This apathetic tolerance may be partly explained by the national character, but it is also to some extent due to the peculiar relations between Church and State. The government vigilantly protects the Church from attack, and at the same time prevents her from attacking her enemies. Hence religious questions are never discussed in the Press, and the ecclesiastical literature is all historical, homiletic, or devotional. The authorities allow public oral discussions to be held during Lent in the Kremlin of Moscow between members of the State Church and Old Ritualists; but these debates are not theological in our sense of the term. They turn exclusively on details of Church history, and on the minutiae of ceremonial observance.
A few years ago there was a good deal of vague talk about a possible union of the Russian and Anglican Churches. If by "union" is meant simply union in the bonds of brotherly love, there can be, of course, no objection to any amount of such pia desideria; but if anything more real and practical is intended, the project is an absurdity. A real union of the Russian and Anglican Churches would be as difficult of realisation, and is as undesirable, as a union of the Russian Council of State and the British House of Commons.*
* I suppose that the more serious partisans of the union
scheme mean union with the Eastern Orthodox, and not with
the Russian, Church. To them the above remarks are not
addressed. Their scheme is, in my opinion, unrealisable and
undesirable, but it contains nothing absurd.
CHAPTER XX
THE NOBLESSE
The Nobles In Early Times—The Mongol Domination—The Tsardom of Muscovy—Family Dignity—Reforms of Peter the Great—The Nobles Adopt West-European Conceptions—Abolition of Obligatory Service—Influence of Catherine II.—The Russian Dvoryanstvo Compared with the French Noblesse and the English Aristocracy—Russian Titles—Probable Future of the Russian Noblesse.
Hitherto I have been compelling the reader to move about among what we should call the lower classes—peasants, burghers, traders, parish priests, Dissenters, heretics, Cossacks, and the like—and he feels perhaps inclined to complain that he has had no opportunity of mixing with what old-fashioned people call gentle-folk and persons of quality. By way of making amends to him for this reprehensible conduct on my part, I propose now to present him to the whole Noblesse* in a body, not only those at present living, but also their near and distant ancestors, right back to the foundation of the Russian Empire a thousand years ago. Thereafter I shall introduce him to some of the country families and invite him to make with me a few country-house visits.
* I use here a foreign, in preference to an English, term,
because the word "Nobility" would convey a false impression.
Etymologically the Russian word "Dvoryanin" means a Courtier
(from Dvor=court); but this term is equally objectionable,
because the great majority of the Dvoryanstvo have nothing
to do with the Court.
In the old times, when Russia was merely a collection of some seventy independent principalities, each reigning prince was surrounded by a group of armed men, composed partly of Boyars, or large landed proprietors, and partly of knights, or soldiers of fortune. These men, who formed the Noblesse of the time, were to a certain extent under the authority of the Prince, but they were by no means mere obedient, silent executors of his will. The Boyars might refuse to take part in his military expeditions, and the "free-lances" might leave his service and seek employment elsewhere. If he wished to go to war without their consent, they could say to him, as they did on one occasion, "You have planned this yourself, Prince, so we will not go with you, for we knew nothing of it." Nor was this resistance to the princely will always merely passive. Once, in the principality of Galitch, the armed men seized their prince, killed his favourites, burned his mistress, and made him swear that he would in future live with his lawful wife. To his successor, who had married the wife of a priest, they spoke thus: "We have not risen against YOU, Prince, but we will not do reverence to a priest's wife: we will put her to death, and then you may marry whom you please." Even the energetic Bogolubski, one of the most remarkable of the old Princes, did not succeed in having his own way. When he attempted to force the Boyars he met with stubborn opposition, and was finally assassinated. From these incidents, which might be indefinitely multiplied from the old chronicles, we see that in the early period of Russian history the Boyars and knights were a body of free men, possessing a considerable amount of political power.
