Officials—Siberian Governors—A Bird of Prey—A Gentle Judge—An Inspector
Roasted—The Tatar—A Boy of the Female Sex—The Potato Revolt—Russian
Justice.
§1
ONE of the saddest consequences of the revolution effected by Peter the
Great is the development of the official class in Russia. These
_chinóvniks_ are an artificial, ill-educated, and hungry class,
incapable of anything except office-work, and ignorant of everything
except official papers. They form a kind of lay clergy, officiating in
the law-courts and police-offices, and sucking the blood of the nation
with thousands of dirty, greedy mouths.
Gógol raised one side of the curtain and showed us the Russian
_chinóvnik_ in his true colours;[97] but Gógol, without meaning to,
makes us resigned by making us laugh, and his immense comic power tends
to suppress resentment. Besides, fettered as he was by the censorship,
he could barely touch on the sorrowful side of that unclean subterranean
region in which the destinies of the ill-starred Russian people are
hammered and shaped.
Footnote 97:
Gógol’s play, _The Revisor_, is a satire on the Russian bureaucracy.
There, in those grimy offices which we walk through as fast as we can,
men in shabby coats sit and write; first they write a rough draft and
then copy it out on stamped paper—and individuals, families, whole
villages are injured, terrified, and ruined. The father is banished to a
distance, the mother is sent to prison, the son to the Army; it all
comes upon them as suddenly as a clap of thunder, and in most cases it
is undeserved. The object of it all is money. Pay up! If you don’t, an
inquest will be held on the body of some drunkard who has been frozen in
the snow. A collection is made for the village authorities; the peasants
contribute their last penny. Then there are the police and
law-officers—they must live somehow, and one has a wife to maintain and
another a family to educate, and they are all model husbands and
fathers.
This official class is sovereign in the north-eastern Governments of
Russia and in Siberia. It has spread and flourished there without
hindrance and without pause; in that remote region where all share in
the profits, theft is the order of the day. The Tsar himself is
powerless against these entrenchments, buried under snow and constructed
out of sticky mud. All measures of the central Government are
emasculated before they get there, and all its purposes are distorted:
it is deceived and cheated, betrayed and sold, and all the time an
appearance of servile fidelity is kept up, and official procedure is
punctually observed.
Speranski[98] tried to lighten the burdens of the people by introducing
into all the offices in Siberia the principle of divided control. But it
makes little difference whether the stealing is done by individuals or
gangs of robbers. He discharged hundreds of old thieves, and took on
hundreds of new ones. The rural police were so terrified at first that
they actually paid blackmail to the peasants. But a few years passed,
and the officials were making as much money as ever, in spite of the new
conditions.
Footnote 98:
Michail Speranski (1772-1839), minister under Alexander I, was
Governor of Siberia in 1819.
A second eccentric Governor, General Velyaminov, tried again. For two
years he struggled hard at Tobolsk to root out the malpractices; and
then, conscious of failure, he gave it all up and ceased to attend to
business at all.
Others, more prudent than he, never tried the experiment: they made
money themselves and let others do the same.
“I shall root out bribery,” said Senyavin, the Governor of Moscow, to a
grey-bearded old peasant who had entered a complaint against some crying
act of injustice. The old man smiled.
“What are you laughing at?” asked the Governor.
“Well, I _was_ laughing, _bátyushka_; you must forgive me. I was
thinking of one of our people, a great strong fellow, who boasted that
he would lift the Great Cannon at Moscow; and he did try, but the cannon
would not budge.”
Senyavin used to tell this story himself. He was one of those
unpractical bureaucrats who believe that well-turned periods in praise
of honesty, and rigorous prosecution of the few thieves who get caught,
have power to cure the widespread plague of Russian corruption, that
noxious weed that spreads at ease under the protecting boughs of the
censorship.
Two things are needed to cope with it—publicity, and an entirely
different organisation of the whole machine. The old national system of
justice must be re-introduced, with oral procedure and sworn witnesses
and all that the central Government detests so heartily.
§2
Pestel, one of the Governors of Western Siberia, was like a Roman
proconsul, and was outdone by none of them. He carried on a system of
open and systematic robbery throughout the country, which he had
entirely detached from Russia by means of his spies. Not a letter
crossed the frontier unopened, and woe to the writer who dared to say a
word about his rule. He kept the merchants of the First Guild in prison
for a whole year, where they were chained and tortured. Officials he
punished by sending them to the frontier of Eastern Siberia and keeping
them there for two or three years.
The people endured him for long; but at last a tradesman of Tobolsk
determined to bring the state of things to the Tsar’s knowledge.
Avoiding the usual route, he went first to Kyakhta and crossed the
Siberian frontier from there with a caravan of tea. At Tsárskoë Seló[99]
he found an opportunity to hand his petition to Alexander, and begged
him to read it. Alexander was astonished and impressed by the strange
matter he read there. He sent for the petitioner, and they had a long
conversation which convinced him of the truth of the terrible story.
Horrified and somewhat confused, the Tsar said:
Footnote 99:
_I.e._, “The Tsar’s Village,” near Petersburg.
“You can go back to Siberia now, my friend; the matter shall be looked
into.”
“No, Your Majesty,” said the man; “I cannot go home now; I would rather
go to prison. My interview with Your Majesty cannot be kept secret, and
I shall be murdered.”
Alexander started. He turned to Milorádovitch, who was then Governor of
Petersburg, and said:
“I hold you answerable for this man’s life.”
“In that case,” said Milorádovitch, “Your Majesty must allow me to lodge
him in my own house.” And there the man actually stayed until the affair
was settled.
Pestel resided almost continuously at Petersburg. You will remember that
the Roman proconsuls also generally lived in the capital.[100] By his
presence and his connexions and, above all, by sharing his booty, he
stopped in advance all unpleasant rumours and gossip. He and Rostopchín
were dining one day at the Tsar’s table. They were standing by the
window, and the Tsar asked, “What is that on the church cross over
there—something black?” “I cannot make it out,” said Rostopchín; “we
must appeal to Pestel; he has wonderful sight and can see from here what
is going on in Siberia.”
Footnote 100:
Herzen is mistaken here.
The Imperial Council, taking advantage of the absence of Alexander,—he
was at Verona or Aix,—wisely and justly decided that, as the complaint
referred to Siberia, Pestel, who was fortunately on the spot, should
conduct the investigation. But Milorádovitch, Mordvínov, and two others
protested against this decision, and the matter was referred to the
Supreme Court.
That body gave an unjust decision, as it always does when trying high
officials. Pestel was reprimanded, and Treskin, the Civil Governor of
Tobolsk, was deprived of his official rank and title of nobility and
banished. Pestel was merely dismissed from the service.
Pestel was succeeded at Tobolsk by Kaptsevitch, a pupil of Arakchéyev.
Thin and bilious, a tyrant by nature and a restless martinet, he
introduced military discipline everywhere; but, though he fixed maximum
prices, he left all ordinary business in the hands of the robbers. In
1824 the Tsar intended to visit Tobolsk. Throughout the Government of
Perm there is an excellent high road, well worn by traffic; it is
probable that the soil was favourable for its construction. Kaptsevitch
made a similar road all the way to Tobolsk in a few months. In spring,
when the snow was melting and the cold bitter, thousands of men were
driven in relays to work at the road. Sickness broke out and half the
workmen died; but “zeal overcomes all difficulties,” and the road was
made.
Eastern Siberia is governed in a still more casual fashion. The distance
is so great that all rumours die away before they reach Petersburg. One
Governor of Irkutsk used to fire cannon at the town when he was cheerful
after dinner; another, in the same state, used to put on priest’s robes
and celebrate the Mass in his own house, in the presence of the Bishop;
but, at least, neither the noise of the former nor the piety of the
latter did as much harm as the state of siege kept up by Pestel and the
restless activity of Kaptsevitch.
§3
It is a pity that Siberia is so badly governed. The choice of Governors
has been peculiarly unfortunate. I do not know how Muravyóv acquits
himself there—his intelligence and capacity are well known; but all the
rest have been failures. Siberia has a great future before it. It is
generally regarded as a kind of cellar, full of gold and furs and other
natural wealth, but cold, buried in snow, and ill provided with comforts
and roads and population. But this is a false view.
The Russian Government is unable to impart that life-giving impulse
which would drive Siberia ahead with American speed. We shall see what
will happen when the mouths of the Amoor are opened to navigation, and
when America meets Siberia on the borders of China.
I said, long ago, that the Pacific Ocean is the Mediterranean of the
future; and I have been pleased to see the remark repeated more than
once in the New York newspapers. In that future the part of Siberia,
lying as it does between the ocean, South Asia, and Russia, is
exceedingly important. Siberia must certainly extend to the Chinese
frontier: why should we shiver and freeze at Beryózov and Yakutsk, when
there are such places as Krasnoyarsk and Minusinsk?
The Russian settlers in Siberia have traits of character which suggest
development and progress. The population in general are healthy and well
grown, intelligent and exceedingly practical. The children of the
emigrants have never felt the pressure of landlordism. There are no
great nobles in Siberia, and there is no aristocracy in the towns;
authority is represented by the civil officials and military officers;
but they are less like an aristocracy than a hostile garrison
established by a conqueror. The cultivators are saved from frequent
contact with them by the immense distances, and the merchants are saved
by their wealth. This latter class, in Siberia, despise the officials:
while professing to give place to them, they take them for what they
really are—inferiors who are useful in matters of law.
Arms are indispensable to the settler, and everyone knows how to use
them. Familiarity with danger and the habit of prompt action have made
the Siberian peasant more soldierly, more resourceful, and more ready to
resist, than his Great Russian brother. The distance of the churches has
left him more independence of mind: he is lukewarm about religion and
very often a dissenter. There are distant villages which the priest
visits only thrice a year, when he christens the children in batches,
reads the service for the dead, marries all the couples, and hears
confession of accumulated sins.
§4
On this side of the Ural ridge, the ways of governors are less
eccentric. But yet I could fill whole volumes with stories which I heard
either in the office or at the Governor’s dinner-table—stories which
throw light on the malpractices and dishonesty of the officials.
§5
“Yes, Sir, he was indeed a marvel, my predecessor was”—thus the
inspector of police at Vyatka used to address me in his confidential
moments. “Well, of course, we get along fairly, but men like him are
born, not made. He was, in his way, I might say, a Caesar, a
Napoleon”—and the eyes of my lame friend, the Major, who had got his
place as recompense for a wound, shone as he recalled his glorious
predecessor.
“There was a gang of robbers, not far from the town. Complaints came
again and again to the authorities; now it was a party of merchants
relieved of their goods, now the manager of a distillery was robbed of
his money. The Governor was in a fuss and drew up edict after edict.
Well, as you know, the country police are not brave: they can deal well
enough with a petty thief, if there’s only one; but here there was a
whole gang, and, likely enough, in possession of firearms. As the
country police did nothing, the Governor summoned the town inspector and
said:
“‘I know that this is not your business at all, but your well-known
activity forces me to appeal to you.’
“The inspector knew all about the scandal already.
“‘General,’ said he, ‘I shall start in an hour. I know where the robbers
are sure to be; I shall take a detachment with me; I shall come upon the
scoundrels, bring them back in chains, and lodge them in the town
prison, before they are three days older.’ Just like Suvórov to the
Austrian Emperor! And he did what he said he would do: he surprised them
with his detachment; the robbers had no time to hide their money; the
inspector took it all and marched them off to the town.
“When the trial began, the inspector asked where the money was.
“‘Why, _bátyushka_, we put it into your own hands,’ said two of the men.
“‘Mine!’ cried the inspector, with an air of astonishment.
“‘Yes, yours!’ shouted the thieves.
“‘There’s insolence for you!’ said the inspector to the magistrate,
turning pale with rage. ‘Do you expect to make people believe that I was
in league with you? I shall show you what it is to insult my uniform; I
was a cavalry officer once, and my honour shall not be insulted with
impunity!’
“So the thieves were flogged, that they might confess where they had
stowed away the money. At first they were obstinate, but when they heard
the order that they were to be flogged ‘for two pipes,’ then the leader
of the gang called out—‘We plead guilty! We spent the money ourselves.’
“‘You might have said so sooner,’ remarked the inspector, ‘instead of
talking such nonsense. You won’t get round me in a hurry, my friend.’
‘No, indeed!’ muttered the robber, looking in astonishment at the
inspector; ‘we could teach nothing to Your Honour, but we might learn
from you.’
“Well, over that affair the inspector got the Vladímir Order.”
“Excuse me,” I said, interrupting his enthusiasm for the great man, “but
what is the meaning of that phrase ‘for two pipes’?”
“Oh, we often use that in the police. One gets bored, you know, while a
flogging is going on; so one lights a pipe; and, as a rule, when the
pipe is done, the flogging is over too. But in special cases we order
that the flogging shall go on till two pipes are smoked out. The men who
flog are accustomed to it and know exactly how many strokes that means.”
§6
Ever so many stories about this hero were in circulation at Vyatka. His
exploits were miraculous. For some reason or another—perhaps a
Staff-general or Minister was expected—he wished to show that he had not
worn cavalry uniform for nothing, but could put spurs to a charger in
fine style. With this object in view, he requisitioned a horse from a
rich merchant of the district; it was a grey stallion, and a very
valuable animal. The merchant refused it.
“All right,” said the inspector; “if you don’t choose to do me such a
trifling service voluntarily, then I shall take the horse without your
leave.”
“We shall see about that,” said Gold.
“Yes, you shall,” said Steel.
The merchant locked up his stable and set two men to guard it. “Foiled
for once, my friend!” he thought.
But that night, by a strange accident, a fire broke out in some empty
sheds close to the merchant’s house. The inspector and his men worked
manfully. In order to save the house, they even pulled down the wall of
the stable and led out the object of dispute, with not a hair of his
mane or tail singed. Two hours later, the inspector was caracoling on a
grey charger, on his way to receive the thanks of the distinguished
visitor for his courage and skill in dealing with the fire. This
incident proved to everyone that he bore a charmed life.
§7
The Governor was once leaving a party; and, just as his carriage
started, a careless driver, in charge of a small sledge, drove into him,
striking the traces between the wheelers and leaders. There was a block
for a moment, but the Governor was not prevented from driving home in
perfect comfort. Next day he said to the inspector: “Do you know whose
coachman ran into me last night? He must be taught better.”
“That coachman will not do it again, Your Excellency,” answered the
inspector with a smile; “I have made him smart properly for it.”
“Whose coachman was it?”
“Councillor Kulakov’s, Your Excellency.”
At that moment the old Councillor, whom I found at Vyatka and left there
still holding the same office, came into the room.
“You must excuse us,” said the Governor, “for giving a lesson to your
coachman yesterday.”
The Councillor, quite in the dark, looked puzzled.
“He drove into my carriage yesterday. Well, you understand, if he did it
to _me_, then ...”
“But, Your Excellency, my wife and I spent the evening at home, and the
coachman was not out at all.”
“What’s the meaning of this?” asked the Governor.
But the inspector was not taken aback.
“The fact is, Your Excellency, I had such a press of business yesterday
that I quite forgot about the coachman. But I confess I did not venture
to mention to Your Excellency that I had forgotten. I meant to attend to
his business at once.”
“Well, there’s no denying that you are the right man in the right
place!” said the Governor.
§8
Side by side with this bird of prey I shall place the portrait of a very
different kind of official—a mild and sympathetic creature, a real
sucking dove.
Among my acquaintance at Vyatka was an old gentleman who had been
dismissed from the service as inspector of rural police. He now drew up
petitions and managed lawsuits for other people—a profession which he
had been expressly forbidden to adopt. He had entered the service in the
year one, had robbed and squeezed and blackmailed in three provinces,
and had twice figured in the dock. This veteran liked to tell surprising
stories of what he and his contemporaries had done; and he did not
conceal his contempt for the degenerate successors who now filled their
places.
“Oh, they’re mere bunglers,” he used to say. “Of course they take
bribes, or they couldn’t live; but as for dexterity or knowledge of the
law, you needn’t expect anything of the kind from them. Just to give you
an idea, let me tell you of a friend of mine who was a judge for twenty
years and died twelve months ago. He was a genius! The peasants revere
his memory, and he left a trifle to his family too. His method was all
his own. If a peasant came with a petition, the Judge would admit him at
once and be very friendly and cheerful.
“‘Well, my friend, tell me your name and your father’s name, too.’
“The peasant bows—‘Yermolai is my name, _bátyushka_, and my father’s
name was Grigóri.’
“‘Well, how are you, Yermolai Grigorevitch, and where do you come from?’
“‘I live at Dubilov.’
“‘I know, I know—those mills on the right hand of the high road are
yours, I suppose?’
“‘Just so, _bátyushka_, the mills belong to our village.’
“‘A prosperous village, too—good land—black soil.’
“‘We have no reason to murmur against Heaven, Your Worship.’
“‘Well, that’s right. I dare say you have a good large family, Yermolai
Grigorevitch?’
“‘Three sons and two daughters, Your Worship, and my eldest daughter’s
husband has lived in our house these five years.’
“‘And I dare say there are some grandchildren by this time?’
“‘Indeed there are, Your Worship—a few of them too.’
“‘And thank God for it! He told us to increase and multiply. Well,
you’ve come a long way, Yermolai Grigorevitch; will you drink a glass of
brandy with me?’
“The visitor seems doubtful. The Judge fills the glass, saying:
“‘Come, come, friend—the holy fathers have not forbidden us the use of
wine and oil on this day.’
“‘It is true that we are allowed it, but strong drink brings a man to
all bad fortune.’ Thereupon he crosses himself, bows to his host, and
drinks the dram.
“‘Now, with a family like that, Grigorevitch, you must find it hard to
feed and clothe them all. One horse and one cow would never do for
you—you would run short of milk for such a number.’
“‘One horse, _bátyushka_! That wouldn’t do at all. I’ve three, and I had
a fourth, a roan, but it died in St. Peter’s Fast; it was bewitched; our
carpenter Doroféi hates to see others prosper, and he has the evil eye.’
“‘Well, that does happen sometimes. But you have good pasture there, and
I dare say you keep sheep.’
“‘Yes, we have some sheep.’
“‘Dear me, we have had quite a long chat, Yermolai Grigorevitch. I must
be off to Court now—the Tsar’s service, as you know. Have you any little
business to ask me about, I wonder?’
“‘Indeed I have, Your Worship.’
“‘Well, what is it? Have you been doing something foolish? Be quick and
tell me, because I must be starting.’
“‘This is it, Your Honour. Misfortune has come upon me in my old age,
and I trust to you. It was Assumption Day; we were in the public-house,
and I had words with a man from another village—a nasty fellow he is,
who steals our wood. Well, we had some words, and then he raised his
fist and struck me on the breast. “Don’t you use your fists off your own
dunghill,” said I; and I wanted to teach him a lesson, so I gave him a
tap. Now, whether it was the drink or the work of the Evil One, my fist
went straight into his eye, and the eye was damaged. He went at once to
the police—“I’ll have the law of him,” says he.’
“During this narrative the Judge—a fig for your Petersburg
actors!—becomes more and more solemn; the expression of his eyes becomes
alarming; he says not a word.
“The peasant sees this and changes colour; he puts his hat down on the
ground and takes out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat off his brow. The
Judge turns over the leaves of a book and still keeps silence.
“‘That is why I have come to see you, _bátyushka_,’ the peasant says in
a strained voice.
“‘What can I do in such a case? It’s a bad business! What made you hit
him in the eye?’
“‘What indeed, _bátyushka_! It was the enemy led me astray.’
“‘Sad, very sad! Such a thing to ruin a whole family! How can they get
on without you—all young, and the grandchildren mere infants! A sad
thing for your wife, too, in her old age!’
“The man’s legs begin to tremble. ‘Does Your Honour think it’s as bad as
all that?’
“‘Take the book and read the act yourself. But perhaps you can’t read?
Here is the article dealing with injuries to the person—“shall first be
flogged and then banished to Siberia.”’
“‘Oh, save a man from ruin, save a fellow-Christian from destruction! Is
it impossible ...’
“‘But, my good man, we can’t go against the law. So far as it’s in our
hands, we might perhaps lower the thirty strokes to five or so.’
“‘But about Siberia?’
“‘Oh, there we’re powerless, my friend.’
“The peasant at this point produces a purse, takes a paper out of the
purse and two or three gold pieces out of the paper; with a low bow he
places them on the table.
“‘What’s all that, Yermolai Grigorevitch?’
“‘Save me, _bátyushka_!’
“‘No more of that! I have my weak side and I take a present at times; my
salary is small and I have to do it. But if I do, I like to give
something in return; and what can I do for you? If only it had been a
rib or a tooth! But the eye! Take your money back.’
“The peasant is dumbfounded.
“‘There is just one possibility: I might speak to the other judges and
write a line to the county town. The matter will probably go to the
court there, and I have friends there who will do all they can. But
they’re men of a different kidney, and three yellow-boys will not go far
in that quarter.’
“The peasant recovers a little.
“‘_I_ don’t want anything—I’m sorry for your family; but it’s no use
offering _them_ less than 400 _roubles_.’
“‘Four hundred _roubles_! How on earth can I get such a mint of money as
that, in these times? It’s quite beyond me, I swear.’
“‘It’s not easy, I agree. We can lessen the flogging; the man’s sorry,
we shall say, and he was not sober at the time. People _do_ live in
Siberia, after all; and it’s not so very far from here. Of course, you
might manage it by selling a pair of horses and one of the cows and the
sheep. But you would have to work many years to replace all that stock;
and if you don’t pay up, your horses will be left all right but you’ll
be off on the long tramp yourself. Think it over, Grigorevitch; no
hurry; we’ll do nothing till to-morrow; but I must be going now.’ And
the Judge pockets the coins he had refused, saying, ‘It’s quite
unnecessary—I only take it to spare your feelings.’
“Next day, an old Jew turns up at the Judge’s house, lugging a bag that
contains 350 _roubles_ in coinage of all dates.
“The Judge promises his assistance. The peasant is tried, and tried over
again, and well frightened; then he gets off with a light sentence, or a
caution to be more prudent in future, or a note against his name as a
suspicious character. And the peasant for the rest of his life prays
that God will reward the Judge for his kindness.
“Well, that’s a specimen of the neat way they used to do it”—so the
retired inspector used to wind up his story.
§9
In Vyatka the Russian tillers of the soil are fairly independent, and
get a bad name in consequence from the officials, as unruly and
discontented. But the Finnish natives, poor, timid, stupid people, are a
regular gold-mine to the rural police. The inspectors pay the governors
twice the usual sum when they are appointed to districts where the Finns
live.
The tricks which the authorities play on these poor wretches are beyond
belief.
If the land-surveyor is travelling on business and passes a native
village, he never fails to stop there. He takes the theodolite off his
cart, drives in a post and pulls out his chain. In an hour the whole
village is in a ferment. “The land-measurer! the land-measurer!” they
cry, just as they used to cry, “The French! the French!” in the year
’12. The elders come to pay their respects: the surveyor goes on
measuring and making notes. They ask him not to cheat them out of their
land, and he demands twenty or thirty _roubles_. They are glad to give
it and collect the money; and he drives on to the next village of
natives.
Again, if the police find a dead body, they drag it about for a
fortnight—the frost makes this possible—through the Finnish villages. In
each village they declare that they have just found the corpse and mean
to start an inquest; and the people pay blackmail.
Some years before I went to Vyatka, a rural inspector, a famous
blackmailer, brought a dead body in a cart into a large village of
Russian settlers, and demanded, I think, 200 _roubles_. The village
elder consulted the community; but they would not go beyond one hundred.
The inspector would not lower his price. The peasants got angry: they
shut him up with his two clerks in the police-office and threatened, in
their turn, to burn them alive. The inspector did not take them
seriously. The peasants piled straw around the house; then, by way of
ultimatum, they held up a hundred-_rouble_ note on a pole in front of
the window. The hero inside asked for a hundred more. Thereupon the
peasants fired the straw at all four corners, and all the three Mucius
Scaevolas of the rural police were burnt to death. At a later time this
matter came before the Supreme Court.
These native settlements are in general much less thriving than the
Russian villages.
“You don’t seem well off, friend,” I said to the native owner of a hut
where I was waiting for fresh horses; it was a wretched, smoky,
lop-sided cabin, with windows looking over the yard at the back.
“What can we do, _bátyushka_? We are poor, and keep our money for a
rainy day.”
“A rainy day? It looks to me as if you’d got it already. But drink that
for comfort”—and I filled a glass with rum.
“We don’t drink,” said the Finn, with a greedy look at the glass and a
suspicious look at me.
“Come, come, you’d better take it.”
“Well, drink first yourself.”
I drank, and then he followed my example. “What are you doing?” he
asked. “Have you come on business from Vyatka?”
“No,” I answered; “I’m a traveller on my way there.” He was considerably
relieved to hear this; he looked all round, and added by way of
explanation, “The rainy day is when the inspector or the priest comes
here.”
I should like to say something here about the latter of these
personages.
§10
Of the Finnish population some accepted Christianity before Peter’s
reign, others were baptised in the time of Elizabeth,[101] and others
have remained heathen. Most of those who changed their religion under
Elizabeth are still secretly attached to their own dismal and savage
faith.
Footnote 101:
Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, reigned from 1741 to 1762.
Every two or three years the police-inspector and the priest make a tour
of the villages, to find out which of the natives have not fasted in
Lent, and to enquire the reasons. The recusants are harried and
imprisoned, flogged and fined. But the visitors search especially for
some proof that the old heathen rites are still kept up. In that case,
there is a real ‘rainy day’—the detective and the missionary raise a
storm and exact heavy blackmail; then they go away, leaving all as it
was before, to repeat their visit in a year or two.
In the year 1835 the Holy Synod thought it necessary to convert the
heathen Cheremisses to Orthodoxy. Archbishop Philaret nominated an
active priest named Kurbanovski as missionary. Kurbanovski, a man eaten
up by the Russian disease of ambition, set to work with fiery zeal. He
tried preaching at first, but soon grew tired of it; and, in point of
fact, not much is to be done by that ancient method.
The Cheremisses, when they heard of this, sent their own priests to meet
the missionary. These fanatics were ingenious savages: after long
discussions, they said to him: “The forest contains not only silver
birches and tall pines but also the little juniper. God permits them all
to grow and does not bid the juniper be a pine tree. We men are like the
trees of the forest. Be you the silver birches, and let us remain the
juniper. We don’t interfere with you, we pray for the Tsar, pay our
dues, and provide recruits for the Army; but we are not willing to be
false to our religion.”
Kurbanovski saw that they could not agree, and that he was not fated to
play the part of Cyril and Methodius.[102] He had recourse to the
secular arm; and the local police-inspector was delighted—he had long
wished to show his zeal for the church; he was himself an unbaptised
Tatar, a true believer in the Koran, and his name was Devlet Kildéyev.
Footnote 102:
In the ninth century Cyril and his brother Methodius, two Greek monks
of Salonica, introduced Christianity among the Slavs. They invented
the Russian alphabet.
He took a detachment of his men and proceeded to besiege the
Cheremisses. Several villages were baptised. Kurbanovski sang the _Te
Deum_ in church and went back to Moscow, to receive with humility the
velvet cap for good service; and the Government sent the Vladímir Cross
to the Tatar.
But there was an unfortunate misunderstanding between the Tatar
missionary and the local mullah. The mullah was greatly displeased when
this believer in the Koran took to preaching the Gospel and succeeded so
well. During Ramadan, the inspector boldly put on his cross and appeared
in the mosque wearing it; he took a front place, as a matter of course.
The mullah had just begun to chant the Koran through his nose, when he
suddenly stopped and said that he dared not go on, in the presence of a
true believer who had come to the mosque wearing a Christian emblem.
The congregation protested; and the discomfited inspector was forced to
put his cross in his pocket.
I read afterwards in the archives of the Home Office an account of this
brilliant conversion of the Cheremisses. The writer mentioned the
zealous cooperation of Devlet Kildéyev, but unfortunately forgot to add
that his zeal for the Church was the more disinterested because of his
firm belief in the truth of Islam.
§11
Before I left Vyatka, the Department of Imperial Domains was committing
such impudent thefts that a commission of enquiry was appointed; and
this commission sent out inspectors into all the provinces. A new system
of control over the Crown tenants was introduced after that time.
Our Governor at that time was Kornilov; he had to nominate two
subordinates to assist the inspectors, and I was one of the two. I had
to read a multitude of documents, sometimes with pain, sometimes with
amusement, sometimes with disgust. The very headings of the subjects for
investigation struck me with astonishment—
(1) _The loss and total disappearance of a police-station, and the
destruction of the plan by the gnawing of mice._
(2) _The loss of twelve miles of arable land._
(3) _The transference of the peasant’s son Vasili to the female sex._
The last item was so remarkable that I read the details at once from
beginning to end.
There was a petition to the Governor from the father of the child. The
petitioner stated that fifteen years ago a daughter had been born to
him, whom he wished to call Vasilissa; but the priest, not being sober,
christened the girl Vasili, and entered the name thus on the register.
This fact apparently caused little disturbance to the father; but when
he found he would soon be required to provide a recruit for the Army and
pay the poll-tax for the child, he informed the police. The police were
much puzzled. They began by refusing to act, on the ground that he ought
to have applied earlier. The father then went to the Governor, and the
Governor ordered that this boy of the female sex should be formally
examined by a doctor and a midwife. But at this point, matters were
complicated by a correspondence with the ecclesiastical authorities; and
the parish priest, whose predecessor, under the influence of drink, had
been too prudish to recognise differences of sex, now appeared on the
scene; the matter went on for years, and I rather think the girl was
never cleared of the suspicion of being a boy.
The reader is not to suppose that this absurd story is a mere humorous
invention of mine.
During the Emperor Paul’s reign a colonel of the Guards, making his
monthly report, returned as dead an officer who had gone to the
hospital; and the Tsar struck his name off the lists. But unfortunately
the officer did not die; he recovered instead. The colonel induced him
to return to his estates for a year or two, hoping to find an
opportunity of putting matters straight; and the officer agreed. But his
heirs, having read of his death in the Gazette, positively refused to
recognise him as still alive; though inconsolable for their loss, they
insisted upon their right of succession. The living corpse, whom the
Gazette had killed once, found that he was likely to die over again, by
starvation this time. So he travelled to Petersburg and handed in a
petition to the Tsar.
This beats even my story of the girl who was also a boy.
§12
It is a miry slough, this account of our provincial administration; yet
I shall add a few words more. This publicity is the last paltry
compensation to those who suffered unheard and unpitied.
Government is very ready to reward high officials with grants of
unoccupied land. There is no great harm in that, though it might be
wiser to keep it for the needs of an increasing population. The rules
governing such allotments of land are rather detailed; it is illegal to
grant the banks of a navigable river, or wood fit for building purposes,
or both sides of a river; and finally, land reclaimed by peasants may in
no case be taken from them, even though the peasants have no title to
the land except prescription.
All this is very well, on paper; but in fact this allotment of land to
individuals is a terrible instrument by which the Crown is robbed and
the peasants oppressed.
Most of the magnates to whom the leases are granted either sell their
rights to merchants, or try, by means of the provincial authorities, to
secure some privileges contrary to the rules. Thus it happened, by mere
chance, of course, that Count Orlóv himself got possession of the road
and pastures used by droves of cattle in the Government of Saratov.
No wonder, then, that the peasants of a certain district in Vyatka were
deprived one fine morning of all their land, right up to their houses
and farmyards, the soil having passed into the possession of some
merchants who had bought the lease from a relation of Count
Kankrin.[103] The merchants next put a rent on the land. The law was
appealed to. The Crown Court, being bribed by the merchants and fearing
a great man’s cousin, put a spoke in the wheel; but the peasants,
determined to go on to the bitter end, chose two shrewd men from among
themselves and sent them off to Petersburg. The matter now came before
the Supreme Court. The judges suspected that the peasants were in the
right; but they were puzzled how to act, and consulted Kankrin. That
nobleman admitted frankly that the land had been taken away unjustly;
but he thought there would be difficulty in restoring it, because it
_might_ have been re-sold since, and because the new owners _might_ have
made some improvements. He therefore suggested that advantage should be
taken of the vast extent of the Crown lands, and that the same quantity
of land should be granted to the peasants, but in another district. This
solution pleased everyone except the peasants: in the first place, it
was no trifle to reclaim fresh land; and, in the second place, the land
offered them turned out to be a bog. As the peasants were more
interested in growing corn than in shooting snipe, they sent in a fresh
petition.
Footnote 103:
Count Kankrin (1774-1845) was Minister of Finance from 1823 till his
death. He carried through some important reforms in the currency.
The Crown Court and the Treasury then treated this as a fresh case. They
discovered a law which provided that, in cases where unsuitable land had
been allotted, the grant should not be cancelled but an addition of 50
per cent should be made; they therefore directed that the peasants
should get half a bog in addition to the bog they had been given
already.
The peasants sent in a third petition to the Supreme Court. But, before
this was discussed, the Board of Agriculture sent them plans of their
new land, duly bound and coloured; with a neat diagram of the points of
the compass arranged in a star, and suitable explanations of the rhombus
R R Z and the rhombus Z Z R, and, above all, with a demand for a fixed
payment per acre. When the peasants saw that, far from getting back
their good land, they were to be charged money for their bog, they
flatly refused to pay.
The rural inspector informed the Governor of this; and the Governor sent
troops under the command of the town inspector of Vyatka. The latter
went to the spot, arrested several men and beat them, restored order in
the district, took money, handed over the ‘guilty’ to the Criminal
Court, and was hoarse for a week after, owing to the strain on his
voice. Several of the offenders were sentenced to flogging and
banishment.
Two years afterwards, when the Crown Prince was passing through the
district, these peasants presented a petition, and he ordered the matter
to be examined. It was at this point that I had to draw up a report of
all the proceedings. Whether anything sensible was done in consequence
of this fresh investigation, I do not know. I have heard that the exiles
were restored, but I never heard that the land had been given back.
§13
In the next place I shall refer to the famous episode of the
“potato-rebellion.”
In Russia, as formerly throughout Europe, the peasants were unwilling to
grow potatoes, from an instinctive feeling that potatoes are poor food
and not productive of health and strength. Model landlords, however, and
many Crown settlements used to grow these tubers long before the “potato
revolt.”
In the Government of Kazán and part of Vyatka, the people had grown a
crop of potatoes. When the tubers were taken up, it occurred to the
Board of Agriculture to start communal pits for storing them. The pits
were authorised, ordered, and constructed; and in the beginning of
winter the peasants, with many misgivings, carted their potatoes to the
communal pits. But they positively refused, when they were required in
the spring to plant these same potatoes in a frozen condition. What,
indeed, can be more insulting to labouring men than to bid them do what
is obviously absurd? But their protest was represented as a rebellion.
The minister despatched an official from Petersburg; and this
intelligent and practical man excused the farmers of the first district
he visited from planting the frozen potatoes, and charged for this
dispensation one _rouble_ per head. He repeated this operation in two
other districts; but the men of the fourth district flatly refused
either to plant the potatoes or to pay the money. “You have excused the
others,” they said; “you are clearly bound to let us off too.” The
official then tried to end the business by threats and corporal
punishment; but the peasants armed themselves with poles and routed the
police. The Governor sent a force of Cossacks to the spot; and the
neighbouring districts backed up the rebels.
It is enough to say that cannon roared and rifles cracked before the
affair was over. The peasants took to the woods and were routed out of
their covert like wild animals by the Cossacks. They were caught,
chained, and sent to Kosmodemyansk to be tried by court-martial.
By a strange chance there was a simple, honest man, an old major of
militia, serving on the court-martial; and he ventured to say that the
official from Petersburg was to blame for all that had happened. But
everyone promptly fell on the top of him and squashed him and suppressed
him; they tried to frighten him and said he ought to be ashamed of his
attempt “to ruin an innocent man.”
The enquiry went on just as enquiries do in Russia: the peasants were
flogged on examination, flogged as a punishment, flogged as an example,
and flogged to get money out of them; and then a number of them were
exiled to Siberia.
It is worthy of remark that the Minister passed through Kosmodemyansk
during the trial. One thinks he might have looked in at the
court-martial himself or summoned the dangerous major to an interview.
He did nothing of the kind.
The famous Turgot,[104] knowing how unpopular the potato was in France,
distributed seed-potatoes to a number of dealers and persons in
Government employ, with strict orders that the peasants were to have
none. But at the same time he let them know privately that the peasants
were not to be prevented from helping themselves. The result was that in
a few years potatoes were grown all over the country.
Footnote 104:
Turgot (1727-1781) was one of the Ministers of Finance under Louis
XVI.
All things considered, this seems to me a better method than the
cannon-ball plan.
§14
In the year 1836 a strolling tribe of gipsies came to Vyatka and
encamped there. These people wandered at times as far as Tobolsk and
Irbit, carrying on from time immemorial their roving life of freedom,
accompanied of course by a bear that had been taught to dance and
children that had been taught nothing; they lived by doctoring horses,
telling fortunes, and petty theft. At Vyatka they went on singing their
songs and stealing chickens, till the Governor suddenly received
instructions, that, if the gipsies turned out to have no passports—no
gipsy was ever known to possess one—a certain interval should be allowed
them, within which they must register themselves as members of the
village communities where they happened to be at the time.
If they failed to do so by the date mentioned, then all who were fit for
military service were to be sent to the colours, the rest to be banished
from the country, and all their male children to be taken from them.
Tufáyev himself was taken aback by this decree. He gave notice of it to
the gipsies, but he reported to Petersburg that it could not be complied
with. The registration would cost money; the consent of the communities
must be obtained, and they would want money for admitting the gipsies.
After taking everything into consideration, Tufáyev proposed to the
Minister—and he must get due credit for the proposal—that the gipsies
should be treated leniently and given an extension of time.
In reply the Minister ordered him to carry out the original instructions
when the time had expired. The Governor hardened his heart and sent a
detachment to surround the gipsy encampment; when that was done, the
police brought up a militia battalion, and scenes that beggar
description are said to have followed—women, with their hair flying
loose, ran frantically to and fro, shrieking and sobbing, while
white-haired old women clutched hold of their sons. But order triumphed,
and the police-inspector secured all the boys and the recruits, and the
rest were marched off by stages to their place of exile.
But a question now arose: where were the kidnapped children to be put,
and at whose cost were they to be maintained?
In former days there had been schools for foundlings which cost the
Crown nothing; but these had been abolished, as productive of
immorality. The Governor advanced the money from his own pocket and
consulted the Minister. The Minister replied that, until further orders,
the children were to be looked after by the old people in the
alms-house.
To make little children live with dying old men and women, and to force
them to breathe the atmosphere of death; and on the other hand, to force
the aged and worn-out to look after the children for nothing—that was a
real inspiration!
§15
While I am on this subject, I shall tell here the story of what happened
eighteen months later to a bailiff of my father’s. Though a peasant, he
was a man of intelligence and experience; he had several teams of his
own which he hired out, and he served for twenty years as bailiff of a
small detached village.
In the year which I spent at Vladímir, he was asked by the people of a
neighbouring village to supply a substitute as a recruit for the Army;
and he turned up in the town with the future defender of his country at
the end of a rope. He seemed perfectly self-confident and sure of
success.
“Yes, _bátyushka_,” he said to me, combing with his fingers his thick
brown beard with some grey in it, “it all depends on how you manage
these things. We put forward a lad two years ago, but he was a very poor
miserable specimen, and the men were very much afraid that he would not
do. ‘Well,’ said I, ‘you must begin by collecting some money—the wheel
won’t go round unless you grease it!’ So we had a talk together, and the
village produced twenty-five gold pieces. I drove into the town, had a
talk with the people in the Crown Court, and then went straight to the
President’s house—a clever man, _bátyushka_, and an old acquaintance of
mine. He had me taken into his study, where he was lying on the sofa
with a bad leg. I put the facts before him. He laughed and said, ‘All
right, all right! But you tell me how many of _them_ you have brought
with you; for I know what an old skin-flint you are.’ I put ten gold
pieces on the table with a low bow. He took them up and played with
them. ‘Well,’ says he, ‘I’m not the only person who expects payment;
have you brought any more?’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘we can go as far as ten
more.’ ‘You can count for yourself,’ says he, ‘where they are to go to:
the doctor will want a couple, and the inspector of recruits another
couple, and the clerk—I don’t think more than three will be needed in
that quarter; but you had better give me the lot, and I’ll try to
arrange it for you.’”
“Well, did you give it?” I asked.
“Certainly I did; and the man was passed for the Army all right.”
Enlightened by this method of rounding off accounts, and attracted
probably by the five gold pieces to whose ultimate destination he had
made no allusion, the bailiff was sure of success this time also. But
there is many a slip between the bribe and the palm that closes on it.
Count Essen, an Imperial _aide-de-camp_, was sent to Vladímir to inspect
the recruits. The bailiff, with his golden arguments in his pocket,
found his way into the presence of the Count. But unfortunately the
Count was no true Russian, but a son of the Baltic provinces which teach
German devotion towards the Russian Tsar. He got angry, raised his
voice, and, worse than all, rang his bell; in ran a secretary, and
police-officers on the top of him. The bailiff, who had never dreamed of
the existence of a man in uniform who would refuse a bribe, lost his
head altogether; instead of holding his tongue, he swore by all his gods
that he had never offered money, and wished that his eyes might fall out
and he might die of thirst, if he had ever thought of such a thing.
Helpless as a sheep, he was taken off to the police-station, where he
probably repented of his folly in insulting a high officer by offering
him so little.
Essen was not content with his own clear conscience nor with having
given the man a fright. He probably wished to lay the axe to the tree of
Russian corruption, to punish vice, and to make a salutary example. He
therefore reported the bailiff’s nefarious attempt to the police, the
Governor, and the Recruiting Office. The offender was put in prison and
ordered to be tried. Thanks to the absurd law, which is equally severe
on the honest man who gives a bribe and the official who pockets it, the
affair looked bad, and I resolved at all costs to save the bailiff.
I went at once to the Governor, but he refused to interfere. The
President and Councillors of the Criminal Court shook their heads: the
_aide-de-camp_ was interested in the case, and that frightened them. I
went to Count Essen himself, and he was very gracious—he had no wish
that the bailiff should suffer, but thought he needed a lesson: “Let him
be tried and acquitted,” he said. When I repeated this to the inspector
of police, he remarked: “The fact is, these gentlemen don’t understand
business. If the Count had simply sent him to me, I should have warmed
the fool’s back for walking into a river without asking if there was a
ford; then I should have sent him about his business, and all parties
would have been satisfied. But the court complicates matters.”
I have never forgotten what the Count said and what the inspector said:
they expressed so neatly and clearly the view of justice entertained in
the Russian Empire.
Between these Pillars of Hercules of our national jurisprudence, the
bailiff had fallen into the deep water, in other words, into the
Criminal Court. A few months later the court came to a decision: the
criminal was to be flogged and then banished to Siberia. His son and all
his relations came to me, begging me to save the father and head of the
family. I felt intense pity myself for the sufferer, who was perfectly
innocent. I called again on the President and Councillors; again I tried
to prove that they were injuring themselves by punishing this man so
severely. “You know very well yourselves,” I said, “that no lawsuit is
ever settled without bribes; and you will starve yourselves, unless you
take the truly Christian view that every gift is good and perfect.”[105]
By begging and bowing and sending the bailiff’s son to bow still lower,
I attained half of my object. The man was condemned to suffer a certain
number of lashes within the prison walls, but he was not exiled; and he
was forbidden to undertake any business of the kind in future for other
peasants.
Footnote 105:
There is a reference to the Epistle of James, i. 17.
When I found that the Governor and state-attorney had confirmed this
remission, I went off to beg the police that the flogging might be
lightened; and they, partly flattered by this personal appeal, and
partly pitying a martyr in a cause so near to their own hearts, and also
because they knew the man was well-to-do, promised me that the
punishment should be merely nominal.
A few days later the bailiff came to my house one morning; he looked
thin, and there was more grey in his beard. For all his joy, I soon
perceived that he had something on his mind.
“What’s troubling you?” I asked.
“Well, I wish I could get it all over at once.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“What I mean is—when will the flogging be?”
“But haven’t you been flogged?”
“No.”
“But they’ve let you out, and I suppose you’re going home.”
“Home? Yes, I’m going home, but I keep thinking about the flogging; the
secretary spoke of it, I am sure I heard him.”
I was really quite puzzled. At last I asked him if he had a written
discharge of any kind. He handed it to me. I read there the original
sentence at full length, and then a postscript, that he was to be
flogged within the prison walls by sentence of the court and then to be
discharged, in possession of this certificate.
I burst out laughing. “You see, you’ve been flogged already.”
“No, _bátyushka_, I’ve not.”
“Well, if you’re not content, go back and ask them to flog you; perhaps
the police will take pity upon you.”
Seeing me laugh, he too smiled, but he shook his head doubtfully and
said, “It’s a very queer business.”
A very irregular business, many will say; but let them reflect that it
is this kind of irregularity alone which makes life possible in Russia.
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