In the land of Tolstoi; experiences of famine and misrule in Russia

Preface

Amid the broken recollections of classic lore that begin to fade into the limbo of " the subliminal consciousness/' as soon as we leave the discipline of our Alma Mater^ is a Roman saying that it is better to do doughty deeds than to write about them.

The bearing of this observation lies in the fact that it is my friend^ Herr Stadling, whose experiences and gleanings in the land of Tolstoi are here set forth. He has borne the fatigues of travel, gone in and out of plague and famine-stricken huts, and gathered from eyewitnesses and authorities the facts that did not come under his own observation. These he recorded in a Swedish work, " Fran det Hungrande Ryssland." It has been my pleasant share, during a summer holiday on a pine-clad granite island between Stockholm and the Baltic, to co-operate with him in the rearrangement of the matter, to offer suggestions, and provide the whole with an English dress. "While most of the matter is contained in the Swedish book just mentioned, it has been entirely rewritten, with complete change of form and many omissions and additions, for the English public. Some of the experiences in the relief work proper have been narrated in different language in The Century Magazine (June and August, 1894), and the story of Prince Khilkov has appeared, in other words and shorter form, in The 8unday Magazine.

The illustrations are reproduced from the originals used in the Swedish book. They are for the most part from photographs taken by Herr Stadling, and afterwards drawn by Herr J. Tiren, one of Sweden's foremost living artists.

WILL SEASON.

Canning Town.

Contents

CHAPTEE I.

FIEST ACQUAINTANCE WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. page

Arrival at Ejasan — Tolstoi's Early Life — Education — His Opinion of the Universities — Unsuccesful Efforts to Help the Peasants — Years of Dissipation — Establishes Schools on his Estate — Tolstoi as "Peacemaker" — Educational Work and Opinions — Influence in Eussia, &c. — Tolstoi and his Critics 1

CHAPTER I. FIEST ACQUAINTAlSrCE WITH COUNT TOLSTOI

Arrival at Rjasan — Tolstoi's Early Life— Education — His Opinion of the Universities — Unsuccessful Efforts to Help the Peasants in Years of Dissipation — Establishes Schools on his Estate — Tolstoi as " Peacemaker" — Educational Work and Opinions — Influence in Eussia, &c. — Tolstoi and his Critics.

It was on a cold, stormy morning in March, 1892, the year of the great famine, that I arrived at the railway-station of Klekotki, in the province of Rjasan, In company with Madame B., who was also bound for the same place, I at once set out to drive to the headquarters of Count Tolstoi, distant some twenty-six miles across the plains, where he was hard at work relieving the needs of the starving peasants. The grey, woolly clouds were chasing each other at great speed ; snowwreaths whirled about us, and a heavy fall had hidden the road completely. At one or two , points in the landscape we

FiEST Acquaintance with Count Tolstoi.

could see a few trees that marked a landowner's dwelling, or a village with its church cupola and row of small, grey huts. At one part our journey took us for two miles along a road built by the Empress Catherine II., lined ou either side with stately trees. It was heavy driving through the deep snow, so that we did not reach the River Don, on the further shore of which lay the village of Begichevka, our destination, until the afternoon.

The mon).ent was now drawing near when I was, for the first time, to meet Count Tolstoi — a moment to which I had been looking forward throughout my long journey as to one of the most interesting occasions of my life. I was about to come into personal contact with a man whose greatness not even his bitterest enemies can dispute, in whom many an earnest seeker after truth discerns a seer and prophet, marking the dawn of a new era in the history of man.

Soon our driver drew up before a plain, one-storied wooden house, and called out, " Vot dom Tolstova ! " (^'^This is Tolstoi's house.") About the premises were a number of peasants, carting loads of flour and grain. As we entered, we passed first through a kind of ante-chamber, densely crowded with ■mushiJis, waiting to see the Count, then into a larger apartment that served as a dining-room. Tolstoi himself was not in, but I was shown into his private room behind the hall — a small apartment simply furnished with a sofa, a cot-bed, a few plain wooden chairs, and a large table covered with account books and papers. I found myself occupying the waiting time in speculations as to the impression Count Tolstoi would make on me. I could not succeed in divesting myself of the '^ great man " idea of the Count, the aristocrat, the famous autJior, the great genius. All these hid from me the image of him as a man, the brother of men.

After a few minutes, a young lady came in, and gave me a cordial greeting. I asked if she were the Count's daughter, but she replied, " No ; I am his niece. My name is Kuzminsky." While I was speaking with her another young ladj^ entered, with an energetic expression and lively eyes ; she, too, greeted me in good English.

FiKST Acquaintance with Count Tolstoi.

'' Countess Tolstoi '? " I asked.

"The J call me so/' she said.

At the same moment a deep voice was heard in the hall, and the Count himself stood before me, dressed in a large sheep- ^skiu coat of the kind worn bj the mushiks. With a hearty grip of his strong hand he bade me welcome, asked about my journey, admired my Lapp dress, and showed me into a small room that I was to occupy. Then he told me to hold out my feet, and pulled off my Lapp boots. This was done so simply that they were off before I thought of protesting. Yet the spectacle of Count Tolstoi, whose greatness had been filling my mind a moment or two before, pulling off my boots like a ■common servant left me breathless with surprise. Then things took their proper perspective, and I saw the naturalness of it, and learnt more from this little unaffected deed of helpfulness than from all the learned lectures I had heard or all the volumes of theology I had read. I was in the presence of a man who had devoted a whole life to passionate search ■after truth and reality, and had found '^^the meaning of life " in following Him " who came not to be served, but to serve " ; Si man who not only talks about " egalite et fraternite, but whose life is egalite et fraternite."

I had come to do what I could to help in his work among the starving mushiks, but before giving an account of what I myself saw and heard while with this notable family in that sadly memorable famine year of 1892, it will be worth while to :give a rapid sketch of the Count's life and character, as a man :and the friend of men.

Count Tolstoi, the author, is well known, and has received his place among the foremost geniuses of the day. Leo Tolstoi, the philosopher and social reformer, has been amply discussed both by those who regard him as a new prophet, and those who look on him as a fanatic and a crank. The man Lyeff Xikolaievitch is comparatively little known. He has, it is true, told us somewhat of himself and his struggles after truth in his Confession, and throughout his other writings are scattered incidents taken from his own experiences. But he :has said little or nothing of his work for his fellows, and what

4 FiEST Acquaintance with Count Tolstoi.

lie has told us has been liable to the failings of all autobiography. He has spoken of his life as it looks to himself. But Oliver Wendell Holmes says somewhere that when we say there are two people conversing there are really six. There is A. as he appears to self, A. as he appears to B, A. as he appears to God, and the same with B. Tolstoi has given the first aspect ; the second is the one we must take. With our many burning social questions to-day, it is of more importance to us to know what such a man as Tolstoi has done and is doing to bring about their solution, than to be familiar with the characters in ^^ Anna Karenina," and others of his novels. Moreover, I heard from some personal friends of the Count, that his descriptions of his "^ wild oats " are very highly coloured. To those who knew him, he belonged certainly to a fast set, but on his personal character there was no stain. As for the third aspect mentioned by Holmes, we must wait awhile for that, if we are ever able to grasp it.

Tolstoi grew up without the knowledge of a mother's love ; she died when he was eighteen months old (he w^as born in 1828, August 28, old style) ; and his father left his family, which was a large one, when the little Lyeif Nikolaievitch was nine years old. So it happened that much of his early education was in the hands of relatives, of whom one, at least, is described as hardly fitted to guide a youth's first steps in the paths of m.anly virtue. In his home on his ancestral estate of Jasnaja Pol j ana, in the province of Tula, he was under the care of both a French and a German tutor, the former of whom remained in the family until, at the age of fifteen, the young Count entered the University of Kasan. For three years he studied philology, history, and Eussian literature. But he soon lost faith in that *^ temple of wisdom," to which Puschkin's words were thoroughly applicable : ^^As everything in Eussia is purchasable, so examinations and degrees of learning also are a. merchandise with the professors." Characteristic both of the state of things at the university and the views and tendencies of the young Count, is his description of the teaching given there. " History," he said, " is nothing but a collection of fables and details often meaningless or

First Acquaintance with Count Tolstoi. 5

absurd. The positive in it is a mass of dates and names of no value. Tiie death of Prince I^or, the snakes that bit the hero Olef, &c., — what are those things but nursery tales, and who needs to know if Ivan the Terrible married the daughter of Tomruck exactly on the 21st August, 1562, or if his fourth marriage, with Anna Alexijevna, took place in 1572? And yet they require of me that I shall know all this by heart ; if not, I get a shameful "one" on my certificate. And how they write history I All is arranged after a given pattern. . . . Ivan the Terrible, e.g., of whom Professor Ivan has had so much to tell us, was suddenly changed in 1560 — something that has no interest whatever either for you or me — from a noble, vii-tuous, and wise ruler, into a mad, licentious, and terrible tyrant. Why ? How ? About this you may not even ask a question."

Small wonder that the young student, athirst for truth, S3"mpathising warmly, though as yet half-consciously, with the downtrodden and oppressed, regarded this ^'temple of learning " as a useless institution. No doubt his lack of interest in many of the subjects had something to do with his being " plucked " at an examination, but it is also certain that this was largely brought about by one of those intrigues so common in a corrupt societ}'. A hostile professor — hostile because of family reasons — refused to give him his due where he was incontestably efficient. This incident strengthened his determination to leave the university and give himself up to the work of elevating the peasants on his paternal estate, which had, by a combination o£ causes, not necessary to detail, passed into his hands.

He returned to Jasnaja Pol j ana in 1846, and fiung all his energy into the task of raising both the economical and moral standard of peasant life. He failed, in spite of his ample means, warm heart, and indomitable pluck. The peasants would not let him pull down their rotten, old tumble-down huts, even to put up new and convenient ones at his own cost ; they also refused to send their children to school. He found, as so many others have done, that good intentions alone are not sufficient to cope with ingrained evil.

6 FlKST AcQUAINTAlSrCE WITH CoUNT ToLSTOI.

nor can the results of centuries of slavery be undone even in a lifetime.

The disappointed jouth resolved to go to Petersburg in the autumn of 1847, to continue his studies, intending this time to take a degree in law. But the juridical hair-splitting of Petersburg satisfied him no more than the fables of Kasan. He returned to his estate in 1848.

It was at this period that the years of dissipation occurred that have been referred to above ; then followed his experience as a soldier in Caucasia, and his successful career as a novelist. Still, through all these varied years he retained his love of the people unchanged ; unlike some who have feebly tried to help' the poor, and have drawn back into their selfish ease like a snail into its shell, at the first touch of what the}^ loudly proclaim as '^ingratitude." In Caucasia, as well as in European E-ussia, he was careful to keep himself in living touch with the people, not simply to study their life, but togive them real aid and sympathy. This love of men is reflected in his writings. He cared nothing for outward events nor outward greatness, but for everything that influences the moral development of the individual, though so slight as to escape superficial observation altogether. In a word, this youngauthor cared for man, and made living men and women the object of his genius. His first book, "Utro Pomestchika " (The Landlord's Morning), and those that followed are full of that deep sympathy with the oppressed and the poor, that love of the people, that Tourgenieff sneeringly stigmatises as- " hysterical."

Shortly after the Crimean War (Tolstoi bore his part in the siege of Sebastopol), he visited Western Europe, in order tostudy the school systems in use there, with a view to his work of raising the life of the Russian peasantry. On his return he began to establish schools on his own estate of Yasnaya Poljana.

The same j'ear, 1861, saw the abolition of serfdom — in name,, at least. Tolstoi probably saw more clearly than the rest of his countrymen the enormous difficulty of making this paperemancipation an actual fact, and thus realising the ideal of

First Acquaintance with Count Tolstoi.

the Reform Part}^ The first great difficulty was the settlement of the disputes that immediately arose between the landowners and the former serfs. The majority of the nobles were opposed to emancipation, and only a few had voluntarily liberated their bondsmen. To meet these difficulties the office of miravoj posrednik^ or " peacemakers," was established, and the Count occupied this office in his own district, which he filled with untiring zeal. This was the only civil post ever held by him, so far as we know. His unswerving sense of justice often brought him into conflict with the landlords, but he cared about opinions as little then as now. On the other hand, he often had to refuse the demands of the peasants, but their faith in him had become so strong that they always acquiesced in his decision.

Besides this work, he threw himself heart and soul into his plans of education for the tnushihs. As early as 1849 he had established a school for peasant children on his estate. Another succeeded in 1857, and the third in 1861. In this he himself conducted the instruction, with the help of four students from Moscow, and a German named Keller. From early morning till late at night he was engaged in active teaching, devising and trying new methods. The principal school was in his own house. All instruction was, of course, gratuitous, and the children were also frequently fed. In one form or another these schools have continued ever since. If closed as schools by the interference of police or priests, the children have been invited by the Tolstoi family "to tea," which feast included food for the mind also.

In connection with this work of teaching, Count Tolstoi edited for many years a monthly magazine called " The School," the contents of which were entirely devoted to education, and were of great interest. The fundamental idea of his "free schools" is the gradual realisation of the moral ideal, taken in its widest sense. Not so much development simply, as the harmony of development, should be the aim of all education. " Therein lies the eternal error of all lyedagogic theories,'' says Tolstoi, "that they make development

FiKST Acquaintance with Count Tolstoi.

per se, the development of some special side of the child's being-, their object and aim."

It is in the child itself, according to him, that the primary conditions for realising the ideal are to be found. " We must listen to the voice of the people," he says. The more he learned to know the young- minds unfolding under his care, ^' listened " to their emotions, and watched the expression of them in their lives, the warmer grew his love for them, and his admiration for that simple poetry that surrounds childhood as an atmosphere. At the same time his faith in tho so-called education of the upper classes, that carries them farther and farther from the true and natural, waxed weaker and weaker.

" Are the peasant children to learn from us how to write, or we from them? " he asks in his paper. He had set a number of boys of eleven or twelve to write down their thoughts and observations on different matters, or describe their experiences, and had made the astonishing discovery that they exhibited, as he expresses it, "an artistic power to which not even a Goethe could attain." This discovery made an overwhelmingimpression on Tolstoi. '^ I was frightened, and at the same time happy as a treasm-e-seeker, who on Midsummer Night has found the St. John's wort — happy, because I suddenly saAv before me the philosopher's stone which I had been seeking for two toilsome years — the art of learning how to express one's thoughts ; frightened, because this art evokes new wants, and a whole new world of wishes, which, as I saw at once, did not correspond to the surroundings in which these children live." It was not only a solution of the educational, but also of the religious question, that Tolstoi believed he had found in the life of these peasants, from whom in this also we have more to learn than they from us.

His paradoxes on the uselessness of what is commonl}" understood as education, art and science, are not to be taken as a condemnation of education, art and science in themselves. In one of his later works he says, " Art is not to disappear, but to become something else, better and higher." It is only in the service of selfishness that they are bad. The best proof

First Acquaintance with Count Tolstoi. 9 of this is in his own untiring work in his schools, in his distribution of books and tracts among the peasants, and his gigantic scheme of a popular library, which is to contain a digest of the best that has been written bj the best men in all ages, to be published in a popular form at one penny a volume.

After the radical change in his ideas and life, or rather the ripening of those ideas that had been germinating and growing within him all his lifetime, he devoted himself entirely to help and raise the downtrodden people by sharing their life. His attempt in Moscow, after his removal there in 1881, to aid the teeming masses of the miserabl}'' poor and degraded in that city have been most graphically described by himself in his book " What to do? " Here he says : —

" Through much painful struggle I came to see that I had a share in the cause of all this misery. I stood up to my ears in the mud, and wanted to pull others out of it ! I, the parasite, I, the louse, which eats into the leaves of the tree, want to promote the health and growth of that tree ! I now come to the following simple conclusion, that it is my duty to reap and use the fruits of the labours of others !

" By a long and roundabout way I reached the unavoidable result that was expressed a thousand years ago among the Chinese : ^If one man is idle, some one else dies of hunger.' "

Tolstoi despaired of being able to help the poverty and vice that prevailed in the city, and seemed inseparable from populous towns. He therefore left Moscow, to lead the life and share the toil of the peasants.

It is quite natural that such a man as this should have attracted many admirers and followers — many more of the former than the latter ! — and that he should also have drawn upon himself many vehement criticisms and bitter calumnies. It is difficult to over-estimate his great influence both in his own and in foreign countries, although this has been greatly disparaged by some ; over the youth of Russia it has been especially great. Banned b}^ the censor, his later writings are being copied, distributed clandestinely, and read by millions. Hundreds, if not thousands, of young men have through his influence left the terroristic party and donned the armour of

10 First Acquaintance with Count Tolstoi.

Christ, hj whicli to fight the powers of darkness and oppression - Several ^'^ Christian commanLties" have been established in different parts of Russia in order to put his principles into practice, and have thriven until they have been broken up by the police, or through the intrigues of enemies. A large number of his peaceful followers are now in exile either in Trans-Caucasia or Siberia, while others have " gone to the people," to share their life and toil in order to serve them and make their life richer and nobler.

In England itself there is a powerful testimony to his influence in the large sale of his books, and the eagerness with which the articles fiom his pen that have recently appeared in the newspapers have been read ; at the universities his books are well known, and thoughtful working men are familiar with his ideas. Much of his philosophy may be rejected, many of his results may be held to have come to him solely through the ahnormal conditions of the Russian society in which he has had his origin and passed the greater part of his life. The present writers, in admiring the man, by no means accept all his ideas» But as a living force, as a man who thinks for himself and sets other people thinking too, it is difficult to compare him with any other figure of modern times.

Tolstoi's critics are many and of va,ried hue ; from the priest& who frighten the peasants with stories of his branding all the musliiks who come to him for counsel and aid with the seal of the devil on their hands and foreheads, and the bishops who preach against him as Antichrist personified ; to the ofiicials and politicians who represent him as a dangerous revolutionary, seeking to rouse the people to armed revolt ; and the gossips who circulate stories about his professing to be a vegetarian, while rising in the night to eat his beefsteak. A certain Russian professor, for example, has written a long series of articles in a Russian review, called the "^Ruskaja Mj'-sl,"' trying to explain Tolstoi's " peculiarities " from " his inherited desire to live in the open air " ; hence, all his work among the people, his relief work, e.g., among the starving millions during the great famine, is only "^ a kind of sport."

We do not speak of thoughtful men who conscientiously

First Acquaintance with Count Tolstoi. II

dissent from his opinions. But when you have known this greatest son of Russia personally, and seen this nobly-born magnate and great genius daily devoting all the powers of his mind, all the strength of his indomitable will, all the warmth of his large and generous heart, to help and uplift the downtrodden, oppressed, and degraded peasants, and have seen, on the other hand, the motley crowd of his critics and calumniators, fops, mammon-worshippers, courtiers, and priests, with borrowed wisdom, drawing-room philosophy, fossil dogmas,^ cut and polished, and a Pharisaism that will almost put to theblush that of Judaic origin, it is as if a swarm of noxious insects were buzzing round a giant ditcher, toiling in the sweat of his brow to drain a stinking and poisonous marsh, and were raging over his attempt to destroy their paradise in which they have grown fat, attacking his perspiring body, and seeking some open wound received during his noble toil, in which to instil their corrosive poison, and fatten themselves on his substance.

CHAPTER 11.

CAUSES OF THE FAMINE.

Contrast of Famines in Russia and Western Europe — Condition at the Emancipation — Broken Promises — InsufBciency of Allotments — Action of Landlords — Prince Vasiltchikoff's Opinion — Proportion of Agriculturists in Eussia and other Countries — Nomadism — Capitalism and the Peasants — Kulacks and their Usury — Kulacks and Officials — Oppressive Taxation.

Thirty-five millions of people starving, at the close of the nineteenth centur}^, with its marvellous network of railroads and other means of communication, its wonderful development in all the means of production, and its loudly boasted organisation of labour, in times of peace, and in a country endowed with unlimited natural resources ! This is so remarkable a phenomenon, that it can only be explained by a concurrence of abnormal causes.

It is well known that years of dearth and famine decrease both* in intensity and frequency as civilisation and means of communication develop. In England, for example, during the fifteenth century, when in normal years food was cheap, labour well paid, and wealth, as it was known at that time, more generally diffused than in any century since, there were times when the crops failed through bad seasons, and the population, limited bj its crude husbandry and without foreign or colonial cornfields to draw upon, suffered severely by disease and death. Under the cruel Corn Laws of later times, which shut out the people's bread to fill the pockets of one class, the same phenomenon was seen. In Western Europe, generally during the middle ages, famines occurred on the average every eighth or tenth year, and were accompanied by great mortality among the poor. But in the present day, by the remarkable development of international trade and the opening up of gigantic

Causes of the Famine.

corn areas in different parts of the world, these years of dearth have become a thing of the past, in such countries as have adopted the enlightened policy of interdependence, with some measure of domestic freedom.

Eussia, however, is a remarkable exception to this rule. Of course, famines occurred in the olden time. In the ISTikonian Chronicle, which covers the period between 1127 — 1803, there are eleven years of famine recorded. In 1128 the population of Novgorod lived on the bark and birch of lime trees, and in 1 229-30 a large part of Middle and Northern Russia was devastated by famine. But during the last tAvo and a-half decades the years of dearth have increased to such an extent that in many parts the peasants may be said to be in a chronic state of famine. The semi-official joiu-nal, Novoje Vremja, for October 7, 1891, says that scarcely a year passes without a visitation of some part of the Empire. This is borne out by the terribly increasing mortality among the peasants. The average rate of mortality in the whole of E-ussia is about 34 ])ev 1,000, and, contrary to the experience of Western Europe, where the death-rate is higher in the towns, in Eussia it is the rural population that yields the higher figures. Among' the peasants of Central Eussia, for example, the frightful rate of 64 per 1,000 has been reached. In 1885 a Medical Congress was convened at Moscoav for the purpose, among others, of investigating the causes of the growing mortality among the peasants. The Congress decided that it was due to the insufficent quantity and bad quality of the food, i.e., to chronic famine.

The explanation of this extraordinary state of things can only be made b}^ reference to the course of events since the emancipation of the serfs. During the period of serfdom, which is usually understood to date from the decrees of Boris Godunoff, tying the serfs to the soil on which they worked, to the abolition under Alexander II. in 1861, the peasants were certainly often subjected to great cruelty, but their masters had a direct pecuniary interest in keeping them from starvation.

In the introduction to the Act of Emancipation, the Government made tlie following well-soundiug promise : — ^' To provide the peasants with the means of satisfying their wants and •enable them to fulfil their duties toward the State " {i.e., to pay taxes) ; " for this purpose they shall receive in inalienable possession allotments of cultivable land and other belongings, which in this Act are to be specified."