IN THE COUNTRY
SOSNOFKA, GOVERNMENT OF TAMBOV,
_March 25th_.
When one has seen a thing which had hitherto been vaguely familiar
suddenly illuminated by a flood of light, making it real, living, and
vivid, it is difficult to recall one’s old state of mind before the
inrush of the illuminating flood; and still more difficult to discuss
that thing with people who have not had the opportunity of illumination.
The experience is similar to that which a child feels when, after having
worshipped a certain writer of novels or tales, and wondered why he was
not acknowledged by the whole world to be the greatest author that has
ever been, he grows up, and by reading other books, sees the old
favourite in a new light, the light of fresh horizons opened by great
masterpieces; in this new light the old favourite seems to be a sorry
enough impostor, his golden glamour has faded to tinsel. The grown-up
child will now with difficulty try to discover what was the cause and
secret of his old infatuation, and every now and then he will receive a
shock on hearing some fellow grown-up person talk of the former idol in
the same terms as he would have talked of him when a child, the reason
being that this second person has never got farther; has never reached
the illuminating light of new horizons. So it is with many things; and
so it is in my case with Russia. I find it extremely difficult to recall
exactly what I thought Russia was before I had been there; and I find
Russia difficult to describe to those who have never been there. There
is so much when one has been there that becomes so soon a matter of
course that it no longer strikes one, but which to the newcomer is
probably striking.
The first time I came to Russia I travelled straight to the small
village where I am now staying. What did I imagine Russia to be like?
All I can think of now is that there was a big blank in my mind. I had
read translations of Russian books, but they had left no definite
picture or landscape in my mind; I had read some books about Russia and
got from them very definite pictures of a fantastic country, which
proved to be curiously unlike Russia in every respect. A country where
feudal castles, Pevenseys and Hurstmonceuxs, loomed in a kind of
Rhine-land covered with snow, inhabited by mute, inglorious Bismarcks,
and Princesses who carried about dynamite in their cigarette-cases and
wore bombs in their tiaras; Princesses who owed much of their being to
Ouida, and some of it to Sardou.
Then everything in these books was so gloriously managed; everybody was
so efficient, so powerful; the Bismarcks so Machiavellian and so mighty;
the Princesses so _splendide mendaces_. The background was also
gorgeous, barbaric, crowded with Tartars and Circassians, blazing with
scimitars, pennons, armour, and sequins, like a scene in a Drury Lane
pantomime; and every now and then a fugitive household would gallop in
the snow through a primæval forest, throwing their children to the
wolves, so as to escape being devoured themselves. This, I think, was
the impression of Russia which I derived before I went there from
reading French and English fiction about Russia, from Jules Verne’s
“Michel Strogoff,” and from memories of many melodramas. Then came the
impressions received from reading Russian books, which were again
totally different from this melodramatic atmosphere.
From Russian novels I derived a clear idea of certain types of men who
drank tea out of a samovar and drove forty versts in a vehicle called a
_Tarantass_. I made the acquaintance of all kinds of people, who were as
real to me as living acquaintances; of Natascha and Levine, and Pierre
and Anna Karenine, and Basaroff, and Dolly, and many others. But I never
saw their setting clearly, I never realised their background, and I used
to see them move before a French or German background. Then I saw the
real thing, and it was utterly and totally different from my
imaginations and my expectations. But now when I try to give the
slightest sketch of what the country is really like the old difficulty
presents itself; the difficulty which arises from talking of a thing of
which one has a clear idea to people who have a vague and probably false
idea of the reality. The first thing one can safely say is this:
eliminate all notions of castles, Rhine country, feudal keeps, and stone
houses in general. Think of an endless plain, a sheet of dazzling snow
in winter, an ocean of golden corn in summer, a tract of brown earth in
autumn, and now in the earliest days of spring an expanse of white
melting snow, with great patches of brown earth and sometimes green
grass appearing at intervals, and further patches of half-melted snow of
a steely-grey colour, sometimes blue as they catch the reflection of the
dazzling sky in the sunlight. In the distance on one side the plain
stretches to infinity, on the other you may see the delicate shapes of a
brown, leafless wood, the outlines soft in the haze. If I had to
describe Russia in three words I should say a plain, a windmill, and a
church. The church is made of wood, and is built in Byzantine style,
with a small cupola and a minaret. It is painted red and white, or white
and pale-green. Sometimes the cupola is gilt.
The plain is dotted with villages, and one village is very like another.
They consist generally of two rows of houses, forming what does duty for
a street, but the word street would be as misleading as possible in this
case. It would be more exact to say an exceedingly broad expanse of
earth: dusty in summer, and in spring and autumn a swamp of deep soaking
black mud. The houses, at irregular intervals, sometimes huddled close
together, sometimes with wide gaps between them, succeed each other (the
gaps probably caused by the fact that the houses which were there have
been burnt). They are made of logs, thatched with straw; sometimes (but
rarely) they are made of bricks and roofed with iron. As a rule they
look as if they had been built by Robinson Crusoe. The road is strewn
with straw and rich in abundance of every kind of mess. Every now and
then there is a well of the primitive kind which we see on the banks of
the Nile, and which one imagines to be of the same pattern as those from
which the people in the Old Testament drew their water. The roads are
generally peopled with peasants driving at a leisurely walk in winter in
big wooden sledges and in summer in big wooden carts. Often the cart is
going on by itself with somebody in the extreme distance every now and
then grunting at the horse. A plain, a village, a church, every now and
then a wood of birch-trees, every now and then a stream, a weir, and a
broken-down lock. A great deal of dirt, a great deal of moisture. An
overwhelming feeling of space and leisureliness, a sense that nothing
you could say or do could possibly hurry anybody or anything, or make
the lazy, creaking wheels of life go faster—that is, I think, the
picture which arises first in my mind when I think of the Russian
country.
Then as to the people. With regard to these, there is one fact of
capital importance which must be borne in mind. The people if you know
the language and if you don’t are two separate things. The first time I
went to Russia I did not know a word of the language, and, though
certain facts were obvious with regard to the people, I found it a
vastly different thing when I could talk to them myself. So different
that I am persuaded that those who wish to study this country and do not
know the language are wasting their time, and might with greater profit
study the suburbs of London or the Isle of Man. And here again a fresh
difficulty arises. All the amusing things one hears said in this
country, all that is characteristic and smells of the Russian land, all
that is peculiarly Russian, is like everything which is peculiarly
anything, peculiarly English, Irish, Italian, or Turkish,
untranslatable, and loses all its savour and point in translation. This
is especially true with regard to the Russian language, which is rich in
peculiar phrases and locutions, diminutives, and terms which range over
a whole scale of delicate shades of endearment and familiarity, such as
“little pigeon,” “little father,” &c., and these phrases translated into
any other language lose all their meaning. However, the main impression
I received when I first came to Russia, and the impression which I
received from the Russian soldiers with whom I mingled in Manchuria in
the war, the impression which is now the strongest with regard to them
is that of _humaneness_. Those who read in the newspapers of acts of
brutality and ferocity, of houses set on fire and pillaged, of huge
massacres of Jews, of ruthless executions and arbitrary imprisonments,
will rub their eyes perhaps and think that I must be insane. It is true,
nevertheless. A country which is in a state of revolution is no more in
its normal condition than a man when he is intoxicated. If a man is
soaked in alcohol and then murders his wife and children and sets his
house on fire, it does not necessarily prove that he is not a humane
member of society. He may be as gentle as a dormouse and as timid as a
hare by nature. His excitement and demented behaviour are merely
artificial. It seems to me now that the whole of Russia at this moment
is like an intoxicated man; a man inebriated after starvation, and
passing from fits of frenzy to sullen stupor. The truth of this has been
illustrated by things which have lately occurred in the country.
Peasants who have looted the spirit stores and destroyed every house
within reach have repented with tears on the next day.
The peasants have an infinite capacity for pity and remorse, and
therefore the more violent their outbreaks of fury the more bitter is
their remorse. A peasant has been known to worry himself almost to
death, as if he had committed a terrible crime, because he had smoked a
cigarette before receiving the Blessed Sacrament. If they can feel acute
remorse for such things, much more acute will it be if they set houses
on fire or commit similar outrages. If you talk to a peasant for two
minutes you will notice that he has a fervent belief in a great, good,
and inscrutable Providence. He never accuses man of the calamities to
which flesh is heir. When the railway strike was at its height, and we
were held up at a small side station, the train attendant repeated all
day long that God had sent us a severe trial, which He had. Yesterday I
had a talk with a man who had returned from the war; he had been a
soldier and a surgeon’s assistant, and had received the Cross of St.
George for rescuing a wounded officer under fire. I asked him if he had
been wounded. He said, “No, my clothes were not even touched; men all
around me were wounded. This was the ordinance of God. God had pity on
the orphan’s tears. It was all prearranged thus that I was to come home.
So it was to be.” I also had tea with a stonemason yesterday who said to
me, “I and my whole family have prayed for you in your absence because
these are times of trouble, and we did not know what bitter cup you
might not have to drink.” Then he gave me three new-laid eggs with which
to eat his very good health.
_March 29th._
To-day I went out riding through the leafless woods and I saw one of the
most beautiful sights I have ever seen, a sight peculiarly
characteristic of Russian landscape. We passed a small river that up to
now has been frozen, but the thaw has come and with it the floods of
spring. The whole valley as seen from the higher slopes of the woods was
a sheet of shining water. Beyond it in the distance was a line of
dark-brown woods. The water was grey, with gleaming layers in it
reflecting the white clouds and the blue sky; and on it the bare trees
seemed to float and rise like delicate ghosts, casting clearly defined
brown reflections. The whole place had a look of magic and enchantment
about it, as if out of the elements of the winter, out of the snow and
the ice and the leafless boughs, the spring had devised and evoked a
silvery pageant to celebrate its resurrection.
MOSCOW, _April 6th_.
I have spent twelve instructive days in the country; instructive,
because I was able to obtain some first-hand glimpses into the state of
the country, into the actual frame of mind of the peasants; and the
peasants are the obscure and hidden factor which will ultimately decide
the fate of Russian political life. It is difficult to get at the
peasants; it is exceedingly difficult to get them to speak their mind.
You can do so by travelling with them in a third-class carriage, because
then they seem to regard one as a fleeting shadow of no significance
which will soon vanish into space. However, I saw peasants; I heard them
discuss the land question and the manner in which they proposed to buy
their landlords’ property. I also had some interesting talks with a man
who had lived among the peasants for years. From him and from others I
gathered that their attitude at present was chiefly one of expectation.
They are waiting to see how things turn out. They were continually
asking my chief informant whether anything would come of the “levelling”
(_Ravnienie_); this is, it appears, what they call the revolutionary
movement. It is extremely significant that they look upon this as a
process of equalisation. The land question in Russia is hopelessly
complicated; it is about ten times as complicated as the land question
in Ireland, and of the same nature. I had glimpses of this complexity.
The village where I was staying was divided into four “societies”; each
of these societies was willing to purchase so much land, but when the
matter was definitely settled with regard to one society two
representatives of two-thirds of that society appeared and stated that
they were “Old Souls” (_i.e._, they had since the abolition of serfage a
separate arrangement), and wished to purchase the lands separately in
order to avoid its partition; upon which the representatives of the
whole society said that this was impossible, and that they were the
majority. The “Old Souls” retorted finally that a general meeting should
be held, and then it would be seen that the majority was in favour of
them. They were in a minority; and in spite of the speciousness of their
arguments it was difficult to see how the majority, whose interests were
contrary to those of the “Old Souls,” could be persuaded to support
them. This is only one instance out of many.
Another element of complication is that the peasants who can earn their
living by working on the landlords’ land are naturally greatly averse
from anything like a complete sale of it, and are alarmed by the
possibility of such an idea. Also there is a class of peasants who work
in factories, and therefore are only interested in the land inasmuch as
profit can be derived from it while it belongs to the landlord. Again,
there are others who are without land, who need land, and who are too
poor to buy it. If all the land were given to them as a present
to-morrow the result in the long run would be deplorable, because the
quality of the land—once you eliminate the landlord and his more
advanced methods—would gradually deteriorate and poverty would merely be
spread over a larger area. One fact is obvious: that many of the
peasants have not got enough land, and to them land is now being sold by
a great number of landlords. To settle the matter further, a radical
scheme of agrarian reform is necessary; many such schemes are being
elaborated at this moment, but those which have seen the light up to the
present have so far proved a source of universal disagreement. The fact
which lies at the root of the matter is of course that if the land
question is to be solved the peasant must be educated to adopt fresher
methods of agriculture than those which were employed in the Garden of
Eden; methods which were doubtless excellent until the fall of man
rendered the cultivation of the soil a matter of painful duty, instead
of pleasant recreation.
I asked my friend who had lived among the peasants and studied them for
years what they thought of things in general. He said that in this
village they had never been inclined to loot (looting can always arise
from the gathering together of six drunken men), that they are perfectly
conscious of what is happening (my friend is one of the most impartial
and fair-minded men alive); they are distrustful and they say little;
but they _know_. As we were talking of these things I mentioned the fact
that a statement I had made in print about the peasants in this village
and in Russia generally reading Milton’s “Paradise Lost” had been
received with interest in England and in some quarters with incredulity.
It was in this very village and from the same friend, who had been a
teacher there for more than twenty years, that I first heard of this. It
was afterwards confirmed by my own experience.
“Who denies it?” he asked. “Russians or Englishmen?” “Englishmen,” I
answered. “But why?” he said. “I have only read it myself once long ago,
but I should have thought that it was obvious that such a work would be
likely to make a strong impression.”
I explained that at first sight it appeared to Englishmen incredible
that Russian peasants, who were known to be so backward in many things,
should have taken a fancy to a work which was considered as a touchstone
of rare literary taste in England. I alluded to the difficulties of the
classicism of the style—the scholarly quality of the verse.
“But is it written in verse?” he asked. And when I explained to him that
“Paradise Lost” was as literary a work as the Æneid he perfectly
understood the incredulity of the English public. As a matter of fact,
it is not at all difficult to understand and even to explain why the
Russian peasant likes “Paradise Lost.” It is popular in exactly the same
way as Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” has always been popular in England.
Was it not Dr. Johnson who said that Bunyan’s work was great because,
while it appealed to the most refined critical palate, it was understood
and enjoyed by the simplest of men, by babes and sucklings? This remark
applies to the case of “Paradise Lost” and the Russian peasant. The fact
therefore is not surprising, as would be, for instance, the admiration
of Tommy Atkins for a translation of Lucretius. It is no more and no
less surprising than the popularity of Bunyan or of any epic story or
fairy tale. When people laugh and say that these tastes are the
inventions of essayists they forget that the epics of the world were the
supply resulting from the demand caused by the deeply-rooted desire of
human nature for stories—long stories of heroic deeds in verse; the
further you go back the more plainly this demand and supply is manifest.
Therefore in Russia among the peasants, a great many of whom cannot
read, the desire for epics is strong at this moment. And those who can
read prefer an epic tale to a modern novel.
Besides this, “Paradise Lost” appeals to the peasants because it is not
only epic, full of fantasy and episode, but also because it is
religious, and, like children, they prefer a story to be true. In
countries where few people read or write, memory flourishes, and in
Russian villages there are regular tellers of fairy tales (_skashi_) who
hand down from generation to generation fairy tales of incredible length
in prose and in verse.
But to return to my friend the schoolmaster. I asked him if “Paradise
Lost” was still popular in the village. “Yes,” he answered, “they come
and ask me for it every year. Unfortunately,” he added, “I may not have
it in the school library as it is not on the list of books which are
allowed by the censor. It is not forbidden; but it is not on the
official list of books for school use.” Then he said that after all his
experience the taste of the peasants in literature baffled him. “They
will not read modern stories,” he said. “When I ask them why they like
‘Paradise Lost’ they point to their heart and say, ‘It is near to the
heart; it speaks; you read and a sweetness comes to you.’ Gogol they do
not like. On the other hand they ask for a strange book of adventures,
about a Count or a Baron.” “Baron Munchausen?” I suggested. “No,” he
said, “a Count.” “Not Monte Cristo?” I asked. “Yes,” he said, “that is
it. And what baffles me more than all is that they like Dostoievski’s
‘Letters from a Dead House.’” (Dostoievski’s record of his life in
prison in Siberia.) Their taste does not to me personally seem to be so
baffling. As for Dostoievski’s book, I am certain they recognise its
great truth, and they feel the sweetness and simplicity of the writer’s
character, and this “speaks” to them also. As for “Monte Cristo,” is not
the beginning of it epical? It was a mistake, he said, to suppose the
peasants were unimaginative. Sometimes this was manifested in a curious
manner. There was a peasant who was well known as a great drunkard. In
one of his fits of drink he imagined that he had sold his wife to the
“Tzar of Turkey,” and that at midnight her head must be cut off. As the
hour drew near he wept bitterly, said goodbye to his wife, and fetching
an axe said with much lamentation that this terrible deed had to be done
because he had promised her life to the “Tzar of Turkey.” The neighbours
eventually interfered and stopped the execution.
When one is searching for curious types it generally happens that you
find one under your very nose. This was my case the other day. There is
in the village another school which has lately been built for the
factory children by the Government. I strolled into it and was received
by a young schoolmaster with long black hair who was conducting, in the
same room, three separate classes of children of different ages, to
which he was respectively and simultaneously teaching reading, writing,
and arithmetic (_i.e._, reading to one class, writing to the second, and
arithmetic to the third). In the interval between two lessons he took me
into his room and talked. His room was next to the schoolroom. It was
like the school, made of oak boards, neither papered nor carpeted. There
was no furniture in his sitting-room, except a tiny table and a stool,
and in a further room no furniture at all except a violin on the floor.
The Government had given the wood with which to build the school, he
said; and when it arrived the peasants whose children were to go to the
school had begun to saw and build, and then had refused to go on with
the work. However, it was eventually built. “Who supports it?” I asked.
“Well,” he answered, “at present the Government have no funds for
schools, and the peasants refuse to pay for it, so I have to support it
myself. The expenses are not great.” His salary consists of £36 a year,
out of which he supplies the school-books and paper, pens, &c. He seemed
to like his work and to take a great interest in the peasants. “The
factory peasants are far more developed than the ordinary peasants,” he
said. “Some of them take an interest in astronomy. But the peasants are
dark people, difficult to get to know, and infinitely cunning.” “Do you
play the violin?” I asked, pointing to the violin case. “Yes,” he
answered, “but I don’t know how I play.” I have never seen so poignant a
symbol of loneliness and the absence of the comforts of life as this
young schoolmaster in his bare wooden room. He seemed, however,
perfectly cheerful, and said that his present situation was a great
improvement on the last one, which had been a mastership in a school
near Morshansk, where he slept in the same room as forty other people,
and where in winter the atmosphere was so thick at night that they had
to open the door. To this the bare room with the violin on the floor
seemed indeed preferable.