THE RUSSIAN PEASANT.
The Russian peasant is the most important factor in Russian life. He
constitutes the majority of the nation. The peasant not only tills the
arable land, but he owns the greater part of it. This is a fact which is
practically unknown in England. There was once an anarchist Russian who
gave a lecture to the poor in the East End of London on the wrongs of
the Russian people. In the course of the lecture he declared with
fervent indignation that no peasant in Russia could own more than so
many acres of land. Upon which the audience cried “Shame!” The irony of
this is piercing when one reflects that not one member of that audience
had ever owned, or could ever in his wildest dreams look forward to
owning, a particle of arable soil.
The average reader, who has some vague notions of Russia, probably
thinks of the Russian peasant as a serf, and as such a scarcely
civilized savage—a little better than a beast. It has already been
mentioned in the preceding chapter that serfdom in Russia was not a
slavery resulting from conquest or difference in race and colour, but
the outcome of economic conditions. Serfdom was a measure by which the
peasant, who had a tendency to wander, was made fast to the land,
because if he wandered the State was threatened with economic ruin;
moral slavery, and the ownership of the peasant by the landowner, were
the ultimate results of this economic measure. When the legislation
which ultimately produced serfdom was framed, it was not regarded by
those who framed it as a permanent solution of the relations between
landowner and peasant, but only as a temporary makeshift. The
result—namely, slavery—was unforeseen.
Now, the peasants never, through nearly two centuries of slavery, lost
sight of the fact that this legislation was only a temporary makeshift,
a stroke of opportunism. Moreover, they kept fast hold of the idea that
the land was theirs; that the land belonged to the people who tilled it;
and that if for a time it was in the hands of landowners, that was
because the emperor was obliged to lend it to the landowners, in order
to pay them for such military service which the destinies of the
fatherland rendered indispensable.
In 1861 came the emancipation of the serfs, and this emancipation did
not merely mean the end of the personal and moral slavery of the
peasant, but something far more important also—namely, that a portion of
the land which the peasant considered to be his by right was restored to
him. The emancipation of the serfs was an act of State expropriation.
More than 130,000,000 _desiatines_ of land (350,964,187 acres) passed
from the hands of the landowners into the hands of the peasants for
ever. On an average each peasant received from 8¼ to 11 acres; in the
north he might receive more, in the south less. The nobility—that is to
say, the landowners—were paid down by the Government for the land they
had given up; the peasants had to pay back the State in instalments,
over a period of more than fifty years. The State acted as banker to
both parties, and not only paid the landowners ready money, but advanced
the money to the peasants. The peasant had to pay back the money
advanced to him at an interest of six per cent. over a period of
forty-nine years, until the year 1910.
In 1907 these payments were cancelled.
The peasants, after the emancipation, were to continue to own the land
in common, as they had always done before.
In the days of serfdom every landowner possessed so much land, and the
serfs—or, as they were called, “the souls”—who belonged to it. After the
emancipation, each batch of serfs belonging to each separate owner
became a separate and independent community, which owned land in common.
The land which was thus owned in common could not be redistributed more
than once every twelve years, and even then only if two-thirds of the
village assembly voted for redistribution. A similar majority was
necessary before any of the common land could become private property.
All the land which was fit for cultivation was divided amongst the
peasants, according to the number of taxed members in each household.
But as the nature of the soil varied with its situation, and was richer
in one place than another, or was more or less advantageous owing to
other reasons—say its proximity or distance from the village—instead of
receiving all his share of the land in one place, each taxed member in
every household received so many strips of land in different places, so
that the division might be fair.
Supposing the land to be divided amongst Tom, Dick, and Harry was good
in some parts, bad in another, and indifferent in a third, and each was
to receive an acre: Tom would receive a third in the good part, a third
in the bad part, and a third in the indifferent part, and Dick and Harry
would fare likewise. When the land was redistributed, the share received
by each household varied as that household increased or diminished in
numbers.
From 1861, the year of the emancipation, until 1904, the year of the
Russo-Japanese War, the only change of importance in the peasant system
of land tenure was made in the reign of Alexander III. A clause was
introduced into the legislation on peasant land tenure which made it
impossible for the peasant to buy himself out of the Commune. This
clause was added in 1890. It was done because the Government at this
period looked on the peasants as a safe conservative element, and
considered that communal ownership of land fostered conservatism. During
all this period agriculture had not improved, but had deteriorated. Half
the landowners in Russia disappeared, and their place was taken by the
peasants or by the merchants. The remaining landowners either let their
land to the peasants, or tried (and for the most part failed) to farm it
rationally.
In 1904 came political unrest and universal political discontent. And
amongst the peasants this discontent was expressed by one formula, and
one formula alone—“Give us more land.” Agrarian riots took place all
over Russia, and landowners’ houses were burnt and their cattle
destroyed.
Universal expropriation was brought forward as a political measure, but
economically it was felt by those who had faced the question practically
to be no remedy, except in regard to the land which was let by the
landowners to the peasants.
Nevertheless, something had to be done. All over Russia every landowner
sold a certain amount of land to the peasants, and a great part of the
land which had been hitherto let to the peasants, and not farmed by the
landowner himself, became the peasants’ property. In 1905, roughly
speaking, twenty-five per cent. of the amount of land still belonging to
landowners passed into the hands of the peasants.
In 1910 another great change came about. Owing to a law, drawn up at the
initiative of P. A. Stolypin, the peasant obtained the right of leaving
the Commune, and of converting his share of the land into his individual
and permanent property. He could, moreover, exchange his separated
strips of land for a corresponding amount of land which should be as far
as possible all in one place. And if he wished to do this, and to start
a farm, he could receive financial assistance from the State.
On paper, nothing could be more satisfactory, the situation seeming to
be this—that the peasant is able to leave the Commune if he wishes and
become an independent peasant proprietor, but he is not compelled to do
so. The idea was expressed at the time of the emancipation of the serfs
by the men who drafted the law of reform, that it was desirable to leave
the question of communal tenure to settle itself. And the same idea was
reasserted by the Russian ministry, when the Bill on peasant land tenure
was introduced into the Duma—namely, that it would be wrong either to
bolster up the Commune artificially, or to destroy it, and that the
right course was to leave the population itself free to settle in every
individual case whether it wishes to remain in the Commune or not.
Practically this is not what has happened. Practically, both owing to
certain clauses in the law itself, and owing to the manner of its
application, pressure has been put on the peasants to leave the Commune.
The law works advantageously for those who leave the Commune,
disadvantageously for those who wish to remain in the Commune. To
explain how this happens would entail going into many technical points.
To those who are interested in this subject, I would recommend an
article in _The Russian Review_ of November 1912, by Alexander Manuilov,
a member of the Russian Council of Empire.
But if it is too lengthy a task to explain how this is so, it is easy in
a few sentences to explain why this is so.
The law on land tenure was made by the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy has
always treated the peasant question from a political point of view. When
the communal system seemed to lead to conservatism, the bureaucracy
backed up the communal system (this was so, as I have already said, in
the reign of Alexander III., and indeed made it impossible for the
peasant to leave the Commune); when after 1904 the communal system
seemed to encourage socialistic ideas, or to be made a basis for
socialistic ideas, the bureaucracy backed up individual land tenure.
Moreover, in the law itself and in the manner of its application the
minority (those who wish to leave the Commune) are backed up at the
expense of the majority, because by so doing the Government considered
they were creating good sound conservative voters.
In spite of this pressure, and perhaps because of it (although in some
parts of Russia they have displayed eagerness to become the permanent
owners of their respective strips of land), up till 1910, only four per
cent. of the peasantry availed themselves of the right to exchange their
strips for an allotment in one place; and up till January 1, 1912, the
Communes who petitioned for deeds numbered only 4,656; and out of 45,994
Communes, only 174,193 petitions were forthcoming, which shows a
proportion of one in every three or four.
It is, of course, too soon to generalize on the result of such recent
legislation. Comparisons and analogies with similar legislation in other
countries—such as Ireland, for instance—would be misleading, for the
existence of the Commune is peculiar in Russia. At the present moment
the Russian peasant owns land. He either owns strips in the land
belonging to the Commune, shares which are liable to periodical
redistribution, or else he has become the permanent owner of his strips,
or else he has exchanged them for an allotment and started a farm.
At the present moment the peasants own by far the greater part of the
arable land in Russia, and every family owns in arable land at least six
acres; and on an average in the densely populated districts, at least 10
acres. In the more thinly populated districts of the north and south,
the average increases.
It is clear then that the peasant is an important unit, the most
important unit in the nation. It is well then to look into the nature of
this important unit, and to see what kind of being he is, and what are
the mainsprings of his conduct.
At the outset there probably exists certain preconceived notions which
it is as well to get rid of at once.
The first of these is that there is anything servile about the Russian
peasant because during two centuries he endured serfdom. “In spite of
the period of serfdom through which he has passed,” writes Sir Charles
Eliot in his _Turkey in Europe_—and Sir Charles Eliot possesses
first-hand knowledge of Russia—“the Russian muzhik is not servile; he
thinks of God and the Tsar in one category, and of the rest of the world
as more or less equal in another.”
And Dostoievsky, in writing about Pushkin, says that one of this poet’s
chief claims to greatness is that he recognized the intrinsic quality of
self-respect in the Russian people, which they proved by the manly
dignity of their behaviour when they were liberated from serfdom.
The Russian people, in spite of centuries of serfdom, with the exception
of individual instances, were not and never have been slaves.
So much, I think, can be stated without fear of contradiction or
controversy. Before going any further I want to clear the ground a
little. The reader must be prepared to find, not only in foreign books
about Russia, but in Russian books about Russia, and to meet with in
conversation not only from foreigners who have travelled and lived in
Russia, but in conversation with the Russians themselves, widely
divergent and contradictory ideas and opinions with regard to the nature
of the Russian peasant. He will hear on one side that he is intelligent,
on the other that he is crassly obtuse. On the one hand that he is
humane, on the other hand that he is brutal. He will find in Russian
literature that by some writers he is exalted as the salt of the earth
and the solution of life, and that by others he is decried as a
hopeless, inert mass of ignorance and prejudices. M. Leroy Beaulieu in
his _Empire des Tsars_ tells a story of how once, when he was travelling
on the Volga, a “lady said to him, ‘How can you bother yourself about
our muzhik? he is a brute, out of which nobody will ever be able to make
a man;’ and how on the same day a landed proprietor said to him, ‘I
consider the _contadino_ of North Italy to be the most intelligent
peasant in Europe, but our muzhik could give him points.’”
Further, most Russians will tell you that the peasant will rarely give
himself away, and that to the outside observer of another class he
probably is, and will always remain, a sealed book. The net result of
all this is that readers may justly say to me, “And what can you know
about the subject?” And it is to this very question that I think I owe
some sort of reply before continuing to say anything else about the
nature of the Russian peasant.
My claims to be in a position to say certain things which I have got
first hand about the Russian peasant are not, it is true, great; but I
believe them to exist. They do not rest on what is called erudition. I
am no expert in the difficult problems, economic and others, which are
connected with the life of the Russian peasantry; but it so happens that
I have been thrown together, so to speak, with the Russian peasant under
peculiar circumstances. During the years I have spent in Russia I have
made friends with peasants in various places, and have often in
travelling had much talk and intercourse with them. But it is not
chiefly on that that I base my observations—it is on this: that being in
Manchuria during the greater part of the Russo-Japanese War, as I
drifted about from one part of the army to another I was thrown together
with the Russian soldier, who is a peasant, often on terms of absolute
equality; that is to say, I was to him no longer a _barin_ (one of the
upper classes), but a kind of camp follower, of which there were
multitudes in Manchuria during the war—a man who, in their eyes, had a
_barin_ himself. On one occasion I was asked where my _barin_ (master)
was, and when I said I was my own _barin_, the peasant who was talking
to me said he thought I was just a common man. Thus on many occasions I
met, travelled with, and bivouacked with soldiers on their own footing,
and shared their food, lodging, and talk _on equal terms_. And it was
this experience which gave me glimpses into things, and an insight into
certain manners and customs, which I should otherwise have ignored. The
knowledge that I thus gleaned was confirmed to me by my subsequent
travel in Russia, especially by journeys which I sometimes made in
third-class carriages. But all this would not be in itself sufficient to
give me any right to talk about the Russian peasant. All this would have
given me the material, but not the means of using it. I base my claim to
right of using it on one simple fact: I like the Russian peasant very
much.
In speaking of Pushkin’s love of the Russian peasant, Dostoievsky says:
“Do not love me but love mine (that is to say, love what I love). That
is what the people says when it wishes to test the sincerity of your
love. Every member of the gentry, especially if he is humane and
enlightened, can love, that is to say, sympathize with the people on
account of its want, poverty, and suffering. But what the people needs
is not that you should love it for its sufferings, but for itself; and
what does ‘love it for itself’ signify? If you love what I love, honour
what I honour. That is what it means, and that is what the people will
answer to in you; and if it be otherwise, the man of the people will
never count you as his own, however great your distress may be on his
account.”
Well, in saying that I like the Russian peasant very much, I mean that I
honour what he honours, and his way of looking at life; his standards of
right and wrong seem to me the sound and true.
It is for this reason that, in all humility, I claim the right of
deducing certain statements from the experience that I have had amongst
the Russian people, and in laying them before the English reader.
Now as to the chief characteristics of the Russian peasant. In the first
place, and most important of all, he is intensely religious, and his
religion is based on common sense.
“Mysticism,” Mr. Chesterton once wrote, “was with Carlyle, as with all
its genuine professors, only a transcendent form of common sense.
Mysticism and common sense alike consist in a sense of the dominance of
certain truths which cannot be formally demonstrated.”
In this sense the Russian peasant is a mystic. His religion does not
come to him through books or study or spiritual sciences, but it is the
outcome of his experience, and of a very hard and bitter experience. The
first and cardinal point of the peasant’s whole outlook on life is that
he believes in God, and that he sees the will of God in all things, and
that he regards a man who disbelieves in God as something abnormal, and
as something not only abnormal but silly. He believes in God because it
seems to him nonsensical not to do so.
It would be easy to call as witnesses on this point a host of the most
famous names in Russian literature. But the objection might be made (a
false objection in my opinion, but still it might be made) that writers
and poets idealize reality, and see in others what they feel in
themselves or what they want to see; so from Russian literature I will
only call one witness, and that is N. Garin, an engineer, who bought a
property in the country and devoted many years solely to farming it, and
was thus brought into daily constant and intimate touch and
communication with the peasants.
He begins relating his experiences thus: “By my conversations and
intercourse with the peasants I could not help becoming acquainted with
their inner life. As I got to know them I was struck on the one hand by
their strength, patience, endurance, and by an inflexibility which
attained to greatness, which made it easy to understand how the kingdom
of Russia had come to be. On the other hand, I met with obduracy,
routine, and a dull hostility to every innovation, which made it easy to
understand why the Russian peasant lives so miserably. Two brothers
lived in a village. One was married and the other was a bachelor. The
married brother has five children and a wife, but is himself the only
bread-winner; the unmarried brother lives in the family, and helps in
the work with all his might, but he is old and ill. The married brother
falls sick and dies. The old man is left with the family on his hands;
he sets about to support it with the slender strength at his disposal.
There are no savings, nothing put by. In the cottage half-naked children
are running about, all with colds; they are crying; the cottage is cold,
the atmosphere is foul, the calf squeals, the dead man is lying on the
shelf, and on the face of the old man there is an expression of calm, as
if all that were quite natural and had to be so.
“‘It will be hard for you to feed eight mouths all by yourself?’ I ask.
“‘And God?’ he answered.
“God is all. Starvation is beckoning through the half-broken little
window of the rotting house; the last bread-winner dies; there is a heap
of children; the sister-in-law (the only woman) is sick; there is no
money for the funeral; and he, being questioned as to his lot, answers,
‘And God?’ And you feel something inexpressibly strong, unconquerable,
and great.”
I will supplement this story with a little piece of first-hand evidence
which I gathered myself. This is only one instance out of a great many
which I have come across in the course of my various sojourns in Russia.
It was in a small provincial town some years ago, in the winter. I was
walking late in the evening down one of the larger streets. It had been
thawing, and the streets and the pavements were sloshy. It was dark.
Just as I was reaching a street corner which faced a large open place, I
became aware of the sound of muffled, persistent sobs. I looked round,
and I saw sitting on the pavement, with his back to the wall, a little
boy, a peasant’s child, who was softly crying his eyes out. He was
sobbing slowly, not loudly, but persistently; not whining, or crying in
the kind of way children cry when they fall down or quarrel, but he
seemed to be sobbing out of the fullness of his little heart. He was not
trying to attract attention, nor did he pay attention to me or to any
one else. He seemed quite unconscious of the surrounding world, and
plunged in his own grief. I stopped and asked him what was the matter.
He answered that his father had sent him to the town to buy something (I
forget what it was), and had given him the money, and that the money had
been taken away from him. It was quite a small sum. He was afraid to go
home. I at once gave him the money, and the little boy stood up, dried
his eyes, and crossed himself. Then, without a word, he went home. He
thanked God: it was not necessary to thank any one else. And I never saw
anything like the expression of gratitude on his face as he crossed
himself; but to me he did not say one word. What was the use? It was God
who had come to his rescue, not I; you might just as well thank the
violin after a concert for the beauty of the music.
This is only the story of a child; but the child in Russia, just as
anywhere else, is father of the man.
It is difficult to bring home to the average Englishman the way in which
religion enters into the daily life of the Russians, and especially into
the daily life of the peasants. How often have I heard it said, how
often have I read in newspapers, of the dark superstition into which the
Russian people is plunged! If it be superstitious to regard religion not
as a rather disagreeable episode belonging exclusively to Sunday, then
the Russian peasant is superstitious indeed. If it be superstitious to
cherish no _mauvaise honte_ with regard to religion, not to be ashamed
of talking about God as a matter of fact, of saying one’s prayers in
public, of going to Mass on Sundays and holidays, of fasting during Lent
and other seasons of merrymaking at Easter, of crossing yourself before
meals, of invoking the Saints, of revering images and relics, then the
Russian peasant is superstitious indeed. But you must not put down such
superstition to ignorance, for it has been shared by men such as Saint
Augustine, Sir Thomas More, Lord Acton, and Pasteur—none of them what
you would call ignorant men.
Sometimes the traveller will note the fact that the Russian peasant will
prostrate himself over and over again before an image, or cross himself
over and over again mechanically. He will say the thing is an idle form
that has no spiritual significance. He will be wrong. The Russian
peasant fulfills the form and ritual of his religion as a matter of
course. He is not more superstitious in the fulfilling of them than an
Englishman is superstitious when he uncovers his head before the colours
of a regiment. In the case of a Russian peasant his meticulous
observance of ritual and form is just as much a matter of course to him,
it is just as much based on common sense as that inflexible belief in
God and the working and will of Providence which Garin so pointedly
illustrates in the passage I have quoted above.
The Russian peasant sees things in their true proportion. He believes in
God, as a matter of course, because it is plain to him that God exists.
He goes to church and observes the formalities of his religion because
it is plain to him that is the right thing to do, just as it is plain to
the ordinary English citizen that it is right to stand up when “God save
the King” is being sung.
The Russian peasant may be, and can be, and often is, as superstitious
as you like about other things, but his superstition does not proceed
from his religion. His superstitions are likewise a matter of tradition;
he believes in the _domovoi_, for instance, the spirit that inhabits
houses, well known once to the English peasantry, under the name of the
hobgoblin; Milton calls him the drudging goblin:—
“And he by Friar’s lantern led
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat
To earn the cream bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of man,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day labourers could not end,
Then lies him down, the lubber-fiend,
And, stretched out all the chimney’s length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And crop-full, out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings.”
The _domovoi_ in Russia is merely supposed to inhabit houses. I do not
think he is ever suspected of working. He is good-natured but
capricious. Each house has its goblin. He sits in the corner
underground. If you move from one house to another you must give notice
to the goblin and summon him to come with you. If you forget to do this,
the goblin will be offended, and stay where he is left, and show marked
hostility to the _domovoi_ brought by a new tenant. The two goblins will
fight; china and furniture will be broken; and this will go on until the
first householder comes and invites the goblin to his new house. Then
everything will be all right once more.
Garin says that he once said to a peasant: “What, in your opinion, is
the _domovoi_—the devil?”
The peasant, quite offended, answered: “Why should he be the devil? He
does no harm.”
“Then is he an angel?”
“God forbid! How can he be an angel seeing that he’s hairy?”
So the peasant agrees with Milton in thinking that the hobgoblin’s hide
is covered with hair.
The hobgoblin plays the part of a kind of moral barometer to the family,
foretelling good or bad fortune. At supper-time he is heard to move, and
then the elder of the family asks whether good or evil is impending. If
it be bad, the _domovoi_ says, “Hu” (Hudo being the Russian for bad);
and if good, he mutters, “D... D... D... D...” (Dobro being the Russian
for good).
To sum up the whole matter briefly, the religion of the Russian peasant
is, if you analyze it (a thing which the peasant would, of course, never
do), a working hypothesis of the world; or, to take Matthew Arnold’s
phrase, a criticism of life; and it is more a solution, a philosophy
which he has evolved not from books, not from professors or teachers,
but from life itself. It is the fruit of his native common sense. In
this observance of the forms of religion he likewise follows what has
for him the sanction (_a_) of common sense; (_b_) of immemorial custom.
Such a point of view one would think at first sight was not difficult to
grasp. Experience has led me to believe that it is difficult for English
people to grasp it. They go to Russia; they see the peasants prostrating
themselves in churches, kissing images, taking off their hats as they
pass churches; they see crowds feasting on Saint days; they see pilgrims
asking for and receiving alms. And they say, “What backward people! How
superstitious!” Or again (which is much worse) they say kindly, “What
charming people. How picturesque!” In the first case they are being
consciously superior, and in the second case they are being
unconsciously condescending.
In the first case they are simply pitying people for what they consider
retrograde and backward; in the second case they are expressing an
admiration whose real source is contempt. They do not know it is
contempt, but it is. Their belief in their own superiority is so sure,
and so sound, that they no more question it than the Russian peasant
questions his belief in God.
It is the same good-natured, easy-going contempt an English workman
feels for foreign workmen when he happens to work abroad.
I know of a case of an English gardener who was employed in a French
country-house. An Englishman who was there asked him how he liked the
French.
“Oh! the French are all right,” he said, “if you treat them well. They
are quite willing. You mustn’t bully them. You must treat them nicely
and kindly. Of course _you can’t expect them to work like Englishmen_.”
He talked of them good-naturedly, tolerantly, as if they were men of
another race, and laboured under some great radical natural disadvantage
through no fault of their own. Had he been talking of negroes instead of
the inhabitants of l’Ile de France you would not have been surprised.
This is exactly the attitude of the many English travellers, and of
certain English residents in Russia, towards the Russian people. They do
not, since they are not taught it at school—neither in board schools nor
in private schools, nor in public schools, nor in grammar schools, and
least of all at the universities—know that once the whole of Europe, and
especially the English, looked on religion as the Russian peasants do
now; or if they do know this, they thank Heaven that some parts of
Europe, and in any case the English, have outgrown this backward
ignorance and this dark philosophy.
It is true, and it is only fair to state, that this attitude towards the
religion of the Russian peasant is shared to some extent, but in a quite
different manner, by the Russian educated classes, and more especially
by the semi-educated. Of this I will write later in greater detail. But
there is this great difference—the Russian educated and semi-educated
classes may sometimes think these religious ideas of the Russian
peasants childish; but not because they look on the peasant as a kind of
inferior being, a savage or a “native.” They think the peasant’s
religion is childish, because they think all religion is childish
(whether the Pope’s, the Patriarch’s, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s,
Mrs. Eddy’s, Mahomet’s, or Buddha’s), a thing which they have outgrown.
But, as one Russian writer has pointed out, the Russian intellectuals
are, on an average, not superior but inferior to the idea of religion,
for they have never experienced it; and it is here that their attitude
resembles that of the average Englishman. The average Englishman
considers himself religiously almost immeasurably above the Russian
peasant in enlightenment; it has never struck him that he may be below
him. And until this humble thought strikes him, he will never be able to
understand the religion of the Russian peasant.
I was once talking to a lady who had been to Moscow about Russia. She
said Moscow was very interesting, but she added: “I suppose it’s
dreadful of me to say it, but all those _mosques_” (and by the mosques
she meant the Cathedral and the Christian churches, which in their rites
and customs probably resemble the early centuries of Christianity more
closely than any in Europe) “were always so full of poor people, and
such dirty people.” The idea of a church being a place where no
distinction was made between rich and poor, where rich and poor could
enter at any time of the day, where rich and poor jostled each other and
crowded together in dense crowds to hear Mass on Sunday, was an idea
entirely new and entirely foreign to her. And in expressing this, I
venture to think she was below and not above the Russian peasant’s
standard of religion.
With regard to superstition, superstition is to the Russian peasant a
thing quite apart from religion. It fills up a gap for him. In the
region of the inexplicable, all matters that religion does not deal
with, such as omens, the peasant puts down to other agencies, harmless
agencies as a rule, such as hobgoblins; and here again he follows
custom.
I have said that the basis of the Russian peasant’s religion is common
sense. Common sense is likewise the backbone or the mainspring of his
material as well as of his spiritual existence, the key to his methods
of work and his manner of play, his social code, his habits and customs;
in a word, to his practice as well as to his theory.
In the past much has been written on his backwardness, his obduracy, his
love of routine, his persistence in remaining in old grooves, his hatred
of innovation, his hostility towards all forms of progress. There is, of
course, in many individual cases, a great deal of truth in these
charges, but there is something else to be said as well. People are now
beginning to say that often what at first sight appears to be wilful
obduracy and blind and senseless conservatism is, in nine cases out of
ten, merely the choice of the lesser of two evils, a choice obviously
dictated by common sense.
It is now being largely recognized by practical experts in agriculture
in Russia, that the reason the peasant obstinately adhered to antiquated
methods and turned a deaf ear to modern improvements and innovations,
was not always that he was stupid, and not necessarily that he was
obstinate, but that the improvements and the innovations suggested to
him, although admirable in themselves, were, given his particular
circumstances, likely to cause him more harm than good; the main fact
being that he was too poor to take advantage of them; that the older
method was the lesser evil, the newer method being the cause of a
greater evil.
I will give a few instances of what I mean.
It is an admitted fact in countries that have a continental climate that
the earth will only retain a sufficient quantity of moisture if it is
ploughed early in spring and remains ploughed throughout the summer.
Consequently the fallow land should be ploughed early in spring for the
winter-sown crops. The peasant knows this well, but he does not plough
early in spring, he ploughs late in summer; but if you ask him why, he
puts to you the unanswerable question, “Where shall I put my cattle, if
I plough early in the spring?”—the only place for his cattle being the
fallow land, since all the remaining part of his land consists of
growing crops. As soon as the harvest is over he can, of course, use the
stubble for his cattle. This is an instance of what seems to be at first
sight backward obstinacy, and is in reality expediency—the choice of the
lesser evil, dictated by common sense.
At one time every effort was being made to persuade the peasant to use a
modern improved plough instead of the primitive instrument he preferred,
which resembled that in use in the days of Abraham. He often refused to
do so; but why? Not because he had anything against the new plough as an
instrument, but because if he had not enough capital to buy one (its
cost being 50 roubles = £5), and if he borrowed money from a rich
peasant to do so, he risked losing all his substance; he risked being
sold up in order to pay his debts. So in this case, the old-fashioned
plough (which cost him only five roubles = 10s.) was a lesser evil than
complete ruin.
But, on the other hand, it has now been proved that as soon as the
peasant can get the necessary capital, as soon as he can obtain credit
from co-operative credit associations, he does not hesitate to buy iron
ploughs, or even Canadian corn-cutters, or any modern implement you like
to mention.
Scientific agriculture is being widely taught at the present moment in
Russia. Agricultural colleges are spreading, and the number of
agricultural students is every day increasing. But it is the firm
conviction of the most learned of the scientific agriculturists that all
you can do for the peasant is to open for him doors on possibilities of
teaching him what can be done; but that if it comes to teaching him
_how_ to do a thing, you cannot. He knows _how_ to do everything much
better than any theorist. Centuries of close and constant contact with
the soil have taught him more than all the learning and all the theory
in the world. You can bring to his notice new methods for him to try,
new experiments; you can submit new possibilities to him; you can
enlarge his horizon to any extent; you can educate him; you can provide
him with new instruments; but in the practical use and application of
knowledge it is he who will teach you, and not you who will teach him.
He has the experience that only practice and centuries of practice can
give.
Not long ago one of the best known of the scientific Russian
agriculturists spoke in this sense to some young students. He bade them
remember that their whole task consisted in suggesting possibilities to
the peasants; but if they met with opposition, they must never insist,
for the peasant probably knew best, his knowledge being the fruit of the
accumulated experience of countless generations. I believe, and I know
that many Russians agree with me, that the history, the life, the
philosophy, and the religion of the Russian peasants illustrate one
immense fact: that the majority is always right in the long run. _Vox
populi, vox Dei._ He may have temporary aberrations; but give him time,
in the long run his view will be the right view.
But some one may say, “Surely you do not wish to advance the dangerous
and doctrinaire view that the land should be entirely in the hands of
the peasant; for you have already stated that the peasant believes that
the land is his, and that all the land should be in the hands of those
that till it? Surely you are not in favour of the wholesale
expropriation of land—of the total abolition of landlords?”
My answer to this is, “Yes, I think the peasant is _right in the long
run_, and I think he is right in thinking that in the long run the land
not only should be, but will be, his.”
At the present moment there are two kinds of landowners in Russia:—
1. Absentee landowners, who rent their land to the peasant on short
leases (on an average from one to six years) without sinking any capital
either in buildings or in any other improvements.[1] A large portion (as
I have already said) of the land thus rented to peasants by absentee
landlords was sold to the peasants (with the assistance of the State
land banks) in 1905; and it is generally admitted that the remainder,
all the land still rented to the peasants, should become their permanent
property. This is what is actually happening (slowly and gradually),
with the assistance, again, of land banks.
With regard to the land farmed by the landowners, the question is
different. Such farming is carried on, as a rule, on a very large scale,
at a great expenditure of capital, which is sunk in the land.
At one time (in 1905) wholesale and immediate expropriation of all the
land owned by the landowners was advocated by some political parties and
individuals as the solution of the land question in Russia.
But a wholesale act of expropriation, if put into force immediately,
would not only bring about an economic crisis affecting the landowner,
but it would reduce the standard of farming and diminish the productive
capacity of the land, and impoverish the peasants themselves.
The peasants, possessing little or no capital, would not be able to
maintain the high standard of farming carried on by the landowners; and
if the land hitherto farmed on this high standard were suddenly to be
made over to them, they would earn less by trying to farm it without
capital than they earn at present by working on the landowners’ land.
If, then, wholesale and immediate expropriation is out of the question
as a wise, practical, and beneficent measure, why and how is the peasant
right in looking forward to the day when all the land will belong to
him?
Before such a state of things can be brought about, two things must
happen to the peasant. He must acquire (_a_) capital, (_b_) a wider
instruction in agricultural methods and a more extensive general
instruction—in a word, a better education.
This is actually happening now. The peasant is enabled to acquire
capital through the existence of co-operative credit associations and
land banks. And everywhere now, all over Russia, agricultural schools
are increasing and instruction in improved agricultural methods is
spreading. The creation of a body of agricultural experts stationed
throughout the country under the supervision of the county councils, in
order to advise the peasants and farmers on matters of agriculture, and
the establishment of experimental farming stations on a comprehensive
scale, have done this.
When the peasant will be in possession of sufficient capital and
instruction (and there does not appear to be anything Utopian in this
prospect) in order to compete with the landowner who farms his own land,
he will gradually oust the landowner altogether. Once possessed of the
same means as the landlord, he will not only be his equal, but his
superior; he will supersede him; he will be the master of the situation,
and in the long run he will become _ipso facto_ the owner of all the
arable land in Russia; and the change could thus come about without any
economic crisis, and without imperilling the interests of the State.
People may perhaps wonder why, during the revolutionary ferment of
1905–6, when there was so much talk of expropriation in the air, when
there was so much agricultural disturbance all over Russia, the peasants
did not simply take all the land belonging to the landowners. It is not
a sufficient answer to say the soldiery, remaining loyal, prevented any
such thing. The soldiers are peasants, and there was probably not one
soldier among them who was not convinced that the land belonged to the
tillers of it by right.
It will perhaps not be thought fantastic if I here again repeat, as an
answer to this question, the democratic theory, which I know is so
distasteful to many, that the majority are always right; that the
peasants, in a vague and inarticulate fashion, vaguely knew or dimly
felt that if they did such a thing the only immediate result would be
wholesale anarchy; and that it was their fundamental common sense which
unconsciously led them to insist on the partial sale of the land let to
them by the landowners, and to rest contented for the moment with this
preliminary step. They would, of course, not be able to explain the
matter thus; but this was in all probability the explanation of their
conduct.
I repeat here, lest the reader should think I am foisting on him
fantastic stuff and idealistic theory, that the individual peasant is as
often as not obstinate, lazy, and backward; that all the peasants are in
need not only of wider instruction in agricultural methods, but also of
general all-round education.
The individual peasant would not come out with any theory as to the
lesser of two evils; he would probably defend his backward practice as
being the best, or as being that which had always been followed.
Nevertheless, in spite of this, those habits of the peasant which are
the result of accumulated experience have, if you look into them, a
fundamental basis of common sense, even though the individual peasant
may be unaware of the fact. The immemorial popular tradition and custom,
the stored and accumulated wisdom of the peasantry (to which the immense
quantity of popular proverbs and saws which exist in Russia are as the
leaves are to a tree) according to which they act as a body, will be
found to be sound and right in the long run, although the average
individual peasant may be unable to give any reason for accepting and
following the dictates of that wisdom which is his inheritance; he may
be not only incapable of defining it, he may be unaware of its
existence. But as a member of the community to which he belongs he will
nevertheless apply that wisdom, as circumstances call for it, and
express it by the acts of his daily life; and his individual voice will
be a part of that larger voice which has sometimes been thought to be
identical with the voice of God.