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Title: An Enemy of Freedom Author: Charlotte Wilson Language: en Topics: liberty, Freedom, authoritarianism Source: https://www.revoltlib.com/anarchism/an-enemy-of-freedom/view.php
The death of Michael Katkoff has deprived Russian despotism of its
ablest supporter; the one man who by his strong logic and marvelous
facility in self-deception had skill and audacity to make meanness seem
great and a lie truth.
Time was when young Katkoff was a Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Moscow, so enlightened in his opinions that the suspicions
of Czar Nicholas obliged him to resign his post. And when, amid the
national outburst of liberal thought and zeal for reform which marked
the earliest years of the reign of Alexander II., Katkoff turned his
attention to journalism, he founded the Russian .Messenger, a magazine
favoring English forms of self-government.
In 1861 when he became editor of the celebrated Moscow Gazette, personal
jealousies were already beginning to separate him from the liberal
leaders. Times were changing, and Katkoff was changing with them.
Liberalism ceased to be fashionable at Court, and Katkoff played into
the hands of the Court party by advocating the conditions least
favorable to the peasants during the discussions upon the Emancipation
Act. After the Polish insurrection of 1863, the Moscow Gazette won the
Emperor's approbation by the ability and zeal with which it advocated a
policy of universal confiscation, which should place the land of Poland
in the hands of Russian officials and secure the enforced loyalty of the
peasants.
Henceforward the aim of the editor of the Moscow Gazette seems to have
been to employ all his mental resources in the justification of that
reactionary and repressive policy whose growth kept pace with the
growing fears of Alexander II. The latter half of Katkoff's life, says
the Times, was strangely devoted to writing down, condemning, and by
personal influence counteracting all that he had advocated and striven
for as a young man. Indeed during the twenty-four years of the
birth-throes of Russian freedom, he deliberately set himself to blacken
and destroy every man or woman, every action, every movement, whether
literary, scientific, educational, social or political, that was
displeasing to the Autocrat of All the Russias. He was the bitter foe of
liberal thought and liberal education. Above all he was the fierce and
unscrupulous adversary, not only of the Revolutionary movement, but of
every attempt at honest reform. Nay more, he was the friend and advocate
of every form of vicious abuse and vested interest, boldly flinging the
shield of his eloquence over all that is vilest in the institutions of
his country.
One instance may suffice as a sample of the quality of Katkoff's
patriotism.
A certain Zograff, a superintendent of police in S. Russia, courts a
publican's wife. Her husband is in the way. Acting somewhat after the
example of David King of Israel in like case, he causes a false charge
of political disaffection to be trumped up against the unlucky Pomaroff,
who is innocent of all political ideas, good or bad. The poor man is
clapped into prison on the way to administrative exile; but there he
finds means to appeal to the Visiting Justice (Juge de Paix) an official
elected by the district assembly and not in league with the police. This
magistrate looks into the matter and orders Pomaroff's immediate
release, There is even some talk of a public trial for the policeman.
Instantly the Moscow Gazette flies to the rescue. "What officer," writes
Katkoff, "can boast of not having made a mistake, or done too little or
too much! His superiors ought to warn, reprimand, even perhaps punish
him or expel him from the service. But now between the subordinate and
his superior an alien power has intruded, judging his acts, subjecting
him to moral torture, whilst his awe-struck superiors reverently assist
at the ceremony. To do this is to play into the hands of the
Anarchists." (Moscow Gazette for 1883, No. 100).
Small wonder if the Moscow Gazette defied the censorship, and if its
editor was the favorite counselor of the Czar.
Katkoff, however, was more than an adroit courtier. He was the agent and
representative of a ring of exploiters whose interest it is to preserve
despotism and bureaucracy in Russia. The great traders and speculators
whose center is Moscow, are rich enough to obtain all the freedom they
require by wholesale bribery; their smaller competitors are not. Thus
the corruption of the official class favors the big sharks of trade.
Again, the extension of the Russian Empire in Asia provides these
merchants and manufacturers with new markets; its extension towards
Constantinople would provide them with fresh sea-ports. Hence they are
in favor of a jingo policy. If it leads to war they may expect big
contracts to supply the soldiers with shoddy, as they did in the Turkish
war.
Meanwhile foreign competition interferes inconveniently with their
profits; Russia must be protected from too many imports by high tariffs,
whilst the scientific enterprise of German traders must be hindered from
opening out the internal resources of the country. Russia, not for the
Russians, but for the Moscow "corner" and the bureaucracy.
Such is the "Moscow opinion," which, as Sir Charles Dilke remarks in his
Present Position of European Politics,' effected and controlled the
policy of Alexander 11, but is actively shared by his successor. Katkoff
was alike its mouthpiece and its soul. He supplied it with an idea. He
dosed the ignorant clique of traders, who formed the core of his public,
with lofty talk of the patriotism that is hatred of the foreigner. He
caught up for their benefit the dying flame of Slavophil enthusiasm and
ranted about the sacred duty of bestowing freedom upon the Slavonic
population; the sort of freedom has lately been illustrated by the
Czar's dealings with Bulgaria. As in the case of the Imperial authority,
he extended his partizanship to the defense of the most flagrant abuses.
In 1884 he was publicly applauded as a patron by the rascally Rykov,
manager of the Skopine bank, who in company with a crowd of officials
and traders whom he had bribed to be his accomplices, was convicted of
fifteen years swindling and the theft of one million rubles for himself
and five million more as hush money.
And now the man who under the name of patriotism devoted his brilliant
ability and splendid energies to the destruction of his country's
freedom is dead. We can only say of him in the words of his German foe,
"One great adversary the less in troubled times."