Occidental Europe is not aware of the degree of religious intolerance that enters into Russian policy.
THE GREEK RELIGION IN RUSSIA.
349
The worship of the United Greeks (the Uniates) has been, after long and heavy persecutions, abolished. The following fact will show the danger run in Eussia by speaking of the Greek religion, and of its little moral influence.
Some years ago, a man of mind, and highly esteemed by every one in Moscow, noble both by birth and character, but, unfortunately for himself, devoured with a love of truth — a passion dangerous everywhere, but mortally so in Russia, — ventured to print that the Catholic religion is more favourable to the development of mind, and to the progress of arts, than the Russian Byzantine. The life of the Catholic priest, he says in his book, a life altogether supernatural, or which at least ought to be so, is a voluntary and daily sacrifice of the gross inclinations of nature ; a sacrifice incessantly renewed on the altar of faith, to prove to the most incredulous that man is not subjected in all things to the tyranny of material laws, and that he may receive from a superior power means of escaping from them: he adds, " By virtue of the changes operated by time, the Catholic religion can no longer employ her virtuality except in doing good:" in fact, he maintained, that Catholicism was wanting to the great destinies of the Slavonian race, because in it alone could, at the same time, be found, sustained enthusiasm, perfect charity and pure discernment ; he supported his opinion by a great number of proofs, and endeavoured to show the advantages of an independent, that is an universal religion, over local or politically-limited religions ; in short, he professed an opinion which I shall never cease to defend with all my powers.
350DANGER ОГ SPEAKING OF
Even the faults in the character of the Russian women are by this writer attributed to the Greek religion. He pretends that if they are light and frivolous, and do not know how to preserve the authority in their families which it is the duty of a Christian wife and mother to exercise, it is because they have never received real religious instruction.
This book having escaped, I do not know by what miracle or subterfuge, the vigilance of the censorship, set Russia in a blaze. Petersburg, and Moscow the holy city, uttered cries of rage and alarm; in short, the consciences of the faithful were so disturbed, that, from one end of the empire to the other, was demanded the punishment of this imprudent advocate of the mother of the Christian churches, an advocacy which did not save him from being reviled as an innovator: for — and this is not one of the smallest inconsistencies of the human mind, almost always in contradiction with itself in the comedies which it plays upon this world — the motto of all sectarians and schismatics is, that we should respect the religion under which we are born — a truth too much forgotten by Luther and
Calvin ;in fine, the knout, Siberia, the mines,
the galleys, the fortresses of all the Russias, were not enough to reassure Moscow and her Byzantine orthodoxy against the ambition of Rome, aided by the impious doctrine of a traitor to his God and country.
The sentence which was to decide the fate of so great a criminal was expected with the deepest anxiety; it was long in appearing, and the people began to doubt in supreme justice : at last, the emperor, in his unfeeling mercy, declared that there was no ground for punishment, that there was no criminal to make
THE GREEK RELIGION IN RUSSIA.351
an example of, but that there was a madman to shut up; and he added that the diseased man should be placed under medical care.
This judgment was put in execution without delay, and in so severe a manner that the reputed madman thought he should have justified the derisive decree of the absolute head of church and state. The martyr of truth had very nearly lost the reason that was denied him. At present, after a three years' treatment, as degrading as it was rigorous and cruel, the unhappy theologian first begins to enjoy a little liberty : but is it not a miracle ! . . . he now doubts his own reason, and, upon the faith of the imperial word, he owns himself insane ! О ! ye depths of human misery ! . . . In Russia, the word of the sovereign, when it reproves a man, equals the papal excommunication of the middle ages!
The pretended madman may now communicate with a few friends. It was proposed, during my stay in Moscow, to take me to see him in his retreat, but mingled fear and pity withheld me ; for my curiosity would have appeared to him insulting. I did not learn what was the punishment of the censors of his book.
This is a quite recent example of the mode of treating affairs of conscience in Russia. I ask again, for the last time, if the traveller so fortunate or unfortunate as to have learnt such facts, has the right to let them remain unknown? In things of this kind, what we positively know enlightens us with regard to what Ave surmise; and from all these things together there results a conviction which we feel under an obligation of communicating to the world if we are able.
I speak without personal hatred, but also without
352
PAKALLEL BETWEEN
fear or restriction; for I brave the danger even of wearying.
The country that I have just surveyed is as sombre and monotonous as that which I described formerly is brilliant and varied. To draw its exact picture is to renounce the hope to please. In Russia, life is as gloomy as in Andalusia it is gay ; the Russians are as dull as the Spaniards are full of spirits. In Spain, the absence of political liberty is compensated by a personal independence which perhaps exists nowhere to the same extent, and the effects of which are surprising ; whilst in Russia, the one is as little known as the other. A Spaniard lives on love, a Russian lives on calculation ; a Spaniard relates every thing, and if he has nothing to relate, he invents ; a Russian conceals every thing, or if he has nothing to conceal, he is still silent, that he may appear discreet: Spain is infested with brigands, but they rob only on the road; the Russian roads are safe, but you will be plundered infallibly in the houses : Spain is full of the ruins and the memories of every century; Russia looks back only upon yesterday, her history is rich in nothing but promises: Spain is studded with mountains, whose forms vary at every step taken by the traveller; Russia is but a single unchanging scene, extending from one end of a plain to the other : the sun illumines Seville, and vivifies the whole peninsula ; the mists veil the distances in Petersburg, which remain dim during even the finest summer evenings. In short, the two countries are the very opposite of each other ; they differ as do day and night, fire and ice, north and south.
He must have sojourned in that solitude without
SPAIN AND RUSSIA.353
repose, that prison without leisure which is called Russia, to feel all the liberty enjoyed in the other European countries, whatever form of government they may have adopted. It cannot be too emphatically repeated: liberty is wanted in every thing Russian; unless it be in the commerce of Odessa. The emperor, who is endowed with prophetic tact, little loves the spirit of independence that pervades that city, the prosperity of which is due to the intelligence and integrity of a Frenchman * : it is, however, the only point in his vast dominions where men may with sincerity bless his reign.
If ever your sons should be discontented with France, try my receipt; tell them to go to Russia. It is a useful journey for every foreigner : whoever has well examined that country will be content to live anywhere else. It is always well to know that a society exists where no happiness is possible* because, by a law of his nature, man cannot be happy unless he is free.
Such a recollection renders the traveller less fastidious ; and, returning to his own hearth, he can say of his country what a man of mind once said of himself : e( When I estimate myself, I am modest; but when I compare myself, I am proud."
* The Duke de Richelieu, minister of Louis XVIII.
APPENDIX.
November, 1842. During the course of this year, chance has brought me into the company of two individuals who served in our armies during the campaign of 1812, and who both lived in Russia for some years after having been ma
de prisoners there. The one is a Frenchman, now professor of the Russian language at Paris ; his name is M. Girard; the other is an Italian, M. Grassini, brother of the celebrated singer whose beauty once caused great sensation in Europe, and whose admirable dramatic and musical talents have contributed to the glory of the modern Italian school.
These two individuals have recounted to me facts which, singularly agreeing as they do, although the parties have not the slightest knowledge of each other even by name, have appeared to me sufficiently interesting to merit publication.
The following is the summary of M. Girard's relation.
He was made prisoner during the retreat, and immediately sent, with 3000 other Frenchmen, under charge of a body of Cossacks, into the interior of the empire, where the prisoners were dispersed among the different governments.
The cold became daily more intense. Dying of hunger and fatigue, the unfortunate men were often obliged to stop on the road, until numerous and violent blows had done the office of food for them, and inspired them with, strength to march on until they fell dead. At every stoppage, some of these scarcely clad and famished beings were left upon the snow. When they onee fell, the frost glued them to earth, and they never rose again. Even their ferocious guards were horrified at their excess of suffering.
Devoured by vermin, consumed by fever and want, carrying everywhere with them contagion, they became objects of terror to the villagers, among whose abodes they were made to stop. They advanced, by dint of blows, towards the places destined
356
APPENDIX.
for their taking rest; and it was still with blows that they were received there, without being suffered to approach persons, or even to enter houses. Some were seen redueed to such a state, that, in their furious despair, they fell upon each other with stones, logs of wood and their own hands ; and those who came alive
out of the conflict devoured the limbs of the dead ! !!
To these horrible excesses did the inhumanity of the Eussians drive our countrymen.
It has not been forgotten that at the very same time, Germany gave a different example to the Christian world. The Protestants of Frankfort still remember the devoted charity of the Bishop of Mayenee, and the Italian Catholies reeolleet with gratitude the succour they received among the Protestants of Saxony.
At night, in the bivouaes, the men who felt themselves about to die rose in terror to struggle, standing, against the death agony ; surprised whilst in its contortions by the frost, they remained supported against the walls, stiff and frozen. The last sweat turned to iee over their emaeiated limbs; and they were found in the morning, their eyes open, and their bodies fixed and eongealed in convulsive attitudes, from which they were snatched only to be burnt. The foot then eame away from the anele more easily than it is, when living, lifted from the soil. When daylight appeared, their comrades, on raising their heads, beheld themselves under the~guard of a circle of yet scarcely lifeless statues, who appeared posted round the eamp like sentinels of another world. The horror of these awakings cannot be described.
Every morning, before the departure of the column, the Ptussians burnt the dead; and — shall I say it — they sometimes burnt the dying!
All this M. Girard has seen ; these are the sufferings he has shai`ed, and, favoured by youth, survived. Frightful as the facts are, they do not appear to me more so than a multitude of other reeitals attested by historians : but what I consider as inexplicable, and almost incredible, is the silenee of a Frenchman escaped from this inhuman land, and again in his own eountry.
M. Girard would never publish the aeeount of his sufferings, through respect, he says, for the memory of the Emperor Alexander, who retained him nearly ten years in Russia, and employed him as French master in the Imperial schools. How
APPENDIX.357
many arbitrary acts, how many frauds, has he not witnessed in those vast establishments ! Nothing, however, has been able to induce him to break silence, and to proclaim to Europe these glaring abuses.
Before permitting him to return to France, the Emperor Alexander met him one day during a visit to some provincial college. After addressing to him some gracious words on his long expressed desire to quit Russia, he at last gave him the permission, with even some money for the journey. M. Girard has a gentle countenance, which no doubt pleased the emperor. The unhappy prisoner, who had previously escaped death by a miracle, thus ended his ten years' captivity. He quitted the country of his tormentors and gaolers, loudly repeating the praises of the Russians, and protesting his gratitude for the hospitality he had received from them.
" You have not published any thing ? " I said to him, after having attentively listened to his narration.
" It was my intention to have related all that I witnessed," he answered ; " but, not being known. I should have found neither publisher nor readers."
" Truth will always eventually make its own way," I replied. " I do not like to say anything against that country," continued M. Girard, " the Emperor was so kind to me."
" Yes; but remember it is very easy to appear kind in Russia."
■' On giving me my passport, they recommended to me discretion."
Such is the influence of a ten years' residence in- that country upon the mind of a man born in France, brave, and true-hearted. After such an instance, it is easy to conceive what the moral sentiment must be which is transmitted among the native Russians from generation to generation.
In the montlTof February, 1842, I was at Milan, where I met iI. Grassini, who informed me that in 1812, while serving in the army of the Viceroy of Italy, he had been made prisoner during the retreat, in the neighbourhood of Smolensk. He afterwards passed two years in the interior of Russia. The following is our dialogue. I copy it with scrupulous exactness, for I took notes of it the same day.
358APPENDIX.
" You must," I said, " have greatly suffered in that country from the inhumanity of the inhabitants, and the rigour of the climate ? "
" From the cold I did," he replied; " but I cannot say that the Russians want humanity. "We received in the interior of the country unhoped-for succours. The female peasants, and the ladies, sent us clothes to protect us from the cold, medicines to cure our sick, food, and even linen; nay, some of them braved the risk of contagion by coming to nurse us in our bivouacs, for our miseries had spread frightful maladies among us. To induce any one to approach us, there was required not merely a sentiment of common compassion, but a high courage, a lofty virtue; and I call this humanity."
" I do not pretend to say that there are no exceptions to the general hardness of heart which I observed in Russia. "Wherever there is woman, there is pity; the women of all countries sometimes become heroic in compassion: but it is not the less true that in Russia, the laws, the manners, the habits, the characters are impressed with a spirit of cruelty, from which our unhappy prisoners sufíered too greatly to allow of our saying much about the humanity of the inhabitants of that country."
" I suffered among them like the others, and more than many others, for since returning to my own country I have continued nearly blind. For thirty years I have had recourse, without success, to every means of art, but my sight is almost lost: the influence of the night dews in Russia, even during the fine season, is pernicious to those who sleep in the open air."
" You slept, then, beneath the open heavens ? "
" It was necessary during the military marches imposed upon us."
" Thus, during frosts of twenty or thirty degrees, you were without shelter ? "
" Yes : but it is the inhumanity of the climate, not of the men, that must be accused of our sufferings during these unavoidable halts."
" Did the men never add their unnecessary severities to those of nature ? "
" It is true I have witnessed acts of ferocity worthy of savages; but I banished the thoughts of these horrors by my love of life: I said to myself, if I indulge in any expressions of indignation,
APPENDIX.359
my keepers will kill me to avenge the honour of their country. Human self-love is so inconsistent, that men are capable of assassinating a fellow-being to prove to others that they are not inhuman."
" You are perfectly right: but all that you tell me by no means causes me to change my opinion respecting the character of the Russians."
" They obliged us to travel in companies. We slept near the villages, the entrance of which was refused us on account of the hospital fever that followed us. In the evening, we stretched ourselves on the ground, wrapped in our cloaks, between two large fires. In the morning, before recommencing our march, our guard counted the dead, and, instead of burying them, which would have cost too much time and trouble, on account of the hardness and depth of the ice and snow, they burnt them, thinking thus to stop the contagion ; body and clothes were burnt together: but, will you believe it ? more than once, men still alive were thrown into the flames ! Reanimated by pain, these wretched creatures concluded their lives with the screams and agonies of the stake! "
" What horrors ! "
" Many other atrocities were committed. Every night the rigour of the frost decimated our companies. Whenever any deserted dwelling could be found near the entrance of the towns, they obliged us to lodge there; but not being able to make fires except in certain parts of these buildings, the nights we passed there were no better than those passed in the open air with fires all around us. Many of our people consequently died in the rooms, for want of means to warm themselves."
" But why did they make you journey during the winter ? "
Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia Page 93
