l82 



The Review of Reviews. 



February $0. 1906 



THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION. 



Count Tolstoy on its Significance. 



The Russian prophet begins in the Fortnightl \ 

 Review for January his interpretation of the origin 

 and significance and ultimate issue of the Russian 

 Revolution. He regards it as springing from the 

 demonstration that the Christian States are doomed 

 to be wiped out by the Heathen, and that the only 

 thing to do is to abolish all authoritv whatever exer- 

 cised by man over man. 



A UNIVERSAL REVOLUTION. 



Count Tolstoy regards the Revolution in Russia as 

 the beginning of a revolution which is about to be 

 the end of all things — 



not only in Russia, but in all the Christian world. In 



Russia it has onlv manifested itself more vividly and 

 openly, but in all Christendom the same is going on, only 

 in a concealed or latent state. I think that at present— 

 at this ve-v time — the life of the Christian nations is near 

 to the limit dividing the old epoch, which is cud inc. from 

 the new. which is beginning:. I think that now at this 

 very time that ereat revolution has begun which for aln 

 2000 years lias been preparing in all Christendom, a revolu- 

 tion cons ; sting in the substitution of true Christianity and 

 founded up->n it the recognition of the equality of all and 

 of that true liberty natural to all rational beines. for a 

 distorted Chris'ianity and the power of one portion of 

 mankind and the slavery of another founded upon that 



THE DOOM OP CHRISTENDOM. 



Europe, according to Count Tolstov, has not assi- 

 milated enough of Christianitv for its salvation, 

 but it has absorbed enough to render it helpless in a 

 contest against nations which have never received 

 that teaching which makes cowards of us all. He 

 says : — 



The victory of the Japanese over the Russians has shown 

 all the military S'ates that military power is no longer in 

 their hands, hut has passed, or is soon bound to pass, into 

 other un-Christian hands, since it is not difficult for other 

 non-Christian nations in Asia and Africa, heing oppressed 

 by Christians, to follow the example of Japan, and h:r 

 assimMiatei the mUitarv technics of which we arc bo proud, 

 not only to free themselves, but to wipe off all the Chris- 

 tian States from the face of the earth. And it is in this 

 inevitable and necessary superioritv of non-Christian na- 

 tions that lies the enormous significance of the Japanese 

 victory. 



MORAL : ANARCHY ABSOLUTE. 



Count Tolstoy ridicules the panaceas of political 

 reformers. Constitutionalism and Republicanism 

 only make thi n Lis worse bv making the whole people 

 partakers in the sins of their rulers. 



The signification of the revolution beginning in Russia 

 and banking over all the world does not consist in the 

 estabPshment of income tax or other taxes, nor in the 

 separation of Church from State, nor in the acquirement 

 by the State of social institutions, nor in the organisation 

 of elections and the imaginary participation of the people 

 in the ruling power, nor in the founding of the most 

 democratic or even socialistic republic with universal 

 suffrage — it consists onlv in actual freedom. 



Freedom not imaginary, hut actual, is attained not by 

 barricades nor murders, not by anv kind of new institu- 

 tion coercively introduced, but only by the cessation of 

 obedience to any human authority whatever. 



THE CAUSE OF THE REVOLUTION. 



Count Tolstoy says : — 



In the distortion of the higher law of mutual service and 

 of the commandment of non-resistance given by the Chris- 

 tian teaching which renders this law possible — in this lies 

 the fundamental religious cause of the impending revolu- 

 tion. 



When the State began to enforce conscription, 

 some Christians refused to perform military service. 

 Their refusal was cruelly punished, but it made the 

 nation think. Thus — 



amongst the majority of the Russian nation there began 

 the invisible, persistent, incalculab.e woTk of the liberation 

 of consciousness. Such was the position of the Russian 

 nation when the utterly unjustifiable Japanese war broke 

 out. It is this war— coupled with the development of read- 

 ing and writing, with the universal dissatisfaction and, 

 above all, with the necessity of calling out for the fir6t 

 time hundreds of thousands of middle-aged men, dispersed 

 over all Russia, and now torn from their families and 

 rational labour Uhe reservists), for a glaringly insane and 

 cruel purpose — this war served as the final impetus which 

 transformed the invisible and persistent inner development 

 into a clear consciousness of the unlawfulness and sinful- 

 ness of the Government. 



This consciousness has expressed itself, and is now ex- 

 pressing itself, in the most varied and momentous events: 

 in the refusal of reservists to enter the army; in desertions 

 from the arinv; in relusals to shoot and fight, especially 

 in refusals to shoot at one's comrades during suppression 

 of revolts; and above all in the continually increasing 

 number of cases of refusal to take the oath and enter the 

 military service. For the Russian people of our time, for 

 the great majority of them, there has arisen in all its 

 great significance the question as to whether it be right 

 before God— before one's conscience— to obey the Govern- 

 ment which demands what is contrary to the Christian 

 law. 



In this question arisen amongst the Russian nation con- 

 sists one of the causes of the great 1 evolution which is 

 approaching and perhaps has already begun. 



THE GADARENE SWINE OF MUSCOVY. 



The Reports of Eye Witnesses. 



The Legion of Devils which have possessed the 

 Russian Empire appear to have entered into the 

 people, who an- now rushing like the swine of 

 Gadara headlong down a very steep place into the 

 abyss of anarchy. There is an admirably written 

 sketch of this plunge to perdition in the Contem- 

 porary Review, written in his subacid, satirical vein, 

 bj Ur. Dillon. He sees clearly enough that the 

 Revolutionary usurpers who are intent upon ruining 

 th.-ir country in order to wreak vengeance on the 

 Russian regime are a thousandfold more despotic, 

 more brutal, more reckless than any autocrat since 

 Ivan the Terrible, and he sets forth this fact in a 

 score of pages from which I have only space to quote 

 a few passages. 



DR. DILLON'S DESCRIPTION. 



He savs : 



It must be admitted that the Socialists and other heralds 

 of the political millennium, while condemning the old 

 regime, do not eschew its methods. Thus they believe in 

 Pi ess censorship- indeed, tlaey exercise it with a rigour 

 which argues ihoorn taste. Then, again, they believe in 

 capital punishment, for they advocate it. They believe in 

 doing violence to private opinions, for they have given 

 many proofs of this intolerance. In a word, the essential 

 difference between their system and that- of the old regime 

 is that the one referred everything to the greater glory 

 of the Tsar, while the other works for the greater glory 

 of— the proletariat- 



NEW TYRANTS BUT THE OLD TYRANNY. 



To the foreigner who merely looks on and meditates it 

 would seem as if nothing had essentially chaneed but the 

 names. The new revolutionary Government is socialistic 

 in its views, but autocratic in its methods. It abolishes 

 the death penalty in Russia— for its own partisans, but 

 not for the others. The unprivileged may be shot down 

 or blown up with impunity. The world will be well rid 

 of the reactionaries. It proclaims that freedom exists to 

 speak and write whatever is not disapproved by the 



