The Russian peasant

Front matter

LIBRARY OF CX)NGRESS

DDD135bn77 t aass_l)lLl Book K^

THE

Preface

The Author begs humbly to lay this short sketch of the " Russian Peasant " before the public. It by no means pretends to be a deep, comprehensive, critical study of the Peasant and the Peasant question ; that is reserved for a future work. It is indeed but the frame of the picture of the life-history of the teeming millions of those who form the real back-bone of Russia. The Author has gained his knowledge of the peasant from personal contact, and living with him in the villages in all parts of European Russia — in the more cultured West, from Petersburg to the limits of Poland ; in the frozen and scantily inhabited North ; in the immense district of Great Russia watered by Mother Volga from Kazan to the Caucasus, and in Siberia. He has studied him at peace in the simplicity and quiet of his village izha^ and has had the privilege of seeing him at war

ix

X PREFACE

in the late Russo - Japanese conflict, and his marvellous qualities of patience and endurance there brought out. Further, the Author is at the present moment witnessing and working amongst the Peasantry, exposed to the horrors of an unprecedented famine, which has reduced more than 20,000,000 to starvation and disease. For historical information the Author has drawn upon the old records of Guy Fletcher, Anthony Jenkinson, the ancient Chronicles of Pskoff, the Records of the Troitsky Monastery, the Secret Memoirs of the Court of Catherine 11.^ Moscovites Lettres^ the Memoirs of M. de Mannheim^ Karamsin's History of Russia^ and numerous antique documents in the Museums of Petersburg and Moscow. Further, he is indebted to the works of Mr Geoffrey Drage, Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, M. Leroy Beaulieu, M. Wassielevski and Mr MorfiU ; and finally he wishes to express his grateful thanks for aid afforded to him in the past while travelling and working in Russia to his Excellency M. de Kerbedz and Madame Eugenie de Kerbedz,

PREFACE xi

whose friendship has been and is invaluable to him, and whose kindness and assistance he takes the opportunity of acknowledging with feelings of the deepest gratitude ; to Mr Montgomery Grove, the British Consul in Moscow, Prince Nicholas Scherbatofif, Mr Victor Marsden (the able correspondent of the Standard in Moscow), Prince Galitzin, Mr Gulkevitch, M. Tatarenoff, M. Nicholas Shishkoff, and his friend Mr L. A. R. Wallace, but for whom this book would never have been published ; also to the late Ambassador to St Petersburg, Sir Charles Hardinge, to whose aid in obtaining for him many special permissions, which made his travels and work easier, he is much indebted.

With this preliminary message of thanks, the Author launches his little work, trusting that it will meet with the approbation of an indulgent and not too critical public.

Howard P. Kennard, M.D.

Samara, Russia, iTth May 1907.

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I. VILLAGE LIFE I

II. HISTORY 133

Chapter I

Russia ! The very word breathes mystery to countless masses. France, Germany, India, Japan, America, Africa, Australia, even China — these are countries known of men ; but Russia bids one pause, breeding a sense of deep obscurity and vastness, conjuring to one's brain ideas of despotism, ignorance, and serfdom. To countless thousands the word is synonymous with secrecy and prison bars, Siberia and the knout. It is not without reason that the foreigner who knows little of Russia is impregnated with these ideas.

Throw enough mud, and some is sure to stick ; and surely enough mud has been thrown at unfortunate Russia. Persistent rumour is generally bred of a nucleus of truth, and in Russia's case rumour has hardly exaggerated even infinitesimally the real facts.

Travel towards the East, crossing the Volga, surmount the Urals' crests, and wander at will across Siberia's plains. There one may meet from time to time, marching with downcast head and weary feet, in silence — such terrible silence that intensifies the solitude of the limitless wastes — ^a gang of hapless exiles, wretched, ill-clad, and often bootless, exhausted with fatigue and lack of food — the melancholy creaking of the chains, the long, long line of brethren in despair, taking the place of Nature's sounds and scenes. No deep blue sky, no gladdening sun cheers their leaden hearts — and Hope is dead. No twittering birds stir their souls sunken in blank despair — only the music of the clanking chains, day in day out, from dawn to setting sun. Tread — tread — tread — wearily wandering, on they go, young and old, women and men, linked with the links of mutual agony : intellect and innocence bonded with sordid crime, refinement and culture with bestial ignorance and brutality — one long chain of mortals marching to their doom.

Hope, spirit, lost ; home, family, name, things of the past ; despair alone printed indelibly on each face. Tramp — tramp — tramp go the stricken souls, and jarring in unison clang the jingling chains — Death's orchestra, playing .its prelude to rest eternal in some rough grave on Siberia's frozen waste, if God in His mercy grant them quick release, or else to life in a living tomb in the depths of the icebound mines! No picture this, bred of exaggerated impulse. Trains have brought powers of transport, until recently undreamt of, and the Siberian Railway takes to their destination many unfortunate exiles who otherwise would have died on the way. But the railway is useless as a means of transport to other more distant localities, desert spots away in the frozen North, where man thinks fit to send his fellow - man even in the twentieth century of the Christian Era. And so to-day one sees ever and anon these serpentine gangs of God's creatures slowly wending their way, mile after mile, day after day, week after week, till Death with its long gaunt finger beckons them to rest.

Follow the line of one of these funeral caravans, and mark the little mounds that ever meet the eye, telling of rest of some poor soul whose life was strife and silent agony, one long vain fight for freedom, country — all that God gave man.

Often have I paused and pondered amidst a little cluster of snow-clad tombs — a convict sepulchre : Who lies beneath that one? A stake driven beneath the frozen earth tells, it would seem, of efforts to mark the spot where sleeps some life-tormented soul. Was he a man of eminence, of world renown, of a talent that forced him on to action, compelled him to use the gifts bestowed on him to raise his stricken country from the mire, engulfed him in the whirl of politics and party strife, and finally sent him to spend his life in solitude, to waste his brilliant brain, his epigrams, his noble utterances, his thoughts and high ideals, on prison warders, — men but yet as beasts, the lowest criminals, dregs of humanity? Does he lie there, his proud, stricken heart broken with grief and with the knowledge that his life has been fruitless and of no avail? does he lie there, fallen thus early from the ranks of those his comrades — comrades whom nothing but this cruel system, this indiscriminate bondage of man to beast permitted by Russia's rulers, could possibly have made his?

But this is only one picture, one aspect of Russia's life afforded to travellers who will dive into the unfathomable depths of this vast country. Russia is a country of contrasts and extremes — melancholy and yet gay, simple and even sweet, yet terrible, repulsive yet fascinating and seductive, mysterious and yet open as the prairies of its own boundless steppes, old and yet young — yes, young as a new-born babe ; and all these contrasts and contradictions may be found reflected in the nature of Russia's people. Twist and turn it how one will, the predominant feeling stirred by the word Russia to-day is Mystery, and round it seems drawn a veil of impenetrable darkness, as if to repel all who would pierce that gloomy shroud, and gain knowledge of a land covering one-sixth of the habitable surface of the globe, and containing no less than 140,000,000, of four-fifths of whom literally nothing is known. Plain upon plain, steppe upon steppe, soil frozen eternally year's end to year's end, contrasting with rich black loam which no country in the world can rival — vast wastes — huge tracts — many of which even to-day are unvisited — are scantily peopled by degenerate beings, remnants of long since departed races — solitude so vast that it is impossible for the Western mind, which knows nothing of real solitude, to picture it.

" There is noise in the capitals, the orators thunder, The war of words rages ; But there, in the depths of Russia, Is the silence of centuries.

Only the wind gives no rest To the tops of the pine-trees along the road, And, kissing Mother Earth, The ears in the illimitable corn-fields Bend themselves in an arch."

Thus the famous Russian poet Nekrassoff sings of his beloved country, which extends in one solid unbroken mass over 8,500,000 square miles of territory, stretching from the icebound Arctic seas washing its northern coasts to the shores of the Black Sea — from the Baltic's coasts and the borders of Germany, Austria, and the Balkan States across the plains of Eastern Europe and the endless miles of frozen Siberian steppe to the warm waters of the Pacific, thus pressing with its ever - expanding sides on to the borders of Sweden, the cultured West, Turkey, Afghanistan, China, and Manchuria, and enclosing within its frontiers 140,000,000 of people. Yet till a very few years back this vast land was as a closed book, beyond the power of the outside world to read, and the outside world ignorant as a child of all but its very name. Why this astounding ignorance ? It would suggest a lack of interest on the part of the Western nations, or else some deep cause emanating from the heart of Russia itself.

Firstly, of what is the Russian people composed? A country populated to the extent of 140,000,000, to which at the present time 2,000,000 is added every succeeding year, conveys to the ordinary mind visions of a Power which should long ago have made itself felt from world's end to world's end, the more so seeing that those millions are of the white race. Forty times the size of France — 140,000,000 of inhabitants. Where are these masses distributed ? and of what are they constituted ? Fifteen millions belong to the towns — the Governmental, professional, official, and social classes ; 3,000,000 are to be found working in the different manufactories throughout the country ; whilst to these must be added another 7,000,000 composed of those working on the railways, the minor provincial officials of all departments, the proprietors, and all who can claim to be counted as intelligent, intellectual members of the community. Another 15,000,000 must be assigned to the thousand and one tribes of heterogeneous race distributed over Russia's wide expanse — Finns, Tartars, Caucasians, Laps, Samoyedes, Mongols, Bashkers, Voliaks, Tcheremisses — their name is Legion.

Forty millions accounted for — where are the rest? Where is this overwhelming mass of 100,000,000 which cannot be classed amongst the tribes of varied blood and breed congregated on Russian soil, and cannot lay claim to be numbered amongst those who have ordinary intelligence ? Does Europe know them ? No ! Does Russia — that Russia represented by the governing, professional, social, and commercial classes — know them ? A thousand times — No! Who are they then? The answer is simple and pathetic in its simplicity: they belong to one class, and one class alone — the

Russian Peasant — a body of men, 100,000,000 strong, of whom nothing is known. I say nothing, but I must qualify that statement, for during the past four eventful decades the attention of Russia's governing and intellectual classes has been drawn perforce to this previously neglected horde of human beings, which during centuries past has held quantitatively an overwhelming position, qualitatively none.

The first note was sounded by the Emperor Alexander II. in his speech to the Nobles of Moscow (March 1856). Beginning with a protective negative, as it were, he ends with a hint of such unmistakable meaning, that his real intentions are immediately revealed to the gathering :

" For the removal of certain unfounded reports, I consider it necessary to declare to you that I have not at present the intention of annihilating serfdom ; but certainly, as you yourselves know, the existing manner of possessing serfs cannot remain unchanged. It is better to abolish serfdom from above than to await the time when it will begin to abolish itself from below. I request you, gentlemen, to consider how this can be put into execution, and to submit my words to the Noblesse for their consideration."

Ominous words. No pleading request this from a Constitutional monarch or Republican president, but a cold, autocratic demand from a man holding limitless power over Russia and Russia's people, a demand admitting of no doubt as to its real meaning, and allowing of no contra-arguments, uttered as it was by the lips of that omnipotent of all omnipotent beings on this earth, the Tzar of all the Russias, whose very breath is law.

The die then was cast, and Serfdom from that moment was doomed, and from that moment has the "peasant horde" thrust itself day after day, year after year, more prominently before the public and official eye of Russia, until now the peasant is recognised not only as a factor which must be taken into account, not only as a class for which legislative steps of the most statesmanlike nature must be taken, but as the predominant feature of the Russian problem to-day — the actual key to the situation.

Russia awakes to-day like some prehistoric mammoth which for long centuries has slept, its huge unwieldy carcass wallowing in the mire, and growing with the growth of time, its vast exterior becoming ever vaster at the expense of those around it. To-day she wakes and shakes

VILLAGE LIFE it

herself, only to find that Time, while ever adding to her outward form, has allowed her very sap to remain stagnant, neglected, undeveloped. For this sap — Russia's life — Russia's real self — is nothing less than the Russian peasant, whose mind during centuries has been swamped in the dense morasses of ignorance, whose very existence as a man has been denied, and who has taken his place humbly and with a patience which Russians alone possess, from father to son through countless generations, as a working thing — an IT — on a level with the beasts of the field !

What is he like to-day? Come with me on my sleigh across the Russian snow, that eternal white mantle adorning the country for two-thirds of the year, and let me show you this strange individual. Wrapped in our furs, enclosing not only body but head and face, leaving but the eyes and tip of the nose exposed to the thirty degrees of frost, made keener by the faint breath of a north-east wind, we are drawn rapidly along by our couple of horses. The hard glistening snow grinds out its creaking music with each fresh blow struck by the horses' hoofs, and our sleigh glides noiselessly along, drawn seemingly without an effort on the part of the magnificent brutes who need not the " Noo Noo : Malootka moy (my little one), Noo Noo — eete (get along)," uttered in persuasively seductive tones by the voice of our driver, as he sits with arms outstretched, a rein in either hand, trusting to voice alone to urge the animals on. On, on we glide, with a sense of luxury which only a swiftly running sleigh and rich warm furs can give, till suddenly Ivan, our driver, fills the air with shouts : " Berege, Berege : noo, doorak : Berege " (" Look out now, fool, look out)." There is no response, and with a supreme effort Ivan forces the striving, straining horses back upon their haunches, and they madly paw the air in vain effort to continue their headlong flight. " Berege Berege," shouts he in stentorian voice : " Pravo " (" To the right ") ; but there is no response.

We stop dead, and glancing beyond our horses' heads, we see a broad, low-lying wooden sleigh, triangular in shape, and all lined with straw, on which lies full length a seemingly inanimate thing. Ivan with his whip, which is rarely used except on such occasions as these, bestows with all his force some half-dozen blows on this object, and as a result the thing awakes, and discloses itself to our gaze as a human being.

'Tis he — the being we are in search of — the Russian Peasant ! A long sheepskin coat, originally of a yellowish brown, but now a polished, dirty mahogany hue, crumpled and creased by age, and veneered with a greasy shine born of the wear of years ; a cord about the middle ; a pair of enormous feet and ankles encased in voluminous folds of felt, with strips of leather for soles, the whole encircled with strands of cord ; a highpeaked pyramidal sheepskin cap, from under the brim of which protrude here and there wisps of an unkempt shaggy head of hair and tawny yellow beard ; a pair of vacant, lustreless eyes, and the tip of a broad-spread nose.

This is our friend the peasant. Imagine him thus, and you have a faithful picture in your mind's eye of the peasai.t as he is during the greater part of his annual existence — that is to say, during seven long wintry months, with perhaps a month on either side of that period ; for according to his ideas, the summer is only a chance interval, a sort of Nature's mistake, during which he comes out from amidst the depths of his reeking bedding, from sheer inability to bear the heat, and hastens with feverish glee to wallow in its warmth again at least a month before there is any need, only relieving his body of its inexpressibly dirty and foul environments when four weeks of the warm suns of Spring have melted the snow.

This is our friend whom we have waked from his slumbers. He hears no speech, he sees no scenes, he is incapable of observation, he possesses no understanding, his brain never works except in reference to objects that hit him between the eyes — but he simply does — does like a beast of burden, knowing neither the why nor the wherefore, neither asking nor expecting to be asked, neither knowing nor wanting to know; lying listlessly full length on his rude wooden sleigh loaded with wood, and drawn by an emaciated apology for a horse. Wearied long since by his overwhelming load, he plods across the wintry snows, looking neither to right nor left, his head bowed down — dreaming — sleeping — oblivious to all sights and sounds, winds and weather — sheep-skin without, sheep's brains within.

Is this a type of the Russian peasant ? you ask. It is, and the type par excellence^ if one excepts certain differences of visage, dialect, and customs, to be found throughout the whole extent of the Russian Empire to-day.

What can be put to the credit side of the account of this unfortunate creature? He has simplicity in overwhelming abundance — faith, trust, obedience to authority which he himself really believes in — all blended with an innate cunning bred of his very ignorance, and fostered by instincts of self-preservation, which only too often lead his poor deluded judgment hopelessly astray — a cunning which has led many superficial observers to believe that he has a formed intelligence. No greater mistake was ever made. He has not.

Much intercourse with the Russian peasant has convinced me that that head, covered with shaggy hair, whatever it may have in it, is at present an unworked mine. There is wealth there, only waiting to be exploited by broad, liberal educational measures of a yet-to-be-created enlightened Government, but — he must himself wake first; he must himself produce the first spark ; the spark of individual effort must show its longawaited light before the world can gauge with even the faintest degree of exactitude what is or is not hidden within that skull of apparently impenetrable density, into which nothing enters and from which nothing intelligible ever makes its exit. I speak broadly of the Russian peasant — the ordinary everyday specimen, and not of the exceptions. Amongst ioo,ocx),ooo there are many to whom my description is not applicable; it would be indeed a marvel if amidst these millions there were not a few exceptions — but they are few and far between, and comparatively insignificant drops in the ocean. It is these exceptions of whom the world hears as getting up political agitations in the villages, taking part in and organising sober assemblies, at which the rights of man, the condition of the country, the needs of the peasantry are sagely discussed ; it is these exceptions which one hears of as being elected to the electoral colleges for the Imperial Duma — and actually for that Imperial Duma itself; and it is these isolated facts that prompt the uninitiated in Russian affairs, and more especially in the affairs of Russia's peasantry, to run away with the idea that that type represented at the above - mentioned assemblies or at the Duma, is a true and everyday type of the great Russian peasant class. No greater mistake could possibly be made. The true peasant is uncultured, uneducated, ignorant of the most elementary facts known to babes in other countries of the West and East, thoughtless, and buried in the mire of stagnant callousness and hopeless indifference.

In my wanderings amongst the western districts of Russia during the past few months, I have alone aided medicinally 1300 peasants ; and whilst treating their bodies I have in each case carefully investigated the condition of their minds. Of these 1300, composed of Russians, Letts, and Poles, 80 were able to read and write a little, — that is, 6 per cent. ; but subtracting the Poles and Letts from the number, I find that the percentage of the actual Russian peasantry able to read and write is 2.

My investigations in Central Russia, in the

Government of Orel, last year gave a slightly

better percentage. There, out of any given

hundred, 4 as a general rule could read and write,

but the area of distribution of these men of

letters varied immensely. Sometimes one would

B find a village of about 700 to 2000 inhabitants where 10 per cent, could read the paper, while again on many occasions, on inquiring from such people as the priest, the village merchant, and amongst the peasants themselves, as to the literary capacities of the inhabitants, I obtained the astounding answer : " No one can read or write here " — and this in villages with populations ranging from 500 to 2500! Reasons for this lamentable and almost incredible ignorance are not far to seek, and these I shall allude to in a later part of this little work. I will only say here that the Russian Governments of the past, and past wielders of the Russian Sceptre, are badly — very badly — to blame.

Where does the peasant eke out his existence ?

With your hand shading your eyes from the dazzling sparkle of the snow, glance to those neighbouring hillocks by the frozen lake, and you will see a cluster of white dots on the still whiter landscape, which stretches in one monotonous sheet as far as the eye can see, and on, on, far beyond the limits of the snow-capped horizon, over the whole vast land of Russia. If one could peep beneath these coverlets of white, one would find that this straggling zigzag collection of tiny specks is nothing less than a mass of dilapidated wooden tenements. A few black beams uncovered by snow at the side of this or that izba^ together with here and there the curl of blue smoke, alone tell us that this melancholy white mass, buried beneath the snow, braving in solitude the wintry blasts that sweep over the desert, is indeed a collection of human habitations. There, sparkling in the sun above the lowly roofs, is a golden ball topped with cross and crescent surmounting the blue-roofed church, emblem of that religion which almost co-equally with the Government itself has so much to account for in the condition of the peasant to-day.

Let us accost one of the inhabitants who is going towards the village, and visit his home with him. He turns to gaze on us with open mouth, and in response to our salutation says '^Zdrazbyete" (" Good morning "), at the same time raising his hat from off his shaggy locks, and retaining it in his hands for the space of half a minute despite the bitter cold, disclosing his features, and showing us the type most common to the Russian peasant — a low, broad forehead, lined horizontally with deep furrows, surmounting a large nose broadening towards the nostrils, but withal well proportioned, and a mouth, thick - lipped, coarse, and large, hidden amidst the entangled hairs of his reddish moustache and beard. " Zdrazbyetel^ says he, and with the greatest affability, in response to our request, offers to escort us to his home.

A visit, in winter for choice, to one of these villages would prove a novelty indeed to dwellers in more fortunate lands, where civilisation and education have comparatively raised the toilers of the fields and dwellers in town and hamlet to a state of absolute luxury.

Most people would turn away with a shudder when only within smelling distance (if I may coin such a vulgar expression) of a Russian village ; but there are many to whom the interests of the poor are a real source of anxiety and solicitude, and it is these that I ask to come with me now. We will endeavour to make the everyday life of the Russian peasant, that almost mediaeval person, as much as possible an open book.

Along the narrow, snow-covered, sleigh-beaten track leading to the village we jolt, for one of the peculiarities of all fairly frequented roads or paths in Russia, is the number of deep holes and hollows. The reason for these might seem rather a puzzle to the uninitiated, but in reality the explanation is simplicity itself. Before the snow falls the road is marked already here and there with small depressions ; then given a fall of snow, and then a continuous traffic of broad flat peasants' sleighs over the surface, one will soon observe that in proportion as the snow falls, the deeper these holes or " dirries " become. A biting side wind completes the business, and it is common to see, a few days after the winter snows have appeared, a continuous series of these dirries transforming the well-worn cross-country paths into ups and downs more like a switchback than anything else.

Along one of these we now wend our way under a brilliant sun, and there in full view, lying in the hollow amidst the hillocks, are the roofs of the village we are in search of

The first sight to strike the traveller's eye in every village throughout Russia is the golden dome of the village church, and it gives food for thought. Comparisons crowd upon the mind. This brilliant spectacle — this noble edifice raising its head from amidst the most incredible squalor — what is it here for? What good does it do to these wretched beings to see a sparkling diamond from which it is impossible for them to obtain food for their hungry children, let alone religious comfort for their souls? Of what benefit is it, think you, for these poor wretches to gaze on this showy outside, and be told that it is the emblem of the Church and the House of God, when in some villages they may frequently see His minister as drunk as one of the lowest of his parishioners, or indulging in peculations and shameful bargains, such as we should associate with the riff-raff of London and Continental cities ?

The interior of these edifices — regarded as places of religion, for the practice of meditation or for the receiving of spiritual food — is even more of a delusion. All is glittering, all is mystery, all is calculated and purposely calculated, and has been purposely calculated for centuries past by the priesthood, to breed in the simple peasant mind superstition and fear rather than devotion. All is show, inside and out. A peasant of intelligence, entering into this brilliant building, hoping to find consolation in trouble, might be likened to a starving child outside a large pastry-shop, where the rich viands are only for show. The interior of the Russian church is the same. The odours of the incense, the overwhelming display of golden ikons or sacred images, the decoration here, there, everywhere, like sugar on the surface of a rich cake, fills the mind with wonderment, but leaves the heart unsatisfied. These buildings, which are such a picturesque addition to the landscape, are the outward sign of that institution, the Russian Orthodox Church, which, in combination with the Bureaucracy, has done more to degrade the unfortunate peasant than anything else we can name. Show inside — show outside — nothing more.