The Defenders of Democracy
U >>
Unknown >> The Defenders of Democracy
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 | 12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21
What John Ruskin said in his famous historic essay applies to
Russia: "I found that all the great nations learned their truth of
word and strength of thought in war." Every great Russian reform
has taken place suddenly as a consequence of some nation-wide calamity.
The Tartar invasion united Russia into one powerful nation; the
Crimean War abolished the feudal system; the Russo-Turkish War
gave the judicial reforms and abolished capital punishment; the
Russo-Japanese War gave the preliminary form of Constitutional
government in the Duma; the present war is opening the soul of Russia
to the world by giving an absolute democratic form of government
to the united Slavic race. The present war will reveal that Russia
the known has been the very opposite extreme of Russia the unknown.
The outside world is wondering how the Russian character will fit
in with the aspirations of democracy. They cannot reconcile the
Russia of pogroms and Serbia with the Russia of wonderful municipal
theaters, great artists, writers, musicians and lovers of humanity.
The world has known the tyrants like Plehve, Trepoff, Orloff and
Stolypin, or others like Rasputin, Protopopoff and forgets that
Russia has also produced geniuses like Dostoyewsky, Turgenieff,
Tchaikowsky, Tolstoy, Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Mendeleyeff
and Metchnikoff. The world has looked at Russia as a land of
uncultivated steppes, of frozen ground, hungry bears and desperate
Cossacks, and forgets that in actuality this is the Russia of
the past very extreme surface and next to it is a Russia of great
civilization and the highest art, unknown yet to the West generally.
One of the strangest peculiarities of Russian life is that you
will find the greatest contrasts everywhere. Here you will see the
most luxurious castles, cathedrals, convents, villas and estates;
there you will find the most desolate huts of the moujiks and lonely
hermit caves in the wilds of Siberia. Here you will meet the most
selfish chinovnik, the most fanatic desperado or reckless bureaucrat;
there you face the noblest men and women, supermen, physically
and mentally. You will find that all Russian life is full of such
mental and physical contrasts.
This is the dualism that confronts like a sphinx the foreigners.
In the same way you will find that the Russian homes are full of
contrasting colors, bright red and yellow, white and blue. The
Russian music is the most dramatic phonetic art ever created; it
reaches the deepest sorrow and the gayest hilarity and joy. Dreamy,
romantic, imaginary, simple, hospitable and childlike as an average
moujik, is the soul of the people. Nowhere is there a hint of
those qualities which are thrown up as dark shadows on the canvas
of his horizon. While with one hand Russia has been conquering the
world, with the other she has been creating the most magnificent
masterpieces of humanity. In the same generation she produces a
Plehve and a Tolstoy, both in a way, true to national type.
In the popular American imagination, which invariably seizes upon
a single point, three things stand out as representative of Russia:
the moujiks, the Cossacks and the Siberian penal system. The vast
unknown spaces between these three have been filled in with the
dark colors of poverty and oppression, so that a Russian is looked
upon as an outcast of evolution, an exile of the ages.
the Russia of the dark powers is past; thus soon will pass the
Russian chinovnik, the Russian spy and the Russian gloom, who have
been a shadow of the Slavic race. From now all the world will
listen to the majestic masterpieces of the Russian composers, see
the infinite beauty of the Russian life and feel the greatness
of the Russian soul. Not only has Russia her peculiar racial
civilization, her unique art and literature, and national traditions,
but she has riches of which the outside world knows little, riches
that are still buried. The Russian stage, art galleries, archives,
monastery treasuries and romantic traits of life remain still a
sealed book to the outsiders. Take for instance, Russian music, the
operas of Rimsky-Korsakoff, the plays of Ostrowsky and the symphonies
of Reinhold Gliere or Spendiarov and you will have eloquent chapters
of a modern living Bible. No music of another country is such a
true mirror of a nation's racial character, life, passion, blood,
struggle, despair and agony, as the Russian. One can almost see
in its turbulent-lugubrious or buoyant-hilarious chords the rich
colors of the Byzantine style, the half Oriental atmosphere that
surrounds everything with a romantic halo.
The fundamental purpose of the pathfinders of Russian art, music,
literature and poetry was to create beauties that emanated, not
from a certain class or school, but directly from the souls of the
people. Their ideal was to create life from life. Though profound
melancholy seems to be the dominant note in Russian music and art,
yet along with the dramatic gloom go also reckless hilarity and
boisterous humor, which often whirl one off one's feet. This is
explained by the fact that the average Russian is extremely emotional
and consequently dramatic in his artistic expressions. Late Leo
Tolstoy said to me on one occasion: "In our folksong and folk
art is evidently yearning without end, without hope, also power
invisible, the fateful stamp of destiny, and the fate in preordination,
one of the fundamental principles of our race, which explains much
that in Russian life seems incomprehensible for the foreigners."
Thus the Russian art and soul in their very foundations are already
democratic, simple, direct and true to the ethnographic traits of
the race. In the same way you will find the Russian home life,
the peasant communities, the zemstvoe institutions, offsprings of
an extremely democratic tendency, perhaps far more than any such
institution of the West. Instead of the rich or noblemen absorbing
the land of the peasants, we find in Russia the peasant commune
succeeding tot he property of the baron. An average Russian
peasant is by far more democratic and educated, irrespective of
his illiteracy than an average farmer of the New World. He has
the culture of the ages in his traditions, religion and national
folk-arts. Russia has more than a thousand municipal theaters,
more than a hundred grand operas, more than a hundred colleges and
universities or musical conservatories. Russia has a well-organized
system of cooperative banks and stores and a marvelous artelsystem of
the working professional classes which in its democratic principles
surpasses by far the labor union systems of the West. Herr von
Bruggen, the eminent German historian writes of the Russian tendency
as follows: "Wherever the Russian finds a native population in
a low state of civilization, he knows how to settle down with it
without driving it out or crushing it; he is hailed by the natives
as the bringer of order, as a civilizing power."
I have always preached and continue to do so in the future, that
Russia and the United States should join hands, know and love each
other, the sooner the better. Russia needs the active spirit,
the practical grasp of the things, which the people of the United
States possess. Nothing will help and inspire an average Russian
more than the sincere democratic hand of an American. A dose
of American optimism and active spirit is the best toxin for free
Russia. On the other hand, the American needs just as much Russian
emotionalism, aesthetic culture and mystic romanticism, as he can
give of his racial qualities.
The old system having gone, Russia is free to open her national,
spiritual and physical treasures. For some time to come neither
Germany nor other European countries, will be able to go to Russia,
for even if the war does not last long, its havoc will take years
to repair. Endless readjustments will have to take place in each
country affected by the war. Russia, being more an agricultural,
intellectual-aristocratical country, will fell least of all
the after effects of the past horrors, therefore has the greatest
potentialities. There is not only a great work, adventure
and romance that waits an American pioneer in Russia, but a great
mission which will ultimately benefit both nations. It should be
understood that the Russian democracy will not be based upon the
economic-industrial, but aesthetic-intellectual principles of life.
It is not the money, the financial power that will play the dominant
role in free Russia, but the ideal, the dramatic, the romantic
or mystic tendency. Money will never have that meaning in Russia
which it has in the West. It will be the individual, the emotional,
the great symbol of the mystic beyond, that will speak from future
democratic Russia only in a different and more dynamic form, as it
has been speaking in the past.
As Lincoln is the living voice of the American people, thus Tolstoy
is and remains the glorified Russian peasant uttering his heart to
the world. The voice of this man alone is sufficient to tell the
outside world that the Russian democracy is a creation not of form
and economics but of spirit and aesthetics.
[signed]Ivan Narodny
Author of "Echoes of Myself," "The Dance," "The Art of Music," X
Volume, etc.
The American Bride
Petka had been for years a village tailor but he had never been
able to save enough money to open a grocery-store. He hated his
profession and hated to think that he could never get anything higher
in the social rank of the place than what he was. While the name
of a tailor sounded to him so cheap, that of a merchant flattered
his ambition immensely. But there was no chance to earn the five
hundred rubles, which, he thought, was necessary to change the
profession.
"If I marry a poor peasant girl like Tina or Vera, I'll never get
anywhere," soliloquized Petka and made plans for his future.
Petka knew a girl with two hundred ruble-dowry, but she was awfully
homely and deaf; and he knew a widow with three hundred rubles, but
she was twenty years older than himself. It was a critical situation.
One day Petka heard that the daughter of an old peddler had a
dowry of five hundred rubles, exactly the amount he needed. After
careful planning of the undertaking he hired a horse and drove
to the lonely cottage of the rag peddler to whom he explained as
clearly as he could, the purpose of his visit.
"My Liz ain't at home," the old man replied. "She is in that
distant country called America. Good Lord, Liza is a lady of some
distinction. If you should see her on the street you would never
take her for my daughter. She wears patent-leather shoes, kid-gloves,
corsets and such finery. Why, I suppose she has a proposal for
every finger, if not more. She is some girl, I tell you."
Petka listened with throbbing heart to the thrilling story of the
old man, scratched his head and said:
"I suppose that she is employed in some high class establishment
or something like that?"
"Of course, she is," grunted the peddler proudly. "She might be
employed or she might not. She has written to me that she is a
lady all right."
"What is her special occupation?"
"She is employed as the waitress in a lunch-room on the so called
Second Avenue corner at New York. And her salary reaches often
thirty dollars a month, which represents a value in our money of
something over sixty rubles. Now that is not a joke. She has all
the food and lodging free. Why, it's a real gold-mine."
"Has she saved already much?"
"She has five hundred dollars in the savings bank, and she has all
the hats and shoes, and gloves and such stuff that would make our
women faint. So you see she is the real thing."
The happy father pulled the daughter's letter from the bottom of
his bed and reached it over to the visitor. Petka read and reread
the letter with breathless curiosity. In the letter which was
also a small snap-shot picture of the girl. Petka looked at the
picture and did not know what to say. To judge from her photograph,
she was a frail spinster, with high cheekbones, a long neck and a
nose like a frozen potato. But the trimming of her hair, her city
hat with flowers, and her whole American bearing made her interesting
enough to the ambitious tailor. For a long time he was gazing at
the picture and thinking.
"Do you think that Liza would marry a man like me? I am a well
known tailor. But I have now a chance to become a merchant in our
village. I need some money to make up the difference, and why not
try the luck? Liza might be a well known waitress in New York,
but to be a merchant's wife is a different thing. Don't you think
she might consider my proposal seriously?"
The old peddler puffed at his pipe, walked to the window and back
as if measuring the matter most seriously.
"It all depends--you know Liza is a queer girl--it all depends on
how you strike her with a strong letter. You could not go to New
York and make the proposal personally. It has to be done by mail.
It all depends how well the letter is written, how everything is
explained and how the idea of being a merchant's wife strikes her.
She is a queer girl, like all the American women are."
"Can your Liza read and write letters?"
"Of course, she can. Liza is a lady of some standing. She can
write and read like our priest. She is a highly educated girl."
"So you think a strong letter will fix her up?"
"Exactly. And tell her everything you plan to do."
Petka took Liza's address, drank a glass of vodka to the success
of the plan and left the old peddler still harping on his daughter.
All the way home and many days afterwards Petka could think of nothing
else. It seemed to him the greatest opportunity in the world to
marry a girl from America. But now and then he got skeptical of
his ability to get such a prize. However, he decided to try. He
admitted that the whole success lay in the shaping of a strong and
convincing letter and sending it to her properly. Petka knew how
to write letters, but the question was would his style be impressive
enough to influence a girl in America to come to Russia and marry
a man whom she had never seen? However, Petka knew Platon, the
village saloon-keeper, as the most gifted man for that purpose.
But in a case like this he hated to take anybody into his confidence.
After arriving home Petka began to practice, writing a love letter
every day. But nothing came of it. One letter was too mild, the
other too extravagant. Finally he gave it up, and whispered his
secret to the inn-keeper, saying:
"Now, old man, do me the great favor and I'll fix you up when I get
her dowry. I want the letter to be strong and tender at the same
time."
The inn-keeper consented. But Petka had to tell all the details
and the specifications. Evan Platon admitted that it required some
skill to write the letter. When he had thought the matter over
carefully, made some notes and discussed the subject with Petka
from every angle, he took a long sheet of paper, glued a rose in
the corner and wrote as follows:
"Highly respected Mademoiselle Liza:--You have never been in our
village, but it is a peach. I am the cream of the place. I have
here all the girls I need. I have a house and my business. But
the point is I want to open a store and need a wife with experience.
We have all the money. But I need some capital to begin. As you
have all that and besides, I have fallen in love with you, I lay
the offer before your tender feet. Your beautiful image has haunted
me day and night, and your wonderful eyes follow me in my dreams,
oh, you lovely rose! If you are ready to marry a merchant like
myself, do not waste any time, but come over and let's have a marriage
ceremony as the world has never seen here. However, before you do
come, send me an early reply with a rosy yes. Most affectionately
and respectfully, Petka Petroff."
"It's bully, it's superb," praised the tailor. "But it lacks the
tender touch. It lacks that style which the city women like."
"I put in the punch, but you can add a love poem from some school-book
if you like," protested the inn-keeper. "The city girls are funny
creatures. Sometimes they like the finger, other times the fist.
Who knows the taste of your Liza! The waitresses of big cities
are usually broad-minded and highly educated."
After the poem was added and another rose glued on the corner of
the letter, it was mailed, registered, with a note "highly urgent,"
and Petka breathed freely, like one who had survived a great ordeal.
Two months of heavy waiting passed and still no reply from Liza.
Petka was like one on thorns. His strange romance was already
known to his neighbors and now everybody was expecting the letter
from America to furnish the most sensational news in all the world.
One afternoon as the tailor was sewing a pair of trousers the
alderman of the village brought him a registered letter from America.
Nearly half the village population had gathered outside, curious
to hear the content of the letter. Petka took tremblingly and
greatly excited the letter and rushed to Platon, the inn-keeper,
all the time followed by the crowd. All the audience gathered in
the inn and Platon was instructed to read it aloud to the gathering.
As it was a ceremonial event of rare occasion, the inn-keeper stood
up, and began in a solemn voice:
"My dear Petka: I am most happy to reply to your valued letter
of the fifteenth of July, that I am glad to accept your proposal.
But everything must be all right. I can marry only a man of the
merchant class. I know the business and I can supply you with the
capital you need. But you must remember that I do not like to be
fooled and marry a man beneath me. No peasant or tailor for me.
I stand here very high and cannot ruin my name. You have not told
me your age, but I suppose you are not an old fogey. I will follow
this letter next month, so you fix the wedding ceremony, secure all
the musicians and manage the meals, drinks and such necessities.
If this is not agreeable cable me. Your Liza."
While Platon was reading the letter Petka gazed dreamily out of
the window and built, not an air castle, but a large grocery store,
with showy windows. It seemed as if he saw his store already
opened, the people going and coming, the shelves filled with cans
and packages. The sign "Merchant Petka" hung in his eyes.
The letter was like a bomb in the idyllic village. Plans were made
of the wedding date and elaborate ceremony. The village Luga had
never witnessed yet a marriage ceremony of this magnitude. The
American bride was like a fairy princess of some ancient times.
Petka was like one in a trance. But Vasska, the blacksmith, opposed
to the idea of such a strange marriage, pounded his hand against
the bar, exclaiming:
"Liza may be all right, but Petka should not marry her. What do
we know about an American woman? What do we know about her habits?
I've been told funny stories about such strange women. I've heard
that nearly every American woman paints her cheeks, dyes her hair,
wears false teeth, puts up bluffs and does everything to deceive a
man. Spit at her capital. Besides, this American Liza is a woman
whom nobody here knows."
The blacksmith's arguments were taken seriously by the others and
a gloom came over the gathered gossips. But the inn-keeper, who
was always optimistic, replied:
"American Liza must be a refined girl, and she has the money. That's
what Petka wants, and that's what he will get. So we better let
the wedding take place and see what will happen. I've heard that
an American woman looks at the marriage as a business proposition,
so we let her do what she pleases."
"Business or no business, but we take the marriage seriously. If
a man makes up his mind that he likes a woman, he must marry her,
and once he has married her, no ax or pike shall separate them. No
monkeying with married men or women thereafter," argued the serious
blacksmith.
Petka turned the conversation to the subject of the wedding meals
and music. The whole program of the ceremony was analyzed and
discussed in detail, some maintaining that the American custom
was to eat with forks and knives from the plates, others that only
uncooked meat was eaten and frogs served as delicacies. Finally
the entertainment was arranged and the blacksmith remarked:
"All city women like fun and don't care about serious affairs.
They have the theaters and operas for amusements, so we better get
a real amusement for American Liza. The best fun would be a huge
hurdy-gurdy or something of that kind, an instrument with sensation.
Our village violins and harps are too mild for women like that
Liza."
After discussing the matter at length, the inn-keeper agreed to take
care of the entertainment. A short cable was composed and sent to
Liza and the wedding date clearly explained. All the village got
alive with the news that Petka was to marry an American girl by
mail.
The three weeks of preparation for the wedding festival passed like
a dream. The Sunday, that was to be the final date, began bright
and cheerful. Petka was hustling to and fro in his newly rented
house, the front of which was to be arranged for the grocery store,
strutted like a big rooster preparing the affairs of his flock. At
the entrance of the house was hung a big flag. Long tables were
arranged in all the rooms, covered with meats, drinks and delicacies,
all prepared in the village. Women were still busy baking other
foods, frying meats and boiling water for tea or drinks. Everybody
was busy and everything looked most solemn and impressive. The
host was dressed in a picturesque new suit of clothes with a silk
scarf around his neck.
While the groom was busy with preparing his heart for joy, the
inn-keeper was solving the problem of the entertainment. He had
constructed, what he thought to be distinctly American, a huge
music-box, which was to produce the most wonderful tones ever
heard. This instrument had the appearance of a big wine-cask and
yet a street-organ at the same time, and was an invention of the
ingenious inn-keeper. It was practically a barrel, covered with
illustrations of old Sunday newspapers and county-fair posters.
To its side was fastened an improvised lever, made from a broken
cart-wheel. Under this barrel, concealed so that no one could see
within, were placed three most prominent musicians of the village,
Ivan with his violin, Semen with his concertina and Nicholas with
his drum. As soon as the conductor outside pulled a string, the
lever began to turn around and the musicians in the barrel had to
start to play. In the corner of the house this strange instrument
looked like a mysterious engine, one knew not whether to expect it
to develop into a flying or moving picture machine.
At last everything was ready. The guests began to arrive and the
carriage was sent to the town to bring the bride. Everybody was
in festival attire and all tuned to expect the utmost excitements
the village had ever had. One could see the people in groups of
three or four, discussing in a high pitch of voice the wonders of
the wedding festival or venturing various guesses about the American
bride. The village girls, who were not a little jealous, nudged
each other and exchanged meaning glances, that Petka was to get
in a fix he had never been before. All were anxious to see the
arrival of the two thousand-ruble bride. The blacksmith and the
inn-keeper were discussing something excitedly.
"Say what you want, but this kind of matrimonial affair is the
limit," argued the blacksmith, pushing back his hat. "I can't see
how a woman comes such a distance and so many weeks to marry Petka,
whom she has never seen, and how Petka gets the crazy thought
to marry a city woman whom he does not know. Something is wrong
somewhere. This is going to bust sooner or later."
"My dear Vasska, it's the education, the refinement and all that
which I and you can do without," grunted the inn-keeper.
Vasska rubbed his fists and spat vigorously. The inn-keeper tried
to mollify him by saying that he should not take the matter so
seriously.
Suddenly the dogs began to bark and the boys shouted:
"The American bride! Here comes the lady from abroad!"
All the guests rushed out to see her. And there she was, in a
big flower-trimmed hat, with a silk parasol, and all the wonderful
fineries. She looked so elegant, so superior that the village women,
accustomed to their rural simplicity, felt overawed. The groom
hurrying with throbbing heart to open the gates of the front-yard
bowed almost to the ground to the dazzling reality of his romantic
dreams. He was so confused by this apparition that he did not know
whether to shout or cry.
"My gracious, how she is made up!" whispered the women.
"What a wonderful dress!" whispered the girls.
"Ain't you Petka? You deary!" exclaimed the bride, affecting a
foreign accent.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 | 12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21