"They are not sufficient in mass-demonstrations, especially where these
are participated in by the student body. Formerly use was made of the
"dvorniks" (janitors) and butchers' clerks to bring the students to
reason. But that is no longer practicable. The "dvorniks" and butchers'
clerks have hesitated of late to come out against the students. They
have discovered that these persons really take their lives in their
hands for the people's sake, and, therefore, are no longer willing to do
the jailer's work. And so the Cossacks must hold forth; and they know no
pity."
We therefore agreed to meet in front of the deceased publicist's house.
Such a Russian funeral is a full day's work. It begins early in the
forenoon, and it is dark when you return home. In front of
Mikhailovski's house I saw Korolenko--a still robust man, with very
curly gray hair and beard--and almost all the master-minds of the
intellectual life of St. Petersburg. Even the recently retired minister,
Sänger, showed himself. Many a man was named to me with great reverence.
The foreign public knows not one of them, and so I may forego the
repetition of their names. It should be mentioned here, however, that in
Russia a distinguished man tries to show his distinction by his dress
and appearance, as far as possible. Here an original way of dressing the
hair is one of the marks of distinction, and so one sees many striking
heads. There is no getting along without some posing. I noticed, too,
that scarcely one of the forty or fifty men I had become acquainted with
was absent from the funeral. Now, these forty or fifty persons belong to
most widely different social and political groups, so that the radical
publicist could not have possibly had the same significance for each of
them. But every one was present and was noticed. In fact, every new
appearance was noted by the crowd. Most of them knew one another. The
loose but yet effective organization of opposition in Russia had never
been so clear to me as now. The unwritten public opinion, I had
frequently noted, orders every intellectual to take part in this mute
demonstration against the régime; and this dictation is more readily
submitted to than the legitimate one. I do not believe our newspapers in
the West could even approximately replace this intimate contact
established day by day among these thousands in a manner mysterious to
me. It is as if St. Petersburg were fermented by some medium in which
every impulse is propagated with furious speed. And people have an
incredible amount of time for politics in St. Petersburg. People in
Russia have in general more time than we hurrying Westerners can
conceive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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