Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski
The Shadow of the Gloomy East
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4064066462574
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
AS a Pole I was an alien in Russia, where I lived for many years, and I looked upon that huge country with all the detachment of an unprejudiced foreigner.
I knew Russia from her Western confines right to the Pacific and the Pamir, and I think I understand the psychology of the peoples of that vast, mysterious land, where modern civilisation of the West and the ideology of Mongolian nomads, the asceticism of orthodox Christianity and heathenism exist together in weird confusion to this very day. The Russian intelligentsia, spiritualised and rising to the loftiest idealism, has long ago cut adrift from the people; it could not understand the great mass and contemptuously disdained to notice its qualities, hostile and dangerous to mankind, which nevertheless remained.
Tolstoy has cast upon the ant-heap of the country a new idea, which to his mind defined the pith of his people.
He called the common people "the carriers of God," and considered that all the qualities, the fine as well as the terrible, were the means of searching after God and His truth.
This formula appealed to the minds of the educated classes and inspired a highly poetic view of the common crowd.
When warning voices were raised against this abstract and most unreal idealism, when writers like Rodionov, Kuprin, Gorky, Chehov pointed this out with set purpose or incidentally, their warnings evoked only the indignant ire of dim-sighted dreamers.
Sober reality wrote with a blood-stained hand Its verdict on the visions of the intelligentsia.
I hope that the same severe judge will not pass the same sentence on the Christian civilisation, which has been sapped by materialism, and is passing at present through its twilight of death or new birth, unable to rouse itself with new strength and impulse to loftier ideals. In face of the danger threatening from Russia these should be our strength and stay, for in them lies the only salvation from the peril coming tip from the East, with its passion for evil and showing its true face since the mask—which deceived mankind for so long—is torn off.
My sketches of the "Shadow of the Gloomy East" are an attempt to lay bare before the civilised world the true face of the Russian people, which must be enlightened, converted to Christianity, to European culture, strengthened in true morality, and then, only then, admitted as an equal to the great comity of nations which aims at perfection, spiritual beauty and strength.
Prof. Dr. FERDINAND A. OSSENDOWSKI.
WARSAW,
November, 1923.
THE SHADOW OFTHE GLOOMY EAST
CHAPTER I
The Masks
THE civilised world knew Russia by those of her representatives who were deservedly admired and respected in Western Europe.
The spiritual, refined culture of the highly educated Russian class and aristocracy, the genuine idealistic impulse of Russian arts, the piety and asceticism of the higher clerical hierarchy, the general very high level of education and intelligence of the middle classes, the profound learning of the most prominent scientists, the true heroism and high courage of military officers in the most aristocratic of Russian units, the æsthetic life and thought of the nobility—all these were eloquent witnesses soliciting the sympathies of the world for the Russian nation.
Why, the favourite subjects of the lofty and rapturous orations of the Russian intelligentsia which captured the ears of Europe were freedom and self-government for the oppressed peoples of Russia, emancipation of women, the education of the masses of the common people, and called forth the enthusiasm of even the most critical political thinkers and philosophers acquainted with Western culture.
But these superficial declamations were but a passing fashion of good breeding, scenery, masks, underneath which lay a mean reality.
Unaware of the liberating forces which gathered strength within the masses, unconscious of the importance and power of the protesting classes, the aristocracy and the higher plutocracy, and alas! the higher middle classes were thronging the Imperial Court as of old, hunting for favours, honours, positions, basking in the sunshine of the Imperial presence.
This lustre, like the radiance of the sun, blinded the vision of those who should have been the strength and stay of Russian society to the seething movement, to the threatening murmur of the human ant-heap down there, in the dark hovels of the "common brute."
And at the time when the whole of Europe knew that a very decisive and dangerous moment in the history of Russia was approaching, the aristocrats and their set were forming the "black hundreds," dragging in the university youth, throwing them together with the scum of the large towns, filling them with reactionary political views, which led to every crime. The picked regiments of the Guards were murdering the helpless populations of Warsaw, Petersburg, and Moscow; and delicately manicured hands of aristocrats: the Golitsins, the Krapotkins, the Wyrubovas, the Ortov-Davidovs, the Shirinski-Shihmotovs, were counting out gold into the unwashen hands of a motley gang of ruffians—for the provocation of pogroms, for the commissions of the murders of a Yottos, a Herzenstein, a Goldstein, Stolypin, and others.
At the time when Europe was listening in rapture to the anthems on freedom, equality, and brotherhood, or to the enthralling mystical preachings of the Russians abroad, the very visitors and preachers had taken or were taking a hand in the greedy, tyrannous and iniquitous measures of their Government
The war with Japan, the aggressive policy towards Finland, the harsh and overbearing attitude towards Poland, the policy in the Caucasus and the Ukraine, the persecution of Catholicism, the wrecking of popular education, opposition to all efforts of the more clearsighted politicians, who counselled certain conciliatory offers to the Socialist groups as well as to the protests of educated men—such was the policy of what is now the ancient regime. At the same time the aristocracy, servile towards the Tsar, and cultivating truly byzantine forms of adulation, was debased and descending into ever lower depths and separated itself from the other classes of Russian society.
Descendants of the Ruriks kissed—for the Tsaritsa’s gracious smile sake—the hands of the horse-thief, Gfishka Rasputin, "the court saint" of the Palace of Tsarskoye Selo.
The crawling servility of the great nobles before the face of the Siberian peasant availed them little; they, the "salt of the Russian earth," were treated as so much chaff and trash!
A Prince Putiatin acted as the "court prospector" of candidates to canonisation, of miracles and