SECRET SOCIETIES IX RUSSIA. 



409 



nality, theft, and abuses of every kind. " These 

 faineants," he said, speaking of the officials, 

 " would steal my ships of war if they had the 

 chance ; and if they could draw my teeth without 

 my noticing it, I should have been long since 

 without a tooth in my head." In his foreign 

 policy he felt that he had been equally unsuccess- 

 ful. The sovereigns whom he had saved in the 

 hour of danger showed themselves ungrateful, 

 and the nations whom he had helped to free from 

 the Napoleonic yoke now forgot their liberator, 

 and regarded him — not altogether without reason 

 — with profound distrust. Even many of his own 

 subjects, on account of his Polish schemes and 

 his refusal to aid the Greeks against the Turks, 

 regarded him as almost a traitor to his country 

 and to the national faith. As is often the case 

 with ambitious natures who fail and have not the 

 moral energy to begin anew, he sought consola- 

 tion in religious contemplation and mysticism — a 

 world in which no energy is required, and in 

 which there is no possibility of disappointment. 

 Having lost his faith in liberalism, he adopted 

 the most energetic repressive measures, and 

 sought to root out abuses .by severe punish- 

 ments. In a word, the young enthusiastic senti- 

 mental republican, who at first took Washington 

 as his model, became, in the latter years of his 

 reign, a victim to religious melancholy and a de- 

 voted adherent of Metternich. 



The events which produced this remarkable 

 change in the emperor had a very different effect 

 on a large section of the young noblesse. The 

 study of French literature, and all those in- 

 tellectual influences which had made him first a 

 sentimental republican and then a believer in con- 

 stitutional monarchy, had affected them in a sim- 

 ilar way, and their enthusiasm was not, as in his 

 case, counteracted by the sobering influence of a 

 responsible position. During the wars with Na- 

 poleon, and the subsequent occupation of France 

 by the allies, they became to some extent ac- 

 quainted with the social and political life of West- 

 ern Europe, and with the opinions and aspirations 

 of the various political parties. On returning 

 home they were struck with the contrast, and 

 their excited patriotic feelings led them to seek 

 the causes of this difference. Much that had 

 formerly seemed to them in the nature of things, 

 now appeared barbarous and disgraceful for a na- 

 tion that professed to be civilized. The general 

 air of poverty, the apathy and ignorance of the 

 people, the corruption of the administration, the 

 venality of the law-courts, the brutality of the 

 police, the frivolity of St. Petersburg life, the 



want of energy in all classes of the nation — 

 these, and a thousand little facts which had hith- 

 erto passed unnoticed, made upon them now a 

 painful impression. What irritated them most of 

 all was the talk of the elderly men, who praised 

 all that was old, and condemned every attempt at 

 reform as a dangerous innovation. They felt, as 

 one of them afterward said, that they had got a 

 century ahead of their fellow-countrymen. 



It is always a very dangerous thing for a lit- 

 tle group of people to get a century ahead of their 

 contemporaries, and so it proved in this instance. 

 The apathy of those around them, and the de- 

 cidedly reactionary spirit of the government and 

 the emperor, drove these men first into extra- 

 legal and then into positively illegal means of re- 

 alizing their reforming aspirations. At that time 

 the most approved means of producing political 

 and social reform were secret political societies. 

 So it was in Germany, in France, in Italy, in 

 Spain, and in Greece, and the young Russians 

 naturally followed the prevailing fashion. 



The first Russian secret society was formed 

 about the year 1816, under the title of "The 

 Union of Salvation," and was composed chiefly 

 of officers of the Guards. Its professed aim w r as 

 to struggle for the common weal, to aid in carry- 

 ing out all beneficial measures of the govern- 

 ment and all useful private undertakings, and to 

 oppose evil of every kind — especially the mal- 

 practices of the officials. In 1818 it was reor- 

 ganized on the model of the German Tugend- 

 bund, and received the new name of " Union for 

 Public Welfare." Under this new form it pro- 

 posed to itself — besides the vague aim of assist- 

 ing the government in all beneficial measures — 

 certain definite objects, the principal of which 

 was the obtaining of representative institutions. 

 In the years 1819 and 1820 its members rapidly 

 increased, till nearly all the young nobles who 

 had any pretensions to being " civilized " and 

 " liberal " were in more or less intimate relations 

 with it. Though it was in form and organization 

 an illicit secret society, it had little or nothing of 

 the nature of a conspiracy, and the great major- 

 ity of the members had certainly no illicit de- 

 signs. They still believed in the emperor's lib- 

 eral sympathies and intentions, and on more than 

 one occasion it was proposed to inform his Maj- 

 esty of the aims and intentions of the society, 

 and to petition him to aid them in their work. 



While the great majority of the members 

 were thus entirely innocent of treasonable or rev- 

 olutionary designs — indulging in impracticable, 

 idealistic sentimentalism, and trusting to moral 



