^ch were almost universal among the various peoples of lorope a few centuries ago, and which have disappeared knost everywhere. — ^The American traveller, steeped in the raditions of Siberian and Russian despotism, once across be dreaded border, is surprised to discover his fear gradu- E^ giving way to a feeling of freedom and ease such as he ftd not known in Germany and Austria. There the stem sifulations of the military system were always apparent and ppressive. Here one gradually realizes that he is left to do Rich as he pleases as soon as he has conformed to the re- nirements of passport registration. — ^There may be a check f his self-esteem as he finds that his official title of Herr ^ofessor or Herr Journalist which is never omitted by the iermans is now dropped. In the language of the country le has become simply ^Mr.* Men in high places, such as the leads of universities, are addressed by their colleagues by heir first names. In familiar Russian and Polish novels re find noblemen and military leaders regularly given the itle of *Pan' (Mr.), which is a term of respect but not of listinction. The relation of nobleman to peasant is not nainlj that of superiority and servility, but of the older ind younger brother. The name Little Father which is ap- plied to the Tzar expresses the attitude of familiarity rather than of awe. — Compare this with the worship of the uniform in Germany, where a policeman will not answer your ques- tion unless you salute him, and an omitted title is an insult. bi Petrograd during student riots it is not an uncommon
112
Who Are the Slavsl
thing for students to kick the shins of the police with punity; and in Russia officers and soldiers are more comrades than in any other country in the world." there is no cla6s feeling even among the Russian shown by M. Baring, who in his above cited book says ( 2&-27) that the ^^Russian soldiers have little class f( They never, like the Prussians, form a military caste^ tinct from the people. They have no margtie, no c; haughtiness. While the German officer, even when his ed tion is the best, feels himself to be a sort of priest,- tary sacerdas — the Russian officer, even when he is radcy according to his own conception, a mortal like others.**
D. M. Wallace, in his Russia (London, 191S, p. 410 points out very nicely that the Russian unsophisticated ant (or muzhik) 9 in his unsavory sheep-skin, can stand in midst of a crowd of well-dressed people without feelin^f all awkward or ashamed. (See also his article: Lod Back Over Forty Years, 1870-1910, in Russian Review^ 1^ 1912, 9-17.) ^
Professor Herbert A. Miller claims openly that modt^.^ em democracy needs Slavic traditions. He says: ^t i^ among the masses, however, that we are to find the reil; contribution that Russia is making. It was formerly thou|^bft:S that ideals and practices were derived by imitation from A superior culture, but now we are discovering that tradi* tions and customs are transmitted horizontally between people of the same class rather than vertically between tbii'; classes. The despotism of Russia is no more the ezpressioflfr, of the real Russian people than Tammany Hall is an etr, pression of American democracy, and the influence of both institutions on national character has been insignificant^ Despotisms come and go, but the habits of a people endure.^ Professor Miller also points out that the Slavs ^^have pre- served to a time that needs them such forms of social organt- ' zation and traditions of simple living together that have
SocialrPoUtical Traits 113
ken almost lost elsewhere in the development of modem life. Jbst these factors of simple relationships of men must be ftmtrodnced into society to make democracy successful. Acre is every reason to expect that the Slav will be swept dong by the flood-tide of modem development before he ks time to lose his characteristic habits and attitudes." (See his article on ^A Prophecy of Slav Dominion," in N, Y. Hmv, May SS, 1915.)
That the Slavs are not servile people as is believed by some ibidents of their peasants, is shown by many authors who 4^^hH»H first-hand information about them. So, for exam- jkf Sir Charles Eliot claims that, *^In spite of the period rf serfdom through which he has passed, the Russian muzhik knot servile ; he thinks of God and the Tzar in one category, ttd the rest of the world as more or less equal in another." h writing about Pushkin, Dostoyevsky said that one of Ftashkin's main claims to greatness is that he recognized the ■trinsic quality of self-respect in the Russian people, which fliey proved by the manly dignity of their behavior when they vere liberated from serfdom in 1861. (See: Serf Emancy- fution in Russia: a letter, London, 1862 ; Encore un mot sur Timancipation des Serfs en Rtissie, Paris, 1859; Count V. QrioT-Davidov, Rifleaions prialdbles sur les bases proposees s» mode ^^mancipation des Serfs en Russie^ Paris, 1859t 47.) A Leroy-Beaulieu tells a story (in his famous UEmpire des Tsars et les Russes, Paris, 1881-89, 3 vols.) rf how once, when he was travelling on the Volga, ^'a lady isid to him, ^How can you bother yourself about our muz- Uk? he is a brute, out of which nobody will ever be able to make a man', and how on the same day a landed proprietor isid to him, 1 consider the contadino of North Italy to be the Most intelligent peasant in Europe, but our muzhik could pre him points.* ''
Baring earnestly believes that the history, the life, the phflosophy, and the religion of the Slavic peasants illustrate
114 Who Are the Slavs?
one immense fact: that the majority is always right in the long run — Vox popuU, vox DeL • • •
Slavic economical-social ideals are best expressed (1) in the Russian "Mir," "Artel" and "Svietelka," (2) in the Serbo-Croatian "Zadruga," "Moba," "EsnaP and "Pozay- mitza" and (8) in the Montenegrin "Bratstvo." A brkf presentation of these institutions is most necessary in the study of mentality of the Slav.
Russian ''Mir''
Economically speaking, Mir (from Russian or better to say, from the Old Church Slavic language ndru = concordf peace, union and world) means an association of several fam* ilies under one head. From the most ancient times the rural population of Russia has been organized into these wdrs. Adjacent mirs are united into volosts or small cantons. In Mir the land is owned in common and is regularly re-allotted by the villagers themselves among the householders accord- ing to their working capacities and needs. It elects its own executive, or starosta^ as he is called, and he may undertake all kinds of work of public utility. Land belongs not to in- dividual peasants in Russia but to the villagers as a whole. It can be redivided every twelve years at the wish of a ma- jority of two-thirds. This and all other local questions such as the incidence of taxation, are settled by village meetings, consisting of the heads of houses, where age naturally has a predominance. A decision which carries a majority of twor thirds is, by law of the Russian Empire, a legal ^'sentence*^ of the village. The village elects its own village-elder, who is responsible for the calling' of meetings; and at certain seasons (e. g., that of hay-making) these meet- ings take place as often as once a week. Many yiUaget are united in a canton, which is ruled by a cantonal elder, similarly elected by the chosen rcpresentar
SocialrPoUtical Traits 115
of all the villages of the canton. The cantonal 18 nominated by the Government, but the cantonal ly all of whom are peasants, are elected by the can- assembly. Yes, in Russia, where communal property 89 where the Mir, a communal form of government dom- the social order, and where the unit of industrial or- .ti<m is the Artel with its starosta^ there the masses, ederation of communes, may awake and overthrow oli- f and install a real democratic government any time »ple wish. A. S. Khomyakov, brothers Kiriyevsky, rs Aksakov, and the famous followers of these Slavo- down to Pobyedonotszev saw in the Russian Mir a dtee, not only for the welfare of Russia and Slavdom, r all the world, because it offers that economic com- n and moral brotherhood which Western social dcmoc- 8 vainly trying to discover in other ways, because it istined to assure the future of the Russian people and >rd it the means of settling all the social questions of »rld in accordance with the laws of justice and of love. re Le Bon, in his Psychology of People (London, Un- 909, p. S28) claims (1) that the Latin races are in a tite case, and the Grermans are no better off, because ire rushing headlong to socialism which is ruin; (2) England and the United States are in a better position, e future of the world rests with Russia, because she has ed too recently from the regime of the ^r,' or from ditive communism, the most perfect form of socialism, urn to this inferior stage of evolution. It has other ies. It is doubtless Russia that will one day furnish resistible flood of barbarians destined to destroy the rilization of the West, whose end will have been led up economic struggles and socialism.'' it the Mir is by no means a sign of a lack of individual ive, rather that it expresses a spirit of independence is ted by many sociologists and economists. Professor
118 Who Are the Slaoil
ture an individualist. He is willing to take his chances in a general mix-up. And therefore it is that at the earliest op- portunity he threw off the shackles of collective ownership. In that long and successful assault which the barons of Eng- land made upon the people's land, the Englishman fell far short of that unconquerable spirit of resistance and counter- assault which we think of as the natural reaction of the Saxon to injustice. Had the aggression been political^ there is no doubt that he would have shown his old spirit. It is this Inability of the Saxon to comprehend the larger mean- ing of democracy that has made England what it is — ^a peo- ple willing to see their land taken over by the barons, though It means starvation for themselves. For this is right in line with the Saxon theory of the rights of the individual, where- as group control Is slavery. The widespread poverty in which England finds herself to-day is due to this excessive Individualism. The age of co-operation has come, and the Briton cannot adjust himself. He will starve, but he will not give up his lords.
^^Lct us now pass Into Russia, the land of autocracy. Here we see an exactly opposite development. Instead of the baron absorbing the property of the commune, the commune Is succeeding to the property of the baron. It is the village, not the Individual, that owns the land and at irregular in- tervals redistributes the land, though not the house, among the members of the commune, or wir, as it is called, — every family is a member, and is represented by Its head, — ^accord- ing to the size and the respective needs of the families. And there Is here none of that Instinctive rebellion on the part of the individuals composing It, but, on the contrary, a submis- sion to its will which to-day, to any man of Grermanic blood, is irritating and inconceivable. While In Russia, too, there Is poverty, this condition is at least not due to the fact that the people are outcasts from the land. That is the chief dif- ference, one might say, between Russia and the ^civilized' par
' SodairPo&ikal Traiii 119
tions, namelyy that whereas in the former the poverty of tiie people is doe to the Goyemment, to what it has done and what it has left undone, conditions in the latter are due to the people themsehres. And therefore while in Russia education and the resultant political changes may remedy the condi- tioDy in the more 'advanced' nations an improvement can be Iroo^t about only by a social revolution. And it is worth mentioning in passing that the starost, or head, of the Rus- nan Tillage never seeks the office, but has it thrust upon him, another Olustration of the difference between the Slav and tbeSaxon.**
Edwin D. Schoonmaker claims that there is no better illus- tration of the most characteristic difference between the Saxon and the Slav than that afforded by the respective ways in which Saxon America solved the slave problem and Slavic RoBsia the serf problem (emancipation of the serfs is, no doobty one of the greatest events in modem history of the vast BosBian Empire, that ^granary of the world"). He laya:
Massing over the fact that in America it required half a eentnry of the most active propaganda to convince the people, even the people of the North, that slavery was wrong, whereas in Russia no such extensive agitation was required, we come to the still wider chasm that yawns be- tween the ways in which, after their emancipation, the slave and the serf were treated in their respective countries. So oiiBessed is the Saxon mind with the idea that freedom is a matter of politics that it seemed even to the abolitionist that ample justice had been done the negro when, after his libera- tion, he was given the vote. In Russia, on the other hand, wliere the people are unpractical in politics and see things rather in their social aspects, the permanent freedom of the serf seemed to depend not upon the franchise, but upon fhe essentials of livelihood. Therefore, while the armies of tlo North at the point of the bayonet were enforcing the
■■!
120 Who Are the Slavif
negroes right to the ballot, the Russian Gk>yeminent was quietly endowing its fifty millions of serfs with land. And when we remember that in both cases the emancipated peo- ples were a childlike people, the supreme folly of the Saxon- American becomes apparent. And he himself has become aware of this, or rather half aware of it ; for while he has i reversed his policy, he has reversed it only half-way. He has • recovered the vote which he gave to the negro, but the lat- { ter's right to some part of the land which he has tilled for ; centuries the Saxon-American will not concede. And the I reason why he will not concede it is as clear as day: the ; Anglo-Saxon is inherently an aristocrat." .
A Slovene diplomatist who knows Russia well, Dr.* j Joseph Goricar, in his Tlie Betrayal of Socialism hy the j German Social-Democratic Party teith a Short Sketch of i the RtMsian Forms of Self -Government; published by Tlie Slovak League of America, Pittsburg, Pa., 1917, pp. 89-49), also calls the Russian Mir ^^a panacea for social and political evils,*' for in it
The 'Khozain', as the head of the family is called, is the undisputed master of this large peasant family, all members of which have all things in common; that is, the house and all its furnishings are common property. Its meml)ers have common responsibilities. For instance, all debts are contracted by the whole family jointly. Furthermore, all the families or households of a village own all the aredile land, all the pas- tures and forests in common; all of which enters into the constitution of the Mir. The village Elder of the Mir is called the *Staro8U' whidi is a departure from the conception which the Southern, and the Western Slavs have of the term, who ordinarily use the word 'Starosta* to applj only to the head of a family or of some civil institution, as for instance, the *Starosta' of the *Sokols', a gymnastic organization.
The Mir has also common obligations; it is responsible to tiie gorem- ment for all the taxes and other civil obligations. On the other band, coexistent with these common duties, the members of the Mir cnjof certain inalienable rights; the family cannot be deprived of its home- stead or the necessary farming implements, and the Mir, or Chmmune^ cannot be deprived of its lands by creditors. The 'Selski Starosta* ii the executive head of the village, but the supreme authority lis vested in the assembly of all the *Khozains* or heads of families. It should be noted for the edification of the Western world, that in case of the absence or the death of her husband, the Russian peasant woman hsi the right to tiike ])art in the debates of the villajire assembly. As die
j
is verv little disturb-ince. In f.ict Mio cl.i^s of imn in tlic WDrld is
pnojl iifitiirccl and pacific lluiri the Uiissimi pc.isnntry/ s.iys Sir ire, the Kngli>li author and tlie most noted foreign student of tliis ution.
; common land which the Mir possesses is of four kinds: the land lich the village is built, all the arable land set aside for cultivation, leadows and piistures and the forests. The homestead, which stands e village, is the inalienable property of the family and can never ftrtitioned, as it is done in the case of the arable land and the owa and pastures.
te one of the powers of the village assembly to apportion and allot ommunal lands among the members of the Mir. This procedure
place at irregular intervals, sometimes every three years, in case e arable lands; but the meadows are divided every year. The land ided according to the number of male members in the Mir; being :ributed whenever necessary. As the taxes due to the central gov- ent are levied on every family according to the number of lots it
it goes without sajing that a just distribution of the land is pos- only if the arable land is divided according to the labor power of
family. And this is done often to enable tiie families to pay their After the number of parcels and shares have been determined, Bflcmbly proceeds to tlie work of real partition of the parcels. The ons and subdivisions and the allotment of the shares is done by the nts themselves and with great justice and accuracy too, consider- tiat these uneducated peasants use only the crudest measuring rods. meadows, as already mentioned, are distributed every year, and procedure takes place regularly at harvest time to enable every
y to harvest its hay immediately. Very often the hayfields are \*
I fay the whole community in common and only the hay distributed g the families. The assembly also has the power to decide upon iroper time for plowing, for making hay, for electing the Elder,
AU the members of one family cultivate their land in common. absent ones, working in the cities or elsewhere, must send their gs to the family, t£s same as it is done by the Southern Slavs
1S2 Who Are the Slavst
Russian village tliere can be no isolation of any family, in strildng coi trast to the condition under wliicli the villagers in other portions o Europe live, with no such common bond of union, each one worldo independently, which tends to foster the instincts of selfishness and t promote enmities. The sodabilibr and good nature of the Russia muzhik are proverbial and must be ascribed chiefly to the Mir, whk smooths out differences and Iceeps all the families in constant tone with each other. The Mir educates these peasants not only to wor together but also to cultivate amcHig themselves the spirit of solidarit and the willingness to make concessions to each other in the interest o the welfare of the entire community. The will of the assembly is neve opposed, even though it should visit a hardship on some individuaL O the whole it may be said that such a village commune is a very goo example of a constitutional government. It is a living real institutkN with very few written laws. It has been descril)ed by many profoun students of Russian institutions as the real solution of many difficol social problems, which are agitating the social and economic life o Western Europe. Sir Wallace calls the Mir the 'panacea for social an political evils*. Above all, it secures to every one of its members U land, the same being allotted to him in severally, thus satisfying the mof deep-rooted desire and longing of every tiller of the soil to possess law And when a man does possess land on which he can build Ids home an from which he can derive a comfortable living according to his stan^ ards, he is inspired with the true spirit of a home builder. Perhaps i is tbds fact more than any other that constitutes the source of Rus^' power, which produced the marvelous growth of her population an enabled her to settle rapidly the vast uninhabited areas of land sk possesses in the various parts of her empire. The Mir, tiierefore, doc not permit, or at least it tends to retard the growth of the discontente element, which forms one of the greatest evils of Western Europea and American social organizations. There can be little doubt that thi dangerous element was produced chiefly by the expropriaticm of ib peasantry or the farming population. When a small landowner becomi separated from the soil, there remain but few opportunities for him t make a living; he can either go to the city or find employment with rich landowner; become either a wage earner, well paid perhaps, or servant, as long as he remains in good health. But in either event hi condition is very precarious; either work may become scarce or he ma lose his position on account of ill health or for some other reason. Tli Russian peasant, on the contrary, remains a member of his Mir, eve though he engage temporarily in some other occupation by becoming wage earner or an employee of the government in some distant pari of the Empire, working on the rculroads in Siberia or Turkestan« H only needs the written permission from his Mir to absent himself, whic serves him also as his passport He may return to his village whenevc he pleases and continue tilling the soil, because he never ceased to be member of his Mir and never lost his rights in it.
Such half farmers, haii artisans always could be found in great mm bers in Russia. They may be found in the farthest comers of the en pire, sometimes many months' journey from their villages. The Ml not only prevents the separation of the small farmers from their soi but it also makes it impossible for wealthy people and landnspeculatoi
Social-PoUtlcdL TrcAU 123
floB bujrlng np its lands, and thus compelling the peasant families to ftnake their Tillages and depriving them of the lands of their ancestors. JSvai the more enterprising and grasping peasants tliemseives are pre- dated from taking advantage of their weaker and less provident neigh- kon^ vho might be tempted, if tiiey could, to dispose of their patrimony ■d Jose their means of maldng a safe living. This is one of the great- crt Uessings of this ancient Russian institution. Whoever had the flpDortunlty to observe the disastrous effects which the unrestricted own- cnUp of land had upon the peasantry of Austria-Hungary, where faoDniae tracts of land passed into the hands of comparatively few persons, as in Galida and some parts of Hungary, where the greatest portion of the farming land came into the possession of the Jews, who tkemaelTes are not tillers of the soil, he must admit that tlie Mir is nhDirably adapted to prevent tlie alienation of land by Its actual tillers. The evil consequences of land being but the object of barter and trade, ad the means of maldng money thereby, as it was done in Germany, ^eie the Prussian 'Junkers' are the omnipotent masters, or as in Bunnnia, wheie large 'Latifundia* were created, whose owners squander Ur profits in gay living in the capitals of Europe, are very apparent. Kta^and and Ireland, where land is tied up for hunting grounds and •Uber recreations and lost to farming, its natural purpose, may be also died as good examples of its evlL There is one more reason why this vOlage eoammne is a hoon to the peasantry; a peasant always finds a nfe reAige in his village when he is overtaken by old age. Besides this, Ml cUldren are raised in the healthy atmosphere of the country. Amer- Icni surgeons^ attached to the Russian armies, attest to the fact that Ills Russian soldiers are remarkably free from those contagious dis- MMS widch are the greatest curse and misfortune of the m^em city dvellen.
Notwithstanding all these evident advantages, there were found some, cien among tlie Russians themselves, who pretended to find serious objections to it. One of the greatest faults of this venerable institution, ttis sacred rdic of the ancient Russian life, was said to be the lack of the spirit of competition among Its members, and that to tliis is attrib- tfaible the backwardness of the Russian village agriculture, as compared with that of the rest of Europe. It is most unfortunate that tliis opin- ion vas entertained even in some governmental circles. Still there were flone Rossians who earnestly advocated its preservation in modem life. The so-called Slavophils, a group of educated Muscovites, were most itrennoiis in upholding all the good ideas found In the Mir. Yet, to the gieat disadvantage of the Russian national life, the government decided to abolidi it The principal reasons which led the Russian government to beUere that the Mir has become obsolete and inconsistent with the opliit of modern progress and unrestricted competition, are not gener- •hy known. A disinterested person, however, would not be far from tbe tmth by assuming that it entered upon this perilous course of *lib- cnting' the peasants from the restrictions imposed on them by the tnwritten laws of the Mir, chiefly because of the fear entertained by the great landowners that land communism, as it existed in the Mir, vould finally deprive them of tlieir immense landed estates. During the icvolution of 1907, the revolutionary party displayed great activi^ the peasant class, instilling into their minds the idea that all
124 Who Are the Slavst
the land belongs to them. No more welcome economic creed could have been taught to the peasants, who by nature and the force of drcum- stances elways were land hung^. The result of spreading these revo- lutionary ideas was that the peasants, woridng for the large landowniftg capitalists, or aristocrats, either refused to work or considered them- selves as the owners of the land which they were tilling for their absent masters. Many of these large landowners, in consequence of this, were compelled to abandon their estates to the peasants. It was onlv another method of squeezing them out of the possession of lands which they inherited from their ancestors. This movement spread very rapidly even to other countries and led to bloody uprising in Rumania, where it was directed principally against the Jewish lessees of the large estates of the Rumanian 'Boyars'. It should be noted that under the Rumanian constitution the Jews cannot own