OFFICIALS—SIBERIAN GOVERNORS-GENERAL—A RAPACIOUS POLICE-MASTER—AN
ACCOMMODATING JUDGE—A ROASTED POLICE-CAPTAIN—A TATAR MISSIONARY—A BOY OF
THE FEMALE SEX—THE POTATO TERROR, ETC.
One of the most melancholy results of the revolutionising of Russia by
Peter the Great was the development of the official class. An
artificial, hungry, and uncultivated class, capable of doing nothing but
‘serving,’ knowing nothing but official forms, it constitutes a kind of
civilian clergy, officiating in the courts and the police forces, and
sucking the blood of the people with thousands of greedy and unclean
mouths.
Gogol lifted one corner of the curtain and showed us Russian officialdom
in all its ugliness; but Gogol cannot help conciliating by his laughter;
his immense comic talent gets the upper hand of his indignation.
Moreover, in the fetters of the Russian censorship, he could scarcely
touch upon the melancholy side of that foul underworld, in which the
destinies of the unhappy Russian people are forged.
There, somewhere in grimy offices, from which we make haste to get away,
shabby men write and write on grey paper, and copy on to stamped
paper—and persons, families, whole villages are outraged, terrified,
ruined. A father is sent into exile, a mother to prison, a son for a
soldier, and all this breaks like a thunderclap upon them, unexpected,
for the most part undeserved. And for the sake of what? For the sake of
money. A tribute must be paid ... or an inquiry will be held concerning
some dead drunkard, burnt up by spirits and frozen to death. And the
head-man collects and the village elder collects, the peasants bring
their last kopeck. The police-inspector must live; the police-captain
must live and keep his wife too; the councillor must live and educate
his children, the councillor is an exemplary father.
Officialdom reigns supreme in the north-east provinces of Russia and in
Siberia. There it flourishes unhindered, unsupervised ... it is so
terribly far off, every one shares in the profits, stealing becomes _res
publica_. Even the cannon-shots of the Imperial power cannot destroy
these foul, boggy trenches hidden under the snow. All the measures of
government are weakened, all its intentions are distorted; it is
deceived, fooled, betrayed, sold, and all under cover of loyal servility
and with the observance of all the official forms.
Speransky[140] tried to ameliorate the lot of the Siberian people. He
introduced everywhere the collegiate principle, as though it made any
difference whether the officials stole individually or in gangs. He
discharged the old rogues by hundreds and engaged new ones by hundreds.
At first he inspired such terror in the rural police that they actually
bribed the peasants not to make complaints against them. Three years
later the officials were making their fortunes by the new forms as well
as they had done by the old.
Another eccentric individual was General Velyaminov. For two years he
struggled at Tobolsk trying to check abuses, but, seeing the
hopelessness of it, threw it all up and quite gave up attending to
business.
Others, more judicious, did not make the attempt, but got rich
themselves and let others get rich.
‘I will abolish bribe-taking,’ said Senyavin, the Governor of Moscow, to
a grey-headed peasant who had lodged a complaint against some obvious
injustice. The old man smiled.
‘What are you laughing at?’ asked Senyavin.
‘Why, you must forgive me, sir,’ answered the peasant; ‘it put me in
mind of one fine young fellow who boasted he would lift a cannon, and he
really did try, but he did not lift it for all that.’
Senyavin, who told the story himself, belonged to that class of
unpractical men in the Russian service who imagine that rhetorical
sallies on the subject of honesty and despotic persecution of two or
three rogues can remedy so universal a disease as Russian bribe-taking,
which grows freely under the shadow of the censorship.
There are only two remedies for it, publicity, and an entirely different
organisation of the whole machinery, the introduction again of the
popular elements of the arbitration courts, verbal proceedings, sworn
witnesses, and all that the Petersburg administration detests.
Pestel, the Governor-General of Western Siberia, father of the
celebrated Pestel put to death by Nicholas, was a real Roman proconsul
and one of the most violent. He carried on an open system of plunder in
the whole region which was cut off by his spies from Russia. Not a
single letter crossed the border without the seal being broken, and woe
to the man who should dare to write anything about his rule. He kept
merchants of the first guild for a year at a time in prison in chains;
he tortured them. He sent officials to the borders of Eastern Siberia
and left them there for two or three years.
For a long time the people bore it; at last an artisan of Tobolsk made
up his mind to bring the position of affairs to the knowledge of the
Tsar. Afraid of the ordinary routes, he went to Kyahta and from there
made his way with a caravan of tea across the Siberian frontier. He
found an opportunity at Tsarskoe Syelo of giving Alexander his petition,
beseeching him to read it. Alexander was amazed and impressed by the
terrible things he read in it. He sent for the man, and after a long
talk with him was convinced of the melancholy truth of his report.
Mortified and somewhat embarrassed, he said to him: ‘You can go home
now, my friend; the thing shall be inquired into.’
‘Your Majesty,’ answered the man, ‘I will not go home now. Better
command me to be put in prison. My conversation with your Majesty will
not remain a secret and I shall be killed.’
Alexander shuddered and said, turning to Miloradovitch, who was at that
time Governor-General in Petersburg:
‘You will answer to me for him.’
‘In that case,’ observed Miloradovitch, ‘allow me to take him into my
own house.’ And the man actually remained there until the case was
ended.
Pestel almost always lived in Petersburg. You may remember that the
proconsuls as a rule lived in Rome. By means of his presence and
connections, and still more by the division of the spoils, he avoided
all sorts of unpleasant rumours and scandals.[141]
The Imperial Council took advantage of Alexander’s temporary absence at
Verona or Aachen to come to the intelligent and just decision that since
the matter related to Siberia the case should be handed to Pestel to
deal with, as he was on the spot. Miloradovitch, Mordvinov, and two
others were opposed to this decision, and the case was brought before
the Senate.
The Senate, with that outrageous injustice with which it continually
judges cases relating to the higher officials, exonerated Pestel but
exiled Treskin, the civilian governor of Tobolsk, and deprived him of
his grade and rank. Pestel was only relieved of his duty.
After Pestel, Kaptsevitch, a man of the school of Araktcheyev, was sent
to Tobolsk. Thin, bilious, a tyrant by nature and a tyrant because he
had spent his whole life in the army, a man of restless activity, he
brought external discipline and order into everything, fixed maximum
prices for goods, but left everyday affairs in the hands of robbers. In
1824 the Tsar wanted to visit Tobolsk. Through the Perm provinces runs
an excellent broad high-road, which has been in use for ages and is
probably good owing to the nature of the soil. Kaptsevitch made a
similar road to Tobolsk in a few months. In the spring, in the time of
alternate thaw and frost, he forced thousands of workmen to make the
road by levies from villages near and far; epidemics broke out among
them, half the workmen died, but ‘zeal can accomplish everything’—the
road was made.
Eastern Siberia is still more slackly governed. It is so far away that
news scarcely reaches Petersburg. Bronevsky, the Governor-General in
Irkutsk, was fond of firing cannon-balls into the town when ‘he was
merry.’ And another high official used when he was drunk to perform a
service in his house in full vestments and in the presence of the chief
priest. Anyway the noisiness of the one and the devoutness of the other
were not so pernicious as Pestel’s blockade and Kaptsevitch’s ceaseless
activity.
It is a pity that Siberia is so badly governed. The choice of its
governors-general has been particularly unfortunate. I do not know what
Muravyov is like; he is celebrated for his intelligence and ability; the
others were good for nothing. Siberia has a great future; it is looked
upon merely as a cellar, in which there are great stores of gold, of
fur, and other goods, but which is cold, buried in snow, poor in the
means of life, without roads or population. That is not true.
The dead hand of the Russian government, that does everything by
violence, everything with the stick, cannot give the living impetus
which would carry Siberia forward with American rapidity. We shall see
what will happen when the mouths of the Amur are opened for navigation
and America meets Siberia near China.
I said long ago that the _Pacific Ocean is the Mediterranean of the
future_.[142] In that future the part played by Siberia, the land that
lies between the ocean, Southern Asia, and Russia, will be extremely
important. Of course Siberia is bound to extend to the Chinese frontier.
People cannot freeze and shiver in Beryozov and Yakutsk when there are
Krasnoyarsk, Minusinsk, and other such places.
Even the Russian immigration into Siberia has elements in its nature
that suggest a different development. Generally speaking, the Siberian
race is healthy, well-grown, intelligent, and extremely practical. The
Siberian children of settlers know nothing of the landowners’ power.
There is no noble class in Siberia and at the same time there is no
aristocracy in the towns; the officials and the officers, who are the
representatives of authority, are more like a hostile garrison stationed
there by a victorious enemy than an aristocracy. The immense distances
save the peasants from frequent contact with them; money saves the
merchants, who in Siberia despise the officials and, though outwardly
giving way to them, take them for what they are—their clerks employed in
civil affairs.
The habit of using firearms, inevitable for a Siberian, is universal.
The dangers and emergencies of his daily life have made the Siberian
peasant more warlike, more resourceful, readier to offer resistance than
the Great Russian. The remoteness of churches leaves his mind freer from
superstition than in Russia, he is cold to religion and most often a
dissenter. There are remote villages which the priest visits only three
or four times a year and then christens, buries, marries, and hears
confessions wholesale.
On this side of the Ural Mountains things are done more discreetly, and
yet I could fill volumes with anecdotes of the abuse of power and the
roguery of the officials, heard in the course of my service in the
office and dining-room of the governor.
‘Well, he was a master at it, my predecessor,’ the police-master of
Vyatka said to me in a moment of confidential conversation. ‘Well, of
course, that’s the way to get on, only you have got to be born to it; he
was a regular Seslavin,[143] a Figner in his own way, I may say,’ and
the eyes of the lame major, promoted to be a police-master for his
wounds, sparkled at the memory of his glorious predecessor.
‘A gang of robbers turned up not far from the town, and once or twice
news reached the authorities of merchants’ goods being stolen, or money
being seized from a contractor’s steward. The governor was in a great
taking and wrote off one order after another. Well, you know the rural
police are cowards; they are equal to binding a wretched little thief
and bringing him to justice—but this was a gang and maybe with guns. The
rural police did nothing. The governor sends for the police-master and
says: “I know that it is not your duty, but your efficiency makes me
turn to you.”
‘The police-master had information about the business beforehand.
“General,” said he, “I will set off in an hour, the robbers must be at
this place and that place; I’ll take soldiers with me, I shall find them
at this place and that place, and within a few days I shall bring them
in chains to the prison.” Why, it was like Suvorov with the Austrian
Emperor! And indeed, no sooner said than done—he fairly pounced on them
with the soldiers, they had no time to hide their money, the
police-master took it all and brought the robbers to the town.
‘The police inquiry began. The police-master asked them: “Where is your
money?”
‘“Why, we gave it to you, sir, into your very hands,” answered two of
the robbers.
‘“Gave it to me?” says the police-master in amazement.
‘“Yes, to you, to you,” shout the robbers.
‘“What insolence!” says the police-master to the inspector, turning pale
with indignation. “Why, you scoundrels, you’ll be saying next, I
suppose, that I stole it with you. I’ll teach you to insult my uniform;
I’m a cornet of Uhlans and won’t allow a slur on my honour!”
‘He has them flogged, saying “Confess where you have hidden the money.”
At first they stick to their story, only when he gives the order for
them to have a second pipeful, the ringleader shouts: “We are guilty, we
spent the money.”
‘“You should have said so long ago,” said the police-master, “instead of
talking such nonsense; you won’t take me in, my man.”
‘“Well, to be sure, we ought to come to your honour for a lesson and not
you to us. We couldn’t teach you anything!” muttered the old robber,
looking with admiration at the police-master.
‘And do you know he got the Vladimir ribbon for that business.’
‘Excuse me,’ I asked, interrupting the praises of the great
police-master, ‘what is the meaning of “a second pipeful”?’
‘That’s just a saying among us. It’s a dreary business you know,
flogging, so as you order it to begin, you light your pipe and it is
usually over by the time you have smoked it—but in exceptional cases we
sometimes order our friends to be treated to two pipefuls. The police
are used to it, they know pretty well how much to give.’
Of the Figner above mentioned, there were regular legends current in
Vyatka. He performed miracles. Once, I do not remember the occasion,
some general-adjutant or minister arrived, and the police-master wanted
to show that he did not wear the Uhlan cross for nothing and that he
could spur his horse as smartly as any one. To this end he applied to
one of the Mashkovtsevs, rich merchants of that region, asking him to
give him his valuable grey saddle-horse. Mashkovtsev would not give it.
‘Very good,’ said Figner, ‘you won’t do such a trifle for me of your own
accord, so I’ll take the horse without your permission.’
‘Well, we shall see about that,’ said Gold.
‘Yes, we shall see,’ said Steel.[144]
Mashkovtsev locked up the horse and put two men on guard, and on that
occasion the police-master was unsuccessful.
But in the night, as though of design, an empty barn belonging to
spirit-tax contractors, and adjoining the Mihailovitch house, took fire.
The police-master and the police did their work admirably; to save
Mashkovtsev’s house, they even pulled down the wall of his stable and
carried off the horse in dispute without a hair of his tail or of his
mane singed. Two hours later, the police-master, parading on a white
stallion, went to receive the thanks of the highest authority for his
exemplary management of the fire. After this no one doubted that the
police-master could do anything.
The governor Ryhlevsky was driving from an assembly; at the moment when
his carriage was starting, the driver of a small sledge carelessly got
between the traces of the back pair and the front pair of horses; this
led to a minute’s confusion, which did not, however, prevent Ryhlevsky
from reaching home perfectly comfortably. Next day the governor asked
the police-master if he knew whose coachman it was who had driven into
his traces, and said that he ought to be reprimanded.
‘That coachman, your Excellency, will never drive into your traces
again; I gave him a good lesson,’ the police-master answered, smiling.
‘But whose man is he?’
‘Councillor Kulakov’s, your Excellency.’
At that moment the old councillor, whom I found and left councillor of
the provincial government, walked into the governor’s.
‘You must forgive us,’ said the governor to him, ‘for having given your
coachman a lesson.’
The astonished councillor looked at him inquiringly, unable to
understand.
‘You see he drove into my traces yesterday. You see if he is allowed
to....’
‘But, your Excellency, I was at home all day yesterday, and my wife too,
and the coachman was at home.’
‘What’s the meaning of this?’ asked the governor.
‘I am very sorry, your Excellency. I was so busy yesterday, my head was
in a whirl, I quite forgot about the coachman, and I confess I did not
dare to report that to your Excellency. I meant to see about him at
once.’
‘Well, you are a regular police-master, there is no doubt about it!’
observed Ryhlevsky.
Side by side with this rapacious official, I will describe another of
the opposite breed—a tame, soft, sympathetic official.
Among my acquaintances was one venerable old man, a police-captain
dismissed from his position by a Committee of Inquiry instituted by the
Senators’ revision. He spent his time drawing up petitions and getting
up cases, which was just what he was forbidden to do. This man, who had
been in the service immemorial ages, had stolen, doctored official
documents, and collected false evidence in three provinces, twice been
tried, and so on. This veteran of the rural police liked to tell amazing
anecdotes about himself and his colleagues, not concealing his contempt
for the degenerate officials of the younger generation.
‘They’re giddy-pates,’ he said; ‘of course they take what they can get,
there is no living without it, but it is no use looking for cleverness
or knowledge of the law in them. I’ll tell you, for instance, about one
friend of mine. He was a judge for twenty years and only died last year.
He was a man of brains! And the peasants don’t remember evil against
him, though he has left his family a bit of bread. He had quite a
special way of his own. If a peasant came along with a petition, the
judge would admit him at once and be as friendly and pleasant as you
please.
‘“What is your name, uncle, and what was your father’s?”
‘The peasant would bow and say, “Yermolay, sir, and my father was called
Grigory.”
‘“Well, good health to you, Yermolay Grigoryevitch, from what parts is
the Lord bringing you here?”
‘“We are from Dubilovo.”
‘“I know, I know. You have a mill, I fancy, on the right from the
track.”
‘“Yes sir, the mill of our commune.”
‘“A well-to-do village; the land is good, black soil.”
‘“We don’t complain against God, kind sir.”
‘“Well, that is as it should be. I’ll be bound you have a good-sized
family, Yermolay Grigoryevitch?”
‘“Three sons and two daughters, and I have married the elder to a young
fellow who has been with us five years.”
‘“I daresay you have grandchildren by now?”
‘“Yes, there are little ones, your honour.”
‘“And thank God for it! increase and multiply. Well, Yermolay
Grigoryevitch, it is a long way you have come, let us have a glass of
birch wine.”
‘The peasant makes a show of refusing. The judge fills a glass for him,
saying, “Nonsense, nonsense, my man, the holy Fathers have nothing
against wine and oil to-day.”
‘“It’s true there is nothing against it, but wine brings a man to every
trouble.” Then he crosses himself, bows, and drinks the birch wine.
‘“With such a family, Grigoryevitch, I’ll be bound life is hard? To feed
and clothe every one of them you can’t manage with one wretched nag or
cow; there would not be milk enough.”
‘“Upon my word, sir, what could I do with only one horse? I have three,
I did have a fourth, a roan, but it was bewitched about St. Peter’s
fast; the carpenter in our village, Dorofey, may God be his judge, hates
to see another man well off and has an evil eye.”
‘“It does happen, it does happen. And you have big grazing lands, of
course; I’ll be bound you keep sheep?”
‘“To be sure, we have sheep too.”
‘“Ah, I’ve been too long talking with you. It’s the Tsar’s service,
Yermolay Grigoryevitch, it is time I was in the Court. Had you come
about some little business or what?”
‘“Yes, your honour.”
‘“Well, what is it? some quarrel? Make haste and tell me, old man! it is
time I was going.”
‘“Well, kind sir, trouble has come upon me in my old age. Just at
Assumption, we were in the tavern and came to high words with a peasant
of a neighbouring village, such a mischievous man, he is always stealing
our wood. We had hardly said a word before he swung his fist and gave me
a punch in the chest. ‘Keep your blows for your own village,’ I said to
him, and just to make an example, I would have given him a push, but,
being drunk perhaps, or else it was the devil in it, hit him in the
eye—and, well, I spoilt his eye, and he is gone with the church elder
straight to the inspector—wants to have me up to be tried in the court.”
‘While he tells this story, the judge—our Petersburg actors are nothing
to him—grows graver and graver, makes his eyes look dreadful, and does
not say a word.
‘The peasant sees and turns pale, lays his hat at his feet and takes out
a towel to mop his face. The judge still sits silent and turns over the
leaves of a book.
‘“So I have come here to you, kind sir,” says the peasant in a changed
tone.
‘“What can I do in the matter? What a position! And what did you hit him
in the eye for?”
‘“That’s true indeed, sir, what for.... The evil one confounded me.”
‘“It’s a pity! a great pity! to think that a household must be ruined!
Why, what will become of the family without you, all young people and
little grandchildren, and I am sorry for your old woman, too.”
‘The peasant’s legs begin to tremble.
‘“Well, kind sir, what have I brought on myself?”
‘“Look here, Yermolay Grigoryevitch, read for yourself ... or perhaps
you are no great reader? Well, here is the article on maiming and
mutilation ... to be punished by flogging and exile to Siberia.”
‘“Don’t let a man be ruined! Don’t destroy a Christian! Cannot something
be done?...”
‘“What a fellow! Can we go against the law? Of course, it is all in
human hands. Well, instead of thirty strokes we might give five.”
‘“But about Siberia?...”
‘“That’s not in our power to decide, my good man.”
‘The peasant pulls out of his bosom a little bag, takes out of the bag a
bit of paper, out of the paper two and then three gold pieces, and with
a low bow lays them on the table.
‘“What’s this, Yermolay Grigoryevitch?”
‘“Save me, kind sir.”
‘“Nonsense, nonsense, what do you mean? Sinful man that I am, I do
sometimes accept a token of gratitude. My salary is small, so one is
forced to, but if one accepts it, it must be for something! How can I
help you? It would be a different thing if it were a rib or a tooth, but
a blow on the eye! Take your money back.”
‘The peasant is crushed.
‘“I’ll tell you what; shall I talk to my colleagues and write to the
governor’s office? Very likely the case will come into the courts of
justice, there I have friends, they can do anything, only they are a
different sort of people, you won’t get off for three gold pieces
there.”
‘The peasant begins to recover his faculties.
‘“You needn’t give me anything. I am sorry for your family, but it is no
use your offering them less than two grey notes.”
‘“But, kind sir, as God is above, I don’t know where I am to turn to get
such a mint of money—four hundred roubles—these are hard times.”’
‘“Yes, I expect it is difficult. We could diminish the punishment in
view of your penitence, and taking into consideration that you were not
sober ... and, there, you know people get on all right in Siberia. There
is no telling how far you may have to go.... Of course, if you were to
sell a couple of horses and one of the cows, and the sheep, you might
make it up. But it would take you a time to make up that money again! On
the other hand, if you do keep the horses, you’ll have to go off
yourself to the ends of the earth. Think it over, Grigoryevitch; there
is no hurry, we can wait till to-morrow, but it is time I was going,”
adds the judge, and puts the gold pieces he had refused into his pocket,
saying, “This is quite unnecessary. I only take it not to offend you.”’
‘Next morning you may be sure the old screw brings three hundred and
fifty roubles in all sorts of old-fashioned coins to the judge.
‘The judge promises to look after his interests: the peasant is tried
and tried and properly scared and then let off with some light
punishment, or with a warning to be careful in future, or with a note
that he is to be kept under police supervision, and he remembers the
judge in his prayers for the rest of his life.
‘That’s how they used to do in old days,’ the discharged
police-inspector told me; ‘they did things properly.’
The peasants of Vyatka are, generally speaking, not very long-suffering,
and for that reason the officials consider them fractious and
troublesome. The rural police find their real gold mine in the Votyaks,
the Mordvahs, and the Tchuvashes; they are pitiful, timid, dull-witted
people. Police inspectors pay double to the governor for appointments in
districts populated by these Finnish tribes.
The police and the officials do incredible things with these poor
creatures.
If a land-surveyor crosses a Votyak village on some commission, he
invariably halts in it, takes an astrolabe out of his cart, sticks a
post into the ground and stretches a chain. Within an hour the whole
village is in a turmoil. ‘The surveyors, the surveyors!’ the peasants
say with the horror with which in 1812 they used to say, ‘The French,
the French!’ The village elder comes with the commune to do homage. And
the surveyor measures everything and writes it down. The elder entreats
him not to measure, not to do them injury. The surveyor demands twenty
or thirty roubles. The Votyaks are greatly relieved, they collect the
money—and the surveyor goes on to the next Votyak village.
If a dead body comes into the hands of the police, they take it about
with them for a fortnight, if it is frosty weather, from one Votyak
village to another, and in each one declare that they have just picked
it up, and that an inquest and inquiry will be held in their village.
The Votyaks buy them off.
A few years before I came to the district, a police-inspector who had
acquired a taste for taking bribes brought a dead body into a big
Russian village and demanded, I remember, two hundred roubles. The
village elder called the commune together. The commune refused to give
more than a hundred. The police official would not give way. The
peasants lost their tempers and shut him with his two clerks in the hut
which serves as the parish office, and in their turn threatened to burn
them. The police-inspector did not believe in the threat. The peasants
surrounded the hut with straw and, as an ultimatum, passed a
hundred-rouble note in at the window on a stake. The heroic
police-inspector still insisted on another hundred. Then the peasants
set fire to the straw all round the hut and the three Mucius Scaevolas
of the rural police were burnt to death. This affair was afterwards
brought before the senate.
The Votyak villages are as a rule much poorer than the Russian ones.
‘You live poorly, brother,’ I said to a Votyak while I was waiting for
horses in a stuffy, smoky little hut all on the slant with its windows
looking into the back-yard.
‘Can’t be helped, master! We are poor, we save money for bad times.’
‘Well, it would be hard for times to be worse, old man,’ I said to him,
pouring out a glass of rum. ‘Drink, and forget your troubles.’
‘We do not drink,’ answered the Votyak, looking eagerly at the glass and
suspiciously at me.
‘Nonsense! come, take it.’
‘Drink yourself first.’
I drank and then the Votyak drank.
‘And what are you?’ he asked. ‘From the government on business?’
‘No,’ I answered, ‘on a journey; I am going to Vyatka.’
This considerably reassured him and, looking round carefully, he added
by way of explanation, ‘it is a black day when the police-inspector and
the priest come to us.’
I should like to add something concerning the latter. Our priests are
being more and more transformed into clerical police, as might indeed be
expected from the Byzantine meekness of our Church and the spiritual
supremacy of the Tsar.
The Finnish tribes were partly christened before the time of Peter the
Great and partly in the reign of Elizabeth, while a section of them have
remained heathen. The greater number of those christened in the reign of
Elizabeth secretly adhere to their savage, gloomy religion.[145]
Every two or three years the police-inspector or the rural police
superintendent go through the villages accompanied by a priest, to
discover which of the Votyaks have confessed and been absolved, and
which have not and why not. They are oppressed, thrown into prison,
flogged, and made to pay fines; and, above all, the priest and the
police-inspector search for any proof that they have not given up their
old rites. Then the spiritual spy and the police missionary raise a
storm, exact an immense bribe, give them a ‘black day,’ and so depart
leaving everything as before, to repeat their procession with cross and
rods a year or two later.
In 1835 the Most Holy Synod thought it fitting to do apostolic work in
the Vyatka Province and convert the Tcheremiss heathen to orthodoxy.
This conversion is a type of all the great reforms carried out by the
Russian government, a façade, scene-painting, _blague_, deception, a
magnificent report, while somebody steals and some one else is flogged.
The Metropolitan, Filaret, sent an energetic priest as a missionary. His
name was Kurbanovsky. Consumed by the Russian disease of ambition,
Kurbanovsky threw himself warmly into the work. He determined at all
costs to force the grace of God upon the Tcheremisses. At first he tried
preaching, but he soon got tired of that. And, indeed, does one make
much way by that old method?
The Tcheremisses, seeing the position of affairs, sent to him their
priests, wild, fanatical and adroit. After a prolonged parleying, they
said to Kurbanovsky: ‘In the forest are white birch-trees, tall pines
and firs, there is also the little juniper. God suffers them all and
bids not the juniper be a pine-tree. And so are we among ourselves, like
the forest. Be ye the white birch, we will remain the juniper; we will
not trouble you, _we will pray for the Tsar_, will pay the taxes and
send recruits, but we will not change our holy things.’[146]
Kurbanovsky saw that there was no making them hear reason, and that the
success of Cyril and Methodius[147] would not be vouchsafed him, and he
appealed to the local police-captain. The latter was highly delighted.
He had long been eager to display his devotion to the Church. He was an
unbaptized Tatar, _i.e._ a Mahommedan of the true faith, by name
Devlet-Kildeyev.
The police-captain took a band of soldiers and set off to attack the
Tcheremisses with the Word of God. Several villages were duly
christened. The apostle Kurbanovsky performed the thanksgiving service
and went meekly off to receive his reward. To the Tatar apostle the
government sent the Vladimir Cross for the propagation of Christianity!
Unfortunately, the Tatar missionary was not on good terms with the
mullah at Malmyzho. The mullah was not at all pleased that a son of the
true faith of the Koran should preach the Gospel so successfully. In
Ramadan, the police-captain, heedlessly affixing the cross to his
button, appeared at the mosque and of course took up his stand before
all the rest. The mullah had only just begun reading the Koran through
his nose, when all at once he stopped, and said that he dare not
continue in the presence of a Mussulman who had come into the mosque
wearing a Christian emblem.
The Tatars raised a murmur, the police-captain was overcome with
confusion and either withdrew or removed the cross.
I afterwards read in the _Journal of the Ministry of Home Affairs_ about
the brilliant conversion of the Tcheremisses. The article referred to
the zealous co-operation of Devlet-Kildeyev. Unluckily they forgot to
add that his zeal for the Church was the more disinterested as his faith
in Islam was so firm.
Before the end of my time at Vyatka, the Department of Crown Property
was stealing so impudently that a commission of inquiry was appointed,
which sent inspectors about the province. With that began the
introduction of new regulations concerning Crown peasants.
Governor Kornilov had the appointment of the officials for this
inspection in his hands. I was one of those appointed. What things it
was my lot to read! Melancholy, and amusing, and disgusting. The very
headings of the cases moved me to amazement.
‘Relating to the disappearance of the house of the Parish Council, no
one knows where, and of the gnawing of the plan of it by mice.’
‘Relating to the loss of twenty-two government quit-rent articles,
_i.e._ of fifteen versts of land.’
‘Relating to the re-enumeration of the peasant boy Vassily among the
feminine sex.’ This last was so strange that I at once read the case
from cover to cover.
The father of this supposed Vassily wrote in his petition to the
governor that fifteen years ago he had a daughter born, whom he had
wanted to call Vassilisa, but that the priest, being ‘in liquor,’
christened the girl Vassily and so entered it on the register. The
circumstance apparently troubled the peasant very little. But when he
realised that it would soon come to his family to furnish a recruit and
pay the poll tax, he reported on the matter to the mayor and the rural
police superintendent. The case seemed very suspicious to the police.
They had previously refused to listen to the peasant, saying that he had
let ten years pass. The peasant went to the governor, the latter
arranged a solemn examination of the boy of the feminine sex by a doctor
and a midwife.... At this point a correspondence suddenly sprang up with
the Consistory, and the priest, the successor of the one who, when ‘in
liquor,’ had failed to note this trifling difference, appeared on the
scene, and the case went on for years and the girl was left under
suspicion of being a man until the end.
Do not imagine that this is an absurd figment of my fancy; not at all,
it is quite in harmony with the spirit of the Russian autocracy.
In the reign of Paul some colonel of the Guards in his monthly report
entered an officer as dead who was dying in the hospital. Paul struck
him off the list as dead. Unluckily the officer did not die, but
recovered. The colonel persuaded him to withdraw to his country estate
for a year or two, hoping to find an opportunity to rectify the error.
The officer agreed, but unfortunately for the colonel the heirs who had
read of their kinsman’s death in the _Army Gazette_ refused on any
consideration to acknowledge that he was living, and, inconsolable at
their loss, insisted on bringing the matter before the authorities. When
the living corpse saw that he was likely to die a second time, not
merely on paper but from hunger, he went to Petersburg and sent in a
petition to Paul. The Tsar wrote with his own hand on the petition:
‘Forasmuch as a decree of the Most High has been promulgated concerning
this gentleman, the petition must be refused.’
This is even better than my Vassilisa-Vassily. Of what consequence was
the crude fact of life beside the decree of the Most High? Paul was the
poet and dialectician of autocracy!
Foul and loathsome as this morass of officialdom is, I must add a few
words more about it. To bring it into the light of day is the least poor
tribute one can pay to those who have suffered and perished, unknown and
uncomforted.
The government readily gives the higher officials waste lands by way of
reward. There is no great harm in that, though it would be more sensible
to keep these reserves to provide for the increase of population. The
regulations that govern the fixing of the boundaries of these lands are
fairly detailed; forests containing building timber, the banks of
navigable rivers, indeed the banks of any river, must not be given away,
nor under any circumstances may lands be so assigned that are being
cultivated by peasants, even though the peasants have no right to the
land except that of long usage.[148]
All these restrictions of course are only on paper. In reality the
assignment of land to private owners is a terrible source of plunder and
oppression of the peasants. Great noblemen in receipt of rents used
either to sell their rights to merchants, or try through the provincial
authorities to gain some special privilege contrary to the regulations.
Even Count Orlov himself was _by chance_ assigned a main road and the
pasture lands on which cattle droves are pastured in the Province of
Saratov.
It is therefore no wonder that one fine morning the peasants of the
Darovsky parish in Kotelnitchesky district had their lands cut off right
up to their barns and houses and given as private property to some
merchants who had bought the lease of them from a kinsman of Count
Kankrin. The merchants fixed a rent for the land. This led to a lawsuit.
The Court of Justice, bribed by the merchants and afraid of Kankrin’s
kinsman, confused the issues of the case. But the peasants were
determined to persist with it. They elected two hard-headed peasants
from amongst themselves and sent them to Petersburg. The case was
brought before the Senate. The land-surveying department perceived that
the peasants were in the right and consulted Kankrin. The latter simply
admitted that the land had been irregularly apportioned, but urged that
it would be difficult to restore it, because it _might_ have changed
hands since then, and that its present owners _might_ have made various
improvements. And therefore his Excellency proposed that, considering
the vast amount of Crown property available, the peasants should be
assigned a full equivalent in a different part. This satisfied every one
except the peasants. In the first place, it is no light matter to bring
fresh land under cultivation, and, in the second, the fresh land turned
out to be swampy and unsuitable. As the peasants were more interested in
growing corn than in shooting grouse and woodcock, they sent another
petition.
Then the Court of Justice and the Ministry of Finance made a new case
out of the old one, and finding a law which authorised them, if the land
that was assigned turned out to be unsuitable, to add as much as another
half of the amount to it, ordered the peasants to be given another half
swamp in addition to the swamp they already had.
The peasants sent another petition to the Senate, but, before their case
had come up for investigation, the land-surveying department sent them
plans of their new land, with the boundaries marked and coloured, with
stars for the points of the compass and appropriate explanations for the
lozenges, marked R.R.Z., and the lozenges marked Z.Z.R., and, what was
of more consequence, a demand for so much rent per acre. The peasants,
seeing that far from giving them land, they were trying to squeeze money
out of them for the bog, refused point-blank to pay. The police-captain
reported it to Tyufyaev, who sent a punitory expedition under the
command of the Vyatka police-master. The latter arrived, seized a few
persons, flogged them, restored order in the district, took the money,
handed over the _guilty parties_ to the Criminal Court, and was hoarse
for a week afterwards from shouting. Several men were punished with the
lash and sent into exile.
Two years later the Tsarevitch passed through the district, the peasants
handed him a petition; he ordered the case to be investigated. It was
upon this that I had to draw up a report. Whether any good came of this
re-investigation I do not know. I have heard that the exiles were
brought back, but whether the land was restored I cannot say.
In conclusion, I must mention the celebrated story of the potato mutiny
and how Nicholas tried to bring the blessings of Petersburg civilisation
to the nomad gypsies.
Like the peasantry of all Europe at one time, the Russian peasants were
not very ready to plant potatoes, as though an instinct told the people
that this was a poor kind of food which would give them neither health
nor strength. However, on the estates of decent landowners and in many
crown villages, ‘earth apples’ had been planted long before the Potato
Terror. But anything that is done of itself is distasteful to the
Russian Government. Everything must be done under terror of the stick
and the drill-sergeant, to the beating of drums.
The peasants of the Kazan and of part of the Vyatka province planted
potatoes in their fields. When the potatoes were lifted, the idea
occurred to the Ministry to set up a central potato-pit in each
_volost_. Potato-pits were ratified, potato-pits were prescribed,
potato-pits were dug; and at the beginning of winter the peasants, much
against their will, took the potatoes to the central pit. But when the
following spring the authorities tried to make them plant frozen
potatoes, they refused. There cannot, indeed, be a more flagrant insult
to labour than a command to do something obviously absurd. This refusal
was represented as a mutiny. The Minister Kisselyov sent an official
from Petersburg; he, being an intelligent and practical man, exacted a
rouble apiece from the peasants of the first _volost_ and allowed them
not to plant frozen potatoes.
He repeated this proceeding in the second _volost_ and the third, but in
the fourth, the elder told him point-blank that he would neither plant
the potatoes nor pay him anything. ‘You have let off these and those,’
he told the official; ‘it’s clear you must let us off too.’ The official
would have concluded the business with threats and thrashings, but the
peasants snatched up stakes and drove away the police; the military
governor sent Cossacks. The neighbouring _volosts_ took the peasants’
part.
It is enough to say that it came to using grape-shot and bullets. The
peasants left their homes and dispersed into the woods; the Cossacks
drove them out of the bushes like game; then they were caught, put into
irons, and sent to be court-martialled at Kosmodemiansk.
By a strange accident the old major in charge there was an honest,
good-natured man; in the simplicity of his heart, he said that the
official sent from Petersburg was solely to blame. Every one pounced
upon him, his voice was hushed up, he was suppressed; he was intimidated
and even put to shame for ‘trying to ruin an innocent man.’
And the inquiry followed the usual Russian routine: the peasants were
flogged during the examination, flogged as a punishment, flogged as an
example, flogged to extort money, and a whole crowd of them sent to
Siberia.
It is worth noting that Kisselyov passed through Kosmodemiansk during
the inquiry. He might, it may be thought, have looked in at the court
martial or have sent for the major.
He did not do so!
The famous Turgot, seeing the hatred of the peasants for the potatoes,
distributed seed-potatoes among contractors, purveyors, and other
persons under government control, sternly forbidding them to give them
to the peasants. At the same time he gave them secret orders not to
prevent the peasants from stealing them. In a few years a large part of
France was under potatoes.
_Tout bien pris_, is not that better than grape-shot, Pavel
Dmitrievitch?
In 1836 a gypsy camp came to Vyatka and settled in a field. These
gypsies had wandered as far as Tobolsk and Irbit and had invariably,
accompanied by their trained bear and entirely untrained children, led
their free nomadic existence from time immemorial, engaged in
horse-doctoring, fortune-telling, and petty pilfering. They peacefully
sang songs and robbed hen-roosts, but all at once the governor received
instructions from the Most High that if gypsies were found without
passports (not a single gypsy had ever had a passport, and that Nicholas
and his men knew perfectly well) they were to be given a fixed time
within which they were to inscribe themselves as citizens of the village
or town where they happened to be at the date of the decree.
At the expiration of the time limit, it was ordained that those fit for
military service should be taken for soldiers and the rest sent into
exile, all but the children of the male sex.
This senseless decree, which recalled biblical accounts of the
persecution and punishment of whole races and the slaughter of all the
males among them, disconcerted even Tyufyaev. He communicated the absurd
decree to the gypsies and wrote to Petersburg that it could not be
carried out. To inscribe themselves as citizens they would need both
money for the officials and the consent of the town or village, which
would also have been unwilling to accept the gypsies for nothing. It was
necessary, too, that the gypsies should themselves have been desirous of
settling on the spot. Taking all this into consideration, Tyufyaev—and
one must give him credit for it—asked the Ministry to grant
postponements and exemptions.
The Ministry answered by instructions that at the expiration of the time
limit this Nebuchadnezzar-like decree should be carried out. Most
unwillingly Tyufyaev sent a company of soldiers with orders to surround
the gypsy camp; as soon as this was done, the police arrived with the
garrison battalion, and what happened, I am told, was beyond all
imagination. Women with streaming hair ran about in a frenzy, screaming
and weeping, and falling at the feet of the police; grey-headed old
mothers clung to their sons. But order triumphed and the police-master
took the boys and took the recruits—while the rest were sent by étape
somewhere into exile.
But when the children had been taken, the question arose what was to be
done with them and at whose expense they were to be kept.
In old days there were foundling hospitals in connection with the
Department of Public Charity which cost the government nothing. But the
Prussian chastity of Nicholas abolished them as detrimental to morals.
Tyufyaev advanced money of his own and asked the Minister for
instructions. Ministers never stick at anything. They ordered that the
boys, until further instructions, were to be put into the charge of the
old men and women maintained in the almshouses.
Think of placing little children in charge of moribund old men and
women, making them breathe the atmosphere of death—forcing old people
who need peace and quiet to look after children for nothing!
What imagination!
While I am on the subject I must describe what happened some eighteen
months later to the elder of my father’s village in the province of
Vladimir. He was a peasant of intelligence and experience who carried on
the trade of a carrier, had several teams of three horses each, and had
been for twenty years the elder of a little village that paid _obrok_ to
my father.
Some time during the year I spent in Vladimir, the neighbouring peasants
asked him to deliver a recruit for them. Bringing the future defender of
his country on a rope, he arrived in the town with great self-confidence
as a man proficient in the business.
‘This,’ said he, combing with his fingers the fair, grizzled beard that
framed his face, ‘is all the work of men’s hands, sir. Last year we
pitched on our lad, such a wretched sickly fellow he was—the peasants
were much afraid he wouldn’t do. “And how much, good Christians, will
you go to? A wheel will not turn without being greased.” We talked it
over and the _mir_ decided to give twenty-five gold pieces. I went to
the town and after talking in the government office I went straight to
the president—he was a sensible man, sir, and had known me a long time.
He told them to take me into his study and he had something the matter
with his leg, so he was lying on the sofa. I put it all before him and
he answered me with a laugh, “that’s all right, that’s all right, you
tell me how many _of them_ you have brought—you are a skinflint, I know
you.” I put ten gold pieces on the table and made him a low bow—he took
the money in his hand and kept playing with it. “But I say,” he said, “I
am not the only one whom you will have to pay, what more have you
brought?” “Another ten,” I told him. “Well,” he said, “you can reckon
yourself what you must do with it. Two to the doctor, two to the army
receiver, then the clerk, and all sorts of other little tips won’t come
to more than three—so you had better leave the rest with me and I will
try to arrange it all.”’
‘Well, did you give it to him?’
‘To be sure I did—and they took the boy all right.’
Accustomed to such reckonings and calculations and also, perhaps, to the
five gold pieces of which he had given no account, the elder was
confident of success. But there may be many mishaps between the bribe
and the hand that takes it. Count Essen, one of the Imperial adjutants,
was sent to Vladimir for the levy of recruits. The elder approached him
with his gold pieces. Unfortunately the Count had, like the heroine of
Pushkin’s _Nulin_, been reared ‘not in the traditions of his fathers,’
but in the school of the Baltic aristocracy, which instils German
devotion to the Russian Tsar. Essen was angered, shouted at him and,
what was worse, rang the bell; the clerk ran in and gendarmes made their
appearance. The elder, who had never suspected the existence of men in
uniform who would not take bribes, lost his head so completely that he
did not deny the charge, did not vow and swear that he had never offered
money, did not protest, might God strike him blind and might another
drop never pass between his lips, if he had thought of such a thing! He
let himself be caught like a sheep and led off to the police station,
probably regretting that he had offered the general too little and so
offended him.
But Essen, not satisfied with the purity of his own conscience, nor the
terror of the luckless peasant, and probably wishing to eradicate
bribery _in Russland_, to punish vice and set a salutary example, wrote
to the police, wrote to the governor, wrote to the recruiting office of
the elder’s criminal attempt. The peasant was put in prison and
committed for trial. Thanks to the stupid and grotesque law which metes
out the same punishment to the honest man who gives a bribe to an
official and to the official himself who takes the bribe, things looked
black for him and the elder had to be saved at all costs.
I rushed to the governor; he refused to intervene in the matter; the
president and councillors of the Criminal Court shook their heads,
panic-stricken at the interference of the Imperial adjutant. The latter
himself, relenting, was the first to declare that he ‘wished the man no
harm, that he only wanted to give him a lesson, that he ought _to be
tried and then let off_.’ When I told this to the police-master, he
observed: ‘The fact is, none of these gentry know how things are done,
he should have simply sent him to me. I would have given the fool a good
drubbing—to teach him to mind what he is about—and would have sent him
about his business. Every one would have been satisfied, and now you are
in a nice mess with the Criminal Court.’
These two comments express the Russian conception of law so neatly and
strikingly that I cannot forget them.
Between these pillars of Hercules of the national jurisprudence, the
elder had fallen into the deepest gulf, that is, into the Criminal
Court. A few months later the verdict was prepared that the elder after
being punished with the lash should be exiled to Siberia. His son and
all his family came to me, imploring me to save their father, the head
of the family. I myself felt fearfully sorry for the peasant, ruined
though perfectly innocent. I went again to the president and the
councillors, pointing out to them that they were doing themselves harm
by punishing the elder so severely; that they knew themselves very well
that no business was ever done without bribes; that, in fact, they would
have nothing to eat if they did not, like true Christians, consider that
every gift is perfect and every giving is a blessing. Entreating,
bowing, and sending the elder’s son to bow still lower, I succeeded in
gaining half of my object. The elder was condemned to a few strokes of
the lash within prison walls, was allowed to remain in his home, but was
forbidden to act as an agent for the other peasants.
I sighed with relief when I saw that the governor and the prosecutor had
agreed to this, and went to the police to ask for some mitigation of the
severity of the flogging; the police, partly because they were flattered
at my coming myself to ask them a favour, partly through compassion for
a man who was suffering for something that concerned them all so
intimately, promised me to make it a pure formality.
A few days later the elder appeared, thinner and greyer than before. I
saw that for all his delight he was sad about something and weighed down
by some oppressive thought.
‘What are you worrying about?’ I asked him.
‘Well, I wish they’d settle it once for all.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I mean, when will they punish me?’
‘Why, haven’t they punished you?’
‘No.’
‘Then how is it they have let you go? You are going home, aren’t you?’
‘Home, yes; but I fancy the secretary read something about punishment.’
I could really make nothing of it, and at last asked him whether they
had given him any sort of paper. He gave it me. The whole verdict was
written in it, and at the end it was stated that, having received the
punishment of the lash within the prison walls in accordance with the
sentence of the Criminal Court, he was given his certificate and let out
of prison.
I laughed.
‘Well, you have been flogged already, then!’
‘No, sir, I haven’t.’
‘Well, if you are dissatisfied, go back and ask them to punish you;
perhaps the police will enter into your position.’
Seeing that I was laughing, the old man smiled too, shaking his head
dubiously and adding: ‘Well, well, strange doings!’
‘How irregular!’ many people will say; but they must remember that it is
only through such irregularity that life is possible in Russia.