Thus I came to see the birth of one of those patriotic demonstrations of which the papers were full in the following days. The impression was anything but striking. The fine hand of the police could be detected in the arrangement as well as in the audience. It was a forced demonstration that no one could avoid. I remember from my boyhood the explosive enthusiasm after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, and the evening after the battle of Sedan. In man's estate I was a non-participating observer of patriotic demonstrations in Hungary; my heart beat fast at home as well as in Hungary under the stress of sympathy. That was a real storm of feeling. Here--wet straw that would not burn. Worse. An obedient participation--woe to him who did not participate! and then a sarcastic wink felt as a compensation for the coercion just experienced.
The difference was never clearer to me between free citizens and Russian subjects, between national sentiment and obedience, as at these patriotic demonstrations under police supervision and inspiration.
And now I looked at the public more carefully. Where was the "people" among the thousands sitting in the theatre, or eddying up and down the colossal halls? not one hundred, not fifty men or women in the dress of the common people. All of it what is known in St. Petersburg as the "gray public," officials, business-men, the class with an income of two or three thousand rubles. I saw high-school instructors, students with their girls, modistes, the good, small bourgeois, that often stand morally and mentally high above the fashionable world; but the people, in our sense of the term, the workingman, the peasant, for whom the popular house was really built, in whose name the Czar was made to contribute, and to whom the building is dedicated, these were absent, and had to be absent, because they do not possess the schooling that would enable them at all to enjoy the offerings of the "Narodni Dom." The court may be persuaded that with such an institution they are marching in the vanguard of civilization, and that something of the future state has been realized with an institution that even the republics of the West do not possess; but the Russian patriots who are indeed living for their nation, and who would free it from the fetters of ignorance and superstition, only shake their heads sadly at this Potemkinism. Sand for the eyes of the philanthropic Czar, another winter resort for the St. Petersburg middle class; for the people neither "panem" nor "circenses," but for the paid eulogists a theme at which enthusiasm may be kindled--that is the "Narodni Dom," the pride of St. Petersburg. In Zurich, in Frankfort, in any place with real popular education, this "Narodni Dom" would be an ideal people's house, adapted to inspire sentiment of citizenship and patriotism, and to elevate the general culture level. In St. Petersburg it only shows the good intentions of the Czar and his consort, and the fundamental corruption of the régime. A sober, enlightened, culture-loving people would not submit to the autocracy of bureaucratic dictation shown above. It makes ideal "people's houses," but takes care that as far as possible, this house be kept free from the people.
