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 – neither 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.

Indeed, it is a thing of wonder that peasant husbandmen of Túla, Sarátof, Vólogda, or Khárkof Province should until now have submitted to and even aided their own enslavement.  They pay taxes, without knowing or asking how they would be spent, and give their sons to be soldiers, knowing still less for what the sufferings and deaths of these so painfully reared, and to them so necessary workers, were wanted.   It is without any profit to themselves and contrary to the demands of their own consciences that they suffer all sorts of misery as a result of their submission to government.

It would be just as strange, or even stranger, if such agricultural peasants were to replace the old force-using power by a new force-using power by employing violence similar to that from which they suffer, instead of simply ceasing to submit to it.  These peasants live their peaceful, independent life without any need of a government, and wish to be rid of the burdens they endure at the hands of a violent and to them unnecessary power.  But this is what the French and English peasants did in their time.

Why!  The Russian agricultural population need only cease to obey any kind of force-using government and refuse to participate in it, and immediately taxes, military service, all official oppression, private property in land, and the misery of the working classes that results from it would cease of themselves.  All these misfortunes would cease, because there would be no one to inflict them.

The historic, economic, and religious conditions of the Russian nation place it in exceptionally favorable circumstances for acting in this manner.

In the first place, it has reached the point at which a change of its old relations towards the existing power has become inevitable after the wrongfulness of the path travelled by the Western nations, with whom it has long been in closest connection, has become fully apparent.  Power in the West has completed its circle.  The Western peoples, like all others, accepted a force-using power at first in order themselves to escape from the struggles, cares, and sins of power.  When that power became corrupt and burdensome, they tried to lighten its weight by limiting it – that is, by participating in it.  This participation, spreading out more and more widely, caused more and more people to share in power.  Finally, most of the people, who at first submitted to power to avoid strife and to escape from participation in power, have had to take part both in strife and in power, and have suffered the inevitable accompaniment of power: corruption.

It has become quite clear that the pretended limitation of power only means changing those in power, increasing their number, and thereby increasing the amount of depravity, irritation, and anger among men.  The power remains as it was: the power of a minority of the worst men over a majority of the better.  It has also become plain that an increase in number of those in power has drawn people from labor on the land, which is natural to all men, to factory labor for the production (and over-production) of unnecessary and harmful things, and has obliged most of Western nations to base their lives on the deception and enslavement of other nations.

The fact that, in our days, all this has become quite obvious in the lives of the Western nations is the first condition favorable to the Russian people, who have now reached the moment when they must change their relation towards power.  For the Russian people to follow the path the Western nations have trodden would be as though a traveler followed a path on which those who went before him had lost their way, and from which the most far-sighted of them were already returning.

Secondly, while all the Western nations have more or less abandoned agriculture and are living chiefly by manufacture and commerce, the Russian people have arrived at the necessity of changing their relation towards power while the immense majority of them are still living an agricultural life, which they love and prize so much that most Russians when torn from it, are always ready to return to it at the first opportunity.

This condition is of special value for Russians when freeing themselves from the evils of power, for men have the least need of government while leading an agricultural life.  Or rather, an agricultural life, less than any other, gives a government opportunities of interfering with the life of the people.  I know some village communes that emigrated to the Far East and settled in places where the frontier between China and Russia was not clearly defined, and lived there in prosperity, disregarding all governments, until they were discovered by Russian officials.

Townsmen generally regard agriculture as one of the lowest occupations to which man can devote himself.  Yet the enormous majority of the population of the whole world is engaged in agriculture, and on it the possibility of existence for all the rest of the human race depends.  In reality, the human race is made up of husbandmen.  All the rest – ministers, locksmiths, professors, carpenters, artists, tailors, scientists, physicians, generals, and soldiers – are but the servants or parasites of the agriculturist.  Thus agriculture, besides being the most moral, healthy, joyful, and necessary occupation, is also the highest of human activities and alone gives men true independence.

Most Russians are still living this most natural, moral, and independent agricultural life.  This is the second, most important, circumstance, which makes it possible and natural for the Russian people, now that they are faced by the necessity of changing their relations towards power, to change them in no other way than by freeing themselves from the evil of all power, and simply ceasing to submit to any kind of government.

These are the first two conditions, both of which are external.

The third condition, an inner one, is the religious feeling that, according to the evidence of history, the observation of foreigners who have studied the Russian people, and especially the inner consciousness of every Russian, was and is a special characteristic of the Russian people.

In Western Europe, there is no doubt that the essence of Christianity, not only among Roman Catholics but also among Lutherans, and even more in the Anglican Church, has long ceased to be a faith directing people’s lives, and has been replaced by external forms, or among the higher classes by indifference and the rejection of all religion.  This is because the Gospels printed in Latin were inaccessible to the people until the time of the Reformation, and have remained until now inaccessible to the whole Roman Catholic world, or because of the refined methods which the Papacy employs to hide true Christianity from the people, or in consequence of the specially practical character of those nations. For the vast majority of Russians, however, Christian teaching in its practical application has never ceased to be, and still continues to be, the chief guide of life.  This is perhaps because the Gospels became accessible to them as early as the tenth century, or because of the coarse stupidity of the Russo-Greek Church, which tried clumsily and therefore vainly to hide the true meaning of the Christian teaching, or because of some peculiar trait in the Russian character, or because of their agricultural life.

From the earliest times until now, the Christian understanding of life has manifested, and still manifests, itself among the Russian people in most various traits, peculiar to them alone.  It shows itself in their acknowledgment of the brotherhood and equality of all men, of whatever race or nationality; in their complete religious toleration; in their not condemning criminals, but regarding them as unfortunate; in the custom of begging one another’s forgiveness on certain days; in the habitual use of a form of the word “forgive” when taking leave of anybody; in the habit not merely of charity towards, but even of respect for beggars, which is common among the people; and in the perfect readiness (sometimes coarsely shown) for self-sacrifice for anything believed to be religious truth, which was shown and still is shown by those who burn themselves to death, or castrate themselves, and even (as in a recent case) by those who bury themselves alive.

The same Christian outlook always appeared in the relation of the Russian people towards those in power.  The people always preferred to submit to power, rather than to share in it.  They considered, and still consider, the position of rulers to be sinful and not at all desirable, This Christian relation of the Russian people towards life generally, and especially towards those in power, is the third and most important condition which makes it most simple and natural for them at the present juncture to go on living their customary, agricultural, Christian life, without taking any part either in the old power, or in the struggle between the old and the new.

Such are the three conditions, different from those of the Western nations, in which the Russian people find themselves placed at the present important time.  These conditions, it would seem, ought to induce them to choose the simplest way out of the difficulty by not accepting and not submitting to any kind of force-using power.  Yet the Russian people, at this difficult and important crisis, do not choose the natural way, but, wavering between governmental and revolutionary violence, begin (in the persons of their worst representatives) to take part in the violence, and seem to be preparing to follow the road to destruction along which the Western nations have travelled.  Why is this so?