THE PEASANTRY
It would be much more satisfactory to one's self to try and write a
_book_ about the peasantry of Russia, rather than attempt to say all
that one wants to say in a single chapter, for there could hardly be any
more interesting and promising people in the world than the peasant folk
of Russia. The future of the empire depends upon the development and
improvement of its agricultural population, as they form three-fourths,
according to the last census of three years ago, of its grand total of
over 171,000,000 souls. Russia thus leads in the white races in the
matter of population, and possesses that splendid asset, which Goldsmith
feels to be vital to a nation's advance and with which nothing else can
compare when lost:--
"Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied."
It is upon coming to write even briefly and in an impressionist kind of
way upon a class which forms the huge majority of Russia's population
that the vastness of her empire and the different conditions under which
her people live begin to be in some small degree apparent. It is no
wonder that thoroughly well-informed and experienced writers, who have
lived long and travelled far in the country and who are evidently quite
to be trusted, should yet write so differently.
[Illustration: _A Village Scene._]
One will write as if the Russian peasant was only a degree better in his
intelligence than the animals which share his filthy hovel, and no less
brutish in temperament and nature. Fearsome pictures are drawn in some
books I have read of the almost impossible conditions and indescribable
filth in which men, women, and children, fowls, pigs, horses, cattle,
and dogs herd together in a stifling atmosphere and sickening stench,
where to enter is out of the question unless one is to be covered with
vermin and contract some illness. All this may be true to the writer's
own experiences, and he can only write and describe things as he has
found them; but I too will do the same.
It is worth while to remember from the first that the lives of the
peasant population of Russia must be as different in summer and winter
as tropical heat is from arctic cold. In the winter all _must_ crowd in
together when the household is poor if life has to be preserved and
defended against that appalling cold, when the one condition of the
survival is warmth, or even heat. All outdoor occupation ceases, of
course, with the one exception, it may be, of cutting, stacking, and
carting wood. A peasant population, with a not very advanced
civilization as yet, and little education--only twenty per cent. of the
whole population can read and write--must, like the animal world,
hibernate, come as it were to a standstill, rest physically and
mentally, and prepare for the unremitting activities of the summer.
I remember once when staying in an inn at the top of an Alpine pass
being impressed with the extraordinary energy and vivacity of the head
waitress. She was simply untiring, always in good spirits, always at
hand when wanted, unfailing in her attentions; however late a guest was
up she was moving cheerfully about, however early one was down she was
down before him helping to get things ready. When I was leaving I said
to her, "I've been wondering when you get your rest?"
She smiled brightly, and said cheerfully, "In the winter, sir."
That's when the Russian peasant gets his rest also, and with the spring
he begins his energetic life of farming and agriculture, of carting and
labour. The long days are busy and all too short, the brief nights are
hardly more than an interval. The whole land is full of movement, the
air is full of song and music, the holidays marked by game and dance.
Nothing could be more unlike the bitter cold and gloom of Russia's long
and terrible winter than the glow, brilliance, joy, and never-ceasing
activities of her amazingly rich and life-giving summer. Her peasantry
must present the same contrasts in homes and seeming temperaments, and
two writers may therefore be widely asunder in their descriptions, and
yet both write truthfully of the things they have seen and known at
different times of the year.
To me the Russian peasant is, as to others who have known him at his
best, an amiable, attractive, intelligent, thoroughly good-natured and
altogether lovable creature. It is quite true that he can do, has done,
and may again do some perfectly appalling things, but it has been when
thoroughly worked up, as one of a crowd, and when every one else has
lost his head. Terrible things which were not allowed to be known in
Europe outside their frontiers, and now will probably never be known,
were done during the revolution of seven years ago. But the Russian
peasants are like children, as yet, and any one who knows and loves
children knows perfectly well also what they are capable of, if they
have any spirit in them, when thoroughly worked up, and when they too
have for the time being lost their head and feel capable of almost
anything that will hurt and pain and annoy. The peasants are in this, as
in many other things, like children.
As soon as the statistics of the Russian peasantry come to be examined a
startling fact comes to light. More than half their number--582 out of
every 1,000--die before they are five years old. This means, as in the
more inclement parts of our own country, that those who survive are a
hardy race, strong and virile. The mortality is greatest amongst male
children--over 600 out of every 1,000--and those, therefore, who do live
are strong enough for anything and of amazing vitality, as we have seen
in the present war.
Not only are they vigorous and strong in physique, however, but there is
nothing lacking in their intelligence, or Russia would not have the
charm and fascination she possesses. Probably no country in the world,
unless it be still agricultural France, can compare with Russia in the
character of its peasant industries or their importance as part of the
national revenue and resources. Probably the people will be stimulated
to greater industry in this direction by the removal of the _vodka_
temptation, and both cease to feel the desire for it and get something
in its place. Just as a man I once knew who was led to give up drink and
gambling at the same time, when wondering how he could possibly live
without them, had to change his house and remove to another with a
garden. There in gardening work he found his compensation, and at the
same time added to the resources of his household. Thus may it be in
Russia.[2]
The list of the Russian peasant industries is a long and interesting
one, but I won't take up time in enumerating them, as they can be found
in the _Russian Year Book_, or probably in most encyclopaedias. I may
perhaps mention a few which have especially interested and attracted me,
and will no doubt be brought before our own people in the Russian shops
and exhibitions which are almost certain to be opened before long, and
it must be remembered that I am speaking of peasant productions only.
There is the beautiful "drawn thread" work, lace-like in character, that
all my friends say is unlike anything to be found in our own country,
the making of which is promoted by the Princess Tenisheva and other
Russian ladies, as well as embroidered and worked linen of all
descriptions. Toys, and particularly large ornamental wooden spoons, of
all kinds are made in great quantities by village folk, and painted
boxes such as the Japanese make, but with Russian scenes upon them, in
delightful shades of colour, and with rich and brilliant lacquer inside
and out. Then there are hand-woven laces of different varieties, and,
above all, the Orenburg shawls, exquisitely dainty and so fine that the
largest of them will go through a wedding-ring, and yet warmer than
Shetland wool. These also are hand-woven, and come from the province of
Orenburg, just beyond the Urals.
Ironwork, again, is a speciality in Siberia, where they are said to be
the best iron-workers in the world, though a friend of mine to whom I
mentioned this, when I was showing him some perfectly wonderful and
artistic specimens which had been given to me when I first went to
Siberia, said, "That's because they have the best iron in the world."
The stone or gem-cutting industry is an important one. Furs, from sheep
and wolf-skins up to bears, as well as those of foxes, sables, elk, and
reindeer, and other animals, are perfectly dressed by the peasants for
their own use, as well as for sale. I have some exquisite work in
coloured silks upon hand-woven cloth which had never been out of the
tents where they were made till given to me, and above all I cherish a
silver box which had been made in a Kirghese _uerta_ or tent, far away
upon the steppes, and was given to me when I had had services there
after my long drive in the _tarantass_. It would hold about a hundred
cigarettes, and was given to me for that purpose, is oblong in shape,
with a lid of sloping sides, and is made from silver roubles hammered
out and ornamented with that beautiful damascening that is said to be a
lost art except for the peasants of the steppes. It is such a beautiful
bit of workmanship that any one looking at it would think it had come
out of a Bond Street silversmith's, until he turned it over and saw that
the bottom is a plain piece of iron, rough and unornamented. Let no one
think the Russian peasant unintelligent or unskilful or wanting in
dexterity or resource. The wonder to me is that, with the few advantages
and opportunities he has had, he is so capable, intelligent, and quick
to learn as he is. And what is important for us to remember is that he
loves to learn from an Englishman.
Then, again, we are told that he is brutish in temperament and of low
ideals, and never seems to rise above his squalid surroundings. I don't
agree that his surroundings _are_ squalid. Simple they are, without a
doubt, as the Canadian shack of three brothers I know is simple, and has
nothing in it but beds and tables and chairs, their boxes and
saddle-trees, etc., and all is bed and work, but it is not squalid. They
have been brought up in a good and refined home, and yet find nothing
incongruous in their present abode amongst the pine-woods.
That's what a Russian peasant's home is also, simple and yet attractive.
It is built of logs, the interstices well plastered up with moss and
clay to keep out all cold air, cool in summer and warm in winter by
reason of the thickness of these outer walls; and it usually has an
inner entrance or small room, before the large and chief living-room.
There will be two or more small square windows in the latter, an _ikon_
in a corner with a lamp before it and a shelf for flowers below--every
one on entering looks towards it, bowing reverently and making the sign
of the Cross--a very large stove of bricks, whitewashed, upon the top of
which rests a wide shelf, carried along the wall as far as is necessary
for the whole family to be able to find sleeping-space upon it. There
will also be a long wooden bench, a great table, a few wooden stools,
and a great cupboard, and, nearly always, cheap coloured pictures of the
Emperor and Empress, whose portraits are to be found in all shops, inns,
post offices, and places of public resort.
These are the simple surroundings described and made familiar to us by
all writers of Russian stories of which peasants form a part, and all
over the empire they are found just as Tolstoi, Dostoviesky, Turgenieff,
and others bring them before us in their interesting tales. Take for
example Tolstoi's _Where Love is there God is also_, _Master and Man_,
and other parables and tales. When Martin Avdeitch is looking out from
his small abode through his one small window upon the passers-by as
simply as man could do, and yet with shrewd and discerning eyes, he is
ready for the old pilgrim who comes into his life just at the right
moment, and shows him the way to God.
Or take Nikita in _Master and Man_, in the same volume. In some ways he
is extraordinarily simple, and does not appear to know how shamefully he
is being exploited by his avaricious and grasping master. We are told in
the story that he _does_ know even though he goes on as if he didn't,
and does his duty by him as if he were the best of masters, just as he
does by an unfaithful and unfeeling wife. It would be difficult to
imagine a peasant one would more love to know and understand than
Nikita, strong, capable, affectionate, and shrewd, as he comes running
before us in the story, to harness the horse for his master, the only
man on the place that day not drunk, talking to the little brown cob
which noses him affectionately, and in the end making a tremendous
struggle for his own and his master's life, and winning through himself.
Thus he goes on steadily as long as he lives, with no other thought but
that of duty, until he lies down beneath the _ikon_, and, with the wax
candle in his hand just as he had always wished, passes away at peace
with every living creature and with GOD.
There are no peasants like the Russians, or who think as they do. They
are young, one feels, and "The thoughts of youth are long, long
thoughts," and that is just what those who know them best find out.
A friend of mine told this story the other day at a meeting, at which we
both had to speak, and I am sure it will bear repetition. A _moujik_, or
peasant, was driving a German commercial traveller across the open
country, and in the course of their conversation together his companion
said to him:--
"Your countrymen are nothing but a lot of idolaters. You worship those
_ikons_ of yours, and bow down to them as the heathen do," and so on.
The _moujik_ was very indignant, and grumbled out his disapproval of all
this.
"Worship our _ikons_ indeed! We don't." And as they went driving on he
suddenly drew up, and, pointing to a tree, demanded of the astonished
traveller:--
"Do you mean to say that I would worship that tree?"
"No, no. Of course not! Drive on."
With a very disapproving grunt he drove on, and when they reached their
destination, where there was a painter at work upon an outside door, the
_moujik_, pointing to the paint-pot beside it, again demanded of the
traveller:--
"Would you say I could worship that paint?"
"No, certainly not! You could not be so silly."
"But yet you say I worship an _ikon_, which is only painted wood, and
can't see that I only use it to help me to worship GOD."
Let the reader reflect upon the way in which that peasant had been
thinking over the charge made against him of idolatry, thinking what
idolatry really was, and how far he felt himself from it. Let him try
and imagine how one of our own agricultural labourers would think over
such a subject if he were entering into conversation with us as he was
digging in our garden, or driving us in a farmer's cart to a country
station. I am writing this chapter in a quiet part of the country, and I
can't conceive of any of the labouring people here even approaching that
line of thought upon which the mind of that _moujik_ began at once to
move, though slowly enough no doubt, when he was told he was little
better than a worshipper of idols.
I read the other day in a book on Russia that the peasantry are very
dirty in person, and never wash; but again it must be borne in mind, as
another remarkably well-informed and sympathetic writer[3] says also:
"When people generalize about the intense misery of Russian peasants and
the squalor in which they live they should remember that Russia is a
large country, that it possesses a North and a South, an East and a
West, and that what is true about one place is quite untrue about
another." I shall be quite prepared, therefore, to be told by people who
know Russia far better than I can ever hope to do, that their experience
has been altogether different from my own, and I shall not dream of
questioning or doubting the truth of what they say as far as their own
experience goes.
In this vast area of which we are thinking there must indeed be great
varieties of experience and conditions of life, and it is not contrary
to what one might expect to find much nearer home, that the people of
one village may be clean in their habits and those of another quite the
reverse. But from all I have seen, heard, and read the Russian labouring
and peasant class have a great desire to be clean. Nor is this a new
thing at all in the national life. It is nearly forty years ago since
Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace told us, in the first edition of his work,
of the important part taken by the weekly vapour-bath in the life of the
Russian peasantry, and described "the public bath possessed by many
villages." How many villages of our own, even now, have a public bath?
And how many of our own peasantry dream of having what is a perfectly
ordinary and weekly habit of the Russians--the bath in his own house?
My Russian and Siberian friends tell me how they have always to arrange
for their domestic servants to get a good bath, before they change for
Sunday, every Saturday afternoon and evening. Mr. Rothay Reynolds says
the same: "My friend took me to see his bath-house. Russians are
exceedingly clean. In villages one may see a row of twenty cottages,
and, thirty yards from them, a row of twenty bath-houses. The one the
peasant showed me was a hut with a stove intended to heat the great
stones placed above it. On bath nights the stove is lit, and when the
stones are hot a bucket of water is thrown on them, so that the place is
filled with steam. The bather lies on a bench in the suffocating
atmosphere, soaps himself, and ends his ablutions with ice-cold water.
In town and country it is held to be a religious duty to take a
steam-bath once a week. Servants ask if they can go out for a couple of
hours to visit one of the great baths in the cities. They go away with
clean linen bound up in a handkerchief, and return shining with
cleanliness. Admission to the cheapest part of a steam-bath is usually a
penny farthing, but in the great towns there are luxurious
establishments frequented by the rich."
There is another custom connected with the bath which testifies to the
hardy character of the Russian _moujik_. They often rush straight out of
the almost suffocatingly hot bath which they have been taking _inside_
the huge earthenware oven that they all possess and, naked and steaming,
roll themselves contentedly and luxuriously in the snow. This, as a
writer has well said, "aptly illustrates a common Russian proverb which
says that what is health to the Russian is death to the German"--a
proverb which has had striking illustration again and again this very
winter. Probably some of my readers saw the account of the arrival at
the Russian front, soon after war began, of the bath-train which was so
completely furnished and arranged that two thousand men could have a
clean bath during the day or twelve thousand in the course of the week.
No doubt others have followed since then.
The bath to the Russian has a certain religious significance also, as in
Moslem countries; "and no good orthodox peasant," I have read, "would
dare to enter a church after being soiled with certain kinds of
pollution without cleansing himself physically and morally by means of
the bath." "Cleanliness is next to godliness" is not a bad motto for any
people, and possibly Russians will like to know that we have an order of
knighthood which dates from 1398, and is named "The Most Honourable
Order of the Bath," and mentioned regularly in the services at
Westminster Abbey.
A great sense of initiative and personal responsibility, as well as
corporate spirit at the same time, is clearly given early in life to the
peasant mind in Russia, for nowhere, I fancy, in the world, except in
countries where primitive ideas and customs still obtain, is there the
same standard of village life and self-government. There are two kinds
of communities. First, there is the village community with its Assembly
or _Mir_, under the presidency of the _Staroshta_, who is elected by the
village. He presides over the Assembly, which regulates the whole life
of the village, distributes the land of the commune, decides how and
when the working of the land has to be done; and it is specially
interesting to know that in this most remarkable and exceptional village
government of the _Mir_ all women who permanently and temporarily are
heads of houses are expected to attend its meetings and to vote--no one
ever dreams of questioning their right to do so.
In addition to the village assembly and chief elder there is also the
"Cantonal" Assembly, consisting of several village communities together,
meeting also under the presidency of a chief elder. All this is, of
course, a development of family life where exactly the same ideas of
corporate duty in its members, and responsibilities in its head, are
held.
It is evident that Russia has a great future if this view of
self-government is gradually carried upwards. The right beginning in
constitutional government, surely, is in the family, for there we find
the social unit. A state is not a collection or aggregate of
individuals, but of families, and all history shows us that the
greatness or insignificance of a country has always been determined by
the condition of its homes and the character of its family life. If from
the family, village, and commune Russian constitutionalists work slowly
and carefully upwards, giving freedom to make opinions and convictions
felt in the votes, just as responsibility is understood and met in the
home, until one comes to the head of it all in "The Little Father"; and
if he really rules--or administers rather, for no true father rules
only--just as any good father would do, Russia the autocratic and
despotic, associated in the minds of so many with arbitrary law in the
interests of a few, enforced by the knout and prison-chain, may yet give
the world a high standard of what the government of a free and
self-respecting people ought to be.
I should doubt if any peasantry in the world live so simply and frugally
or, as they say in the North of England, "thrive so well on it," as the
Russians. The men are of huge stature, and their wives are strong,
comely, and wholesome-looking also. Their boys and girls are sturdy,
vigorous, and full of life; and yet how bare the table looks at the
daily meal, how frugal the fare and small the quantity! It has been the
greatest joy to me to have Russian boys and girls, in out-of-the-way
places, to share my sandwiches or tongue or other tinned meats, when
stopping at a rest-house, and see their eyes shine at the unexpected and
unusual treat.
Black rye-bread and cabbage-soup form the staple food of a peasant
family, while meat of any kind is rarely seen. The many and rigorous
fasts of the Church make very little difference to the quality of the
food, but only to its quantity. The thanks given by guests to their host
and hostess, _Spasibo za kleb za sol_, "Thanks for bread and salt," tell
their own story of a bare and simple diet. Many of us have read in _The
Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem_ of the sacks of black and hard crusts the
peasants take with them, which quite content them.
What a tremendous difference it must have made this winter in the
Russian food transport from the base to the front, to know that, if a
serious breakdown took place, or a hurried march was ordered with which
it was difficult for them to keep up, and the worst came to the worst,
the men would have their crusts. It has been said in years gone by, and
may be true still in many places, that the Russian peasant's ideas of
Paradise is a life in which he would have enough black bread to eat.
This bare subsistence and monotonous diet, perhaps, is responsible for the
break-out from time to time when the attraction of _vodka_ is too strong
to be resisted in a life in which there are no counter-attractions.
Counter-attractions there ought to be for a being who is created not for
work alone, but for that recreation which, as its very name betokens, his
whole nature needs if he is to do his best work. "There is a time to work
and a time to play," says the proverb writer; and if we hold that in
school life "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," we can hardly
wonder that, the world over, those for whom work is provided and play
refused will seek, as they have ever done, to make up for its absence by
the exhilaration of stimulating and intoxicating drinks. It is when
writing upon the drunkenness to be seen at every Russian village holiday
that one whom I have often quoted in this book,[4] truly says, "As a whole
a village fete in Russia is a saddening spectacle. It affords a new
proof--where, alas! no proof was required--that we northern nations who
know so well how to work have not yet learnt the art of amusing
ourselves."
As an instance of the real and natural friendliness and essential good
nature of the Russian, I may say that even when drunk I have never seen
or heard of men quarrelling. They do not gradually begin to dispute and
recriminate and come to blows or draw the knife, as some of the more
hot-blooded people of the South do, when wine excites or spirits cheer
them. They seem to become more and more affectionate until they begin to
kiss each other, and may be seen thus embracing and rolling over and
over together like terriers in the snow. If wine unlooses the tongue,
and brings out what is usually hidden away beneath the surface, it
evidently brings out nothing very evil from the inner life of the
Russian peasant.
In time to come, if all's well, Russia is to be opened up to the
traveller, and everywhere the British tourists will be welcomed, and
even though the beaten track of the railway may never be left there will
be abundant opportunities for observing the habits and customs of the
people. A modern writer who, apparently, in passing through Siberia
never went far from the railway, though he probably stayed for some time
at different places on the way, and sat in third and fourth-class
carriages even if he did not actually travel in them, managed to see a
great deal of peasant life. The railway train is open from end to end,
and a great deal may be learnt thus about the people while merely
passing through. There are also the long waits at the stations where
there are invariably interesting groups of the most romantic and
picturesque character--the women vivacious and full of conversation,
while the men stand more stolidly by, always making one long to speak
and understand their language and to know more about them.
There is a story of Mr. Maurice Baring's which illustrates what I have
already said of the way in which the Russian peasant mind begins to move
freely, independently, and responsibly upon lines undreamed of by those
who may be addressing him, and shows how far he is from receiving merely
conventional and stereotyped impressions, but is always ready to think
for himself. Mr. Baring considers it an instance of his common sense.
The reader may also have his own ideas of what it illustrates, but the
story is this:--
"A Socialist arrived in a village to convert the inhabitants to
Socialism. He wanted to prove that all men were equal, and that the
government authorities had no right to their authority. Consequently he
thought he would begin by disproving the existence of GOD, because if
he proved that there was no GOD it would naturally follow that there
should be no Emperor and no policemen. So he took a holy _ikon_ and
said, 'There is no GOD, and I will prove it immediately. I will spit
upon this _ikon_ and break it to bits, and if there is a GOD He will
send fire from heaven and kill me, and if there is no GOD nothing will
happen to me at all.' Then he took the _ikon_ and spat upon it and broke
it to bits, and said to the peasants, 'You see GOD has not killed me.'
'No,' said the peasants, 'GOD has not killed you, but we will'; and they
killed him."
It is not difficult to imagine that closing scene, knowing Russia. There
would be no excitement, but all would be quickly and effectually done.
The same writer draws our attention to Turgenieff's wonderfully
appealing sketches of country life, though not many of his works have
been translated for English readers as yet. He alludes especially in an
essay of last year on "The Fascination of Russia" to his description of
the summer night, when on the plain the children tell each other bogey
stories; or the description of that July evening, when out of the
twilight from a long way off a voice is heard calling, "Antropk-a-a-a!"
and Antropka answers, "Wha-a-a-at?" and far away out of the immensity
comes the answering voice, "Come home, because daddy wants to whip you!"
Perhaps the reader may _feel_ nothing as he reads, but all who know and
love Russia, and are stirred by thoughts of its life and people will
feel that it was abundantly worth while to write down such a simple
incident. They will understand and feel that stirring within, which
Russia never fails to achieve again and again for those who have once
lived and moved amongst her peasantry, and come under her strange spell
and felt her charm.
Gogol, the greatest of Russian humorists, has a passage in one of his
books, where, in exile, he cries out to his country to reveal the secret
of her fascination:--
"'What is the mysterious and inscrutable power which lies hidden in
you?'" he exclaims. "'Why does your aching and melancholy song echo
unceasingly in one's ears? Russia, what do you want of me? What is there
between you and me?' This question has often been repeated not only by
Russians in exile, but by others who have merely lived in Russia.
"There are none of those spots where nature, art, time, and history have
combined to catch the heart with a charm in which beauty, association,
and even decay are indistinguishably mingled; where art has added the
picturesque to the beauty of nature; and where time has made magic the
handiwork of art; and where history has peopled the spot with countless
phantoms, and cast over everything the strangeness and glamour of her
spell.
"Such places you will find in France and in England, all over Italy, in
Spain and in Greece, but not in Russia.
"A country of long winters and fierce summers, of rolling plains,
uninterrupted by mountains and unvariegated by valleys.
"And yet the charm is there. It is a fact which is felt by quantities of
people of different nationalities and races; and it is difficult if you
live in Russia to escape it; and once you have felt it you will never be
free from it. The aching melancholy song which, Gogol says, wanders from
sea to sea throughout the length and breadth of the land, will for ever
echo in your heart and haunt the recesses of your memory."[5]
[Illustration: _The Metropolitan of Moscow._]
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Just as I go to press Mr. Lloyd George has told the House of Commons
that productivity is already increased 30 per cent. in Russia.
[3] The Hon. Maurice Baring.
[4] Wallace, _Russia_, vol. i, p. 129.
[5] _Russian Review_ for February, 1914.