FOREIGN COLONISTS ON THE STEPPE
The Steppe--Variety of Races, Languages, and Religions--The German
Colonists--In What Sense the Russians are an Imitative
People--The Mennonites--Climate and Arboriculture--Bulgarian
Colonists--Tartar-Speaking Greeks--Jewish
Agriculturists--Russification--A Circassian Scotchman--Numerical
Strength of the Foreign Element.
In European Russia the struggle between agriculture and nomadic
barbarism is now a thing of the past, and the fertile Steppe, which was
for centuries a battle-ground of the Aryan and Turanian races, has been
incorporated into the dominions of the Tsar. The nomadic tribes have
been partly driven out and partly pacified and parked in "reserves,"
and the territory which they so long and so stubbornly defended is now
studded with peaceful villages and tilled by laborious agriculturists.
In traversing this region the ordinary tourist will find little to
interest him. He will see nothing which he can possibly dignify by the
name of scenery, and he may journey on for many days without having
any occasion to make an entry in his note-book. If he should happen,
however, to be an ethnologist and linguist, he may find occupation, for
he will here meet with fragments of many different races and a variety
of foreign tongues.
This ethnological variety is the result of a policy inaugurated by
Catherine II. So long as the southern frontier was pushed forward
slowly, the acquired territory was regularly filled up by Russian
peasants from the central provinces who were anxious to obtain more land
and more liberty than they enjoyed in their native villages; but during
"the glorious age of Catherine" the frontier was pushed forward so
rapidly that the old method of spontaneous emigration no longer sufficed
to people the annexed territory. The Empress had recourse, therefore,
to organised emigration from foreign countries. Her diplomatic
representatives in Western Europe tried to induce artisans and peasants
to emigrate to Russia, and special agents were sent to various countries
to supplement the efforts of the diplomatists. Thousands accepted the
invitation, and were for the most part settled on the land which had
been recently the pasture-ground of the nomadic hordes.
This policy was adopted by succeeding sovereigns, and the consequence of
it has been that Southern Russia now contains a variety of races such as
is to be found, perhaps, nowhere else in Europe. The official statistics
of New Russia alone--that is to say, the provinces of Ekaterinoslaf,
Tauride, Kherson, and Bessarabia--enumerate the following nationalities:
Great Russians, Little Russians, Poles, Servians, Montenegrins,
Bulgarians, Moldavians, Germans, English, Swedes, Swiss, French,
Italians, Greeks, Armenians, Tartars, Mordwa, Jews, and Gypsies. The
religions are almost equally numerous. The statistics speak of Greek
Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Gregorians, Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans,
Mennonites, Separatists, Pietists, Karaim Jews, Talmudists, Mahometans,
and numerous Russian sects, such as the Molokanye and the Skoptsi or
Eunuchs. America herself could scarcely show a more motley list in her
statistics of population.
It is but fair to state that the above list, though literally correct,
does not give a true idea of the actual population. The great body
of the inhabitants are Russian and Orthodox, whilst several of the
nationalities named are represented by a small number of souls--some of
them, such as the French, being found exclusively in the towns. Still,
the variety even in the rural population is very great. Once, in
the space of three days, and using only the most primitive means of
conveyance, I visited colonies of Greeks, Germans, Servians, Bulgarians,
Montenegrins, and Jews.
Of all the foreign colonists the Germans are by far the most numerous.
The object of the Government in inviting them to settle in the country
was that they should till the unoccupied land and thereby increase
the national wealth, and that they should at the same time exercise a
civilising influence on the Russian peasantry in their vicinity. In
this latter respect they have totally failed to fulfil their mission.
A Russian village, situated in the midst of German colonies, shows
generally, so far as I could observe, no signs of German influence. Each
nationality lives more majorum, and holds as little communication as
possible with the other. The muzhik observes carefully--for he is very
curious--the mode of life of his more advanced neighbours, but he never
thinks of adopting it. He looks upon Germans almost as beings of a
different world--as a wonderfully cunning and ingenious people, who
have been endowed by Providence with peculiar qualities not possessed by
ordinary Orthodox humanity. To him it seems in the nature of things that
Germans should live in large, clean, well-built houses, in the same way
as it is in the nature of things that birds should build nests; and
as it has probably never occurred to a human being to build a nest for
himself and his family, so it never occurs to a Russian peasant to
build a house on the German model. Germans are Germans, and Russians are
Russians--and there is nothing more to be said on the subject.
This stubbornly conservative spirit of the peasantry who live in
the neighbourhood of Germans seems to give the lie direct to the
oft-repeated and universally believed assertion that Russians are an
imitative people strongly disposed to adopt the manners and customs of
any foreigners with whom they may come in contact. The Russian, it is
said, changes his nationality as easily as he changes his coat, and
derives great satisfaction from wearing some nationality that does not
belong to him; but here we have an important fact which appears to prove
the contrary.
The truth is that in this matter we must distinguish between the
Noblesse and the peasantry. The nobles are singularly prone to adopt
foreign manners, customs, and institutions; the peasants, on the
contrary, are as a rule decidedly conservative. It must not, however, be
supposed that this proceeds from a difference of race; the difference is
to be explained by the past history of the two classes. Like all other
peoples, the Russians are strongly conservative so long as they remain
in what may be termed their primitive moral habitat--that is to say, so
long as external circumstances do not force them out of their accustomed
traditional groove. The Noblesse were long ago violently forced out of
their old groove by the reforming Tsars, and since that time they have
been so constantly driven hither and thither by foreign influences that
they have never been able to form a new one. Thus they easily enter upon
any new path which seems to them profitable or attractive. The great
mass of the people, on the contrary, too heavy to be thus lifted out of
the guiding influence of custom and tradition, are still animated with a
strongly conservative spirit.
In confirmation of this view I may mention two facts which have often
attracted my attention. The first is that the Molokanye--a primitive
Evangelical sect of which I shall speak at length in the next
chapter--succumb gradually to German influence; by becoming heretics in
religion they free themselves from one of the strongest bonds attaching
them to the past, and soon become heretics in things secular. The second
fact is that even the Orthodox peasant, when placed by circumstances in
some new sphere of activity, readily adopts whatever seems profitable.
Take, for example, the peasants who abandon agriculture and embark in
industrial enterprises; finding themselves, as it were, in a new world,
in which their old traditional notions are totally inapplicable, they
have no hesitation in adopting foreign ideas and foreign inventions. And
when once they have chosen this new path, they are much more "go-ahead"
than the Germans. Freed alike from the trammels of hereditary
conceptions and from the prudence which experience generates, they often
give a loose rein to their impulsive character, and enter freely on the
wildest speculations.
The marked contrast presented by a German colony and a Russian village
in close proximity with each other is often used to illustrate the
superiority of the Teutonic over the Slavonic race, and in order to make
the contrast more striking, the Mennonite colonies are generally taken
as the representatives of the Germans. Without entering here on the
general question, I must say that this method of argumentation is
scarcely fair. The Mennonites, who formerly lived in the neighbourhood
of Danzig and emigrated from Prussia in order to escape the military
conscription, brought with them to their new home a large store of
useful technical knowledge and a considerable amount of capital, and
they received a quantity of land very much greater than the Russian
peasants possess. Besides this, they enjoyed until very recently several
valuable privileges. They were entirely exempted from military service
and almost entirely exempted from taxation. Altogether their lines fell
in very pleasant places. In material and moral well-being they stand as
far above the majority of the ordinary German colonists as these latter
do above their Russian neighbours. Even in the richest districts of
Germany their prosperity would attract attention. To compare these
rich, privileged, well-educated farmers with the poor, heavily taxed,
uneducated peasantry, and to draw from the comparison conclusions
concerning the capabilities of the two races, is a proceeding so absurd
that it requires no further comment.
To the wearied traveller who has been living for some time in Russian
villages, one of these Mennonite colonies seems an earthly paradise. In
a little hollow, perhaps by the side of a watercourse, he suddenly comes
on a long row of high-roofed houses half concealed in trees. The
trees may be found on closer inspection to be little better than mere
saplings; but after a long journey on the bare Steppe, where there is
neither tree nor bush of any kind, the foliage, scant as it is, appears
singularly inviting. The houses are large, well arranged, and kept in
such thoroughly good repair that they always appear to be newly built.
The rooms are plainly furnished, without any pretensions to elegance,
but scrupulously clean. Adjoining the house are the stable and byre,
which would not disgrace a model farm in Germany or England. In front
is a spacious courtyard, which has the appearance of being swept several
times a day, and behind there is a garden well stocked with vegetables.
Fruit trees and flowers are not very plentiful, for the climate is not
favourable to them.
The inhabitants are honest, frugal folk, somewhat sluggish of intellect
and indifferent to things lying beyond the narrow limits of their own
little world, but shrewd enough in all matters which they deem worthy of
their attention. If you arrive amongst them as a stranger you may be
a little chilled by the welcome you receive, for they are exclusive,
reserved, and distrustful, and do not much like to associate with those
who do not belong to their own sect; but if you can converse with
them in their mother tongue and talk about religious matters in
an evangelical tone, you may easily overcome their stiffness and
exclusiveness. Altogether such a village cannot be recommended for a
lengthened sojourn, for the severe order and symmetry which everywhere
prevail would soon prove irksome to any one having no Dutch blood in
his veins;* but as a temporary resting-place during a pilgrimage on
the Steppe, when the pilgrim is longing for a little cleanliness and
comfort, it is very agreeable.
* The Mennonites were originally Dutchmen. Persecuted for
their religious views in the sixteenth century, a large
number of them accepted an invitation to settle in West
Prussia, where they helped to drain the great marshes
between Danzig, Elbing, and Marienburg. Here in the course
of time they forgot their native language. Their emigration
to Russia began in 1789.
The fact that these Mennonites and some other German colonies have
succeeded in rearing a few sickly trees has suggested to some fertile
minds the idea that the prevailing dryness of the climate, which is
the chief difficulty with which the agriculturist of that region has
to contend, might be to some extent counteracted by arboriculture on a
large scale. This scheme, though it has been seriously entertained by
one of his Majesty's ministers, must seem hardly practicable to any
one who knows how much labour and money the colonists have expended in
creating that agreeable shade which they love to enjoy in their leisure
hours. If climate is affected at all by the existence or non-existence
of forests--a point on which scientific men do not seem to be entirely
agreed--any palpable increase of the rainfall can be produced only by
forests of enormous extent, and it is hardly conceivable that these
could be artificially produced in Southern Russia. It is quite possible,
however, that local ameliorations may be effected. During a visit to
the province of Voronezh in 1903 I found that comparatively small
plantations diminished the effects of drought in their immediate
vicinity by retaining the moisture for a time in the soil and the
surrounding atmosphere.
After the Mennonites and other Germans, the Bulgarian colonists deserve
a passing notice. They settled in this region much more recently, on the
land that was left vacant by the exodus of the Nogai Tartars after the
Crimean War. If I may judge of their condition by a mere flying visit,
I should say that in agriculture and domestic civilisation they are
not very far behind the majority of German colonists. Their houses
are indeed small--so small that one of them might almost be put into a
single room of a Mennonite's house; but there is an air of cleanliness
and comfort about them that would do credit to a German housewife.
In spite of all this, these Bulgarians were, I could easily perceive, by
no means delighted with their new home. The cause of their discontent,
so far as I could gather from the few laconic remarks which I
extracted from them, seemed to be this: Trusting to the highly coloured
descriptions furnished by the emigration agents who had induced them to
change the rule of the Sultan for the authority of the Tsar, they
came to Russia with the expectation of finding a fertile and beautiful
Promised Land. Instead of a land flowing with milk and honey, they
received a tract of bare Steppe on which even water could be obtained
only with great difficulty--with no shade to protect them from the heat
of summer and nothing to shelter them from the keen northern blasts that
often sweep over those open plains. As no adequate arrangements had been
made for their reception, they were quartered during the first winter
on the German colonists, who, being quite innocent of any Slavophil
sympathies, were probably not very hospitable to their uninvited
guests. To complete their disappointment, they found that they could not
cultivate the vine, and that their mild, fragrant tobacco, which is for
them a necessary of life, could be obtained only at a very high price.
So disconsolate were they under this cruel disenchantment that, at the
time of my visit, they talked of returning to their old homes in Turkey.
As an example of the less prosperous colonists, I may mention the
Tartar-speaking Greeks in the neighbourhood of Mariupol, on the northern
shore of the Sea of Azof. Their ancestors lived in the Crimea, under
the rule of the Tartar Khans, and emigrated to Russia in the time of
Catherine II., before Crim Tartary was annexed to the Russian Empire.
They have almost entirely forgotten their old language, but have
preserved their old faith. In adopting the Tartar language they have
adopted something of Tartar indolence and apathy, and the natural
consequence is that they are poor and ignorant.
But of all the colonists of this region the least prosperous are the
Jews. The Chosen People are certainly a most intelligent, industrious,
frugal race, and in all matters of buying, selling, and bartering they
are unrivalled among the nations of the earth, but they have been too
long accustomed to town life to be good tillers of the soil. These
Jewish colonies were founded as an experiment to see whether the
Israelite could be weaned from his traditionary pursuits and transferred
to what some economists call the productive section of society. The
experiment has failed, and the cause of the failure is not difficult to
find. One has merely to look at these men of gaunt visage and shambling
gait, with their loop-holed slippers, and black, threadbare coats
reaching down to their ankles, to understand that they are not in their
proper sphere. Their houses are in a most dilapidated condition, and
their villages remind one of the abomination of desolation spoken of by
Daniel the Prophet. A great part of their land is left uncultivated or
let to colonists of a different race. What little revenue they have is
derived chiefly from trade of a more or less clandestine nature.*
* Mr. Arnold White, who subsequently visited some of these
Jewish Colonies in connection with Baron Hirsch's
colonisation scheme, assured me that he found them in a much
more prosperous condition.
As Scandinavia was formerly called officina gentium--a workshop in which
new nations were made--so we may regard Southern Russia as a workshop
in which fragments of old nations are being melted down to form a new,
composite whole. It must be confessed, however, that the melting process
has as yet scarcely begun.
National peculiarities are not obliterated so rapidly in Russia as in
America or in British colonies. Among the German colonists in Russia the
process of assimilation is hardly perceptible. Though their fathers and
grandfathers may have been born in the new country, they would consider
it an insult to be called Russians. They look down upon the Russian
peasantry as poor, ignorant, lazy, and dishonest, fear the officials
on account of their tyranny and extortion, preserve jealously their
own language and customs, rarely speak Russian well--sometimes not at
all--and never intermarry with those from whom they are separated by
nationality and religion. The Russian influence acts, however,
more rapidly on the Slavonic colonists--Servians, Bulgarians,
Montenegrins--who profess the Greek Orthodox faith, learn more easily
the Russian language, which is closely allied to their own, have no
consciousness of belonging to a Culturvolk, and in general possess a
nature much more pliable than the Teutonic.
The Government has recently attempted to accelerate the fusing process
by retracting the privileges granted to the colonists and abolishing
the peculiar administration under which they were placed. These
measures--especially the universal military service--may eventually
diminish the extreme exclusiveness of the Germans; the youths, whilst
serving in the army, will at least learn the Russian language, and may
possibly imbibe something of the Russian spirit. But for the present
this new policy has aroused a strong feeling of hostility and greatly
intensified the spirit of exclusiveness. In the German colonies I have
often overheard complaints about Russian tyranny and uncomplimentary
remarks about the Russian national character.
The Mennonites consider themselves specially aggrieved by the so-called
reforms. They came to Russia in order to escape military service and
with the distinct understanding that they should be exempted from it,
and now they are forced to act contrary to the religious tenets of their
sect. This is the ground of complaint which they put forward in the
petitions addressed to the Government, but they have at the same time
another, and perhaps more important, objection to the proposed changes.
They feel, as several of them admitted to me, that if the barrier which
separates them from the rest of the population were in any way broken
down, they could no longer preserve that stern Puritanical discipline
which at present constitutes their force. Hence, though the Government
was disposed to make important concessions, hundreds of families sold
their property and emigrated to America. The movement, however, did
not become general. At present the Russian Mennonites number, male and
female, about 50,000, divided into 160 colonies and possessing over
800,000 acres of land.
It is quite possible that under the new system of administration the
colonists who profess in common with the Russians the Greek Orthodox
faith may be rapidly Russianised; but I am convinced that the
others will long resist assimilation. Greek orthodoxy and Protestant
sectarianism are so radically different in spirit that their respective
votaries are not likely to intermarry; and without intermarriage it is
impossible that the two nationalities should blend.
As an instance of the ethnological curiosities which the traveller may
stumble upon unawares in this curious region, I may mention a strange
acquaintance I made when travelling on the great plain which stretches
from the Sea of Azof to the Caspian. One day I accidentally noticed on
my travelling-map the name "Shotlandskaya Koldniya" (Scottish Colony)
near the celebrated baths of Piatigorsk. I was at that moment in
Stavropol, a town about eighty miles to the north, and could not
gain any satisfactory information as to what this colony was. Some
well-informed people assured me that it really was what its name
implied, whilst others asserted as confidently that it was simply a
small German settlement. To decide the matter I determined to visit
the place myself, though it did not lie near my intended route, and I
accordingly found myself one morning in the village in question. The
first inhabitants whom I encountered were unmistakably German, and
they professed to know nothing about the existence of Scotsmen in
the locality either at the present or in former times. This was
disappointing, and I was about to turn away and drive off, when a young
man, who proved to be the schoolmaster, came up, and on hearing what I
desired, advised me to consult an old Circassian who lived at the end
of the village and was well acquainted with local antiquities. On
proceeding to the house indicated, I found a venerable old man, with
fine, regular features of the Circassian type, coal-black sparkling
eyes, and a long grey beard that would have done honour to a patriarch.
To him I explained briefly, in Russian, the object of my visit, and
asked whether he knew of any Scotsmen in the district.
"And why do you wish to know?" he replied, in the same language, fixing
me with his keen, sparkling eyes.
"Because I am myself a Scotsman, and hoped to find fellow-countrymen
here."
Let the reader imagine my astonishment when, in reply to this, he
answered, in genuine broad Scotch, "Od, man, I'm a Scotsman tae! My name
is John Abercrombie. Did ye never hear tell o' John Abercrombie, the
famous Edinburgh doctor?"
I was fairly puzzled by this extraordinary declaration. Dr.
Abercrombie's name was familiar to me as that of a medical practitioner
and writer on psychology, but I knew that he was long since dead. When
I had recovered a little from my surprise, I ventured to remark to the
enigmatical personage before me that, though his tongue was certainly
Scotch, his face was as certainly Circassian.
"Weel, weel," he replied, evidently enjoying my look of mystification,
"you're no' far wrang. I'm a Circassian Scotsman!"
This extraordinary admission did not diminish my perplexity, so I
begged my new acquaintance to be a little more explicit, and he at once
complied with my request. His long story may be told in a few words:
In the first years of the present century a band of Scotch missionaries
came to Russia for the purpose of converting the Circassian tribes, and
received from the Emperor Alexander I. a large grant of land in this
place, which was then on the frontier of the Empire. Here they founded
a mission, and began the work; but they soon discovered that the
surrounding population were not idolaters, but Mussulmans, and
consequently impervious to Christianity. In this difficulty they fell
on the happy idea of buying Circassian children from their parents and
bringing them up as Christians. One of these children, purchased about
the year 1806, was a little boy called Teoona. As he had been purchased
with money subscribed by Dr. Abercrombie, he had received in baptism
that gentleman's name, and he considered himself the foster-son of his
benefactor. Here was the explanation of the mystery.
Teoona, alias Mr. Abercrombie, was a man of more than average
intelligence. Besides his native tongue, he spoke English, German,
and Russian perfectly; and he assured me that he knew several other
languages equally well. His life had been devoted to missionary work,
and especially to translating and printing the Scriptures. He had
laboured first in Astrakhan, then for four years and a half in
Persia--in the service of the Bale mission--and afterwards for six years
in Siberia.
The Scottish mission was suppressed by the Emperor Nicholas about the
year 1835, and all the missionaries except two returned home. The son of
one of these two (Galloway) was the only genuine Scotsman remaining at
the time of my visit. Of the "Circassian Scotsmen" there were several,
most of whom had married Germans. The other inhabitants were German
colonists from the province of Saratof, and German was the language
commonly spoken in the village.
After hearing so much about foreign colonists, Tartar invaders,
and Finnish aborigines, the reader may naturally desire to know the
numerical strength of this foreign element. Unfortunately we have no
accurate data on this subject, but from a careful examination of the
available statistics I am inclined to conclude that it constitutes
about one-sixth of the population of European Russia, including Poland,
Finland, and the Caucasus, and nearly a third of the population of the
Empire as a whole.