farming from the Orthodox. You will see the men threshing on a level
floor beside the corral. They are dressed in long blue or magenta
fur-lined cloaks and colored cone-shaped hats. Other Buriats are
permanently resident in the Slavonic settlements, and send their
rosy-faced children to school. They mix with the Russians, subject to
almost no disabilities, and their better classes contract inter-racial
marriages, which seem, to an outsider, at least, completely happy and
successful.
It is no small thing, this which Russian rule has done for the Buriats.
A people whom any other nation would spurn in racial ostracism, perhaps
would eliminate, live side by side with the good-natured Slav in
perfect accord, progressing in civilization and material well-being as
high as the individual can aspire to and attain.
They are ruled by their own chiefs, whose sway is tempered by the
benevolent supervision of the general government. They are represented
in the Duma by men of their own selection. They freely worship the
Buddhist Burhan in their lamasery near Cellinginsk, without pope to
preach or missionary to proselyte. Their easy citizenship is unharassed
by money taxes, and their only obligation is Cossack service in the
army. But Cossack service to a Buriat is what a picnic is to a boy.
Riding around on horseback, rationed by the Government, visiting a
city with real tobacco and vodka sometimes attainable, sleeping on a
straw-stuffed mattress with no tethered lambs to murder sleep, when
they are used to a sheepskin on the dirt floor,--all this is luxury of
blissful memory, during the years of the reserve. The net result is
that the Buriats are entirely content. They are progressing all along
the line, and are being made useful to the nation, not by unpayable
taxation, but by the service which they are so especially fitted to
render.
As one nears Chinese territory, by the lower waters of the Chickoya
River, the villages of Slavic colonists who hold their land on
tax-paying peasant tenure, have given place to the Buriat tribesmen
and to the _stanitzas_ of the Cossack guard that occupy the pale of
land flanking the frontier. Within this border-belt, every village
_stanitza_ holds its quota of Cossacks. These soldiers are for the
most part descendants of the levies from the Don region, transplanted
to the Trans-Baikal by the Government’s despotic hand in the
eighteenth century, and since then forming an hereditary military
caste. Many of them are bearded Slavs, indistinguishable, save for
their accoutrements, from their more peaceful neighbors. Others
are of a peculiar cast of countenance, due to the mixture with the
Asiatic tribes in ancient times, when the hunted people fled to their
ancestors’ asylum, the territories beyond the Volga and on the Don.
There is great variation in type among the imported Cossacks. Most are
Orthodox, but a very large number are “Old Believers,” or Semieski. In
all the houses now hang the yellow cap and the uniform coat, which must
be ever ready against the call of duty. Arms are in the corners of the
rooms, and everything has a military look, in marked contrast to the
peasant homes. Crude, highly-colored prints of Japanese defeats, which
circulated broadcast in Russia during the war, share the attention
usually devoted exclusively to holy ikons. Portraits of Generals
Linevitch and Kuropatkin, and Admiral Alexiev, are tacked to the
walls. In one house we saw hanging a prized silver watch, one of those
distributed by General Rennenkamp among the soldiers of his command.
One of our Cossack hosts is an old man, Orthodox, and of Russian
origin, but with some ancient Asiatic blood, for only a stringy beard
grows on his kindly, wrinkled face. With reluctant pride he tells of
his three sons away on service, leaving but himself and two daughters
at home. With frank happiness he shows you his medals. Every soldier at
the front received a round brass service-medal; his, however, a silver
cross with St. George and the Dragon on it, is given for valor. He will
not drink the vodka he offers you,--rheumatism. But in order that you
may smoke some alleged tobacco that greatly interests him because he
gathered it himself by the roadside, in Manchuria, he starts up his
pipe despite the dust-induced coughs that it begets. He is a kindly,
loquacious old man.
Another Cossack, privileged to the broad yellow top on his cap and
the yellow stripe on his trousers, is, for the time, our guide and
gun-carrier. His flat strongly-mustached face is open and ingenuous. He
tells of his _sotnia_ in Manchuria.
“I was with Mitschenko at the front during the war, in his great
raid,” he says. “Ten of our _sotnia_ of a hundred were killed, forty
wounded. We got behind the Japanese and burned four hundred of their
wagons. We had two hundred rounds of cartridges, and more when we
wanted them. But food often not, and meat sometimes not for two months.
We had thirty Buriats in our hundred, but the Verhneudinsk Polk were
almost all Buriats.”
In one house where ikons, oven, bench, and stockade reveal the Slav
peasant’s home, the mirrors are shrouded for their forty days’
veiling. It is a place of death. The owner was a full-blooded Buriat
married to a Russian woman. In silent grief she plods through her
mechanically-executed duties. Their son, in red blouse, is in prayer
beside his father’s body. They have pressed us to remain. The advent
of strangers seems to distract their thoughts a little. From outside
comes a hail, and heavily there dismounts from his pony an old grizzled
Buriat Cossack. He has ridden two hundred versts to pay this last
respect to his friend.
His military training makes the Cossack a little less gentle than the
average peasant. When off duty, hen-roosts near a garrison are in
some danger. For the rest, he is naturally brave, generous, and will
share the chicken he has just ridden forty versts to lift. He will
give his pipe to be smoked, and will behave with a thoughtfulness and
courtesy that is not found in finer circles. His children have the free
unrepressed air which speaks of genial home kindliness and sympathy.
His wife is far from being a mute drudge.
Assuredly this is not the Cossack of legendary fame, the “implacable
knout” of the czars. It requires almost courage, in the face of the
savage of literary tradition, to assert that the Cossack is other than
a dehumanized monster of oppression. Why then did he cut down with
utter ruthlessness the helplessly frozen grenadiers of the Grande
Armée? Why will he massacre indiscriminately men, women, and children
on his path from Tien-tsin to Peking? Why will he beat with his knotted
whip the striking girl students of Kiev? Who shall tell? To a certain
extent he is callous to suffering because of a defective imagination.
He will ride his best horse to death if need be. Loving it, he will yet
leave it out in weather forty below. He is cruel, often, because he
has not the substituting gift needed to translate another’s suffering
into terms of his own. He is valorous because, even so far as regards
himself, he cannot think beyond the immediate privation into the future
of imaged dread, so he goes fearlessly into unpondered peril. He
offends the traditional ideas of humanity and civilization in killing
people, because of his failure to recognize a wider radius of sympathy
than circles his own tribe. But if the tribe circumscribes his idea,
the nation circumscribes the sympathies of others who make tariffs to
crush an extra-national industry and raise armies to destroy a foreign
liberty. But if outside the Cossack’s recognized circle, you are to
him beyond the pale, in his home, you are, _ipso facto_, a member of
the tribe, a brother in whose defense he will gayly risk his life, and
spend his substance.
The deeds that are recalled to the Cossack’s discredit often fall for
judgment really to those who plan and issue the orders which loyalty
makes him obey. Where his allegiance has been once given, there it
remains. His _hataman_ is more than a superior officer; he is the chief
of the clan, the head of all the tribe, and the subordinate is united
to him by the traditions of centuries of mutual dependence. Where other
than blood-kin officers are put over the Cossack he mutinies, as when,
in Manchuria, Petersburg-schooled lieutenants were drafted and raised
to command. But give him his own rightful chief, then if the Cossack is
told to do something it is done. He will cross himself and jump from
the tower, as in Holland did Peter the Great’s guardsman at the word of
the chief to whom he had given his loyalty.
The savage valor of the warriors in Verestchagin’s picture, _The
Cossack’s Answer_, is typical of the spirit of these soldiers.
Surrounded by battalions of the foe, fated to annihilation when the
summons to surrender is rejected, the leaders, laughing uproariously in
approval, hear their _hataman_ dictate the insulting reply that dooms
them all. If one would ride to China he can have no better guards and
comrades than the Cossacks.
We are close to the border now, climbing the last crest which separates
the Chickoya from the Cellinga Valley, our toiling tired ponies white
with frost. All day the long sweep of the hills has been taken through
heavy snow. The landscape is barren, desolate, and lifeless save for
the occasional sight of a distant Buriat horseman. The sun is slowly
sinking.
The crest at last! The driver points with his whip to the dark masses
of houses below, wreathed in the curling smoke of the evening fires.
Here and there is a brilliantly painted building or tower, and sleighs
and horsemen are passing in the streets. “Troitzkosavsk!” he says. He
points further ahead to another more distant town, whose most dominant
features are the great square tea-caravansaries and a mighty church,
green-domed, with a gilded far-glimmering cross. The huddled houses
end sharply toward the south, as if a ruler had marked off their limit
in a straight stretch of white. Along this pale are little square
sentry-boxes, striped black and white. In the evening sun a distant
glint of steel flashes from the bayonet of a pacing sentry. “Kiahta!”
the driver says. Then, across the white strip where a wooden stockade
girds a settlement of gray-walled compounds, fluttering with tiny
flags, gay with lofty towers and temples flaunting their red eaves, he
points a third time: “Kitai!” (China).
He picks up the reins, and lifts the whip; “Scurry!” he cries to the
horses. The ponies leap forward, throwing their weight against duga
and collar, and we sweep down the hill toward the nearest Russian town,
Troitzkosavsk, four versts from the border.
As we come down to the main road hard-by the town, officers of the
garrison drive past with their spick-and-span fast trotters, city-wise,
as one sees them in Irkutsk. Behind rolls a Mongol cart driven by a
burly Chinaman. A Buriat, come to town to replenish his supply of
powder and ball, follows on his shaggy pony.
Down a long street, flanked first by log cabins with courtyards and
fences like those in the peasant villages, then by stucco-plastered
houses, cement-walled government buildings, and great whitewashed
churches, we pass and reach the centre of the town. Then we turn up a
side street to the house of a mine-owner, to whom we are accredited.
Nicolai Vladimirovitch Tobagov meets us at the door of his log house,
clad in gray flannel shirt and knee-boots. A not unnoteworthy product
of Siberia is this man,--squarely built and yet wiry, with nervous
strength expressed on his bearded face. He is self-made, risen
from the masses. A peasant-boy, he started life as assistant to a
surveyor, learning to read and write by his own efforts. During this
apprenticeship he studied his chief’s books on geology, by the light
of the brands for the samovar in the peasants’ houses where they were
billeted nightly.
He located placer gold in a number of spots, at a time when the oblast
was a lawless “no man’s domain,” without any legal means in existence
for acquiring title to property. Guarding in silence his secret, he
waited years, until at last a mining-law was enacted for the oblast
where his prospects lay. When this law ultimately made private
ownership possible, he started in to realize. A friend lent him the
money for a mill, which he constructed, according to book-descriptions,
on the model of those in California. At first it failed to work, and
broke again and again. His riffles were set too steeply. They had let
the gold scour away, and his neighbors reported that there was no
gold to collect. But he fought it through to victory, returned every
borrowed kopeck with interest, bought new machines, and prospered; till
now, besides controlling several mines, he possesses a great domain in
the river valley, some hundred versts away, with fields of wheat and
rye and hay-meadows.
When the visitor has stamped the snow from his felt boots and emerged
from his shaggy bearskin coat and hooded fur cap, he enters the main
room, with its walls of great logs bare of ornament and showing the
scorings of the axe, but clean as new-planed wood can be. Between
the chinks straw and moss are packed to keep out the cold. Two great
benches flank the sides of the room. Not a picture, not an ornament,
not a curtain, not a drapery, not a shelf, breaks the plainness
of the log wall, but here and there are hung guns and rifles. In
essentials this large house does not greatly differ from the typical
peasant’s dwelling. But a copy of the “Sibir” newspaper lies on the
table, and photographs of the female members of the family are added
to the many reproductions of relations in military dress, which the
photographer has touched up with brilliant dashes of red, to pay
tribute to the coat-lining, and white to indicate the gloves. Lamps
replace the lowly tapers, and they burn before more gorgeously gilt
ikons. The windows are double, with cotton-wool and strips of colored
paper between. This is a great improvement on the single ice-crusted
window, with its perpetual drippings down along the sill. There are
the little sheet-iron stoves, whitewashed after the tradition of the
oven; chairs with backs, as well as the square stools; and small rooms
curtained off from each other. A clock hangs on the wall, and there are
carpets on the floor. A large table stands at one end, on which is the
ever-boiling samovar, which is nickel instead of brass.
We are made acquainted with the wife of the host, a stout matron of
fine domestic proclivities. Though of humble origin, she has discarded
her peasant shako and bandana-handkerchief headdress for a bonnet, and
dispenses, as to the manner born, many luxuries. On the other hand,
she has lost the robustness which keeps her peasant sisters fresh and
hearty. Sewing-machines, and beds, and servants, must exact toll even
in Siberia. Her boys are clean-cut and intelligent. They go to school
and are the future “Intellectuals” that are seeding Siberia. Sixteen
children--eleven Nicolai Tobagov’s own, five adopted in open-hearted
generosity--sit down to four very solid meals a day in the big hall.
Ivan Simeonski, _optovie_ and _argove_ merchant, and Nicita Baeschoef
the lieutenant, traveling west on furlough, are stopping in this
friendly house, and many other guests are here. The hospitality of the
household is conducted on a scale of patriarchal magnificence.
Before our furs are fairly off, the host has called aloud for _obeid_.
One’s first formality is, as usual, to salute the ikons and the guests.
One’s second is to escape the scalding vodka, seventy proof, and then
begin with the _zakuska_ of ten cold dishes on the side table. There is
black caviar from the Volga, though the rapid diminution of the supply
has raised the price to ten roubles a pound. There is red caviar from
the Chickoya, cold mutton, cold sturgeon, sardines, ham, and sliced
sausages made at home. The latter must be abundantly and appreciatively
sampled, because they have been specially prepared under the direction
of the _souprouga_ herself. One stands before the _zakuska_ and dips
from dish to dish. Next, the guests take the square wooden stools and
draw up to the great table, where the plates are set for the real
dinner. Each one helps himself to the smoking soup, which is passed
in the tureen. As this is being ladled, a plate of round balls comes
by, the delicious _piroushki_, dough-shells filled with hashed meat,
always served with soup. We have entered upon a typical Siberian meal,
with the boiled soup-meat eaten as the second course, and madeira,
champagne, claret, and rum, indiscriminately offered. A perfect babel
of conversation goes on, and one is pressed to try this, try that, try
each and everything of the long menu, under the watchful eyes of the
kindly host and hostess.
At all times of the day the samovar is left simmering, ready for
any one of the multitudinous household to brew tea, and constantly
replenished _zakuska_ dishes deck the sideboard. Guests, attendants,
children, and friends come and go in the utmost freedom. Such is the
_Hazan’s_ life.
In another part of the building there stuffs to repletion an army of
dependents. Servants, artisans, drivers from the caravans which pass
up from China by the road below the house, a whole other below-stairs
world is here. Twenty caravan teamsters, _karetniki_ or _isvoschniki_
of the sledges and carts that fill the ample courtyard, huddle in the
back rooms for tea. An old bespectacled maker of string-net doilies,
who reads Alexander Pushkin’s poems, is working out a week’s board in
the room where the chickens are kept. The housewife does not disdain,
either, to find a place for the traveling _sapojnik_, who will put
leather reinforcements on the felt boots which have been worn
through at the heel. It is a large easy way of living, this of the man
who holds a leading place in the border city.
[Illustration: A CHICKOYA GIRL]
[Illustration: TROITZKOSAVSK STUDENT]
A mixture of crudeness and culture, of luxury and hardship, of Orient
and Occident, runs through the quaint fabric of frontier society, with
its medley of races and types. Fine avenues flanked by stuccoed houses
pierce the main city. Back of them lie the log houses of the plainer
citizens, while the outskirts are occupied by the felt huts of the
Buriats and Mongols. Students in uniform elbow Cossacks of the Guard,
and maidens from the seminary brush the Mongol wood-choppers.
“Téatre?” suggests one evening the twenty-year-old son of your host.
Of course the invitation is accepted. At eight o’clock you put on your
felt boots, and tramp down past dark-shuttered log houses and the
silent white church into the field, where stands a barn-like building
placarded with the programme. The young guide secures seats at the
ticket-counter of rough lumber. Seventy-five kopecks they are, each.
With them are handed out eight numbered slips of red paper. Then
together you break a way to the front rows, through the crowd of burly
Cossacks of the garrison, bearskin-capped students, citizens with shiny
black boots, and here and there a husky stolid-faced Buriat. Keeping
hat and coat on, as does every one else, we find seats on the rough
benches wheresoever we like or can; for nothing is reserved save the
elevated perch of the musicians, where a four-piece orchestra drones
out a monotonous Russian march. What a fire-trap! is the first thought.
To each of the posts that sustain the rafters is fastened a lamp
shedding an uncertain light on the hangings of bright-red cotton cloth,
in dangerous proximity to which, utterly disregarding the “no smoking”
signs, stand the crowd of forty-kopeck admissions, rolling and smoking
perpetual _papirosi_.
As the impatient audience begins to pound and stamp, a bell rings, and
the curtain rises on two comic characters busily engaged in packing for
a hurried departure from their lodging. The stage has become a room,
with red-cotton-covered walls and bright green curtains. A merchant
comes with a bill for comestibles six months due. He is quieted with
extravagant tales of forthcoming change for a hundred-thousand-rouble
note. The landlady enters, and the shoemaker’s apprentice with a pair
of mended boots. Both are likewise cajoled and bullied away. The Jewish
money-lender is more difficult, but at length, to the manifest delight
of the audience, he, too, is staved off, and the pair draw the vivid
green curtains and go out through a window for parts unknown, amid much
glee and applause.
We now go out to the “buffet” and contribute to the dangers of
conflagration by smoking an offered cigarette. We also add to the
theatre’s income by buying a glass of hot _chai_ for ten kopecks.
Something special is in the air for the next act. The audience is
buzzing and moving in eager expectancy. We return to our seats. The
curtain rises upon a double row of two-_pud_ (sixty-four-pound)
weights, such as are used at the bazaar to sell frozen beef. Amid a
thunder of stampings on the plank floor one of the escaping debtors
of the last act, dressed in tights, comes out from behind the green
curtains, and lifts one of these above his head. Then he poises one
with each hand. Finally a wooden harness is adjusted to his body, and
sixteen weights (or about half a ton), are heaped upon him by the
jack-booted Buriat stage-attendant on one side, and the defrauded
merchant of the first play on the other. It is the most unspectacular
performance possible, this athletic test, but it takes the place of a
football match in Siberia. The applause is ferociously appreciative.
More _chai_ and cigarettes, and we come back to hear a very pretty
girl, dressed in the peasant’s costume of Little Russia, head a chorus,
and to see a boy in red blouse and boots dance the wild dervish whirl
which the peasants of tradition are supposed to execute. The boy is
in the midst of his performance when there is a tumult among the
forty-kopeckers under the musicians’ eyrie. The latter, being human,
try to watch what is going on below and play jig-music at the same
time, and sharps and flats fly wide of the mark till the sounds become
frightful. Everybody jumps up on his bench to see a peasant having a
turn with a Buriat, and further trouble brewing with a Cossack who has
got upset in the mêlée. There is a chaos of tossing hats and brandished
fists, and the two armed soldiers who are on guard as policemen press
in, with gruff shouts to make them way. The tumult finally goes out the
door and into the street, and we turn back to the poor dancer still
trying to beat out his stunt.
The curtain rises next on the manager, who has been up to date
weight-lifter, escaping boarder, and part of the peasants’ chorus. He
is seated at a table, looking very ordinary in his street clothes.
Behind him is another table covered with an assortment of crockery,
mirrors, spoons, vases, pieces of cotton cloth, and a big striking
clock. He calls for a volunteer from the audience for some unknown
purpose, and a little rosy-cheeked uniformed Buriat schoolboy, who
has been peeking behind flapping curtain between the acts, responds.
The boy reaches into a box and pulls out a slip of paper. The manager
reads a number from it, “_Sto piatdeciet sem_.” An eager voice from the
rear answers “_Jes!_” The stage-attendant takes a glass tumbler from
the table and carries it solemnly to the man who has answered. Your
host nudges until you comprehend that you are to excavate the eight
theatre-slips, which you do, to find that two only are seat-tickets.
The rest are numbered billets, and you are liable at any moment to
receive a perfumery-bottle or a candlestick from the lottery which is
in progress. The scene now takes on an imminent personal interest
shared with the banked forty-kopeckers behind. A breathless strain
accompanies the drawing of the numbers. It mounts to a climax as the
big musical clock is approached. The fateful billet is at last drawn
in intense silence. Every eye is fixed on the reader. Not a Cossack
speaks, not a Mongol moves.