It may seem strange that an honourable man like the General should receive in his house such a motley company, comprising men of decidedly tarnished reputation; but in this respect he was not at all peculiar. One constantly meets in Russian society persons who are known to have been guilty of flagrant dishonesty, and we find that men who are themselves honourable enough associate with them on friendly terms. This social leniency, moral laxity, or whatever else it may be called, is the result of various causes. Several concurrent influences have tended to lower the moral standard of the Noblesse. Formerly, when the noble lived on his estate, he could play with impunity the petty tyrant, and could freely indulge his legitimate and illegitimate caprices without any legal or moral restraint. I do not at all mean to assert that all proprietors abused their authority, but I venture to say that no class of men can long possess such enormous arbitrary power over those around them without being thereby more or less demoralised. When the noble entered the service he had not the same immunity from restraint—on the contrary, his position resembled rather that of the serf—but he breathed an atmosphere of peculation and jobbery, little conducive to moral purity and uprightness. If an official had refused to associate with those who were tainted with the prevailing vices, he would have found himself completely isolated, and would have been ridiculed as a modern Don Quixote. Add to this that all classes of the Russian people have a certain kindly, apathetic good-nature which makes them very charitable towards their neighbours, and that they do not always distinguish between forgiving private injury and excusing public delinquencies. If we bear all this in mind, we may readily understand that in the time of serfage and maladministration a man could be guilty of very reprehensible practises without incurring social excommunication.
During the period of moral awakening, after the Crimean War and the death of Nicholas I., society revelled in virtuous indignation against the prevailing abuses, and placed on the pillory the most prominent delinquents; but the intensity of the moral feeling has declined, and something of the old apathy has returned. This might have been predicted by any one well acquainted with the character and past history of the Russian people. Russia advances on the road of progress, not in that smooth, gradual, prosaic way to which we are accustomed, but by a series of unconnected, frantic efforts, each of which is naturally followed by a period of temporary exhaustion.
CHAPTER XXII
PROPRIETORS OF THE MODERN SCHOOL
A Russian Petit Maitre—His House and Surroundings—Abortive Attempts to Improve Agriculture and the Condition of the Serfs—A Comparison—A "Liberal" Tchinovnik—His Idea of Progress—A Justice of the Peace—His Opinion of Russian Literature, Tchinovniks, and Petits Maitres—His Supposed and Real Character—An Extreme Radical—Disorders in the Universities—Administrative Procedure—Russia's Capacity for Accomplishing Political and Social Evolutions—A Court Dignitary in his Country House.
Hitherto I have presented to the reader old-fashioned types which were common enough thirty years ago, when I first resided in Russia, but which are rapidly disappearing. Let me now present a few of the modern school.
