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NOTHING is more remarkable about Russia than the general ignorance in Europe concerning the social condition and internal affairs of that country.

This ignorance is due to a variety of circumstances-geographical, historical, and others. The Russian population who still inhabit the centre only of what is now the Russian Empire in Europe, were, until comparatively recent times, completely cut off from all contact with the European nations who were steadily advancing in that civilisation the light of which failed to reach the secluded Muscovite. The instinct of self-preservation among the Finnish, Swedish, German, Lithuanian, Polish, Moldavian, and Turkish peoples, who surrounded, and, with the exception of the latter, still surround, the central Russian population, and even to-day form 30 per cent of the Tsar's European subjects, long fought against the advance of the Russians to their present political frontiers. Hemmed in on

VOL. CXLVIII. - NO. DCCCC.

all sides, the Muscovite remained as ignorant of Europe as Europe was of him.

It was reserved for Peter the Great to force his way to the Baltic, to found St. Petersburg, and, as he himself accurately expressed it, to open a window to Europe. Peter's window was, however, but a small one, and for a long period, the faces chiefly visible at it, were those of the foreigners whom the rulers of Russia took into their service, either from Western Europe or from the Baltic and Polish provinces, over which their dominion steadily encroached. The introduction of the large foreign element into the government, which was a necessity to Russia's progress, has had a remarkable and lasting effect. The Russians who left their provincial homes to establish themselves in the new capital, and to attach themselves to the Court, entered a new world. They necessarily bowed to the influence of the ruling foreigners, and with the

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latter they founded that St Petersburg society which has always remained completely out of touch with the mass of the Russian nation, but which until the present Tsar's reign monopolised the government of the country.

Now that the Russian frontiers have reached the sea, and march with those of the civilised nations of central Europe, with fair railway communication from the interior to the civilised West, the Russian house has become full of windows, and the design of Peter the Great would appear to have reached its fulfilment. Under ordinary circumstances windows admit of looking in as well as of looking out, but this ordinary condition is not fulfilled by the Russian windows. Other Tsars may have hesitated about letting too much light into their house, but Alexander III. is not given to hesitation. He found windows, but he determined to exclude the observation of his neighbours, and he has resolutely put up the shutters.

Every possible means is now taken to conceal the truth about Russia, to keep out the foreigner, and to baffle his hateful curiosity. No native journal is allowed to give any real picture of the internal condition of the country. No foreign journalist may send uncensored telegrams to his editor, and no suspected author of unpleasant communications can hope to be allowed to remain in Russia. No foreign missionary may settle, or even travel in the country, for fear he should discover disagreeable truths, and report unfavourably on Holy Russia. The intelligent foreigner who arrives armed with recommendations from high personages abroad is promptly and easily blindfolded. He is received with fulsome compliments;

the officials everywhere are at his service to take him wherever he chooses and show him everything. Their bonhomie and frankness of manner is truly charming, but they never leave their visitor to see anything by himself. To those who can see behind the scenes, nothing is more exquisitely amusing than to observe the intelligent visitor, confident in his own cleverness and powers of observation, and completely hoodwinked by the men who affect to be at his service, and to assist his inquiries. As long as, from want of knowledge of the language, or from other circumstances, the traveller in Russia finds himself accompanied by, and obliged to accept the proffered services of, any Russian of higher rank than a peasant, he may be perfectly assured that, from first to last, everything will be presented to him in false colours, and that he will be if possible more ignorant of the country when he leaves it than when he entered it.

A country long geographically isolated, historically backward, with little literature to give views of its inner life, with a great gulf and complete want of sympathy between the limited upper class and the masses, with officials distinguished by combined ignorance and chauvinistic sensitiveness, and with an autocrat who declines to hear, or to allow others to hear, unpleasant truths about his empire and people, such is the combination of conditions and circumstances which keeps Russia a mystery to Europe. The official version of every event in Russia is always the least worthy of credence and the most widely spread, and unfortunately the contradictions which occasionally reach the public ear are too often, through ignorance or prejudice, equally untrustworthy. In no other country in Europe would it be possible for the Government to steadily organise and prosecute a widespread system of religious intolerance and persecution, without the fullest details reaching and rousing the indignation of the co-religionists of the persecuted in other lands. Yet, although vague stories of trouble occasionally cross the Russian frontier, it is but little realised abroad that Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jew, and Armenian all suffer disabilities, and too often persecution, on account of their faith.

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It is not long since the Protestants of the Russian Baltic provinces made an ineffectual attempt to attract the attention of Europe, and to stay the hand of their persecutors, by an appeal to the sympathies of their brethren in the West. Now it is the turn of the Russian Jews who seek to make their voices heard, and cry aloud for some influence to incline their tormentors to mercy. In Turkey it is impossible for the Sultan to conceal for a week any detail concerning a single outrage by a Kurdish brigand on an Armenian peasant. Missionaries, journalists, travellers, and consuls hasten to spread the news. Bluebooks are published, Armenian committees organise meetings in London to protest, and high Armenian officials are hastily summoned in council to the imperial palace in Constantinople, to deliberate on the best measures for protecting and satisfying their co-religionists. In Russia, Protestants, Armenians, Roman Catholics, or Jews may suffer en masse, and but a few dismal wails will penetrate the barriers carefully erected and maintained to stifle the voice of truth from Russia. We have, however, travelled unaccompanied by official guides in those Russian

provinces which are inhabited by the Jews, and we have had opportunities of seeing and hearing behind the barriers. We know that the complaints of the Jews respecting present woes and anticipated miseries are but too well founded; and it shall be our endeavour, in describing what we have seen and know, to convey some idea of their position under the existing penal laws, and of the danger which continually threatens both their persons and property from the jealousy and violence of an ignorant and barbarous peasantry.

In Russia the present legal status of the Jew is that of an alien. The spirit of the laws which regulate his position may be briefly summed up as follows: The Jew is assumed to be an individual against whose treacherous wiles the authorities must always be on their guard. He has no rights or privileges, except such as have been specially granted to him by imperial statute, and his enjoyment of even these is precarious. His conduct and occupations must be regulated by special legislation, and he must on no account be allowed, so long as he remains true to his faith, to acquire the position of a permanent inhabitant of the country.

Perhaps the most important of the restrictions on the liberties of the Russian Jew is that which confines his right of residence to certain specially named districts and governments. In the provinces comprised in what is still known as the kingdom of Poland, and in Volhynia, Bessarabia, and Podolia, the Jews are exceedingly numerous, and are said to form from 13 to 18 per cent of the population. In these provinces, and in the government immediately adjoining them to the

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