AMONG THE MUZHIKS
Importance of the muzhik in the future--Ancient republican
traditions--Greek church and bureaucracy run Russian
institutions--Weight of the peasant vote in the Duma--How the
peasant’s belief in “God and Czar” is waning--Strokes of
disillusionment--Indifference to time--Muzhik nonchalance--Strange
sects--Muzhik religion--A characteristic legend--Practical
ethics--The muzhik not necessarily lazy--Muzhik shrewdness--The
dawning of self-consciousness.
The future of Russia lies in the muzhik. With an agrarian population
aggregating eighty per cent. of the total population, the balance of
power must ultimately rest with the majority. Since the war with Japan
the world has begun to see the Russian peasant in a new light. No longer
the ignorant, slothful creature he has been depicted, but a thinking man
of strong frame, promising rare development in the future if individual
advancement can be encouraged under a wise, sane, and humane
administration.
“The Russian peasant is the best raw material in Europe from an
industrial point of view,” an American manufacturer in Russia once said
to me. “He is powerfully built, naturally imitative, and adaptable.”
Long before the Mongols invaded Russia, Russia held republican
traditions. The states which now make up the Russian empire were
formerly ruled by princes and dignitaries elected by the people, and,
indeed, Michael Romanoff, the first of the present reigning house, was
chosen czar without opposition of arms or other force, so that even
Nicholas II is where he is to-day because of a republican custom which
raised his forebears to the throne. The Russian church is not Russian.
It calls itself Greek “Orthodox.” It is an importation from Byzantium
just as the bureaucracy is an importation from Germany. The Russian
peasant has submitted to these foreign impositions because they were
foisted upon him, but in the village life there has been presented the
spirit of pure democracy and republicanism. Therefore it is true that
the Russian people do take kindly to reform, and herein lies the
probability of the Russian peasant ultimately leading the world in
social and economic reforms. When the power which must eventually be
yielded to the peasantry has finally been wrested from autocracy and
bureaucracy, the pendulum of the social revolution will swing wide,
paralleling, if not surpassing, the French Revolution, and affecting the
entire world.
The peasants were the weightiest group in the Duma. The Constitutional
Democrats did more talking, and in their academic way were the shapers
of the first Duma. But the peasants swung the votes. The government at
first leaned on the peasants because of their supposed superstitious
loyalty to the Emperor--their “Little Father.” The Constitutional
Democrats knew, however, that this was a thing of the past, and at once
began to proselytize among the men in homespun. The socialists and
extreme radicals among the Social Democrats and Labor Deputies entered
upon no end of negotiations to seal a compact with the peasants, and
with perhaps better success. But the supposed gullible, guileless,
ingenuous Muzhik showed himself as canny as a Scot. He listened to
everything that anybody wished to say to
[Illustration: A group of leading men in a starving village]
him, but when the moment came for exchanging pledges the long, shaggy
head of the rustic would deliberately, but firmly, wag--“We want land
and liberty.” That was the answer one heard a score of times each day in
the Duma lobby. Other matters were of secondary interest to him.
The muzhik used to be terribly serious about two things in life: God and
the Czar. This is no longer the case. The Czar sanctioned the calling
together of the Duma. The peasants believed in it then--and in him. The
Duma meant to them a place where representatives of all the people could
come together to formulate requests and to explain in detail to the
Emperor the ills of his majesty’s people in the remote country
districts. Previous to the first Duma millions believed that this would
suffice. Thousands of people in America hold a similar view in regard to
the Czar--namely, that he is well-meaning, but kept from knowledge of
actual conditions through the machinations of his ministers, counselors,
and minions of the court. There was great rejoicing among the peasants
when the first Duma framed a “response to the Throne Speech,” and many
of them telegraphed most optimistic messages to their home villages. The
Czar would hear their prayers and grant their requests, they thought.
Alas, the pain of disillusionment that awaited them! Like a thunderbolt
from a clear sky came the government’s answer. Every single request
rejected and refused! I was in the Duma that afternoon. Amid the
strained stillness of the great hall, the prime minister read the
address. Only once did M. Gorymekin pause--to swallow a drop of water.
As he raised the glass to his lips it seemed as if every one of the
eight or nine hundred people in the room coughed nervously, as men do
who sit under great strain. But in a breath the intense quiet returned.
When the reading was ended a pin drop would still have been audible.
Then, while the Constitutional Democratic leaders were answering the
ministry in fiery speeches, one after another from the tribunal, the
peasants alone, or two by two, as men in common trouble, filed slowly
into the lobby. They all seemed instinctively to drift toward the
telegraph booth. They were the men who had suffered a blow and were
nonplussed. Their faith in the “Little Father” was now irretrievably
shaken. In the Duma conservative and academic professors, stung to
desperation, hammered and pounded the ministry, and finally introduced a
resolution (which, incidentally, they asked a peasant to read)
expressing their mistrust of the ministers, demanding their resignation,
and a new and responsible ministry. This was parliamentary. The peasants
acted differently--they voted in agreement, because they were told it
was right to do so. What they did of their own initiative was to send
scores of telegrams, which strangely enough the imperial wires carried
that night, carried till they were hot. “We have been refused land,
liberty, and new laws. Tell everybody.” This was the burden of the
messages. That was the muzhik’s impulse. These messages were sent by sad
men just coming to the realization of their situation. But having done
this they were not materially relieved. They sat together on the lobby
benches and conversed in low tones. When adjournment was announced they
went sorrowfully away, several never to return. One resigned--utterly
discouraged. A few days later one died as a result of his heart-breaking
disappointment--Andrianov of Simbirsk government--and the Duma rose in
the middle of the afternoon as a token of respect. Several remained ill
in their lodgings for a week. It is difficult for us in America to
understand and appreciate such intense feeling as these simple peasants
reveal, but to them this Duma was the most serious event in their lives.
Now they were utterly crushed by the realization that apparently the
Czar did not care for his people, that the Duma was a mockery and a
farce, and that if they were to escape from their plight it must be
through their efforts. The telegrams sent that afternoon constituted the
biggest piece of revolutionary propaganda since the Father Gapon labor
demonstrators were shot down in cold blood in the square of the Winter
Palace in January, 1905.
“How can you fight?” I asked of some peasants who had been sent as
delegates to St. Petersburg, and who intimated that this refusal of the
government’s meant open rebellion.
“The soldiers have taken our arms, it is true,” they replied. “But we
have left our wood-axes and our scythes. We can cut telegraph posts. We
can burn barracks and landlords’ houses.”
It is a commonplace psychological fact that the slower a man is to anger
the more terrible will his wrath be. The muzhik is grim and determined.
As for time, it does not exist for him. At any railroad junction in
Russia one may see any number of peasants waiting about all night or all
day between trains. Six, eight, ten hours’ delay in making connections
troubles no peasant.
One night I stepped off a Volga steamer at a landing far too small to be
mentioned on the biggest map. It was nearly midnight and the rain was
descending in torrents. My destination was a place distant between
twenty-five and fifty miles--my information was no more definite than
this--and the journey must needs be by horse or wagon. My companion and
I were utterly at a loss to know how to proceed from the landing, for we
could not see an arm’s length before us and we had not the remotest idea
which direction to take. Presently we discovered a muzhik whom we hailed
with joy. He told us he was waiting for a boat down the river--which he
expected would come along about five o’clock in the morning. Where had
he come from, we asked. “Petrovka,” he replied. Our destination! Our
delight at the coincidence was unbounded and we straightway asked him
how we were to get there, and the distance. To proceed at night was
impossible, he told us, for the roads were flowing streams and the mud
ankle-deep. As to the distance he had not the dimmest idea.
“How long were you in coming?” we asked. “What time was it when you left
Petrovka?”
The fellow laughed as he answered: “Friend, you must know we have no
clocks. When I left the sun was there--” and he pointed to about five
degrees above the eastern horizon, “and when I reached here the sun was
there--” and he pointed to about five degrees above the western horizon.
So we knew it to be about three quarters of a day’s journey. He told us
further that though there was a village a little more than a mile away
from the landing, we could never reach it in such a storm. Just then a
horse neighed, not twenty feet away. We eagerly splashed through the mud
in the direction of the sound and found a young peasant on the point of
driving off. He had brought some goods to the steamer we had just left
and now he was returning to the village. We begged him to take us home
with him and put us up for the night. He assented readily. Arrived at
his house--a typical peasant’s hut with roof of mud and thatch--we
helped him put up the horse and
[Illustration: Women making hay]
[Illustration: The “sleeping-box” over the stove. The platform is the
family bed in the warm weather]
followed him inside. His father and mother, and several brothers, were
asleep on the floor. Peasants usually sleep on the floor in summer. In
winter there are “sleeping-boxes” over the stove. The old woman was the
only one who moved at our entrance, and she did not look at all
surprised. She pointed to an ancient home-made bed and told us we might
lie there if we liked, but the floor was better. We knew the bed would
be swarming with vermin, so we chose the floor. The old woman threw down
a sheepskin for my friend. I rolled myself in my traveling rug.
This instance is typical of the muzhik’s placid hospitality. Not once
but many times I knocked at peasants’ huts in out-of-the-way places and
asked for shelter. Sometimes I received the greeting: “Where did God
send _you_ from?” But muzhik curiosity is easily appeased.
The psychology of muzhik religion brings one to the realm of mysticism
and superstition. Russia is filled with sectarians. The Doukhobors are
known in America because of their wholesale immigration into Canada a
few years ago. They were a Caucasian sect. The Molokani are another,
kindred sect, also originating in the Caucasus. In central Russia are
many other sects, holding and practising strange tenets--among them,
suicide by fire and exposure of their naked bodies to the furious storms
of winter. Certainly no country in Europe has so great a variety of
mysterious beliefs. But these all belong in a category apart from the
superstitious orthodoxy of the average muzhik. To describe the
sectarians would necessitate the compass of a volume, whereas there are
certain salient characteristics of the accepted orthodoxy which are ever
impressing themselves upon the traveler.
At the outset, the forms of religion are well-nigh universally observed.
Most peasants remove their hats when passing a church, or an icon, and
cross themselves three times. In the interior one sometimes finds a
small, crude shrine, set up at the entrance to a village. Before this
shrine traveling muzhiks prostrate themselves, falling to their knees
and bowing forward till their foreheads rest in the dust. Every muzhik
has his revered icon and holy pictures. Usually the icon is set in the
corner of the wall facing the door, so that every one who enters may
reverence it. After each meal the peasants upon rising from the table
bow before the icon, crossing themselves. I have seen icons in vodka
shops thus reverenced by peasants coming to buy liquor. The peasant,
too, has a blind, but sometimes very real, faith in miraculous images
and pilgrimages to well-known shrines like the Madonna of Kazan and the
Iberian shrine in Moscow are constantly maintained.
The ringing of the village church-bells on a Sabbath morning or on the
occasion of a saint’s day is something wondrous and memorable. There is
nothing melodious in the sound. A terrible clanging and pounding, loud,
wild, sonorous, discordant. But the muzhik believes that these sounds
drive away evil spirits.
In spite of all of these surface signs of ingrained religion, the muzhik
is not a religious being. The Orthodox church has no real grip upon his
life, and apart from the sectarians and old believers, the peasant is
intensely ignorant of all religion and religious beliefs. He strictly
observes the church fasts because it has been his custom to do so and
because the priests tell him that he must. But it must be remembered
that the priest is not so much a spiritual teacher as an agent of the
government. Nor do the priests, by their example, show the people what
Christianity might do for them. They are frequently dirty, slovenly
creatures, guilty of many excesses, of public drunkenness, and not
infrequently accused of dishonesty. Monasteries are sometimes dens of
iniquity and I know of convents which are semi-public brothels. The
muzhik abstains from flesh food during the long Lenten fast and on the
regularly prescribed fast days, but he drinks at the same time, and as a
result of his impoverished physical condition he falls easy victim to
the strong drink. This gives rise to the common idea that Russian
peasants are drunken.
During a certain long fast I was spending some time at a large house in
south Russia. One afternoon, upon returning to the house after several
hours’ absence, the master and I met one of the maids in the hall,
weeping bitterly. She told us to go quickly into the dining-room. There
we found the gardener and the laundress, both maudlin drunk, standing
before a small icon of the Virgin repeatedly drinking the good health of
the Holy Mother. This shocking irreverence had quite undone the maid.
Flagrant as this incident sounds, it is less so than many of the stories
one hears of priests, holy sisters, and mother superiors. Mother
superiors, like abbots, are often appointed because of their social
influence, and may be without any previous ecclesiastical or monastic
training.
There is a classic story in Russia, told of Alexander III, who was once
visiting a certain town near Moscow. A local monastery was pointed out
to the Emperor and a little way off a convent. The Emperor looked from
one to the other and then began to scan every point of the horizon.
“Does your majesty seek something?” asked one of the escort.
“Yes,” responded the Emperor. “You tell me yonder is a monastery and
over the way a convent. I am looking for the third building--the
foundling institution.”
The muzhik’s religion, so far as I had observed it, is a set of forms to
which he bows--much as he pays his taxes--and an instinctive feeling
which is never discussed nor thought about, that outside of himself is
some great and mysterious power which he must not offend, and by
observing the forms which this vaguely understood Being delights in he
may expect in return protection in any hour of trial. The muzhik is
naturally shrewd. This is a reasonable explanation, and adequate reason
for his going regularly to church. And of course no God would see His
children inflict the punishments of fasts and long ceremonials upon
themselves without rewarding them at some future time.
That there is a genuinely practical element in the muzhik’s religion is
indicated in a well-known popular legend which purports to explain how
it comes that St. Cassian’s day falls only on the odd day of leap year.
It also is a keen analysis of the psychology of the muzhik’s religious
outlook.
The two saints, Cassian and Nicholas, so the legend goes, appeared
before the Lord together.
“What hast thou seen on earth?” asked the Lord of St. Cassian.
“I have seen a muzhik foundering with his cart in a marsh by the way,”
answered St. Cassian.
“Why hast thou not helped him?” inquired the Lord.
“Because I was coming into Thy presence, and I was afraid of soiling my
bright clothes so that they would offend Thine eyes.”
At this moment the eyes of the Lord rested upon St.
[Illustration: A village boulevard]
[Illustration: A Russian cemetery]
Nicholas, who approached, falteringly, his dress utterly disheveled and
spattered with mud.
“Why comest thou so dirty into My presence?” asked the Lord.
“Because I was following St. Cassian, and seeing the muzhik of whom he
just spake, I have helped him out of the marsh.”
The Lord hesitated a moment, then said:
“Because thou, Cassian, hast cared so much about thy dress and so little
about thy brother, I will give thee thy saint’s day only once in four
years. And to thee, Nicholas, for having acted as thou didst, I will
give four saint days each year.”
And that is how it comes about that St. Cassian’s day falls on February
29 and St. Nicholas’s day occurs quarterly.
In this case muzhik ethics are illustrated as eminently practical. And
so with muzhik morality. Sexual immorality is so commonplace among the
officers, and among certain court and aristocratic circles, that it is
no longer scandalous. It is accepted. And also in the industrial towns
among the proletariat. But among the peasantry an entirely different
code exists--a code of sex honor, born of what Americans would call
“horse sense.” Early marriages are the rule, to be sure, much earlier
than in the towns, but the standard of morality is probably higher among
the peasantry than among any other class of people in Russia.
In one village which I visited in south Russia the village
school-mistress and school-master, aged, respectively, twenty-one and
twenty-six, were living together in what they called a “free-love
union.” Yet the matter was not noticed especially by the peasants. In
other words, the muzhik, while morally strict with his own people, is
highly tolerant of the lives of other people, and this tolerance does
not stop here but is extended also to beliefs. The religion of the
muzhik is so lacking in detailed creed that he is not inclined to
quarrel over beliefs with any one. In this respect the sectarians are
less amiable. They, not unnaturally, are dogmatic and largely inclined
toward bigotry, but the sectarians are apart from the typical Russian
peasant.
Laziness is frequently ascribed to the Russian peasant. Here one may not
assent, nor at the same time repudiate, the charge. Between the peasants
of different sections are differences in temperament and characteristics
almost as great as between some races. The landed proprietor is the man
who most often calls the muzhik lazy. He best should know. But by what
standard is the Russian peasant adjudged lazy? The average Russian
official comes to his office at ten or eleven o’clock in the morning and
in three or four hours he feels that he has done enough for one day.
Russia borders on the East. There are parts of Russia traversed by
Bedouins, by camel-traders, by people whose months and years slip easily
by on the hillsides and the deserts. Compared to any of these the
Russian peasants are most industrious.
Soil is a factor. If a peasant has only one dessiatine of ground, as is
the case with thousands of peasants in the interior in governments like
Saratoff and Voronezh, it is quite impossible for him to keep busy the
year through. Especially if he has no knowledge of modern agriculture,
as most of them have not. There are thousands of muzhiks who have not
yet heard of intensive cultivation, who know nothing of the advantage of
rotating crops, and who use wooden ploughs because they have always used
wooden ploughs, or have not the money to buy iron implements when they
learn that such exist in the world. Russia is not equally fertile
throughout. In some of the districts where an annual famine is
recurrent, one finds soil which should be rich and productive. It lacks
only water, which could be managed by irrigation. But the government has
never taken large steps to solve this difficulty. So the soil is
subjected to abuse by peasants who know no better. Then when the crops
become meager, the peasants are reduced to starvation. But the great
point of all is that it is less than half a century since the shackles
of bondage fell from them. Surely not one generation nor two must pass
before these recent slaves shall be judged by the side of men who have
been free for centuries. Under serfdom the obligatory duties of peasants
were vague, ill-defined chores. And even these were prescribed by some
one else--some one who said when it was time to cut wood for the master,
when it was time to sow, and when it was time to reap. The problem of
adjustment is only a little less real and formidable to these people
than it was to the American negro-slaves, and the differences of opinion
in Russia to-day are quite as great in regard to the relative advantages
of the present condition as compared to serfdom, as in America in regard
to the welfare of the negro now and before the war. But one thing I have
noticed: no muzhik ever desires to return to serfdom. The twinkle in his
eye is full enough of intelligence when this question is put to him.
The muzhik is rarely indiscreet in his talk. This characteristic is
noted by most travelers in Russia, and it is surely true. Not
infrequently a man who has been talking most intelligently will give an
answer to some simple question which is perfectly inane. He has suddenly
become suspicious. So he shrewdly turns you so completely off the track
that, metaphorically, you are ditched. This seems to be an instinctive
ruse.
To learn that the forms of democracy are not new in Russian life one
needs only to turn to the villages. The very word Duma is not new. Towns
and even villages have their Duma. Tolstoi talks about the “Gospel as
understood by the muzhik.” The ideal of civic life as conceived by the
muzhik culminates not in the state and autocracy but in the people--an
aggregation of muzhiks. There is an ancient proverb familiar throughout
Russia which expresses this ideal of democracy: “Each for himself, but
God and the Mir for all”--the Mir being an association of villagers
coming together to work out the common weal of the village under the
laws of the land. The national laws have allowed a wide scope in certain
directions, and the opportunity has not been lost by the muzhiks. They
have been left free to manage many of their local economic interests in
common, like the allotment and periodic redistribution of land, their
fisheries, cutting of timber, and also they have been given absolute
freedom to divide and distribute among themselves the village share of
the taxes collected from all of the people. They have elected their own
immediate administrative officers, a certain number of local judges, and
those in turn have limited freedom in regard to accepting local custom
and tradition in precedence to civil or criminal law prescribed by the
state. To the peasant, therefore, the Duma is an institution similar to
this local town meeting he has always been used to, only on a national
scale. The shock came when the Duma delegates in St. Petersburg found
that to deliberate, come to conclusions and to vote for certain measures
was wholly a different thing from
[Illustration: A Russian farmer]
gaining those measures. This was not like the Duma they had been
accustomed to at home.
There is much of animal patience about the muzhik. He is a stolid,
stubborn, creature. These qualities have led enlightened Russians to
call him a child. When the Duma began landed proprietors and gentry were
wont to speak of peasant deputies as “children.” But impartial observers
soon formed their own opinions. The muzhik is wily. He may not have been
so outspoken in the Duma as men more accustomed to town life, but he has
the voice where voice means influence, and his vote is as good as a
university professor’s in the assembly. The peasant members usually
stand solidly together. They know what they want, they ask for it
concretely: “Land and liberty,” and mark the craft! They know that they
cannot work out the land problem, so they say to the Constitutional
Democrats: “You want certain measures passed. Very well. We will vote
for them, but you must turn your thoughts to the land question which is
what we are interested in.” The Constitutional Democrats could not
dispense with the peasant vote, so they were coerced into agreeing. And
the muzhiks would sit on the benches in the lobby, swinging their legs
and smoking cigarettes, while tedious debates lasted, going in when time
to vote. The peasants know their time is coming. They have only to keep
on smoking cigarettes in the lobby, going in in time for each vote, and
to keep talking all the time about “land and liberty.” During the Duma
session their telegrams went to every part of the empire. They well knew
they could afford to appear indifferent to the details of working out
any bill. The pretentious frock-coated gentlemen might see to that. The
muzhik understood that it was his part to lie low for a time, only not
to cease murmuring “land and liberty.” He had the whip hand and knew it
then. No fool is this simple, untutored, rustic.
During the first Duma the peasant deputies awoke to a consciousness of
their power and importance. Through painful surprises they realized that
they had a destiny to fulfil. When these deputies returned to their
respective villages, all over the provinces they related to their fellow
villagers all that had transpired in the Duma. Then came the great
peasant awakening which marked a new era for Russia. Just those few
months from May to July did it. During that period the Russian peasants
bounded forward almost incredibly, and in a few weeks advanced further
than in many previous years.
To gather evidence of this change which literally swept over Russia
during the spring and early summer of 1906 I planned a long trip through
the interior where I would see typical peasant villages, and come in
contact with many hundreds of the men upon whom it had suddenly dawned
that they were indeed men, men of power, of ultimate influence, and with
a future in which to work out their own great destiny.