Help for the Starving

I

THE questions, whether there is famine in Russia or not, and if there is, to what an extent, remain as yet unanswered. As an answer to them let a description of what I have seen and heard in four districts of the Government of Tula, suffering from failure of the crops, suffice.

The first district I visited was Krapivensky, which is suffering in its black earth belt.

The first impression, answering in its fundamental sense the question whether the population finds itself this year in especially trying circumstances, was the fact that the bread used by almost all was adulterated with lebeda-weed, in proportions of one-third, and in some cases one-half, lebeda, black bread of inky blackness, heavy and bitter. This bread was eaten by all chil- dren and pregnant women and nursing mothers and sick people.

The second impression, pointing to the peculiarity of the situation this year, is the general complaint of the lack of fuel. At that time it was still in the early part of September people had nothing to warm them- selves with. It was said that they had cut up the young sprouts on the threshing-floors, and I myself saw that ; it was said they had cut down and split up for fire-wood all the posts, everything that was of wood. Many bought wood in the clearing of a proprietor's forest and in the grove which ran in that vicinity. They would go from seven to ten versts after fire-wood. The cost of split aspen wood was ninety kopeks per shkalik, that is to say, for one-sixteenth of a cubic sazhen.

The shkalik lasts a peasant's establishment about a week, so that his fuel for the winter, if he has to buy it, will stand him about twenty-five rubles.

The poverty is beyond question : the bread is unwholesome mixed with lebeda-weed, and they have no fuel. But if you look at the people and judge from externals, their faces look healthy, cheerful, and contented. All are at work ; no one is at home. One is threshing, another teaming. The proprietors complain because they cannot get people to work for them. When I was there, the digging of potatoes and threshing was going on. On the church festival there was more drinking than usual, and even on working-days there was much drunkenness. Moreover, the bread itself, made with lebeda-weed, when you examine why and how it is used, receives another significance.

At the farm where I was first shown bread made with lebeda-weed, in the back-yard the man's own threshing- machine was threshing for four horses, and there were sixty ricks of oats on his own land and that which he hired, yielding at the rate of nine measures, that is to say, at the present prices three rubles.

Rye, it is true, was scarce he had only about eight chetverts but besides the oats he had at least forty chetverts of potatoes, and buckwheat also. Yet the whole family, consisting of twelve souls, ate lebeda-weed bread. So that it seemed that, in this case at least, the lebeda- weed bread was not a symptom of poverty, but a stern old man's measure of economy, so that they might eat less bread ; since with this end in view even in plentiful years the economical muzhik never gives any warm food or even soft bread, but always stale crusts.

" Flour is high ; so why should you waste it on these rascals ? People eat bread made with lebeda-weed, then why should we try to be such noblemen ? "

The lack of fuel finds compensation in the fact that this year, although there is less straw than usual, yet it is grassy, with small ears, and makes excellent fodder. That they do not use straw for fuel is not only because it is so scarce, but because this year it partly takes the place of the meal usually given to cattle.

This was so where there was any straw at all. But in many districts there was no straw at all.

The situation of the majority of the farms under a superficial observation is such that the failure of the rye crop finds its compensation in the good crop of oats, which bring a high price, and in a good crop of potatoes. They sell oats, they buy rye, and feed principally on potatoes.

But not all have oats and potatoes. When I made a list of the whole locality, it seemed that out of fifty- seven dvors there were twenty-nine where no rye was left, or only a few puds from five to eight and little oats, so that in an exchange at the rate of two chetverts for one chetvert of rye, there would not be enough food to last them till Christmas. Such was the case in twenty- nine dvors.

Fifteen were in a very bad condition. These dvors were bad, not from the bad harvests this year, but from the perpetual conditions of their lives, both inwardly and outwardly, from their isolation, their lack of strength, and the feebleness of the character of the housekeepers ; and these have been wretched even in previous years. These dvors had not this year their principal means of support oats, as they had no seeds and the soil was exhausted. Even now some of them are begging. Ap- proximately as bad off are other villages of the Krapi- vensky District suffering from the bad harvests. The percentage of the rich, of the middling well-to-do, and of the wretched is almost one and the same : fifty-nine per cent or thereabouts of the middling well-to-do, that is to say of those who this year will eat up all their pro- visions by Christmas ; twenty per cent of the rich, and thirty per cent of the perfectly wretched, who either now or within a month will have nothing to eat.

The situation of the peasants of the Bogoroditsky District is worse. The harvest, especially that of rye, was worse here. Here the percentage of the rich, that is of those who can subsist on their own bread, is the same ; but the percentage of the utterly destitute is greater : out of sixty dvors, seventeen middling, thirty- two utterly destitute, corresponding to the fifteen utterly destitute in the first locality of the Krapivensky District. And exactly as in the Krapivensky District, the poverty- stricken condition of these destitute dvors depended, not on the famine of this year alone, but on a whole series of both internal and external conditions long in operation, the same isolation, large families, weakness of char- acter

Here in the Bogoroditsky District the question of fuel was still more difficult to decide, as the forests were sparser. But the general impression was the same as in the Krapivensky District. As yet, there was nothing peculiar indicating famine ; the people were alert, in- dustrious, gay, healthy. The clerk of the volost com- plained that drunkenness in Uspenye, the chief city, was more pronounced than ever.

The farther one penetrated into the depths of the Bogoroditsky District and the nearer to the Yefremov- sky, the worse grew the situation. In the threshing- floors grain and straw kept diminishing, and there were more and more abodes of destitution. On the borders of the Yefremovsky and Bogoroditsky districts the situa- tion was particularly bad, because, in addition to all the misfortunes such as befell the Krapivensky and Bogo- roditsky districts, and besides, the sparsity of forests, the potato crop had failed. There were scarcely any ; even on the best soil only a return of seed was produced. In almost all families bread adulterated with lebeda- weed was used. The lebeda here failed to ripen, it was green. Of that white substance which is generally found in it, there was not a trace, and therefore it is not fit to eat. Bread of lebeda-weed it is impossible to eat alone. If it is eaten on an empty stomach it causes vomiting. People grow crazy from the kvas made from flour mixed with lebeda-weed.

Here there are poverty-stricken dvors which, having been greatly reduced in previous years, have eaten up everything.

But even this is not the worst locality. Worse ones are in the Yefremovsky and Yepifansky districts. Here is a large neighborhood in the Yefremovsky District. Out of seventy homes there are ten which are still self-supporting. The rest have just gone to begging on horseback ! Those that are left eat bread mixed with lebeda-weed or with bran, which is sold to them at the storehouse of the zemstvo at the rate of sixty kopeks a pud.

I went into one house to see the bread made with bran. The muzhik had received three measures for seed, when he had already done his sowing, and mix- ing these three measures with three measures of bran, ground it together, and the result was sufficiently good bread, but it was his last.

The woman told me how her daughter had eaten bread made with lebeda-weed, and it had caused vomit- ing and diarrhea, and she had ceased to cook that kind of bread. The main room of the izba was full of horse- dung and fagots. The women go to the pasture to collect dung, and to the forest to get bits of twigs as long and as thick as their finger. The filth of the habi- tations, the raggedness of the clothing, in this neighbor- hood was very great ; but it could be seen that it was nothing new, because it was the same even in the bet- ter homes. In this neighborhood there was a little clus- ter of ten dvors occupied by soldiers' children who had land.

At the last hovel of this cluster where we stopped, a thin, ragged woman came out to us, and began to tell us her condition. She had five children. The oldest daughter was ten. Two were sick it must have been from the influenza. A three-year-old child was sick in a high fever, had been brought outdoors, and lay on the bare ground, on the pasture, eight pacefc from the hovel, and covered by the ragged remains of a cloak. It was thirsty, and would be chilly as soon as the fever passed, but still it was better off than it would have been in the tiny hovel with a heated stove, the filth, the dust, and the other four children.

This woman's husband had gone off somewhere and disappeared. She subsisted and fed her sick children on crusts which she got by begging. But it was hard for her to beg, because her neighbors had little to give. She had to wander away twenty or thirty versts and abandon her children. If she got crusts she would re- main at home, and, when they began to fail her, she would start out again.

Now she was at home. She had come that afternoon, and she had brought enough crusts to last till the next day after. In such a condition she had been for two years, and things were much worse off than they had been, because this third year she had been burnt out, and her eldest girl was away, so that there was no one with whom to leave the little ones. The only difference was that they kept eating more and more of the bread mixed with lebeda-weed. And she was not the only one as bad off. In this condition, not only this year, but always, are all the families of weak, drinking men, all families of those in jail. Such a state of things is more easily borne in good years.

II

THERE are many such neighborhoods as this, both in the Bogoroditsky and the Yefremovsky districts. But there are still worse ones. And such neighborhoods are found in the Yepifansky and Dankovsky districts.

Here is one of them. Along the six versts from one locality to the other there is no village or habitation only the farms of proprietors are to be seen. Between steep banks, a large beautiful river ; on both sides, set- tlements. On one side that belonging to the Yepifan- sky District, the smaller ; on the other that belonging to the Dankovsky, the larger. Yonder is a church with a bell-tower, and a cross glittering in the sun. Along the hill on this side extend, in the distance, the pretty little houses of the peasants.

I approach the edge of the settlement on this side. The first izba is not an izba, but four stone walls, of gray stone laid in clay, covered with a ceiling on which are spread potato leaves. There is no yard. This is the dwelling of the first family. There, in the middle of this residence, stands a cart without wheels ; and not back of the yard where the threshing-floor generally is, but directly in front of the izba, is a small cleared place, called a tok, where the oats are threshed and winnowed. A tall muzhik in bark shoes, with a shovel and his hands, is shoveling the newly winnowed oats from a pile into plaited seed-baskets ; a barefooted peasant woman of fifty, in a filthy black skirt torn at the side, is carrying these baskets away and setting them into the wheelless cart, and keeping count. An unkempt little girl of seven, in a skirt gray with grime, clings to the woman, ham- pering her. The muzhik is the woman's neighbor, who has come over to help her winnow and garner the oats. The woman is a widow ; her husband has been dead two years, and her son has gone to the army for the autumn drill. In the ibza is the daughter-in-law with her two little children, one a baby at the breast, the other, two years old, with bare legs, is sprawling on the thresh- old and screaming something discontents him.

The whole harvest of this year consists of oats, all of which is stored in the cart, and amounts to four chetverts about twenty-three bushels. Of rye, for seed, there remained, carefully stored away in the punka, or grain-closet, one bag mixed with lebeda-weed about three puds.. No millet, no buckwheat, no lentils, no potatoes, had been planted or sowed. The bread they used was made with lebeda-weed, and it was so bad it was im- possible to eat it ; and on the morning of this particular day, the woman had gone begging to the village eight versts. In the village it was a festival, and she had collected five pounds of pieces of pirog free of the lebedaweed. She showed it to me. In a linden-bark basket were collected four pounds of crusts and pieces as big as one's palm. This was her whole property and all her visible means of support.

Another izba was the same, only a little better pro- tected and had a small court. The crop of rye was the same. The same bag with lebeda-weed stood in the entry and represented the granary with stores. At this place they had not sowed oats at all, as they had had no seed in the spring. They had three chetverts of potatoes and there were two measures of millet. To the rye which was left over from the distribution for seed, the woman had added an equal quantity of lebeda-weed, and they were using it for food. A slice and a half of it was left. With potatoes, they said they might get along for a month, but what remained for them after that they did not know. The woman had four children and a husband. The husband, when I was at the izba, was not at home. He had built the hut, laying the stone in clay. He was at a neighbor's at the next dvor.

The third place was the same, the condition the same. While I was there and talking with the mistress of the establishment, another woman came in and began to re- late to her neighbor how her husband had been beaten, how she did not expect to have him live, and how they had administered the last communion to him that morn- ing. Evidently the neighbor knew it all long before, and it was repeated for my benefit. I proposed to come and look at the ailing man and help him, if there was any possible way. The woman went out and speedily returned to show me the way. The sick man lay in the next izba. This izba was large, timbered, with a stone punka, or grain-room, and a yard. But the destitution was the same. The owner, evidently, had been tempted to build after a fire. That is all he had done. He had built, then he had taken sick and been reduced to beg- gary. Two other families, unrelated and homeless, had lodgings in this izba. The head of one of these families was also stricken with illness.

On a bunk between the stove and the wall lay the sick man, covered with a corn-cloth, and groaning piteously.

I went to him and cautiously turned back the covering. He was a thick-set, healthy muzhik of forty, with a bloodstained face and well-developed muscles on his bare arm. I proceeded to question him, and he, striv- ing to groan, in a feeble voice told me that three days before they had held a reunion and he and a comrade had taken billets, passports, to go down the river, and then he had told one of the muzhiks that he ought not to swear ; and in reply to this the muzhik had knocked him down and "walked all over him"; that is, had given him a regular trouncing, striking him on his head and on his chest. It seemed that, having taken out their passports, they had bought liquor on shares ; and then the former starosta, squandering fifty rubles of the commune's funds, treated them to one-half a vedro, or bucket, because they postponed the payment for three terms, and the peasants got drunk.

I felt of the wounded man and examined him. He was perfectly well, and was perspiring powerfully under his covering. There were no marks on him, and evi- dently he was in bed and they had given him the Holy Communion in order to induce the authorities, one of whom he supposed me to be, to inflict punishment on the man with whom he had quarreled. When I told him that he need not be tried, and that I thought he was not dangerously beaten and might get up, he remained discontented, and the women, who had attentively fol- lowed me and filled the izba to overflowing, began with displeasure to remark that, if that were so, then they would beat them all to death.

The poverty of all these three families living here was as absolute as in the first dvors. No one had any rye. One had two pounds of buckwheat ; another had enough potatoes to last a fortnight or a month. All had still a little bread made of rye mixed with lebeda- weed, but not enough to last any length of time.

The people were almost all at home. One was plas- tering his house, another was rebuilding his, another was sitting still, doing nothing. All the threshing had been done ; the potatoes were all dug.

Such was the whole village of thirty places, with the exception of two families which were in easy cir- cumstances. This village had been half burned down the year before, and had not been rebuilt. The first dvor, with the woman threshing oats, and eight others had been immediately settled in a new place on the outskirts, so as to fulfil the rules of insurance. The majority are so poor that, so far, they are living in lodg- ings. In the same condition of feebleness are also those that had not been burnt out, though those that had been burnt out are, on the whole, rather worse off. The condition of the village is such, that out of thirty dvors twelve have no horses.

The village is in destitute condition, but it is evident that the failure of this year's harvest is not the princi- pal misfortune. In almost every family, its special cause is something far more significant than the mis- fortune of this year's crop.

The misfortune of the former starosta is that he has to pay fifty rubles in three instalments, and he is selling all his oats to pay this debt. The present starosta, an excellent carpenter, had the special misfortune that he had been appointed to that office and cannot go out to work. His salary is fifteen rubles a year, and he de- clares that he could easily earn sixty, and would not mind the failure of the harvest.

A third muzhik has the misfortune of having got into debt long ago, and now the time to pay it has come, and he has been obliged to sell the three walls of his wooden izba, leaving himself one for fuel. Now he has nothing to live in, and he is constructing for himself, out of stone, a tiny cell in which he will live with his wife and children.

A fourth has the misfortune of having quarreled with his mother, who had been living with him, and she has left him, dismantled her izba, and gone to another son, taking her share with her. And he had nowhere to live and nothing to live on.

Still a fifth has the misfortune of having gone to the city with oats, where, in a spree, he had spent for drink all that he got for his oats. The universal, chronic causes of poverty are also many times more powerful than the poor crops. As always, conflagrations, quar- rels, drunkenness, low spirits

Before taking my departure from the village, I stopped near one who had just brought from the field some potato vines botovya they call them and who was piling them up against the walls of his izba. Quickly six muzhiks also came up, and we had a talk. Their women stood listening at a little distance. Children munching inky black, sticky bread made with lebeda- weed were running around us, gazing at me, and trying to catch a word. I repeated several questions, credit- ing the starosta's testimony. It all seemed credible. Even the number of those without horses proved to be greater than the starosta had claimed. They related the whole story of their poverty, not with any satisfac- tion, but with a certain irony. "Why is it that you are so wretched; have you become poorer than other peo- ple ? " I asked.

Several answered at once in various voices, so definite was the reply.

" But what shall we do ? In the summer half the vil- lage was burnec: up as a cow licks dew with her tongue. And then the crop failed. And the summer was bad, and now to-day we are all cleaned out."

" Well, how are you going to live ? "

" We shall live all right. We shall sell what we have, and then whatever God gives."

What does this mean ? Can it be that these men do not in reality understand their condition, or do they so hope for aid from outside that they do not want to put forth any effort ? I may be mistaken, but it seems like this.

And here I remembered two somewhat intoxicated old muzhiks of the Yefremovsky District, who were coming from the volost headquarters, where they had gone to ask when they would employ their sons for the autumn drill ; and at my question how their harvest had been and how they got along, they replied, notwithstanding that they were from the very wretchedest locality, that, glory to God, they had distributed seed for sowing, and now they would continue to distribute grain also for provisions, till Lent at the rate of thirty pounds a man, and after Lent at the rate of a pud and a half. Why, the fact that the people of this Yef removsky village can- not live through the winter unless they undertake some- thing, is as palpable as that a hive of bees without honey, left for the winter, will die before spring. But this is the very question : Shall they undertake anything or not ? So far it is likely that they will not. Only one of them sold all that he had and went to Moscow. The rest apparently do not realize their situation. Do they really not comprehend their situation, or are they wait- ing for help from outside, or do they, like children who have slipped into an ice-hole or lost their way, in the first moment, not comprehending all the dangers of their sit- uation, find amusement in its unusualness ? Maybe both are true. But it is unquestionable that these people are in a condition where they make scarcely any effort to help themselves.

III

WELL, then, is there famine or is there not famine ? And if there is, in what degree ? And in what degree must help be given ? All the columns in which the possessions of the peasants are entered give no answer, and can give no answer, to these questions.

Many represent to themselves the task of feeding the starving people exactly as they will represent to them- selves the same task of feeding a given number of cattle. For so many oxen they need for two hundred winter days so many puds of hay, straw, malt, grain. They get ready this amount of feed, furnish it for the herd of cattle, and have the assurance that the creatures will weather the winter. With human beings the calcula- tion is entirely different.

In the first place, for the ox and all kinds of cattle, the minimum and maximum of indispensable food are not very far separate from each other. Having eaten their necessary amount of feed, cattle cease to eat, and that is all that is required for them ; but if they do not have all they need, they soon sicken and die.

For a human being the difference between the mini- mum and the maximum of what he requires not only as regards food, but other necessities also is enor- mous. A man may live on wafers like the fasters, on a handful of rice like the Chinese, may go without food for forty days like Dr. Tanner, and preserve his health ; and he may swallow down enormous quantities of costly and nutritious food and drink, and besides this bodily sus- tenance he requires many things besides, which may wax to great proportions and be limited to very narrow ones.

In the second place, the ox in the stall cannot earn its own feed; while a man does earn his food, and that man whom we are proposing to feed is the chief earner of food, the very one who in the most difficult conditions earns what we are preparing to feed him with. To feed a muzhik is just the same as in springtime, when the grass is pushing and the cattle can already crop it, to keep the creatures in the stall and pull up this grass for them ; in other words, to deprive the herd of that enor- mous power of crop-gathering, and thereby ruin it.

Something analogous would happen with the muzhik if we proceeded to feed him in the same way, and he should believe in this.

The muzhik's budget does not meet the requirements there is a deficit, he has nothing to live on he must be fed.

Now, if you feed every average muzhik, not in a famine year, but in an ordinary year, when as in our localities, in these very localities where there is famine, often the grain from the allotted land will not last till Christmas, you will see that in ordinary years, according to the returns of the harvest, he will have nothing to live upon, and the deficit will be such that he will infallibly have to kill his cattle and have only one meal a day himself. Such is the budget of the average muzhik of the desti- tute there is nothing to be said ; but, lo ! he not only does not kill his cattle, but he has married off his son or his daughter, celebrated a festival, and smoked up five rubles' worth of tobacco.

Who has not seen conflagrations that cleaned every- thing up ? It would seem as if the sufferers were utterly ruined. Lo, and behold ! one is helped by a kinsman, an uncle; some one furnishes a jug, another takes a place as a laborer and another goes a-begging; much energy is put out, and lo ! within two years they are no worse off than they were before.

But how about emigrants, who go with their families, subsisting for years on their labor while lacking any definite place of settlement ? At one time I was occu- pied with the question of a former settlement of the Samara border. And it is a fact, which all the old inhabitants of Samara can substantiate, that the majority of the emigrants who were assisted as they came along the main traveled roads went to ruin and poverty, while the majority of the deserters reached their journey's end, and settled down successfully, and became rich. But how about landless peasants, household servants, soldiers' children ? All have been supported, and are supported, even in years when bread was higher than it is now. They say there is no work. But here are others who keep saying that they have work to offer, but there are no workmen. And the men who say this are just as correct, or just as incorrect, as those that complain that there is no work. I know definitely that proprietors have offered work but no laborers came ; that, to the work furnished by the forestry commission, so far, no laborers appeared ; and this is true also of other undertakings described in the newspapers.