ENGLAND AND THE GREAT FAMINE IN RUSSIA
My Russian Home--The Horrors of Famine--The Peasants' Heroism--Starving
yet Patient--The Society of Friends--I am Invited to
Meeting--Magnificent Munificence--Among the Starving--Terrible
Hardships--Some Illustrations--The Stoical Russian--Cinder Bread
The Tamboff Steppes have a great fascination for me. I was always very
happy at Novo Alexandrofka, our country home. It possesses the
beautiful church built by my son. Then I have there my two other
attractions, the two splendid schools, each capable of accommodating
over one hundred pupils, that for boys being called St. John's, after
my husband's patron saint; and the girls' school, of which I am
directress, is called St. Olga's. My son and I were always ardent
believers in the importance of education, for in it lies the whole of
the world. Good teachers are necessary above all, and bad schools do
more harm by their existence than no schools at all, and there is
nothing more wonderful or beautiful in Russia than to see the
passionate eagerness of the peasants to have their children educated.
I am happy to say that, thanks to our excellent teachers and the
principal director, a very superior priest of our church, all our
examinations have resulted in very fruitful success.
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At Novo Alexandrofka, my husband, my mother, my brother, Alexander
Kiréeff, my son (the founder of the church) Alexander Novikoff--are
already in the family vault. The last addition will be myself, and
then the vault shall be definitely closed.
Some ten years ago when I was present at the final examination of the
girls, no less than nineteen fulfilled the requirements of the Tamboff
Education Committee, and were all qualified to become school-teachers.
Since then we have had only excellent results of our schools.
The most unhappy time I ever spent at my home was during the terrible
famine in Russia in 1892. I could not remain in England while my
country was suffering so. I felt that my place was at Tamboff, and I
accordingly left a land of plenty for poor, desolate Russia. I
remember only too vividly those terrible days of famine. At one time
my son Alexander had under his charge no less than 33,000 men, women
and children, all depending upon him to find them food.
I call to mind one terrible day that brought from Alexander this tragic
telegram: "Funds exhausted, send me something, position indescribable."
It was terrible, tragic.
All the work done by the Relief Committees was voluntary. The Grand
Duchess Constantine fed 2000 people a day.
Even in those days we strove to guard against reckless charitable
effort, which can only have a demoralising influence. I call to mind
one person who insisted on his name being unknown, offered my son 1000
roubles to be spent in providing food {126} for the inhabitants of a
certain village on the condition that the amount were regarded only as
a loan, which should be repaid and subsequently spent on that same
village for educational purposes. This donor was doubly a donor by the
proviso he made.
It was a tragedy to see splendid men in the prime of their lives,
walking about with stony faces and hollow eyes. With them were women
clothed only in wretched rags, and little children shivering in the
cold wind. They would crowd round the relief parties, which drove
about in sledges, holding out their hands saying:
"We have sold our last horses, cows and sheep, we have pawned all our
winter clothing; we have nothing left to sell. We eat but once a day,
stewed cabbage and stewed pumpkin, and many of us have not eaten that."
This was true. There were some among them who had not tasted food for
days. It was agonising to hear these poor people pleading to us for
mercy lest they die of starvation. As they spoke in dull voices, tears
would spring up into the eyes of strong men and course slowly down
their cheeks into their rough beards; but there were no complaints, no
cries, just the slow, monotonous chant, broken by the sobs of worn-out
mothers and the cries of hungry children.
We had neither wood nor coal, only straw and the refuse of stables, for
fuel. The Volga was frozen, and in some provinces corn was absolutely
unprocurable.
[Illustration: MY SON. ALEXANDER NOVIKOFF]
In that great calamity the help given by the English Society of Friends
was very remarkable. {127} After some preliminary enquiry, I was
invited to attend a Committee Meeting. There were, I think, between
twenty and thirty present, and I was the only woman. A series of
questions was addressed to me about the state of things in Russia. I
exaggerated nothing. I concealed nothing. I told them that an
unforeseen blow had befallen sixteen of our provinces and found us
unprepared to combat its effects. My son, Alexander Novikoff, was just
organising a committee in the district of Kazloff (Tamboff province),
and, thanks to him, I knew the question fairly well. "The Friends"
listened attentively, but said very little. Mr. Braithwaite, the
chairman, only expressed a hope that "God will help our efforts."
Nothing more: but without losing a day they went to work, and worked
splendidly. They not only collected about £40,000, but sent their
delegates--Mr. Edmond Brookes and Mr. William Fox--to distribute their
help on the spot amongst the famine-stricken peasantry.
Do you know one of the results of such practical application of
sympathy?
It is now generally admitted in my country that unofficial Englishmen
are "kind and generous," and, when left to their own true nature, are
capable of being friends deserving trust and confidence.
I also received, quite unsolicited, liberal subscriptions from friends
in the City, which enabled me to send without delay much needed relief
to the starving peasants in my district of Tamboff. The "English
bread," as they called it, is remembered and spoken of even now.
Perhaps the best description of that terrible {128} famine, and of the
efforts to relieve it, is that recorded in an interview with me by the
representative of _The Week's News_, which I therefore transcribe, the
more so because that enterprising journal sent out a special Commission
to our famine districts to report upon the situation there. Here is
the interview:
"NOVO ALEXANDROFKA,
"12_th February_, 1892.
"A beautiful night drive across the snow from Bogojawlensky brought me
to Madame Olga Novikoff's estate during Wednesday night. The
thermometer stood at 36 degs. Fahrenheit below freezing point, yet the
air was so calm that the cold was scarcely noticeable. A heavy hoar
frost covered the trees, and the slight mist gave a weird aspect to the
desert of snow that stretched away on every side. Without a house on
the horizon to direct him, the _jamschick_ drove out into the night,
and the sledge glided along over the crackling snow.
"Mr. Alexander Novikoff, the son of Madame Olga Novikoff, was at Novo
Alexandrofka to welcome me, and put me in a position to judge of the
state of things in his district of the Tambov Government. He is Zemski
Natchalnick, and very popular amongst the peasants whose little
differences he has to judge.
"In the early morning we started off to visit the hospital in the
village of Tooriévo. After all that has been said of the condition of
Russian hospitals at this moment I was agreeably surprised, both at the
cleanliness and the absence of patients whose {129} illnesses might be
directly attributed to the famine. I, however, found there the first
case of hunger typhus that I have seen, and learned from the surgeon,
Dr. Malof, that in one village close at hand there were no fewer than
150 similar cases.
"This is one of the strongest proofs of the hardships through which the
people are now passing. It is the disease that always follows in the
wake of war and famine, and although the mortality amongst those seized
is relatively small, the fact that numerous cases are occurring is
significant. They arise from stomach disorders, brought on by
insufficient and bad food, and the disease then takes the course of
ordinary typhus.
"Tooriévo is a long straggling village, and contains about 1000 huts.
The harvest in the neighbourhood was fairly good, and the population
will probably weather the storm. Another large village in the
district, Céslavino, with its 7000 inhabitants, is suffering intensely,
the majority of the inhabitants being in receipt of relief. I found a
particularly bad state of things in the village of Spasskoe. Amongst
the 1500 inhabitants there were but three huts in which there was
sufficient corn to keep the occupants till the next harvest. Most of
the families are already receiving help from the Government, and the
private committee presided over by M. Novikoff.
"I will mention but few cases in this village where the monotony of
misery is so apparent in the deserted street and the dilapidated huts.
This is the only village I have visited in this neighbourhood where the
uniformity of distress compares {130} with the village in the south of
Tambov that I described last week.
"Paul Axenoff is the head of a family of nine, comprised of two old
people, Axenoff and his wife, and five children. They were receiving
aid from both the authorities and the committee, but they had run
through everything except three pounds of bread that was to last them
for some weeks to come. The same thing happened to them last month,
and in spite of all their efforts to secure food they ate nothing for
three days prior to the last delivery of the month's flour.
"The horse and cow have both been sold, and the outhouses pulled down
and used for fuel. Straw is usually employed in Russia for heating,
but this year there is none, so the peasants are glad to find anything
to burn. There is very little wood in this part of the country, and
what there is is young, and has evidently been planted by the
landowners. With the exception of a sheepskin cloak worn by one of the
boys who came in from school while I was in the hut, the members of
Axenoff's family had nothing to wear but the rags in which they stood.
"In this hut I discovered a fresh article of food--a soup made of hot
water and weeds. They didn't eat it for the good it might do them, but
simply for the sake of having something hot. At another hut in this
village I found a similar concoction made with boiling water and
chopped-up hay.
"All the bread I found in the next hovel was broken, and had been
begged from house to house. The occupants had burnt the wood, straw,
and outhouses they had at the beginning of the winter, and {131} were
now pulling the straw from the roof over their heads to keep the hut
warm.
"Although this was a new-fashioned hut, that is, one with a chimney,
the occupants had stopped this up to prevent the fire burning too
quickly, and to keep the heat in. This caused the suffocating smoke
and tar-like odour that is found in the chimneyless huts.
"On leaving this place we struggled through the snow to visit another
house from which the roof had been torn, and which was almost embedded
in the quantity of snow that the gale of the previous night had whirled
round it. The mayor of the village, who accompanied me, told me that
the family of five persons included a dying woman, and two children
down with scarlatina.
"With some difficulty we struggled through the four or five feet of
snow that barricaded the door, and on getting it open we found the
outer part of the hut half filled with snow that had been driven
through the unthatched roof. We had some trouble to open the door
leading to the inner room, and when this was done the mayor seemed
surprised to find that the place was tenantless.
"He enquired amongst the neighbours what had become of Nicolas Semine
and his dying wife. Nobody knew, and all were lost in surmise as to
what might have happened had they been driven forth by the storm of the
previous night. We continued the tour, and half an hour later I came
upon a scene the like of which I hope never to see again.
"Eight or ten persons were crowded into a hovel {132} not more than ten
feet square. An unconscious woman had been leaned against the brick
stove to keep her warm in the stifling atmosphere. On the ground
several dirty and ragged children were playing around two suffering
creatures, whose arms and faces were masses of sores. I had already
taken in these details when my guide told me this was Semine's dying
wife and scarlatina-stricken children, that a man he pointed out was
Semine himself, and that the ten-year-old boy lying on the stove was
his eldest child.
"I was not able to understand how the father and this boy brought the
dying, and now unconscious, woman and the two children through the
storm of the previous night. I had myself had an experience of the
blinding violence of clouds of snow blown across the plains by a
hurricane.
"The story of the refugees is a very sad one; I will tell it just as it
was told me. Between the time the harvest failed and the time the
authorities commenced to aid the family, they had been obliged to sell
everything they possessed to get food, and to pull down the
outbuildings for firing purposes. The wife had been ill since autumn,
and to keep the place warm they had been obliged to burn first the
table, then the benches, then the old clothes, and last of all, to pull
the straw from the roof and burn it.
"Yesterday they had nothing. No food, no firing, and the wind drove
the snow through the unthatched house. To have stayed was certain
death, so they wandered out into the night and were taken into the
house where I saw them on condition that they consented to the four
walls of their hut being {133} pulled down and used to heat the hovel
in which they had taken refuge. They brought no food with them, and
the family of four persons which has taken them in had just five pounds
of bread to last till the end of February.
"In the hut occupied by Timothy Metchariakof I was shown some _lebeda_
flour which the peasants often mix with rye or maize flour thinking
that it gives nourishment to the bread. The fact that there are
quantities of _lebeda_ this winter is another sign of famine. Whenever
the crops fail the weed from which the grains of _lebeda_ are thrashed
is found in abundance.
"In spite of what the peasants say about the satisfying properties of
these seeds, the doctors consider the flour made from them most
injurious to the health. All sorts of stomach complaints can be traced
to the consumption of bread of which it is an ingredient.
"The bread was very black everywhere, but as long as this blackness
resulted from the use of rye flour it was not unhealthy, and the bread
although rather bitter was not uneatable. In many houses, however, the
people had mixed anything that came to hand with the flour served out
to them, and the bread consequently suffered.
"I tasted some this morning in which cinders or grit was undoubtedly
one of the ingredients. It is also generally very badly baked, and if
the authorities can improve on the official bakers I have seen, there
should certainly be a public bakery in each village, as many of the
sufferers have not sufficient fire in their stoves properly to cook
anything. {134} Disease will go on increasing even more rapidly than
famine if this unhealthy food is eaten by the peasants.
"I visited a great many of the families in this village so as to be
satisfied that I was not basing my judgment of the distress on
exceptional cases. The misery I found was very widespread, and actual
starvation is only avoided by the aid of the Zemstvo and M. Novikoff's
committee. If these aids were stopped for a week, nine-tenths of the
village would be starving.
"From Spasskoe I drove across to the little village of Dolguinko, where
I found a part of the population living in holes dug in the earth.
Towards the end of last autumn, one half of the village was burned to
the ground. The work of rebuilding had scarcely commenced when winter
set in, and those peasants who were not able to lay beams and branches
over their partially-built huts and thus make a roof, dug holes in the
ground in which they are now living with their families.
"To reach these burrows it was necessary to follow a long passage cut
in the snow, at the end of which was a hole through which the visitor
was supposed to let himself, legs first, and then steady his descent by
catching at the snow till he felt the ground beneath his feet. I did
all this, and am not certain whether I was not more astonished at my
safe arrival than the occupants of the hole were to see me.
"Beyond the difficulties of entrance and exit the hole is no darker
than an ordinary hut. But a more horribly insanitary place of abode
for human {135} beings it would be hard to find. As could only be
expected, it was very damp, and the occupants were condemned to stand
and sit in several inches of mud, and to support the drippings of the
snow melted by the heat of their fire. However they manage to live
with insufficient nutriment amid such surroundings I cannot imagine.
The man in one of these burrows that I visited was making wooden boots,
for which he could earn a penny a pair. If he worked very hard he
could make two pairs a day.
"On returning to Novo Alexandrofka, I looked over the books of the
district of which these villages form part. It comprises twenty-five
villages, with a total of 60,000 inhabitants. How many of these are
relieved by the authorities cannot be said, but M. Novikoff's Committee
has supplemented the efforts of the Government by feeding 10,436
persons during the month of January. Each one of these 10,436 persons
was the recipient of twenty-five pounds of flour.
"According to the inventories made of the possessions of every
inhabitant of the district, the number of destitute, unprovided for by
Government relief, will increase by more than 1000 a month, and will
reach 18,000 by June. The committee has already distributed 650,000
pounds of flour since its institution. As many Britons have aided this
work by funds sent to Madame Olga Novikoff, it will interest them to
know what is doing.
"In the village of Novo Alexandrofka no one is in receipt of relief.
Thanks to M. Novikoff, who has endowed it with elementary, secondary,
and adult {136} schools, it is a particularly happy village, and counts
800 teetotalers in a population of 900 persons.
"Before leaving the Tambov Government, I may say that although in
certain villages the want is appalling, and is rendered more palpable
by the condition in which the inhabitants live, I do not anticipate an
overwhelming disaster in this province. It is well served by railway
lines, though the companies have little rolling stock, and grain can be
easily conveyed to these central Governments if it is in the country,
and has been brought to some available spot before the thaw."
On a second occasion, when the present War Charities began to press for
support, the same kind friends in the City and elsewhere, who had
helped during the Russian famine, again came forward and collected for
me a handsome sum. Part of this money I had the satisfaction of
distributing to Russian, British and Serbian Red Cross funds. A part
also (2000 roubles) was sent as a Christmas present to the wounded
soldiers in H.I.M.'s Hospital at Petrograd, in gracious acknowledgment
of which I received the following telegram from the Empress Marie:
"Am greatly touched by your letter and your generous gift, for which I
wish you to express to all those who have contributed my warmest
thanks. MARIE."
From the Princess Helène (daughter of the King of Serbia), to whom I
had also sent a small sum, came the following telegram:
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"Best thanks for your generous gift--profoundly touched--affectionate
greeting."
And from Monseigneur Cyril, Bishop of Tamboff, came his acknowledgment
of my remittance:
"Generous gift received--great joy--many thanks and blessings."
The Grand Duchess Elizabeth, who is at the head of so many charitable
institutions in Moscow, and takes such an active interest in good work
there, also very kindly acknowledged the small sum sent to her. All
these remittances were kindly telegraphed for me by Monsieur de
Helpert, the obliging Director of the Russian Bank for Foreign Trade.
Amongst other remittances to Petrograd was one of £50 to Lady Sybil
Grey, who was at the head of a Red Cross branch there, and respecting
the safe transmission of which I had consulted her father, Earl Grey,
who replied to me with the necessary advice, and concluded his letter
with very warm acknowledgments of the kind and hearty reception his
daughter had met with in Petrograd.
Later on I had the additional satisfaction of raising a further sum for
War Charities by the raffle of a Diamond Ornament, for which purpose my
friend, Lady Primrose, lent me her house as well as her valuable
personal aid.
The above are a few illustrations, among others that might be added, of
the British warm-heartedness and generosity that never fails in time of
need.
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