THE PEASANT AWAKENING
The period of repression following the Duma dissolution--Under
arrest in Moscow--The cradle of the Romanoffs--A peasant
gathering--Outspoken muzhiks--A “constituent assembly”--Rational
opinions of the Viborg manifesto--Nijni Novgorod--The great fair--A
disturbed province--Kazan--A journey to the interior--A visit to
Prince Ouktomsky--Professor Vassiliev and his family--Advanced
ideas of the peasants--Simbirsk, the “Mountain of the Winds”--An
illiterate government--What the peasants want--Entering the famine
belt.
The dissolution of the Duma tore away the last remaining vestige of
faith of the peasants in the Czar and in the government. I allowed a
month to pass after the dissolution before I set out upon my journey
into the interior, for I wanted the news to permeate everywhere before
my arrival, in order that I might gather impressions of the effect of
this step upon the peasants.
Intense repression was the aftermath of the dissolution, and martial law
was spread to every quarter of the empire. The number of arrests made
during the latter half of the summer was appallingly large. I left St.
Petersburg on the night train, intending to leave Moscow the following
evening. In Moscow I stepped into a book-shop to purchase a map. As I
turned to leave the store a clatter of spurs and the rattle of a sword
caused me to turn my head, and I saw an officer of gendarmes,
accompanied by several regular soldiers, entering the shop by the rear
door. A moment later a party of several officers and more soldiers
passed through the front door by which I was about to pass out. The
senior officer motioned me back, the doors were all locked, a soldier
placed by each, and all of us who were there--proprietor, clerks,
customers, understood that we were all under arrest. Thereupon we made
ourselves as comfortable as we could pending the long and tedious search
of the officers for forbidden books or pamphlets. From time to time I
glanced out of the window into the streets, where I could see the
radiant face of my droshky driver whom I had engaged by the hour. It was
just the noon hour when I had entered the shop, and I began to get
ravenously hungry, but I had to bide my time. After several hours of
patient waiting we customers were taken into a rear room and subjected
to a searching examination. I was able to establish my identity as an
American citizen and was presently released, but all of the others were
detained, some for over night, and two or three for several days. In the
interior none of us would have got off so lightly. It was now early
August and eighty-five of the eighty-seven provinces of European Russia
were then under some form of “extraordinary protection,” or martial law.
One of the five exempt, or officially “tranquil” provinces, was
Kostroma, a government which lies across and above the upper Volga. The
capital of this province, Kostroma city, is situated about 260 miles
north of Moscow, and it was here that I planned to begin my long journey
through the peasant country.
Kostroma once boasted historical consideration as the cradle of the
House of Romanoff. Here lived Michael Feodorovitch Romanoff in the year
1613, when he was elected czar. Just outside the town rises the Convent
of Ipatieff, which offered him a safe refuge when the embittered Poles
marched thither to slay him, and were diverted from their intention
through the wit of the peasant Soussanine, who, under the pretense of
guiding the men of the south country to the hiding-place of the
czar-elect, led them far into the forests out of whose bewildering
vastnesses no man might hope to escape. To-day there are large imperial
estates in Kostroma. I came here, turning over in my mind the
probability of finding the loyal spirit of Soussanine still lingering
among the Kostroma peasants, a devotion supposedly of traditional
character.
I was recommended to several typical peasant villages within a radius of
fifty miles of the town of Kostroma as worth my visiting. The town of
Kostroma is an industrial rather than an agricultural center. Large
linen mills, starch, and cutlery factories are there. The employees of
these establishments are mostly peasants. Some of them contribute to the
support of families in the villages, while not a few quit the mills and
factories at every sowing and reaping time, to help with the labors of
the field. Thus Kostroma peasants are not solely dependent upon their
crops. There is yet another factor which helps to better their
conditions, and which, according to the theory of some observers, should
temper their feeling toward the government. The individual holdings of
land are larger than in many sections. The average allotment is from
eight to sixteen acres per adult male. This sometimes aggregates thirty
acres to a family. Taken all in all, then, I had every reason to expect
these peasants to be conservative, contented, and non-revolutionary.
A local Zemstvo official, known to the peasants, offered to accompany me
to the villages, to introduce me and to vouch for the fact that I was
seriously interested in knowing the precise feelings of the peasants in
regard to the dissolution of the Duma, their attitude toward the
government at that time, and their state of mind toward the next Duma.
We traveled through the country in a native conveyance called a
_tarantass_, a basket-like affair, drawn by three horses. Were it not
for the incredibly rough roads a tarantass ride would be quite merry.
The peasants of one of the first villages at which we called proved not
only communicative, but so frankly eager to express themselves that the
experiences of the evening proved full of significance. This village was
located about ten miles from Kostroma and consisted of a group of three
or four hundred houses. As Russian villages go, this one had every
appearance of comparative freedom from the ravages of poverty. To be
sure, few of the houses were painted, and the streets were mere
mud-rutted lanes, but the general appearance did not suggest squalor, or
the grim life-struggle so often characteristic of Russian villages.
Our troika pulled up before a tea-house, near the close of the day.
Within we found groups of peasants from the fields, who were loitering
over glasses of refreshing tea. There may have been forty in the room
when we entered. Mostly they were men of middle age. Their long hair was
trimmed squarely; their beards shaggy and unkempt, though on the whole
they had a neat appearance. Some wore shirts of bright red, others of
blue. Their great boots were clodded with the soil. To foreign eyes it
was a striking and picturesque scene. The rough rafters of the room, the
bare walls, the home-turned benches and chairs, fittingly framed the
picture of these massive, strongly built, peasant folk, enjoying the
first respite from the day’s toil.
When our steaming, fragrant tea had been set before us, my companion
told the men, briefly, that I had come all the way from another country
to talk with them. Their interest was fixed instantly. Within a very few
minutes the number in the room had swelled to nearly one hundred, and so
intent did we all become that several hours slipped by all too quickly.
“Will you tell us why the people of other countries lent money to the
Russian government to help keep us down?” This question came abruptly
from a keen, blue-eyed muzhik, early in the conversation. “We don’t
understand why the people of other countries should oppress us, because
what have we done to them?”
My best explanations were obviously futile. The bald fact was clearly
grasped by my questioner that the Russian government had borrowed money
in France, and Austria, and England, at a time when it seemed as if lack
of money would end the régime of insufferable oppression and wrong. His
mind reached no farther than this and his sense of justice and right
were hurt. This man nurtured bitter enmity against his government, so I
pressed him to tell me the reasons for his strong feelings.
“Everything costs too much,” he replied. “In this village we are not
like peasants in other places who need more land. We have enough. What
we want is another government--a government that will help the people to
live. We are tired of paying eighteen copecks (nine cents) for sugar,
and too much for everything we buy. It is the government that does all
this.”
A murmur of assent rolled round the room. Such boldness of speech in the
midst of so large a company amazed me. Six or even four months before
such daring was unheard of.
“When you say you want a change of government, what do you mean?” I
asked.
“We want a people’s government,” answered a swarthy-faced man who leaned
far over an adjoining table. “We want a real Duma.”
“But you had a Duma, and look what became of it,” I replied.
“We don’t want that kind of a Duma,” he persisted. “We want a Duma that
can do something for the people--”
“A constituent assembly,” interrupted a younger man.
It did not seem possible that these men could be so clear on the
situation as their words seemed to indicate, so I said: “You see, I am a
foreigner; I know nothing about your conditions. What do you mean by
‘constituent assembly’?”
“We mean,” responded the man near me, “a Duma that can make all of the
laws. We don’t want another Duma that is hampered by a lot of laws at
the start. We don’t want any ministers except those appointed by this
Duma, and we don’t want any other officials who are not appointed by our
Duma. That is what we mean by constituent assembly.”
Whether this extraordinary development was the result of agitation, or
of the peasants’ own progress toward a political concept, I did not then
know. But there it was--a hundred peasants, in what amounted to a
meeting, declaring for a “constituent assembly,” and explaining with
perfect clearness and lucidity what it was they wanted to abolish, and
what they hoped to attain.
“Have you seen the Viborg manifesto?” I asked.
“Of course we have read it,” they exclaimed, laughing.
“What do you think about it?”
“It is foolish,” answered one of the older men. “Stop paying taxes? We
have not paid direct taxes in two years. Of course we shall not pay any
this year. But can we stop drinking tea and vodka? Can we stop using
matches? As for not sending soldiers to the army--suppose we don’t. Five
soldiers are soon due from this village. Suppose we don’t send
them--what will happen? Cossacks will come. The whole village will have
to defend those five men. That will mean bloodshed. Is it not better
that we should get every one of those men to promise that they will
never shoot at their brothers? If we do this we can accomplish the same
result without spilling blood in the streets of our village.”
One of the Constitutional Democratic Duma deputies from this province
was urging a group of peasants to accept the Viborg manifesto, when up
spoke a canny muzhik and said: “You ask us to stop giving taxes to the
government. That means stop drinking tea and vodka. Very good. But you
are a lawyer--will you stop putting stamps on all of your papers, and
documents, and letters?”
These peasants, so far as I talked with them, had lost faith in the
Constitutional Democrats. They felt that the members of this party were
not always single-eyed; and in the Viborg manifesto they showed their
lack of understanding of the peasants by asking them to do several
ridiculous and impossible things, and then dropped into private life,
leaving the peasants to muddle through with the practical side of the
manifesto as best they could.
“Why should we shed our blood for a Duma that is dead?” asked the man
who had asked why England helped the government with money. “The old
Duma can do nothing for us. It is over. Give us a constituent assembly,
a Duma that will make all of the laws, that cannot be dissolved, and
then things will be different. We would then feel that we had something
worth fighting for.”
“But your Duma has been dissolved, and you have no immediate prospect of
a constituent assembly. What do you intend to do?”
“We will join any movement for a new government,” was the surprising
answer. “We won’t begin, because in this village we have no pressing
reason. But if the peasants in the districts where there is famine will
begin, we will join in. The peasants must rise together.”
“How are you to do that?”
“The Duma has taught us that it is possible for us to be united.
Whatever is done now must be done by all of the peasants and all of the
people.”
“This being the province where the Emperor’s family came from,” I went
on, “I expected to find the peasants here quite loyal.”
There was a loud laugh at this, more direful than words.
Up to this point the name of the Czar had not been mentioned. I was
curious to know their feeling toward him, so I ventured a direct
question:
“When did you begin to lose faith in the Czar?”
There was a momentary silence in which I almost regretted the question.
Then some one answered: “We never speak of the Emperor now. But we
cannot forget that when our representatives drew up a response to the
throne speech, setting forth our needs, he refused to receive it.”
The Kostroma peasants now were sympathetic toward revolution because
they had slowly reached the conclusion that the existing régime must go
because it was evil and they saw no other way of getting rid of it.
Their faith in the Czar, which once was so strong, was hopelessly
shaken, and they no longer were soothed by the empty phrases which are
periodically lavished upon them in hollow, religious solemnity, in the
imperial ukases and rescripts.
The significance of the Kostroma situation lay in this, that here was
the ancient home of the House of Romanoff, a province that had ever been
loyal to autocracy; now not only had this loyalty disappeared, but open
unrest prevailed and threats of rebellion were freely expressed. The
feeling of the peasants toward the government--that remained as it was
before, full of hatred. Toward the Czar they had changed. Previously
they believed in him, but now they saw that Czar and the government were
one. So they cordially hated both, and dared to tell us so. Here surely
was evidence of a peasant awakening.
Midway between this officially “tranquil” province of Kostroma and the
frankly revolutionary government of Kazan, the old Tartar capital, lay
Nijni Novgorod; assertive, daring, ever since the good days of old, when
independence was maintained for several centuries against all invaders.
The ex-Duma deputies, Zemstvo officers, and other citizens to whom I
brought introductions, assured me that this whole province was not
unlike a powder magazine which a spark might touch off at any moment.
Several estates near the city of Nijni Novgorod had just been burned.
The landlords of others had fled in anticipation of a coming wave of
destruction. To such an extent was this true that not one of the
gentlemen with whom I talked could suggest one estate within a
reasonable distance of the city where I might hope to find normal
conditions. At the same time they all stated that the southern part of
the government was thoroughly imbued with the idea of revolt, and that
the completion of the harvest-taking might be followed by outbreaks
regardless of the “peasant movement” in other parts of Russia.
Here in Nijni Novgorod, however, I found a charming relief from the
serious business of observing the “peasant awakening” and the progress
of the people toward revolution, in the world-famous fair. This proved
like a childhood dream come true. The fires of insurrection were alight
here and there through the province, landlords of estates near by were
making off in anticipation of the rising tide of the peasant movement.
But the great fair had all the charm of a world, wondrous strange, all
the novelty of boyhood’s most bizarre phantasies. When life grants so
delightful an experience as the realization of an olden dream without
one tinge of disappointment, one is filled with gratitude. And so I
blessed the dear old geographers who spared a corner of one of the
broad, flat pages to a picture of Nijni Novgorod.
For the nonce I tried to forget the tumult and the struggle. Here was
the fair. Landlords’ estates might burn to ashes. For a few days I
determined to forget them, confident that ere long I should see other
places in flames as I had already seen whole towns reduced to ashes.
A world exposition, whether at Paris, or St. Louis, is a wearisome thing
after the first one has been seen. The sameness, the fatiguing miles we
walk in vain search for something new--none of this in Nijni. Unless one
has been to Calcutta, and knows his Turkestan, his Caucasia, his
Siberia, and Lapland, Nijni is fascinatingly new.
It is a people’s fair above all else. A practical thing. The annual
exchange of thousands of small things from the mysterious East and the
frozen North, the one ample market of near a million peasants from the
interior governments of Russia. The tourist will not find preparations
to please his extravagant tastes. Utility is the underlying aim of the
Nijni fair, but utility from the standpoint of the needs of the people
who contribute to its upkeep and depend upon its resources. And the
needs of the vast Tartar horde, of stolid muzhiks, and hardy peoples
from polar regions, are wondrously unlike the needs of Europe and the
western world. The bazars of Persia, of Daghestan, and Tashkent range
side by side with booths of pelts from Archangel and Nova Zembla and,
frequently enough to be noticed, a stall of old Cathay attended by
narrow-eyed Orientals in rich, blue silks, their plaited pigtails
glistening black against the bright cloth. A few enterprising European
merchants are represented, but only a few. I met one surprise at a
picture post-card counter. The proprietor, a native Nijni Novgorodian,
asked me if I spoke English. When I answered that I did, he asked me if
I had ever been in England. When I again answered yes, he asked if I had
been also in America. Once more I told him yes. Then he came to the
point. “Have you ever been in Boston?”
“Yes, I know Boston quite well,” I replied.
A wide smile of genuine joy spread over his face as he grasped both my
hands and wrung them in excited cordiality--enthusiastic to a degree
utterly foreign to Boston. Early in his life he had spent four years in
Boston. Since then he has never ceased regretting his inability to
return there. His uncompromising loyalty to what he called “the best
city on earth” would have done credit to any Bostonian of Mayflower
lineage.
Nijni streets flaunted gay colors, the myriad peoples who thronged the
thoroughfares of the fair made up a crowd remarkably different from any
I had ever before beheld. Here, I thought, it will not be difficult to
forget Russia and her troubles. Alas! the Russian people make no such
resolve. Never a day but some stroke against the government is
contemplated. Never an event without some effort to turn toward the goal
of Russian liberty. Hardly had I reached the fair when a chance
acquaintance urged me to buy a ticket for a certain performance to be
given that night, ostensibly for the benefit of an orphan asylum in a
distant part of the country. But, as my friend explained, this orphan
asylum was non-existent and the proceeds really were for the Social
Democratic party. Next Tuesday another “charity” performance was
advertised, the proceeds to go to the Social Revolutionary party, these
being the two most active revolutionary organizations in European Russia
at that time.
In the midst of the fair-grounds I met an old-time revolutionist whom I
had known as an exile on the east side in New York. She was among the
amnestied in October, 1905, and had returned, like a released prisoner
of war, to the fight. When I met her she was about to start for a
revolutionary meeting to be held in the depths of a forest a little way
out of Nijni. Meetings of this nature were quite common at that time,
despite the fact that they were attended at considerable risk. The place
of meeting must be announced by word of mouth, through a small
committee, to each and every one of the four or five hundred people who
are to attend. Absolutely nothing may be committed to paper. In spite of
these precautions the secret police frequently hear of the gatherings,
and Cossacks are sent to fire upon the crowd. Twice within a fortnight
my friend had been at such meetings which were surprised by soldiers. At
one, the volleys from the Cossack rifles had brought down a number of
men and several young girls.
The Nijni Novgorod fair was inaugurated long before the discovery of
America. It owes its origin to the jealousy of the Muscovite princes of
the commerce and trade which annually centered at Kazan, the seat of the
Tartar khans. The Kazan fairs date from 1257, but the Muscovite fairs
soon began to surpass those of the Tartars, and eventually the Kazan
fair ceased to exist. Nijni has not always been the location of this
fair, for in the early days Czar Michael Feodorovitch, the first
Romanoff, and Ivan the Terrible, changed the site to other Volga towns,
but so far as history is concerned the associations will remain
clustered round the old fortified town, built at the junction of the Oka
and the Volga and called Nijni Novgorod.
It is a big affair. At the last official rebuilding there were sixty
buildings and twenty-five hundred bazars. Many small booths are added
each year, and in addition are the usual “side shows”--usual in the
East. To me they were most unusual. Beautiful Caucasian dancers, real
Cossacks doing wonderful feats of horsemanship, old Russian tableaux,
sectional characterizations such as singers from Little Russia; northern
camps; Daghestanese, Turkestanese, and Persian industries.
All in all the fair comprises about eight thousand definite exhibits,
some of which are very large. But the impression made is not of costly
wares, designed for the homes of the rich, but simple things such as
simple people need in daily life. The grand shops are there, as
everywhere, but the _ensemble_ effect was of useful, cheap articles for
a workaday people.
The Caucasian bazars glisten with silver wares--bejeweled daggers,
silver ornamented whips, bracelets, cigarette boxes, slippers adorned
with hand-worked designs of gold and silver thread. Costly sounding
articles, these, but in reality very cheap, and to Caucasians very
necessary. To the rest of the world very pretty. A dagger is as much a
part of Caucasian dress as a waistcoat of a European. All Caucasians are
horsemen, and ornamented whips are as universal among them as embossed
saddles among Mexicans. As for the bracelets and earrings and
brooches--where is milady who will deny that these are among life’s
essentials?
The Russian stalls show samovars, of brass and nickel, linens--peasant
linens--often exceedingly pretty and ridiculously cheap, home-pounded
metal candlesticks, cups, plates, and even small implements, the various
kinds of Russian costumes of the present day and of long ago--ancient
styles being frequently worn on Sundays and special feast-days by the
peasants for their extra dress-up clothes.
Before the Persian bazars I was wont to linger longer. The stately mien,
the innate dignity of these swarthy Easterners, commands interest. Their
great, dark eyes suggest infinite depth lost in height, their strange,
yet meaningful, expressions seem to flit from age to age as lightly and
as swiftly as a woodland bird darts from bough to bough. Now soft as
memory, recalling a long and mighty past; now stern and austere,
remembering the hardness of the present. And the goods they sell are not
of our world. Delicate embroideries, slight stuffs of silks as veil-like
as dew webs on the grass of a summer morning, yet traced with bright
colors by fingers we know not where--beyond the great mountains that
divide Europe from Asia, far beyond the Caspian Sea.
[Illustration: Tartar types--East Russia]
Out of the depths of this ancient, but still little known, land, have
these goods been brought on the backs of camels. A few months earlier I
had watched long camel trains of Persian traders crossing the Nucha
Desert, leisurely plodding the hot, sandy stretches with the goods of
their country with which they thought to please other eyes. At Nijni I
was not tempted to buy any of these goods, for in my rooms in St.
Petersburg I had enough table-covers and hand-embroidered squares to
supply a host of friends with souvenirs. I had picked them up in Tiflis,
in Transcaucasia, during one of the pitched battles between the
Armenians and Tartars. The Armenians had taken possession of a hill in
the town just above the Persian quarter, and began firing upon the
Tartars whose quarter adjoins the Persians’. The Tartars returned the
fire smartly, but as neither of these nationalities are notoriously good
shots, the innocent Persians, who unluckily were between the two camps,
were the chief sufferers. When the Russian troops came up they fired
indiscriminately upon the Armenians and Tartars; likewise upon the
Persians, who could not be distinguished. The result of the mêlée was
the almost complete demolition of the Persian quarter. These unhappy
merchants and traders started in panic for their native country, and
those who had managed to save any of their goods at all were glad enough
to sell them in quantities for a song. But even at Nijni these Persian
stuffs are inexpensive. I saw groups of admiring muzhiks clad in what
some one has called their “national costume of rags” venturing to invest
a hard-earned ruble in a gaudy table-cover.
Interesting as are the bazars with all their varied displays, the crowds
of patrons were surpassingly fascinating. Beautiful Tartar women, with
faces half-veiled lest the eyes of a strange man should rest upon them.
Mohammedan molla in silken robes of many colors like little Joseph’s,
with snowy turbans wound round their shaved heads, setting into bold
contrast the polished olive skins of their faces. Peasants in shoals who
stare and stare. Housewives who question and price a thousand things,
and sometimes risk a purchase.
It was with a feeling of refreshment and no little regret that I boarded
a Volga flat-bottomed steamer to proceed on my journey to Kazan.
Kazan had long been a troubled government. The nearer one approached to
the famine belt, the stronger were the sentiments of insurrection. So
complete was the failure of crops in some counties of Kazan this year
that the harvest would not suffice for a single month! The estimated
amount of government relief needed for Kazan government for that year
alone was thirty-two million rubles--$16,000,000--a sum so vast that it
was already known that the central government, as usual in straitened
circumstances, would be obliged to cut it down so largely that appalling
suffering was inevitable.
Taking a small boat that for a few months each year plies up and down a
tributary of the Volga, I made a three days’ journey into the interior
of this province, stopping for part of a day with a well-known Kazan
landlord, a marshal of nobility, Prince Ouktomsky.
The monarchy has no more loyal supporter than Prince Ouktomsky, but when
I asked him the attitude of his peasants toward the Emperor, he
regretfully confessed that their disillusionment had gone so far that
there was no hope of the present Czar ever regaining their confidence.
“The defeats in the East completely shattered their faith,” he said. As
for the Duma, he was reluctant to admit that its dissolution had
influenced them, but
[Illustration: Carriage used by bomb-throwers at Stolypin’s house]
when I talked with the peasants at work on his estates, I found that
their silence was deep with foreboding and their looks were sinister.
“The next Duma will contain many more peasants,” he said, “because the
Constitutional Democrats have discredited themselves. The peasants will
not trust them again. Neither will they boycott the elections.” The
peasants with whom I talked supported this view. The Viborg manifesto
failed utterly to impress them, and since the Constitutional Democrats
were in the majority in the late Duma and yet failed to help them in
their plight, they will try to return only peasants to the next Duma.
News of the assassination of General Minn, of evil memory, and the bomb
incident in M. Stolypin’s house in St. Petersburg had not yet penetrated
to the remote villages of this province, although both events had
happened nearly a week before. In one of the villages I handed a
newspaper, containing an account of both incidents, to one of a
picturesque group to read aloud. Had there been any lingering doubt in
my mind as to the revolutionary spirit of these people, it would have
disappeared in this moment. Details of the bomb affair were listened to
with breathless interest, but when it was learned that M. Stolypin was
uninjured, there were expressions of chagrin, of disappointment, and
regret.
“What! Do you approve of these terroristic acts?” I exclaimed. A silence
fell over the company until a young peasant, with a frank and rather
striking face, answered: “Yes, we believe in the killing of ministers.
They are bad men. They are our oppressors. It is good that they should
die.” For a peasant this was very “advanced” thinking.
I left Prince Ouktomsky’s toward the end of a summer afternoon, for the
estate of Professor Vassiliev, some five hours’ journey away.
Three hours after leaving the Ouktomsky estate we passed a certain
convent. My peasant driver was very insistent that I and my interpreter
should pass the night here.
“But how is that possible?” I exclaimed. “If it is a convent, surely men
may not tarry here over night.”
“May God forgive me,” replied the horseman, “but in many months the
sisters have had no opportunity to welcome such handsome travelers as
you. If you will only stop here you will be received like great men.”
When my interpreter further questioned the fellow he told me a tale that
recalled Boccaccio and the Florentines of the Middle Ages--which I was
assured was truly Russian!
Two hours later we passed Professor Vassiliev’s gates. Dogs greeted our
arrival, and the professor himself raised a window to call out, in
Russian:
“Who’s there? What is it?”
“Good-evening, professor,” I answered, in English, “you speak English,
do you not?”
“English! Yes, I do--but who are you?”
“An American,” I replied.
“Impossible!” exclaimed the good man. “But come in. Whoever you are
you’re heartily welcome.”
And heartily welcome we were made. Not only the professor, but his
delightful wife, and his charming oldest son and daughter, all spoke
perfect English, and their cordiality was beyond anything I had
anticipated.
We talked until past midnight, and then a room was prepared for my
interpreter and myself. I chanced to have with me a copy of Professor
Paul Miliukoff’s admirable book, “Russia and Its Crisis,” being
lectures delivered at the University of Chicago. Professor Vassiliev
and his son were overjoyed at this, and begged me to let them have it
over night.
“Miliukoff himself may not have a copy,” they told me; “it is a
forbidden book in Russia.” Next morning they told me that they had both
read it through during the night while we slept--and returned it with
profuse gratitude.
Professor Vassiliev conducted me over his estate and afforded me
opportunities for conversations with many peasants, and everywhere I
found my earlier impressions confirmed. The peasants had advanced by
leaps and bounds within a few months, and in the words of the professor:
“Kazan was then ripe for insurrection, if only the firebrand were
applied, with the assurance that neighboring provinces were rising
also.”
Professor Vassiliev was a staunch liberal, a Constitutional Democratic
deputy to the first Duma, and a hereditary landowner. Yet he looked upon
the expropriation of land in Russia, not only as desirable, but as
presently inevitable. “At the same time I am a monarchist,” he added;
“but, though a monarchist, I must say that the blunders of the present
monarch have damaged him forever with the peasants. The war shook their
belief in him. His treatment of the Duma added to their skepticism, and
the sending of the Duma away was the final blow.”
“As for the expropriation of land in Russia,” continued the professor,
“I believe in the principle, and I shall be glad when my lands are
taken--with the rest. I would leave to the proprietors only their house
gardens.” When the man who has much to lose is willing to lose all for
the good of his neighbors, then, indeed, is the spirit of true
citizenship met in its purest form.
These visits to Prince Ouktomsky and Professor Vassiliev, and the
conversations with their peasants, went to confirm the impressions
gathered in Kostroma, and Nijni-Novgorod. The peasantry no longer
cherished dreams of autocratic infallibility. The idea of revolution had
gained strong headway, especially since the Duma. An idea cannot be held
back by Cossacks, by rapid-firing guns, by bayonets, or by the legalized
lawlessness which is screened by so-called martial law. The government,
through its fatuous policy of oppression and reaction, had now awakened
the sympathies of practically all of its people to revolution. Active
revolutionists, in any country, are in a seeming minority up to the
crisis. When the wave of success attains formidability, the ranks of the
then new régime suddenly become filled and solidified. The present
government, partly owing to the financial support it receives from the
peoples of England, France, Austria, and other countries, still
maintains a show of strength. But examination reveals the obvious
condition--strength merely to demoralize the ranks of the revolution,
while lacking the strength to rule or to administer.
The next province I went to was Simbirsk, the next province below Kazan
on the Volga. “Mountain of the Winds” was the name given to Simbirsk
city by early Volga-side dwellers. “Plain of the Whirlwind” might
Simbirsk government well be called at the time I passed through.
Conservatism would scarcely be expected among the constituents of
Aladin--that daring, outspoken labor-group leader in the Duma.
“Revolutionary”--he was called by people who heard his impassioned
speeches. But the Honorable Maurice Baring, after listening to him many
times, recalled the words spoken by Mirabeau of Robespierre: “That young
man will go far. He believes every word he says.” Of Aladin’s beliefs I
knew nothing at the time, for this was all before his visit to America,
where (together with Tchaykovsky the “Father of the Russian Revolution”)
he did more, perhaps, than any Russian has ever done to arouse the
American people to Russia’s wrongs. Of the man I knew little; only
this:--the peasants trusted him, and in as large degree as the
Constitutional Democrats had lost the confidence of the peasants, Aladin
and the “toil group” had won it. This was not because of Aladin,
however, but because the peasants were now unequivocally and avowedly
revolutionary, and they trusted the man who dared shake his fist at
ministers, hiss them, and shout loudly for their demission, and who had
publicly referred to the peasants as men, not as “children”; whose
championship of the men in sheepskin had been neither apologetic nor
patronizing.
Simbirsk is an illiterate government. Five sixths of the population
cannot read or write. It is hard, indeed, for an English mind to
conceive the status of education in a country of pretended standing, as
we find it in Simbirsk. The government (Zemstvo) school appropriation
averages ten copecks (five cents) per head annually. Only nine tenths of
one per cent. of the men, and five tenths of one per cent. of the women
receive more than a primary-school education, while only four in a
thousand ever finish the “gymnasia” (high school), and four in ten
thousand reach the universities. In spite of these tremendous handicaps
it is patent to the most careless traveler through these parts, that in
a simple, direct way the people know what they want.
“We want a Duma that we can trust, and that shall be the highest power
over us,” said a middle-aged peasant to me, as he paused in his work in
the fields.
“Were you satisfied with the Duma you had?”
“The Duma was all right, but the ministers were bad and it was wrong of
the Emperor to send it away.”
The way in which the Constitutional Democrats had dropped out of sight
since issuing the Viborg manifesto had told strongly against them.
Prince Baratieff, a Constitutional Democrat, a Simbirsk deputy to the
Duma, told me frankly: “Formerly the Constitutional Democratic Party
enjoyed the confidence of the peasants of this government, but since the
dissolution I think they have moved more to the left.”
During the course of this journey I searched diligently for conservative
peasants--peasants who still believed in God and the Czar, as of old,
but the peasants themselves were always the first to say: “Before the
Duma we thought differently.” It was a Simbirsk peasant, however, in a
village twenty miles inland from the Volga, who said: “We had always
believed in the Czar as our Emperor by ‘divine authority,’ but now we
see that if we put a crown on a hitching-post and call it ‘Czar by
divine authority,’ it is the same.”
About this time the government announced that it was prepared to
alleviate the agrarian stress by placing certain appanage, or crown,
lands at the disposal of the peasants--for a consideration.
“How do you feel in regard to the Emperor’s latest step in putting the
appanage lands at the disposition of the peasants through the Peasants’
Bank?” I asked of a group of six peasants whom I was questioning in
Simbirsk. A chorus of derisive exclamations immediately followed. “We
believe no more in anything that comes from the government--or even the
Emperor. We have had too many pieces of worthless paper read to us. It
may sound good now, but in the end it will not be for our good.”
As a matter of fact, if all of the appanage lands of Simbirsk government
were distributed among the peasants of that district, the allotments
would average only one eightieth of an acre per capita. Furthermore, a
large part of the 480,000 acres--the aggregate amount of imperial lands
within the government--are wooded, and consequently unavailable for
immediate agricultural purposes. It may be explained that the appanage
lands are lands set apart for the support of members of the imperial
family.
“How did you hear of this imperial proposition so soon?” I inquired,
knowing that so remote a village could not yet have received newspapers.
“It was read out in the church on Sunday,” they answered.
“Then the priests must believe in it.”
“That is why we don’t,” they went on. “The priests are ‘Black Hundred,’
and we believe no more in them.”
“What do you believe in?” I asked.
“We believe in a Duma for the people; a Duma without ministers who work
against our interests.”
Simbirsk was another famine district. Even for an agricultural district
in Russia it was terribly poor. Twenty-four per cent. of the population
had no horses at all, and forty per cent. had only one horse per
household. This year the crop failure was the worst in two generations.
It was estimated that $5,000,000 would be needed for food for the
peasants alone, and many millions more for the starving cattle and
horses, and for seeds for next year’s harvest. The peasants looked
forward to the illimitable suffering of starvation through the long
months of the Russian winter. Knowing full well the crying needs which
shall soon beset them, and that without money the government will find
it impossible to alleviate these needs, one peasant said to me, in the
presence of a group:
“You wonder, perhaps, why we take strangers into our houses this way and
tell them everything, as we are talking to you?”
“I have usually found the peasants frank and friendly,” I replied. “At
the same time I should be glad to know why you are so free with me.”
“Because,” said the speaker, “you come from another country, and it is
in other countries that the Russian government borrows money. We think
that if the people of other countries only understood how hard our
position is, they would not help the government to put us down.”
This was not the first peasant who had brought up the question of
foreign loans to Russia. Nor was this the first time I had failed in
attempting to explain to the muzhik why foreign loans are possible. In
Kostroma, at the very outset of this journey, I had met with the same
thing, and there, as here, failed in my attempt to explain the theory of
foreign loans. To the peasant the only principle involved was that of
oppression. Every ruble loaned to the Russian government was another
lash across the back of a struggling, starving peasant. No other issue
loomed before their eyes. Withal, the kindliness of their attitude
always amazed me. To the ignorance of the people of England, of France,
and of Austria, do the peasants ascribe their willingness to open their
purses to the stained hand of tyranny. “If the people of other countries
only knew,” they said. There was something inspiringly beautiful in the
ingenuousness of sturdy men so simple--even Russian peasants--who still
not only believed in the supremacy of plain morality, but who had no
understanding of the “business,” the financial considerations which in
the workaday world we know do supplant the innate ethics which make for
right, for justice, and for fair play among men.
At the beginning I was startled when violent sentiments were expressed
by peasants, but now I was accustomed to them. So recently such boldness
would not have been possible, and now--it was truly amazing. In each
government I had visited on this trip the same spirit prevailed and
similar utterances were freely heard. The territory I traversed was so
great that all theory of this being the result of agitation was done
away with. These were the spontaneous conclusions of the peasants, not
only in widely different sections, but in all sections I passed through.
At this point I became satisfied that at last the peasants were awake to
their true situation. The Duma did it. Its propaganding influence was
felt throughout Russia, and here were the fruits. The boast of the
peasants that they would not wait for another Duma, that they would rise
presently, was, of course, dependent upon circumstances. But whether
conditions were propitious in the autumn of 1906, or the spring of 1907,
or 1908, or some other year, makes no material difference in the
ultimate outcome. A year or two, or a decade or two, is of small moment
in the history of an empire. In the summer of 1906 it became clear that
the Czar had lost his peasants--and through his own faithlessness.
At Simbirsk I entered the heart of the famine district, and from this
point on my attention was almost entirely claimed by the misery of the
starving people, whose pitiable suffering I had to witness in utter
helplessness--appalled by the magnitude of the crime. I call it “crime”
because famine, in Russia, is preventable. The régime that persists in
maintaining the present archaic, economic system is responsible for all
the pain, the epidemics of disease, and the deaths which follow in the
wake of the calamity we call famine.