Page:Leo Tolstoy - The Russian Revolution (1907).djvu/38

 Rh debts, growing armaments, and cruel, stupid wars. More than that, they would be deprived, like the Western nations, of their chief, blessing—their accustomed, beloved, agricultural life, and would drift into hopeless dependence on foreign labour; and this under the most disadvantageous conditions, carrying on an industrial and commercial struggle with the Western nations, with the certainty of being vanquished. Destruction awaits them on this path and on that.

What, then, is the Russian nation to do?

The natural and simple answer, the direct outcome of the facts of the case, is to follow neither this path nor that.

To submit neither to the Government which has brought it to its present wretched state; nor, imitating the West, to set up a representative, force-using Government such as those which have led those nations to a still worse condition.

This simplest and most natural answer is peculiarly suited to the Russian people at all times, and especially at the present crisis.

For indeed, it is wonderful that a peasant husbandman of Túla, Sarátof, Vólogda, or Khárkof Province, without any profit to himself, and suffering all sorts of misery, such as taxation, law-courts, deprivation of land, conscription, etc., as a result of his submission to Government, should till now, contrary to the demands of his own conscience, have submitted, and should even have aided his own enslavement: paying taxes, without knowing or asking how they would be spent, giving his sons to be soldiers, knowing still less for what the sufferings and death of these so painfully reared and to him so necessary workers, were wanted.

It would be just as strange, or even stranger, if such agricultural peasants, living their peaceful, independent life without any need of a Government, and wishing to be rid of the burdens they endure at the hands of a violent and to them unnecessary power, instead of simply ceasing to submit to it, were, by em-