The Russian peasantry, their agrarian condition, social life and religion

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY

THEIR AGRARIAN CONDITION, SOCIAL
LIFE AND RELIGION

STEPNIAK

AUTHOR OF

"THE RUSSIAN STORM-CLOUD," "RUSSIA UNDER THE TSARS'
AND "UNDERGROUND RUSSIA"

NEIV EDITION

LONDON

GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LIMITED
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

5/7Y

1095028

NOTE

IN view of the recent social and industrial up-
heaval in Russia, and the widespread interest that
is being taken by the British and American public
in the progress of the Russian working classes
towards liberty, the publishers have thought it
desirable to issue this popular edition of the late
Mr. Stepniak's chief work, by arrangement with
its original publishers, Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein
& Co., Limited. Owing to the lamented death
of the author, it has been impossible to bring the
work quite down to date, but the Russia of to-day
remains the same as that of ten years ago.

Mr. Percy Addleshaw's epitaph on the author,
which appeared in The Academy shortly after his
death on 23rd December, 1895, mav be worth
permanent preservation here.

One man there was ignored a tyrant's will,

One resolute voice that thundered o'er the fight ;

The valiant heart, though dead, is living still,
Lo ! the sun rises while we wail ' Good-night ! '

G. R. & S., L.

CHAPTER I.

IN all European countries the agrarian question
is of great moment, but in none does it possess
the same interest and importance as in Russia.
Here the agricultural class constitutes eighty-two
per cent, of the entire population, equal for Euro-
pean Russia, exclusive of Finland and Poland,
to about sixty-three million souls. Ireland alone,
with seventy-three per cent, of her population
engaged in husbandry, approaches, at some
distance, this figure. Russia is, and must un-
doubtedly for many years remain, a peasant State
in the fullest acceptation of the term. With us,
therefore, the agrarian question is the national
question, and agrarian concerns are national con-
cerns, all others being dependent on and sub-
servient to them. The tillers of the soil — our
moujiks — must of necessity become the chief
figures in our social and political life. On the
moujik rests the financial, military, and political
power of the State, as well as its interior cohesion

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

and prosperity. The inclinations, ideals, and
aspirations of the moujiks will also play the
principal part in the remoulding of Russia's future.
For all interested in politics — statesmen and ad-
ministrators, writers and scholars — the moujik
must be the prime object of study, observation,
and investigation, as well as of practical manipu-
lation.

For the same reasons the Russian moujik has
always attracted the attention of observant
travellers who have desired to make known to
English-speaking readers the agrarian conditions
of this strange country, ol which so mucn is said
and so little known. There are few among
educated foreigners who have not heard of
the self-governing, semi-republican mir and the
somewhat communistic Russian system of land
tenure, with its periodical equalizations and divi-
sions. Much less attention has been given by the
European public to the modern phases of Russian
agrarian life, albeit this side of the question is
perhaps the most interesting and instructive.

The Emancipation Act of February iQth, 1861,
enfranchising and settling the economical con-
ditions of one-half of our rural population, the
former serfs of the nobility, followed in 1866 by

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 5

a second Act, settling the condition of the other
half, the former State peasants, were by far the
most extensive experiments in the way of agrarian
legislation the world has yet seen. The peculi-
arities of our traditional system of land tenure,
sanctioned to a great extent by the Emancipation
Act, imparted to this experiment an additional
interest.

That these experiments have not proved a
success no competent person can now deny.
Emancipation has utterly failed to realize the
ardent expectations of its advocates and pro-
moters. The great benefit of the measure was
purely moral. It has failed to improve the
material condition of the former serfs, who on the
whole are worse off than they were before the
Emancipation. The bulk of our peasantry is in
a condition not far removed from actual starva-
tion,— a fact which can neither be denied nor
concealed even by the official Press.

The frightful and continually increasing misery
of the toiling millions of our country is the most
terrible count in the indictment against the
Russian Government, and the paramount cause
and justification of the rebellion against it. It
would be a gross injustice to affirm that the

FHE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Government has directly ruined or purposely
injured the peasantry. Why should it act with
such foolish and wanton wickedness ? We can
well understand that a despotic Government,
caring only for its own selfish interests, should
object to the commonalty being educated. But it
is to the Government's own material advantage
to have well-to-do tax-payers rather than the
beggarly ones it has now. I admit willingly
that the central Government quite sincerely in-
tended to benefit the peasants, not only morally,
but economically, by the agrarian arrangement
of 1861. Still more so by that of 1866, which
is better than its predecessor in every respect ;
the Government in the latter case not having
been hampered by a desire to conform to the
wishes of the nobility.

Leaving out of the question the immaterial
point of intentions, I am ready to go the length
of acknowledging that it would be incorrect to
maintain that to the Government's unintentional
blunders should be ascribed the ruin which has
overtaken the peasants. The new agrarian ar-
rangement is very unsatisfactory, and the system
of taxation is simply monstrous. I shall presently
show how far both these elements contributed

1HE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 7

towards reducing the peasants to their present
condition. But still it was not the Government's
direct doing. There is one consideration which
clearly proves this. Since the Emancipation the
yield from the direct taxes imposed on the pea-
sants has increased. But until 1879 their burdens
had increased twelve per cent. only. Since that
time they have remained stationary, and of late
years there is even a slight decrease in the direct
taxes — very slight, yet still a decrease. As to
the impoverishment of the masses, measured by
the reduced consumption of food and the increase
in the rate of mortality, it is frightful and intense,
and shows no sign of abatement whatever. This
is proof to demonstration that there must be at
work another corrosive influence more inexorable
and fatal and less under control even than the
actions of the uncontrollable bureaucracy.

This influence lies in the new economical system,
quite opposed to the traditions and ideals of the
Russian peasantry, and which has been forced on
them by the Act of Emancipation. In these few
pages I purpose to present a brief, yet as far
as possible complete, account of the results of
the Russian agrarian experiment, derived from
the numerous and painstaking reports on the

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

subject in which modern Russian literature is so
rich.

But what constitutes the basis of the traditional
economic conceptions of our agricultural classes ?
The communal system of land tenure, the reader
may suggest, is its most original and striking
feature. On this, however, I shall not dwell.
First, because it was affected but slightly by the
Emancipation Act of 1861, which gave each
village commune the option either of breaking
up their land into private allotments and distribut-
ing it among independent families, or keeping
it as common property. Secondly, because the
communal land tenure, though accepted by
seventy-three per cent, of our peasantry, is only
exceptional among the Ruthenians, who form the
remainder of our rural population. The evil
inflicted by the Emancipation Act is of a much
wider reach and greater importance ; it arises not
from the way in which occupying owners divide
their properties among themselves, but from the
fact that they are fast being divorced from the
soil which they till.

The Russian popular conceptions of land tenure,
though they may seem somewhat heterodox to
a Western lawyer or modern economist, are ex-

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. g

actly the same as those which in past times pre-
vailed among all European nations before they
happened to fall victims to somebody's conquest.
Russian peasants hold that land, being an article
of universal need, made by nobody, ought not
to become property in the usual sense of the
word. It naturally belongs to, or, more exactly,
it should remain in the undisturbed possession of,
those by whom, for the time being, it is culti-
vated. If the husbandman discontinues the culti-
vation of his holding he has no more right over
it than the fisher over the sea where he has
fished, or the shepherd over the meadow where
he has once pastured his flock.

This does not, however, imply any question
as to the right of the worker over the product
of his labour. In Russia a peasant who has
improved and brought under tillage new land
always obtains from the mir a right of undis-
turbed possession for a number of years, varying
in its maximum, in divers provinces, from twelve
to forty years, but strictly conforming in each
case to the amount of labour which had been
bestowed on it by the peasant and his family.
During this period the occupier possesses the full
right of alienating his holding by gift or sale.

io THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

But when the husbandman is supposed to have
been fully remunerated for his work, all personal
prescriptive right ceases.

These notions cannot be called exclusively
Russian. They are deeply rooted throughout
the Slavonic world, save among the few tribes
who have been long subjected to Western influ-
ences and overdrilled by the feudal regime. The
Turkish domination proved in this respect much
more tolerant. The customs which prevail
among the Balkan slavs are almost identical
with those commonly accepted in Russia. Here,
according to Bohishitch, the people do not recog-
nize a right of property in virgin land. When
cultivated, it becomes the rightful property of its
occupier, and remains his so long as he continues
to improve it with the work of his own hands.
A tenant who has cultivated for ten years without
interruption another man's land becomes ipso
facto its legitimate proprietor and ceases to pay
rent, on the ground that he has bought up, by
his ten years' payments, the claims which the
former landlord might have acquired. In Bul-
garia, according to the same authority, the
principle is pushed still further. Here simple
wage labourers acquire the right of ownership

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 11

over the land on which they have been employed
without interruption for the ten years' period, so
that farmers, in order to avoid being expropri-
ated, change their labourers at least once before
the expiration of every ten years.

In Russia, until its close alliance with Western
countries in Peter the Great's time, the popular
notions as to land tenure were common to all
classes, the Government included. " There is
no country," says Prince Wassiltchikoff, in con-
cluding his careful study of the history of our
agrarian legislation, " in which the idea of pro-
perty in land was so vague and unsteady as it
was until very recently with us, not only in the
minds of the peasants, but also of the representa-
tives and heads of the State. The right of use,
of possession, of the occupation of land has, on
the contrary, been very clearly and firmly under-
stood and determined from time immemorial.
The very word ' property,' as applied to land,
hardly existed in ancient Russia. No equivalent
to this neologism is to be found in old archives,
charters, or patents. On the other hand, we
meet at every step with rights acquired by use
and occupation. The land is recognized as being
the natural possession of the husbandman, the

12 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

fisher, or the hunter, of him who ' sits upon it.' '
In the living language of peasants of modern
times, there is no term which expresses the idea
of property over the land in the usual sense of
the word. The expression " our land " in the
mouth of a peasant includes indiscriminately the
whole land he occupies for the time being, the
land which is his private property (under recent
legislation), the land held in common by the
village (which is, therefore, only in the temporary
possession of each household), and also the land
rented by the village from neighbouring landlords.
Here we see once more the fact of working
the land identified with rights of ownership.

When serfdom was introduced, and one half of
the arable land, with the twenty-three millions of
human beings who lived thereon, gradually be-
came the property of the nobility, the newly
enslaved peasants found less difficulty in realizing
the fact of their slavery than in understanding
the law which allotted the land to those by whom
it was not tilled. " We are yours," they said to
their masters, " but the land is ours." " My
vashi, zemlia nasha" — this stereotyped, hundred
times quoted phrase, vividly sums up the Russian
peasant's conception of serfdom.

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 13

When, after so many years of expectation, dis-
appointment, and delusive hopes, the longed-for
day of emancipation came for the down-trodden
serfs, the idea of the impending enfranchisement
assumed in the rural mind only one and the same
shape through all the empire — that when once
restored to freedom they would not be despoiled
of that which they had possessed as slaves — their
land. The universal expectation, as proved by
the universal disappointment, was that the freed
peasants would have all the land which they had
previously tilled. As to the nobles, their former
masters, the Czar would keep them, they thought,
henceforward "on salary, as he kept his gene-
rals." This was the ingenuous and naive expres-
sion of a very clear and practical idea — that of
the State buying out the landlords by means of
a vast financial operation. This was precisely
the measure advocated by Tchernyshevszy and
the Sovremennik party as the best and most
convenient solution of the Russian agrarian
problem.

The Government, as might well be expected,
was loth to adopt a course which seemed so
hazardous and new. Fortunately for itself, it
did not follow the opposite course, which would

14 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

have been the signal for a tremendous popular
rising — the enfranchisement of the peasants with-
out any land at all, as suggested by the reaction-
ary anti-abolitionist party. The freed peasants
were endowed with small parcels of land, carved
out of the estates of their masters, who retained,
however, the greater part of their properties.
The idea of the Government was to keep up the
system of great landlords, while creating around
them a class of resident owners.

This may have seemed a fair compromise, but
in reality it was not so. In the preamble of the
Emancipation Act the intention of the Govern-
ment was clearly defined. " To provide the
peasants," it ran, "with means to satisfy their
needs, and enable them to meet their obligations to
the State (payment of taxes), the peasants will re-
ceive in permanent possession allotments of arable
land and other appendages, as shall be deter-
mined by the Act." Hence, a small proprietor
according to the Government's own definition, is a
husbandman having a piece of land on which he
can live, however poorly, and pay his taxes — a
definition which economists will readily accept.
A peasant in this position is, indeed, a regular
"small proprietor," or resident owner. If, how-

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 15

ever, a man possess a patch of land of a few square
yards, on which he can grow a bushel of potatoes,
he is a "proprietor" all the same, but only from
a juridical point of view. In the eyes of an
economist he is a pure proletarian, amenable to
the economical laws regulating the conditions
of this and not the other class.

Now to which of these two categories do the
enfranchised Russian peasants belong ? Certainly
not to that of small proprietors, in the economical
sense. Neither are they pure proletarians. They
partake of both characters, in what proportion
we shall see further on. Let it here suffice to
say that the land was so parsimoniously appor-
tioned that the enfranchised peasants were utterly
unable to provide themselves with the first
necessaries of life. With few exceptions, the
bulk of our peasantry are compelled to look to
wage labour, mostly agricultural, on their former
masters' estates and elsewhere, as an essential,
and often the chief, source of their livelihood.

Thus, the Act of Emancipation did not, as its
promoters intended, create side by side small
and large landowners who could live and labour
and thrive independently, without obstructing and
damaging each other's work. The peasants were

16 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

not independent of the landlords. The landlords
were not independent of the peasants. There
existed in Russia at the time of the Emancipation
no agrarian proletariat whatever. The landlords
could nowhere find regular wage labourers by
whom they might replace their enfranchised serfs.
The cultivation of the landlords' vast estates
had either to be entirely dropped or their serfs
compelled to till them for hire.

This was the new principle on which Russian
rural economy had thenceforward to be based.
It was decidedly opposed to our national and
inveterate traditions, as I have just shown. It
was borrowed from Western countries. I do
not say that it was not better than serfdom. It
certainly was better. Neither do I affirm that
those who introduced it had the slightest sus-
picion of the havoc which in one generation it
was destined to produce. I am simply stating
a sad but undeniable fact. In social and political
life, as well as in the domain of art and fiction,
imitations seem always to bear the same original
sin : while reproducing with great fidelity the
drawbacks, imitators ignore and forget the merits
of their exemplars. Thus the Capitalist order
came to us without any of the free elements of

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 17

polity which were its outcome in the countries
of its birth. All the advantages in the impending
struggle were therefore on one side. The masses
were left with no means of defence, and the
Government threw the enormous weight of its
material and political power into the scale of
wealth and against labour. The victory of tb*
protected few over the helpless many was thence-
forth assured. It was also complete and fright-
fully rapid.

In the following chapters I propose to describe
the ways and means whereby this victory has
been gained and the consequences which it has
entailed. As yet Russia is an enormous, albeit
a comparatively simple, economical organism.
Through the puzzling and disorderly complication
of private economical operations we shall discover
a striking unity of cause. It is a huge economical
mechanism, combined upon one leading principle
and having one consistent end. I shall begin by
describing its central organs, those which impart
movement and life to the whole, — the banking
and credit system, circulation of money, and the
rest.

CHAPTER II.

FOR obtaining full control of the resources of
the country, Russian capitalists made use of two
seemingly innocent means — the railways and
credit. The construction of the railways was
undertaken in the first instance by the Govern-
ment itself. Very soon, however, the business
was transferred to private companies, which the
State supplied with capital, since at that time
no private enterprise could raise such enormous
sums as were involved in the construction of the
railways. Up to January 1883, 13,500 miles of
permanent way had been laid in Russia proper,
and the total amount of shares issued by the
various companies was 2,210,000,000 roubles
(about ,£22,000,000 sterling). Of this sum the
Government supplied directly fifty-four per cent.
— i.e., more than half — the money being raised
by several loans, chiefly foreign, the interest of
which (four, four and a half, and five per cent.)
is, of course, debited to the railway companies in

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 19

their accounts with the State. In order to enable
the companies to raise the remaining forty-six
per cent, the Government guaranteed a minimum
revenue, and undertook to make good out of the
public funds any deficit that might arise. Nor
is this all ; in cases of emergency the Government
still continues to make supplementary grants to
these companies, which have already been so
generously subsidized from the national exchequer.

With the public finances always in an unsatis-
factory condition, this lavishness must needs be
a grievous burden on the budget. In 1869 the
national debt amounted to 1,907*5 millions of
roubles, of which only 10*6 per cent, fell to the
share of the railways. In January 1883 the national
debt had increased to 3,267 millions of roubles, of
which fully 28*3 per cent, had been contracted for
the construction of railways. Thus the railway
debt increased in this period absolutely fivefold, and
at three times the rate of the national debt itself.

These outlays, it is true, figure in the budget
as debts owing by the railway companies to the
State — temporary loans which in due time will be
repaid to the exchequer. But this is a mere
fiction. The indebtedness of the railways to the
State is continually increasing in each category

20 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

under which the advances are made — viz., direct
subsidies, guarantees, and interest on obligations.
In 1877 the deficit in the annual payment due
from the railways to the State amounted to 450*5
millions of roubles, while those of all the other
debtors of the State (the peasants included) totaled
up to only 154*7 millions, the railway companies
thus engrossing seventy-four per cent, of the famous
" arrears " (nedoimki] which are the plague of our
finances. In the following year the railway debts
had increased to seventy-seven per cent, of the
total arrears, and rose subsequently to eighty per
cent. In 1884 the total amount of railway debts
was stated to be 886,000,000 roubles. In reality,
however, it was more, because the Ministry
passed a resolution to strike out of the list forty
millions as " perfectly hopeless." Thus the total
of railway debts in 1884 was about one and a-half
times as much as the entire revenue of the State
(Russian Almanac, 1886, p. 192).

It might appear from this that the railways are
the most disastrous of the many ruinous Russian
State enterprises, and that the companies are
running the country towards the verge of bank-
ruptcy. In reality, however, it is not so. The
prospects of the railways are as bright as anything

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 21

can be in Russia, The railways are, on the whole,
very prosperous. They are extending rapidly,
and the profits of the companies are increasing
both absolutely and as compared with former
years. In the period from 1870 to 1877 each
mile earned in gross receipts on an average four
teen per cent, more than in the preceding period.
The expenses having in the same time augmented
considerably, the net increase is not so great,
being three per cent, per mile. In the following
five years the increase of the gross receipts
was ten per cent, for each mile. The dividends
received by the shareholders in 1870 amounted
to 32*5 millions of roubles ; in 1877 they were
717 millions, an increase of 2*5. Nevertheless,
the indebtedness of the railways to the State
shows for the same period an increase of one
hundred and fifty per cent.

This seems contradictory and rather puzzling.
The explanation of the riddle is, however, very
simple. The various railway lines are not equally
profitable, and the Government, while leaving the
extra profits of the best lines to their respective
shareholders, has to make up the deficiency of
the remainder.

It comes practically to this : — The State, which

22 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

has supplied the railway companies either directly
or indirectly with all their funds, surrenders the
profits of the enterprise to individual capitalists,
taking for itself only the losses. In other words,
the peasants (for as they contribute eighty-three
per cent, of the whole budget they are the real
paymasters) are paying a group of individual
capitalists a tribute amounting from 1878 to 1882
to an average of forty-six millions of roubles a year.

Let us now ascertain what are the normal use
and functions of this network of railways so dearly
bought by the peasants. The railways transport
freight and passengers, and statistics show that in
Russia both are chiefly of rural origin.

The passengers first. We have to observe
before anything else that passengers of the third
class make eighty-three per cent, of the whole
and pay sixty-seven per cent, of all the receipts
for fares. Thus even here, as everywhere else,
the peasant is the main prop of the business.
Why do our peasants travel so much ? Not, of
course, for pleasure or for health, but in search of
work. The traffic returns are very significant as
to the extent to which the receipts are derived
from the agricultural classes. During the winter
months the passenger traffic is at its lowest ebb.

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 23

In March, when field labour begins in the vast
southern region of the empire, we observe, on the
other hand, a sudden increase of 19*5 per cent.
In April, when field labour extends to the central
zones, there is a still greater increase — twenty-four
per cent, over the previous month. In the fol-
lowing months the increase continues, though less
rapidly ; the workers are at their posts busy with
their work. In August the number of passengers
attains its maximum ; the workers have done,
and return after the harvest to their homes, in a
body. In September the passenger traffic drops
suddenly to 33*74 per cent., and goes on de-
creasing until the following March.

The passenger traffic, in fact, corresponds with
the cycle of agricultural work. It is represented
by a single wave, having its greatest amplitude
in the autumn and its lowest in the winter. This
is an indirect but striking confirmation of Mr.
Tchaslavsky's calculations that even in the out-
door employment of our peasantry the agricultural
branch has an overwhelming preponderance over
the industrial.

The fluctuations in the passenger traffic show
that they are the natural corollary of the periodical
migrations of the tillers of the soil. The month

24 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

of August, when the workers are returning whole-
sale to their penates, leaving behind them the
produce they have harvested, presents, as we
have seen, the greatest amplitude of the migratory
wave. The same month gives the lowest returns
for heavy freights carried at low speeds. Time is
required for the collection of the produce by the
hands which forward it to its destination. But
in September the heavy traffic returns show a rise
of 19*46 per cent, and the rise continues in
October. But in November there is a sudden
drop of 20*5 per cent. What does it mean ?
The hard winter has frozen the rivers, thus
hindering the carriage of corn and other agricul-
tural products to the railway stations by water,
the usual method, the transport by horses and
oxen and carriages being too expensive. During
the winter months there is little shipping of
produce. But in March, when the rivers of the
southern provinces are reopened to navigation,
traffic increases 14*57 Per cent- I*1 May, when
the navigation is open throughout Russia, the
increase is 40*27 per cent., the same high rate
being maintained in June. The pressure is then
over, heavy traffic diminishes, and the diminution
goes on until the following September. Goods

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 25

traffic, in fact, like the passenger traffic, corre-
sponds with the cycle of the agricultural year,
with this difference — that while the shipping of
merchandise, owing to climatic conditions, is
divided into two pulsations, the movement of
passengers has but one.

Now let us consider the other part of the
mechanism — first, the all-powerful agent which
sets in motion all this vast machinery — money.
Ordinary banks were first introduced into Russia
in 1864. Before that time the " Bank of the
State " — the official bank of the Empire — was
practically the sole institution of the sort in Russia.
In 1864 its capital amounted to fifteen millions of
roubles, with 2627 millions of private deposits.
Of this sum forty-two millions only were used
for commercial purposes by way of advances on
mercantile paper. In 1877 the capital of all the
banks amounted to 167-8 millions, the deposits
to 707-5 millions of roubles. In these thirteen
years banking capital was increased more than
eleven-fold, and the deposits more than three-
fold (3^). At the same time the method of
employing banking capital underwent a thorough
change. In 1864 only fifteen per cent, of the
capital was, as we have seen, employed in dis-

26 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

counts. In 1877 almost the whole — ninety-six
per cent. — was used in this way. Loans and
discounts for business purposes show a still more
rapid increase. From 237 millions in 1864 the
bills under discount rose to five hundred millions
of roubles, more than twenty-one times as much.
With the enormous increase in banking capital the
rapidity of its circulation has moreover doubled.
In 1863 the entire deposits were turned over
about twice in a twelvemonth (1*85). Thirteen
years later they were turned over nearly five
times in the same period.

The increase of money power has been
enormous, the progress of commerce almost febrile
in its intensity. Now, what are its objects and
character ? Banking statistics give a peremptory
answer. Its chief object is the manipulation of
raw agricultural produce.

It must be observed, by way of explanation,
that, notwithstanding the great development of
banking facilities, the vast majority of commer-
cial transactions are settled with ready money.
According to the accounts of the Bank of the
State, of all the bills discounted by the Bank and
its branches only fourteen per cent, are not liqui-
dated where they are drawn. The ready money

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 27

thus obtained is used for the payment for grain
and other produce.

Let us examine how this transfer of money
varies during the year. The circulation of money
is at its lowest ebb twice a year. Its active period
begins about the end of harvest time, in July ;
but very slowly at first, the rise being only i -o6
per cent. In August it makes a sudden leap
of 1 9*31 per cent. In September the increase is
still greater — 38-03 per cent. — and it remains at
the same figure during October. November is
marked by a decrease of 46*44 per cent., and at
this level it remains until February. Then in the
spring it begins to rise once more, showing in
May a total incease of 47-8 per cent. Thus the
double pulsation of money exactly corresponds
with the fluctuations of railway traffic receipts,
which, as we have seen, are at their highest
in September and May. In the centre of our
financial system, St. Petersburg, the streaming
out of money somewhat precedes the influx of
corn. The money which leaves St. Petersburg
accumulates for a short time in the provincial
banks, whence it flows to the various local
corn markets, where the produce is stored in
September and in May.

28 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

The two waves which represent the yearly
pulsation of money — the autumn wave and the
spring wave — though quite similar as to their
exterior form, differ greatly as to their object
and significance.

The produce sold in the spring is that of the
previous year, which, owing to the freezing of the
rivers, could not be moved sooner. The money
remitted from the centres to the provinces during
the spring season is used solely for speculative
purposes. The grain passes from one buyer to
another, and capitalists now begin to struggle
among themselves.

The September circulation of money is of quite
a different nature. It signifies that the capitalists
are coming into direct contact with the producers.
Now not only the corn stores but the granaries
of the millions of peasants are filled with as much
grain as they are allowed by the fates to possess.
The smallest village becomes during this season
a little corn market. The quantity of potential
bread which the farmer sells or keeps for his own
consumption is not yet settled, his need of money
contending with his desire for food. The greater
the amount of money thrown on the market the
greater will be the victory of the capitalist over

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 29

the producer. The capitalists, therefore, strain
every nerve to have the best of the battle. The
cash reserves of the banks — State as well as
private — are heavily drawn upon. Private de-
posits are also utilized for the same purpose.
The September deposits sink to 0*35 per cent,
of their yearly average. All the disposable
capital of the Empire finds its way into the hands
of the corn merchants, whose agents traverse the
country far and wide, doing their utmost to obtain
from the peasants as much of their yearly harvest,
and leave them as little, as they can, because it is
on the success of these operations that depends
their profit for the year.

Finally, in this critical moment of the struggle
between the purses of the merchants and the
stomachs of the peasants, the State intervenes
in favour of capital by making a new issue of
paper money.

It must be remembered that in Russia, "money,"
so far as interior markets are concerned, means
exclusively paper money. Silver and copper
coin is used for small change only. Commercial
transactions are carried on by " credit roubles,"
which are nominally convertible into gold and
silver, but in reality are not convertible at all,

30 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

but only saleable at their effective value, which
fluctuates between sixty and sixty-five per cent.
of their nominal value.

The abuse of this privilege of issuing paper
money is one of the many causes of the miserable
condition of our finances. But in the regular
course of affairs this potent means of influencing
the market is altogether subservient to the in-
terests of the capitalists.

Paper money is subject during the year to a
double process — the periodical issues and with-
drawals, apart from the mere substitution of new
for worn notes. The regular issues (omitting
exceptional cases) begin at the end of summer,
" to reinforce the branches," precisely when the
money begins to stream rapidly from St. Peters-
burg to the provinces. The issues are increased
as the demand for money increases on the corn
market. In July it is twenty-one per cent, of the
whole yearly issue, in August nine per cent. ; in
September, when the demand reaches fever heat,
56*54 per cent. — that is to say, more than one-half
of the whole issue for the remainder of the year.
And in the three months of the autumn market
season the Exchequer issues eighty-six per cent,
of the paper money of the year, whereby is caused

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 31

a depreciation of the credit rouble, which in this
season can be obtained at its lowest price both
in the world's money markets and in all Russian
financial centres. But the cost of the operation
is borne by the moujiks. The wave of deprecia-
tion of the paper rouble does not reach the green
fields of Russia, the villages and hamlets where
the bargain is struck. Here the enormous mass
of paper money advanced by the State and the
banks to the traders keeps all its buying power,
and takes from the producers the corresponding
quantity of their produce.

The peasants receive the money. The autumn
is the only time of the year when they have the
pleasure of holding in their hands the yellow,
green, and blue painted strips of paper called
money. But they do not keep it long — just long
enough to dirty it. They return it faithfully in
the form of taxes to the State, in order that it
may next year repeat the same operation with
the same results. Paper money returns to the
Exchequer, which can then proceed to withdraw
it from circulation. This operation is effected
chiefly during the winter season, the old paper
money being burnt in a furnace in the courtyard
of the " Bank of the State," to the great consterna-

32 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

tion and excitement of the St. Petersburg roughs,
who always gather round to stare at such a
strange and incomprehensible spectacle.

This brief and dry sketch shows clearly that
the whole economical life of this colossal Empire
— railways, banks, finances — so far as interior
policy goes, is concerned with the manipulation of
the agricultural produce, which, ready in August,
is sold in September, and carried by the railways
in the autumn and the following spring.

It remains only to indicate the end and result
of this comprehensive operation. Whither is
all this grain conveyed ? To the great foreign
markets, in order to extract from them as much
gold as they can be made to yield. The interior
exchange has no interest for us, since produce
and money alike remain in the country.

The export of Russian corn since the Eman-
cipation has increased with wonderful rapidity. In
1860-4 we exported nine million quarters. In the
following five years the export increased to ten
millions, then to twenty-one millions, and finally,
1875-79, reached its highest point — an average
of thirty-three millions. The following five years,
1880-85, exhibit a sudden stoppage to this rapid
progress. The export is maintained at the same

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 33

high standard of thirty-three millions a year without
any further increase. We shall presently see the
real significance of this ominous hitch. Still on
the whole things seem to be very satisfactory.
In a score of years the value of our corn exports
increased sevenfold, and became the leading article
of our foreign trade, the proportion being sixty-
two per cent., as compared with thirty-three per
cent, in previous years. In the three triennial
periods from 1870 to 1879, the taxes were in-
creased— first 6-24 per cent., then 3'89, and finally
3*69 per cent. It shows that the State, on its
part, took care to profit by this apparent prosperity.
As for the capitalists, they are simply rolling in
wealth. In the same period their profits, as
shown by the sums deposited by them in the
banks, increased thirty-three per cent., then thirty-
eight per cent., and finally fifty per cent. It looks
splendid !

The fact which puts this capitalist splendour in
quite another light is that, according to official
statistics, our agriculture for the last fifteen years
has been in a state of almost utter stagnation.
There is a wide difference, of course, between the
harvests of two consecutive years, the minimum
(1876) being 156^ millions of quarters, the maxi-

34 THE R VSSIAN PEASANTRY.

mum 23 if millions, or forty-two per cent. more.
But if we divide the period 1871-1882 into three
periods, the fluctuations are seen to be insignificant
(1*80 per cent.) — in point of fact, nil. As, more-
over, in this time the quantity of corn sown
increased 2*1 per cent., it results that the
productiveness of agriculture even slightly dimi-
nished (0*3 per cent.). The growth of our foreign
corn trade has, therefore, been forced to the
detriment of the people. It has lessened the
quantity of bread left for their maintenance. The
population in the meantime has continually
increased. In the absence of additional supplies
of bread the new-comers must take what they
require from the share of their elders. By com-
paring the increase of the population (six per
cent.) with the increase of the corn export, we
find that the cereal food supply available for our
peasant families has fallen off on an average
fourteen per cent. In other words, a Russian
peasant consumes one-seventh less bread than he
did fifteen years ago. Nor is this all. His food,
besides being diminished in quantity, has dete-
riorated in quality. The best wheat (seventy-
eight per cent, of the entire crop) is naturally
taken for export. Practically this means the

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 35

whole, as something must needs be left for seed
and the consumption of the well-to-do. The
wheat flour once used by the peasants on holidays
and for their children's food they can no longer
afford. And now rye, their daily bread, and the
oats which they require for their cattle, are also
becoming large articles of export.

It has fared no better with the live stock,
which form the peasants' working power and
occasional food. From 1864 to 1883 the export
of cattle increased thirteen-fold, with the result
that cattle have greatly diminished in number in
all the provinces of Russia Proper, to the great
injury both of the health of the people and the
productiveness of the soil.

Thus the whole economical arrangement is
doing its part admirably. All the parts of the
colossal machine work into one another like the
toothed wheels in clock-work. Its mainspring,
which imparts life and activity to the whole con-
cern, is money, or, to be exact, the inconvertible
paper money issued by the State and put into cir-
culation by the banks. Paper money has been
issued by the Government in such enormous
quantities that the credit rouble, always falling,
lost between 1864 and 1882 twenty-nine per cent.

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

of its buying power in the world's markets. Yet
in the interior markets, especially in the villages,
it has hardly depreciated at all. We are without
statistics as to the prices at which corn is bought
from the peasants in their own villages by the
local or travelling agents of capitalists. It is
doubtful whether we shall for a long time have
such statistics, owing to the character of the
transactions in question, concerning which I shall
say something further on. The only figures we
possess refer to the prices in the markets whither
the corn is conveyed after being bought from the
peasants.

Now, these prices, which are obviously higher
than those ruling in the smaller markets, show a
rise, it is true, but only about a third of what it
should be as compared with the depreciation of
the credit rouble, which points to the conclusion
that in the interior of Russia the average value of
corn has undergone little, if any, change. This is
the crux of the question. The enormous issues
of paper money have so augmented the buying
power of capitalists as to give them more and
more the control of agricultural produce, a result
to which the action of the banks has largely con-
tributed, chiefly by stimulating the circulation

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 37

of capital. In the fourteen years' period during
which the State increased the mass of paper
money thirty-one per cent., the turnover of the
banks increased by nearly seventy per cent.
They have thus done twice as much for capital-
ists as the Exchequer has done, for by halving
the time during which each rouble formerly lay
dormant they have doubled its effective power.
As the use of cheques and clearing offices is
rapidly extending, this process is likely to be
carried still further. The banks, moreover, now
absorb much of the floating capital of the country,
the greater part of which is placed at the disposal
of corn factors exactly at the time when they are
doing their utmost to take from the impoverished
peasant all the produce he can be induced to sell.
The railway network, which, from nine
hundred and ninety-three miles at the time of
Emancipation extended in the following twenty-
two years to 16,155 miles (for the whole Empire),
and is still extending at the rate of about eight
hundred miles each year, serves to widen and
extend this activity over new districts and pro-
vinces, the chief work of the railways being, as
we have seen, the transport of agricultural pro-
ducts and agricultural producers.

3$ THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

All is well combined, and the whole acts like a
colossal hydraulic press, which squeezes from the
peasants an ever-increasing part of their daily
bread. In about fifteen years it has squeezed
from them just one-seventh. From manuals of
political economy we learn that when the supply
of corn is diminished to the extent of a sixth of
its ordinary amount the value of it rises to famine
rates. Russian peasants are, however, unable to
obtain higher prices ; for the want of merchandize
on the one hand, and possession of money on the
other, are the sole factors which influence the
markets. The fact remains, that, as the peasants
have been compelled to sacrifice a seventh of
their food supply, starvation has become their
permanent condition. The economic machine
has done wonders.

But how can such a miracle have come to pass ?
How can the peasants have been induced to give
up voluntarily (because there is no compulsion on
the market) that which is absolutely necessary
for their own sustenance ? We can well under-
stand that a considerable rise in prices might
tempt the farmers of the most prosperous country
to part with a greater quantity of their produce
than strict prudence would justify. But this has

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 39

not been the case in Russia. The spoliation of
our peasants has been effected, not by an artifi-
cial rise in prices, but simply by an increased
amount of money. Every fresh issue of roubles
withdraws a corresponding quantity of bread, just
as a heavy body thrown into the water displaces
some of the liquid. There must, therefore, be
something peculiar in Russia which diminishes the
usually strong natural clinging of the cultivator
to the fruit of his industry, to a surprising extent.
Russian peasants, who work with relentless
assiduity and pluck, on the State and capitalist
treadmill, would seem to have no hold whatever
over the increase which the earth yields to their
labour and presumably for their advantage.

To account for such a strange state of things
we must leave the higher spheres of political
economy and administrative mechanism and
observe what may be described as the molecular
action of the system. We must descend to a
Russian village, such as it has become since the
Emancipation, and look into the normal economy
of the peasant households of which it is composed.

CHAPTER III,

RUSSIAN peasants, as I have shown, cannot be
regarded as ordinary resident owners, and herein
lies the gist of our agrarian question. Let us
consider more closely the how and the why of
this important fact.

Serfdom, as established in Russia by law and
custom, took, in the regions where it struck root,
a form peculiar to itself. The landlords allotted
to each peasant household a certain quantity of
land, and allowed them to give to its cultivation,
for their own benefit, a certain proportion of their
time. For the rest of their time they laboured on
their master's land for his sole benefit, receiving
therefor neither food nor pay. Few were the
cases — when, for instance, the master was a
manufacturer — where the serfs worked for him
throughout the week and were boarded and
lodged at his expense.

The allotment system of land prevailed every-

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 4'

where, and the Government attempted to regulate
the economical relations between serf and master
by a law prescribing three days as the normal
proportion of gratuitous work in the landlord's
fields and three days in the peasant's. This
law was, however, never strictly enforced. Rapa-
cious masters could make their peasants work as
long as they thought fit. Many kept the serfs
four or five, some it was rumoured six days, out
of the seven, leaving only Sunday for the culti-
vation of their own holdings. It was evident that
this state of things could not last. The econo-
mical law, that the producer's remuneration cannot
fall below the minimum necessary for keeping him
alive and enabling him to rear children, operates
quickly and peremptorily in every slave-owning
community. The master cannot change his
slaves for an equal number of fresh ones after
having worn them out. The improvident seig-
neur is inevitably ruined, and stern necessity im-
posed the three days' rule as being the only one
which sufficed to keep the human cattle in good
health and strength. It prevailed generally
throughout the country. The peasants gave up
to their masters three days a week, or, to speak
more exactly, one half of their labour (men,

42 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

women, and horses), and kept the remainder
for themselves.

The Emancipation Committees, in making
forecasts of the proposed Act, took for their basis
the existing apportionment of the peasant's time.
Since there was every reason to suppose that the
former masters had given to their serfs rather less
land than was strictly necessary, it was at first
agreed, and very wisely, that the enfranchised
peasants should not be allotted smaller allotments
than they had previously possessed. In carrying
out the Emancipation Act this principle was,
however, forgotten, altered, and mutilated. The
enfranchised peasants received much less than
they had previously enjoyed. I will not dwell on
the legal tricks by which this purpose was effected ;
the clause of the maximum allowing the spolia-
tion of the serfs of the smaller nobility ; nor the
paragraphs about "orphan shares," which per-
mitted the creation of 700,000 downright pro-
letarians. Neither shall I do more than allude to
the blunders in the Emancipation Act concerning
the pasture and forest arrangements, nor to the
abuses in the settlement of agrarian matters since
made by the executive, which in 1863 became
decidedly reactionary, always favouring the land-

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 43

lords to the prejudice of their former serfs. All
these details can have little interest for foreigners.
Suffice it to say that the three or four dessiatines
which the former serfs have on an average
received, are quite inadequate to provide them
with bread. In the central provinces they only
have bread for two hundred days in a year, often
only for one hundred and eighty, or even one
hundred. The agrarian arrangement, made for
the benefit of the former State peasants in 1 866,
was far more satisfactory than that made in con-
nexion with the enfranchisement of the former
serfs of the nobility. The State peasants were
provided with twice as much land as the former
serfs : a quantity sufficient on the whole to provide
them with bread all the year round, supposing
they had no other outgoings.

But, besides feeding themselves and their
families, the peasants have to make another out-
lay as peremptory as eating, while possessing
none of the marvellous elasticity which dis-
tinguishes human wants in general and those of
Russian peasants in particular. They must pay
the taxes, which, as the reader will presently
learn, are rather heavy ! In 1871, ten years after
the Emancipation, when the first alarming symp-

44 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

toms of impoverishment among the peasants
appeared, the Government appointed an Imperial
Commission to inquire into the condition of the
peasantry. These inquiries brought to light the
fact that in the thirty-seven provinces of European
Russia the class of former State peasants pay in
taxes of every description no less than 92*75 per
cent, of the average net produce of their land.
As for the former serfs, being, as we have said,
much worse off than their brethren, the State
peasants, they have to pay a total taxation
amounting on an average to 198-25 per cent, of
the net produce of their land.

Thus one half of our peasantry, the former
State peasants, have to give up to the State
almost all that the land granted to them is capable
of producing. The other moiety — the former
serfs — pay away almost twice as much as the
yield of their holdings. These are average figures,
and, of course, not applicable to many particular
cases. There are State peasants paying only
Irom thirty to forty per cent., but there are also
others who pay about one hundred and fifty per
cent. (Smolensk, Kostroma, Vladimir provinces.)
There are former serfs paying from seventy-six to
one hundred per cent. (Petersburg province) ; but

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 45

there are others who pay two hundred and fifty
per cent. (Tver, Vladimir provinces), or three
hundred per cent. (Kazan province), and more.
In the province of Novgorod, according to the
official statement, there is a class of peasants who
pay five hundred and sixty-five per cent (Janson,
" Essay on Allotment," pp. 35, 36, and following).
This will seem not merely exorbitant, but alto-
gether absurd. How, it may be asked, can a
farmer pay in taxes the whole amount or even
twice or thrice as much as he gets from his
land and yet live ?

The solution of the enigma lies in the smallness
of the allotments. Being insufficient to furnish
the peasants and their families with bread, they
do not engross the whole of their working time.
With our climate and our system of husbandry a
peasant family, averaging seven to eight members,
can cultivate fifty-four acres. Our peasants have
only about a fourth of this, and the smaller their
holdings the heavier relatively they are taxed.
Former serfs, who spend on their diminutive
allotments a fourth of their working time, and
State peasants, who spend on theirs a little more
than a third of their time, therefore pay to the
State a half and a third respectively, because as

46 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

touching the remainder of their work they are
hardly taxed at all. These are heavy burdens.
What would an English taxpayer say if he had to
give up a third or a half of his income, however
small it might be ? But the thing is comprehen-
sible and clear.

It is equally clear that our peasants, though
" landed proprietors " in the eyes of the law, would
not be so considered by an economist. Neither,
on the other hand, could he classify them as agri-
cultural proletarians. They stand between the two.
On the average, our peasants of both classes can
get from their land only about one-third of their
livelihood, taxes included, hence the remaining
two-thirds must be obtained by out-door work,
and they are constrained to seek occupation as
day labourers, home artisans, metayers, and so
forth. They stand, in fact, one-third above the
downright agrarian proletarian and two-thirds
below the ordinary small resident owner.

We shall, however, fail to realize the condition
of our agricultural classes if we do not take
into account the fluctuations of harvests. Were
harvests always the same, our peasants would
have to devote to their land exactly the same
amount of time every year, and every year there

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 47

would be the same supply of labour in the labour
market. The position would then be clear and
constant for both parties — employers and em-
ployed. But it is not so in reality. Far from
being constant, the harvest in Russia shows the
widest fluctuations, depending, as it needs must
in a country where agriculture is so primitive
and backward, altogether on the caprices of nature
and climate. The normal yield of grain is very
low — only 2*9 for one (seed excluded) is the
average for the whole Empire. But it varies
greatly from year to year. In the fertile south-
eastern and southern provinces, where agriculture
is technically the worst, the fluctuations are the
greatest. In the Middle Volga provinces in an
average bad year the land yields three for one ;
in an average good year twelve for one ; in a
middling, six for one ; in an exceptionally good
year twenty to twenty-five for one. For Southern
Russia in general the variations of the harvest are
eighty-seven per cent In the central provinces,
where the system of culture is technically some-
what better, the difference between the yearly
harvests is not so great, reaching, however,
forty-nine, forty-seven, and twenty-one per
cent. (Janson).

48 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

This state of things materially affects the
mutual relations of landlords and peasants, and
prevents any approach to regularity in the annual
supply of labour. In an average year labourers
in plenty can be obtained at average rates. In
a bad year the peasants are in sore trouble and
distress. They run after work in all directions
and take it at starvation wages. In an excep-
tionally good year the position is reversed. The
bulk of the peasants have plenty of work in
harvesting their own crops, which they will never
abandon for ordinary wages. Working on their
own land they earn at the same time wages, rent,
and the profit on capital. A day's labour for him-
self brings the peasant in as much as the wages of
three days' work. So it conies to pass that there
is a dearth of labour at the very moment when
the landlords are most in need of hands to gather
an abundant harvest. Under these circumstances
it is not surprising that wages vary enormously.
In bad years the wages in the Middle Volga
provinces are from seventy to a hundred per cent,
lower than in good years. In years of exceptional
abundance wages are so high in the south-eastern
provinces, the Russian granary, that it does not
pay to reap the harvest unless 4,000 Ibs. of wheatt

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 49

or thirteen to one, are expected from a dessiatine.
The field which does not promise thus much
is left unharvested, and the ripe grain perishes
under the burning sun.

Letting alone exceptional cases, it may be said
that every change in the harvest reacts in a con-
trary sense, but in much greater proportion, on
the prices paid for agricultural work. The widely
differing condition of the peasants, consequent on
the varying size of their holdings, causes every
change in the harvest to throw in or out of the
labour market a varying quantity of hands.

Nothing can be more absurd or disastrous for
both parties and for the country in general than
such a system as this. Professor Enghelhart,
writing from the Smolensk province, truly
observes that very high wages would be better
for the landlords than these perpetual variations.
A fixed rent for land and a fixed interest on
capital invested in agriculture should once for
all be established. As things are, every year
takes its chance, and all is based on speculation.
M. Giliaransky, writing about the opposite
: extremity of the Empire, the region of the
i enormous cereal plantations of the Middle Volga,
! comes to the same conclusion, and vividly ex-

4

5o THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

presses it by saying that in his country pro-
fessional usurers and landlords holding 150,000
acres are the only members of the community
whose solvency is not open to doubt. The
smaller fry know not whether in another year
they will be utterly ruined or rolling in wealth.

There could be only one issue from this in-
describable economical chaos. The landlords,
certainly the stronger of the two contending
parties, being unable to secure a regular supply
of low-priced labour by means of economic
compulsion, have had to resort to a more direct
and brutal form of constraint.

This they have found in the new system of
bondage, or, to use the Russian word, the kabala,
which has become an important and continually
increasing influence in Russian rural life, and is
in effect a simple revival, in a somewhat milder
form, of the ancient serfdom.

CHAPTER IV.

THE word kabala is very ancient. In old annals
and juridical records it was used to designate
the document by which a destitute but free
man sold himself to some rich man as his
slave. Later on it was used colloquially to
signify the state of slavery. One would have
thought that after emancipation there should have
been no further occasion for this ill-omened word,
that it should have become obsolete. But it was
not allowed to die, and is now used by Russian
peasants to denote that dependency of the
labourer on his employer which arises from the
former's irretrievable indebtedness and impe-
cuniosity.

That a modern Russian peasant is always liable
to fall deeply into debt is unfortunately too easily
demonstrated. The ordinary peasant household,
taking peasants of every class, has to give up in
taxes of all descriptions forty-five per cent of
its whole income (industrial work included), or in

52 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

other terms about three days' work in a week.
This is rather heavy, of course. The old demo-
crat Ogareff, co-editor with Herzen of the
London Kolokol (Bell), was quite right in stig-
matizing the agrarian arrangement of 1861 as
a new sort of serfdom, in which the State was
substituted for the former seigneurs. Having
only three days' in the week, or, what is the same,
one-half of the family's working force for their
own behoof, it follows that in order to make both
ends meet — to live and pay taxes — the peasants
must contrive never to be out of work.

Now all the employments open to them are
very uncertain. The rent of land, hired from
neighbouring lords for short terms, generally
a year, is very heavy, owing to the fierce com-
petition of the whole body of peasants. In the
thickly-populated black earth region, the rent has
risen since the Emancipation three and four fol
in twenty years. On the character of the harves
depends entirely the peasants' chance of profit —
if there be any. Agricultural work for wages is still
more precarious. If in the far distant provinces,
whither the peasants rush in swarms from the
thickly-populated centres, the crops are good, the
local people keep to their own fields, wages run

e

•
•d.

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 53

high, the new-comers find employment readily,
and return to their homes with money in their
pockets. If, however, the harvest be bad they
earn nothing, and have to make their way back
barefoot and penniless, begging, in Christ's name,
a crust of bread to keep themselves alive.

The indoor industries, in which the majority
of Great Russian (Central) peasants are mostly
engaged, are less remunerative than formerly,
owing to the competition of the great manufac-
tories on the one hand, and the gangrene of
usury, to which all these home-working artisans
are more and more exposed, on the other.

Work in manufactories is naturally the most
certain. But it requires a special training, and
occupies less than a million hands, one half of
whom are ordinary town proletarians. Thus
the economical position of our peasants is most
strained and precarious. Notwithstanding their
surprising industry and courage, their future is
never sure. A deficit in their yearly budget is
always possible, and indeed of frequent occurrence,
leaving them no alternative save insolvency at
the hands of the Government, or, a diminished
consumption of food. These expedients, however,
cannot be adopted indefinitely. The patience of

54 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

tax-collectors is very short, and when exhausted
is quickly followed by severe floggings and the
forced sale of the insolvent's belongings.

The power of self-restraint is very great with
our peasants, and the elasticity of their stomachs
is simply surprising. But even these qualities
have their limits. Both children and adults, when
the last crust of bread is consumed, will ask for
more, and the cattle, which with Russian peasants
is an object of even greater solicitude than their chil-
dren, cannot be left to starve. The peasant makes
up his mind and looks around for some "benefactor"
from whom he can borrow something.

Here we must pause. We are now at the
turning-point of our social life, and the new
figure which has to play the most prominent
part therein is stepping on to the stage — we
mean the "benefactor" or usurer. He is of two
strongly marked types. The more numerous, and
by far the more important of the class, socially
and politically, are those who have themselves
sprung from the ranks of the peasants. These
are koulaks, or wzV-eaters, as our people call them.
They make a class apart — the aristocracy, or
rather the plutocracy, of our villages. Every
village commune has always three or four regular

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 55

koulaks, as also some half-dozen smaller fry of the
same kidney. The koulaks are peasants who, by
good luck or individual ability, have saved money
and raised themselves above the common herd.
This done, the way to further advancement is
easy and rapid. They want neither skill nor
industry, only promptitude to turn to their profit
the needs, the sorrows, the sufferings, and the
misfortunes of others.

The great advantage the koulaks possess over
their numerous competitors in the plundering of
the peasants, lies in the fact that they are members,
generally very influential members, of the village
commune. This often enables them to use for
their private ends the great political power which
the self-governing mir exercises over each indi-
vidual member. The distinctive characteristics
of this class are very unpleasant. It is the hard,
unflinching cruelty of a thoroughly uneducated
man who has made his way from poverty to
wealth, and has come to consider money-making,
by whatever means, as the only pursuit to which
a rational being should devote himself. Koulaks,
as a rule, are by no means devoid of natural
intelligence and practical good sense, and may
be considered as fair samples of that rapacious

$6 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

and plundering stage of economic development
which occupies a place analogous to that of the
middle ages in political history.

The regular landlords, remnants of the old
nobility, or new men, who have bought their land
and stepped into their shoes, also play a very
conspicuous part in the operations of rural credit,
though, being total strangers in the communes,
they are naturally less directly responsible for the
interior decomposition of our village life. Acting
as a rule through their managers and agents, who
have no personal interests to serve, these large
proprietors are in reality the least exacting of
the gang. Yet when in difficulty the peasant will
always try the koulaks first, who are peasants
like himself. He dreads the formalities, the
documents, the legal tricks and cavils which the
big people have in store for a "benighted " man.

In the extensive operations of rural credit,
consisting chiefly of small advances, but amount-
ing in the aggregate to many millions of roubles
yearly, the koulaks and rural usurers generally gain
a far greater profit than do the landlords proper.

The petty capitalists who settle in the villages
for business purposes, small shopkeepers, wine
dealers, merchants, who always combine their

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 57

special trade with more or less extensive land
culture, occupy an intermediary position between
that of the koulaks and the big landlords. They
are outsiders like the latter, having by our laws
no share in the administration of the commune,
which is exclusively controlled by born or
naturalized peasants. But by their education (or
better, absence of education) and general tenor
of life they are as near to the peasants as the
koulaks, and by no means inferior to the latter in
knowledge of local conditions, or in pluck, rough-
ness, and cruelty.

Such are the classes who control rural credit.
Whatever be its individual source in each par-
ticular case, it is based on the same principle
and produces the same social results. I shall
therefore analyze its forms and influence
cumulatively.

Regular credit — i.e., advance of money to be
returned in money, with the addition of interest
— is very rare in our villages, unless it refers to
trifling sums advanced by rural pawnbrokers.
Peasants receive too little ready money to be able
to depend on it for the discharge of their obliga-
tions. Loans are generally made only to whole
villages or to peasants' associations under the

58 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

guarantee and responsibility of the mir. As to
the interest required, and the general character of
these loans, they remind us rather of Shylock's
bond than of ordinary business transactions.

In January 1880, a large village of the Samara
province, Soloturn, borrowed from a merchant
of the name of Jaroff the sum of ,£600, interest
being paid in advance, and bought from Jaroff's
stock 1 5,000 puds of hay for their starving cattle.
Repayment was to be made on October ist, 1880,
under the condition that ^5 should be added for
every day's delay. When the time of payment
arrived the peasants brought ^200 on account of
their debt to Jaroff, who made not the slightest
objection to waiting for the balance. For eleven
months thereafter he kept quiet. But in Septem-
ber 1 88 1 he brought an action against the village
for ^1,500. The magistrate before whom the
case was tried, being evidently in a frame of
mind not unlike that of Antonio's judges, decided
against the plaintiff. But Jaroff was not much
discouraged thereby. Confident in his right, he
appealed to a higher court and won his case.
And as this proceeding caused further delay the
claim, by accumulation of interest, had doubled, and
Jaroff got judgment for .£3,000 in satisfaction

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 59

of a debt of ^600, of which ^"200 had been
repaid! (Annals, No. 272.)

In the Novousen district of the same province
the peasants of the village of Shendorf, being in
great distress during the winter of 1880, borrowed
from a clergyman named K £700, under-
taking to pay him in eight months ,£1,050 (i.e.,
fifty per cent, for eight months), on condition
that in case of default they should give Mr.

K , pending repayment, 3,500 dessiatines

of their arable land at an annual rent of ten
copecks per dessiatine. As the peasants were

unable to fulfil their engagement, Mr. K

received the 3,500 dessiatines for 350 roubles,
and forthwith re-let the land to the peasants them-
selves at the normal rent, which in this province is
about five roubles (los.) per dessiatine. Thus he
obtained ,£1,715 on a capital of ,£700, or interest
at the rate of about 2^o°/o a year. (Idem.)

I have quoted these examples because they
possess much of what the French call couleur
locale, and are eminently suggestive of the spirit
and flavour of the financial transactions practised
in our villages. They give also an idea of the
great distress which prevails among peasants
during the winter months, because nobody, unless

60 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

on the verge of starvation, would enter into such
engagements as those I have described.

The winter is, indeed, the hardest season of
the year for our peasantry. The spring, too, has
its difficulties, but by then field work is beginning
on the neighbouring landlords' estates, and the
peasants have a chance of earning a trifle. In
the winter their resources are at their lowest ebb,
for in September the corn was sold to pay the
autumn taxes, whilst others fall due in the spring.
If the household be not well off it generally has
some arrears to make up, which are " flogged
out " in winter. In a word, and to use their own
expression, calamities beset the poor peasants
from every quarter, "like snow on their heads,"
and they cannot avoid turning towards their
" benefactors," and consenting to the most Shy-
lockian conditions.

Regular money credit, even at the heaviest
interest, is, as I have said, exceptional. Individual
peasants never obtain it from a rich man, because
he will not trust them without good security.
Credit is mostly given on the security of the
peasants' work, their hands being their most
valuable possession. It assumes the form of
payment in anticipation for work to be done in

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 61

the next season — a sort of hypothecation of work,
to be performed several months thereafter.

Agreements of this kind are always legalised
at the communal offices, and often copied in their
register books ; it is very easy therefore to obtain
a fair idea of their character. Investigators of
various branches of our agrarian work have pre-
served for us these interesting documents.

I now have before me three such deeds — one
referring to the beetroot sugar plantations ot the
south-west ; a second to the rafting of wood and
timber down the rivers, an occupation in which
the peasants of the northern sylvan regions find
their chief livelihood ; and a third, which refers
to purely agricultural work. In two the terms
are almost identical, and even in the third the
difference is but slight. Mr. Tchervinsky says
that in his province there are special scribblers,
who, having learnt the wording of these documents
by heart, make their living by rewriting them
for each occasion, changing only the names. Mr.
Giliaransky transcribes the form of agreement for
agricultural work from a printed original. I will
give here a summary of the latter, as being the
most important and characteristic, and as affording
a fair idea of the others.

62 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

These agreements always begin by setting forth
in great detail the work to be done, and fixing
the number of dessiatines to be sown, ploughed,
or harvested. Then follow a series of paragraphs
intended to secure due observance of the conditions
on the part of the peasant : —

" I, the undersigned, agree to submit myself to all the
rules and customs in force on the estates of N. N. During
the period of work I will be perfectly obedient to N. N.'s
managers, and will not refuse to work at nights, not only
such work as I have undertaken to do, as set forth above,
but any other work that may be required of me. More-
over, I have no right to keep Sundays and holidays."

For securing good work the imposition of heavy
penalties is agreed to beforehand by the subscriber,
generally four or five times in excess of any
damage his negligence can occasion, thereby
affording a hundred pretexts for malversations,
and yet quite failing in preventing the work from
being on the whole very badly done.

A very important proviso remains to be noticed.
The agreement never omits to mention that it
retains its binding power for an indefinite number
of years. Thus, if the landlord should not require
his debtor to work in the immediately following
summer (as might happen were the harvest de-

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 6^

ficient, and labour cheap and easily obtainable)
he is free to call on him to liquidate his debt in
the following year, or even the year after, thus
securing for himself cheap labour at the time
when wages are likely to be at their maximum.

The concluding paragraph is to the same effect.
It states that should tJie debtor be unable or un-
willing to discharge his debt, or a part of it, in
work, and desire to discharge it in ready money,
he must pay a prescription amounting to four or
five times tJie original loan.

The reader will perceive that the peasants do
no violence to the exact etymological value of the
word in calling the winter agreement kabala, or
bondage.

As to the purely economical side of the question
— the rate of usury enforced under this system of
anticipated payment of wages — we have only to
compare the difference between the average wage
of the labourer hired in summer and that of the
unfortunates who are compelled to give them-
selves " in bondage " during the lean months of
winter.

Here I quote a few well authenticated state-
ments referring to the entire agricultural zone
of the Empire. According to Mr. Trirogoff, the

64 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY,

harvesting of one dessiatine in the province of
Saratoff costs on an average eight roubles if carried
by labourers engaged in the summer at market
rates, whilst the labourer engaged in the winter
receives three or four roubles for the same work.
It is no uncommon thing, he adds, to see labourers
of each class working side by side, the one for ten
the other for three and a half roubles per dessia-
tine. Mr. Giliaransky states that in the Samara
province the whole rotation of agricultural work for
a dessiatine of land costs fifteen to twenty roubles
at ordinary rates. But those labourers who are
engaged in the winter are on an average only paid
five roubles. In the Tarn boff province, according
to Mr. Ertel, free labourers receive from nine
to eleven roubles, while the " bondage " (winter
engaged) labourers are paid only from four to five.
In the Kieff province, on the beetroot plantations,
the free workers receive eight roubles and upwards
for fifteen days' work, the bondage labourers only
three. In the Kamenez-Podolsk province (south-
west) the daily wage of free labourers is forty-five
copecks in the spring and sixty copecks in
summer, while the bondage labourers are paid in
the same season fifteen and twenty copecks.
Thus in the Samara province the money-lenders

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 65

exact an interest equal to three hundred per
cent., in Saratoff two hundred per cent., in
Tamboff one hundred and eight, in Kieff one
hundred and sixty-six, in the Kamenez-Podolsk
two hundred per cent, on their capital, lent
for a period generally not exceeding nine
months.

This looks very ugly. But if the reader thinks
these are exceptional extortions, of which a few
greedy usurers alone are guilty, he is mistaken.
There is no lack of exceptions, but they present
an even blacker picture. In November and
December 1881 the judge of the Valuj district
(Voronej Province) had to give judgment upon
forty-five suits against as many groups of peasants
for failure to fulfil their engagement with their
landlord J. The facts were that during the
winter months of 1881 the latter advanced to the
peasants of several surrounding villages a quantity
of straw, wherewith to feed their cattle. The
peasants had promised, as usual, to harvest for
him a fixed number of dessiatines, but many — in
all forty-five groups — had failed to observe the
conditions agreed upon. To give an idea of
these conditions I may mention that one of the
groups, in a moment of sore distress, had engaged

5

66 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

to harvest, in return for twelve cubic yards of
straw advanced to them, no less than thirty-five
dessiatines of corn. They harvested twenty-one
dessiatines, which represented at current prices
one hundred and five roubles, but being unable
to harvest the remaining fourteen dessiatines
they had to pay one hundred and thirty roubles
more. Thus two hundred and thirty-five roubles
were demanded for about five roubles' worth of
straw. I leave the reader to calculate how much
per cent, such usury denotes.

In the Oufa Province there are two great
villages called Usman and Karmaly, with about
1,200 inhabitants. The peasants hold in common
3,890 dessiatines of land. In 1880 they borrowed
from a clerk named Rvanzeff 1,019 roubles
wherewith to pay their taxes. For this loan they
agreed to let to him all their 3,890 dessiatines
of land for three years at two roubles a dessiatine,
whereas the minimum rent in this district is six
to seven roubles. In 1881 the peasants, now left
without land, rented their own holdings from
Rvanzeff at seven to eight roubles a dessiatine,
thus giving this gentleman a profit of 20,895
roubles, or an interest of 2,000 per cent, for the
first year, and three times that amount if all the

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 67

three years are taken together, on a capital of
1,019 roubles. (Golos, 1882, No. 113.)

Here is another instance, which is not confined
to a few groups of individual peasants. In 1879,
in the Province of Oufa, the whole harvest was
bought from the Bashkir peasants for an advance
of twenty kopecks per poud (4olb.) made during
the winter. The next autumn it was resold to
the same Bashkirs for one rouble twenty kopecks
(120 kopecks) per poud, making an interest of
500 per cent, for about eight months.

This is really exceptional, though many pages
could be filled with similar examples, which each
year brings to light It is what is called in
Russia " usury." The transactions as to which
I have calculated the approximate interest in
various provinces are not considered usurious at
all. They are only " private winter engagements,"
which are imposed every year on millions of
peasants in every region of the empire — in the
agricultural and in the industrial as well as in
the sylvan. Far from considering it as something
to be ashamed of, the money-lenders always pose
as the peasants' " benefactors," in that they have
consented to lend them money on such easy
terms.

68 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Whatever be the name we give to it, usury
always remains usury, and everywhere possesses
the attribute of gradually swallowing up all those
who have the misfortune to step within its bounds,
like a quaking bog. After discharging out of his
very modest and strained resources such exorbi-
tant claims as I have described (no matter what
form the usury takes), the peasant will, generally
speaking, be worse off the next autumn than
he was the year before. He will have greater
difficulty in defraying the taxes and in providing
for his own wants. Unless unusually good luck
befall him, he will be obliged during the winter
to apply once more, and probably for a larger
advance, to his " benefactor." Very often he will
have been unable to execute all the heavy obliga-
tions previously undertaken. Some arrears will
still remain to be added, with accumulated
interest, to his debt of work, a debt from which
he can never, except by the help of some windfall
or God-send, escape.

Only very large families, which are becoming
less common, are able to extricate themselves
from the usurer's net in which they have been
by dire misfortune entangled. When the liability
is divided amongst twelve or more adults they

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 69

may compensate for the absence of one or two
of their number " given in bondage " by increased
diligence on the part of those that remain. But
small families almost inevitably succumb. Mr.
Trirogoff tells us that the peasants themselves
are convinced that when a man has once been
caught by the rural usurer he must remain " in
bondage " to the end of his days. And in nine
cases out of ten this proves true.

Thus the new economical regime which has
struck root in Russia is not only extending but
acquiring a permanent force. "In the Saratoff
Province whole districts are in a state of bondage"
(Trirogoff). "In the Samara Province there are
many villages, small and great, which have the
bulk of their working strength pawned, or given
in bondage, to use the peasant's expression, for
many years to come, to sundry large corn
growers " (Giliaransky). In the Ousman district
alone (Tamboff Province), according to Mr. Ertel's
very moderate estimate, the winter engagements
amount to 240,000 roubles, equal to about 500,000
roubles a year at market value. There is no
Province, no district, in which the system does
not extensively obtain.

In some provinces it becomes from the first

70 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

a permanent bondage without the money-lender
having the trouble and expense of rebinding his
client every year, or of involving him in the net
of accumulated interest. One of the experts for
the Kherson Province made the following state-
ment before the official inquiry commission, as
registered in its official records : — "With us," he
said, "there exists another mode of harvesting,
extremely ruinous for the peasants. They receive
from some landlord a loan of ten roubles (£ i ), and
in return are under the obligation of harvesting,
in lieu of interest, one dessiatine of corn and two
dessiatines of hay, and of refunding the capital
sum in the autumn. If, however, the money is
not refunded, the same agreement holds good for
the next year, and so on. New loans are not
refused, but are made under the same conditions.
Thus the peasants gradually fall into a state of
bondage worse than was the old serfdom, for
they are generally unable to refund the capital,
and obliged to work from year to year quite
gratuitously."

In the Province of Kieff yet another form
of bondage obtains which approaches still more
nearly the form of the old serfdom. Here the
landlord advances eighteen roubles, for which

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 7*

sum he is entitled to receive in lieu of interest two
days' work per week, i.e., one hundred and four
days a year. The women have to do similar slave
work as interest for an advance of twelve roubles.
The advance of one-half of these sums entitles
the landlord to one day a week. If the peasant
misses a day he is mulcted in fifty kopecks (a
woman thirty-five kopecks) a day, the amount
being put to his debit. When these mulcts reach
the sum of nine roubles for a man and six for a
woman, another day a week is added by way
of interest to their debt. (Kieff Telegraph, 1875,
No. 52.)

At this point, however, exploitation of the
peasant's labours receives a self-acting check.
Credit on the hypothecation of future earnings
is limited by the amount of work which it is
physically possible for the debtor to perform. In
the fertile steppes of the south-western region, so
highly favoured by nature and the Emancipation
Act, which gave them the largest allotments, and
in isolated districts where the peasants are ex-
ceptionally well off, the struggle between landlords
and peasants has ended in the subjugation of the
latter in the way I have described, but has gone
no further. In all these places credit assumes

72 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

chiefly the form of the hypothecation of future
labour.

But in less favoured regions, and especially in
the densely populated central provinces of the
empire, other and more desperate and ruinous
forms of credit are being developed with alarming
rapidity. Potential property, labour, ceases to
be a sufficient guarantee for the money-lenders.
The impoverished peasants, driven to despair by
famine or by fear of a forced sale of their effects,
borrow money right and left, undertaking to give
the lenders three times more work than they
are physically able to perform. To avoid dis-
appointment and the troubles of litigation, the
usurers demand as security substantial property
— the very implements of agricultural work, the
cattle and the land. Both produce identical and
almost equally rapid results. Deprivation of
cattle and loss of land go on simultaneously.

The peasant's indispensable instruments of
labour, the cattle, are sold in enormous quantities.
The sales are made during the winter months and
in the spring, chiefly at the time when the taxes
and arrears are " flogged out." This accounts for
the curious fact that in the provincial towns a
pound of meat is sometimes cheaper than a pound

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 73

of bread. Exports of cattle have increased for
the same reason enormously ; the increase since
1864 is equal to 1,335 Per cent.

Statistics likewise disclose, in the thirteen
Provinces of Central Russia, a decrease of 17*6
per cent, in large cattle and a reduction of 27*8
per cent, in the quantity of harvested corn, not-
withstanding the increase (6*6 per cent.) of the
population since 1864 ; the inventory of horses
taken in 1882 for military purposes shows that
one fourth of the peasant households no longer
possess horses at all (Janson).

A peasant who has lost his cattle can no longer
be considered a tiller of the soil. His imprescrip-
tible right as the member of a village community
to a share in the land becomes purely nominal
and practically void. Yet, though he may give up
agricultural work in his allotment, and can no
longer in any way turn it to account, he still
remains liable for the taxes.

Very often the peasant's road to ruin is re-
versed ; the sale of his cattle not sufficing to meet
his engagements, he is obliged to part, bit by bit,
with his land. True, the laws in force do not
permit peasants to sell their allotments for which
the price of redemption — payment for which in

74 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

most cases extends over forty-nine years from
1861 — has not been provided. But the law in
this regard is evaded by the expedient of long
leases. The letting of land by peasants to capi-
talists of the upper classes — burghers, clergymen,
or nobles — is exceptional. It is done wholesale
by entire mirs, and generally for short periods.
Letting to koulaks, or peasant capitalists, is, on
the contrary, quite common and much in vogue.
It is done wholesale and retail both by groups
and by individual peasants. The law cannot
interfere with the mutual relations of members of
the same community. At the present time, the
new peasant bourgeoisie, the koulaks, legally have
got into their hands vast quantities of inalienable
communal land under the form of long leases,
which they will hold until the " next redistribu-
tion." The peasants, the nominal proprietors,
work on it meanwhile as agrarian proletarians.

There are no complete estimates as to the area
of land engrossed by this new rural aristocracy,
but isolated inquiries in the central Provinces,
where the process of social fermentation has been
the most marked, prove it to be very considerable.
Writing about one of the Tamboff districts, which
are rather favoured by the agrarian settlement—

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 75

the Ousman district, where the majority of the
population were formerly State peasants — Mr.
Ertel states that in an average and rather prosper-
ous district, which he selected for investigation,
25,258 peasants' households (one-third) pawned
some of their land every year. The total area of
land pawned to the koulaks was 8,419 dessiatines
a year in the mean.

Mr. Tereshkevitch, Chairman of the Statistical
Board of the Poltava Province, in a work to
which was awarded the great gold medal of
the St. Petersburg Geographical Society, shows
that in the Poltava Province, the land of the
former Cossacks, inalienable by law, is con-
centrated, to the extent of 24 to 32*6 per cent,
of the total area, in the hands of rich koulaks.
Here i6'5 to 29^8 per cent, of the population are
downright landless proletarians. Nearly one-half
(forty-three to forty-nine per cent.) have their
land curtailed, sometimes to one-fourth, one-fifth,
and one-sixteenth of a dessiatine ; so that, accord-
ing to the peasant's graphic expression, " the rain
falls from your own roof on to your neighbour's
land." The koulaks, however, who constitute
5 '4 per cent, of the population, have twenty
dessiatines (54 acres) and upwards per household,

76 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

and among them are many who hold 100 dessia-
tines (270 acres), sometimes 300 dessiatines (810
acres), of the richest black soil, per household.
(Report of the Geographical Society for 1885.)

Having no positive figures for the whole
empire, I shall not venture to estimate, even
approximately, how great a proportion of the
peasants' land the wzV-eaters, or koulaks, have
already devoured. But we can gauge the havoc
they have wrought in another way — by the
number of agricultural proletarians, landless and
homeless, that modern Russia possesses.

In the epoch of Emancipation Russia had no
agricultural proletariat whatever. It was expected
that our traditional system of land tenure, with
periodical redistributions, would preserve Russia
for ever from this drawback of old civilizations.
Some ten years later, however, it was discovered
that agrarian proletarianism had already come to
be a fact. In 1871, according to the calculations
of Prince Vasltchikoff, districts existed in Russia
where five, ten, and even fifteen per cent, of the
rural population had become downright prole-
tarians. " Since that time " (I am quoting the
words of so unimpeachable an authority as the
chairman of the St. Petersburg Congress of

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 77

Russian Farmers, held on the 4th March, 1886), —
" Since that time, the agrarian proletariat has
increased with alarming rapidity. From the
statistical investigations of the Moscow and other
zemstvos, we are able to affirm that the number
of proletarians has increased at least from fifteen
to twenty-five per cent. This shows that one-
fifth of the whole population of the empire (one-
third of the rural population of Russia Proper),
or about twenty millions of souls, are agrarian
proletarians. Thus the number of proletarians
we have at present is equal to the number of
serfs Russia possessed before the Emancipation.
And I will not venture to judge how far the life
of our modern agrarian proletarian is preferable
to that of the former serfs."

Further on in the same speech the causes of
this devastation and miserable condition of our
agriculture are pointed out : —

" Thriving estates are those where the pro-
prietors use ' bondage ' (kabala] labour — wzV-eaters
and usurious landlords (practising the winter
engagement system) — and perhaps that of peasants
with large families. For all the rest, agriculture
has become a risky and not very profitable
business. The ' bondage ' labour, which is

78 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

chiefly used by the landlords, is a labour of the
lowest quality, much inferior to that of the former
serfs ; while the ' bondage ' peasants themselves,
wasting an enormous quantity of their working
time on the landlords' estates, are unable to culti-
vate their own land even tolerably, and must
drop husbandry altogether."

CHAPTER V.

THE results of emancipation, a measure from
which so much was expected, must needs greatly
disappoint all who are in favour of peasant owner-
ship, especially if they have likewise put some
trust in the Russian communal system of land
tenure. But those who hold the opposite view
will probably conclude that the process of peasant
spoliation, though a painful process, and an
unavoidable evil, is yet in some sort an advan-
tage, since it may be the beginning of a new
development of agriculture which will eventually
put Russia on a level with Western countries and
force on it the same system of land tenure.

It is quite evident that Russia is marching in
this direction. If nothing happens to check or
hinder the process of interior disintegration in
our villages, in another generation we shall have
on one side an agricultural proletariat of sixty to

k seventy millions, and on the other a few thousand
landlords, mostly former koulaks and wz>-eaters,

8o THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

in possession of all the land. When starvation
has depleted the market of some ten or fifteen
millions of superfluous agricultural proletarians, the
landlords will doubtless introduce an improved
system of agriculture of the regular European
type, and the remainder of our rural population
will become common wage-labourers. Then, and
only then, will there begin true agricultural
progress in Russia. In the present transitory
stage, however, the landlord system is technically
as bad as it well can be. It is chiefly based on
bondage labour, which is cheaper than any other ;
cheaper than machinery, cheaper than that of
the worst paid common labourers, who must be
nourished after all at their master's expense, and
get something (from ,£4 to ^"5 a year) for taxes
and clothing. As to bondage labour, it can be
got for next to nothing after the first payment.
Then the work done merely represents the
exorbitant interest on the trifling sums advanced
years before, to which may have been added, out
of pity, a few sums equally trifling.

But the peasant, enslaved by usury, has repaid
his extortioners in another way — by the utter
negligence, slovenliness, and dirtiness of his
work. He is bound to labour on the landlord-

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 81

creditor's land, and ostensibly conforms to the
conditions of his bond. No power on earth,
however, can prevent his working as hastily and
as badly as he is able — from doing his " level
worst," as an American would say. No amount
of superintendence can compel diligence, unless,
indeed, the landlord has one superintendent for
every bondsman. These men cannot be terror-
ized and beaten into carefulness and industry
as were the former serfs. On the other hand,
neither is he in the least impressed, as the free
wage-labourer is, by dread of dismissal. He
has, in a word, no motive whatever to work well,
and every reason on earth to get rid of his
ungrateful task as quickly as may be. The work
supplied by the bondage system is of the worst
possible description. M. Gilaransky says : —

" Where the free peasants harvest five stacks,
the bondage people harvest only four or three
and a half. In the field you recognise at first
sight the work done by bondage people and by
free labourers. With the latter the freshly-mown
field presents a nice, even surface, showing no
trace of former vegetation, while the bondage
labourers always leave long strips of grass
unmown. In the fields of well-to-do peasants

6

82 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

you will find not a handful of spikes or straw, the
closely-cut stubble field extends even and uniform
like a hair-brush on every side. But the fields
of the big landlords, after the bondage people's
harvesting, are pictures of haste and dirt. Here
and there you see black spots as if swine had
been grubbing ; these are places where the
children, in helping their elders, have uprooted
the crops with their hands. Great clumps of
unreaped grain are left behind, and the whole
field, covered with scattered spikes and straw,
seems rather creased and trampled than mown."

With such methods as these no improvement
in husbandry can be thought of. Scientific
culture is impossible. The cereal planters under-
stand all this only too well, and, taking the
bondage work as it is, make splendid profits by
speculating on the enormous extension of tillage,
thus compensating by the extent of land culti-
vated for the very low technical quality of the
culture.

Such few estates as are in a satisfactory,
sometimes even a model state of cultivation, are
those where the proprieters have adopted the
heroic resolution of keeping an adequate number
of permanent labourers, and paying them fair

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 83

wages — in other words, of investing considerable
capital and getting for it small, though regular,
returns. Such capitalist heroism is, however,
necessarily exceptional. The great majority of
capitalists find it much more advantageous to
spend as little as possible on each acre, keeping
only a small staff of managers on permanent
wages, speculating on the extreme cheapness of
labour, and avoiding the costly luxury of scientific
agriculture.

The koulaks and aw/r-eaters, the new land
forestallers of peasant origin, are in a much better
position as touching bondage work than are
their fellow loanmongers of the upper crust.
These rural Crassuses very often wield the same
influence in their diminutive village republics,
as their protagonist, the famous Roman usurer,
wielded in Rome, and for the same reasons ; a
koulak is not to be trifled with, and a poor
peasant, his debtor, will think twice before
cheating him as he would cheat a landlord. He
well knows that the koulak will find a thousand
occasions for revenge. Moreover, the koulak
and all the members of his family work together
on the same fields as their bondsmen, keeping
constant watch over them.

84 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

On the whole, the koulaks and wzV-eaters, as
all observers agree, obtain by the bondage
system tolerably good work. Working for a
koulak exhausts the peasant's strength, while
work on a landlord's estate is little more than
a waste of time. Employing a much greater
proportion of bondage work relatively to their
capital than the regular landlords, and possessing
the above-mentioned advantages, the koulaks and
wzV-eaters grow in numbers, riches, and power
with startling rapidity. But being in so advan-
tageous a position, the koulaks have even less
inducement than the regular landlords to change
their tactics and waste money on any permanent
improvements. So long as there is a crowd of
people on whom they can impose their yoke so
cheaply and easily, their culture will continue to
be as loose and predatory as it has hitherto been ;
only, instead of exhausting the land, as the
regular landlords are doing, they are exhausting
the labourer.

Thus the concentration of land in the hands
of individual proprietors has imparted, as yet,
neither order nor progress to our agriculture.
The process of land concentration, if not stopped,
will, doubtless, achieve in time both these results,

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 85

but in another way — by starving out an adequate
part of our rural population. It may be added
that this charitable work is going on with the
greatest success. I will not go into details,
neither will I harrow the reader by sensational
pictures. I shall only quote figures, some statis-
tical, which speak for themselves.

The rate of mortality in the whole of Russia is
very high, fluctuating between 35-4 and 37^3 per
thousand. Taking thirty-six as the mean, we find
that in Russia, with its thin population and a climate
as healthy as that of Norway and Sweden, the
mortality is one hundred per cent, greater than in
the latter, and one hundred and twelve per cent,
greater than in the former of those countries. It is
sixty-four per cent, greater than in Great Britain ;
thirty-seven per cent, greater than in Germany ;
and thirty-nine per cent, greater than in France.

According to Dr. Fair, a mortality exceeding
seventeen per thousand is an abnormal mortality,'
due to some preventable cause. This standard
is reached in Norway, and approached very
nearly in Sweden, and in the rural districts
of England (where it is eighteen per thousand),
and even in several large centres of popu-
lation in the United States. In England, when-

86 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

ever the death-rate rises to twenty-three per
thousand a medical and sanitary inquiry of the
district is prescribed by law, this mortality being
considered due to some preventable cause. It
cannot be otherwise in Russia with a death-rate
of between 35-4 and 37*3. And it is not at all
difficult to discover that this preventable cause
lies in the misery of the unhappy country. The
Congress of the Society of Russian Surgeons
expressed exactly the same opinion at their last
annual meeting, held on the i8th of December,
1 885, under the presidency of M. S. P. Botkin,
body-surgeon to the Emperor. After ascertain-
ing the exact death-rate, they expressed the
opinion that the primary cause of this frightful
mortality is deficiency of food (bread). It is
thus obvious that the reduction of one-seventh
in the peasants' consumption of bread during the
last twenty years, as is shown by the computation
of corn exports and corn production, has not
come out of the people's superfluities, but is
literally wrung from their necessities.

The Congress of Russian Surgeons of
December 1885 brought to light some other very
suggestive facts. This high rate of mortality is
not uniform throughout the Empire ; it is much

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 87

greater in its central than in its peripheral
regions. The high birth-rate in Russia, due
to the very early marriages of our agricultural
population, atones in part for the devastation
produced by untimely deaths. Statistics show
an average yearly increase of 1*1 per cent, (or
about 1,200,000) in the number of the unfor-
tunate subjects of the Czar. But there is no
such increase in the central provinces, where the
population is more dense, and the ruin of the
masses proceeds with the greatest rapidity.

In the thirteen provinces — that is to say, the
whole of Central Russia — the mortality, always
on the increase, reached when the last census was
taken (1882) sixty -two per thousand per annum.
Nothing approaching this prevails in any other
part of Europe. It would be incredible were it
not officially attested. The birth-rate in these
provinces being forty-five (the normal rate for
the whole Empire), this is equal to a decrease of
seventeen per thousand per year. In the heart
of Russia the population is being starved out.

The medical report, moreover, notices that
the provinces where the mortality is greatest are
those where the land produces a full supply of
bread, The starving out of the peasants who till

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

it is, therefore, the work of " art," as I have just
described, and not of nature.

Another most suggestive fact which points to
the same conclusion is that Russia is the only
country in the world where the mortality over a
large area of open country is greater than that in
the towns. In all countries possessing statistical
records it is the reverse, the hygienic conditions
of life and work in the open air being all in
favour of the rural population. In England, for
instance, the mortality is 38-8 per cent, higher in
towns than in the country ; in France, twenty-
four per cent ; and in Sweden, thirty-seven per
cent. In Prussia the difference is less than in
any other part of Western Europe — 7'i per
cent. ; yet even there it is in favour of the
villages. In Russia there are fourteen provinces,
with a population as great as that of the Austrian
Empire, and an area three times as large, in which
the death-rate of the villages is higher than that
of the largest towns. In the villages of the pro-
vince of Moscow, the mortality is 33-1 higher
than in Moscow city ; in the province of St.
Petersburg the difference is 17*5 ; in Kazan and
Kieff, with more than 100,000 inhabitants each,
the mortality is less by twenty-seven and thirty

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 89

per cent, than in the villages of their respective
provinces (Professor Janson's Statistics, Vol. I.,
p. 264).

I hardly need to add that such a striking
anomaly can in nowise be put to the credit of
the exceptional perfection of the hygienic arrange-
ments of our big cities. The largest, the two
capitals included, are in this respect much more
nearly allied to Asiatic than to European towns.

Another startling fact is, that the official returns
relating to recruits for the period from 1874 to
1887, published in 1886 by the central Statistical
Board, show that the number of able-bodied
young men decreases every year with appalling
regularity. In 1874, when the law of universal
military service was for the first time put in
action, out of the total number of young people
tested by the recruiting commissioners seventy
and a half per cent, were accepted as able-
bodied. The next year showed even a some-
what higher rate — seventy-one and a half per
cent, of able-bodied. But since that date the
decrease has gone on uninterruptedly. It was
69-4 in 1876. Then 69, 68'8, 67-8, 677, 65-8,
59-1, and finally, in 1883, fifty-nine per cent. This
means a decrease of twelve and a half per cent, in

90 7 HE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

nine years in the number of able-bodied people
among the flower of the nation, that is, the youth
of twenty years of age, of whom eighty-five and a
quarter per cent, come from the peasantry.

These facts need no comment. They admit of
only one explanation ; hunger and poverty have
wrought fearful havoc among our rural popula-
tion. This is the last work of our present regime.
It is to this we have come after twenty-five years
of incessant " progress," and the worst of it all is,
that under the present regime the work of ruin
and devastation must go on uninterruptedly, fatally,
rather increasing in its rapidity than diminishing.

For what are the chief causes of peasant de-
gradation ? Usury on the one hand and taxes
on the other. The first of these causes, in the
material ills which it produces, is by far the more
powerful and fatal of the two. But the koulaks,
wzV-eaters, and usurers of all sorts would never
have been able to lay hold of and re-enslave the
recently enfranchised agrarian population with-
out the aid of the tax-gatherer and his satellities.
What is it that constrains the peasants to sell in
September corn which they know they will be in
desperate need of a few months later on ? The
imperious necessity of paying their taxes.

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 91

The ideal of each peasant's household is to eat
the bread from their own fields, providing for the
taxes by outdoor work or by some home industry.
But few are able to realize their ideal. The vast
majority, as I have already shown, sell a consider-
able proportion of their harvest in September,
only to buy it back in the winter or the spring,
always losing heavily thereby, because corn is
cheap in September and from thirty to fifty per
cent, dearer in the winter and spring. Never-
theless they commit each year this economical
absurdity, which they thoroughly understand.
They risk hunger, knowing well how hard it is
to make money in winter. They are aware that
in such cases they will have no other resource
than to " give themselves in bondage " to some
koulak, or landlord, and fully comprehend how
disastrous such a step will be. But a peasant
always counts on his luck. He thinks he can
scrape up a little money and thus escape usurers
altogether. And even when compelled to appeal
to their ruinous assistance, the peasant lulls his
fears to rest with the hope that some pitying fate
will at the last moment befriend him. In any
case, times moves slowly, and ruin is as yet far
off,

92 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

From the taxes there is no escape, and the
reckoning day comes quickly. The administra-
tion is very exacting as to arrears, for punctuality
in collecting taxes constitutes the tax-gatherer's
best claim for promotion and the approval
of his superiors. No excuse is admitted.
Even in times of famine payment of arrears is
enforced by the stanovois and ispravniks. When
there is neither corn nor cattle to seize in insolvent
villages the police sell houses and storehouses,
ploughs and harrows, by auction.

But such drastic measures as these can be
resorted to but once in each village ; the dis-
possessed peasants are turned into beggars, and
can thenceforth pay nothing more. Adminis-
trators who are wise prefer other means, which,
while of considerable efficacy, have no disastrous
economical consequences, and may, therefore,
be repeated every year and to any extent. This
is flogging. Insolvent peasants are flogged in a
body, in crowds and alone. To show how exten-
sively this forcible administrative method is used
in modern Russia, I may mention that during the
winter of 1885-6, a tax-inspector of Novgorod
province reported that in one district alone 1,500
peasants were condemned to be flogged for non-

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 93

payment of taxes. Of these, 550 had then been
flogged. The remainder were awaiting their
turn, and the charitable inspector interceded with
the Ministry to procure them a respite.

It is, indeed, open to doubt whether even on
the old slave-owners' estates there was ever so
extensive an application of the rod as there now
is in modern Russia, twenty-five years after the
Emancipation.

It will thus be seen that that old ingredient in
Russian life, the rod, still plays a very important
part in the lives of the peasants. It is at the
bottom of the whole system of spoliation, for the
tax-collector's rod and nothing else is driving
the peasantry under the wheels of the despoiler's
machine, which has for its working or peripheral
tools the koidaks, wzr-eaters, and usurious land-
lords.

In the foregoing pages I have described
the central or directing organs of the same
machine, with its complicated economical network
of banks, railways, paper money, and the rest.
I have shown, as the reader may remember, that
the mainspring of this colossal mechanism, and
the final instrument in the abstraction of corn
from the mouths of its producers, is the paper

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

money issued by the Government. Put in febrile
motion by the banks, and concentrated in the
hands of the corn merchants, this money over-
flows the country in September, and sweeps away
with irresistible power the peasants' provision of
food.

Thus both keys to the machine are held by
the Government. In both cases its action is
subservient to that of the capitalists, but in both
it works in their favour, giving them the necessary
power over the objects, or, let us say, the victims
of their manipulations — the peasants. While
lending to the capitalists and the higher-class
koulaks millions of paper money with one hand,
the Government with the other hand flogs the
peasants into submission to the rural agents and
representatives of these capitalists — the koulaks,
mir-eaters, and usurers of every description.

The terrible machine must and will do its
work. With the impoverishment of the masses,
the drastic measures for extorting taxes will
rather become intensified than subside. Having
to sustain itself more or less on a level with its
powerful Western neighbours, the Empire can
neither diminish its expenditure nor arrest the
continual increment of the public debt. On the

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 95

other hand, the more the koulaks and mir- eaters
succeed in their work of devastation the richer
they become, and the more are they able to
extend their operations. They never have any
difficulty in finding investments for their capital
in the villages ; they have no need to seek
candidates for loans. On the contrary, each
winter as the taxes fall due, all these village
usurers are besieged with suppliants who, implor-
ing their help, submit to every humiliation which
a self-satisfied and brutal upstart can inflict, if
haply they may obtain from him a loan at cent,
per cent.

There is no chance of the havoc being arrested.
Even at the present day one-third of our
formerly independent peasants are reduced to
the state of homeless, down-trodden beggarly
batraks, and in thirteen provinces the population
is literally being starved out at the rate of seven-
teen per thousand a year. If no change is
brought about, we may affirm that in another
fifteen years the rate ot this descensus Averni
will be doubled.

But, the reader may well ask, is there no
remedy for these heart-sickening horrors ? For
unless the Opposition can bring forth some

96 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

practical and acceptable proposals of reform,
some scheme for ameliorating the deep-rooted
evils here described, their exposition, though it
may deepen the shadows and intensify the sorrows
of this vale of tears, can serve no useful purpose.
The question, therefore, is whether any of the
parties forming the Opposition have brought
forward some acceptable plan capable of im-
mediate application for the solution of Russian
agrarian — which is equal to saying social —
difficulties.

Yes, there is such a solution — a solution which
has been pointed out not by one, but by every
section of the Opposition, by all the thinking
men of the country who have studied the ques-
tion, and, what is more important still, one which
is supported unanimously, the koulaks alone dis-
senting, and which enjoys the good wishes of
the whole of our agrarian class. Moreover, the
peasants' natural good sense has suggested the
very same solution of the problem to which men
of science have been led by their studies. The
peasants must have the land. From sham
owners they must be transformed into real
proprietors, able to live by their land, pay their
taxes, and put something aside for the unforeseen

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 97

casualties of agrarian life, and for the gradual
improvement of the cultivation of the land
according to the best methods of science and
the teachings of Western experience.

Is Russia sufficiently rich in land to afford
the material possibility for such a reform ? The
question hardly needs answering. Less than one-
third (twenty-seven per cent.) of the land capable
of cultivation is held by the peasantry : the
remaining two-thirds lie as dead capital in the
hands of the government or are wasted by the
landlords, who either do not cultivate it at all
or convert it into an instrument of most reckless
extortion. The kabala or " bondage " culture
we have just described is the only one which
exists or can exist on an extensive scale on the
landlords' estates in the Russia of to-day. Now
though this may be profitable to private
individuals, it is absolutely ruinous to the
community at large. It destroys a hundred times
more wealth on the side of the peasants than it
creates on that of the landlords. Neither are our
landlords prospering, as I have shown by statistics
in an earlier work (" Russian Storm Cloud," p. 57).
If transferred to the peasants, this land, or even
only a considerable part of it, would more than

7

98 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

suffice to set them on a firm footing at once,
without requiring either any particular outlay
or any additional technical knowledge.

Every average peasant family can, provided it
preserve its implements of labour in good repair
and the normal number of cattle, cultivate unaided
fifty-four acres of land, and can earn its own living
and pay its taxes with ease. The prevailing " three
fields " system of culture is undoubtedly the clum-
siest of its kind ; under it only two-thirds of the
arable land are utilised at a time, the remaining
third being kept fallow in order to restore its
fertility. The average return yielded by crops
over the whole of Russia is moreover only 2*9 to
one grain sown (excluding the seed). This is
almost the minimum, below which regular agricul-
ture would hardly be possible. But the "three
fields " system of rotation is the cheapest form of
cultivation, requiring a minimum outlay in imple-
ments and the smallest quantity of manure ; and in
the fertile regions of black soil no manure at all.
It is the only system possible at the outset. But
our agriculture admits of an almost unlimited im-
provement. Were the Russian (European) fields
cultivated as are those of Great Britain, says E.
Reilus, Russia would prodiice, instead of six hun-

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 99

dred and fifty million hectolitres of corn annually,
about five milliards, which would be sufficient
to feed a population of five hundred million souls.
(" Geographic Universelle," vol. v., p. 859.) Add
to this the fact that an enormous residue of land
is laying in store for future generations. In
European Russia the cultivated land is but
twenty-one per cent, of the whole area, while it
is sixty-one per cent, in Great Britain and eighty-
three per cent, in France. «*

The wealth of Russia in land is enormous, and
amply sufficient to transform it from a country of
beggars into a land of plenty. The poverty of its
husbandmen, compelled to sit on their " cat's
plot," whilst enormous tracts of land lie waste
around them, is a monstrous crime against
nature as well as against humanity. A simple
reorganization of our absurd agrarian system will
put an end to this, and enable the peasants to start
on the work of economical progress and emulation.

The urgency of this reform, the impossibility of
going on without it, and the universal desire for it,
are guarantees that, were Russia free to assert
her will and manage her own affairs, it would
speedily be realized. But it is evident that only
a free Russia can and will undertake so radical a

ioo THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

reform. The decrepit autocracy has neither the
moral strength to risk it nor the material means
necessary for its accomplishment. All the Govern-
ment has done by way of satisfying the despairing
cry for more land and of silencing the clamour
made about it by the democratic part of the press,
was the foundation, in May 1882, of the so-called
" peasants' land bank," for facilitating the
acquisition by peasants of saleable land. The
means placed at the disposal of this bank were,
however, so small (only five million roubles a year,
while the Government pays to the railway share-
holders alone an annual tribute of forty-six
millions) that the bank is unable to supply even
the yearly increase of population with land ; and
its statutory arrangements are such that it can
advance money only to those who already possess
something — the koulaks and groups of well-to-do
peasants, and not the destitute — thus increasing
the segregation and concentration of land into a
few hands instead of distributing it more widely.
Nothing better, indeed, could be expected from
our Government.

But let us suppose, for argument's sake, the
Autocrat of Russia, head of the privileged of every
class — let us suppose him transformed into a Czar-

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 101

Democrat such as some foolish narodniks have
imagined. I affirm that the most radical agrarian
reform initiated by him without the abolition of
the present political organization would be quite
inadequate to permanently improve the condition
of our peasantry.

The mischief already wrought by the present
system is too deeply seated to be remedied by
mere grants of land. Many of the peasants, no
ewer than twenty millions, are unable to cultivate
.he little land they already possess for lack of
:attle and implements — that is, in two words —
ndustrial capital. After the grant of new land
.hey can neither start afresh nor rise to material
sase without enjoying for a certain time the
Benefit of cheap credit. Without this aid they
would have to apply once more to the koulaks,
who would demand their two hundred and three
lundred per cent., and thus repeat the same
process of enslavement and spoliation, only on
a larger scale than before.

The reliance placed by our peasants on their
collective strength, educated as they are in the
traditions of their mir, — together with the re-
narkable honesty, fairness, and sense of duty
displayed by these mirs in their dealings when

102 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

they are really independent — greatly facilitate
such operations as those in question. The
union of the peasants of one village offers a far
greater security than any individual landlord can
give, always provided, of course, that the mir has
real and full control over its affairs. A mir is,
moreover, a natural and permanent assurance
company for all its members in case of unforeseen
misfortune, acting thus as preserver of the other-
wise unstable economical equilibrium.

Under the present regime the mir plays this
part only in exceptional cases, where the commune
is not totally destitute. It is generally composed
of a mass of beggars, who cannot afford the
assistance they would otherwise give, and of a few
koulaks and wzV-eaters, who sell their help at the
price I have named. Still less can the modern
bureaucratic mir be trusted with any money, be
the amount great or small.

The modern mir is completely subject to the
local police and the administration, which allow
it the free exercise of its powers of self-govern-
ment only when there is no inducement for officials
to interfere. Whenever any profit is to be made
the stanovoi and ispravniks are always at hand,
using every means in their power, from threats

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 103

and ear-boxing to flogging, to enforce their will.
The abuse of authority on the part of inferior
police agents and administrators, and their cruel
treatment of the helpless peasantry, form one of
the most sickening and bloody chapters in the
annals of Russian autocracy.

The common and unfailing expedient used by
these officers for getting their fingers into the
pie is to get one of their minions nominated to
the post of " head-man " (volost) and manager
of the communal finances, — of some koiilak or
wz>-eater — who will repay their support by giving
them a share in the booty.

The embezzlement of peasants' money by ad-
ministrators of this stamp goes on as impudently
here as in the Czar's Government generally.
It is certainly practised on a more extensive
scale in these cases than in the higher walks
of political life, which are necessarily under better
control. The illiterate peasants are quite defence-
less, and should some educated man try to inter-
fere on their behalf he is sure to get into serious
trouble, for sympathy with the peasants is always
considered in high circles as identical with sub-
versive ideas. Robbery goes on unchecked,
hardly concealed by even the forms of decency.

104 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY,

It not infrequently happens that the money paid
for taxes is embezzled, the peasant in this case
being compelled to pay a second time. The sums
sent by the zemstvos for the relief of the hungry
are embezzled ; the funds advanced for the
purchase of seed corn are seized ; the very corn
which is stored in communal granaries as a
provision for times of scarcity is stolen. Each
year brings heaps of such cases to light. All that
can be plundered is plundered.

On what ground, then, can we hope that
" cheap credit " institutions would escape ? We
know by experience how these so-called " peasants'
loans and savings banks " are managed, which
for a time were the hobby of the zemstvos and
of the liberal officials. They received a consider-
able development, their capital amounting in 1883
to thirteen million roubles — on paper, at least.
To show what these banks were I need only quote
from the Novoe Vremya, the organ of the high-
class koulaks, which admitted that "in an
enormous majority of instances the banks
benefited the bulk of the peasants nothing what-
ever, having become instruments of usury in the
hands of rural koulaks and swindlers." The
managers, communal clerks, koulaks, parish

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 105

beadles, and other rural notabilities " borrowed
money from the banks to re-lend at usurious
interest to needy peasants." (No. 2532.)

Several revisions, undertaken on some occasions
by the Governors-General in entire provinces, as for
instance in those of the eight districts of Tchernigoff
Province and the whole Penza province (1882),
have shown that the money was principally " bor-
rowed " by a few persons when the banks first
started, some ten or twelve years ago, and has not
yet been refunded. To use plain English, it was
simply stolen. For formality's sake, a new book
was bought every January, and the old debtors'
names re-entered from year to year, as if the
amounts standing to their debit had been only just
advanced. Exactly the same trick was used by
Rykoff, Youkhanzeff, and other high-class robbers
who stole millions, a fact which only goes to
prove yet once again that les beaux esprits se
rencontrent.

Enough of this. From these cursory remarks
the reader can well realize that the second of the
great measures indispensable for extricating the
peasants from the grasp of usury — cheap credit —
would be a rather risky proceeding under the
present political regime.

106 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

The third indispensable requirement for ren-
dering the acquisition, by the people, of the
material means of work, of any avail is the spread
of both elementary and professional education
among the rural classes. A large and wide
diffusion of knowledge among them would in-
crease tenfold the productiveness of labour, and
open out an unlimited field for further progress
in its social and economical life. But here, once
more, we stumble against the autocracy, which
cannot tolerate the idea of an educated peasantry,
and which does not recoil from the most bare-
faced obstructions and shameful subterfuges for
hindering the diffusion of primary education,
impeding the foundation of new schools, and
blocking the wheels of the old ones.

To conclude. There is a means for extricating
our people from the deadlock to which Russia has
been brought ; but it implies as a conditio sine qua
non the abolition of the bureaucratic despotism
and the transformation of the autocratic Empire
into a free constitutional State of the European
type. Of all the series of measures which only
in their totality would suffice to reduce to order
the present economical, social, and political chaos,
not one can be adopted by the existing regime.

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 107

Each implies or necessitates the breaking up of
the present system. And every step that makes
for the redemption of the masses involves danger
to the supremacy of the Czar and his satellites.

Our Government, caring above all things for
its own interests and privileges, and putting all
else in the background, acts according to the
dictates of the grossest selfishness. It did not
object to reforms in favour of the peasants so long
as the reforms could be effected at the expense of
the serf-owning nobility. This was very wise and
perspicacious, and for a time won the Emperor
Alexander II. great popularity, even among
extreme Radicals and Socialists. But from the
moment when this was found insufficient, and a
demand was made for the cessation of absolute
power, the Government made up its mind and
took the opposite course.

The whole home policy of the two last reigns
since the Emancipation, is nothing but a constant
fostering of the interests of the privileged classes at
the expense of the masses. Hundreds of millions
— milliards — of money exacted from the peasants
are spent in " supporting the nobility " or the
"landlords," or in subsidizing great manufac-
turers. For the sake of augmenting the profits

io8 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

of the favoured trades, prohibitive tariffs are
levied, wars of conquest are undertaken, and
conquered provinces cut off by cordons of custom-
houses of the interior. And when, in 1871, the
more enlightened and liberal part of the privileged
classes — the zemstvos of all the thirty-four
provinces where the zemstvos existed — unani-
mously condemned the injustice of the present
fiscal system and petitioned for the introduction
of a progressive income-tax, equitable for all, the
Czar Alexander II. pronounced the measure to be
too democratic and subversive — too likely to injure
and alienate the koulaks, the usurers, the sharpers
and the swindlers of every sort. In its selfish
fear autocracy appeals to the worst instincts and
the basest elements of human nature, for selfish-
ness and greed is its best support.

Connivance is secured by dividing the booty,
and attempts to improve the condition of the
masses are regarded as acts of overt sedition.
They are opposed by the combined forces of the
censorship of the Press and the police. The
people's friends are not even allowed to denounce
the horrors which are passing under their eyes.
The democratic monthlies, such as the Annales,
the Slovo, and the Dtelo, are suppressed under

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 109

the pretext that they are organs of " revolution "
— a nonsensical accusation against periodicals that
had been published for fifteen or eighteen years
in the Czar's capital. Their real offence was
that they made the investigation of the condition
of our peasantry the chief object of their efforts,
and continually held the light of truth and science
over this abyss of popular suffering.

Whenever some fact or some rumour brings
the agrarian question forcibly before the public,
the press invariably receives secret orders, like
those of June i2th, 1881, and June 26th, 1882,
forbidding, " in order not to excite public opinion,"
the publication of anything referring to the sen-
sational affair of Count Bobrinsky and Prince
Scherbatoff, showing such an amount of cruelty,
cheating, and malversation on the part of these
gentlemen towards the peasantry as to be ex-
ceptional and revolting even for Russia. Or the
orders are more sweeping, as on March i7th,
1882: — "It is absolutely forbidden to publish
anything referring to the rumours going on
among peasants as to the redistribution of land,
as well as articles alleging the necessity or the
justice of making any alteration in the agrarian
condition of the peasants." Or on September

i io THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

1 8th, 1885: — "Forbidding absolutely the com-
memoration in any form of the coming (February
1 9th, 1886) twenty-fifth anniversary of the eman-
cipation of the peasants," lest some allusion to
their present evil plight might perchance escape
the speakers.

This is our position. It is not the Imperial
Government that materially or purposely ruins
the peasants, which is equivalent to saying the
nation ; but the Government, out of regard for
its mere selfish interests, purposely and deli-
berately supports and assists those who are
ruining it, whilst, for the same reason, suppressing
every influence and force likely to produce a dif-
ferent result. The Government of the two Alex-
anders is, therefore, fully and entirely responsible
for the present sufferings of the Russian masses.
This is the chief, the most terrible and over-
whelming count in the indictment against our
Government.

Great are the wrongs, bitter the abuses and
sufferings inflicted by this despotism on the whole
of educated Rusia — arbitrary arrests, detentions,
exiles without any trial whatever, the trampling
down of all sacred human rights, suppression of
freedom of speech and of the press, violation of

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. riJ

the hearth and prevention of the right to work,
whereby the lives of thousands of intelligent,
well-intentioned, and innocent men and women
are either wasted or made miserable. But what
are their sufferings compared with those of the
dumb millions of our peasantry ? What an ocean
of sorrow, tears, despair, and degradation is re-
flected in these dry figures, which prove that
households have by hundreds of thousands been
forced to sell by auction all their poor posses-
sions ; that millions of peasants who were at one
time independent have been turned into batraks,
driven from their homes, have had their families
destroyed, their children sold into bondage, and
their daughters given to prostitution ; and untold
numbers of full-grown, nay even gray-haired,
respectable labourers, have been shamefully
flogged to extort taxes. Then think on these
frightful figures of mortality — sixty-two a year
per thousand in thirteen provinces. This means
nothing less than half a million a year virtually
dying of hunger, starved to death in a twelve-
month, with the probability that before long
the proportion will be doubled.

Verily, it is here, and not so much in the
cruelties inflicted on political offenders, that we

m THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

must look for the cause of the fierce, implacable
hatred of the revolutionists against their Govern-
ment.

Herein lies the peremptory cause, the perma-
nent stimulant and the highest justification of the
Russian revolution and of Russian conspiracies.
Life is not worth living when your eyes con-
stantly behold such miseries as these inflicted on
a people whom you love. It would be a shame to
bear the name of a Russian had these unutterable
sufferings of the masses called forth no respon-
sive and boundless devotion to the people's cause ;
a devotion which glows in the hearts of all those
thousands of Russia's sons and daughters who
risk life, freedom, domestic happiness, all which
is most dear to our common nature, in the effort to
free their country from a Government which is
the mainspring of all these woes.

But, we are sometimes told, the Nihilists have
no right to set themselves up as champions of
the peasants against the autocracy, for the rural
masses are loyal and devoted to the Czar.

If to label aspirations which, in their very
essence, are hostile to the Czardom with the
name of the Czar can in truth be called loyalty,
why then a vast majority of our peasants are most

T.VE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 113

assuredly very loyal indeed. In this case, how-
ever, it is strange that the Imperial Government
and the Czar himself place so little trust in this
loyalty as to tremble at the thought of putting it
to the test. The prospect of perpetual Nihilist
attempts, which make the present life of the
Gatschina prisoner a burden and the future a
terror, seem to the Government preferable to
the chances of a popular vote. For have not
the Nihilists repeatedly declared that they would
desist from hostilities towards their paternal
government from the first moment that it obtained
the sanction of the freely expressed voice of the
people ?

The fact is that the peasants are as dissatisfied
with the working of the present institutions as the
Nihilists themselves — certainly more dissatisfied
than are the educated and privileged classes as
a whole. And the reader will certainly admit that
for this discontent they have ample cause. The
only difference between the middle-class opposition
and the peasantry is, that the peasantry think the
autocracy has no share whatever in bringing on
them the calamities from which they suffer, and
that the Czar is as much dissatisfied as the
peasants themselves with the present order of

8

114 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

things, which they attribute to the wickedness
and cunning of the " nobility." It is doubtful
whether the peasants will stick for ever, or for
long, to this nonsensical idea. But I frankly
confess that, even as matters now stand, I take a
totally different view as to this would-be sanction.
I think that if there be anything which deprives
our Government of all claim to respect ; if there
be anything which can lower it in the eyes of
mankind, and which will remain as a stain on its
escutcheon for evermore, it is just the foul perfidy
involved in the abuse of this touching, child-like
confidence reposed in it by the simple-hearted
millions of our Russian peasantry.

THE MOUJIKS AND THE RUSSIAN
DEMOCRACY.

CHAPTER I.

WHEN, about a score of years before the Emanci-
pation, the Russian democrats for the first time
came into close contact with the peasants, with
the view of becoming better acquainted with
their down-trodden brothers, they were amazed
at their discoveries. The moujiks proved to be
an entirely different race from what pitying
people amongst their " elder brothers " expected
them to be.

Far from being degraded and brutalised by
slavery, the peasants, united in their semi-patri-
archal, semi-republican village communes, ex-
hibited a great share of self-respect, and even
capacity to stand boldly by their rights, where
the whole of the commune was concerned.
Diffident in their dealings with strangers, they
showed a remarkable truthfulness and frankness
in their dealings among themselves, and a sense
of duty and loyalty and unselfish devotion to
their little communes, which contrasted strikingly

Ii8 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

with the shameful corruption and depravity of
the official classes.

They had not the slightest notion of the pro-
gress made by the sciences, and believed that
the earth rested on three whales, swimming on
the Ocean ; but in their traditional morality they
sometimes showed such deep humanity and
wisdom as to strike their educated observers
with wonder and admiration.

These pioneer democrats, men of great talent
and enormous erudition, such as Yakushkin, Dal,
and Kireevsky, in propagating among the bulk
of the reading public the results of their long
years of study, laid the base of that democratic
feeling which has never since died out in Russia.

From that time forth the momentous rush of
the educated people " amongst the peasants," and
the study of the various sides of peasant life,
has been constantly on the increase. No country
possesses such a literature on the subject as
Russia ; but the tone of the writers of these
latter times — men of the same stamp as
Yakushkin and Kireevsky — is no longer that of
unmixed admiration. Whether you embark on
the sea of statistical and ethnographical lore
collected for posterity by the untiring zeal of the

THE MOUJIKS AT HOME. 119

late Orloff and his followers, or whether you are
lost in admiration of the artistic sketches of
peasant life drawn by Uspensky, or whether
you are perusing the works of no less trustworthy
though less gifted essayists of the same school,
such as Zlatovratsky and Zassodimsky, you will
invariably be brought to recognise a great
breaking up of the traditional groundwork of
the social and moral life of our peasantry.

Something harsh, cruel, cynically egotistical, is
worming itself into the hearts of the Russian
agricultural population, where formerly all was
simplicity, peace, and goodwill unto men. Thus
the grey-bearded grandfathers are not alone in
modern Russia in lamenting the good old times.
Some of our young and popular writers are,
strangely enough, striking the same wailing
chords. It is evident that in the terrible straits
through which our people are passing, not only
their material condition but their very souls have
suffered grave injuries.

Yet it is not all lamentation about the past
in the tidings which reach us from our villages.
The good produced by the progress of culture is,
in spite of its drawbacks, according to our modest
opinion, full compensation for the impairing

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

of the almost unconscious virtues of the old
patriarchal period.

Freed from the yoke of serfdom, and put
before the tribunals on an equal tooting with
other citizens, their former masters included, the
peasants, too, are beginning to feel themselves
to be citizens. A new generation, which has
not known slavery, has had time to grow up.
Their aspiration after independence has not as
yet directed itself against political despotism, save
in isolated cases; but in the meantime it has
almost triumphed in the struggle against the
more intimate and trying domestic despotism of
the bolshak, the head of the household. A very
important and thoroughgoing change has taken
place in the family relations of the great Russian
rural population. The children, as soon as they
are grown up and have married, will no longer
submit to the bolshaKs whimsical rule. They
rebel, and if imposed upon, separate and found
new households, where they become masters of
their own actions. These separations have grown
so frequent that the number of independent house-
holds in the period from 1858-1881 increased
from thirty-two per cent, to seventy-one per cent,
of the whole provincial population.

THE MOUJIKS AT HOME. 121

It is worthy of remark that the rebellion among
the educated classes also first began in the circle
of domestic life, before stepping into the larger
arena of political action.

Elementary education, however hampered and
obstructed by the Government, is spreading
among the rural classes. In 1868, of a hundred
recruits of peasant origin there were only eight
who could read and write. In 1882 the propor-
tion of literate people among the same number
was twenty. This is little compared with what
might have been done, but it is a great success if
we remember the hindrances the peasant has had
to overcome.

Reading, which a score of years ago was con-
fined exclusively to the upper classes, is now
spreading among the moujiks. Popular literature
of all kinds has received an unprecedented
development in the last ten or fifteen years.
Popular books run through dozens of editions,
and are selling by scores of thousands of copies.

Religion is the language in which the human
spirit lisps its first conceptions of right and gives
vent to its first aspirations. The awakening of
the popular intelligence and moral consciousness
has found its expression in dozens of new religi-

122 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

ous sects, a remarkable and suggestive phenome-
non of modern popular life in Russia. Differing
entirely from the old ritualistic sectarianism, which
was more of a rebellion against ecclesiastical
arrangements than against orthodoxy, these new
sects of rationalistic and Protestant type have
acquired in about ten or twelve years hundreds
of thousands, nay millions, of proselytes.

This movement of thought, both by its exalt-
ation and the general tendency of its doctrines,
can be compared with the great Protestant
movement of the sixteenth century. The only
difference consists in its being confined in Russia
exclusively to the rural and working classes, with-
out being in the least shared by the educated
people. The sources of religious enthusiasm are
dried up, we think for ever, in the Russian in-
tellectual classes, their enthusiasm and exaltation
having found quite another vent. For nobody
can seriously consider the few drawing-room
attempts to found some new creed, of which we
have now and then heard of late. But it is
beyond doubt that the genuine and earnest deve-
lopment of religious thoughts and feelings, which
we are witnessing among our masses, will play
an important part in our people's near future.

THE MOUJIKS AT HOMh. 123

In whatever direction we look, everything
proves that under the apparent calm there is a
great movement in the minds of our rural popula-
tion. The great social and political crisis, through
which Russia is passing, is not confined to the
upper classes alone. The process of demolition,
slower but vaster, is going on among the masses
too. There all is tottering to its fall — orthodoxy,
custom, traditional forms of life. The European
public only takes notice of the upper stratum of
the crisis, of that which is going on among the
educated, because of its dramatic manifestations ;
but the crisis among our agricultural classes,
wrought by the combined efforts of civilisation on
the one hand and of economical ruin on the other,
is no less real, and certainly no less interesting and
worthy of study than the former.

In what does this crisis consist ? How far and
in what direction have the changes in the social
and ethical ideals, the traditional morality and the
character of the moujik, the tiller and guardian of
our native land, gone ? It would seem presump-
tion to answer, or even to attempt to answer, in
the space of a few pages such questions in refer-
ence to an enormous rural population like the
Russian. I hasten, therefore, to mention one

124 THE MOUJIKS AT HOME.

thing which renders such an attempt — partial at
least — justifiable.

A Russian moujik presents of course as many
varieties as there are tribes and regions in the
vast empire. There is a wide difference between
the peculiarly sociable, open-hearted Great
Russian peasant, brisk in mind and speech, quick
to love and quick to forget, and the dreamy and
reserved Ruthenian ; or between the practical,
extremely versatile and independent Siberian,
who never knew slavery, and the timid Beloruss
(White Russian), who has borne three yokes.
But through all the varieties of types, tribes,
and past history, the millions of our rural
population present a remarkable uniformity in
those higher general, ethical, and social concep-
tions which the educated draw from divers social
and political sciences, and the uneducated from
their traditions, which are the depositories of
the collective wisdom of past generations.

This seemingly strange uniformity in our
peasants' moral physiognomy is to be accounted
for by two causes : the perfect identity of our
people's daily occupation, which is almost
exclusively pure husbandry, and the great simili-
tude of those peculiar self-governing associations,

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

village communes, in which the whole of our rural
population, without distinction of tribe or place,
have lived from time immemorial.

No occupation is fitter to develop a morally as
well as physically healthy race than husbandry.
We mean genuine husbandry, where the tiller of
the soil is at the same time its owner. We need
not dwell on the proofs. Poets, historians, and
philosophers alike have done their best to bring
home to us, corrupted children of the towns, the
charms of the simple virtues which hold sway
amidst the populations of staunch ploughmen.

In Russia, until the " economic progress " of
the last twenty-five years turned twenty millions
of our peasants into landless proletarians, they
were all landowners. Even the scourge of serf-
dom could not depose them from that dignity.
The serfs, who gratuitously tilled the manorial
land, had each of them pieces of freehold land
which they cultivated on their own account.
Nominally it was the property of the landlords.
But so strong was tradition and custom that the
landlords themselves had almost forgotten that
they had a right to it. So much was this the
case that Professor Engelhardt (" Letters from
a Village"), tells us that many of the former

126 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

seigneurs only learned from the Act of Emancipa-
tion of 1 86 1 that the land on which the peasants
dwelt also belonged to them.

Gleb Uspensky, in discussing the causes of
the wonderful preservation of the. purity of the
moral character of the Russian people through
such a terrible ordeal as three centuries of
slavery, which passed over without ingrafting
into it any of the vice of slavery, can find no
other explanation than this : the peasant was
never separated from the ploughshare, from
the all-absorbing cares and the poetry of
agricultural work.

Our peasants could, however, do something
more than preserve their individuality. They
could give a more lasting proof and testimony as
to their collective dispositions and aspirations. A
Russian village has never been a mere aggrega-
tion of individuals, but a very intimate association,
having much work and life in common. These
associations are called mirs among the Great
and White Russians, hromadas among the
Ruthenians.

Up to the present time the law has allowed
them a considerable amount of self-government.
They are free to manage all their economical con-

THE MOUJIKS AT HOME. 127

cerns in common : the land, if they hold it as
common property — which is the case everywhere
save in the Ruthenian provinces — the forests, the
fisheries, the renting of public-houses standing on
their territory, etc. They distribute among them-
selves as they choose, the taxes falling to the
share of the commune according to the Govern-
ment schedules. They elect the rural executive
administration — Starost and Starshinas — who are
(nominally at least) under their permanent control.

Another very important privilege which they
possess is that they, the village communes com-
posing the Volost, in general meeting assembled,
elect the ten judges of the Volost. All these
must be peasants, members of some village
commune. The jurisdiction of the peasants' tri-
bunal is very extensive ; all the civil, and a good
many criminal offences (save the capital ones), in
which one of the parties, at least, is a peasant of
the district, are amenable to it The peasants
sitting as judges are not bound to abide in their
verdicts by the official code of law. They
administer justice according to the customary
laws and traditions of the local peasantry.

The records of these tribunals, published by an
official commission, at once afford us an insight

128 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY

into the peasants' original notions as to juridical
questions. We pass over the verdicts illustrating
the popular idea as to land tenure, which has been
expounded above. We will rather try to elicit the
other side of the question : the peasants' views
on movable property, the right of bequest, of in-
heritance, and their civil code in general, which
presents some curious and unexpected peculiarities.
The fact which strikes us most in it is, that
among the peasants where the patriarchal principle
is as yet so strong and the ties of blood are held
so sacred, kinship gives no right to property.
The only rightful claim to it is given by work.
Whenever the two interests clash, it is to the
right of labour that the popular conscience gives
the preference. The father cannot disinherit one
son or diminish his share for the benefit of his
favourite. Notwithstanding the religious respect
in which the last will of a dying man is held,
both the mir and the tribunal will annul it at the
complaint of the wronged man, if the latter is
known to be a good and diligent worker. The
fathers themselves know this well. Whenever
they attempt to prejudice one of their children in
their wills they always adduce as motive that he
has been a sluggard or a spendthrift and has

THE MOUJIKS AT HOME. 129

already dissipated his share. The favourite, on
the other hand, is mentioned as " having worked
hard for the family."

Kinship has no influence whatever in the
distribution and proportioning of shares at any
division of property. It is determined by the
quantity of work each has given to the family.
The brother who has lived and worked with the
family for the longer time will receive most, no
matter whether he be the elder or the younger.
He will be excluded from the inheritance alto-
gether if he has been living somewhere else and
has not contributed in some way to the common
expenses. The same principle is observed in
settling the differences between the other grades
of kinsfolk. The cases of sons-in-law, step-sons,
and adopted children are very characteristic. If
they have remained a sufficient time — ten or
more years — with the family, they receive, though
strangers, all the rights of legitimate children,
whilst the legitimate son is excluded if he have
not taken part in the common work.

This is in flagrant contradiction to the civil
code of Russia, as well as of other European
countries. The same contradiction is observable
in the question of women's rights. The Russian

9

130 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

law entitles women — legitimate wives and daugh-
ters— to one-fourteenth only of the family inherit-
ance. The peasants' customary law requires no
such limitation. The women are in all respects
dealt with on an equal footing with the men.
They share in the property in proportion to their
share in the work. Sisters, as a rule, do not
inherit from brothers, because in marrying they
go to another family, and take with them as
dowry the reward of their domestic work. But
a spinster sister, or a widow who returns to live
with her brothers, will always receive or obtain
from the tribunal her share.

The right to inheritance being founded on
work alone, no distinction is made by the
peasants' customary law between legitimate wives
and concubines.

It is interesting to note that the husband, too,
inherits the wife's property (if she has brought
him any) only when they have lived together
sufficiently long — above ten years ; otherwise the
deceased wife's property is returned to her parents.

The principle ruling the order of inheritance
is evidently the basis for the verdicts in all sorts
of litigation. Labour is always recognized as
giving an indefeasible right to property. Accord-

THE MOUJIKS AT HOME. 131

ing to common jurisprudence, if one man has
sown a field belonging to another — especially if
he has done it knowingly — the court of justice
will unhesitatingly deny the offender any right to
the eventual product. Our peasants are as strict
in their observance of boundaries, when once
traced, as are any other agricultural folk. But
labour has its imprescriptible rights. The
customary law prescribes a remuneration for the
work executed in botk of the above mentioned
cases — in the case of unintentional as well as in
the case of premeditated violation of property.
Only, in the first instance, the offender, who
retains all the product, is simply compelled to pay
to the owner the rent of the piece of land he
has sown, according to current prices, with some
trifling additional present ; whilst in the case of
violation knowingly done, the product is left to
the owner of the land, who is bound, nevertheless,
to return to the offender the seed, and to pay him
a labourer's wages for the work he has done.

If a peasant has cut wood in a forest belonging
to another peasant, the tribunal settles the matter
in a similar way. In all these cases the common
law would have been wholly against the offender,
the abstract right of property reigning supreme.

132 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

In the vast practice of the many thousands of
peasants' tribunals, there are certainly instances
of verdicts being given on other principles than
these, or contrary to any principle whatever.
Remembering the very numerous influences to
which a modern village is subjected in these
critical times, it would have been surprising were
it otherwise. Moreover, the peasants' tribunal
has by its side the pissar, the communal clerk,
a stranger to the village and its customs. This
important person is the champion and propagator
of official views and of the official code. His in-
fluence on the decisions of the peasants' courts is
considerable, as is well known. The rarity of the ex-
ceptions, however, makes the rule the more salient.

The peasants have applied their collective
intelligence not to material questions alone, nor
within the domain apportioned to them by law,
The mir recognises no restraint on its autonomy.
In the opinion of the peasants themselves, the
mirs authority embraces, indeed, all domains and
branches of peasant life. Unless the police and
the local officers are at hand to prevent what
is considered an abuse of power, the peasants'
mir is always likely to exceed its authority.

THE MOUJIKS AT HOME. 133

Here is a curious illustration. In the autumn
of 1 884, according to the Russian Courier of the
1 2th November, 1884, a peasants' mir in the
district of Radomysl had to pronounce upon the
following delicate petition : One of their fellow-
villagers, Theodor P., whose wife had run away
from him several years before, and swho was
living as housemaid in some private house,
wanted to marry another woman from a neigh-
bouring village. He accordingly asked the mir
to accept his bride as a female member of their
commune. Having heard and discussed this
original demand, the mir unanimously passed
the following resolution : " Taking into consider-
ation that the peasant Theodor P., living for
several years without his legitimate wife by the
fault of the latter, is now in great need of a
woman (!), his marriage with the former wife
is dissolved. In accordance with which, after
being thrice questioned by the elder (mayor)
of our village as to whether we will permit
Theodor P. to receive into his house as wife the

peasant woman N , we give our full consent

thereto. And if, moreover, Theodor P. shall
have children by his second wife, we will recognise
them as legitimate and as heirs to their father's

134 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

property, the freehold and the communal land
included."

This resolution, duly put on paper and
signed by all the householders and by the elder
of the village, was delivered as certificate of
marriage to the happy couple, no one sus-
pecting that the mir had overstepped its
power.

In the olden times, as late as the sixteenth
century, it was the mir who elected the parson
(as the dissenting villages are doing nowadays),
the bishops only imposing hands on the mirs
nominees. The orthodox peasants have quite
forgotten this historical right of theirs ; but the
natural right of the mir allows it to deal even
with subjects referring to religion.

The conversion to dissenting creeds of whole
villages in a lump, is of very common occurrence
in the history of modern sects. A dissenting
preacher comes to a village and makes a few
converts. For a time they zealously preach,
their doctrines to their fellow-villagers. Then,
when they consider the harvest ripe, they
bring the matter before the mir, and often that
assembly, after discussing the question, passes a
resolution in favour of the acceptance of the

THE MOUJIKS AT HOME. 135

new creed. The whole village turns "shaloput"'
or " evangelical," changing creeds as small states
did in the times of the Reformation.

To a Russian peasant it seems the most natural
thing in the world that the mir should do this
whenever it chooses. In my wanderings among
the peasants, I remember having met near
Riazan with a peasant who amused me much by
telling how they succeeded in putting a check on
the cupidity and extortion of the pop of their
village. " When we could no longer bear it we
assembled and said to him, ' Take care, batka
(father) ; if you won't be reasonable, we, all the
mir, will give up orthodoxy altogether, and will
elect a pop from among ourselves.' ' And the
pop then became " tender as silk," for he knew
his flock would not hesitate to put their threat
into effect.

The mir forms indeed a microcosm, a small
world of its own. The people living in it have
to exercise their judgment on everything, on
the moral side of man's life as on the material,
shaping it so as to afford to their small com-
munities as much peace and happiness as is
possible under their very arduous circumstances.

136 7HE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Have these uneducated people been able to
achieve anything in the high domain of public
morality ?

Yes, they have, though what they have done
cannot be registered in volumes like the verdicts
of their tribunals. They have maintained througn
centuries, and improved, the old Russian principle
of governing without oppression. To settle all
public questions by unanimous vote, never by
mere majority, is a wise rule, for a body of
people living on such close terms. This system,
however, could only be rendered practicable,
amongst people of all sorts of tempers and diverse
moral qualities, by a high development of the
sentiments of justice, equanimity, and concili-
ation.

Our peasants lay no claim to being a race of
Arcadian pastors. Their present and their past
alike has been and still is too hard to make it
possible for them ever to forget that charity
begins at home. In the bitter struggle for a
bare existence which they have had to sustain,
each has had to consider his own skin first. In
their every day life and intercourse they are as
egotistical as any other set of people, each man
trying to make the best of his opportunities.

THE MOUJIKS AT HOME. 137

" Each for himself," say they — " but God and
the mir for all." The mir is no egotist ; it
pities everybody alike, and should it have to
settle any difference it does not look to the
numerical strength or respective influence of the
contending parties, but to the absolute justice
of the cause.

But is not the mir composed of the selfsame
individuals who outside of its charmed circle are
pursuing each his personal ends and interests ?
If they are able to forget themselves when at the
mir, and can elevate their minds and hearts to
the exercise of perfect justice and impartiality,
they must also be equal to doing the same out-
side of the mir, in those solemn moments when
daily cares and anxieties are cast on one side
and their higher nature has free play. The mir s
morality gives its tone to, and shapes according
to its image, the morality of the individual
too.

Hence that wide tolerance which characterises
our peasants ; that somewhat gregarious benevo-
lence embracing all men, almost to the prejudice
of intensity of personal attachment, but which
excludes nobody from its pale. The Russian
moujik is proverbially benevolent towards strangers

138 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

of his own race. He is accustomed to feel
something like family attachment to most, or to
very many, of the members of his mir. It is
easy for him to admit a new member into so
large a family. When difference of religion and
of language do not allow of the full benefit of
adoption — he will still recognise in the stranger
a man like himself.

There is no people on the face of the earth
who treat aliens so kindly as do the Russian
moujiks. They live peacefully side by side with
hundreds of tribes, differing in race and religion
— Tartars, Circassians, Bouriats, and German
colonists. (The outburst against the Jews sprang
from economical causes, and not from racial
antipathy.) During the last Turkish war, whilst
the burghers and the shop-boys of the towns
were casting stones and mud at the poor Turkish
prisoners of war, as they passed along the streets,
until the police had to intervene, the moujiks
offered them bread and coppers, and in some
cases even took them home to their villages as
paid labourers. They were greatly perplexed, it
is true, as to whether they could invite them to
share their meals, being " infidels," but they
generally ended by conquering their prejudices ;

THE MOUJIKS AT HOME. 139

and they, the representatives of two belligerent
nations, might be seen amicably eating at the
same table (Zlatovratsey).

The mir in the management of its affairs recog-
nises no permanent laws restricting or guiding its
decisions. It is the personification of the living
law, speaking through the collective voice of the
commune. Every case brought before the mir
is judged on its own merits, according to the
endless variety of its peculiar circumstances. In
foreign lands, too, the laws tacitly acknowledge
the necessity for making a considerable allowance
for the voice of pure conscience in the more
delicate questions of society — as to the culpability
or innocence of its members. But by the side
of the jury sits the judge, the representative of
the written law, one of whose duties it is to
control and keep them within their strictly defined
limits — i.e,, to the mere verdict as to the facts of
the case. With a Russian mir the law is nowhere,
the "conscience" everywhere. Not merely the
fact of the criminal offence, but every disputed
point is settled according to the individual justice
of the case, no regard being paid to the category
of crime to which it may chance to belong.

HO THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

These villagers have to deal with living men
whom they know and love, and it is deeply
repugnant to them to overshoot the mark by so
much as a hair's breadth for the sake of a dead
abstraction — the law.

This bent of mind is not confined to the
peasantry, — it is national.

I have frequently observed, and I believe that
all who have given any attention to the subject
will agree with me, that the abstract idea of
" law," as a something which is to be obeyed to
the letter under all circumstances, even when the
peculiar circumstances of a case make it unjust,
is grasped with the greatest difficulty, even by
the most cultured Russians.

There are few among our countrymen who will
not give the preference to the dictates of con-
science tempered by a fair and impartial mind.
They are in this respect a perfect contrast to
the people of English origin. In our great poet
Pushkin this feeling was so strong as to make
him an upholder of the principle of absolute
monarchy. " Why," he said, " is it necessary that
one of us should be put above all the rest, and even
above the laws? Because the law is a wooden
thing. In the law the man feels something hard,

THE MQUJIKS AT HOME. ui

unbrotherly. With a literal application of the
law you cannot do much. But at the same time
nobody may take upon himself to transgress or
disregard the law. Hence it is necessary that
there should be a supreme clemency to temper
the laws, and this can only be embodied in the
autocratic monarch."

Out of respect to the memory of our great
national teacher of art, I will not here discuss the
antiquated conception of a monarch as a dispenser
of justice, and not as an administrator, bound to
know all, to see all, to understand all, under
penalty of being befooled and made a tool of at
every turn. I simply mention it as a good illus-
tration of the peculiar bent of the Russian mind.

Much of this is to be ascribed to the lack of
political education, and to the feeble development
of the proud and powerful sense of individuality
which is the one quality we most envy our
Western neighbours. To a truly independent
man even a hard law, because abstract and dis-
passionate, and known to him beforehand, is a
better thing than the most benignant despotism.
That which is the most abhorrent to him is the
sense that he is dependent on the good pleasure
cf another — be it the benevolent despotism of

143 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

one master or even the still more benevolent
despotism of a friendly crowd.

Nevertheless we must not forget that on the
other hand we have been spared the habit of not
looking or caring to look beyond the mere legal
aspect and established rule as to human conduct.

In constantly striving after individual justice,
both in practice, as with the peasants, and in theory,
as with the educated classes, our people have not
been able to rest satisfied with mere appearances,
nor to consider the question solved as soon as
they discovered under which section of the
criminal or any other code the trespass fell.
They have had to look into the very innermost
recesses of the human heart, to discover all its
hidden promptings, and to subject them to an
impartial, dispassionate examination, all which
must needs have educated our people in a spirit
of the highest tolerance. "To understand every-
thing is to forgive everything," is the deepest of
human sayings.

Hence that "pity for all" which extends, not
merely to the weak, but to the fallen, to the de-
graded, to the outcast. Just observe how our
moujiks behave towards criminals. All, without
distinction, are designated under the generic term

THE MOUJIKS AT HOME. 143

of '• unhappy," and are treated as such. No
contempt, no harshness can be detected in the
demeanour of the crowd of peasants, who meet
(bearing alms in their hands) a body of convicts
being escorted to Siberia. They know that many
of them must be innocent of any real offence.
But there is something deeper than this in their
humanity. Gogol, who excelled all other writers
in the insight he possessed as to the workings of
the Russian mind, observes that " of all nations
the Russian alone is convinced that there exists
no man who is absolutely guilty, as there exists
no man who is absolutely innocent." Is it not
this same idea which permeates Dostoievsky's
masterpiece, " Buried Alive" ? Is not this "pity
for all " apparent throughout the works of all our
great masters, from Gogol to Gonciaroff and
Ostrovsky ? Herein lies yet one more proof that
in the moral qualities of the two extreme sections
of the Russian nation — the peasantry, who are at
the bottom of the social scale, and the educated,
wno are at the top — there are some striking
resemblances which cannot be purely accidental.
Many foreign writers have been struck by the
peculiar ardour which animates the Russians of
all classes in their devotion to their country.

144 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Well, I do not know whether this is due to
the emotional character of our people, or whether
it is merely a reflection of what is intensely de-
veloped under another name within our masses.
Among the peasantry, in whose eyes their mir is
their country, the devotion of each individual to
the mir has been made the keynote of social
morality. They have learned to exercise self-
restraint in petty everyday concessions and
services to the mir, and have risen to the sub-
limity of heroism in their acts of self-sacrifice
for its good. Examples of this are frequent.
To " suffer for the mir ; " to be put in chains and
to be thrown into prison as the mirs khodok or
messenger, — " sent to the Czar " with the mirs
grievances ; to be beaten, exiled to Siberia
or to the mines, for having stood up boldly for
the rights of the mir against some powerful
oppressor, — such are the forms of heroism to
which an enthusiastic peasant aspires, and which
the people extol.

The orthodox Church has no hold over the
souls of the masses. The pop or priest is but an
official of the bureaucracy and depredator of the
commune. But we hardly need to say that the
high ethics of Christianity, the appeal to brotherly

THE MOUJIKS AT HOME. US

love, to forgiveness, to self-sacrifice for the good
of others, yet have always found an echo in the
responsive chords of our people's hearts. " The
type of a saint, as conceived by our peasants,"
says Uspensky, " is not that of an anchorite,
timidly secluded from the world, lest some part of
the treasure he is accumulating in heaven might
get damaged. Our popular saint is a man of the
mir, a man of practical piety, a teacher and
benefactor of the people." In AthanasiefFs col-
lection of popular legends we find an illustration
of this idea. Two saints — St. Cassian and St.
Nicolas — have come before the face of the Lord.

•' What hast thou seen on the earth ? " asks the
Lord of St. Cassian, who first approached. " 1
have seen a moujik foundering with his car in
a marsh by the wayside."

" Why hast thou not helped him ? " " Because
I was coming into Thy presence, and was afraid
of spoiling my bright clothes."

The turn of St. Nicolas comes, who approaches
with his dress all besmeared.

" Why comest thou so dirty into my presence ? '
asks the Lord. " Because I was following St
Cassian, and, seeing the moujik of whom he just
spoke, I have helped him out of the marsh."

10

146 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

"Well," said the Lord, "because them, Cassian,
hast cared so much about thy dress and so little
about thy brother, 1 will give thee thy saint's
day only once in four years. And to thee,
Nicolas, for having acted as thou didst, I will
give four saint's days each year."

That is why St. Cassian's Day falls on the 29th
of February, in leap year, and St, Nicolas has a
saint's day each quarter.

Such is the peasant's interpretation of Christian
morality. And is it not suggestive that the
greatest novelist of our time, and a man of such
vast intelligence as Count Leo Tolstoi, in making
his attempt to found a purely ethical religion,
formulates his views by referring the educated
classes to the gospel as it is understood by the
moujik ?

Since I do not in the least presume to sketch
anything like a full picture of our people's moral
physiognomy, I shall stop here. My sole object
has been to show that our peasantry, on the whole,
as it has entered into political life and freedom
after centuries of internal growth, presents a race
with highly developed social instincts and many
elements promising further progress ; and that the
feelings of deep respect, sometimes of enthusiastic

THE MOUJIKS AT HOME. 14?

admiration, which the Russian democrats feel
for the peasantry, are not devoid of foundation.

These feelings may often have been exag-
gerated, especially of old, when the two classes for
the first time came into close contact. But excess
of idealisation and sentimentality have become
matters of history. They were destroyed by the
rough touch of reality ; and the mighty figure of
the hero of the plough has lost nothing by being
stripped of tinsel. Hewn in unpolished stone, he
looks better than when robed in marble. The
charm of his strength, dauntless courage, and
his moral character is strengthened by the
thrilling voice of pity for the overwhelming, the
indescribable sufferings of this childlike giant.
A passion for Equality and Fraternity is and
will ever be the strongest, we may say the only
strong social feeling in Russia. It is by no
means the privilege of " Nihilists," or advanced
parties of any kind ; it is shared by the enormous
majority of our educated classes.

Man is a sociable being. He yearns to attach
himself to something vaster than a family, having
a longer existence than his immediate sur-
roundings. The feeling in which this yearning
finds its commonest and easiest expression is

148 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

patriotism, embracing the whole of the nation,
the State and the people being blended into one.
For us Russians, no such blending is possible.
The crimes, the cruelties, equalled only by the
folly, of those who are representing Russia as a
State, stand there to prevent it.

No, no true Russian can ever wish Godspeed
to the Government of his country. And yet we
Russians are most ardent patriots. We have no
attachment to our birthplace or any particular
locality. But we love our people, our race, as
intensely and organically as the Jews. And we
are almost as incapable of getting thoroughly
acclimatised in any other nation. In describing
Russia's real and not fictitious glories, in speak-
ing when in an expansive mood about his
country's probable future and the service she
is likely to render to mankind, a Russian can
startle a Chauviniste of the grande nation. Yes,
we are certainly patriotic. Only our patriotism
runs entirely towards the realisation of the
democratic ideal. The idea of country is em-
bodied for us not in our State but in our people,
in the moujiks and in those various elements
which make the 'moujiks' cause our own. Our
hopes, our devotion, our love, and that irresistible

THE MOUJIKS AT HOME. 149

idealism which stimulates to great labour, all that
constitutes the essence of patriotism, with us is
democratic.

In the following chapters I will relate how our
popular notions of morality and justice bore the
test of adversity ; what was the form assumed in
villages by the corrosive elements, and how the
people defended their traditional ideals of life.

We will begin by briefly sketching the ten-
dencies of the purely political elements newly
introduced into Russian village life, as they are
more circumscribed in their action and far less
widespread than the economical.

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT.

CHAPTER I.

As soon as the government had earnestly set its
mind on the emancipation of the serfs, the all-
important questions had to be faced, as to how
all these millions of newly-made citizens should
be managed and kept in order ; and how they
should be made to pay the price of their re-
demption to the lords of the manors, and the
taxes to the State ? The bureaucratic commission
appointed for the settlement of this great problem
of the Emancipation, with usual bureaucratic fore-
sight and profundity, at first proposed that to the
former seigneurs should be entrusted the admini-
stration, the justice, and the police of the rural
districts.

This would have been neither more nor less
than a re-instatement, only in another form, of
serfdom — a joke made all the more dangerous in
that there was but too much reason to anticipate
bitter disappointments on the part of the people
on many other points connected with their libera-

154 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

tion. Fortunately for itself, the Government
listened to wiser counsel, offered by local commit-
tees, and the press, which pointed to the village
communes as to natural and long-established insti-
tutions standing ready to their hand and existing
throughout the country. The village commune
was preserved. The open-air meetings of all the
peasants, the mir, were acknowledged as the chief
authority both in the village commune and in the
rural volost or district, an administrative unit
embracing a few village communes.

But here most puzzling questions of detail
presented themselves to the minds of the St.
Petersburg legislators. Notwithstanding the
benevolent regard for the peasants which pre-
vailed at this epoch in the highest governmental
circles, our lawgivers could not admit that the
mir might be left just as they found it. It was
more than the most refined bureaucratic mind
could digest — the mir and the tchin I It was
as though two cultures, two different worlds, we
may almost say two different types of human
nature, as strongly individualized as they were
antipathetic, had suddenly been brought face to face.

What is a tchtnovnik? It is a man convinced
that were it not for his " prescriptions," " instruc-

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. i?5

tions," and " enjoinments " the world would go
all askew, and the people would suddenly begin
to drink ink instead of water, to put their breeches
on their heads instead of on their legs, and to
commit all sorts of other incongruities. As all
his life is passed from his most tender youth
upward in offices, amidst heaps of scribbled papers,
in complete isolation from any touch with real
life, the tchinovnik understands nothing, has
faith in nothing but these papers. He is as
desperately sceptical as regards human nature as
a monk, and does not trust one atom to men's
virtue, honesty, or truthfulness. There is nothing
in the world which can be relied upon but
scribbled papers, and he is their votary.

Such an institution as the mir — a self-governing
body with no trace of hierarchy or distinction of
ranks, wielding an authority so extensive that in
its own sphere of action it might be called un-
limited, and at the same time wishing for no
record of its proceedings, confiding in people's
good faith and the infallible guidance of such a
thing as collective conscience and wisdom — such
an institution as the mir, to the mind of a
tchinovmk, must have appeared incoherent, in-
comprehensible, almost contrary to the laws of

156 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

nature. It was his most sacred duty to bring
order into this chaos.

Every Russian village commune elects its elder
or mayor, who is by virtue of his office its
spokesman and delegate before the authorities.
In the village itself the elder is neither the chief
nor even the primus inter pares, but simply the
trusted servant and executor of the orders of the
mir. The mir discusses and regulates every-
thing that falls within its narrow and simple
sphere of action, leaving hardly anything to the
discrimination and judgment of its agent. So
simple and subordinate are the elder's duties, that
any peasant, provided he be neither a drunkard
nor a thief, is eligible for the post. In many
villages, in order to avoid discussion, the office of
elder is filled in turn by all the members of the
mir. As the eldership brings the peasant into
frequent, almost daily, contact with the adminis-
tration, which involves him in endless trouble and
annoyance, peasants show very little ambition
to fill the office. Much persuasion, sometimes
remonstrance and abuse, are necessary before an
honest peasant, who has not the feathering of his
nest in view at the expense of the commune, can
be induced to accept this post of honour.

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 157

Some writers — Mr. Mackenzie Wallace among
them — in describing Russian village life, wonder
at this strange lack of political ambition. I think
it only too natural : our moujiks have not studied
the history of Rome, Athens, and other republics,
nor do they so much as suspect the existence
of great municipalities such as London, Paris,
or New York. No obsequious imagination
suggests to them flattering analogies, and they
cannot see that the proffered dignity is anything
but a double servitude — to the mir on the one
hand and to the administration on the other
with no room whatever for the proud self-assertion
which gives the charm of office to the gifted ; a
burden and a public work, differing from those of
mending the roads, digging wells, or transporting
Government freights only in so far that it is
more trying and more troublesome.

Now, in modifying the system of rural self-
government the St. Petersburg tchinovniks were
inspired to transform this very modest and
humble village elder into a diminutive tchinovnik,
created in their own image and likeness. The
task was not without its difficulties. The elder
was as a rule deficient in the most essential
qualification for his profession — he could not

158 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

write! It was therefore necessary that he should
be provided with a secretary, who could inscribe
the paper to which he should affix his seal or his
cross. This important person, the clerk, was
generally a perfect stranger to the village, a man
picked up from the streets. As the law must
needs give him extensive powers, it was all the
more desirable that he should be easily controlled.
Our legislators proved equal to their task ; for
they blessed our villagers with a system of law-
court proceedings which would do honour to
much bigger places. To give some idea of their
method, suffice it to say that the clerk of the
volost is bound to supply his office with no less
than sixty-five different registers, wherein to keep
a record of the sixty-five various papers he has
to issue daily, monthly, or quarterly. This was
pushing their solicitude for the welfare of the
countrymen rather too far, and taxing the clerk's
powers rather too highly. In some of the larger
volosts one man does not suffice for the task, and
the peasants are compelled to maintain two, nay,
even three clerks. It is needless to add that such
a complication of legal business can in no way
keep an adroit clerk in check nor prevent the
abuse of his power. The opposite is rather the

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 1 159

case. The figure cut by the pissar or clerk in the
annals of our new rural local government is a
most unseemly one indeed. In its earlier period
it was decidedly its blackest point.

The Government has undoubtedly had a hand
in making the pissar such a disreputable character,
by expressly prohibiting the engagement for this
office of men of good education, — for fear of a
revolution. All who have completed their studies
at a gymnasium (college), much more those who
have attended a high school, are precluded from
filling this post. Only the more ignorant, those
who have been expelled from college or who
have never passed farther than through a primary
school, have been trusted to approach the pea-
santry at such close quarters. Being generally
self-seekers, and not particularly high-minded,
they easily turned the peculiar position in which
they were placed to their own advantage. The
pissar, the interpreter of the law, and, more often
than not, the only literate man in the district,
could practically do whatever he chose. The
elder, his nominal chief, in whom the word law
inspired the same panic that it did in the breast
of every other peasant, and who was quite
bewildered by the bureaucratic complication of his

160 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

new administrative duties, was absolutely helpless
in thzflissar's hands.

The elders could, however, find ample com-
pensation for this kind of involuntary dependence,
in the consciousness of the power they wielded
over the rest of the villagers. At the present
day they are really chiefs and masters. To the
elders of both grades was granted the right of
imposing fines, to the extent of one rouble at
a time ; also the right to imprison or to impose
compulsory labour, for a period not exceeding two
days, on any member of their respective communes
or volost. This " at their own discretion and
without appeal," for any word, or act, or slight
which they might consider derogatory to their
dignity, such as omission to take off a hat before
them, etc., of which there have been instances in
recent times.

Neither with regard to the mir as a whole,
may the elder's rights be lightly trifled with. In
them is vested the exclusive right of convening
meetings of the commune or the volost. A
meeting assembled without their authorization is
declared illegal, its resolutions void, and its con-
veners liable to severe penalties. By withdrawing
from a meeting the elder can break it up when-

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 161

ever he considers that the debate is taking an
unlawful turn. Thus the elder, though elected by
popular vote, when once confirmed in his office
becomes, for all practical purposes, the master of
the body which elected him. A strange sort of
local government cejtainly, though by no means
an exceptional one under an autocracy. The
local governments granted to our provinces in
1864, and to our towns in 1871, are modelled
on exactly the same pattern. In both the chair-
man has more power than the body he presides
over ; an arrangement which has, as is well
known, deprived both the provincial and the
municipal governments of all vitality.

It is interesting to observe that in the villages
the same trick did not produce this same effect.
There the legislation met with an ancient custom
of collective communal life and local government
which no ukaz could uproot. True that in the
last twenty years great corruption had crept in,
even in the case of village government. But this
was due to the internal economical decomposition
of the village commune, which divided the inhabi-
tants into two camps, the one composed of a
knot of rich people, and the other of a mass of
proletarians and beggars. The law then became

II

162 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

a ready-made channel for the manifestations of
the new anti-social elements, but not its direct
cause.

So long as the process of the economical dis-
integration of the peasantry remains in an inci-
pient state, as also in the thousands of communes
which have until the present time preserved their
original economical character, the bureaucratic
prescriptions of the law remain a dead letter.
The mir keeps to the traditional forms of local
government. The elders, too, imbued with these
traditions just as much as are their fellow-peasants,
never think of making use of the strange powers
reposed in them by the State. They remain in
the subordinate and modest position formerly
assigned to them — the " mirs men," to use our
people's own expression.

It fared far worse with the other series of
manipulations introduced into rural government,
and which formed the natural supplement to
those just dealt with.

Local village government had as yet to be
linked in hierarchical order with the whole of
the administrative machine of the State. After
having created, in the midst of the once demo-
cratic villages, a sort of tchint it was necessary to

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 163

discover another tchin to which to subject the
newly-founded one.

The government, in the honeymoon of its
liberalism, acted with sense and discretion in
entrusting this function to the mediators, officers
nominated conjointly by the ministry and by the
election of the citizens. These mediators, elected
from among the liberal and really well-intentioned
part of the nobility, exercised their authority with
moderation and wisdom, not so much as regarded
subjection to the control of the mir, which was
perfectly equal to its task, but to protect it from
the abuses and malversations of the local police
and its pissars.

Since 1863, the year of the Polish Insurrection,
which marks the point at which our Government
adopted a policy of reaction, the state of things
has changed considerably. The Government then
threw all the weight of its authority into the scale
with the party of the " planters," as the obdurate
advocates of serfdom were, in 1861, christened.
The whole administration changed sides, and
Russia has since seen mediators who have used
their powers in order to compel the peasants to
gratuitously do all sorts of work on their estates ;
who have publicly flogged the elders — mocking

164 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

at the law, which exempted them from corporal
punishment, by first degrading them from their
office, and then restoring to them the attributes
of their dignity after they have been flogged.

The regular bondage of the mir began, how-
ever, a few years later. From 1868 down to 1874,
when the office of the mediators was entirely
suppressed, the mir gradually passed under the
supreme command of the ispravnik, i.e., the
superintendents of the local police.

The peasants' bitterest enemy could not have
made a worse choice.

A police officer — we are speaking now of the
common police, charged with the general mainten-
ance of order and the putting down of common
offenders — is a tchin in the administrative
hierarchy like all the others. But between him
and a paper-scribbling tchin of the innumerable
Government offices, there is as wide a difference
as between a decent, peaceful Chinese, votary of
his ten thousand commandments, and a brutal
and fierce Mogul of Jenghiz — though both have
beardless faces and oblique eyes. A police tchin
is our man of action. With him the instrument
of command is not the pen, but the fist, the rod,
and the stick. He breaks more teeth and flays

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 165

more backs than he issues papers. As regards
other people's property, tchins of all denomina-
tions hold the same somewhat strange views. But
whilst the scribbling tchin cheat and swindle, the
police tchin ransack and extort like Oriental
pachas.

In the villages, amongst the moujiks, who will
suffer to the uttermost before "going to law,'1
the police can afford to go to any extreme short
of open homicide and arson. The function of
tax collector alone, which, after the Emancipation,
was entrusted to the police, offered a vast field for
interference, abuse, and oppression, and of these
the early zemstvos often complain. When the
ispravniks were charged with the chief control
of the rural administration, and could at their
pleasure, and by way of disciplinary punishment,
indict, fine, and imprison both the district and
commual elders, self-government by the peasants,
as such, was practially abolished. It could exist
only as far and in so much as the police chose
to tolerate it. " The ispravniks, thanks to the
powers they have received, have transformed
the elected officers of the rural government, the
elders, into their submissive servants, who are
more dependent on them than are even the

1 66 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

soldiers of the police-stations," — that is the state-
ment made by the most competent authorities
on the subject, the members of the zemstvos.
(Russian Courier, Nov. 8th, 1884.)

The village communes have become for the
country police a permanent source of income,
often levied in a way which reminds one forcibly
of the good old days of serfdom. Thus, in the
circular issued by the Minister of the Interior on
March 29th, 1880, we find the significant confession
that, "according to the reports accumulated in
the offices of the ministry," the country police
officers, profiting by their right to have one
orderly to run their errands, were in the habit of
taking from forty to fifty such orderlies from the
communes under their command, whom they
used as their house and fee Id labourers. In some
cases the communes, instead of this tribute of
gratuitous labour, paid a regular tribute of money
(called obror by former serfs), amounting in
some provinces, according to the same authority,
to from forty thousand to sixty thousand roubles
a year per province.

CHAPTER II.

THE stanovois and ispravniks are the menials
of the provincial administration. Set over them
are the Governors of the Provinces, with the
Governors-General of regions containing several
Provinces, both surrounded by a swarm of
tchinovniks, attached to their persons, or grouped
on "boards," "chambers," or "courts of justice "
of various denominations. They do not come
into direct contact with the moujiks, unless in
exceptional cases, and by means of a few special
officers.

In these higher grades of the administration,
the chief means possessed by the servants of the
public for enriching themselves at the expense of
the peasantry assume a more refined form than
that of petty bribery, and are at the same time
far more profitable. They are the embezzlement
of land.

I will pass over all the common everyday
malversations of which the peasants are victims.

168 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Those I will take as a matter of course ; but I
will devote a few pages to describing this peculiar
mode of plunder because it is practised on the
largest scale by the whole of the Russian official
world, from petty clerks up to the Governors,
Governors-General, Ministers, and courtiers, both
male and female.

The Provinces of those vast oriental regions
bordered by the steppes of Central Asia have
grown particularly famous of late, by reason of
the extensive and bare-faced embezzlement of the
land. The land there is plentiful ; the bulk of the
population consists of alien tribes, who know next
to nothing of Russian law or even of the Russian
tongue, Russian being nevertheless the language
in which all official documents are drawn up.

The tchinovniks are all-powerful here, and
practically beyond control, so enormous are the
distances from the Central Government. They
can and they do profit by these opportunities, and
permanently improve their private fortunes by
robbing the people of the land, their sole valuable
possession.

For the edification of those who indulge in
singing paeans to Russia's mission of civilization
to the barbaric tribes of Asia, it must be observed

PA TERNAL GO VERNMENT.

that these services are not without their draw-
backs. The Russian advance in these regions
presents two markedly different stages. The
first, which follows immediately upon the conquest
or the peaceful annexation, shows the Russian
rule in a most favourable light. Order is
established, slavery and brigandage disappear,
as do also the distinctions of race ; laws are made
equal for all, and respect to them enforced with
severity tempered by justice. The best men of
the Empire, such as Count Perovsky, Mouravieff
of the Amour, Tcherniaeff, Kaufmann, in all of
whom ambition is stronger than cupidity, are sent
to administer the newly-annexed territories.
They generally defend the natives as far as they
can even against Russian officials, and the hosts
of adventurers and swindlers who follow in the
rear of a conquering army.

During this period the Russian settlers are
almost exclusively peasants, who are invited and
encouraged to migrate into the newly-acquired
country, in order to give Russia a stronger
footing there. The Russian moujiks never fail
to answer to such an appeal. The word " free
land " produces a magic effect on them, and they
constantly stream in all directions where such

i;o THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

treasure is to be found. Thousands of Russian
villages have quite recently been founded on the
Amour, on the enormous plains of Southern
Siberia, among the Bashkirs, Khirghis, and
Kalmuks of the Unfa, Orenburgh, and Samara
Provinces, of which we shall shortly have to
speak. Often the colonists precede the con-
querors, penetrating into neighbouring countries
scores of years before the armies. The annexa-
tion merely increases this movement. But in
these parts land is plentiful — nobody suffers from
the intrusion. The peasants take only so much
land as they can till with their own hands, never
appropriating one acre more. Furthermore, they
rarely decline to enter into a friendly compromise
with the natives.

Whilst the government of Siberia had to resort
to the most drastic measures, such as the knout
and hard labour, to prevent the nobility and rich
merchants from converting the natives into slaves,
the peasants of the Provinces of Astrakhan or
Samara or Orenburg often paid a yearly tribute in
money or in goods to the nomads whose lands
they had appropriated. The rent in these districts
is, however, so low, and the chances of receiving
it so small, that neither the tchinovnik nor the

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT.

capitalists feel tempted to acquire estates. The
husbandmen of both nationalities have thus
plenty of land for tillage.

The position changes when the increase of
population has considerably raised the value of
land and diminished the amount to be disposed of.
By this time the province has become solidly
incorporated with the rest of the Empire, re-
quiring neither particular ability nor care in its
administration. The men of talent, ambition, and
energy are attracted to other fields. Their posts
are filled by commonplace tchinovniks, who start
a new mode of " Russifying " and " benefiting "
the country — by taking the land from both the
natives and their own countrymen, the Russian
colonists, with perfect impartiality.

This spoliation of land is going on everywhere,
even in Siberia. For this we have the testimony
of Yadrinzeff, who is our best authority on
Siberian matters ; though in this enormous desert,
covered with ice and marshes and impenetrable
brush-wood, the plunder is of necessity confined
to those few districts more thickly populated than
the rest. On the Siberian main, with its one
inhabitant to every three square kilometers — two
square miles (English) — the land is as yet free.

172 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

The peasantry know of neither rent nor communal
property : each husbandman takes as much land
as he can find and can cultivate. But in other
colonies and regions more favoured by nature the
robbery of land is perpetrated on a very large,
sometimes gigantic scale, and is the chief specula-
tion of the tchiiiovniks, their relatives, and their
hangers-on, as well as of their St. Petersburg
protectors.

Thus in the vast provinces of Uffa and Oren-
burg, which together cover an area equal to that
of the United Kingdom — the officials with their
numerous retinue have, in the period between
1873 to 1879, by force and fraud embezzled no
less than five million acres of the best arable
land and timber wood of those districts.

The whole operation was carried out with all
the appearance of legality, and was screened
behind the plausible pretext of the " Russifica-
tion " of the Provinces and " the improvement
of their industries." With this object in view
the officials asked and obtained permission to
sell the land " unoccupied by peasants of any
race," "on easy terms," to officials "who have
merited such favour by their faithful services to
the State."

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 173

As a matter of fact, only one item of that fable
was true : the terms were the easiest imaginable,
as excellent arable land, besides timber wood,
which in these parts costs from fifty to one
hundred roubles (a rouble is worth about two
shillings) a dessiatine, were sold to the officials
for merely nominal prices, varying from eight
shillings down to tenpence a dessiatine, payable
over long periods, varying from ten up to thirty-
seven years. All the rest of the tale was an
impudent falsehood and farce.

The land officially designated as free for
occupation had generally been owned for gene-
rations, either by native Bashkir villagers or by
Russians who had migrated years ago from the
interior Provinces. It was precisely this fact
which made these estates particularly attractive
to the officials, as it enabled them to turn an
honest penny. A certain Yusefovitch bought
an estate of 1,017 dessiatines (a dessiatine is equal
to 2 "] acres) for 4,804 roubles, and resold it to
the peasants for 25,000 roubles. Another
estate, for which 506 roubles were paid to the
crown, was resold a few days later to the resident
peasants for 15,000 roubles. A third Govern-
ment official bought an estate for two roubles per

174 1HE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

dessiatine, and immediately let it to its occupants,
at a rental of twelve roubles a year per dessiatine!

Of course but few of the peasants were able
to pay such a heavy ransom for their own land.
And for those who could not pay there was the
sole alternative : either to be evicted or to accept
a sort of serfdom, i.e., to work gratuitously on the
estates of their new landlords as remuneration for
that small portion of land which he vouchsafed
to leave in their hands. Thus was the bulk of
the rural population of these Provinces almost
totally ruined, reduced to beggary and indigence,
and decimated by hunger.

In distributing these iniquitous gifts, the
administration in most cases could not even
put forward any services rendered to the State
(i.e., useless scribbling for regularly paid salaries)
as a pretext. A private person, a teacher, who
was not so much as a member of the civil service,
paid nine hundred roubles for an estate which he
immediately resold for 15,000. Two gymnasts
bought each an estate of 1,000 dessiatines for
2,000 roubles, to be paid over thirty -seven years,
whilst both relet their land at once for 900
roubles per year.

There was no limit to the favouritism shown

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 175

by the uncontrollable administration. A father
received an estate of 6,000 dessiatines ; whilst to
his daughters 1,000 each were allotted, and to
his sons 2,000 each. The son married ; his wife's
relatives were endowed with an estate. The
next to marry was a daughter — her husband
received an estate, and his family another.

The contagion of this land hunger spread
far beyond the sphere of Uffa and Orenburg
officialdom. Scores of tckinovniks flocked from
St Petersburg and other quarters, probably
armed with good introductions, and, after having
" served " in the Provinces two or three years
received their rewards in the form of splendid
estates of from two to three thousand dessiatines
and upwards, in the most fertile parts of the
country, on the shores of big, navigable rivers.

The Ministry of the Interior, then presided over
by Count Valueff, at last grew jealous of the
privileges enjoyed by the Governor-General who
had such an Eldorado to dispose of, and ended by
distributing estates on its own account to its own
favourites. When the senatorial revision of
1879, called forth by all these scandalous corrup-
tions, began its investigations, several of the
highest officers of the imperial court and Govern-

1 76 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

merit hastened to voluntarily resign their ill-gotten
riches in order to avoid judicial proceedings.

It was rumoured that even the Minister of the
Interior, Valueff, had had a finger in the pie.
The reporters of German and English newspapers
communicated news to that effect abroad, and the
minister was indeed dismissed shortly after. The
Russian press, however, in spite of this, received
the following significant secret order, dated 4th
October, 1881 : — " In some foreign periodicals it
has been stated that Count P. A. Valueff has been
implicated in the prosecutions now proceeding for
misappropriation of land in the Orenburg region.
The head board of management of the press depart-
ment requests that the papers will not circulate,
nor so much as mention these reports." Thus
were these rumours suppressed without being so
much as denied.

A no less conspicuous part in the wholesale
peculation of land in the Uffa and Orenburg Pro-
vinces was played by the forcible or fraudulent
" purchase " of land from the natives by the
officials themselves, or with their active conni-
vance. To show to what an impudent extent
this legalized robbery was pushed one illustration
will suffice.

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 177

In 1873 f°ur l°cal capitalists joined in purchas-
ing from the Bashkir peasants 30,000 dessiatines
of land, lying on the shores of the Uffa river, for
the sum of 21,000 roubles, on condition that if it
were afterwards found that there was more land in
the estate than was specified in the agreement, they,
the buyers, should have no further sum to pay.

(Such strange clauses as this are to be found in
most agreements of this description, because the
Bashkirs are easily cheated in the measurement
of land.)

This agreement was, as usual, guaranteed by
an enormous fine of 150,000 roubles. It was
presented, as prescribed by law, for examination
to the mediator, the immediate chief and pro-
tector of the peasants of his district, who approved
of it and handed it on to head quarters, the Civil
Board of Uffa, for registration. It was duly
registered, and the four sharks formally invested
with the right of ownership.

But at this point the Bashkirs "rebelled," and
refused to fulfil their part of the engagement, and
sent their men to lodge complaints in various
quarters. After a "long series of charges," the
Governor-General resolved to send a special
Inspector to the spot to enquire into the case.

12

178 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

This Inspector chanced to be an honest man,
who investigated the matter fairly, and reported :
first, that the estate purchased comprised full
70,000 dessiatines ; and secondly that it included
splendid timber wood, which in these parts was
worth no less than one hundred roubles a dessia-
tine. He discovered, moreover, as was natural,
that the Bashkirs were quite unwilling to part
with their property on such terms, and that the
agreement to sell it had been extorted from them
by threats, and under compulsion.

The mediator, their immediate superior, and the
magistrate of the district, had ordered them to
sign it, and had also arrested and removed from
the village, "for disobedience and calumny against
men in office," the twenty-four householders who
had protested and absolutely declined to put their
hands to the agreement. In conclusion, the
Inspector reported that in acknowledgment of
their services both the mediator and the magis-
trate had received small estates from their grateful
clients.

The mediators and the magistrates were not
the only officials who lent themselves to these
disgraceful practices. Persons who held higher
berths in the provincial government did the same.

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 179

Members of the Governor- General's Privy Coun-
cil, who enjoyed the full confidence of the chief
of the department, and through him held command
over the police, " persuaded " the Bashkirs to sell
their land to various persons on terms similar to
those quoted above, and acquired on their own
account about 30,000 dessiatines of land, mostly
rich in timber wood.

A certain Shott, father-in-law of Cholodkovsky,
chief of the Civil Service Department, acquired
by similar " purchases " 50,000 dessiatines of
land. Threats, extortions, imprisonment, and
open violence were resorted to for crushing
obstinate resistance. The officers most directly
responsible for the protection of the peasantry
from malversation and injustice, the mediators
and the members of the Peasants' Court of Justice,
had the largest share in this wholesale plunder.

A special commissioner, a General and chamber-
lain to the Emperor, Burnasheff, was sent from
St. Petersburg in 1874 for the purpose of
revising the Uffa Civil Board. He reported
that everything was as it should be there. But
it was afterwards discovered that he had himself
"purchased" an estate of 20,000 dessiatines for
40,000 roubles in the Belebeef district, with the

i8o THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

usual prescription of 80,000 roubles in case of
the non-fulfilment of the agreement. This trans-
action was, however, annulled by the Senate in
1878.

The total number of agreements of this com-
plexion registered by the Uffa Civil Board up to
the time of the arrival of the Senatorial Inquiry
Commission was one hundred and twelve ; and
the area of land covered by them was nothing less
than one million dessiatines, or 2,700,000 acres.

The Senatorial Inquiry Commission sent into
these Provinces by special order of the Emperor
annulled some of the most scandalous of these
legalized robberies, whilst some of the highest
officials returned to the crown the estates they
had received, declaring their ignorance of the
injustice done to the peasantry who had pre-
viously held it. But the enormous majority of
these land-robbers were not so sensitive about
their reputations, and contrived to keep their
booty. This has been revealed by the agrarian
disturbances which occurred in these Provinces
some three years later, in 1882, and which ex-
tended over four districts.

The Bashkirs of the Province of Uffa have
been despoiled of their land definitely and irre-

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 181

trievably. The Governor-General, Kryshanovsky,
who had headed the band of robbers, was dis-
missed; other officials got off with a "reprimand;"
no one was indicted before a regular tribunal.
Even this rebuke, however mild, was caused by
the absolute want of discretion and moderation
shown on the part of the robbers themselves,
who in the fever of greed forgot all moderation
and caution ; and made the Uffa malversations
a byword to the whole Russian Press.

In the neighbouring province of Samara, which
lies on the left shore of the Middle Volga, and
covers an area three times as large as Switzerland,
the Administration has done exactly the same
thing, without incurring any annoyance. The
ethnographical and economical conditions of these
two contiguous regions are pretty much the
same, the northern part of the Samara plain,
the Bagulminsk district, being chiefly populated by
Bashkirs, the southern by Russian colonists, with
a sprinkling of native Mordvas and Kalmuks,
the latter mostly keeping to a nomadic state.

Twenty years ago the land was so plentiful
in these parts that the peasants could rent from
the crown or from the native nomads as much
as they chose for from ten to fifteen kopecks a

182 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

dessiatine. During the last twenty to twenty-five
years things have gradually changed. The land
was despoiled by officials and the private indivi-
duals whom they favoured. Up to 1881 the
total amount of land thus abstracted from the
Russian settlers amounted to about 700,000
dessiatines, or 1,890,000 acres. Enormous tracts
of land were taken from the Kalmuks by means
of sham purchases, more vile even than those
practised upon the agricultural Bashkirs. The
spoliation was effected gradually and cautiously,
but the final result was the same. The Samara
peasantry, prosperous in bygone days, is now
one of the most wretched and hunger-stricken.
Famine is of constant recurrence in this Pro-
vince, the most terrible being those of 1878 and
1 88 1, when, in some villages, one- fourth of the
whole population died from starvation. In the
same years millions of puds of corn were ex-
ported from the Province by the landlords, who
battened on the land which had been robbed from
the people.

If we skip the Province of Astrakhan, composed
mostly of saline sands, where nothing can be
got to grow and which are not worth robbing,
we shall find ourselves in the Caucasus — the gem

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 183

of nature, the country which disputes with the
valley of the Euphrates the glory of having
been the place chosen for the earthly Paradise
of tradition. Our great poets and novelists,
Pushkin, Lermontoff, Tolstoi, owe many of their
best inspirations to the snowclad Caucasus, and
they have all contributed to render familiar and
dear to the Russians its sumptuous, grand, and
grim character, as well as its noble, simple, and
chivalrous inhabitants.

Nowadays, though as poetical as ever, the
Caucasus has ceased to be the country of romance.
Its warlike mountaineers are subdued; the country
is peaceful ; the Hadji Abrecks, the Kazbitchs,
the Ismail Beys, the Abrecks, the terror of the
valleys, are no longer to be met with there in living
flesh and blood. These heroes of the( poniard
and scimitar have disappeared under forty years
of uncontested Russian rule, and in the natural
course of things have been supplanted by robbers,
who may very possibly be as mischievous as they,
but who certainly have nothing of romance or
poetry left about them. The plunder of the State
and of the people as regards their landed wealth
(we will confine ourselves to this question here),
by the Caucasian Administration and its proteges.

1 84 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

combines the characteristics of both the Uffa
and the Samara robberies.

It is as extensive and bare-faced as in the first-
named Province, and as safe as in the last.
The Caucasus is administered, not by a simple
Governor-General but by a grandee of a much
higher grade, a lieutenant who is, with rare ex-
ceptions, a Grand Duke, brother or uncle of
the Czar. Nothing need be feared behind such
a screen. Moreover, the dangers and difficulties
of the conquest of the Caucasus, though they
ceased to exist some thirty-eight years ago, still
furnish a good pretext for the distribution of
sinecures.

In this fabulously rich country the Government
owns vast tracts of land, forests, mines of priceless
value, and mineral springs classed under four
hundred and eleven "heads" in the official list,
which, however, bring to the exchequer next to
nothing — at the outside an average of seventy-
three roubles per estate. The reason for this is
very simple : the greatest number, two hundred
and fifty-five out of four hundred and eleven, are
given to tchinovniks almost free of charge. In
the Province of Kutais an estate comprising 2,000
dessiatines of arable land was let to a tchinovnik for

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 185

ten roubles or, £1, a year. In the Viliet district
of the same Province, 1,000 dessiatines of arable
land were let to another man at a rental of
twenty-five roubles per annum ; and so on.
(Slovo 1880, VII.)

During the same period, from 1866 to 1875, tne
administration disposed of about 100,000 dessia-
tines of land, from which its former inhabitants,
the Circassians, had been expelled with fire and
sword. Of this, 23,000 dessiatines were distributed
amongst the military, and 26,000 amongst mem-
bers of the Civil Service, whilst 50,000 were sold
at merely nominal prices to a lot of speculators
who obtained the protection of the administration.

In the vicinity of Baku lies the land containing
the petroleum springs, which is valued at from
25,000 to 60,000 roubles a dessiatine. After the
abolition of the power of sale by auction of some
of the State revenue, this land was declared
inalienable. Yet General Staroselsky, Prince
Withenstein, and Prince Amilakhvary were each
presented with ten dessiatines of this most valua-
ble land. The Princess of Gagarine, wife of the
Governor of the Province of Kutais, received five
dessiatines of petroleum land, which she exchanged
for 7,000 dessiatines of ordinary arable land in the

1 86 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Province ot Stavropol. Other five dessiatines of
this same land were granted to the Princess
Orbeliany. Full forty-five dessiatines were pre-
sented to the members of the Caucasian Civil
Service for their relief fund. At the time to
which all these statements refer, the short liberal
respite of 1881, when the press was permitted to
allude to such subjects, it was proposed to dis-
tribute the greater part of the forest covering the
shores of the Black Sea in Abkhasia amongst the
members of the Civil Service.

Our story will never draw to a close if we
attempt to mention all that came to light in this
question of land-robbery in the border provinces
alone.

And how about the central provinces ? Are
the peasants dwelling there guaranteed at least
against this form of oppression ? Not quite, —
though of course nothing like the wholesale theft
going on in the border lands is possible here.
In the interior, land is taken by instalments, a bit
here and a bit there. The chief means employed
to this end are legal chicanery and litigations, in
which all the advantages are on the side of the
great people, especially if they are members
of the local administration. Since the Emanci-

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 187

pation, hundreds of thousands of dessiatines
have been niched from the peasantry by means
of thousands of these lawsuits, which differ
from open robbery only in name. The highest
dignitary of the empire and the noble aristocrats
themselves have not recoiled before such methods
of enrichment. Count Dmitry Tolstoy, the
minister, has despoiled the peasants on his Riazan
possessions of their land ; Count Sheremeteff is
doing the same thing with the forty-two villages
of the Gorbatov district, the inhabitants of which,
to the number of 8,000 souls, were formerly his
lerfs.

The Tartars of the Crimea are still struggling
for their strip of land with Count Mordvinoff.
It is no uncommon thing for the despotic powers
of the administration to be called upon to
facilitate the success of these lawsuits. Thus,
for instance, in No. 163 of the Russian Courier
for 1 88 1 we read that a peasant named Mikhailoff
of Novosilka, a village in the Birutch district,
Province Voroneje, was exiled by order of the
administration to the province of Archangel.
The offence alleged against him was that he
incited his fellow-villagers not to pay their taxes.
But the real facts of the case were as follows ;

r 88 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

— the peasants of the villages of Novosilka,
Podleska, and several others, had a lawsuit about
some land with the neighbouring landlords,
Sheglov, Sinelnikoff, and others. The peasant
Mikhailoff was chosen by the joint village mirs
as their delegate. He commenced operations
with great activity, and discovered documents
proving the injustice of the landlords' claims.
They thought it advisable to have him removed.
Cases of downright robbery are not wanting
either. The method generally adopted is, to forge
resolutions of the mir, ordering that the coveted
piece of land shall be yielded up. In No. 142
of the Russkia Vedomosty for 1881 the follow-
ing curious incident is recorded. In the Fatej
district of the Province of Kursk a certain lady,
Nikitina, sold to various persons eighty-three
dessiatines of land, which she of course stated to
be her own, for two hundred and fifteen roubles
a dessiatine. But when the new owners came to
take possession of their property, they found it
was occupied by the peasants of the village,
Archangelskoie, who on hearing the claims of
the new comers expressed the greatest surprise,
and, flatly refusing to yield the land, drove away
the intruders. At this Madame Nikitina applied

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 189

to the ispravnik, who sent the stanovoi to the
spot. This gentleman arrived at Archangelskoie
and having convened the peasants' mir began to
admonish them not to offer rebellious resistance.
The peasants answered unanimously that they had
no desire to rebel against anybody, but that they
would not give up the land, because it was their
own, and they had never sold it to Nikitina, nor
to anybody else, and knew nothing about the
matter.

An agreement to that purport existed, how-
ever, dated i$th September, 1878, and was
witnessed by a member of the Peasants' Court,
who gave testimony to the effect that he had
read this agreement before the mir, and was
told that everything was correct, after which the
deed was approved by the Peasants' Court, on
3Oth January, 1881, though it bore on the face of
it the evidence of being a forgery. It did not
bear the seal of the Archangelskoie mir, and it
was signed by a total stranger to the village —
the coachman of the member in question — and
was witnessed as genuine by three servants
of Madame Nikitina.

The Golos for the same year reported
several similar cases as having occurred in the

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

district of Balta, Province of Podolsk. Here the
very men in office actually appropriated a good
deal of peasants' land, by means of forged agree-
ments, which the communal clerks drew up in the
name of the mir by order of the mediators. One
of the mediators, in virtue of such an agreement,
received from the peasants as a Present three
hundred dessiatines of land, which constituted the
only means of subsistence for a whole village.
"It is easy to imagine," adds the correspondent,
" the despair of the peasants when they were told
that they had ' presented ' the mediator with the
only piece of arable land which they possessed."

Instances of such shameless abuses as these
are, according to the Golos, numerous in the
Province of Podolsk.

In other places, according to Novoe Vremya,
the communal clerks drew up fraudulent agree-
ments of this nature for their own benefit. In
the Starobelsk district, in 1881, the Novoaidarsk
Commune brought an action against their elder,
Russenoff, for appropriating 1,000 dessiatines of
communal land by means of a forged agreement
(Golos, 1881).

These are a few specimens selected from among
a heap of facts which the temporary relaxation

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 191

of the censorship of the press has enabled the
Russian newspapers to publish. Since 1882 we
have heard no more of them, this class of
publications being prohibited as inflammatory, and
calculated to " disturb the public mind." They
are considered seditious, and would involve severe
punishment by the censorship.

With regard to the misappropriation of land,
this is certainly not likely to diminish by the
withdrawal of even this slight check.

The peasants are pretty nearly defenceless
against the coalition of robbers. The official
control is little more than a mere fiction. The
central government depends necessarily on the in-
formation it receives from the tchinovniks, i.e., the
very accomplices or perpetrators of the robberies.
And when some tchinovnik of good position,
head of some board or governor of some province,
is not actively compromised by the misdeeds of
his subordinates, he screens them and conceals
their actions none the less when once committed,
because he is personally responsible to his
superiors for all which happens within his juris-
diction. The all-directing, all-controlling Auto-
cracy is a myth. The real Autocracy has long
been broken up into a series of petty despotisms

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

— a sort of feudalism, which reproduces in modern
Russia the same phenomenon discovered by the
historical school of economists as existing in
Western Europe in the middle ages, — the con-
version of political power into economical pre-
dominance, of which the robbery of the land from
the people is the most striking feature.

At the base of these operations, wherever
committed, lies brute force. The Russian
tchinovniks have at their disposal the military
forces of the State, which they are free to use
themselves, or to lend to any private person when
needed, to put down any resistance which the
peasants may offer to the appropriation of their
land by any one of the methods described above.
Rebellions of the peasantry, followed by " mili-
tary executions," having their origin in the
embezzlement of land, can be counted by the
score, though these events are rarely honoured
with more than a short and dry notice in the
newspaper chronicles of the day. Exceeding few
are allowed to be thoroughly investigated and
discussed. When some particularly gross abuse
committed against the peasants forces itself upon
the public notice and that of the higher ministerial
circles, it is the deliberate policy of the govern

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 193

ment, ministers and Czar included, to hush the
matter up as much and for as long as possible,
because, taking the Russian reading and thinking
public as it now is, nothing stirs it half so deeply
as do affairs of this nature.

Among dozens of scandalous trials for bribery,
embezzlement of the public funds, plunder in the
Ordnance Department, etc., which the Govern-
ment allowed to be heard in public, we remember
only one important case — that of the Governor
of the Province of Minsk, General Tokareff.
and the man associated with him, in which the
prosecution, followed by a public trial, was due to
the initiative of the Government. Other famous
" peasant cases," such as Count Bobrinsky's,
Prince Sherbatoffs, etc., only came to light owing
to some outrages committed by the peasants, who
appeared as the prosecuted party, the Govern-
ment exercising to the full its power over the
press to prevent these affairs from being well
thrashed out.

The Tokareff affair is a very instructive one. and
is well worth studying for more reasons than one.
It was tried before the fifth department of the
Senate in November 1881, though the offence
was committed in 1874. It took seven years

13

194 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

to make its circuitous way to the court, and it
was by a mere accident that it was not altogether
swamped on the way. The trial only began
in 1878, four years after the commission of the
crime. The chief offender, General Tokareff,
had by that time been promoted from the
governorship of the Province of Minsk to
the post of Special Commissioner of the Red
Cross in Bulgaria, and was, together with his
accomplice General Loshkareff, a member of the
Ministerial Council. The third hero in the
Loghishino affair, Colonel Kapger, had been
created Knight of the Order of Vladimir, and
he too was pursuing his noble career elsewhere.
The trio would probably have been left un-
molested to the present day had not two hostile
parties at the court of St. Petersburg broken
out into open strife.

The Trepoff-Shouvaloff-Potapoff Coalition, all-
powerful at the court before 1877, received a
severe blow by the Zassoulitch trial, which revealed
Trepoffs infamous brutalities. His numerous
opponents thought the moment most opportune
for entirely crushing the coalition by a new blow
and resolved to disinter the Loghishino affair,
which would compromise several of the gang

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 195

Four years previously Potapoff, then Governor-
General of the Lithuanian Provinces, had allowed
his follower and subordinate Tbkareff, then Gov-
ernor of the Province of Minsk, to take several
thousand dessiatines of land from the peasants of
Loghishino. The act was committed under pecu-
liarly aggravating circumstances, as the peasants
struggled hard for their property. They " re-
belled " several times, and were put down by a
liberal allowance of flogging, but did not give up
the fight. They lodged their complaint with the
Senate, and after two years of litigation succeeded
in 1876 in gaining their suit.

The Loghishino peasants, in so far as they re-
covered their property, were much more fortunate
than most of their fellow-victims. They never
thought, however, of taking further action against
their former Governor for his past offences. But
on this occasion Potapoffs adversaries, then in
the majority in the ministry, became unusually
alive to the people's wrongs. They brought the
matter before the first department of the Senate.
They fared badly in this, their first attack. The
Senate, where Potapoffs party was probably well
represented, opined thai the affair ought to be
concluded by a " reprimand " to Tokareff and

196 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

his accomplices. Then the ministers discussed
the matter at a cabinet council, and resolved to
report the affair to the Emperor. The document
wound up with the following remarkably bold and
novel truth : " We consider it to be the duty of
the Government to take severe and impartial
legal action in cases such as this, of misde-
meanour on the part of men in office." The
Emperor's hand traced the word " certainly "
opposite this sentence. Nevertheless the Potapoff
party for three years succeeded in preventing
the fulfilment of the Emperor's resolution. The
affair was not adjudicated until 1881.

It was not in vain that the two hostile parties
contended so bitterly — the one to bring it before
the public, the other to hush it up. The details
of the affair were sufficiently revolting to make it
an ideal battering-ram. The Province of Minsk, of
which Tokareff was Governor, forms a part of the
vast region to which converged the greed of the
Russian tchinovniks, until they discovered still
richer prey in the enormous eastern outskirts of
the empire. After the suppression of the Polish
insurrection of 1863-64, the Government confis-
cated a total area of 60,914 dessiatines of land
belonging to such landlords as had been implicated

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 19?

in patriotic conspiracies. These spoils of the
vanquished the Government threw as prey to its
officials, and especially to the bloodhounds who had
helped to quench the insurrection, — as the hunter
throws the remains of the skinned beast to his dogs.

This rich booty did not suffice to satisfy
the appetites of the crew When the best of the
landed property had been appropriated amongst
them, the tchinovniks began to plunder the peasants,
according to the common methods as practised
elsewhere. One of these tchinovniks was the
Governor of the Province of Minsk himself,
General Tokareff, who obtained from the Gover-
nor-General of the region, Potapoff, an estate of
3,000 dessiatines, yielding an income of about
9,000 roubles a year, for the sum of 14,000 roubles,
payable over twenty years. Tokareff 's vassal,
Sevastianoff, chairman of the Local Board of Minsk,
carved out this estate for him from the land which
belonged by right to the peasants of Loghishino.

It is evident that both Sevastianoff and
Tokareff committed this act of flagrant robbery
in full cognizance of the fact, though they denied
it before the tribunal. The Loghishino peasants
had been in possession of the land claimed by
Tokareff from time immemorial, and had never

198 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

paid an iota of rent to the Local Board. This
could hardly be ignored by the Chairman of the
Local Board, more especially as Loghishino
is only twenty-five miles distant from Minsk.
In addition to this, the peasants could show
ample documental evidence in support of their
rights, the best proof of which is the eventual
success of their suit before the Senate in 1876:
a charter from the King of Poland, and an
ukaz confirming their rights from the Russian
Senate. On being apprised of the impending
transfer of their land to their Governor, they sent
their deputies to the latter to explain to him
how the matter stood, and at the same time
forwarded the senatorial ukaz to SevastianofI
The Governor, however, refused to listen to any-
thing. As to the ukaz sent to Sevastianoff, it
mysteriously " disappeared " at the office, and
could never be recovered : in other words, it was
stolen either by Sevastianoff on behalf of the
Governor, or by his direction. When the Ministry
to which the Loghishino peasants appealed, upon
the failure of their applications at Minsk, applied
for information at Minsk upon the subject, to
the Minsk Local Government Board, Sevastianoff
replied that the peasants' claims were void of any

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 199

foundation, and that the land was unquestionably
State property, and that therefore there could
be no legal obstacle to its transfer.

The Governor-General himself did not lie idle.
On learning that five peasants had been deputed
to St. Petersburg to push forward the Loghishino
suit, Tokareff reported to the ministry that these
deputies were revolutionary agitators. They
were accordingly at once locked up, and without
further trial exiled to the northern Littoral, as is
the custom in such cases with our Administration.

Having thus removed all obstacles, Tokareff
was in 1874 formally invested with the rights
of ownership over the Loghishino estate. But
when he sent his agents to collect the rents the
peasants refused to pay, and drove away the
police. Twenty-six peasants were arrested and
thrown into the Minsk prison. Tokareff's next
move was to send small detachments of troops
against the village to compel obedience and levy
the money. The peasants, however, persisted
in their refusal. When the troops were drawn
up before them, they tried to force the line, but
were driven back at the butt-end of the musket.
The soldiers then fired a volley with blank
cartridges, and withdrew without resorting to more

200 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

drastic measures, the officer in command not being
anxious probably to obtain a cross or promotion
for the putting down of " civil enemies."

On the first news of the failure of the ex-
pedition— -four days before the official report
reached him — Tokareff hastened to telegraph to
St. Petersburg that the Loghishino peasants had
broken out into open rebellion and had repulsed
the troops. Such a grave emergency requiring
strong and prompt measures, the ministry sent
a special commissioner from St. Petersburg,
General Loshkareff, with most extensive powers.
On October 25th, 1874, the General arrived at
Minsk, received from Tokareff one battalion of
soldiers, with 250 Cossacks, and marched against
the " rebels."

In the subsequent, most revolting, part of the
proceedings, the leading actor is Colonel Kapger,
the ispravnik of Minsk, whom Tokareff attached
to the expedition quite unlawfully. The duty of
assisting the military in compelling obedience
from the peasantry belonged of right to the
ispravnik of Pinsk, Zolotnizky, because the
Loghishino commune was in his district.
Tokareff did not want to trust an affair of such
personal interest to himself to the local police.

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 201

Kapger was under the circumstances a much
fitter person, and was therefore attached to the
expedition "as an experienced and capable police
officer, to try and persuade the peasants to submit
to the law," as the mealy-mouthed Governor
explained in his own justification.

Kapger did not disappoint the expectations of
his chief. His first precaution was to stow away in
the Loghishino police-station (stan) several can-
loads of birch rods. When this order had been
executed, he arrived on the 3ist October at
about mid-day at the village, and appeared before
the peasants in the public square escorted by two
policemen. He then began to abuse and vilify
the villagers for their ill-behaviour, and announced
that " an army was advancing on them, with a
General who was authorized to bury them alive,
to flog them to death, to shoot them, to do with
them as he would with rebels, — anything he
chose, if they would not at once submit."

The frightened people said they would submit,
and hastened to send three deputies forward to
meet and propitiate the terrible General. They
met him at a few miles' distance from the village,
and said that they submitted and would pay rent
to General Tokareff. This did not. however, stav

202 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

the advance of Loshkareff, who entered Loghi-
shino at the head of his troops at night time, and
immediately ordered the Cossacks to invest the
village from all parts, "lest anyone might escape."
A second deputation then came before him, bring-
ing the traditional "bread and salt," in token of
welcome and obedience. But the General said he
would not accept these offerings from "rebels,"
until they had repented and fulfilled the claims of
their landlord, who demanded about 50x3 roubles
as a part of the rent for 1874, and 5,000 for the
arrears owing to him for 1873.

This claim was a most impudent extortion.
Tokareff had only been invested with the right of
ownership in 1874. Any claim on the rent for
the previous year was therefore absolutely illegal.
On being questioned on this point by the tribunal,
Tokareff explained that though he was formally
invested with the right of ownership in 1874, still
it had been reported to the chairman of the
Local Board (his friend and accomplice Sevas-
tianoff) that the Loghishino peasants were in-
formed a year before by a tchinovnik of the Minsk
courts of justice (who had neither juridical nor
even administrative powers over them) that they
must hand over one third of the harvest to

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 203

Tokareff. Then Stanovoi Trikovsky made a
valuation, unassisted even by the local surveyor,
and most generously adjudicated full 12,000
roubles to his chief, who reduced the sum to
5,500 roubles. Thus were the Loghishino
peasants not merely robbed of their land, but
had to present Tokareff with the capital which
he had to disburse in the transaction !

The poor people could not, however, afford to
ponder on the injustice of their case in the face of
this array of bayonets and Cossacks. They sub-
mitted, pleading only for a short respite in which
to sell some of their goods in order to make up
the required sum. No respite was granted them.
The General told them in firm but moderate lan-
guage, as became so high an official, that they
must collect and deposit in his hands the sum of
5,500 roubles within forty-eight hours, otherwise
he would compel them to pay the whole sum
of 12,000 roubles.

On this he retired, and shut himself up in the
house assigned to him, leaving the command to
the ispravnik Kapger. This officer went at once
to the root of the matter, and showed to the full
extent how " experienced " and " capable " he was
in fulfilling the mission assigned to him by the

204 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Governor. He refused to wait for the money
even until the next morning. He rushed upon the
peasants as one possessed, abusing them, calling
them names, stamping his foot, boxing them on
the ears, and shouting, " The rods, bring the rods !
I will flog you to death ! I will flay you alive ! "
He did not want the peasants to distribute
the contribution demanded, according to their
means. He made short work of all these forma-
lities by assigning twenty-five roubles as the
amount to be paid by each of the 233 households.
Those who said they had not the money and
could not pay at once were sent to the police
station, and there flogged until they promised to
find the money, selling their goods to the Jews of
the village for a song, or borrowing from them
the money at an interest of from one and a half
to three per cent, a week. As the Loghishino
peasants were poor people, according to the
statements of the policemen themselves, many
suffered very severely. One of the witnesses, the
deputy Korolevitch, testified that the peasant
Malokhovsky was beaten so savagely that he
had never since fully recovered. He was a non-
commissioned officer, and had only just returned
from his regiment. He had had no time to get

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 205

settled in his home, and was very poor. When
summoned before Kapger, who was sitting at the
police-station, he gave him full particulars as to
why he was unable to pay the twenty-five roubles.
He was conducted to the execution-chamber,
and there flogged by two policemen under the
personal superintendence of Kapger. After some
time Kapger stopped the flogging, and asked
whether he would bring the money or not On
receiving the same answer as before, he ordered
the men to flog him once more. When he was
again released, he said to Kapger that " whilst in
the Czar's service he had never undergone the
shame of corporal punishment." For this " imper-
tinence " Kapger ordered him to be flogged for
the third time. But even after that Malokhovsky
brought no money, which was paid for him by
the mir.

Lukashevitch, an old man of sixty-nine
years, begged the ispravnik to give him a short
respite, but the latter struck him in the face twice
so violently that he could not keep his feet.
Then he ordered him to the flogging-room, where
he was flogged three times, Kapger telling his
men to strike more heavily, and asking the victim
whether he would bring the money now ?

206 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Many fainted under the ordeal. Kapger him-
self superintended the execution of the sentences,
giving his men instructions as to how to use
the rods so as to cause the victims to suffer
more acutely. None were spared. The deputy
Korolevitch testified to the fact that Kapger
demanded the money even from a blind old
beggar, Adam Tatarevitch, and when he said he
had no money Kapger struck the poor fellow in
the face, and was about to have him flogged ; but
Tatarevitch went to the village, and came back
with ten roubles he had collected in Christ's name
from his fellow-villagers.

The subordinates treated the people with the
bestial brutality of invaders. A retired soldier,
Chechotka by name, stated on oath that the
ispravnitts men came to fetch him to the police-
station in the dead of night, about twelve o'clock ;
that whilst he was dressing himself one Cossack
struck his pregnant wife on the back with his
horsewhip so cruelly that she fainted, and the
next day miscarried.

By such means as these Kapger levied in two
days the whole sum of 5,500 roubles, which were
duly forwarded to the Governor. The troops
retired, and General Loshkareff returned to St.

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 207

Petersburg, to report to the Emperor that order
was restored in Loghishino, and that the rebellion
had been put down without the use of fire-arms
or any violence, thanks to the courage and ability
of the ispravtiik, Kapger, who had succeeded in
persuading the mob to submit to the just claims
of their landlord ! Loshkareff was rewarded by
the thanks of the Emperor, whilst Kapger was
decorated with one of the highest military orders.
(Poriadoc, 1881, No. 330-340.)

This is a fair sample of the truthfulness of the
official reports, and the whole affair is typical of
the style in which the military carried the law
into effect Of course such utter scamps as
Colonel Kapger are rare, even in the ranks of the
Russian police. Few ispravniks would strike a
blind old man in the face, or take actual pleasure
in the operation of flogging. But out of the
seven hundred ispravniks and the two thousand
stanovois of the Empire, there are hardly a dozen
who during their term of service have not had to
" put down " several of these " rebellions " amongst

* o

the peasantry, generated by the same feelings of

despair, and subdued by the same methods of

military pressure and wholesale flogging, as in
the examples cited above.

CHAPTER III.

AFTER the beasts of prey — the vermin. Natura-
lists say that the most mischievous enemies of
unprotected and primitive man are not the big
carnivora with whom he has to fight now and then
on unequal terms, but the lower forms of creation,
— the insects, the mice, rats, wild birds, and other
small pilferers, which overwhelm him by their
numbers and omnipresence.

I will not venture to say that the same holds
good with respect to the two classes of parasites
which our paternal government has set on the
moujiks. It is beyond doubt that both are
extremely obnoxious. As to the question which
of the two is the most so, it is rather difficult to
give a positive answer.

The upper police and administrative officials —
the tchinovniks — unquestionably commit enormous
material damage among the people. But as
they come into immediate contact with the
peasantry on comparatively rare occasions, they

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 209

cannot have much effect upon the moral side of
the people's life. With the inferior police the
reverse is the case. It must be granted that
even as a question of finance they are a very-
heavy additional burden to the people. The
5744 uriadniks (rural constables) created in 1878,
and constantly added to since, represent an
outlay of 2,600,000 roubles a year, or about
twice the sum the State Exchequer spends on
primary education.

As every uriadnik extracts from the rural
population subjected to him, by bribes, blackmail,
and other devices, on an average at least twice
as much as he receives in salary, the total
cost of this amiable institution represents a good
round sum, for which a much better use might be
found than the support of this horde of black-
guards. But monetary damages become almost
trivialities by the side of the vexations, insults,
petty everyday tyranny, and demoralisation which
are poured into our villages by these guardians of
the peace — unique of their kind.

To give the ring of truth to these strange
statements, we have only to draw a sketch
of these uriadniks^ and how they came to
exist.

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

When the Nihilist rebellion first burst forth,
it assumed, as is well known, the aspect of
a vast agrarian agitation in favour of the resti-
tution of the land to its tillers. As the
same aspirations, though obscured by the mists
of monarchical superstitions, were smouldering
among the whole of our agricultural class,
the Government at once took the greatest
alarm.

The fierce hunting of the Nihilist began through
all Russia. The peasants did not rise in arms at
the voice of the agitators, perplexed, bewildered
by the unheard of appeal. But in the relentless
chase after the Nihilists they kept aloof, and often
assisted the propagandists to escape from the
hands of their persecutors. The active part in
the drama was played by the local officers of the
State, — the police, the stanovois, the ispravniks,
and the volunteer spies, who were furnished by
the newly-born class of rural usurers, plunderers
of the people and upstarts, who had fished in
troubled waters. But in a well-regulated autocracy
nothing can be left to private enterprise, least
of all the craft of a spy. As to the local agents
of the State police, they were so surcharged with
so many other duties, and had under their super-

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 211

vision districts so vast, as to render an effective
and minute survey impossible.

In 1878 a force of rural constabulary was
created, and from that moment commenced the
Babylonian captivity of the Russian peasantry
to the police.

The uriadniks were created in order to streng-
then the hands of the rural police, headed by
the ispravniks and their assistants the stanovois.
The uriadniks are therefore under the command
of these officers, in their quality of general police
agents. But like the gendarmerie created by the
Emperor Nicholas I. for the benefit of the towns-
people, their rural brothers are placed in a
peculiar position.

The duties of the uriadniks are extensive and
manifold. They are the masters of the village
communes in the same sense as the governors
are called the masters of their respective Provinces.
Besides the function of chief of the communal
police, they unite in their persons those of sanitary
inspectors, inspectors of roads and buildings, and
statistical agents, etc. They poke their noses
into everything, prying into private households,
and enforcing various prescriptions intended
by the idle bureaucratic imagination for the

212 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

benefit of the moujiks. Thus forsooth they must
see that the peasant's house be ventilated and the
windows opened, even during the winter time,
when people have hardly fuel enough to keep the
hard frost out of the door. To secure purity of
air they are bound to prevent the keeping of
manure in open courts near the houses, when in
the whole of Russia not a single peasant, save
a few German settlers, has an artificial dung-pit.
The same solicitude for the stupid moujiks, who
cannot feel the disadvantage of keeping cattle
within their dwellings, inspired the prohibition of
that bad practice, though the young cattle would
otherwise be frozen in the courts, as the peasants
have no warm stables.

Neither is the exterior of the village neglected.
The uriadnik must see that the streets be kept
clean, though in the villages there is no trace of a
pavement, and the streets during the spring and
the autumn, six months out of the twelve, are
knee deep in mud. A lot of other equally bene-
volent and equally stupid prescriptions exist, re-
lating to food, the construction of the houses,
gardening, etc., all of which are fair examples of
bureaucratic perspicacity and knowledge of the
things with which they have to deal.

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 213

All this is amusing, but to an outsider only.
To the peasants it is a very serious matter. The
more absurd the order is, the easier is it for an
uriadnik to convert it into a means of extortion
and a source of abuse, owing to the exorbitant,
the monstrous powers with which the uriadniks are
armed in their quality of political bloodhounds.

Only a despotic government fully conscious of
its many sins could in a fit of well-grounded fear
put such powers into the hands of subordinate
agents. They can enter anybody's house at any
time of the day or of the night, examine every-
thing, and question anybody as to any actions
and purposes which may seem to them suspicious.
They have the right of arresting and taking into
custody any citizen of the district at their own dis-
cretion, without first obtaining any special warrant
or authorization. The elders and the communal
police are bound to arrest and to march off any
prisoner at the bidding of the uriadniks.

Now let us ask, What are the moral and in-
tellectual guarantees offered by these people,
entrusted with such extensive powers over the
liberty, honour, and property of their fellow-
citizens ? Whence does this horde of village
proconsuls spring ?

214 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

An uriadnik receives a salary of £20 a year,
which, taking into account the cheapness of living
in a Russian village, would represent from ^40 to
£50 at the English rate of value. We cannot
therefore expect to see well-educated people in
their ranks, quite apart from the aversion felt in
Russia by all men of self-respect to the accept-
ance of any post connected with the police.
Moreover, the considerable amount of physical
exertion required from the uriadniks as a rule
excludes the petty tchtnovniks.

But as the uriadnik 's duties imply a consider-
able amount of legal chicanery, they cannot be
recruited at random from among simple folk,
such as retired soldiers or non-commissioned
officers. The uriadniks are chiefly picked up
from among the dregs of the Government servants
of the towns, and the outcasts of the intellectual
professions : scribes out of employment, petty
police-officers turned out of their posts for bribery
or drunkenness, and so forth. In spite of this, this
rabble, which had to be watched and watched like
a host of pickpockets in a crowded room, were
exempted by the Czar's government, to a quite
exceptional degree, from any control whatever.
The Russian press, as is well known, is not

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 215

allowed to indulge over much in the exposure of
the abuses and misdeeds of any of the members
Df the official hierarchy ; but to attack a gendarme,
a political spy, any officer connected with the
defence of the autocracy against its civil enemies,
is considered almost as a personal insult to the
Czar.

The uriadniks, in their capacity of rural gen-
darmes, were on their creation granted the
same immunity. The press was strictly prohibited
from publishing any exposure of their vices.
This fact, however strange it may sound, was
publicly disclosed three years later by several
Russian newspapers.

In the Zemstro newspaper of December
3ist, 1880, the following details are explicitly
given by the responsible editors : " At the
founding of the uriadniks all possible care was
taken to present them in the most favourable
light to the public. To this end the Official
Messenger and the official papers, which exist
in every province, published, by order of
the Minister, a number of reports tending to
show their activity, sometimes put into the form
of special narratives, sometimes in the form of
statistical tables. Whilst, on the other hand,

216 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

shortly after the law of 9th June, 1878 (institut-
ing the uriadniks), had received due attention,
namely, in September of the same year, the
editors of all the newspapers and periodicals
were ordered not to allow any censure of the
activity of the police to appear in their respec-
tive columns, nor to ' discredit it,' by expos-
ing any of its abuses. In case of the trans-
gression of this order the delinquents were
threatened with most stringent penalties. Thus
did the uriadniks become quite inviolable to
the press."

It may be added that the government defended
these its Benjamins, charged with protecting it
against agrarian revolution — even against their
immediate superiors in office, the stanovois and
ispravniks.

When this herd of 5,744 brutal invaders,
scattered amongst the Russian villages, began
their exploits, even the not particularly scrupu-
lous law-abiding gentlemen of the police felt that
they were bound to interfere. Numbers of
uriadniks were turned out, or at least driven
from one district to another, by way of dis-
ciplinary punishment. In order to suppress this
flagrant proof of their worthlessness, the Minister

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 217

of the Interior, General Makoff, expressed marked
disapprobation to the police authorities wherever
there had been frequent expulsions, " calculated
to diminish the prestige of the uriadniks in
the eyes of the peasantry." No wonder that
the uriadniks grew so conceited with their
self-importance that in the Province of Poltava,
when one of them was fined eleven roubles
by the magistrate, he flew into such a passion
as to inveigh against the magistrate in open
court, and to threaten him with a " protocol."

We have dwelt on these details at the risk
of wearying our reader, because they prove to
demonstration the fallacy of a very common
prejudice concerning the Russian government.
It is supposed that the educated class only are
subjected to police tyranny. This is not so.
Our government is free from any taint of par-
tiality. Whenever it smells some danger to its
own skin, all " the dear children," both peasants
and the well-to-do, are dealt with on exactly the
same footing.

The quite anomalous position created for these
guardians of the public safety could lead to only
one consequence. The uriadniks became the
scourge of our villages, the terror of the peasants,

218 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

the chief perpetrators of such violence and
extortion as had never been heard of before.
" Being perfect strangers to the village," says
the Zemstro newspaper, " they despise the
peasantry, as all upstarts do. They look on
the rustics subjected to their control as invaders
do upon a conquered people, on whom they may
work their will. The extortions of the uriadniks
in their insolence recall the rapacity of the
soldiery. Not only are private individuals com-
pelled to propitiate these uriadniks with bribes,
but whole communes are saddled with illegal
tribute. And such things happen not only in
the remote corners of the vast Empire, but in
the neighbourhood of St. Petersburg itself."

In view of these experiences, the Zemstvos
have repeatedly petitioned for the abolition of the
uriadniks. At the sitting of the St. Petersburg
Zemstvo on i7th January, 1881, the deputies
expressed their opinion in the following strong
terms : — " the magistrates Volkoff and Shakeef
do affirm most positively that the uriadniks are
simply a nuisance to the people. They are
doing no good, and are unable to do any good,
being chiefly recruited from amongst half-illiterate
clerks who are out of employment, and who

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 219

take a distorted view of their duties." Baron
Korf spoke to the same effect.

During the short Liberal respite of 1881 there
was hardly one periodical, save Mr. Katkoffs
Moscow Gazette, which did not pour out before
its readers whole volumes of accumulated facts
about the exploits of the unadniks, varying in
their nature from the too free use of the fist or
whip to the most heinous and revolting crimes.

We will first open a page in the public career
of a certain Makoorine, uriadnik of the Province
of Samara, a jolly fellow, though somewhat
excited and rough when in his cups. One fine
morning, in the autumn of 1881, he arrived at the
village of Vorony Kust, where a meeting was
being held in the public hall. Here all his friends
were met together, and amongst them Chaibool
the Rich, a Tartar peasant. Having some
business to transact with the uriadnik, Chaibool
invited him, together with several common
friends, to take a glass in his house. The meet-
ing over, therefore, they left the hall in several
cars. In opening the gate they let out a pig.
The pig took it into its head to run after the
uriadnik, though " Chaibool did his best to call
it back." They crossed the village and reached

220 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

the fields, the pig still running after the uriadnik's
car, with the evident intention of escorting him
up to the house of his host. The rural magnate
took it as a malicious insult to his dignity on the
part of the beast, and shot the pig dead.

After having taken their refreshment with
Chaibool the Rich they returned back to the
village a little elevated. There they met with
a publican, the owner of the killed pig, who asked
the uriadnik to pay for the beast.

At such audacity Makoorine lost his temper,
swore, boasted of his official importance, and,
according to the unanimous testimony of all the
witnesses, said that " he, the uriadnik, had the
right to shoot not only pigs, but men too, there
being a law to that effect." A retired soldier,
John Kirilow, who was present, observed that he
also had served the Czar, but had never heard of
such a law.

Without wasting words on his adversary, the
uriadnik flew on Kirilow, knocked him down, and
then dragged him into the court, and, calling his
coachman to his assistance, struck Kirilow again.

The guardian of public order was, for this
breach of the peace, condemned to six weeks'
imprisonment ; but as it was discovered that there

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 221

were no less than fifteen similar suits pending
against him, he was put under police supervision
until such time as the verdict was pronounced on
his accumulated offences.

Another uriadnik, that of Malo-Archangelsk,
at the time of the Carnival arrived in the village,
" drunk as a fiddler." On entering the public
hall he behaved with gross impropriety. He
cut the tablecloth to pieces with his sabre, and
reviled the members with most opprobrious names.
When some persons tried to get him to listen to
reason he flew at them, brandishing his sabre, and
drove them all, both guests and owners, out of
the building.

In Ivanovka the uriadnik, on entering the
house of a peasant to make an inspection as to
whether it was kept clean, saw a young calf tied
to a table leg in the kitchen. At such slovenli-
ness the uriadnik lost his temper, and after having
reviled the women who were spinning in the
other room, as best he could, he drew his sabre
and cut the calf to pieces.

In Poroobejka an uriadnik came upon a woman
making dough. She was in a hurry to make the
bread for her household, and had left the floor
unswept. Exasperated by this negligence, the

222 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

uriadnik, after giving the woman a severe scold-
ing, overthrew the kneading-trough before the
woman's eyes, and upset the dough on to the
dirty floor.

In Dmitrovka the uriadnik Lastochkin met a
wedding procession, going with songs, according
to custom, from one relative of the newly-married
couple to another. He ordered them to disperse
at once, though the elder of the village was
amongst them. One of the guests, Easily Kareff,
remonstrated against such interference, explaining
that they were celebrating a wedding. The
uriadnik as his only answer struck Kareff twice
with his whip.

The crowd got into a rage ; they flew at the
uriadnik and handled him roughly. He would,
perhaps, have fared yet worse had he not taken
refuge in the parson's house.

On hearing of the disturbance the whole village
assembled round the parsonage, clamouring to
have the uriadnik delivered up to them, and it
was only thanks to the soothing influence of the
parson that the uriadnik escaped lynching A
protocol was drawn up about the " insult offered
to the uriadnik'' and Kareff was condemned to
seven days' imprisonment.

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 223

All these examples, given by eye-witnesses to
a correspondent of the Zemstro newspaper, refer
to one small district alone. None of them are
of any particular importance, but they contain
much local colouring, and convey a pretty fair idea
as to the moral physiognomy and distinctive attri-
butes of the new type of our village magnates.

In one place the uriadnik fired into a crowd of
unarmed people ; in another charged a crowd
busied in quenching a fire, on horseback, with
sword and whip. In a third case, a freshly built
peasant's house was demolished, under the pretext
that it was not constructed "according to the
regulations." In a fourth, the uriudnik assaulted
and inflicted severe bodily injuries on a church-
warden, for not having appeared before him with
sufficient alacrity when sent for.

In the Bogorodsk district the uriadnik was in
the habit of stealing the peasants' oats for his own
horse by night. When caught on one occasion
in the act, so far was he from being put out of
countenance that he threatened the owners with
imprisonment, and then, having sent his errand-
boy to fetch his sabre and revolver, declared
himself to be engaged " in the execution of his
duty,1' and triumphantly made his way through

224 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

the assembled throng. The ispravnik, on receiv-
ing complaints from the peasants, ordered the
stanovoi to investigate the case. The accusation
proved true, but the uriadnik was not even dis-
charged, and continued to hold his office as
guardian of the public safety in peace.

In one of the towns of the Province of Poltava,
during fair time, the uriadniks formed themselves
into a body, which wandered through the town,
and amused themselves by tearing off the earrings
and necklaces of the peasant women who came
to the fair adorned in their best national attire,
alleging that the national costume had been
prohibited by the Czarina's ukaz.

We will close this list, which might be pro-
longed ad libitum, by mentioning some of those
cases where these rural despots, accustomed to
impunity, have given vent to their low instincts
in acts which recall the worst features of the days
of serfdom.

In the Mogilev district of the Province of Podol,
Daniel Yasitsky, the uriadnik of the village
Chemeris, after having for a long time and with
impunity distinguished himself by the extortion
of money from the innocent, and blackmail from
such thieves as were caught in the act, whom he

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 225

was in the habit of setting free by his own
authority, — this Daniel Yasitsky indulged in the
following practical joke.

By threats and blows he compelled two of his
subordinates, peasants' " decurions," to harness
themselves into a car and drag him to the town
of Bar, distant about four miles. Yasitsky was
simply dismissed.

Another still more revolting case was tried
before the St. Petersburg tribunal, April 23rd, 1886.

Gerassimoff, the nriadnik of the village Borki,
in the Peterhof district, was convicted of having
subjected several peasants to the torture in order
to extort from them confessions about a robbery
committed by unknown persons. A peasant
named Marakine, and two brothers of the name
of Antonoff, were all three kept hanging for
several hours on a sort of improvised strappado.
Stripped of their clothes, and barefoot, their hands
were tied behind their backs by a rope, which
was then passed over a rail, fixed high up in the
wall of an ice cellar. The bodies of these unfor-
tunate men were then raised above the level of
the ice ground, which they could hardly touch
with the tips of their toes.

The uriadnik now and then appeared, request-

15

226 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

ing them to confess, and dealing them blows on
the head on their refusal to comply with his
wishes. One of the three victims, the peasant
Marakine, on the way to the torture-chamber was
subjected to other treatment no less infamous.
The testimony of the elder of the village is par-
ticularly characteristic. "Gerassimoff the uriadnik
came to me and asked whether I could lend him
thirty men. ' For what purpose do you need so
many ? ' I asked. Then he answered, pointing to
Marakine, ' I mean to make this fellow run the
gauntlet.' ' To this the witness made reply that
he would never permit such things to be done to
the peasants of his commune. Then Marakine's
hands and legs were tied, and he was fastened by
the legs to the back of the car, his body on the
ground. The horse was then made to run, and
Marakine was dragged in the mud for about ten
yards. Then Gerassimoff said to the elder,
" Bring me some straw, we will burn him a
little," but witness refused to bring it to him.

Gerassimoff was found guilty, and sentenced
to one years penal servitude. So lenient is the
Russian law towards crimes against humanity,
reserving its ferocity for those who are working
on behalf of humanity.

PATERNAL GOVERNMENT. 227

Such barbarities, which, had they been com
mitted by a Turkish officer, would have set
European diplomacy on fire, are of course ex-
ceptional, though it would be illogical to suppose
them unique.

From the opposite end of the Empire we hear
of things which are no better, indeed, if anything,
rather worse. It was proved by judicial inquiry
before the Kisheneff tribunal, that in the Orgheef
district the unadnik and the communal authori-
ties had for a long time used various instruments
of torture in their judicial proceedings. One
of these, called butuk, figured on the table of
"material evidences" in the court. It is a
wooden instrument, composed of two sliding
beams, which serve for screwing the feet of the
culprit between them. These abominations were
not unknown to the police. The matter was,
however, only brought before the tribunal because
the authorities arrested the wrong man, on whom
they used the butuk with such cruelty that the
victim was crippled for life.

The patience of our people is great ; too great,
indeed, but not unlimited. Since the uriadniks
have been introduced the number of so-called
offences against officials in the execution of their

228 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

duty has considerably increased amongst the
rural classes. The first official statistics bearing
upon the subject show, for instance, that in
1877-81, in the district included under the St.
Petersburg jurisdiction (embracing several pro-
vinces), the peasants form 93 per cent, of such
offenders, whilst the privileged classes supply
only 7 per cent. In the Kharkon region the
former furnish 96 per cent., the latter only 4 per
cent, in the rural districts, of such offences ; all
refer to the uriadniks or to the rural stanovois.
Thus, to the lawlessness of the police must be
accorded at least the merit of instructing our
peasants a little in the art of taking the laws into
their own hands, which may, perhaps, ultimately
serve some useful purpose.

HARD TIMES.

CHAPTER I.

THE outcry for more land was the first sound the
ears of educated Russians were able to catch,
in the confused din of voices which rose from the
masses below. Our moujiks were never tired of
repeating the same requests again and again.

It was in vain that the Government, in order to
satisfy their greed after land, offered them various
cheap makeshifts. The moujiks displayed a
stoical indifference to these advances, and went
on endlessly repeating the same refrain about
land.

What could be supposed to satisfy the peasants
more than the condonation of the arrears in the
taxes ? or the reduction of one rouble per head
of the annual land-purchase payments ? But even
to these offers the peasants turned a deaf ear.
When spoken to about the condonation of the
arrears, says Enghelhardt, they would answer :
" The solvent payers will only regret their
former punctuality — that is all. Condonation or

232 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

no condonation, those who have nothing can pay
nothing. The present arrears condoned, fresh
ones will be made next year, since they cannot
pay." They will point to such and such villages
which are not in arrears and are in no need of
condonation, " because they were not wronged
with regard to their land."

As regards the reduction of the land-purchase
money, they showed the same wooden insensi-
bility. " One rouble per head," they said,
"mounts up to a large sum of money to the crown,
but to us separately it is a trifle, hardly perceptible
at all. We moujiks are quite ready to pay our
dues, if only we can have more of our dear
land."

The land is the object of the peasant's day-
dreams and longings, as well as of a touching,
almost filial respect and devotion. In the
peasant's songs and in their ordinary speeches
the usual epithet applied to it is " mother," or
"little mother." The whole tenor of peasant
life in Russia suggests the idea that the chief
aim of their existence is to serve the land, and
not to use it for their own advantage.

The Russian moujiks are, as a rule, quite un-
concerned as to what is called "comfort." They

HARD TIMES. 233

seem to consider a Spartan mode of life, and
indifference to hardships, a good deal in the light
of an attribute of man. In Eastern Russia and
the Volga Provinces they scoff at their neigh-
bours, the peasants of Tartar origin, who are fond
of soft bedding and dainties, and who ride in long-
shafted buggies, which rock them as a cradle
might, instead of suffering their bowels to be
jolted out in the traditional Russian telegite. I
will not cite as an example the life of the poorer
class of peasants. Amongst them privations
are unavoidable. That which bears particularly
on our present object is the life of such peasants
as could afford to live quite comfortably if they
chose.

If you enter the house of a notoriously rich
peasant, whose granary is brimful of corn, who
keeps half-a-dozen horses in his stables, and
who has probably in some remote corner under
the floor a jugful of bright silver roubles, laid
aside against a rainy day, you will be surprised
at the extreme simplicity, nay squalor, of his
household arrangements. All peasants, the rich
as well as the poor, live, with very few exceptions,
in the same narrow peasant's izba; these home-
steads presenting a square of fifteen to twenty

234 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

feet in length and width. Into this space, divided
into one or two rooms, both children and grown-
up people are all huddled together. The quantity
of air afforded for respiration is so puzzlingly
small that our hygienists are forced to admit the
endosmical action of the walls as the only hypo-
thesis which will account for the fact that these
people are not literally suffocated.

" Furniture " is a word which can be used only
in its broad philosophical sense when applied to
the dwellings of these people. They really have
no furniture beyond a big unpolished table of
the simplest pattern, which stands in the place of
honour, in a corner under the ikons or images
of saints ; and some long wooden benches, about
two feet deep, running all along the walls.
These benches are used for sitting on in the
daytime and for sleeping on at night. When
the family is a large one, some of its members,
at bed time, mount on to the upper tier of these
shelves, which run all along the upper part
of the wall, like hammocks in a ship's cabin.
Nothing bearing the likeness of a mattress is to be
seen ; a few worn-out rugs are thinly spread ovei
the bare wood of the benches or on the floor,
and that is all. The everyday coat, just takei

HARD TIMES. 235

off, serves as a blanket. Beds are a luxury
hardly known, and very little appreciated by the
Russian moujiks. Even in the peasants' hotels,
the dvors on the chief commercial highways of the
interior, frequented by the rich freight-carriers, a
plentiful and luxurious table is kept, but nothing
but bare benches in the way of beds are to be
found. In the winter the large top of the stone
oven is the favourite sleeping-place, and generally
reserved for the elders, so that they may keep
their old bones warm.

All the peasants dress in pretty much the same
manner, which is extremely simple, — no under-
garment ; a shirt of homespun tick or of chintz,
sometimes of red fustian — this last is very much
appreciated — and light cotton or linen trousers.
The richest wear boots, which are used by the
poorer sort only on great occasions. The " bast "
shoes, which were used in the middle ages in
Europe, and have since disappeared, are in com-
mon use among the bulk of the Great Russian
peasants. In the winter, a kind of home-made
woollen boot is preferred, and the long woollen
homespun coat is replaced by a sheepskin over-
coat, by rich and poor alike. The peasants wear
this fur dress the whole year round, rarely

236 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

taking it off unless when at work or asleep.
Being so seldom changed, the peasants' clothes
are not a model of cleanliness, but both men and
women, as a rule, keep their bodies very clean.
Every family which is not totally destitute has
its hot steam-bath, where all wash, on the eve of
every holiday, with great punctiliousness. The
poorer amongst them, who have no bath of their
own, use the family oven for this purpose, just after
the removal of the coal. This is a real martyr-
dom, as the first sensation of a man unaccustomed
to such exploits is that of being roasted alive.

As to the food, which forms the chief item
of expenditure to people living in a simple way,
and which presents the greatest scale of variation
among peasant families, the allowance which has
to be made for wealth is exceedingly modest.

Those peasant families which can be classed
as rich or well-to-do use wholemeal bread and
gruel all the year round, and eat it to satisfaction.
But as long as they keep to the " peasant's state"
— in other terms, as long as they are living from
the land and tilling it with their own hands—
the Russians do not depart from the chiefly
vegetarian and extremely simple system of diet
common to the average peasant. They eat meat

HARD TIMES. 237

on Sundays, and occasionally on a week-day,
never every day. It is a general maxim amongst
all peasant households not to spend anything on
themselves if they can help it that is not
" home-made," home-grown, or reared on their
own premises. As no family, living by husbandry
alone, can rear on its own premises a sufficient
number of cattle to supply it with meat every
day, it, as a matter of course, adopts the above-
mentioned custom.

It does not spring from stinginess. The
same families, when moving to a town and
engaged in business, spend just as much and
live in just the same style as the well-to-do
merchants and townspeople. But, so long as
their ties to the land remain unbroken, the
land is their first care. Very close-fisted in his
household expenditure, the rich peasant will yet
spend generously for the extension of his agri-
culture, the improvement of his working imple-
1 ments, or the augmentation of the number of his
cattle. He expects a good return for his outlay,
as the contrary would be proof of a blunder on
his part. But money is not the only thing he
has in view : he is heart-sick at the sieht of bad

o

crops, without in the least thinking of the possible

238 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

pecuniary losses. If quite well off he will none the
less overwork himself at the hay-harvest, just as
much as will the poorest man in the village.

There is, indeed, a good deal of unselfishness in
the intense love borne by the peasants to the soil,
which we townspeople, living in almost complete
estrangement from nature, can hardly realise, but
which is deep-rooted in the heart of every moujik —
nay, of every husbandman — without distinction
of nationality. The same feeling as that which
inspires our peasants' poetry, breathes in the
monologue of Alexander I den, squire of Kent,
overlooking his garden before John Cade drops
in. Michelet, in his well-known prose poems, has
sung the ardent love of the French peasant for

his " mistress " the land.*

* I quote this beautiful passage as translated by John Stuart
Mill (Pol. EC., p. 172).

" If we would know the inmost thought, the passion, of the
French peasant, it is very easy. Let us walk out on Sunday
into the country and follow him. ... I perceive that he is going
to visit his mistress.

" What mistress ? — His land.

" I do not say he goes straight to it. No ; he is free to-day,
and may either go or not. Does he not go every day in the
week? Accordingly, he turns aside, he goes another way, he
has business elsewhere. And yet — he goes.

" It is true, he was passing close by ; it was an opportunity.
He looks, but apparently he will not go in ; what for ? And
yet he enters.

HARD TIMES. 239

Yet everything in men bears a national stamp,
which reflects the historical and social peculiarities
of their native countries. Alexander Iden — a man
living amidst the turmoil of feudal struggles, who
has found on his small estate a safe refuge, alike
from the necessity of being an oppressor and the
wretchedness of being oppressed — experiences
in the fact of possession a quite different enjoy-
ment from that of the peasant painted by Michelet,
who, an owner above all things else, has recently
come into the possession of a freehold estate into
the bargain. It is yet another thing among our
moujiks, with their perfect abhorrence of the idea
of private property in land, and the peculiar
agrarian arrangements which are the result of this
objection.

" At least, it is probable that he will not work ; he is in his
Sunday dress: he has a clean shirt and blouse. Still there
is no harm in plucking up this weed and throwing out that
stone. There is a stump, too, which is in the way ; but he
has not his tools with him, he will do it to-morrow.

"Then he folds his arms and gazes, serious and careful.
He gives a long, very long, look, and seems lost in thought.
At last, if he thinks himself observed, if he sees a passer-by,
he moves slowly away. Thirty paces off he stops, turns round,
and casts on his land a last look, sombre and profound, but
to those who can see it, the look is full of passion, of heart,
of devotion." — (The Ptople, by J. Michelet).

240 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

There is no strip of land in Russia — save,
perhaps, that whereon the peasant's house stands—
which the peasant can call his own in the same
sense as a continental peasant proprietor or
English freeholder can claim land. To-day he
holds one piece of land — by to-morrow a redistri-
bution is voted for by the mir, and he receives
another piece, which may be larger or may be
smaller than the first, according as to whether his
family has increased or decreased in number, but
which certainly will lie in some other part — or
better, parts — of the common field. We say parts
because the families never receive their allotment
of land in one whole block, but in a number of
small plots and strips, scattered sometimes over
ten, fifteen, or even more, localities, and changed
every two or three years. This plan has its in-
conveniences ; but the peasants prefer such an
arrangement. It affords room for perfect fairness
in the distribution of this most precious com-
modity— the land — which always presents great
variety as to the quality of the soil, and it
position with respect to the roads, the village,
the water, etc.

Under such an arrangement there was no rooi
for the development of the jealous and exclusive

HARD TIMES.

passion of ownership, so characteristic of small
holders, and little room indeed, if any, for attach-
ment to the communal field as a whole, where
each peasant wanders with his own plough and
scythe. The cohesion between the men always
proves stronger than their attachment to the soil.

Thus our peasants have no difficulty whatever
in migrating to new places, provided they may
start there on the same work and in the same
mode of life which has proved itself congenial
to them in their old homes. It may be said,
without exaggeration, that most of the peasants
in the thickly populated central provinces of
Russia are permanently on the look-out for some
new settlement. As a rule, before moving, the
peasants send forward their explorers — the
khodoks, or "pedestrians/' and await their report
about the new country.

Not rarely it happens, however, that vague
rumours about the fertility and abundance of free
land in some far-distant province set dozens of
villages in motion, which sell their goods, put
what can be transported into cars, and start on
their journey without any further inquiry, and
generally end by paying dearly for their childish
rashness. On the other hand, it must be

16

242 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

mentioned that in no case do the peasants migrate
by isolated households, as do the American settlers
in the West. A peasant never detaches himself,
unless compelled by main force, from his village
and his mir. Whether well pondered or not,
the migrations are always made, either by whole
villages or by parts of villages, considerable enough
to form a new village commune, a new mir, at the
new place. Of the many thousands of peasants
who, on being compelled to abandon the plough-
share for a time, find regular and tolerably
remunerative employment in the towns, nine out
of ten return to " their villages " and the hard-
ships of a peasant's life so soon as they have
amassed a sum of money sufficient for the purchase
of a new instalment.

In our peasant's longing after land there is
more of the love of a labourer for a certain kind
of work which is congenial to him than of con-
crete attachment of an owner to a thing possessed.
A moujik will survey with great complacency
the furrow his plough and his faithful friend his
horse have traced. At the sight of a golden corn-
field his heart will be filled with exultant joy ; he
will delight, strong man as he is, in the powerful
exertion of mowing. But to fallow land, the land

HARD TIMES. 243

which is no more an active participator in agri-
cultural labour, he will probably be quite indifferent.
Certain it is, that he will not, like Michelet's
peasant, covet such land with wistful, passionate
eyes on his Sundays, when he has to abstain
from working on it ; nor would he, in going off,
turn round to throw at his mistress "a look full
of passion."

Moreover, if his neighbour has little land and
a big family he will, at the mirs bidding, give
up a part of his land for his neighbour's sake,
without in the least feeling as if a part of his
own flesh were cut from off his body.

It is not exactly the land, the given con-
crete piece of land, which a moujik loves — it is
the mode of life which the possession of land
allows him to live, and which blends into one
inseparable whole both the work and the men
in whose company he is accustomed to toil.
This feeling, because it is less individualised and
more complicated, is none the less intense; perhaps
the reverse is rather the case. A Russian moujik
probably feels much more grieved and down-
hearted at being separated from his furrow than
does a husbandman of any other nationality.

Uspensky, in one of the many sketches drawn

244 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

from life which we owe to his powerful pencil,
has well caught this double characteristic of our
peasants' longing after their land. In his " Ivan
Afanasieff " he shows us a peasant in whom, as
we shall see, this feeling developed to an almost
morbid intensity, and the tragedy of whose life
consists in the necessity for constantly violating it.

" Ivan Afanasieff, peasant of Slepoe Litvinovo,
in the province of Novgorod, is a sterling example
of a genuine husbandman, indissolubly bound to
the soil both in mind and in heart. The land
was in his conception his real foster-mother and
benefactress, the source of all his joys and sorrows,
and the object of his daily prayers and thanks-
givings to God.

"Agricultural work, with its cares, anxieties,
and pleasures, was so congenial to him, and filled
up his inner life so completely, as to exclude even
the idea that husbandry might be exchanged for
something else — for another and more profitable
employment. Though Ivan Afanasieff is by no
means enamoured of the land, as the reader might
have concluded, he is yet so closely united to it,
and to all the mutations which the land under-
goes in the course of the year, that he and the
land are almost living as parts of the same whole-

HARD TIMES. 245

" Nevertheless, Ivan Afanasieff does not feel in
the least like a bondsman, chained to the soil ; on
the contrary, the union between the man and
the object of his cares has nothing compulsory in
it. It is free and pure because springing spon-
taneously from the unmixed and evident good the
land is bestowing on the man. Quite independ-
ently of any selfish incentive, the man begins to
feel convinced that for this good received he
must repay the land — his benefactress — with care
and labour.

" With these pure, conscientious principles to
form the base of the whole existence of a genuine,
unsophisticated peasant family, the germ of a
wonderfully high moral standard of life might
have been sown amongst them had they been
allowed to thoroughly develop these fruitful
ideals of free unconstrained union, based on the
unshaken conviction that good must be earned
by good. But alas ! though Ivan Afanasieff
and his foster-mother — the land — are doing their
respective duties with most scrupulous conscien-
tiousness, times have come which seem to set no
value on either the purity of these relations, or on
the fact that they form the backbone of the moral
strength of the whole Russian peasantry.

246 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

" 'Money !' roar the new times, granting neither
exemption nor respite. ' But for pity's sake ! how
can I leave the land?' supplicates Ivan Afanasieff.
4 Suppose I go and seek some other employment
for the sake of earning money, why then the land
will be neglected, and we have lived all our lives
by the land ! '

" Ivan Afanasieff is so devoted to husbandry, is
so genuine a moujik, that the highest salary he
might obtain would not allay his craving after
land, after the various sensations and appearances
which surround the labours of the husbandman,
and connect his soul and his mind with the sky
and the earth, with the bright sun and the gor-
geous dawns, with the storms and the rains, the
snowdrifts, the frost, the thaw — with all God's
Creation, with all the wonders of God's Universe.

" ' Money ! ' roar the new times, and willing or
not Ivan Afanasieff begins to struggle to scrape
together some roubles ? "

As Ivan Afanasieff had a horse, which, accord-
ing to his own account, " though a poor, spare jade,
dragged its feet along nevertheless," and an uncle
whom, by dint of prayers and supplications, he
induced to lend him ten roubles for three months,
he resolved to try his luck in trade,

HARD TIMES. 247

He did not prove a success in this, his new
calling, because he had not the hawker's stuff in
him ; he was unable to swear that his wares had
cost him three times as much as they had done,
calling God and all the ikons of the Virgin Mary
to witness to his truthfulness ; nor did he know
any of the tricks by which to preserve himself
from dangerous competition.

After a lot of trouble and much anxiety, Ivan
Afanasieff was happy to be able to return what
he had borrowed from his uncle. " From this
time forth no — God forbid ! Never will I try
commerce again. When I returned to my uncle
the money he had lent, I felt relieved as from a
heavy burden. No ! let us not meddle with this
commerce. It is no business for us peasants."

The whole last ten years of Ivan AfanasiefFs
life is fraught with similar incidents. Being quite
devoid of cunning and craft — for agricultural
labour teaches no such lessons — Ivan Afanasieff
fails in all enterprises which have money-making
as their aim.

" A relative of his," we resume the quotation,
"employed as a nurse in St. Petersburg, pro-
cured him a situation as a dvomik (porter) in a
house. He spent all his money on his railway

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

ticket and arrived at St. Petersburg. But he
was as frightened as a child at the sight of
the ant-hill of ' strangers ' which he beheld
around him. He was frightened, too, at his dry,
uninteresting work, done for the sake of money ;
he found it hard, too, to work, away from ' his
own people.' He lost his place owing to his
half-heartedness, and had to make his way home
again on foot, penniless, begging in Christ's name,
until, half-starved, he reached his native village,
distant three hundred versts from the capital.

"'Then I could repose at last to my heart's
content,' he said. ' Leave all these places alone !
Henceforth will I prefer to live on dry bread so
long as it is in my own home.'

" On his return to his nest after every such
absence, Ivan Afanasieff feels an almost childish
joy, though he is always worse off than when he
started. He is glad to have a crust of bread,
provided it is home-made, and that he is allowed
to live amidst his own home surroundings, and
with people whom he knows and loves.

" ' Money, money ! ' roar the new times, and Ivan
Afanasieff, who has none, is entrapped once more
in some financial enterprise. He is engaged to
dig a canal near Lake Ladoga. They give him

HARD TIMES.

ten roubles in advance, and promise more, besides
board and lodging. Ivan Afanasieff could not
but accept ; but lo ! at the close of some six
months he returns home again without money,
without health, without clothes. It turned out
that he and his companions had to sleep on the
snow, that they were fed on carrion, and cheated
most shamefully as to wages ; that a multitude
died from various diseases, and were buried in
hot haste anywhere. After having passed through
all these ordeals and seen the heart-sickening
sufferings of others, Ivan Afanasieff is glad to run
away, with his passport as his sole remuneration.
And how pleased he is with his thatched roof, his
big stove, and his diluted acidulous ' home-made '
kvas !

" However exhausted and toil-worn he may be,
the life in ' his country,' and especially the return
' to the peasant state ' and to agricultural labour,
speedily wipe out all traces of illness, of sorrow,
and indignation from his face, which once more
looks calm, noble, benevolent." — (Uspensky,
Vol. vii.)

CHAPTER II.

No greater misfortune can befall a peasant than
to become a landless batrak, compelled to hire
himself out to landlords or to his rich fellow
peasants. The moujiks make, indeed, but a
slight distinction between the state of a slave
and that of a hireling. " To hire yourself out is
to sell yourself," they say ; and they feel the same
abhorrence for the state of a hireling as a freeman
feels for the state of slavery. There is no name
more opprobrious for a peasant than that of
batrak.

" Oh, they live in clover," these hen poachers
(popular sobriquet for the policemen) said to Eng-
helhardt a moujik friend of his, a genuine, pas-
sionate husbandman of enormous physical strength,
and cleverness and ability in the management of
his farm.

" Why, would you take such a place your-
self?"

" I take such a place ? "

HARD TIMES. 251

"Yes."

" No, God forbid ! I would not be a batrak."

Another day several peasants from a neighbour-
ing village came to his stores to buy some bushels
of corn.

" Why do you not buy it from your landlord ? "
he asked.

" Our landlord ! " they exclaimed. " What
kind of corn can you expect him to have when
he is a batrak himself?"

"And what contempt there was in these
words ! " adds Enghelhardt. The landlord being
a poor man served as steward to the estates of
his rich neighbour.

It must be observed, however, that these same
moujiks never neglect an opportunity of turning
an honest penny by their labour, if it in no way
implies permanent dependence. Even the rich
nwujiks, who have plenty of food and everything
they require in their homes, after they have
harvested their own crops, and during the winter
months, when there is no field work, most willingly
accept any work they can get on the landlord's
fields or farms. They do not in the least con-
sider it to be derogatory, nor would they call them-
selves on that account either batraks or "hire-

252 THE R USSIAN PEASANTRY.

lings." They hate permanent engagements only
as implying dependence on the pleasure of a
master, because a moujik, even though he be
poor, — provided he lives by the labour of his
hands, on his own bit of land, without applying
to anybody for assistance, — is an independent,
self-confident man, enjoying his ample share of
human dignity and self-respect.

It stands to reason that the ideas of personal
dignity held by our moujiks are not the same as
those held by the people of the civilised countries
of Europe. When meeting a " gentleman " or an
official, no matter of what grade, the peasant will
take off his hat and stand bareheaded when
spoken to. If anxious to express extreme grati-
tude to any one, he may perchance bow down to
the ground, as grown-up children bowed to their
parents in the families of the middle classes up
to the present generation. The moujtks do not
consider any of these acts to be humiliating, hold-
ing still in this respect to the same standards of
ideas as have prevailed in all countries, modern
and ancient, when just emerging from the patri-
archal state. Yet they possess in a high degree
one qualification which in all centuries and in all
lands has constituted the very essence of human

HARD TIMES. 253

dignity — they are truthful. There is neither false
hood nor deceit in their lives. In their families,
and in all their mutual relations, everything is
clear, genuine, frank ; this is true, even as regards
egotism and brutal oppression. There is much
harshness in the everyday life of the peasant,
but millions of our people have lived from
generation to generation without knowing or
suffering a lie.

" That which struck me most," says Enghel-
hardt, " when I was listening to the peasant's
discussions at the village meetings, was the
freedom of speech the moujiks granted to them-
selves. We " (he means the well-to-do, the upper
classes), " when discussing anything, always look
suspiciously around, hesitating whether such or
such things may safely be uttered or not, tremb-
ling lest we should be collared and taken before
some one in authority. As to the moujik, he fears
nothing ; publicly, in the street, before the whole
village, he discusses all kinds of political and
social questions, always freely and frankly speaking
his mind about everything. A moujik, ' when not
in disgrace with his landlord or with the Tzar,'
which means that he has paid all his taxes to
both, is afraid of nobody. ... He may stand bare-

254 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

headed before you ; but you feel that you have to
deal with an independent, plainspoken man, who is
not at all inclined to be obsequious to you or to
take his tone from you."

Rural Russia fought bravely and pluckily for
the preservation and freedom of its husbandmen,
endeared to it for so many reasons.

From the first, however, it was quite evident
that all the odds were absolutely against the
peasants. With plots of land so small that the
best-conditioned half of our rural population
(originally " State peasants") could only win from
them sufficient to supply one-half of their yearly
income, whilst their poorer brethren (former serfs)
could only gain from one-fifth to one-third of
the amount absolutely needed for food and taxes ;
with a burden of taxes for the State peasants
equal in amount to 9275 of the entire value
of the annual produce of their allotments, and for
the former serfs about double that proportion —
198*25, — I say, that with such an arrangement
as this, for the peasants to live on the profits of
their land was an arithmetical impossibility.

The State peasants had to provide, as we have
seen, for about 40% of their annual expenditure by
some other means, whilst the former serfs had to

HARD TIMES. 255

find, some two-thirds, others four-fifths, of their
yearly income from outside sources. In cases
where this is found to be feasible, the taxes im-
posed on them would absorb, as we have seen
in a former chapter, about one-half (45%) of the
yearly gains of the people on their land and else-
where, kindly leaving for their subsistence the
larger half (55%). This is practically a permanent
corvee of about three days a week paid in money.
To call this a "tax " is a flagrant abuse of the term ;
but our peasants would not quibble about that, for
these moujiks are wonderfully ready tax-payers.

They would freely give up three days of their
week without a murmur, or so much as asking
for an account, and would go merrily on their
way with the remaining three, if only they might
employ them also on the land. In other words,
if they had their plots of land enlarged, so as to be
able to draw from them the whole of their exceed-
ingly modest revenue, they would be content. As,
however, their bitter outcry for more land was never
listened to, they have had to make the best shift
they could. With their peculiar adaptability, which
never despairs and which puts a good face upon
all difficulties that cannot be avoided, they left
no stone unturned in the endeavour to make both

256 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

ends meet. They applied for whatever work they
could hope to get, and adapted themselves to any
they could find : in the factories, at the railways, at
the wharves, in the thousands of petty trades which
congregate in towns.

The whole of the peasantry being in extreme
need of extra earnings, it is a difficult matter to
find employment for all in a non-industrial country
like Russia. Every trade is overcrowded.

The sums realised by " outside " (i.e., non-agri-
cultural) employments are very considerable. In
the Provinces of Novgorod one-third of the pea-
sants are permanently engaged in various outside
industries, their wages amounting to about nine
and a half millions of roubles a year, whilst from
their land they receive only two and a half millions.
Out of this total of twelve millions the Novgorod
moujiks pay 65 per cent, in taxes. In the
Province of Yaroslav, where about half of the
whole population is engaged in outside employ-
ments, the non-agricultural revenue brings in
eleven and a half millions of roubles a year ; in
the districts of the Province of Tver the peasants
earn on an average about eight roubles a head by
extra work, or about one and a half millions a year.
The losses, too, are enormous, especially in the

HARD TIMES. 257

agricultural branches of the " migratory employ-
ments " — the most important of all. There is
neither system nor order ; and there can be none
in these wholesale wanderings of people in search
of employment.

The peasants of the Province of Viatka rush to
Samara, whilst those of Samara try their luck in
Viatka, and both Samara and Viatka send batches
of their men to the Black Sea steppes, which return
them a Roland for their Oliver, The travelling
expenses, and the losses occasioned by the hun-
dreds of thousands of failures, amount to scores
of millions of roubles every year, and are a
direct loss in the popular economy, acting on the
peasants as a dead weight, which drags them
downhill.

To atone for these constant and unavoidable
losses our people have but one expedient — increase
of work. They have reduced to the extreme
limit the number of able-bodied labourers kept
on the land so as to set a greater number free
for the chances of " outside earnings."

The petty trades carried on by artisans, who
work at home — kustary — have flourished from of
old in the villages of Great Russia, as a supple-
ment to agricultural work.

17

258 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

At the present day the hard exigencies of com-
merce have gradually compelled a considerable
number of these artisans — husbandmen — to give
up husbandry altogether and to devote themselves
exclusively to their trade. But the bulk of them
are still tillers of the soil, dedicating only the
winter months to their trade. They make all
kinds of goods which do not require expensive
machinery for their manufacture: earthen, steel,
iron, leathern wares, woollen, cotton, and linen
stuffs, carts and harness, hats, furniture, mats,
carpets, lithographs and ikons, ropes, musical
instruments, candles, soap, glass, beads, bronze,
and silver finger and ear rings ; they bring up
singing birds, they knit laces, they hew grind-
stones,— they do everything which a ready mind,
coupled with a hungry stomach, can suggest. In-
vention and ability make good the extreme
deficiency of tools, as well as the complete absence
of any assistance from scientific technology.

In the finest specimens of these wares the
workmanship is brought to remarkable perfection.

The Inquiry Commission mentions that most
of the goods of some of the best commercial
houses of Moscow, trading in Parisian silk hats
and Viennese furniture, are manufactured by these

HARD TIMES. 259

kustary peasants in their villages. The Podolsk
laces, and the linen of Kostroma, belong to the
best specimens of these articles. The crushing
competition of large factories working with
machinery, and the swarms of usurious jobbers,
have together, by steadily cheapening the products,
driven these small artisans to lengthen their hours
of labour to a frightful extent

Amongst weavers, lace-makers, rope-twisters,
fur-dressers, and locksmiths, it is a common thing
for men to work for seventeen hours a day ;
sometimes more.

The mat-makers — an extensive trade, by the
way, carried on in four hundred villages of twenty-
six provinces, and returning two millions of roubles
yearly — have to work such appallingly long hours
that they invented a sort of relay system which,
as far as we know, is quite unique of its kind.
They sleep three times in the twenty-four hours at
about equal intervals : first at dark, until 10 P.M.,
when they awaken for their night's work ; then
after the early breakfast at dawn, and again after
the dinner-hour. As they work, eat, and sleep in
the same dusty workshop, and certainly fall asleep
as soon as they drop on the floor, they contrive to
squeeze out of themselves nineteen hours of work

260 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

a day, and sometimes twenty-one ! " When the
work is very pressing," says the report of the
Commission, " the mat-makers do not sleep more
than three hours " — one hour at a time.

Among all these trades, in which millions of
people — men, women, and small children — are
engaged,' there are few in which the working time
is less than sixteen hours a day. The result
of all this fearful toil, which absorbs every hour
unoccupied by field labour — i.e., the whole of the
winter and part of the autumn — is, that they barely
manage to pay their taxes, and do not starve.
This is what is meant by " peasants making both
ends meet."

After such horrors, field labour may well assume
the guise of recreation. Yet the peasants when
ploughing "at their leisure," because this is not
pressing work, rise before the sun and do not go
to rest until it is dark, reposing but for a short
time during our very long northern day. As to
the harvest-time, it is not without cause that
in our peasants' idiom it is called strada, or
"sufferance."

Strange ! the medical inspectors say, about most
of our factories, that the hygienic conditions under
which the "hands" work are so bad, and the

HARD TIMES. 261

hours so long, that the only thing which prevents
their being slaughtered in a mass is the fact that
they return to their villages for the summer
months, and are there able to recuperate their
strength. Exactly the same conclusion was come
to by the Commissioners concerning many of the
kustary mat-makers, fur-dressers, and others : they
are able to go on, solely because it is only during
the winter months that they work under such
fearful pressure, and till their plots of land in the
summer.

At the same time all those who have written
about Russian village life — nay, all who have ever
spent a few holiday months in a Russian village
— know that it is difficult to conceive of more
exhausting work than that which is performed by
the peasants during the " sufferance time."

When mowing the hay (on their own land, of
course) the peasants do not allow themselves more
than six hours' rest out of the twenty-four. To-
wards the close of the harvest season the peasant
gets thin, and his face grows dark and emaciated
from overwork. " They get so exhausted that.
if the fine weather lasts for a long time, the
peasant will in his secret heart pray to God for
rain, that he may have a day of rest. In fine

262 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

weather the peasant, however weary, will never
desist from his labours. He would feel ashamed.'
(Enghelhardt.)

Of course I do not say this as disproving the
surgeon's opinion as to the strengthening effects of
agricultural labour. Certainly it is the healthiest
of all occupations, provided only that the labourer
has food enough to make up for the great
physical exertions this work entails. I only wish to
show that our peasants do not spare themselves,
either behind the kustars stand and the factory
loom, or on their land ; that their capacity for work
is at least equal to their power of endurance ; and
that they really do their utmost in the terrible
struggle for life and independence which they have
been waging under such unfavourable conditions
for the last twenty-six years.

It cannot be said of them that they have
won the battle ; yet neither are they defeated.
Certainly they have saved their "honour" and
something more.

The bulk of our peasantry, that is to say, about
two-thirds of it, have preserved the land and the
position of independent husbandmen to which
they are so passionately attached ; and for its pos-
session they continue to pay, in some cases, the

HARD TIMES. 263

whole, in others twice the value of what it yields
in taxes, twisting themselves with miraculous
dexterity out of the clutches of usury, and from
under the hammer of the tax-collector. But
in spite of this they are gradually giving way.
Slowly, it is true, obstinately defending every
inch of the ground ; sometimes retrieving in a
good year that which they lost in a bad one ;
but, on the whole, losing their foothold unmistak-
ably, fatally.

Those frightful figures, showing the increase of
general mortality, are there in all their barren
eloquence to attest this fact. The Government
returns regarding recruits prove that insufficiency
of food, combined with over-work, begins to pro-
duce its baleful effect on the health of the rising
generation. The peasantry, as a whole, lives in
greater want than it lived ten — nay, fifteen years
ago.

The scientific study of the daily fare of ordinary
peasants — which means those who are rather badly
off — would, in all probability, prove a no less
puzzling problem than to calculate the average
quantity of respirable air inhaled by each, and
would inspire a high opinion as to the marvellous
adjustability of the human stomach.

264 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

When in 1878 some people brought samples of
bread from the Province of Samara, nobody in
the Geographical Society would believe that it was
intended for the consumption of man. It looked
like a brownish, sandy coal of inferior quality, or
like dried manure ; and it fell to pieces when
pressed between the fingers, so great was the
quantity of non-nutritive ingredients mixed with
the flour. This, of course, is exceptional ; but the
average peasant family in our villages leads a
life of privation and fasting, which would do
honour to a convent of Trappists. They hardly
ever taste meat. Whole-meal rye bread, and
whole buckwheat, and gruel made of grits, are
dainties which they only taste during the few
months, sometimes weeks, which immediately
follow the harvest.

Children from these families, when placed in
situations in town as domestic servants, in well-
to-do households, at first literally over-eat them-
selves on ordinary sifted rye bread, as other
children might do on cakes.

In the prisons the convicts banter and tease
one another. " You rogue, you ! Look how you
have fattened on the Crown's chistiak ! " which
means whole-meal bread ; because in the prisons

HARD TIMES. 265

rye bread, though of inferior quality, is dealt out
without any extraneous admixture, whilst the
ordinary run of villagers, during eight months
out of the twelve, eat bread mixed with husks,
pounded straw, or birch bark.

It is when reduced to such extremities as these
that the peasant "puts himself in harness," to
use the moujiks* colloquial term, for applying to
the ruinous assistance of the local usurer. He
cannot help it if his children cry for bread.
4< They are not like cattle, the children," said one
peasant, apologising for his insolvency. " You
cannot cut their throats and eat them when there
/s no forage for them. Willing or unwilling, you
must feed them." And the peasant then steps
on to the slippery declivity, at the foot of which
yawns the abyss of misery and degradation, which
is summed up for our rural population in the one
word " batrak'1 A whole third of our peasantry
has slipped down this descent since 1861, and is
now at the bottom. There are twenty millions
of landless rural proletarians in modern Russia.
Among the remaining forty millions, who still
hold their land, there are yet other millions who
will join the ranks of the ruined to-morrow if not
to-day. Here is an extract from the reports of

266 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

a Commission of Inquiry, giving a detailed and
graphic account of the economical position of such
peasants as are on the high road to become
batraks, though nominally they are still land-
holders. I translate literally, in the endeavour
to preserve the ingenuous tone and style of the
original.

" Pankrat Horev and wife have a family of
six daughters and one son, all under age. He is
the only full-grown workman in the house. He
pays taxes for two souls — i.e., two shares of land.
His property : ' one cow, one horse, two sheep. '
Their means of subsistence : ' know no trade.
Have ground their last sack of oats.'

" Ivan Jdanov. Family of five people, with one
full-grown workman. His property : one cow,
one horse, one sheep. Means of subsistence :
' no bread since the autumn. Begs with his
children. In order to pay off the second instal-
ment of his taxes has sold his hay.'

" Fedor Kazakovzev. Family of six people,
with one full-grown workman. Pays for one and
a half souls (share of land). His property : one
cow ; no horse. Means of subsistence : no trade,
goes begging. To pay the taxes has sold his
stable.

HARD TIMES. 267

" Emelian Jdanov. A family of ten people, of
which only one is a full-grown workman. Pays
for one and a half souls. His property : no cow,
no horse, the house in ruins — uninhabitable.
Means of subsistence : begging. To pay the
taxes has sold his last horse.

" Efrem Tarasov. A family of six people, with
one full-grown workman. Pays for two souls.
His property: one horse, old and lean, one sheep.
Means of subsistence : no bread, are begging.

" Evsignei Usskov\\zs> a family of six. Pays for
two souls. His property : one horse, one calf.
Means of subsistence : are eating their last oat
bread. To pay the taxes has sold his pig.

" Prod Jdanov. A family of seven people, with
only one full-grown workman. Pays for three
souls. His property : one horse. Means of
subsistence : to pay the taxes has sold his house ;
to buy bread, his cow. This they have already
eaten, and now are begging.

" Andreian Zaushnitzin. A family of seven
people, with one full-grown workman. Pays for
two souls. His property : no horse, no cow,
two sheep. Means of subsistence : to pay the
taxes has sold his horse and his cow. No bread,
are begging. And so forth, and so forth. . . . '

268 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

(" Records of the Zemstvo of Orloff District in
the Province of Viatka," 1875, page 254).

For peasants in such an evil plight, whose
name is legion, to be converted into downright
batraks would be to a certain extent a deliver-
ance. They would no longer be worried about
the taxes, and their position would be clear once
and for ever. That which makes them cleave
so tenaciously to the land is the hope, but rarely
realised, that " perhaps " by some lucky chance
they may be able to struggle through their
present straits, rear their children, and then, when
the household numbers several workmen, all will
be well again, and they become " real moujiks "
once more.

Hundreds of thousands of peasants, when once
compelled to resign the land, leave the country
altogether, swelling the masses of our town pro-
letarians, paupers, and tramps. The bulk of the
landless peasants do not, however, leave their
native villages. They seek employment as
batraks in the village or neighbourhood, and
wander as day labourers from one master to
another. Their families live in the village, in the
izba (cottage) they have retained, and to which
the father returns when out of employment.

HARD TIMES. 269

If the commune is not very hard up, no taxes
or duties are imposed on these bobyls and bobylkas,
as the male and female landless householders are
called. In such communes as are in distressed
circumstances, and which cannot afford to exempt
any, they have to bear their share of the common
burdens, such as the digging of wells, the con-
struction of bridges, or, if they keep any cattle
themselves, the hiring of the communal shepherd.

But, whether they pay anything or not, whether
they work or beg, the bobyls and bobylkas retain
their full voice in public affairs and their place at
the communal meetings of the mir. There is not
a single case on record of any attempt on the part
of a mir to curtail these rights, which, in their
opinion, is due to manhood and not to property.
It is not, however, to this class, which is so
absolutely dependent on the koulaks, and so easily
cowed by them, that the mir can look for an
active support in its struggle for freedom against
its chief enemies and oppressors.

There are few rural districts which enjoy real
and genuine self-government. In most of them
the Government appointments are monopolised by
koulaks and wz'r-eaters pure and simple. An honest
peasant, a mirs man, anxious to protect the mirs

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

interests against the village koulaks as well as the
police superintendents, stands but a poor chance
against one of the koulaks, supported, as they
are, by the police and local administration. To
obtain the post of starshina for their own man, or
to overthrow some notorious swindler hated by
all, who may chance to fill it for the time being,
the peasants have to resort to no end of canvass-
ing, agitation, and diplomacy, in order to detach
from the koulak who opposes them some influential
supporter of his own set, to inspire the timid with
courage, and persuade them to firmly resist the
threats of the " stanovoi" the " ispravnik" and
the " member."

More often than not these efforts are not
crowned with success, and hence the fact that
there are few districts in which there is no under-
hand contest going on between the commonalty
and the board of officials. But in a prosperous
and truly agricultural commune— which is tanta-
mount to saying in a strongly united commune —
the koulak, even when accepted as the head of
the administration, will think twice before com-
mitting a gross injury to a member of the mir, or
before plunging his grasping hand too deeply
into the communal cash-box. For a flourishing

HARD TIMES. 271

agricultural commune, not in "arrear" with its
taxes, even the police has no overpowering terrors,
and the mir grows very obstinate when provoked
beyond a certain limit.

We gaze on another picture when we look at
poor half-ruined villages, swamped by "arrears,"
overcrowded by bobyls indebted almost to a man
to the koulak, and dependent on his kindness
and mercy. Here the koulak reigns supreme.
Whether in office or not he is absolute master
of the position, because he is able to sway the
mirs vote at his pleasure. Both elders and
judges, who among other powers have the right
to inflict corporal punishment on the peasants of
their district, are the tools, friends, dependents,
obedient to his biddings. In such communities
the koulaks verily are absolute masters. The
very vastness of the powers wielded by the mir
makes it extremely dangerous to resist the koulak ;
should there be no rivalry among the set, almost
impossible.

Thus are the koulaks not merely instrumental in
the material ruin of our peasantry ; they are the
chief agents in the demoralisation and perversion
of our people's public spirit, and of those demo-
cratic communal institutions which first fostered

272 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

it. At the same time the koulaks serve as a
channel by which the demoralising influences,
which come from the police and the adminis-
tration, are infiltrated into the hearts of the
villages.

CHAPTER III.

BETWEEN these two classes — the rural proletarians
on the one hand and the rural plutocracy on the
other — stands a third, that of the " grey " moujik.
In their ranks we place all peasants who, without
being necessarily free from debt to the koulak or
to the State, have, nevertheless, preserved their
land, their agricultural implements, and their
cattle in good working condition, so as to have
a reasonable hope of retrieving their position
within an appreciable time. Excluding all such
merely nominal land-holders, who have no cattle
wherewith to till their land, we shall still find this
to be a sufficiently numerous class. At the
present time it counts among its numbers
certainly more than one-half of our rural popu-
lation, though it is constantly on the decrease.
The upper stratum melts into the rural pluto-
cracy, the lower swells the ranks of rural
proletarians.

This is the class which forms the backbone

18

274 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

of Russian strength ; it intervenes between the
State and bankruptcy ; it upholds the great
popular principles of social and economical life,
and struggles undaunted against the police and
the tax-gatherer ; ic withstands the heavy pressure
of the rural plutocracy ; it resists the downward
influence of the proletariats.

It must be in fairness admitted that in defend-
ing their political and social principles our
peasants, the " grey moujiks " at their head, have
shown the same tenacity and obstinacy as they
showed in the protection of their favourite
economical status. Indeed, they have succeeded
in preserving in absolute integrity the funda-
mental axiom that there shall be no such thing
as personal proprietorship in land or in any
other source of wealth which is provided by
nature. Notwithstanding the many influences
working in an opposite direction, they still hold,
with a few unimportant exceptions, to the principle
that a man has a right of ownership in a thing
only in so much and in so far as it embodies his
labour. In politics they stick to the idea of the
supreme authority of the mir and of the perfect
equality of its members, considering the many
violations of these principles as abuses ; and

HARD TIMES. 275

against them the popular conscience never ceases
to protest.

There is certainly a far greater uniformity in
the popular mind as to these two fundamental
points than might have been anticipated from the
diversity in the social condition of the people.

The very koulaks and wzr-eaters who misapply
them to their own ends will generally recognise
them in the abstract. That which in our social
organisation had become damaged, vitiated, cor-
rupted, is the interior relations between the
members of the commune, affecting the opinions
held as to a man's moral conduct and his obliga-
tions towards his fellow men. This ideal of
"unity," then, which we have endeavoured to set
forth in one of our former chapters, was the
natural outcome of the material and social equili-
brium existing at one time in Russia, but which is
now gradually disappearing from our village com-
munities.

The village in its natural state — as it was in by-
gone days, and could yet be under a more rational
agrarian arrangement — may be best described as
an association of labourers, amongst whom there
are no connecting interests to check or mar that
sentiment of mutual good-will which is inherent

276 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

in all men as social beings. Friendliness amongst
these peasants was assured by their not being in
any sense competitors : that which in other branches
of industry can be attained only by means of a
complicated social arrangement is obtained in
agriculture by itself. I mean independence of
the market. Each lives by the fruit of his labour,
not from the profits he might or might not get
by selling to somebody else. Two husbandmen
tilling their fields side by side are not rivals,
unless in the noble and artistic emulation that
may be felt by two labourers delighting in their
work. The failure of the one can in no way be
considered by the other as a windfall for himself.
Nor could one feel grieved, or in the least alarmed,
if the other, being stronger or abler, or simply
luckier, earned more

Differences in wealth always existed among
our peasants. In each village there have always
been rich families, poor families, and those of
moderate means, a difference regulated by their
respective ability and industry, and particularly
by the number and age of the members which
formed each household. Large families, composed
of five, six, and even more full-grown workers,
and " rich families " are synonymous terms even

HARD TIMES. 277

now. But as for every pair of willing hands
there was land waiting to be tilled, a diligent
peasant could well afford to be indifferent to the
question as to how many silver coins his neigh-
bour had hidden away in his strong-box. He was
in no need of it ; and in the next generation the
chances of birth and death might make his family
a large one, and make him in his turn a " rich "
man. Labour was the certain source of prosperity
and independence. It was also an all-sufficient
ground for self-respect and for considerate treat-
ment from his fellow-men. Labour became, to
a certain extent, sanctified in the eyes of the
people.

"God loves labour," say our people, though
nowadays there are few who attach more signifi-
cance to these words than to many other virtuous
precepts handed down by popular tradition. Men
belonging to the type of unselfish workers are
rare in our time. Lukian, for example, " the
batrak of Ivan Ermolaeff, with whom even his
exacting master was satisfied, was an exceptional
man." He believed labour to be meritorious
before the face of God. "God loves labour,"
he often said, and believed it firmly. With a
view to future beatitude, he moved logs and

278 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

carried beams, rolled stones, and over-taxed his
strength over the most back-breaking efforts, not
only without a grumble or any feelings of spite,
but with an unshaken belief that all this was
agreeable to God. " He likes it ! " said Lukian,
whilst, red as a turkey cock and dripping with
perspiration, he was pulling up an enormous
stake sticking in the bed of the river under the
direction of Ivan Ermolaeff. He was all wet, he
was sighing and groaning from the strain ; but
God saw these efforts and approved of Lukian.
The stake creaked and splashed as it was pulled
out of the deep mire of the river's channel, and
Lukian then knew for certain that " God had seen
his efforts and had added a new mark to the
many he had already gained by his labours."

In losing the power to secure the satisfaction
of the people's needs, labour lost much of its
dignity, scope, and attractiveness. The only
thing which is appreciated now, and which alone
can secure to the peasant peace, safety, and
respect, is money. But from daily observation and
experience he soon learns that money cannot be
viewed in the same light as the product of the
land. The people who succeed in making the
most money are not always those who work the

HARD TIMES. 279

hardest, but in many cases those who do not
work at all, and are only the more respected for
being idle, both in the wide world outside, of
which the moujik catches occasional glimpses, and
in the village where he lives. The koulak, whose
motto is " Only fools work," is certainly the man
whose position is the most enviable. Nobody
would dare to lay a finger on him. To him not
only the small fry — starshina, pissars, uriadniks
— but the stanovoi himself are kind and consider-
ate. The ' ' grey " moujik cannot help feeling
tired and disgusted with his eternal drudgery
over his " cat's plot," which brings him in such
a pittance. He also longs to be safe, and not
to live in momentary dread of a flogging ; he,
too, wishes to be respected, and would not in
the least object to being courted. The greed
for money now permeates the whole rural popula-
tion ; they all join in the mad chase after roubles,
a chase which moreover diminishes their attach-
ment both to the land and to the village.

On the land a household works together ; the
>roduct is the result of common labour, and is
considered as common property. The mir as a
whole plays an all-important part in the cycle of
agricultural life, as guardian of the land, meadows,

28o THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

and forests, controlling their fair distribution
amongst the people, and directing the common
work. When making money in towns, everybody
depends on his own personal ability and indus-
try. The village does not in any way assist or
protect him, and the household very rarely does.
His duties towards the mir become a burden to
him, and he is much tempted to resent the con-
stant drain on his resources made by his own
relatives.

This is one of the chief causes of the breaking
up of the large patriarchal families, which flourished
among the Russian peasants in olden times.
" The Gorshkovs," says Uspensky, " were one of
the richest and largest families in Slepoe Litvinovo ;
in proof of which I may state, that up to the
present moment they have always lived under
the same roof. I called on them pretty often ; and
whatever the hour of my visits — early morning
or mid-day or evening — I invariably found all the
members of the family not engaged upon some
work — men, women, and children — seated round
a big samovar sipping their weak tea. They
always asked me to partake of their refreshment,
and they were exceedingly polite and obliging ;
but, nevertheless, I did not feel at my ease among

HARD TIMES. 281

them. In the mutual relations of the members
of the family there was a certain constraint and
insincerity. It seemed not only as if I were
a stranger amongst them, but that they were
all strangers to one another. When I became
better acquainted with this family, and with the
general conditions of peasant life, I was convinced
that my presentiments had not deceived me.
There was deep-seated, internal discord in the
family, which was only held together partly by the
skill of the clever and robust old grandmother,
whom all were accustomed to obey, and especially
by the unwillingness of each one ' to be the first
to begin the row/ It seemed as though each
one expected that one of the others should be
the first to ' rebel.'

" This discord was of ancient date. It had
been worming itself gradually into the heart of
the family almost ever since the time when the
necessity for earning something extra first became
manifest. One of the brothers went to St.
Petersburg during the winter months as a cab-
man, whilst another engaged himself as a forester ;
but the inequality of their earnings had disturbed
the economical harmony of the household. In
five months the cabman sent one hundred roubles

282 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

home to the family, whilst the forester had only
earned twenty-five roubles. Now, the question
was, Why should he (the forester) consume with
such avidity the tea and sugar dearly purchased
with the cabman's money ? And in general : Why
should this tea be absorbed with such greediness
by all the numerous members of the household—
by the elder brother, for instance, who alone drank
something like eighty cups a day (the whole family
consumed about nine hundred cups per diem),
whilst he did not move a finger towards earning
all this tea and sugar ? Whilst the cabman was
freezing in the cold night air, or busying himself
with some drunken passenger, or was being
abused and beaten by a policeman on duty near
some theatre, this elder brother was comfortably
stretched upon his belly, on the warm family oven,
pouring out some nonsense about twenty-seven
bears whom he had seen rambling through the
country with their whelps, in search of new land for
settlement. True his (the cabman's) children were
fed in the family whilst he was in town ; in the
summer he was, however, at home, and worked
upon their common land with the rest. His
children had a right to their bread. The only
thing which made him tolerate his dependency

HARD TIMES. 283

was that the horse and the carriage, which he
drove when in town, had been purchased out
of the common funds. But his endurance did not
promise to hold out much longer.

" For two years he had kept silence ; but his
people were well aware that he tried to ' conceal '
a part of his earnings, so that his contribution
towards the family income should be pretty much
the same as that furnished by the other brothers.
When his daughter, a little girl, succeeded in
earning fifteen roubles for the family by selling
wood-berries, he tried to deduct that amount
from his cabman's fees for his own private use.
The grandmother would not, however, permit
this.

" The next brother (the forester) also began to
ponder and to calculate as to how much of his
money was ' engrossed ' by the eldest brother
and his children. A dress for Paranka had been
purchased from a pedlar with his money. Now,
Paranka was the eldest brother's daughter, and
able to earn fifty roubles at work among the osiers,
which she appropriated to her own private uses.
The forester was very vexed and irritated about
the dress bought of the pedlar. As the grand-
mother took Paranka's side in the dispute, Alexis

284 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

(the forester) took his next month's salary to the
public-house and spent it all in drink.

" It is impossible to describe all these domestic
dissensions. The notions as to ' mine ' and
' yours,' which disturbed these people's peace of
mind, were felt in every trifle — in every lump of
sugar, cup of tea, or cotton handkerchief. Nicolas
(the cabman) looked at Alexis, thinking. ' You are
eating of that which is mine,' conscious, all the
while, that at times he, too, had eaten of something
belonging to his younger brothers. Alexis, in his
turn, could not feel himself quite at his ease. It
was all very well for him to hiccough freely after
drenching himself with as much tea as he could
hold, in sign of his being well pleased and satisfied
with himself, after having partaken of tea which
was his own, but he was not sincere. A misgiv-
ing lurked in his heart, that either in this tea, or in
that sugar, or in the white bread, or — which was
most certain, and by far the most disagreeable of
all — in his own stomach, there was something
belonging to somebody else.

"It was exactly this ' mine, thine,' peeping out
from every mouthful and from every gulp, which
drove me from the Gorshkovs' table, all their
obliging invitations to take a cup of tea with them

HARD TIMES. 285

notwithstanding. They drank their tea solemnly
and silently, looking steadily into their cups ; but
it always seemed to me that they were all trying
to drink the same quantity, noting, under the
rose, whether any one had out-eaten or out-drunk
the others.

" At all events, the sidelong glances they threw
upon one another and the children were very bad
looks indeed. It was the same in everything. If
you hired some horses of one of the brothers for a
drive into town, the others, on meeting you, would
try to find out how much you had paid him. If
you paid one of the brothers his fees the others
were sure to stare at your purse and at their
brother's hands. Of course such relations could
not be maintained for long.

"It so happened that the first to rebel was
Paranka. She took it into her head that she
could not do without a regular woollen, town-made
dress. All the men resisted this whim, for about
eighteen months, with resolute energy. A million
of times, at least, it was proved to them by the
grandmother and the other women, as well as by
Paranka herself, who wept bitterly through a
number of winter evenings, that no less than a
hundred roubles of Paranka's money had been

286 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

spent upon the family. The men resisted with a
truly bull- like stubbornness. Finally, the grand-
mother herself began to wail, and then the men
gave way, and it was resolved that a dress should
be made.

"The eldest brother was commissioned to
inquire about the prices and everything appertain-
ing to the matter. He resolved to go to the next
port, distant about fifteen miles, and to make his
inquiries there. He took a provision of oats and
hay for the horses, spent two days on the trip, and,
having consulted with the smith, the farrier, and
several merchants, returned home not one whit
the wiser. He did not know how to broach the
subject. In order not to allow the brothers to
cool down, Paranka had begun to wail incessantly
from the very day the resolution as to her dress
had been passed at the family council. By dint
of these tears she moved the reluctant men to
take active steps. The two next brothers put
horses into the cart and also went to the port, for
there was a saw-mill there, and, in consequence,
a large number of people. They were no more
fortunate than the elder brother, and came home
with the conviction that the women must be sent,
for Paranka gave them no peace with her wailings.

HARD TIMES. 387

The women went and returned perfectly horrified :
nobody would think of making a dress such as
Paranka wanted for less than forty roubles. Here
all the brothers, their wives, and even Paranka
herself, seemed to understand that the matter was
at an end ; but God saved Paranka. A soldier
who happened to be at the port heard about the
inquiries of the Gorshkov women, and sent word to
the headquarters of a cavalry regiment stationed
near Novgorod, some thirty miles off. At these
headquarters there was a dressmaker who, profit-
ing by a lucky chance (an officer was transporting
a piano to St. Petersburg), begged permission from
the carrier to accompany him, and thus arrived at
Paranka's village sitting upon the piano. She
persuaded the family that all could be well and
cheaply arranged.

" But when the brothers counted up everything
that had been spent on the dressmaker during the
six weeks that she stitched and unstitched the
dress, they found that it represented a sum equal
in value to the framework of two peasants' houses.

" The dressmaker stole some pieces of stuff,
and they had to incur extra expense in recovering
them. And worst of all the dress was quite
unwearable. Later on, thanks to unremitting toil,

?8« THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

and particularly to ' concealment ' of money.
Paranka succeeding in paying herself for a silk
dress by a Novgorod dressmaker, besides a jacket
and a paletot. All these treasures she kept hidden
in the house of a friend.

" The next after Paranka to squabble was
Nicolas, the cabman. He began to urge that he
had long since redeemed the carriage and the horse ;
but the first to break away from the family, and to
separate in real earnest, was Alexis, the forester,
probably because he felt more sincerely and
oftener than the others did the burden of being
indebted to others. That part of his own earnings
which he considered to be an extra he faithfully
spent in drink, that it might fall to nobody's share ;
he did not, like Nicolas, secrete it. When sober,
however, he could not help feeling that he at
times ate that which he had not earned. To screw
his courage up to break with his family he gave
himself up to reckless drinking ; he squandered
seventy roubles — that is a whole year's salary—
at the public-house, and drank himself mad.
By this means he was able to tear himself from
his own people. In a sober state he would never
have haa the heart to take his children from the.
paternal root- tree, to lead away the cow and the

HARD TIMES. 289

horse, or to pull the slits. He took possession of
a small house, built by the Gorshkovs some ten
years previously, after a fire, and there he and
his family lived whilst a new house was being
constructed."

The ultimate complete dissolution of the Gorsh-
kov household is merely a question of time. Thus
far there has been no harm in it. The vigour of
the big patriarchal families is sapped by the lowest
instincts as well as by the loftiest aspirations
developed by modern times. They are incompati-
ble with individual independence. Amongst the
Southern Russians, with whom the sentiment of
individuality is much stronger than among the
Great Russians, these composite families are
unknown. Their rapid dissolution among the
Russians would have been an unmitigated good
if it were not accompanied by the general relaxa-
tion of social ties between all the members of the
village Community.

CHAPTER IV.

FOR a community of labourers mutual assistance
is only another name for mutual insurance. The
danger of falling ill or lame, of remaining without
support in old age, or of having a " visitation "
in the form of fire or murrain, is pretty well
equally shared by all. In mutually assisting each
other they are doing that which it is to their
obvious interest to do ; giving the same as they
expect in their turn to receive. There is nothing
particularly generous in it ; nor do they them-
selves consider it to be anything very meritorious
or laudable on their part. Zlatovratsky, in his
" Derevenskie Budni " (sketches of every-day
village life), describing one of the " old-fashioned "
villages, observes how easy it is for an outsider to
be led into error if he takes the peasants' state-
ments in a literal sense without observing and
investigating for himself.

If, for instance, you were to ask the peasants
whether they assist the poor, they would certainly

HARD TIMES. 291

answer. " Oh dear me, no ! We are too hard-up
ourselves. We throw a Kopeck, or a piece of bread,
to the poor who knock at our window, that is all."
But, if you take the trouble to observe more
closely, you are surprised to discover the existence
of a vast system of co-operative assistance given
to the aged, the orphaned, and the sick, both
in field work and in household labour ; only the
peasants do not look upon this as charity. It is
a simple fulfilment of the obligations of their
" daily life." The old man, whose corn the
whole mir turns out to carry on a Sunday
afternoon, receives only what is his due as a mirs
labourer and tax- payer of several score of years'
standing. The orphan receives but a benefit on
account of labours to come.

The present increase in the number of purely
industrial occupations, which now largely pre-
dominate over the agricultural, has made the
necessity for this reciprocity less self-evident, and
general impoverishment has made its practice
hardly possible, even with the best-intentioned.
People who live from hand to mouth, and who
are compelled to put into requisition every
working hour of the day on their own account
in order to avert or to postpone their own ruin.

292 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

cannot afford to be solicitous over any needs
but their own. Such considerate mutual assist-
ance, the humanity of which is enhanced by the
delicacy with which it is offered, is becoming
rarer and rarer. Charity — for our people are still
very charitable — is the meagre wraith of the once
high conception of co-operative assistance ten-
dered as a duty on the one hand, and accepted
as a right on the other.

Enghelhardt gives an exceedingly interesting
account of the practice of almsgiving among the
peasants of North- Western Russia (White
Russian), which under other guises exists in
nearly every district of the empire.

" There is no regular distribution by weight of
baked bread to beggars, as is, or rather was, the
custom in times of yore in the manor-houses.
In my house the cook simply gives those who
ask ' the morsels,' or small pieces of rye bread,
as do all peasants. As long as a moujik has one
loaf of bread left in his house his wife will give
' morsels.' I gave no orders as to the
' morsels/ and knew nothing about the custom.
The cook decided on her own responsibility that
'we' must give 'morsels,' and she accordingly
does it.

HARD TJMES. 293

" In our Province, even after a good season, few
peasants are able to make their own bread last
until harvest-time comes round again. Almost
every family has to buy bread to some extent ;
and when there is no money for it, the head
of the household sends the children, the old
men and women ' for morsels.' This year, for
instance, the crops were very bad : there was
neither bread for the people nor, worse still,
forage for the cattle. A man may find food for
himself among the people by means of these
' morsels ; ' but how is he to feed a horse ? It
cannot be sent from door to door in search of
' morsels.' The outlook is bad, so bad that it
cannot well be worse. Most of the children were
sent ' for morsels ' before St. Cossma and
Damian. (ist November: the peasants count
the time by the saints' days.) The cold ' St.
George ' (26th November) in this year proved a
hungry one too. There are two ' St. George's '
days in the year ; the cold — 26th November
— and the hungry — 23rd April, which, falling
as it does in the spring, is at a very hungry
time of the year. The peasants began to
buy bread long before ' St. Nicolas,' which
shows that they had not a grain of home-grown

294 1HE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

corn in the house. For the peasant will never
buy any bread until the last pound of flour is
kneaded. By the end of December about thirty
couples came every day and begged ' for
morsels.' Among them were children and old
people, also strong lads and maidens. Hunger
is a hard master ; a fasting man will sell the very
saints, say the moujiks. A young man or girl
feels reluctant and ashamed to beg, but there
is no help for it. There is nothing, literally
nothing, to eat at home. To-day they have eaten
the last loaf of bread, from which they yesterday
cut ' morsels ' for those who knocked at their
door. No bread, no work. Everybody would be
happy to work for bare food ; but work — why,
there is none. A man who seeks ' for morsels '
and a regular ' beggar ' belong to two entirely
different types of people. A beggar is a pro-
fessional man ; begging is his trade. A beggar
has no land, no house, no permanent abiding
place, for he is constantly wandering from one
place to another, collecting bread, eggs, and
money : he straightway converts everything he
receives in kind — corn, eggs, flour, etc. — into
ready money. He is generally a cripple, a sickly
man incapable of work, a feeble old man, or a fool :

HARD TIMES. 295

he is clad in rags, and begs in a loud voice, some-
times in an importunate way, and is not ashamed
of his calling. A beggar is God's man. He
rarely wanders amongst the moujiks, and prefers
to haunt towns, fairs, and busy places, where
gentlemen and merchants congregate. Pro-
fessional beggars are rare in the villages ; there
they would have little to expect.

" A man, however, who asks ' for morsels ' is
of quite another class. He is a peasant from the
neighbourhood. He is clothed like all his brother
peasants, sometimes in a new arnnak; a linen sack
slung over his shoulder is his only distinguishing
mark. If he belongs to the immediate neighbour-
hood even the sack will be missing, for he is
ashamed to wear it He enters the house as if by
accident, and on no particular business beyond
warming himself a little ; and the mistress of the
house, so as not to offend his modesty, will give
him ' the morsel ' incidentally, and ' unawares.'
If the man comes at dinner time he is invited
to table. The moujik is very delicate in the
management of such matters, because he knows
that some day he, too, may perhaps have to seek
1 morsels ' on his own account.

" * No man can forswear either the prison or the

296 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

sack,' say the peasants. The man who calls
for a ' morsel ' is ashamed to beg. On entering
the izba he makes the sign of the cross and stops
on the threshold in silence, or mutters in a low
voice, ' Give in Christ's name.' Nobody pays
any attention to him ; all go on with their business,
and chat or laugh as if nobody were there. Only
the mistress approaches the table, picks up a piece
of bread from three to four square inches in size,
and gives it to her visitor. He makes the sign of
the cross and goes. All the pieces given are of
the same size. If any of the slices given are
three square inches in size, all are three square
inches. If two people come together (they
generally work in couples) the mistress puts the
question, 'Are you collecting together?' If the
answer is ' Yes,' she gives them a piece of six
square inches ; if separately, she cuts the piece
in two.' '

The man who tramps the neighbourhood thus
owns a house, and enjoys his allotted share ot
land ; he is the owner of horses, cows, sheep,
clothes, only for the moment he has no bread.
When in ten months' time he carries his crops,
he will not merely cease begging, but will himself
be the giver of bread to others ; if by means of

HARD TIMES.

the aid now afforded him he weathers the storm
and succeeds in finding work, he will with the
money he earns at once buy bread, and himself
help those who have none. This system of
asking for help " in kind" serves as a make-shift
to avoid the irretrievable ruin which would follow
the selling off of his cattle and other property.
It is a painful expedient, to which the peasants
only resort when all others have failed.

"In the autumn " — we resume the quotation —
" when the crops are just gathered, practically all
these peasants eat wholemeal rye bread until their
hunger is satisfied. Just a few exceptionally
prudent families do add husks to their flour even
at this season of the year, but such foresight is
rare. When, after a time, the head of the family
notices that bread is running short, the family has
to begin to eat less — perhaps twice a day instead
of three times, then only once ; the next step is to
add husks to the flour. If there is any money left
after the taxes are paid, bread is bought ; but if
there is no money in the house, the head of the
household tries to borrow, and pays an enormous
interest on any accommodation he gets. Then,
when all other means are exhausted, and the last
bread has been eaten, the children and the old

298 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

people swing the sacks over their shoulders and
tramp to the neighbouring villages asking help.
Whilst the children generally return to sleep at
home, their elders go to more remote parts of the
country, and return home only after they have
collected a considerable number of morsels. On
these the family dines, and if there are any left
they are first dried in the oven, and then stored
away for future use. In the meantime the father
is struggling to find work, or to borrow bread,
and the mistress is looking after the cattle, and
cannot leave the house. The grown-up young
people are eager for any employment that will
bring in food.

" The father has perhaps succeeded in procuring
a few bushels of corn, and in that case the children
no longer go to the mir and beg from door to door,
and the mistress once more distributes ' morsels '
to those who knock at theirs. If, on the other
hand, the father has failed to procure corn, the
children are followed in their piteous quest by
the grown-up members of the family, and, finally,
by the father himself, who does not go on foot,
but with his cart and horse, his wife remaining
alone in the house to look after the cattle. The
advantage of driving is that the needy men can

HARD TMES. 299

thus penetrate much further into the country,
often even beyond the borders of their Province.

" This winter it has been common enough to
meet a cart full of sacks with ' morsels ' on the
road, and on the cart a moujik, a girl, and a boy.
Such peasants do not return home before they
have collected a considerable supply of bread,
which they dry in the oven when stopping to
sleep in some village. The family feed on these
biscuits, while the father works about the house
or seeks for employment somewhere else. When
the stock of ' morsels ' begins to be exhausted,
the horse is once more put into the cart, and they
go again on their weary round. Many families
provide themselves with food in this way all the
winter, and even during a part of the spring ;
and sometimes, when there is a good supply of
these ' morsels ' in the house, they are distributed
to those who come to beg.

" All this clearly proves that these men are not
professional beggars. To them people do not
say, when unwilling to give anything themselves,
' God will give you in our stead,' as they do to
a regular beggar ; but, ' We have nothing to give ;
we are going to solicit morsels for ourselves.'
Another distinction to be drawn between the two

300 '1HE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

classes of beggars is that whereas, as has before
been stated, the peasant gives to those in need
as soon as he is able, the professional beggar
never gives anything to any one.

" Not to give a ' morsel ' when there is bread in
the house — is a sin. That is why my cook gave
them without first asking for my permission. Had
I forbidden her to do so she would most likely
have rebuked me, and in all probability have flatly
declined to remain in my service."

In addition to this remarkable development of
public-spirited self-sacrifice amongst our peasants,
instances occur of yet higher manifestations of
the feeling of human brotherhood.

Potanin, in writing of a commune in the Nicolsk
district, Province of Vologda, which depended for
its support on the work supplied by a salt-house
in the neighbourhood, mentions how, in 1878, the
firm began to lose ground, and was compelled
to reduce the number of the men employed, by
one-half. The community, brought face to face
with the necessity of seeing one-half of its mem-
bers condemned to starvation, passed the resolu-
tion that each peasant should work only three
days in the week instead of six, as heretofore.

It was an heroic impulse which decided these

HARD TIMES. 501

men to suffer gradually, but together, rather than
to snatch the bread from one another's mouths.

As a rule, in all similar cases it has been found
that the strongest will outbid the feeblest, and the
whole community will look with perfect composure
on the ruin of its weaker members.

This power of self-restraint on behalf of the
community, has now given place to that cold-
blooded indifference to others' woes, to that animal
egotism, indicative of a universal breaking up,
which has struck with awe many of the observers
of modern village life.

There is no secret between fellow villagers
concerning their material prosperity. Every
peasant knows the exact number of acres tilled
by each one of his companions, the number of
sacks of grain he has sold, and the number he has
kept, and could give an inventory of each house-
hold in turn, by heart. If some ill luck befall
a family, the village knows exactly what will
be the outcome of it. The ruin is foreseen, pre-
dicted, expected, with fatal certainty, and takes
nobody by surprise.

Here is an excellent peasant family — a husband,
wife, two boys, and a girl. It is hard work for the
father to feed them all, but he has good help-

302 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

mates — an industrious, clever wife, and a daughter
who has entered upon her sixteenth year. They
make both ends meet. The father wishes to find
a son-in-law who would consent to live with them,
and is looking out for a suitable match for the
girl ; then the household would be complete.
But it chances that the father hurts his leg, and has
to keep his bed. This misfortune occurs at the
season when work is most pressing, in the spring.
The neighbours who have no such affliction to
bear, on seeing the piece of ill luck which has
befallen the family, cry, " Oh ! what a pity, what
a pity ! Nothing could be worse than to be laid
by at the season when work is heaviest. They
will now have to sell their two calves to enable
them to hire a labourer, and they will be
unable to marry their Mariushka."

All this proves true to a fraction. The two
calves, destined to defray the expenses of the
wedding, are sold, and Mariushka's marriage is
postponed. The batrak has done his trashy work,
and has gone, but the master still remains lying in
his bed. An old woman treats him with various
home-made medicaments, but the leg grows worse
and worse.

In the meantime the mowing season has com-

HARD TIMES. 303

menced. Now there is nothing left to sell, to pay
for the hiring of a batrak. The father makes an
effort, rises from his sick bed, sets his scythe,
and goes to the field. He mows the hay, but
irritates his wounded leg so badly that he falls
quite ill, and at about the middle of the harvest
time breathes his last.

" Now, say the neighbours, Mariushka must
go to town as a servant, to earn money for
her mother. There is no use in her remaining
at home — nobody will marry her now, poor
soul ! "

And once more everything happens exactly
as had been predicted. Nobody will marry
Mariushka, for she cannot leave her family, and
no young man will venture to enter into the
household as one of its members with so many
mouths to feed — two brothers under age, the
mother, and his own children into the bargain.
So the family remains without a man. But the
taxes must be paid for the land, so they resolve
to engage a permanent batrak. Mariushka goes
to town to service to make up enough money for
his wages, but she has everything to learn before
she can be engaged as a trained servant. Many
months pass before she is able to buy herself fitting

304 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

dresses to wear when she shall have found employ-
ment in a " respectable " house. To these diffi-
culties must be added the numberless uncertainties
and temptations besetting a young girl in a town.
She may be seduced, and return with a baby
to the village, and a life of eternal shame. A mere
accident : the gentleman in whose family she was
engaged as servant has lost his employment, and
for three months is unable to pay her her wages,
so that Mariushka cannot send a penny home to
her mother just at the time when money is the
most urgently needed. Arrears in the taxes
accumulate upon the arrears of the wages due to
the batrak.

The land is taken from the mother, and her cow
is sold to pay the batrak. What could the poor
woman do in this extremity ? She has two boys
to bring up, one of ten the other of eleven years
of age. They are not workers as yet, but they
need to be fed, and the mother has nothing to give
them. Her only expedient is to send them also
to town to Mariushka, who is glad to find them
employment with a publican.

The mother remains alone. She is sick at
heart, weary of this life of suffering and wretched-
ness. She sells the. house and goes away, a sack

HARD TIMES. 3°5

on her shoulders, to the shrine of some saint, there
to pray for the soul of her deceased husband, and
for the two boys who are pining away in the
tavern, and for Mariushka too, of whom nothing
whatever has been heard. " Oh, poor creature ! >!
say the neighbours pityingly, as they see the
owner of the ruined nest off; and a week later
they welcome the new proprietors of the house.
The recent drama is forgotten.

Or another case — two brothers. The elder,
Nicolas, is a hard-working, indefatigable moujik,
but he can hardly keep body and soul together,
and is gnawing his heart out in vain efforts to
improve his condition. Opposite him lives his
brother Aleshka, a bumpkin, who never yet suc-
ceeded in anything. This Aleshka was employed
as a forest surveyor, at seven roubles per month.
Nicolas has ousted him. Aleshka occasionally
takes a drop too much, whilst Nicolas is a total
abstainer. " It is just the same to Aleshka whether
he earns money or not," he said.

Ousted from this employment, Aleshka tries
the wood trade, and delivers fire-wood at certain
places. Nicolas " finds out " the wood-yard,
offers his services at a lower price, and ousts his
brother again. "What right has he to grumble?"

20

3o6 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

he asked ; " I do not hinder him from offering his
services at a yet cheaper rate."

And what of their fellow-villagers, the mir?
What are they doing ? They look on with perfect
equanimity, merely stating the facts — "John must
go begging." "Peter will flourish." "Andrew
will have to starve," and so on.

When Nicolas turned his brother out of his
situation in the forest, " Seven roubles a month
will be a God-send to Nicolas ! " remarked the
neighbours. " Now he will thrive apace." When
Aleshka was ousted by his brother from the wood
trade, and shortly afterwards lost to him a small
meadow, rented from a landlord, the neighbours
said, "Now Aleshka is lost, he must come to
downright ruin." And Aleshka could not help
ratifying their prognostication. He has a lot of
children, one under another, and a sickly wife,
unfortunately endowed with great fecundity.
Aleshka, on seeing ruin and desolation creeping
over him, gave himself up to drinking, and began
to beat his wife furiously, in the hope that it might
subdue her untoward fecundity, and bring it to
a level with his miserable means. In this he did
not succeed, and then threw the heft after the
hatchet by drinking more than ever. On seeing

HARD TIMES. 307

him stretched in the mud in the gutter, face
downwards, motionless as a log, people predicted,
" He will be found thus some day, dead." Aleshka,
however, escaped death, and a new and terrible
misfortune overtook him.

One day the news spread through the village
that Aleshka's three daughters, left by the mother
to the care of their elder brother, a boy of
nine (the father was absent also, stealing wood
from the landlord's forest), had, in playing, upset
a boiling samovar, and had scalded themselves
from head to foot, "In a few hours they will
probably be dead," prophesied the village experts.
As, however, in villages everything is known and
so very many things foreseen, this prophecy was
accompanied by another. " Why ! perhaps now
Aleshka may improve his position. Certainly it
is hard upon him to have to bear such a blow,
for who does not pity his own flesh and blood ?

: But, on the other hand, nobody can pry into
God's designs. Who knows but what God in

his wisdom At all events Aleshka will have

a chance ; certainly his prospects may improve."
As a matter of fact the children did die, and,

i as a matter of fact also, Aleshka did begin to

i improve.

308 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Such are the incidents which sometimes "save"
a peasant from inevitable ruin ! Each for him-
self. Near is my shirt, but nearer is my skin.
The commune has been transformed into a pack
of galley slaves, each of whom endeavours to
minimise his share of the burden and responsi-
bilities.

The commune asks for an advance from the
zemstvo. The zemstvo accedes to the demand,
and sends in a subsidy only sufficient, as a matter
of course, to assist the needy families. In a
village composed of some twenty households
there are, let us say, five families which are
destitute. The money, or the provision of corn,
sent by the zemstvo is accordingly sufficient to
relieve only these five families. But the subsidy
is advanced to the mir as a whole, under its
collective responsibility. The zemstvo cannot
have dealings with, or rely upon the solvency of,
Peter or of John, and other private individuals
who may be soliciting its assistance. Now, as
the whole village is answerable for the cost of
the supplies sent, the peasants say, " If I shall
have to pay, let me have my share too." It is
resolved, therefore, at the mirs meeting that the
subsidy shall be divided amongst all, apportion-

HARD TIMES. 309

ing, moreover, the shares according to the number
of " souls " in each household. The " soul " which
is the unit for measuring the working capacities of
each household (as well as the amount of land
apportioned to it), at the same time represents
the liability of each household with regard to
all those taxes and payments and duties of any
kind, which fall on the commune in a lump.

Thus, in the distribution of the zemstvd 's subsidy,
the richest family, which represents five "souls,"
and has five shares of land, will receive most
of the corn ; the medium-sized, representing three
souls, will have three shares. As to the landless
bobyl, who is economically a cipher, because he
does not stand even for a fraction of a " soul,"
he receives nothing at all, though he may have
the largest family and be the most needy.
People do not want to be answerable for him.
If he is reluctant to resort to the usual expedient
of " going for morsels," he must re- borrow the
subsidy at its full valuation, and upon his own
responsibility, from his well-to-do neighbours, who
have received it without any individual payment.

No wonder that the barefooted horde in its
turn shows no particular goodwill to its well-to-do
fellow-villagers.

310 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Ivan Ermolaeff grumbles. He is a typical
"grey moujik" this Ivan Ermolaeff. Though
with a slight leaning towards the koulaks, he
retains all the traditions and tastes of a genuine
peasant in their full intensity, and hates and
despises all non-agricultural profits as unbecoming
a moujik. He is far cleverer than another "grey
moujik" of our acquaintance, Ivan Afanasieff,
whom we introduced to the reader in a former
chapter.

Whilst puny Ivan Afanasieff, with all his dili-
gence and ardent love for the land, is unmistakably
on the high road to become a landless batrak,
energetic and ready-witted Ivan Ermolaeff will
certainly hold his own, at all events for many
years to come.

Working all the year round like a galley slave,
Ivan Ermolaeff makes both ends meet, and " does
not suffer from hunger," which is the beau ideal
of a grey moujik.

Yet he grumbles. He grumbles, not against
his hard lot, which he supports with stoical endur-
ance, but against the people, against his fellow-
villagers.

" You try to improve your position, and your
neighbours do their best to ruin you."

HARD TIMES. 311

" How can that be ? Why should they do
it?"

" I do not know ; since they do do it, they must
certainly have some reason. 'You are doing well,
I am doing badly.' ' Well, let us so arrange
matters that you shall do badly too.' ' It will
put all upon the same level.1 ' Judge for yourself.
We have here a forest belonging to the Com-
mune. Everybody receives a part of it for his
own personal use. Well, I have hewn my wood,
grubbed up the ground, have generally improved
it, and transformed it into arable land. As soon
as I have by my own labour obtained more
land, they shout, ' Let us have a redistribution !
You hold more land than those who pay for
the same number of souls. The quantity of
communal land has increased ; let us have a
redistribution ! '

" But is not everybody free to reclaim his part
of the waste land ? ' '

" Yes, but everybody is not willing to do it.
Herein lies the difference — some are not strong
enough, others are too lazy. I am up before the
dawn, I work in the sweat of my brow, I harvest
more crops. Oh ! they will take it from me, you
may depend upon it. " And do you think it

312 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

will be of any great advantage to them ? " "Not
at all. Each will receive a bagatelle, a mere
strip, a narrow slip of land. They have twice
played me this same trick. It is useless to try
to improve my position."

" And are there many people in your village
who are thus hindering you ? "

" Certainly, many. The rich bar my way, and
the poor bar my way likewise."

A new stream of feeling, which is anything
but benevolent, is springing up in the villages
amongst the disinherited " victims " of the social
struggle, which bodes evil both to social order
and to their victorious brethren.

Formerly the peasants used to hate their
masters, the nobles, and the tchinovniks, who,
rod in hand, managed the manorial estates. This
hatred, however bitter, fell on outsiders, who
formed a small body of people, who were allowed
to oppress and torture the peasants by the Tzar's
sufferance, not by any power of their own.

At the present day the bitterest enemies to the
people are singled out from among their own
ranks. They form a detached and numerous class,
which has its adherents, and agents, and sup-
porters. The hatred they inspire in millions of

HARD TIMES. 313

the peasants is as legitimate as that inspired by the
slave-owning nobility in times of yore. Modern
hatred assumes the character of class-hatred, and
extends to the whole social system, of which the
rural plutocracy is the necessary outcome.

CHAPTER V.

" EVERY time I happen to meet or to speak to
the peasant Havrila Volkov," says Uspensky, " I
invariably think how dreadful it will be to witness
the time when this Volkov shall let loose the fierce
hatred and rage which lie hidden in the depths
of his heart, and are at present only discovered in
the cruel expression of his eyes and mouth, and
by the harsh tones of his voice. For when the
outward pressure which holds him down shall be
removed, his hidden passions will immediately
assume the form of a powerful, revengeful, and
pitiless giant, raising an enormous cudgel against
everything and everybody.

" A man of herculean strength, Havrila Volkov
is also undoubtedly endowed with great mental
energy. But the transition period through which
we are passing, though already protracted to such
an abnormally long time, has provided no solid
food for the popular intelligence to digest ; indeed,
hardly any food at all, because during all this

HARD TIMES. 315

time nothing has been so thwarted and obstructed
as the influences which might have resulted in
a sound development of the popular intelligence.
Owing to this, Havrila's mind is only distorted,
disconcerted, unhealthily excited by vague rumours
and hopes, and as unhealthily depressed by other
rumours of an opposite nature. ' Money ' — this
is the only immutably solid thing amidst all the
contradictions and uncertainties of life.

" Havrila is now about forty years of age. He
was born, and grew into young manhood, in the
days of serfdom, though people were already
talking about the coming Emanicipation.

" These rumours grew more persistent, and with
them the hopes for the future grew stronger and
brighter. Serfdom was at last abolished. Their
lord, whom Havrila's parent served, mortgaged
his estate and disappeared. The manor house
stood deserted and locked up. The hateful past
seemed to be blotted out for ever. Yet people
had to work harder than before, because the
peasants' land had been curtailed and their ex-
penses had increased. They could not live by
the land alone, and were forced to go to town
to seek work there. Havrila's family, however,
ruled by a hard and despotic father, preserved

3i6 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

a comparative affluence, because kept together
by the strong hand of its head ; but it was trying
to have to bear his despotism. He took all the
money earned by his sons. One brother earned
more, another less, for equal skill was not required
for their respective work.

" They were all put on an equal footing by the
absolute rule of their father, which appeared to
Havrila to be nothing less than wanton tyranny.
To become rich through husbandry had gone out
of fashion. The method which had come to be
much in vogue was to gain wealth by speculation
and by usury. A constant rage was gnawing at
Havrila's heart : the family had eaten up such
a lot of his own earnings, that, if he had used
it in speculative ventures, he might by that time
have been as rich and as respected as their neigh-
bour Cheremukhin, who had started in business
with a solitary sixpence in his pocket. Domestic
despotism oppressed him to no purpose. By
agricultural work, however hard, it was futile to
try to match Cheremukhin's profits.

As time moved on, the despotic habits of the
father, instead of taming down, became daily more
oppressive. Taxes were increasing, the family
stood in need of more money — ergo, the work grew

HARD TIMES. 317

!

heavier and heavier, otherwise the greater expen-
diture could not be met, and Cheremukhin would
swallow them up. All this only stirred up
Havrila's rage the more. His father ought to let
him live by himself on his own earnings, and
after what fashion he liked. But the old man
would not hear of it, and squeezed him ever
closer in the effort to make both ends meet.

"Yet all this relentless work notwithstanding,
ruin was always imminent. If by ill luck the
horse should one day perish, they would be com-
pelled to implore Cheremukhin's assistance, and
it would be all over with their independence.
But just look at Cheremukhin ; he could impose
his yoke on everybody, whilst nobody could im-
pose a yoke on him, and he was a stranger to
poverty and hard labour.

" To what purpose all this ? Wherefore this
eternal drudgery, which gave neither ease nor
independence in return? Havrilaand his brothers
had on several occasions tried to rebel against
their father's despotism, but had learned that this
despotism was strong, and had moreover the sup-
port of the mir, who could flog the irreverent sons.
Rancour brooded in Havrila's heart, — rancour
against his father, against work, and against taxa-

3i8 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

tion, resentment towards Cheremukhin, and envy
of his easily-won wealth ; indignation at the
paucity of land, and the multitude of rates and
taxes imposed upon the peasants. For ever
working, for ever paying, without any profit for
yourself or for the household. There was only
one thing that Havrila understood with perfect
clearness, i.e., that money was the solution of all
problems, and the means wherewith all difficulties
might be settled. One needed only to make
money. With money you were free as a bird ; you
could buy everything, sell it, and buy it back again.
" At last the despotic father died. Havrila
immediately separated from the others, and he
and his wife started a new household. He had
no faith left in agriculture, which had become
hateful to him ; yet he was still compelled to live
by this work, and under far more distressing con-
ditions than before. Thenceforth he was the only
full-grown labourer in the household. Instead of
rising to it, as he had expected, he sank im-
measurably below the level of his ideal, Chere-
mukhin. After his separation he could hardly
keep the wolf from the door. All the year round
he dwelt in dirt, in poverty, and in interminable,
ungrateful work, without hope or respite.

HARD TIMES.

" A passionate desire to make their way in the
world absorbed all the thoughts of Havrila and
his wife, — an energetic and stern woman. They
must have money, no matter by what means.
No kind of swindling came amiss to Havrila
provided it promised to forward his aim — wealth.
He had heard that Cheremukhin pressed hay and
sold it at a profit in St. Petersburg. He was also
told that damaged hay often passed undetected
amongst the good — who can see what is put into
the middle of a bundle of hay ? Havrila com-
menced to speculate in rotten hay. He found
customers, and at first sold -them several cart-loads
of sound hay, then palmed off a lot of spoilt stuff
all in one consignment, and then disappeared.
He repeated this operation successfully with
several people in different parts of St. Petersburg,
and had begun to make a little money, though
the amount was very small as yet, when one day-
he was caught in the act, dragged to the Police
Station, and indicted before a Magistrate. He
lied and prevaricated like any conjurer, but
could not exculpate himself, and was locked up,
and lost both hay and money.

" Swindling had proved a failure, though he
knew by many examples that this was not always

320 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

so. Exasperated by his losses and his humiliation,
Havrila applied his mind with redoubled energy
to the discovery of some new means whereby he
might retrieve his fortunes. He eagerly caught
at any information which bore in any way upon
money-making. Events at St. Petersburg (i.e.,
the attempt against the Emperor's life) gave rise
to a great many vague and irritating rumours
amongst the masses. One day, on passing by a
manorial wood, Havrila met a gentleman in a gig,
a gun slung behind his shoulders, and a wild duck,
just shot, lying at the foot of the box. With one
flash all the wickedness and spite which lay
fermenting in Havrila's head and soul broke forth
into a brutal desire ' to catch the gentleman and
hand him over to justice. It is all the work of
gentlemen (i.e. these attempts) who are set against
the Tzar. I will earn a reward. . . . Poaching in
the Tzar's woods . . . first-rate chance ... a reward ! '
And Havrila, though perfectly indifferent to the
interests of the Crown, forthwith flew at the
gentleman, like a robber, snatched at his gun and
the duck, climbed into the gig, and, seizing the
reins, drove him as a prisoner at full speed to
the village. . . ' A gentleman without a pass-
port . . . caught by me in the Tzar's woods

HARD TIMES. 321

identify him ! ' shouted Havrila, with the evident
desire of making as much noise and scandal as
possible.

"When the superintendent officer had listened to
Havrila's exultant report of his exploit he warned
him : ' I shall advise this gentleman to take an
action out against you for violent assault. Out of
my sight, you idiot ! ' Havrila did as a matter of
fact have to appear before the magistrate, but fhe
gentleman spared him, and he therefore bowed
low to him, craving his pardon, whilst in his
breast he was boiling over with rage against the
gentleman, the authorities, and his own stupidity.

" ' No,' he secretly resolved, ' one must rob.
There is nothing for it but to rob.'

" An intense desire to appropriate things be-
longing to others, particularly money, assumed
in him the strength of a devouring passion.
Side by side with this covetousness there grew
upon Havrila and his wife, who understood her
husband's wishes at a glance, a kind of austere
avarice. They had never spent a penny on tea
or sugar ; since Havrila had separated from his
relatives he had not smoked one ounce of tobacco
\ nor drunk one glass of brandy. Never did he
exchange a friendly word with anybody, unless

21

322 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

expecting to reap some profit by it. If he had
called on you he would have squeezed something
out of you in some way or other before he left, on
that you might depend. He would literally com-
pel you to submit to the necessity of being
cheated by him. His object once attained, he
would not stop at your house one minute longer ;
but in case of failure he would drink three
samovars, and sit for five hours as dumb as an
idol, until he had contrived to gain at least some
of his ends.

" If he had nothing to expect from you he would
pay you no attention, perhaps not recognise you
at all. On looking at his cruel face and harsh
eyes, which made every attempt to smile ' like a
peasant ' simply pitiful, one felt that a reserve of
strength that boded no good, lay hidden in this
dark soul.

" A dark night, a deserted, out-of-the-way
thoroughfare, a drunken wayfarer with a bundle
of banknotes in his pocket, and a blow with an
iron pole-axe on the temple, must have often
flashed through this energetic but benighted
brain as the 'real thing,' the only solution to
all difficulties.

" Cherishing such ideas and such feelings as

HARD TIMES. 323

these in his breast, Havrila was nevertheless com-
pelled to drudge away at the land. He had three
children, all under age, and he worked briskly
and vigorously, though sullenly. He kept down
the bile and spite and rage which were devouring
him, but he gnawed at the bit. When his
opportunity came he would give rein to his re-
bellious temper, and would take a frightful revenge
for the enforced submissiveness of years, and for
the trampling down of his own natural feelings,
for the slow murder of his two ' superfluous '
children, dispatched by himself and his wife to
the other world as untoward obstacles ; for the
humiliations of poverty, and for the galling
drudgery of hateful toil."

Another interesting character in Uspensky's
gallery, Ivan Bosykh, is a person of totally
different temper and nature. He is, indeed, the
kindest and the most benevolent of men. But he
is one of the regular " victims " in the economical
struggle, and the trying circumstances of his
position have exasperated him to such an extent
as to have converted him into certainly quite as
dangerous a character as Havrila.

" Ivan Bosykh belongs," says Uspensky, " to
that useless and miserable class of beings whose

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

existence is incomprehensible, even disgraceful in
a country like Russia, but who nevertheless do
exist, and during the last twenty years have been
constantly on the increase, a class which, willingly
or unwillingly, must be designated as 'rural
proletariats.'

" Bosykh, when sober, is the kindest of men and
an excellent worker, having ' golden hands,' as
the peasants say nowadays. However, he is
rarely seen to advantage. Only a few years ago
it was otherwise. Then Ivan Bosykh was in
all respects an exemplary moujik, and his house-
hold, though not rich, was united and orderly
— ' pleasant to behold/ to use his fellow- villagers'
expression. Now he is the poorest batrak in
the village. His cottage is fallen into decay.
The window-panes are broken, and the gaps
stopped up with dirty rags. He beats his wife, a
clever, industrious woman, and remarkably beau-
tiful, whom he married for love. She took a
summons out against him. His three ragged
children wander about the village all day long,
cared for by nobody, and hungry. If you mak<
enquiries about him in the village you will receive
the most unfavourable references. He has sole
the same hay three times over to three different

HARD TIMES. 325

persons, and spent all the money in drink. He
borrowed money on his heifer in three different
shops, but paid it over to none of them, having
sold it meanwhile to a fourth and spent the
money, as usual, in drink.

The history of Ivan Bosykh's ruin and moral
degradation is instructive because it is so common-
place— hundreds of thousands of Ivan Bosykhs
have been ruined in exactly the same manner. If
Bosykh fell lower than some, it was merely be-
cause, being more sensitive, he was more subject
to despair.

The chief instruments of his ruin were as usual
the village usurers, the koulaks. It began slowly
at first. To begin with, his land was curtailed,
the meadow and pasture lands were retained by
the landlord, whilst the taxes in the meantime were
increased, a common, oft-repeated story. With a
young family like his, Ivan Bosykh could not avoid
the necessity of now and then applying for small
loans to fill up the gaps in his balance sheet.

" ' Then,' he explains, ' one creditor bothers you
for one rouble, another for two. You make shift
and pay — with interest. Interest here, interest
there — and lo ! there is a new gap which you had
not noticed before.'

326 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

For a long time Ivan Bosykh struggled bravely
against heavy odds, which he thought would be
only temporary, and kept himself more or less
above water, when a ' sudden visitation ' overtook
him and felled him to the ground. His two
horses and his cow were killed by the murrain.
In this desperate position Ivan Bosykh applied to
a regular koulak, his brother-in-law. By dint of
supplication and the intercession of his sister Ivan
Bosykh bought a horse from his brother-in-law,
on credit, for thirty-five roubles, to be paid in the
spring, though the beast had cost the koulak no
more than fifteen roubles. But Ivan accepted
this deliverance even at that price, and thanked
his kinsman most humbly for his kindness.

As he had only one horse to feed, his brother-in-
law offered to buy his hay. Ivan Bosykh, greatly
pressed for money as he was, agreed to part with
his hay for five kopecks per stone. Soon after he
had to dispose of his heifer, as he could not feed
it well after the death of his cow. His brother-
in-law bought it for five roubles, and a few weeks
later Bosykh learned that he had resold it for
twenty-five roubles. He also learned that the
hay he had parted with at five kopecks per stone
had been resold in the town for twenty kopecks,

HARD TIMES. 327

his brother-in-law making a net profit of full
eleven kopecks per stone.

When Bosykh, after having delivered a lot of
hay to his brother-in-law, tried to get rid of him,
as he had a perfect right to do, and found another
hay merchant, willing to pay him a more reasonable
price — ten kopecks per stone — his brother-in-law
grew furious, and charged him with base ingrati-
tude. Another koulak, Parfenoff by name, the
man who had packed Bosykh's hay, and whom in
hanging his customer Bosykh had ' robbed ' of a
part of his profits, made common cause with his
brother-in-law. Together they tried to enforce
obedience on their common victim.

As Bosykh refused to sell for five kopecks
what he could sell for ten, they resolved to take the
horse from him ; without a horse he would be
altogether prevented from working his farm.
The brother-in-law and Parfenoff tried to lead off
the horse from Bosykh's house by force. A
scuffle ensued, in which Bosykh proved to be the
strongest. Upon this the brother-in-law lodged
a complaint against Bosykh before the village
tribunal. Here Parfenoff was one of the judges,
and the other judges were his friends. A glass
of wine here, a bottle of beer there — the verdict

328 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

was : to take the horse from the defendant, and
to give him twenty strokes with the rod for
having boxed ParfenofT and his own brother-in-
law on the ears.

" ' I was not present at the trial,* said Ivan
Bosykh. ' After the verdict a policeman was
sent to my house : "You must go to the volost"
he said. " What for ? " " You are to be
flogged.*' " Oh, no, not I." " Yes, you are,
though." "No, I won't. Tell them to flog
somebody else, if they like." I grew quite
furious,' he continued. How is this ? ' said I to
myself ; ' our lords flogged us when we were serfs,
and now, when that is over, a simple moujik
like myself can flog me because I will not
voluntarily allow him to rob me of my own ! I
gave this scoundrel (brother-in-law) one hundred
roubles' worth of my toil, but he requires more,
and means to flog me into obedience."

Bosykh resolved to make a firm stand for his
rights. The horse was his rightful property by
the terms of his agreement, whereby payment for
it became due in the following spring, six months
hence. He appealed against the judgment of
che village Court, and declared that he would not
give up the beast. But it was easier to come to

HARD TIMES. 329

this resolution than to keep it. A few days
later the brother-in-law, Parfenoff, and the village
elder, who was also a koulak of the same stamp,
entered his house, breaking the door of the house
open with an improvised battering-ram, as well
as those of the stable, where the horse lay hidden,
and led it away in triumph.

" ' You expected that we should await the
decision of the Court?' said the elder, who led
the band. ' No ! with such knaves as you we
conduct things in a more speedy fashion — mind
that ! And you will be flogged into the bargain,
take my word for it. Perhaps you want to lodge
a complaint against me ? Please try it. We
have sentenced you to twenty lashes now ; after
that you will receive a hundred and twenty.'
On this they retired.

" Thus,' says Bosykh, ' I was left without my
horse, and such a rage took possession of me
that it seemed as though the very devil had
entered into my body. My wife began to weep
over our ruin ; I flew at her like a madman.
By God ! I do not know how I could have had
the heart to raise my hand against her. She
began to cry, and this only increased my fury.
I left her at last and ran straight to the tavern.

330 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Here I promised the inn-keeper to sell him my
hay, at two kopecks a stone, provided he would
give me wine, and I drank and drank till I lost
my senses. I could not reach my house, but
stumbled into a ditch, with my face in the mud,
and fell asleep. How long I lay there I do not
know. The cold awakened me, and I opened
my eyes. The moon was up ; in the village the
girls were singing their songs. I arose. In
passing by Parfenoft's house I saw the whole
party through the window, — the elder and my
brother-in-law among them, grouped round the
table, on which stood a boiling samovar and
a bottle of wine. They were celebrating their
triumph. All my fury returned at once. I rushed
into Parfenoft's house just as I was, besmeared
with mud, and barefoot, because I had left my
boots at the tavern in exchange for drink. I
went straight up to the elder, and treated him to
a sound rap on the snout ; then I did the same to
Parfenoff, and then to my brother-in-law. They
rushed at me. But no ! I was quite in earnest this
time. " I will kill you, you damned scoundrels ! "
1 shouted. " Give me wine, you rascals ! " All
my strength returned to me at this moment. I
should have crushed, with one blow, the first who

HARD TIMES. 331

had dared to approach me, and they knew it, too,
for they left me alone and sent for help. I sat
at the table, drank up the wine, and then with
the empty bottle struck the looking-glass, which
fell to pieces, and in its descent knocked the
tea-tray on to the floor.

" ' In the meantime help had arrived. They
knocked me down, bound my hands, and put me
under lock and key. All three sent in their com-
plaints against me. I was summoned to appear
before the tribunal, but I would not go, and went
to the tavern instead. They passed a verdict of
" contumacy " against me, and sentenced me to be
flogged. They summoned me for the execution
of the sentence. I would not go. They sent for
me three times. I spat in their messenger's face
and told him that I would not go. In defence of
their three snouts they sentenced me to upwards
of one hundred strokes. I held fast to my resolu-
tion not to submit. Thank God there were other
good people in the village to support me. Thus
I succeeded in escaping from their clutches up to
Lady Day, my chief consolation in the meanwhile
being the tavern. By this time my new friend,
the merchant to whom I had agreed to deliver
the hay, began to threaten me with a writ. But

332 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

how could I bring my hay into the town when
I had no horse ? Besides which the tavern-keeper
required the same hay, because I owed it to him
for drink. I could not look people in the face
for very shame.

" When Lady Day had passed I heard the tink-
ling of little bells, and saw three troikas (carriages
driven by three horses) running into the village.
It was the elder, the judges, and the stanovoi. My
heart sank within me at the sight. They stopped
just before my gate, entered my house, and called
a village meeting. "The taxes!" No means to
escape was left me. People began to bring their
taxes, and the elder approached the stanovoi^ and
pointing to me said, " This peasant, your Excel-
lency, was four times sentenced by the tribunal
for having insulted, first his brother-in-law, then
me, then Parfenoff, and then his brother-in-law
again. He was twenty times summoned to attend
at the volost, but he will not obey and offers resist-
ance. Moreover he does not pay his taxes. Will
you permit us to execute the verdict at once ? "

" ' It was then that they laid me down. It was
then that I lost my reason, and my shame, and
my conscience. I lay on the ground like a log,
and they lashed me, and lashed me again, in

HARD TIMES. 333

virtue of all four resolutions. I lay there, and,
will you believe it ? I was frightened of myself !
By God, yes ! frightened of myself, frightened to
jump to my feet, frightened to move, lest I should
slay the first whom my hand could reach.

" ' At last I perceived that the hounds had taken
rather a liking to the operation.

" ' Enough ! ' I cried, and in such a voice
that they stopped at once, the damned scoun-
drels !

" ' Well, from that time forth I was a lost man.
Lost — absolutely lost ! Everything became dis-
gusting to me, the work, the house, the light of
day. The tavern grew to be my only consolation.
I began even to steal ! Everything went from
bad to worse, and I doubt now whether there will
ever again be any chance for me to retrieve my-
self. Something dreadful will happen, I am sure.
I am quite beside myself from exasperation. A
mortal anguish is gnawing at my heart. The
evil one is whispering in my ear. Oh ! he will
incite me to something horrible. I shall end in
the galleys, take my word for it.' '

Ivan Bosykh is one sample drawn from a
number, — an illustration of the feelings which are
surging in the hearts of our toiling millions. This

334 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

state of things must naturally lead to some prac-
tical manifestation on the part of the disinherited.
The " red cock," or wilful arson of another
man's property, this favourite means of revenge
within the power of the weak of heart, is no rare
guest in modern Russian villages. Our meek
and patient peasantry are, however, beginning to
learn even fiercer methods of retaliation. There
is ample evidence in the reports of foreign corre-
spondents (Russian papers are not allowed to
mention such delicate subjects) that agrarian
crimes like those at one time of such frequent
occurrence in Ireland are beginning to strike root
upon Russian soil. Sometimes they assume the
character of a solemn public execution. The most
striking so far, has been that recently perpetrated
by the peasants of a village in the Insar district
(Province of Pensa), who at their public meeting
passed a resolution to put the land-agent of their
landlord to death, and went in a body and carried
this resolution into effect. For this offence four-
teen peasants were sentenced to death in October
1887 by a Court Martial, and two were actually
hanged on November 24th, — a drastic sentence,
and a drastic proceeding, evidently intended to
strike terror into the peasantry, because according

HARD TIMES. 335

to Russian law and every day practice, all crimes,
save political ones, are tried before a jury, and
there is no capital punishment for any common
offence.

Still, if we take into consideration the enormity
of the popular sufferings, and the paucity of
agrarian crime and agrarian disturbance of any
kind, we must admit that the Russian peasants
practically keep very quiet.

Where lies the source of this phenomenal en-
durance displayed by a mass of several scores
of millions of people, whose bitter dissatisfaction
with their lot admits of no shadow of doubt ?

In the character of our race ? In our people's
past history or present political superstitions ?
Each of these causes must certainly have had its
share of influence, though they are but secondary
ones, which cannot explain this strange fact satis-
factorily. We, for our part, think that the main
cause of it lies elsewhere, and is this : the moral,
political, and social discontent seething in the
heart of the rural population of Russia has found
a sort of safety-valve in the new evolution of
religious thought which nowadays covers almost
the whole field of the intellectual activity of the
Russian labouring classes. Almost the whole

336 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

moral and intellectual force produced by the
modern Russian peasantry runs in the channel of
religion ; religion engrosses the leading minority
of the people who understand most thoroughly
and feel most keenly the evils of the day, and who
alone would be able to put themselves at the head
of any vast popular movement. That religion
should play this part of intercessor between popu-
lar discontent and its logical outcome — open rebel-
lion— is all the more natural and unavoidable
inasmuch as our new popular religions are not
merely a protest against, but to some extent a
cure to, the evils against which the popular con-
science is the most indignant. The religious en-
thusiasm proper to all new sects has re-established
— for a time at least — more fraternal relations
between those men who adhere to them, and has
subdued the fierce and cynical struggle for eco-
nomical predominance which is raging in our
villages.

This interesting process we will endeavour to
investigate in its fulness in the following studies
upon popular religion.

POPULAR RELIGION.

.22

CHAPTER I.

ARE the Russian peasants so very religious ?

This question, of the highest importance, both
in the present and for the future, has attracted a
good deal of attention, Russians and foreigners,
travellers and scholars, journalists and folk-lorists,
historians and ethnographers, have dealt with it
more or less exhaustively.

The prevailing opinion among foreigners is,
that the Russian peasants, though imbued with
many superstitions, are nevertheless a very re-
ligious race. Amongst those Russian observers
and scholars who are recognised as the best
authorities on the subject, the contrary opinion
predominates, though it is far from being
universal.

Thus, the most prominent of our historians,
N. Kostomarov, who unites to his vast erudition
an unrivalled historical insight, is of opinion that
the modern orthodox peasants — of whom alone
we are speaking here — are at much the same

340 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

standpoint as were their forefathers, the Musco-
vites, of the seventeenth century, and they,
according to Kostomarov, " were remarkable for
a state of such complete religious indifference as
to be without a parallel in the annals of Chris-
tian nations." Another historian, S. M. Solovieff,
of Moscow, draws from the same facts a different
conclusion, extolling throughout his work the
" deep devotion " of the Russians to their
creed.

A numerous group of young scholars, whc
make the study of popular religions their speci-
ality, such as Yousoff, Abramov, Prugavin, and
others, adhere entirely to the opinion of Kosto-
marov ; whilst the whole body of the Slavophils,
amongst whom are men of undoubted sincerity
and learning, will swear by all they hold sacred
that there never was nor will be another people
so pious as the Russians. The great novelist,
Count Leo Tolstoi, is pretty much of the same

opinion, though with him it springs from an

•^

entirely different source.

We do not in the least intend to imply by all
this that the question we are about to consider
is insoluble. To the best of our comprehension
it is not only soluble, but already solved, with

POPULAR RELIGION. 341

as ample an array of documentary proof as ques-
tions of this class admit of. It is, however, quite
evident that it must by its very nature remain
a complicated and tangled problem.

To completely unravel it is an impossible task.
Many of these discrepancies have their origin in
the preconceived ideas of the observers, who are
quite capable of seeing white where it is really
black. Discrepancies in the bare statements of
impressions and facts admit of no reconciliation,
and must be left to the judgment of those who
may care to investigate for themselves. Much,
however, depends also on the light in which
different persons view the same facts and the
various manifestations of the spiritual life of our
people. With regard to this much may be done
towards both explaining and removing miscon-
ceptions and misunderstandings.

If we follow the peasants in their everyday life
we shall hear God's name uttered at every step.
The will and biddings of God are constantly
mentioned as the base of the moral and social
code.

A peasant in the act of engaging himself, in
some time of distress, to work on the estate of his
well-to-do neighbour is unwilling perhaps to enter

342 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

into a formal agreement at the communal office.
" Never mind," he says to his employer, " I
know you will settle with me in a godly way "
—which means, fairly, without taking advantage
of his present helplessness.

Two sons of a deceased father are mayhap
quarrelling about their inheritance, each thinking
that he has claims to a larger share than the other
is inclined to admit. They will go and choose an
old man as arbiter, and they will say, "Judge
between us in a godly way " — which means,
according to the highest standard of his moral
consciousness, which is supposed to be superior
to the laws of common justice. The old man
wrill thereupon divide the money and the other
property, for instance, according to the individual
claims of each, calculated, let us say, upon the
basis of the number of years they have been
workers in the family (which is common law) ;
but the stock of corn left in the granary he will
divide equally between the two. That is more
godly, according to his notion. The assistance
given to the sick and the destitute is a " godly
act " ; disobedience to parents, injustice to an
orphan, is a sin which God will punish. The
name of God is constantly on the peasant's lips.

POPULAR RELIGION, 343

God's will is the source and sanction for every-
thing which is just, kind, humane.

"Why, then," the reader will ask, "does not
this all mean that these people are very religious
indeed ? "

A disciple of Count Leo Tolstoi will certainly
answer with an emphatic affirmative. And he
will be quite right from his dogmatic point of
view. If we choose to apply the name of religion
to a social philosophy, which is based on a system
of pure ethics, with no admixture of theology,
these people may certainly be called religious.

Baron Haxthausen represents the opposite ex-
treme when he extols the extraordinary religious-
ness of the Russian peasants after having witnessed
how fervently whole crowds of them prostrate
themselves before the ikons ; and he too is quite
right from his particular point of view.

A savage extending his arms towards an idol,
or bowing in wonder and admiration before the
glorious vision of the morning sun, is certainly
under the spell of religious emotion.

Religious feeling is a complicated one, which
we do not propose to analyse here. Our object
is a purely practical one. Religion in the common
acceptation of the term, such as universal history

344 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

has made it, is neither pure ethics nor pure theo-
sophy. For us it implies a certain union of the
two — of the ethical and theological, of the natural
and supernatural. We all, Freethinkers and Chris-
tians alike, agree, moreover, in associating with the
name of religion, the idea of a great, sometimes
an overwhelming, impulsive force of its own.

This is indeed the reason why the study of
religion has for us, as a rule, such an absorbing
interest.

But how is it possible to gauge the potential
force of this agent in a given community — the
Russian, for example ? Where lies the main
source of the impulsive power of religion ? What
are the symptoms of its presence ?

Disagreement on these points would necessarily
lead to confusion and misunderstanding. In
order, therefore, to avoid all possible misappre-
hension we will in a few words explain our
general standpoint.

First of all we take for granted the absolute
independence of pure ethics from any religious
doctrines. Human ethics, the moral principles
which regulate the relations between man and
man, have a much broader basis than the doc-
trines of Christianity, or any religion whatsoever.

POPULAR RELIGION. 345

They spring from the human heart, from man's
social nature, and are manifested wherever men
are thrown peacefully together. When tribes
first broke up into families, their founders learnt,
from the very nature of this new institution, the
first lessons of morality, and at once grasped
the necessity of putting the common good before
their private benefit. They learnt to suppress
their narrow and selfish interests for the sake of
wider and far-reaching ones ; the needs of the
family ranked before those of the individual.
The extension of the principles of morality,
which are the result of association, over large
bodies of people was the one vital condition of
the survival and progress of all tribes as they
issued from the woods ; and such of the older
communities as have left any record of themselves
at all, were able to formulate principles of morality
to which centuries of culture have not been able
to add an iota.

But civilisation has performed a more difficult
task, in constantly enlarging the circle which is
comprised of those to whom morality is binding
and transgression to its laws blameworthy. In
the days of the Seven Sages this circle was
co-extensive with the walls of each town. In

346 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Italy, when Alighieri was giving vent to his
sublime indignation, and much later even than
that, it was so still. The Middle Ages, with
all their Madonnas, saints, and legions of priests
and monks — accredited preachers on the theme
of Christian brotherhood and equality — had a
code of morals whose benefits were confined to
the mutual intercourse of the privileged classes
amongst themselves. The "villeins" were ex-
cluded from its protection as completely as were
the "barbarians" of antiquity.

Civilisation has broken up these caste distinc-
tions within the nationalities. The dominion of
human ethics has been extended, we will not say
over the whole of the human race, because the
coloured races are evidently outside its pale as
yet, but we may, with the aid of a good deal of
charity, say over the whole family of the white
nations. Here the violation of the first principles
of morality, though still only too common, is
always reproved by the public conscience with
an earnestness which certainly increases with
each succeeding generation.

This widening of the spheres of human sympathy,
which is the best result of the incipient fruits of
civilization, was not the result of preaching or

POPULAR RELIGION. 347

teaching or speculation. Sympathy, in any of its
innumerable degrees, must be spontaneously felt.
People who do not instinctively care about one
another can hardly be induced to do so by the
persuasion, entreaty, or command of some superior
authority.

Neither could the growth of knowledge, nor
the spread of culture, as such, bring this about.
But civilization has indirectly done it all by the
marvellous broadening of the intellectual horizon
of modern man, by introducing to him in spirit,
myriads of people who did not exist for his fore-
fathers, and in holding before his mental vision
that which is loftiest and noblest in all humanity.
Civilisation has, as yet, only to a very slight
extent weakened the barriers of class institutions,
but it has overthrown the barriers created by
many prejudices, and it has destroyed the barriers
of space ; and herein lies the real cause of the
spread of the idea of human brotherhood among
men, which is now assuming an earnestness of
purpose unknown to the world two, nay, even
one short century ago.

The instinct of sympathy, innate in man, is
the source and creative principle of all which has
life in human communities, as the sun's heat in

348 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

the world of organic nature. And, like the sun's
heat, it asserts its creative force on the removal
of the material obstacles which screen its vivifying
rays.

And what of religions ? We mean the great
monotheistic religions, which have played so
mighty a part in shaping the destinies of mankind.
These religions are the fairy daughters of these
same sympathetic instincts, which they may be
said to condense and absorb in enormous quan-
tities, converting them into moving force.

The founders of all the great historical religions
were, above all, moral teachers, and gave ex-
pression to the broadest conception of morals to
which their century and nation had attained ; and
amongst these none laid more stress on human
ethics, nor, in advocating the principle of love,
gave utterance to words so deep and true and
heart-reaching, as the great Galilean. Jesus of
Nazareth certainly taught men to love one
another. But the gospels written about him, and
the superstructure of religion bearing his name,
enjoin us to love Christ, which is something very
different.

In all those religions of which we are speaking,
the personal, human charm of the Founder, and

POPULAR RELIGION. 349

the poetry of his life, have been the chief power
wherewith the high, devotional, altruistic instincts
of men have been stirred and riveted upon God.
But Jesus, martyr upon earth and God in heaven ;
Jesus, shedding his blood and giving his life
out of love for mankind, and for each man in-
dividually ; ever present to each one of his
disciples as a living person ; standing ready to be
the recipient of transports of gratitude and love
in this world, and to pass them on in the world
to come — has obtained an unique, an unparalleled
command over the emotional side of human nature.
This it is which gave to his religion the power
to conquer the world. But by the same policy
the educational, the humanizing elements, so
prominent in the original doctrine of the Founder
of Christianity, were pushed entirely into the
background. The God Jesus absorbed and de-
tached his worshippers from humanity, and
monopolized them completely for himself. In
other words, his figure was so enormously magni-
fied in the eyes of his worshippers as to render
men and mankind, with all their petty cares,
very insignificant objects of interest when com-
pared with him. The only valuable service
which a man full of love for his fellow-men could

350 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

render to them was to convert them to the same
faith, thus persuading them likewise to forget as
much as was possible everything for which they
were naturally most inclined to care. Indifference
to all which lay outside the pale of spiritual
pursuits grew to be the essential characteristic
of the religion of Jesus. The beauty of his
doctrine and life were lost as a moral lesson and
an example for men, and served only to facilitate
the access to heaven by increasing the fervour
of adoration, and by enhancing the fascination
of his person.

When the public mind is in its natural and
ordinary state, the human love, pity, and en-
thusiasm called forth by Christianity only add
to the spiritual enjoyments furnished by religion.
And when in a man or in a nation religious
emotions rise to their highest pitch and become
vehement, gushing, irrepressible stimulants for
action, these actions are self-centered ; their ten-
dency always is to serve God and not humanity,
and woe unto humanity when the thing of God
clashes with the thing of man !

But what is the thing of God ? What does
God command ? What will redound to the glory
of God's name, what to its abasement ?

POPULAR RELIGION. 351

Every century, every epoch gives a different
answer to these questions, creating its God after
its own image. Thus it has come to pass that
the Christian's heaven is peopled with as many
different Christs as there have been generations
of Christians. In our own noble and truly philan-
thropic century, we see Christ teach his followers
the doctrine of Christian socialism. During the
epoch of the great English revolution, when the
English middle class first awakened to a sense of
its strength and independence, it was Christ who
led Cromwell's battalions in those glorious fights
for freedom ; it was Christ who sustained the
civil courage of President Bradshaw ; it was he
who guided the hand which wrote the Defence
of the English people and the revindication of
the freedom of the press. But Christ likewise
ordered the Smithfield executions, the massacres
of St. Bartholomew, and the Spanish Inquisition.
There is not a thing, however sublime, not a
thing, however abominable, which, in some time
or place, religion in the name of Christ has not
countenanced and peremptorily ordered. But
whatever the difference in the moral and social
value of these acts inspired by religion may be,
they all exhibit the same characteristics of in-

352 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

domitable energy, straightforwardness, and intense
exaltation, which measure neither the sufferings to
be undergone nor those to be inflicted on others.
Religion as a direct agent in social life is an
enormous but a neutral force, intensifying what-
ever it touches without creating any inner change.
The really great and positive service rendered
by religion to the cause of human progress has
been an indirect one, and lies in the intellectual
domain. Having by its very nature access to
the most primitive intellects, those intellects
which are absolutely proof against any other
spiritual influence, the promptings of religion
rapidly permeated almost every particle of the
body social, sometimes culminating in one of those
moral tempests which will fill remotest posterity
with awe and consternation. They shook the
firm rock of popular intellectual apathy and
stagnation to its foundations, and awakened the
people, as with an Archangel's trumpet, from the
torpor and smallness of narrow, everyday cares.
They stirred millions, physically and morally, and
roused them into taking part in some kind of
intellectual pursuit. It is doubtful indeed
whether any other force than religion could
have done this to the same extent ; and this is

POPULAR RELIGION. 353

why the epochs of great religious excitement
were those wherein the human mind made its
most astonishing advances.

In this attempt to sketch the state of religious
feeling amongst the bulk of the Russian peasantry,
we will consider religion exclusively from the
above-named historical point of view, as an
active or potential mover of the masses. We
cannot, therefore, dismiss the question by merely
inquiring how far our peasants are Christians in
their ethical conceptions, or even their practical
conduct.

Milton's Satan, in speaking to the young Son
of Mary about the Athenian Philosophy, observes
very pertinently that —

" All knowledge is not couch'd in Moses' law,
The Pentateuch, or what the Prophets wrote ;
The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach
To admiration, led by Nature's light"

The social conditions under which our peasantry
lived for centuries have been favourable to the
spontaneous development among them of such
" pan-human " morals. They are Christ-like as
a matter of course. The infiltration of actua
Christian ethics amongst them is very probable,
nay certain, given such favourable ground ; but

23

354 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

whether this be so to a great or only to a small
extent, this does not in the least imply that
Christianity as a religion has a strong hold over
them. Furthermore, the fact that our people dub
their whole system of morality with the name of
religion is equally inconclusive. The question we
have to investigate is, how far the channel between
the natural and the supernatural is open with them,
and how far they have the element of the super-
natural stored up in their minds. We mean che
supernaturalism of Christianity, — because that of
fetishism and paganism — has no motive force in it.

CHAPTER II.

IT has been admitted that Christianity, as far as
its ethics are concerned, must have actually filtered
down to our peasantry. Eight centuries of official
Christianity could not pass over their heads with-
out leaving some trace behind. But as in the
Christian Religion the theological doctrine goes
hand in hand with the ethical, we are bound to
admit that in the process of infiltration the people's
natural predispositions have operated as a kind
of endosmic disintegration of the religion : whilst
they accepted one part of the doctrine offered to
them, they remained completely deaf to the other.
It is undeniable that the bulk of our population
has, up to the present day even, a very faint con-
ception of the framework, as a whole, upon
which the religion to which they officially belong,

is based.
>-»

The Russian peasantry is still wallowing in

superstitions. There is hardly a nation in Chris-
tendom which has a demonology — a remnant o

356 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

ancient paganism — so well elaborated and so

fj deeply rooted as is that of the Russian peasants.

A Their apocryphal mythology can indeed vie with

^ that of the Ancients in the number of its deities, if

^ not in their poetry.^ There are sylvan spirits and

river spirits, both male and female, the naiades,

and the river-gods, and household spirits, lares

and penates, in whose existence and occasional

apparition, and frequent interference in their

household affairs, the peasants have an unshaken

. belief.

x^"With the advent of Christianity the heathen
sgods and goddesses were not annihilated, but
Jonly driven from heaven into hell. To have
V .^declared the gods which had reigned over the
md for so many generations to be a mere fiction
' would have seemed a perfect absurdity, but it was
only too natural that the dethroned powers should
resent the desertion of, and try to punish and
worry, their former worshippers. Thus, in the
eyes of the people they necessarily assumed the
character of malignant spirits, waging constant
war against them, and compelling them to be
always on their guard. Our forefathers, however,
as well as the Russian peasants of to-day, were a
peaceful and a cautious people. That which they

POPULAR RELIGION. 357

most wished for was to be left to themselves by
both the contending parties. They found it more
expedient to buy their peace by bribing both, than
to resolutely side with one party against the other.

Christianity met with scarcely any resistance in
taking possession of the country of St. Wladimir
and his progeny, but many generations, nay,
many centuries, after their conversion, professing
Christians continued to worship their old heathen
gods, according to their ancient rites, making
sacrifices and offerings to them by the side of the
water and at the foot of the trees, as the chroni-
clers and bishops complained throughout the
Middle Ages. The worship of a heathen goddess
known as Holy Friday was still prevalent in the
seventeenth century. The Tzar Peter the Great
issued an ukaz against those who took part in
these rites.

Nowadays no formal worship of this goddess
takes place, though she still retains a very pro-
minent place in the popular Olympus, and, as
" Holy Friday," plays an important part in many
apocryphal legends relating to Hell and Paradise.
Thousands of customs and observances of fla-
grantly pagan origin are, however, faithfully
preserved by our people. Fishermen still offer

358 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

small propitiatory sacrifices to the river-gods, and
each family does the same, so as to keep on
good terms with its household deities. Sorcerers,
who are the priests of these malignant spirits,
hold their own in the face of the pop, accredited
minister though he be of the dominant creed,
and are eagerly applied to as magicians and
advisers. The/0/ is held in the most reverence,
but the sorcerer is certainly more feared. The
safest plan is to keep aloof from both, because
even the pop is not always welcome either. He
is all very well in church, at harvest festivals,
at weddings, at christenings, and at the perform-
ance of any other regular function of his office ;
but if you are ill-advised enough to take a pop
on board your ship you will of a surety encounter
a storm. If you meet him on the way you must
expect some mishap to befall either yourself or
your beasts.

A dread of these chance meetings and dealings
with the pop is shared by all the Russian peasantry.
The official explanation as to the source of this
not very flattering superstition is, that the
peasants in past times were in the habit of beinj
rebuked by their clergy for their heathenisl
practices. Is not, however, a more simple am

POPULAR RELIGION. 359

more rational answer to the problem, and one
which coincides better with the character of this
superstition, to be found in the dread felt by the
peasants, lest the inferior, malignant deities which
sway the elements should be provoked to wrath
and revenge by the evidence of any close con-
nection between their enemy and the peasants ?

Another instance of that sly wariness cha-
racteristic of uncertain minds is afforded by
the evident transfer of _the worship at one time
accorded to the chief heathen gods, to genuine,
canonized saints of the Greek calendar. The
Prophet Elias, for instance, owing probably to his
extraordinary aeronautical experience recorded in
the Bible, was invested by the popular imagina-
tion with the exclusive management of thunder
and lightning. When it thunders our people say,
It is Elias the Prophet, who is driving in his
chariot on the clouds. The flashes of lightning
are the arrows he throws to the earth. It is he
who sends or withholds rain or hail, and it is to
him that special prayers are addressed when the
crops are threatened with drought. He is indeed
none other than the well-known Perun, god of
thunder, clad in the raiments of the noble and
fierce Tishbite.

360 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

St. Vlas, whose name suggests that of Volas
or Veles, the god of cattle, of vegetation (perhaps
the sun-god), was converted, by popular fancy, into
a substitute of the ancient protector of flocks and
herds. This saint, however, shares his dominion
with gallant St. George, who slew the dragon, and
on whom the people look as their especial pro-
tector against wild beasts ; sometimes too as a
sort of God's vicegerent, running his errands on
his magnificent charger.

Of all the saints, St. JNficolas is perhaps the
most popular with the Russians. Half the
heathen Zyrians worship him, and so do other
savage aborigines of Siberia, and afford an
interesting illustration of the gradual transforma-
tion of Christianity into pure paganism.

There is much that is

worship of the saints in general. It is all very
well for the orthodox catechism to declare that
the worship of the ikons is a purely spiritual one,
inasmuch as by it, through the power of the
painter's brush, the memory of these holy men is
kept fresh in the minds of the faithful. In the
eyes of the people the ikon is a living thing ;
the very body of the saint, whose spirit dwells
in it as the man's soul inhabits his corporeal

POPULAR RELIGION. 361

frame. They believe that the ikon feels pain
and pleasure, resents insults, and is gratified by
kind treatment, just as a living being would be.
In one of the popular legends, entitled " The
Greedy Pop," we are told how St. Nicolas inflicted
severe trials on the pop of his chapel for having,
in a fit of spite (brought on by the small receipts
of the chapel), struck the ikon of its patron saint
with a bunch of keys. On finally forgiving the
delinquent, merciful St. Nicolas warns him : " Go,
but take care not to strike me with the keys on
my bald pate again. Look ! you have almost
broken my skull " (Athanasieff Legends).

These popular legends of ours, the outcome of
the collective imagination of the illiterate peasantry,
handed down by oral tradition from generation
to generation, form documentary evidence of the
greatest value. Indeed, in them we have the
only genuine expression of the religious ideas of
the masses. They give us some idea, too, as to
many other articles of popular faith as it really
is, and not as the orthodox Church wishes it to be.

I may mention here that when the well-
known folk-lorist, Athanasieff, in 1859 issued his
volume of popular legends, its publication was
peremptorily prohibited by the censors of the

362 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

press. It is, of course, not easy to comprehend
the wisdom of prohibiting the use in public
libraries and by a few specialists, of matter which,
in the form of oral tradition, is the common
property of millions ; but we may infer thereby
that popular theology, as seen in these tales, is
not exactly in accord with the teachings of the
orthodox Greek Church. What, for instance,
could be more heretical than the idea of the devil
as the junior brother of God and his co-partner
in the creation of the universe ? Yet this is an
exact account of what we find in the legend
known as " Noe the Godly."

The devil is a great favourite with the popular
muse, and is treated with remarkable fairness.
He is represented as the enemy of man, doing
his best to drag him down into hell. But as
this is his trade he cannot help it, and the people
bear him no malice in return. He is a good
devil after all. When treated kindly he is capable
of unselfish attachment ; even when provoked he
sometimes shows a most praiseworthy forbear-
ance and moderation in taking his revenge. One
curious legend, " The Devil and the Smith,"
relates how a smith took pity on the devil, whom
all abused, and drew his portrait on the wall of

POPULAR RELIGION. 363

his shop. Whenever he entered it he was wont
to greet the devil's image thus : " How do you do,
companion ? " For this kindly feeling the devil
rewarded the smith by making him very skilful
and prosperous in his trade. When, however,
the smith died and his son succeeded to the
business, the position of the devil was much
changed for the worse. Instead of greeting him
daily with a kind word, the young smith fell into
the habit of dealing two or three blows with his
hammer upon the devil's head, and every time he
returned from church he spat in his face. For a
long time the devil suffered this to go on, but at
last he lost patience. " I have borne with these
improprieties long enough," said he to himself.
" I must take my revenge." He was as good as
his word, and placed the young smith in a great
predicament, the exact nature of which we will
not record. But when the young man was already
on his way to the scaffold, the devil suddenly
appeared, and upon the promise being given that
henceforth the young smith would treat him with
the same respect as his father had shown before
him, the devil saved him from an ignominious
death, and set everything straight, to the satisfac-
tion of all concerned.

364 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

The whole bearing of the Christian theological
system seems to be entirely lost upon the bulk of
the people. God the Father and God the Son
are two totally distinct persons, standing in the
perfectly concrete relation towards one another of
a father on the one hand and a son upon the
other. The person of the Son is represented
with great sympathy and uniform consideration.
He is the champion of the people, always siding
with the poor moujik against his rich neighbour.
But we should look in vain for any trace of
genuine religious inspiration in the treatment of
this figure. There is nothing which reveals the
touch of a living image upon a living soul. He
is introduced rather as an onlooker in stories
about others, to illustrate popular views on
certain points, and to solve certain problems.
There is as little life in him, or passion about
him, as in a secondary character introduced for
the purpose of giving utterance to moral views
in some imaginary story. As to the person of
God the Father, he appears in the popular legends
very vaguely delineated as a hard taskmaster,
and whenever introduced by the popular muse is
treated with a certain amount of ill-feeling and
hostility.

POPULAR RELIGION. 365

In the encounters with the "retired soldier"
(the wit of all these legends), God's orders are
repeatedly baffled and set at naught by the
cunning of the soldier, who stands before men
defending them from death as long as he can.

Most of these legends are, however, devoted to
the adventures and exploits of the minor lights
of the popular heaven — the saints. It must be
confessed that they are represented as a rather
queer set. They quarrel among themselves, brag
about their strength and achievements, some-
times cheat one another, and when they want
to play some trick scruple not to tell deliberate
falsehoods.

In the legend entitled "St. Elias and St.
Nicolas" we are told the story of a moujik who
was very devout towards St. Nicolas, but paid
no attention whatever to St. Elias.

One day the two saints passed by his fields,
which were all green with sprouting vegetation.

"What a rich harvest the man will gather!"
exclaimed St. Nicolas, "and it is only fair that
he should, for he is a good moujik, fearing God
and respecting the saints. Wealth is coming to
the right person."

" Oh, well," answered St. Elias, " that still

366 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

remains to be seen ; " and the wrathful saint then
announced his intention of sending hail and storm
on the field.

On learning this, St. Nicolas ran to the moujik
and advised him to immediately sell his growing
crops to the pop of St. Elias's chapel.

Some weeks later the two saints were once
more passing the same way.

" Look," said St. Elias, " how well I have
belaboured the moujik 's fields. There is hardly
one sheaf left."

"Quite true," answered St. Nicolas, "only you
have destroyed the crops belonging to the pop
of your own chapel, and not those of the moujik,
because he sold them to him a few weeks ago."

" Never mind," said Elias, " I will reward my
pop, and will make his fields twice as good as
before."

St. Nicolas ran to the moujik once more, and
advised him to buy his crops back again, which
the moujik did with great advantage to himself.

So the naive story goes on — St. Elias inveigh-
ing, threatening, striking ; St. Nicolas forewarning
his friend the moujik in time, and suggesting
various tricks by which he might turn the intended
punishment to his own advantage.

POPULAR RELIGION.

"Oh, brother Nicolas," St. Elias at last ex-
claimed, on seeing all his efforts frustrated, " I
guess that you have reported all I told you to
the moujik"

"Nonsense!" exclaimed St. Nicolas; "how
can you charge me with such a thing?"

" Oh, well ! you may say what you like — I am
sure it is all your doing. But you may rely upon
it, the moujik shall hear of me yet."

" But what will you do to him ? "

" That is my business, which I will not confide
to you."

St. Nicolas hastened to the moujik, and ordered
him to buy two candles, one as thick as his wrist
and worth a rouble, the second as thin as a straw
and only worth one kopeck, and to be on the
road at such and such a time and place.

" Where are you going ? " asked the two saints
who met him.

" To the church to put this thick candle before
St. Elias, my benefactor, who has been so generous
to me."

" And this thin one ? "

"This thin one will do for St. Nicolas," said
the moujik, and went his way.

"What do you say to that, Elias?" said St.

368 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Nicolas. " You accused me of having reported
all you said to the moujik. I hope you yourself
now see that I did nothing of the kind."

In the legend called "The Marvellous Thrashing
of Corn," St. John the kind-hearted is described in
a fashion which savours rather of the disrespectful.
Once he was wandering with other apostles on
the earth, when night overtook them in an
open field. It was winter time, and the frost was
bitter. It seemed hard to the saints to spend
the night unsheltered. They accordingly knocked
at the door of a moujik, who on seeing so large
a company at first refused them admittance. He
relented, however, when the wanderers promised
to help him in the morning with his thrashing.
When early in the morning the moujik called
them, the apostles wanted to go to work, but
St. John the kind-hearted persuaded them to
sleep awhile longer. When, after a time, the
moujik came once more to summon them, and
saw they were still sleeping, he took a whip and
administered a good flogging to the nearest
sleeper, who happened to be St. John the kind-
hearted.

" Stop ! " cried St. John the kind-hearted,
" we will follow you at once to the courtyard.''

POPULAR RELIGION. 369

The moujik believed him and went away.
But as soon as the door closed behind him St.
John the kind-hearted exclaimed, —

" Bah ! He has treated us roughly, and yet
expects us to work for him. Let us sleep awhile
longer."

The apostles, who had proposed to descend,
allowed themselves to be over-persuaded, and
resumed their rest, St. John the kind-hearted
having slily taken the precaution of changing
his place.

When the moujik comes he will again apply
his whip to the nearest sleeper, thought the saint,
and accordingly stretched himself out at the
opposite end of the room.

The moujik came again, whip in hand, but said
he to himself, " Why should I always beat the
same man ? " and he applied his whip this time to
the sleeper who lay the farthest from the door.
Thus did St. John the kind-hearted have to bear
the next thrashing too.

The same promise given on the part of the
belaboured saint, the same scene after their host
had left them, followed by the same result for the
unlucky saint, who had this time put himself in
the middle.

24

370 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

After his third thrashing St. John the kind-
hearted found that it was more troublesome to
sleep than to work, and urged his companions to
descend in hot haste.

That which is here worthy our attention is
not, of course, the disagreement between all these
legends and the canon of Scripture and the
catechism, but their general tone.

Our dissenters also have their religious poetry,
"verses," or hymns, which are often at variance,
not merely with the Bible but with good sense as
well. Here is one illustration, the hymn about
" Halleluiah's Wife." It tells how Mrs. Halleluiah
(sic), her baby-child in her arms, stood before a
blazing fire in her room, when Jesus entered.
He told her that he was flying for life from the
Jews, who were pursuing him closely, and bade
her save him. Halleluiah's wife on hearing
Jesus' summons, tore her baby-child from her
breast and threw it into the blazing fire, and
took Jesus to her breast in its stead.

When the Jews broke into the room and
demanded to know where Jesus was, Halleluiah's
wife pointed to her baby burning in the oven,
and said it was he. The Jews went away with-

POPULAR RELIGION. 371

out having recognised Jesus, who was in her
arms.

This song is perfectly apocryphal. The in-
cident about baby Jesus coming by himself and
speaking is strange ; and the conversion of the
word Halleluiah into a living person, having a
wife and a child, is quite absurd ; but the whole of
this terrible song breathes the wild poetry of
religious exaltation. It expresses in a powerful
though somewhat clumsy form an intense feeling
of devotion, and readiness for self-sacrifice for the
sake of God. The funny, flippant stories of the
orthodox peasants, however, whether canonical
or not matters not, of which some samples are
given, savour rather of amusement at the expense
of orthodoxy than of expressions of earnest
religious sentiment

CHAPTER III.

THERE is another test which may be applied to
prove the intensity of the religious feelings of a
community, more tangible, and therefore perhaps
more convincing, than the former. This is the
position held by the clergy. A strong, earnest
religion means an influential and a respected
clergy, and vice versd. A general contempt for
the clergy is incompatible with great zeal for the
religion which they profess. Religion is not like
a positive science, where the personal feeling
inspired by the exponent has nothing whatever
to do with the acceptance or rejection of his
doctrine.

Now there cannot be, and there is no divided
opinion as to how matters stand between the
Russian people and their clergy. To put it in
the most charitable way possible, the pops are not
respected by the moujiks. The orthodox clergy, as
a body, have no moral influence over the masses,
and enjoy no confidence among them. The

POPULAR RELIGION. 373

extreme conservatives agree with the socialists as
to this fact, though the latter consider it to be
a great boon, constituting one of the few compen-
sations for our unfortunate historical past ; whilst
the former very justly see in it one of the heavy
odds against them, and vainly seek to find a
remedy for a malady past all cure.

The relations between the moujiks and their
pops have little, if anything, of the spiritual in
them. Let us charitably admit as many individual
exceptions as can be wished, it yet remains an
undeniable fact that as a rule the pops are looked
upon by their parishioners not as guides or
advisers, but as a class of tradesmen, who have
wholesale and retail dealings in sacraments. In
Russia it is only the superior or black clergy (the
monks) who are endowed with riches, and who
receive stipends sufficient to maintain them in
ease and opulence. For the white or inferior
clergy, the married curates, there is fortunately
no State endowment. In the rural districts they
possess, it is true, some freehold land for farming
purposes, but their chief source of revenue is the
fees they receive for ministering at baptisms,
burials, weddings, special masses, and private
services such as every peasant's family desires to

374 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY,

have performed on some occasions in their own
homes.

The principle on which this arrangement is
based is fair and equitable enough, since thereby
the expenses for the maintenance of the clergy
are distributed amongst those who desire their
ministrations. Unfortunately the exceeding
poverty of the peasants on the one hand, and on
the other the exceeding greediness of the pops,
who rarely care for anything beyond their own
profits, make it a source of most shameless abuse
and heartless extortions. The pops, as a matter of
course, haggle over every penny in the price of
their peculiar merchandise, and as they hold more-
over a monopoly, can drive any of their spiritual
sheep to the wall.

The wedding, or the christening, or the burial
cannot be put off indefinitely, nor can it be
performed by another clergyman except by the
special licence of the parson of the village. If
the moujik is too poor, or the sum demanded
too high, the pop does not scruple to flatly
refuse to administer the sacrament. Many cases
have been reported by the newspapers of pops
having refused to bury the dead because they
had not been able to come to terms with the

POPULAR RELIGION. 375

relatives ; this certainly being the extreme point to
which churlishness can attain. We hear the same
story from every quarter, but will not waste space
here on illustrations, of which it would be only
too easy to find enough to cover many pages,
nay, even to fill chapters. Our churches are not
houses of prayer, but houses of plunder, as the
dissenters say, and this is the chief cause of the
deep-seated estrangement between the people
and the orthodox clergy.

The exceeding sensitiveness of the consciences
of believers to the practical conduct of their reli-
gious teachers is an accepted fact. Whenever
there has been the slightest awakening of the
religious sentiment in the masses, it has been
the unworthiness of the vessel which has been
first felt ; the turbidness of the contents was not
discovered, or even looked for till afterwards.
Theological subtleties are beyond the compre-
hension of the uneducated, whilst on the other
hand the moral inconsistencies and shocking
practices of the men who represent the Church,
wound the eyes of all, and cause their hearts to
rise in indignation, wrath, and disgust, with the
result that thousands turn a willing ear to the
apostles of some new creed.

376 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Dissatisfaction on the part of the people
with the clergy has played a very important part
in stimulating, and particularly in widening, all
great religious movements, and that in Russia is
no exception to this common rule. Diatribes
against the corruption of the orthodox clergy
form the favourite themes of the dissenting
prophets of our day. They are as virulent and
effective as was the outcry raised by the leaders
of the Reformation against the great parent
Church. A closer study of the inner develop-
ment and the propagation of Russian dissenting
sects only proves that, their religious aspirations
having once been awakened, the Russians can
no more put up with the scandalous venality and
extortions of our pops than could the Germans
with the traffic in indulgences and other similar
practices. But this fact only serves to throw into
stronger relief the strange equanimity of the
orthodox. They are as fully awake to the short-
comings of their pops, and despise and ridicule
them almost as willingly, as do the dissenters
themselves. Yet they seem to be quite satisfied
with what they have, and make no effort to get
anything better.

What can it all mean ? Why do the peasants

POPULAR RELIGION. 377

care about such pops and their ministrations at
all ? And if they do not value them, why do they
pay them, poverty-stricken as they themselves
are ? The heavy expenses incurred by the great
bulk of the population for the satisfaction of their
religious needs suffice alone to exclude any idea
of levity. When we see a moujik bargaining
eagerly with ^pop for a religious ceremony which
he wishes performed, or a prayer which he wishes
to have recited, and then go away in despair and
return an hour later and reiterate every means
of persuasion, entreaty, coaxing, and upbraiding
to obtain an abatement of a few kopecks in the
price demanded, and finally, when brought to
bay, disbursing the money, with bitter complaints
against the pop's covetousness, we cannot sup-
pose that his feelings towards his spiritual father
can still be very friendly or reverential. But at
the same time we cannot help coming to the con-
clusion that there must be something in \hz pop's
ministrations for which the moujik must care very
earnestly indeed ; he must put his faith in the
outward form, if not in the inner virtue of the
prayer or the ceremony, — in the rite, if not in
the religion.

If we wish to find the cue to the strange state

378 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

of our people's religious feelings, we must bear
in mind the leaven of heathenism which up to
the present day has permeated the rudimentary
Christianity of our rural population. Time in
its progress has so far influenced them in matters

of religion as to cause them to drop the formal

fT
worship of Baal, buxfeith_the bulk of the people

orthodoxy means little beyond a purely heathenish

. " V| • r ; — .„

ritualism. iAn orthodox moujik believes in the
^••^^•••••pv

virtue of the pop ' s ceremonies and recitals in
pretty much the same sense as he believes in the
efficacy of the perfectly incoherent and incom
prehensible conjurations of the exorcists. Pro-
vided the pop be trie right pop, and the words
he utters be spoken in the right way and in the
right place, they will have their due effect, what-
ever be the attitude of mind of the speaker or
his personal character, or whether he does it
for love or for money.

This standard of religion does not necessarily
exclude a certain zeal in the observance of its
claims, and in the fulfilment of religious duties.
A pilgrim who trudges his weary way for thou-
sands of miles to kiss the shrine of some saint ;
a mother who allows her sick child to dwindle
away for lack of substantial food rather than

POPULAR RELIGION. 379

break the rigorous Lenten fast by giving it a sip
of milk ; a penitent on his knees " hammering
off" his thousandth bow on the stony floor of
the church, — all exhibit that kind of piety which
is very common among the Russians.

It springs as much from primitive heathenism
as from the higher forms of monotheism. Religious
feeling is, with them, so to speak, crumbled up
into a number of disjointed fragments. Of the
powerful integration which transforms it into an
all-absorbing passion that carries all before it, the
bulk of the orthodox peasantry knows nothing
now, and never has known anything.

This does not mean that the Russian peasants
are by nature inclined to religious indifference.
They have their full share of the human faculty
for intense enthusiasm, which, in dealing with
masses, is most readily converted into religious
zeal. The history of our sects, old and new, is
there to prove it.

All we wish to point out is that with the
orthodox Russian peasantry, which up to the
present day has formed three-quarters of our
rural population, religious feeling is almost entirely
dormant. Fortunately for us, Byzantine ortho-
doxy was unable to call forth, or to permanently

380 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

hold, more than a quite insignificant quantity of
this emotional force, a quantity so small that we
may ignore it. ,

It has lain there, hidden in the breasts of the
toiling millions, as an enormous potential force,
which, however, may be awakened some day, and
appear as a new and important agent of our
national history. We, for our part, venture to
express the opinion that here, in the presence of
this latent force, which has never yet been tested,
lies perhaps the greatest enigma of Russia's
future.

It is not at all improbable that Russia may
never have a great religious movement of her
own, like those which stand between the Middle
Ages and the new centuries in Europe. The
positive sciences have clipped the wings of the
supernatural throughout the civilized world, and
there is perhaps no country where the whole of
the educated classes are so thoroughly imbued
with the spirit of free thought as are the Russians.
Now, it is quite impossible that this fact should
have no influence over the popular mind. The
intellectual barriers between the upper and lower
classes are rapidly disappearing. Nowadays the
most gifted among the peasants — the future

POPULAR RELIGION. 381

leaders of the masses — can grope their way
towards light and knowledge. Contact with
modern civilisation must needs blunt the edge
and destroy the freshness of the faith which can
work miracles and move mountains only when
in its full bloom.

Russia may skip over this phase of social
development, for which she has come too late ;
she may gradually enter into that period wherein
those precious and sublime faculties of man's soul,
love and self-denial, will be spent directly on
works of love and truth, ennobling and exalting
human life, instead of being stored up and petrified
in the region of ethereal skies.

On the other hand, we see that our peasantry,
in its intellectual awakening, shows a remarkable
tendency to run into religious channels. Dumb
and inert in the domain of politics, it is in the
founding of religious sects that our peasantry has
formulated its most cherished ideals and social
aspirations. Here they exhibit, not only great
intellectual activity, but also unlimited moral
energy. With a wider and more energetic
awakening of the popular intelligence, either
before, or during, or even the day after our
political crisis, the fervent genius of religion,

382 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY

stifled heretofore under the blankets of orthodox
ritualism, may awaken likewise.

No great national movement is possible unless
the aspirations of the masses are shared by the
educated classes. Yet even when confined to the
masses, religion is capable of developing into
issues of the greatest magnitude.

One thing is however certain : whether ex-
tensive or limited, primary or unimportant, the
religious element, when it eventually steps to
the front, will not do so under the auspices of
orthodoxy.

The history of the awakening of the religious
sentiment in various sections of the Russian
people is, from this point of view, very instructive.

THE RASCOL.

CHAPTER I.

IN the year 1659 Patriarch Nicon, then the head
of the Russian Church, issued a new edition of
the mass-book, or missal, revised and carefully
corrected according to the old Slavonic and Greek
originals. This was not the first occasion on
which the Muscovite Tzars and Patriarchs had
busied themselves with proof-reading. When the
printing-press was introduced into Muscovy, and
the publication of the sacred books was resolved
upon, the Muscovite people discovered to their
great mortification that the manuscript copies used
in various dioceses presented many discrepancies,
and sometimes even complete distortions of the
original text. These errors were corrected as far as
it lay in the power of the ignorant pops, appointed
to superintend the printing business, to correct
them.

During the Patriarchate of Joseph, the pre-
decessor of Nicon, a special commission was
nominated for a new revision of the sacred books,

25

386 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Some of the eloquent and influential leaders in the
future schism formed part of this commission —
Protopop, Avvakum, Neronoff, Login, and others.
The result of their labour was a text which is said
by connoisseurs to be a rine example of idiomatic
Slavonian, though still but a poor performance as
far as correctness went.

Patriarch Nicon and Tzar Alexis resolved to
crown the edifice, and bestow upon the Muscovite
people a text and a ritual to which no exceptions
could be taken. They proceeded with all the
care and circumspection the importance of the
work required. Learned scholars, both Russian
and foreign, were summoned to Moscow ; the
best and oldest manuscripts were procured from
the libraries of Mount Athos and other Oriental
monasteries and churches. The Patriarch superin-
tended the work, ' and the Tzar, who took th<
liveliest interest in it, warmly assisted him. No
pains were spared to make the work good and
authoritative. The revisers proved themselves
thoroughly competent, and produced a' text
which modern Russian philologists pronounce
to be perfectly reliable.

The chief corrections introduced into the text
Ct the various scriptural books, gradually issued

THE RASCOL. 387

by the ecclesiastical authorities, need not detain
us here. Of religion, the Russians of N icon's
time knew nothing beyond that which they heard
or saw in the churches, to which they trooped
on great occasions. The schism was provoked by
the changes introduced by Nicon in the mass-
book. Let us now examine in what they consisted.
The most important innovation, which after-
wards became the symbol and the war-cry of the
religious rebellion, referred to the position of the
fingers in making the sign of the cross. The
Russians of Nicon's time when they crossed them-
selves held two fingers together, whilst the
Oriental churches and the Greeks enjoined their
adherents to cross themselves with three fingers
united into one point. The two-fingered cross
of the Muscovites was used in the Orient only for
giving the priestly benediction. The ikons of the
saints of clerical grade are usually represented
in the act of conferring this benediction, which
was doubtless the cause of the universal accept-

i ance of this form of making the sign of the cross
in Russia.

Patriarch Nicon was anxious to return to

j ancient traditions. Reserving the two-fingered
cross for priestly benedictions only, he re-esta-

:

388 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

blished the three-fingered Greek cross, or, as his
opponents called it, "the pinch-of-snuff cross,'
for the private act of devotion.

Then, too, in certain cases, for instance in
stamping the round wafers, he introduced the use
of the equilateral, four-sided cross (similar to the
Swiss or Crusader's cross), as the Greeks were
wont to do, whilst the Russians of this time never
departed from the original normal cross, modelled
after that on which Christ was crucified — a long
stem with shorter transverse beams.

The Russians celebrated the mass on seven
wafers, whilst the Greeks and Orientals used only
five.

In the processions of the church, the Russians
were in the habit of first turning their steps
westward — going with the sun ; the Greeks
marched eastward — against the sun. In all these
points Patriarch N icon conformed to the traditions
of the Greek Mother-Church. In conformity with
this rule, moreover, he directed that the Halle-
luiahs should be "trebled," or sung thrice, as with
the Greeks, the Russians having up till then
only " doubled " it, — singing, instead of the third
halleluiah, its Russian equivalent, " God be
praised " Finally, or we should rather say above

THE RASCOL. 389

all, Nicon introduced a fresh spelling of the
name of Jesus. The fact is that, probably in
consequence of the Russian habit of abbreviating
some of the commonest scriptural names, the
second letter in the name Jesus had been dropped
altogether ; it was simply spelt Jsus, without any
sign of abbreviation. Patriarch Nicon corrected
this orthographical error, replacing the missing
letter.

Was this all ? Yes, this was all. As far as
doctrinal matters were concerned nothing more
serious was at stake in the great religious schism
of the seventeenth century, known by the name
of Rascol.

And yet it was for these trifles — a letter less in
a name ; a finger more in a cross ; the doubling
instead of the trebling of a word — that thousands
of people, both men and women, encountered
death on the scaffold or at the stake. It was for
these things that other scores of thousands under-
went the horrible tortures of the knout, the
strappado, the rack, or had their bodies mutilated,
their tongues cut, their hands chopped off.

Saddening, sickening sight, unredeemed and
unsoothed by that mingled feeling of respect and
thankfulness which we bring to the shrines of

390 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

the martyrs and champions in the great cause of
humanity! It seems impossible to discover what
human or national interest could have been served
by the numberless victims and heroes of the
Rascol struggles, which read more like a bloody
farce than a great historical tragedy.

For a long time the Rascol remained a great
and unsolved riddle to all the investigators of our
national life. It puzzled by the fierce fanaticism
and unlimited spirit of self-sacrifice which it roused
for the sake of trifles so utterly irrelevant. It
puzzled still more by the fact of its influence
having been spread over a mass of from ten to
fifteen millions of people, and by the extraordinary
tenacity of its hold. Scholars could only marvel
that a kind of mental craze should thus stand the
test of two centuries, constantly gaining ground
over the certainly more rational views of official
orthodoxy.

The honour of throwing the light of science on
this the darkest problem of our history, and of
unravelling the standing enigma of the Rascol,
belongs to the last twenty to twenty-five years,
and is one of the most brilliant triumphs of
modern Russian historiography. Attracted by
the magnitude of this purely popular movement,

THE RASCOL.

some of our best historians — Shchapov and
Kostomarov at their head — made the Rascol a
special object of long and patient study. They
threaded their way through the contradictions and
perplexities of that strange and complicated move-
ment ; and they have shown it to be, not an
outburst of callous obscurantism and sordid
reaction, but a striking illustration of the peculiar
and crooked paths by which the human spirit
sometimes marches from darkness into light.
The common conclusion come to, as summed up by
Kostomarov, is, that, " far from being a reaction-
ary movement, the Rascol was an important
step in the intellectual progress of our people "
( ' Monograph," vol. viii.).

Such words sound strange when applied to a
rebellion in favour of the absolute immutability
of ancient traditions, and absolute negation of the
right to criticise even so much as the spelling of
the Scriptures. But nevertheless so it is, and the
seemingly strange views on the Rascol, advocated
by the modern historical school, possess that
quality of forcible persuasiveness which is proper
to all really scientific discoveries.

To begin with, there is one consideration which
at once exonerates our Rascolniks from the charge

392 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

of exceptional narrow-mindedness. We have
only to reverse our position, and to look on
the history of the Rascol from the opposite
point of view. If it is strange that people should
die for the sake of an orthographical blunder,
is it not equally strange that their opponents, the
dominant Church party, comprising all the best
educated amongst the clergy and society, should
burn, hang, and decapitate hundreds and thou-
sands of their fellow-creatures, and ruin and
devastate entire provinces for questions so utterly
unimportant ?

Indignation at disobedience accounted for much
in these fierce persecutions. Despotism, both
secular and ecclesiastical, was provoked by the
impudence of benighted moujiks who dared to
reason for themselves on questions of faith and
Scripture. But though this might account for
a few fitful acts of violence, it is not sufficient
to account for half a century's uninterrupted
struggle, which strained all the resources of

OO '

the State, and which brought on the govern-
ment incalculable harm. It is evident that the
dominant Church party, with the Tzar and the
Patriarch at its head, considered the corrections
they had made just as essential to the interests

THE RASCOL 393

of true religion as did the Rascolmks the main-
tenance of the old forms. Where the two parties
differed was, as to which really were the ancient
and true rites and forms of orthodoxy. In their
conception as to what actually constituted true
religion both the contending parties were agreed.
They both believed in the efficacy of the rite
as such, and therefore were both firmly convinced
that the slightest inaccuracy would render it null
and void before the face of the Lord, — a standard
of religion which forcibly recalls that of the
orthodox peasants of the present day, which we
described in the previous chapter.

The two forms of religion present an evident
affinity. The study of the one is exceedingly useful
towards a right understanding of the other. We

realize the Rascol more vividly when we look at

^^
it through the medium of modern popular religion ;

whilst on the other hand the study of the Rascol
helps us to a better comprehension of the state
of religious thought amongst our rural contem-
poraries. With the moujiks this curious phase
of the religious idea is still a living thing, a fact
standing there in the full bloom of its reality.
But it is confined exclusively to the class which
tills the soil, illiterate people for the most part,

394 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

who have neither the leisure nor the habit of mind
to fit them for abstract speculation. They cannot
think abstract questions out logically, and therefore
cannot give them adequate expression. Besides,
the peasantry of to-day is no longer intellectually
on a uniform level. Groups and individuals,
representing more advanced religious phases, are
to be met with everywhere. Small in number,
they yet are likely to attract the attention of
an outsider, and would be apt to confound and
mislead him in making his observations. In the
seventeenth century Muscovites of all ranks and
classes were as uniform in their religious ideas as
only an uncultured nation can be. The documents
referring to the ecclesiastical history of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, anterior to
the grea ritualistic schism, supply us with
perfec examples of this christianised fetishism
— crystallized as hard as granite, unyielding and
ferocious, like all absolute religious convictions.

Some of our scholars, Kostomarov among
them, ascribe this uninspiring form of Christianity
to a certain superficiality and formalism inborn in
the Great Russians (Muscovites).

It is an open question whether the Great
Russians really have this tendency or not ; their

THE RASCOL. 395

social and political life shows a marked, nay,
often an injudicious repugnance to any formalism
whatever, whilst, as far as the domain of specula-
tion is concerned, the Russians as a race certainly
exhibit no peculiar proclivity for sticking to
details and exterior forms. Then why should
they be pronounced to be by nature narrow and
formal in their religion ? It is always safer not to
fall back upon a far-fetched hypothesis, when a
thing can be accounted for as a simple stage in
natural development.

We must indeed upset all our ideas as to the
natural and organic development of the human
mind if we are to suppose that the wholesale
conversion to Christianity, of tribes and nations
can be anything but fictitious and superficial.

Barbarians, whether they were the Franks
under Clovis, or the Saxons under Alfred, or the
Russians under Vladimir of Kieff, after having
spent one short quarter of an hour in the water
of a river, which may have washed a little dirt
from their bodies, could not have had their minds
cleansed from all the ideas acquired and inherited
from centuries. Fetish-worshippers as they were,
they could do nothing more than clothe their
national fetishism in a Christian garb. And this

396 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

they did The Popes of Rome issued dozens of
bulls of excommunication against the observers
of old heathen ceremonies. The chroniclers of
the Middle Ages utter complaints against them.
The same story was lived through in Western
Europe as it had been in Eastern.

These early conquests of the cross remind us
of the solemnity of taking possession of the
main, as practised by the Spaniards and other
Europeans in the New World, rather than of
real conversions. Then, under the protection of
friendly standards, a stream of new ideas began
to penetrate into the popular mind, side by side
with the elements of general culture. So exceed-
ing slow is the process that even now it is not
perfected. In countries, which can count fifteen
hundred years of official Christianity, there
remain sections of the population which still retain
many of the features of primitive christianised
heathenism.

In Western Europe, however, as well as in the
Ruthenian (Southern Russian) provinces, where
the banner of Lithuania and Catholic Poland
was followed, the authorized spokesmen of
religion stood, intellectually, far above the
masses. The Catholic priests and monks were

THE RASCOL. 397

acquainted with Latin, and preserved in part
their inheritance of the high philosophy and
culture of antiquity. Thus, in Europe generally,
the theological efforts of the popular mind were
kept in check and confined to their own spheres,
and branded wholesale with the name of " super-
stition," whilst in Russia they were converted
into " orthodox Christianity."

The Greek clergy, which did so much towards
spreading Christianity over the Slavonic world,
was likewise the bearer of the rudiments of
culture. This culture very readily struck root
among the Russians of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, but was swept away again by the inva-
sion of the Asiatic nomads and the three centuries
of desperate struggle which followed.

By this struggle all intellectual pursuits were
interrupted. The clergy gave up the study of
Greek, which in those days was the vehicle of
culture ; they even forgot old Slavonic, into which
the Scriptures had been translated, and in which
the Liturgy was celebrated. To know how to
read grew to be a rare accomplishment, which
most of the rural clergy did not possess, and they
therefore learned the Liturgy from their prede-
decessors by rote and from ear. Some of the

398 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

cultivated Bishops felt much grieved at having to
consecrate these illiterate men, sent to them by the
village Communes, but they could find no substi-
tutes, and had to decide between leaving the village
without a minister at all or consecrating those who
were unable to read one word of the Scriptures.

Thus, whilst Western Europe steadily pro-
gressed in her culture, emerging about the six-
teenth century from the barbarity of the Middle
Ages, Russia relapsed into a state of almost
primitive savagery. Religion necessarily followed
the same retrogressive movement. It relapsed
into its primitive state, and would have been well
suited to the intelligence of the converts made
by St. Vladimir and his early followers. With
this difference, however : Christianity was no
longer a mere garb, donned to please a popular
prince, and to be thrown off again whilst heathen-
ism was resumed with perfect ease of mind, a
proceeding of which there have been several
examples in our early history.

Orthodoxy gained ground in the nation, anc
at last grew to be a part of its very flesh am
bones. For six centuries orthodoxy was identi-
fied with the life of the nation. In the most
solemn and tragic moments of our history — whei

THE RASCOL. 399

struggling desperately with the sword and by
statecraft against the overwhelming power of the
Tartars for the right of calling their bodies and
goods their own, or when defending the State
and the integrity of the Empire against the Poles
and Swedes — the Russians always had to face
enemies of another creed, as well as of another
nationality. Whenever they met on a peaceful
footing with aliens, they found them different —
save a mere handful of Greeks — in creed as well
as in speech and race. Orthodoxy became con-
bunded with the idea of nationality.

"Russian" and " provoslavny" (orthodox) be-
came synonyms, the latter priming the former.
Jp to the present time orthodox peasants,
amongst whom there happens to be a settlement
of dissenters, will say, pointing out some group
of houses or some village : " Such and such
villages or families are Molokane or Dukhoborzy,
and we are Russians," i.e.. orthodox. To give
up orthodoxy means to forsake the Russian
nationality, to cease to be a Russian. Many-
dissenters concur in this view. They call the
orthodox Church, the Russian Church, and the
Drthodox, Russians, — as if they themselves did
lot belong to that nation.

400 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

The old Muscovites were exceedingly sensitive
to any wrong or disrepect shown towards ortho-
doxy. Whenever it was threatened in any way,
the people rose as one man, and achieved miracles
to preserve undefiled what was to them the
highest embodiment of their national self-con-
sciousness.

Patriotism is a powerful feeling when called
into action ; under ordinary circumstances, how-
ever, this feeling of national self-love is a quiet
sentiment, defensive rather than impulsive.
Whatever be the national peculiarity on which it
prides itself the most, be it religion, language, or
constitution, it is roused to activity only when
some danger threatens the thing cherished.
When in the secure enjoyment of its idol it
naturally keeps quiet and slumbers. The ancient
Muscovites cleaved to all customs bequeathed
to them by their forefathers : to the habit of
wearing long beards, for example, which they
held sacred. When Peter the Great ordered all
beards to be shorn, this mandate produced an
indignant and lasting opposition, which culmi-
nated in 1 707 in a regular " beard insurrection "
in Astrakhan. Before the issue of this ukaz,
however, and so long as neither razor nor scissors

THE RASCOL. 401

threatened the luxuriant growth on men's chins,
why should the Muscovites make more fuss about
their beards than other people did ?

Passing from small things to great, we may
say that so it was with religion. It was felt to be
an attribute of the whole nation, without being
in any sense an individual impulse. Hence that
seemingly strange contradiction, which was in
reality no contradiction at all — their striking
readiness to stand by their religion to the last
drop of their blood, and at the same time the
no less striking religious indifference in their
everyday life, and utter carelessness in the fulfil-
ment of their religious duties — facts abundantly
proved by the records of the epoch.

They did not observe the rites of the Church ;
many among both laymen and clergymen were in

e habit of living with women unwedded ; they
did not attend at church, save at very great
solemnities ; the churches stood empty, and the
clergy, who were addicted to much drinking and
bad living, sometimes did not celebrate the mass
for months together. Preaching was dropped
altogether, except that the Patriarch preached
occasionally. The practice of preaching was not
re-established among the inferior clergy until

VOL. n. 26

402 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

much later, in the time of Peter the Great, when
the newcomers, the orthodox Ruthenian priests,
resumed the practice. The service was conducted
in a manner which well illustrated the people's
indifference to it ; two or three different songs
were sung at the same time, or several parts of
the Liturgy read simultaneously, so that nothing
could be understood. The congregation talked,
laughed, and quarrelled during the service, and
came and went freely, standing with their heads
covered, and they kept neither fasts nor Sundays.
When the great Boyar, Morosov, the confidant
of Tzar Alexis, who was a great churchgoer,
tried to compel his peasants to go regularly to
church, and not to work on Sundays, he almost
provoked a rebellion. The steward of his estate
reported to him that " the peasants were secretly
working at their own homes on Sundays, and
refused to give up the habit, because in the
neighbouring village of Alexeevka, and all around
them, the people worked on Sundays. Neither
would they go to church : on St. Peter's Day
none of them attended at God's Temple." The
Boyar made his injunctions more stringent, giving
orders that those who remained obdurate should
be fined and flogged. The steward reported that

THE RASCOL. 403

at the meeting convened to hear their master's
message the peasants were quite angry with
him, and shouted, " It is all your doing! It is
you that have reported against us to our master,
in order to compel us to pray often ! " And they
began to assemble in large crowds and to look
defiant, " and I fear," adds the unwilling propa-
gator of piety, " they may be meditating my
death."

CHAPTER II.

IT was a moment of severe trial to the Muscovites
when the Patriarch Nicon sent his new missal
with all its sweeping innovations to all the
churches and chapels of the Empire. Tradi-
tional ritualism and the no less traditional in-
differentism came into collision with one another,
and had to show which would prove the stronger
of the two. Had the proposed reforms emanated
from the outside, or had there been any ground
for the suspicion that it had been borrowed from
or suggested by foreigners, one tenth of the
changes introduced would have sufficed to make
the whole country rise in wrath and indignation,
and eject both the Patriarch and his mass-book.
N icon's enemies knew this, and exerted them-
selves strenuously to prove that his " novelties "
were pure Romish popery. But this trick would
not hold water.

There was no ground for suspecting the
slightest treason to the national cause in a

THE RASCOL. 405

measure started under the auspices of a Tzar like
Alexis, and a Patriarch like Nicon. Tzar Alexis
Mikhailovitch was a model Tzar, to whom no
exception could be taken ; * though Patriarch
Nicon had many enemies amongst the clergy,
partly owing to his great severity in exposing their
evil conduct, and partly owing to his personal
arrogance and cruelty. The bulk of the popula-
tion, however, neither knew nor cared about these
family quarrels.

Nicon was by far the strongest and cleverest
man who had occupied the ecclesiastical throne
of the Moscow Patriarchate since its first
creation. There was much to admire in his
manly character, notwithstanding his obvious
shortcomings, and he was vastly popular with
the great mass of laymen.

It must have seemed preposterous to suppose
that such a man could become a traitor to the
national cause, and a convert to popery, or any
other foreign heresy. This patriotic feeling,
so powerfully represented in Muscovite ortho-
doxy, and constituting its impulsive element,

* The intense popular sufferings, which gave rise to so many
rebellions during this reign, were always attributed to the
wickedness of the Tzar's officials.

406 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

gave no response to the call ; whilst religious
feeling as such, i.e., the attachment of the in-
dividual to orthodoxy as an element of spiritual
life, was at this period so feeble within the
masses as to be hardly perceptible at all. If
powerful religious emotions were to be called
forth from the innermost recesses of men's
hearts, some more potent spell would be needed
than the contemplation ot the eight-pointed cross,
or than listening to a nasal " double " halleluiah.

The first apostles of this religious schism had
to cry in a veritable wilderness, confronted with
an absolute indifference on the part of all who
surrounded them.

At a distance of two centuries we have con-
siderable difficulty in preserving the historical
perspective. Events which happened at short
but perfectly noticeable intervals of time, when
viewed at close quarters, seem, when viewed from
a distance, to cover one another like the visible
objects on the verge of the horizon.

The Rascol is usually represented as a stormy
and widespread outburst of popular discontent at
the sight of Niconian " innovations." It was not
so in reality. To be convinced of this we have
only to pay some attention to the dates, which in

THE RASCOL. 407

historical investigations are as important as in a
Court of Justice. The fact is that the Niconian
mass-book, with all its bold "innovations," was
at first universally accepted. It was certainly
exceedingly distasteful to almost the whole body
of churchgoers, but they did not move a finger
to protest against it, and quietly submitted to
orders coming from Moscow, as was their wont.

At the Moscow Council of 1654, convened to
hear the new mass-book and to give it the
official sanction of the Church, only two members
dared to openly express their disapprobation.
These two where the pop Avvacum and Paul of
Kolomna. Outside the Council a handful of pops
and monks joined them ; the laymen kept entirely
out of the way. During the first twelve years
after the promulgation of the new missal, that
is, up to the Council of 1666-7, tne opposition
to N icon's reforms was solely represented by a
small body of monks and pops, with a very feeble
following among the laymen.

The Council of 1666-7 pushed the unsophis-
ticated and simple-minded orthodox literally to
the wall. At this solemn assembly, presided over
by two Eastern Patriarchs — those of Alexandria
and of Antioch — the advocates of two-fingered

408 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

crossing, double halleluiahs, and old uncorrected
missals were excommunicated and anathematised
in a body — " Their souls, in virtue of the power
given to the Church by Jesus Christ, to be given
up to eternal torments, together with the souls
of the traitor Judas, and of the Jews by whom
Jesus Christ was crucified."

This was rather too strong even for those days
of petty formalism. The famous Council, in the ex-
cess of its zeal, had overstepped the mark, and had
done the utmost that could be done in the domain
of spiritual influence to trouble the consciences of
the faithful, and to disseminate doubts about official
orthodoxy, thus pushing the people into the Rascol.

All the generations of the past, all the Saints,
the holy Patriarchs, and the early Czars, had
used the same books and the same rites as were
now condemned as heretical. The deduction from
this was obvious, and must have struck even the
unsophisticated intellects of the people, — if those
who stuck to the unrevised missals were doomed
to eternal damnation now, why, then the same
fate must have befallen their forebears likewise.
The Rascolniks repeatedly pointed out to their
opponents and persecutors the following simple
consideration, which must have suggested itself to

THE RASCOL. 409

everybody. " If you anathematise us," they said,
"you likewise anathematise your own forefathers
and all the holy men of the past."

The number of those who were able to think
for themselves was exceedingly small. To the
bulk of the clergy and of the people it was a
question of reliance on some authority. Now, in
the choice between the whole of the past, with
all its holiness, and the few clerks of the present,
who quarrelled among themselves and deposed
and cursed one another, no hesitation could be
possible. Placed between the horns of this
dilemma a common man, who took a lively in-
terest in religious questions, could not help
becoming a sympathiser and abettor of the
Rascol. If he was endowed with a religious
temperament he had the stuff in him of which
its apostles and martyrs were made. Yet the
Rascol was as slow to spread as fire over wood
soaked in water, for there were so few in Russia
who cared to think about religion at all. The
rebels of the Solovezk monastery — a body of
three hundred clerks and two hundred laymen —
represented the main strength of the Rascol
during the first quarter of a century after it
had been officially proclaimed by the Niconians,

410 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

In 1682-84, sixteen years after the meeting of
the Council which rent the Church in twain, and
about twenty-five years after the promulgation of
the new mass-book, Moscow became the centre
of great public troubles, which present to us the
rare opportunity of gaining an insight into the
genuine feelings and dispositions of the usually
dumb masses. During the first tumultuous
rising of the Strelzy, which occurred in 1682,
the Rascolniks were nowhere. Among the many
grievances which the Strelzy laid before the
regents not a word was uttered as to religious
persecution. It is very evident that the Rascol-
niks were at that time too thinly disseminated
among the bulk of the people to be represented
at all in a spontaneous movement composed of
elements taken at random from amongst the popu-
lation of the Capital. They were active people,
these early Rascolniks, keenly alive to the interests
of their creed, and able to make all winds fill their
sails. Profiting by a temporary lull in the perse-
cutions directed against them, they began an
active agitation among the Strelzy and the people
of Moscow, and got up a petition and huge riotous
demonstrations in their favour. But they made
few converts. People who consented to back

THE RASCOL, 411

their cause were not in the least in sympathy with
their creed. The Strelzy refused to sign the
Rascolniks profession of faith. " Still," they said,
" we will not permit the authorities to burn and
torture people for adherence to the old creed,"
and all joined in the demonstration. They pitied
the men, remaining the while quite indifferent to
the question of old or new creed.

The whole enterprise collapsed ; the crowd
succeeded in obtaining a stormy and uproarious
debate on religion, which resulted in nothing
but mutual recrimination. Tzarevna Sophia had
no difficulty in destroying the temporary alliance
between the Rascolniks and the Strelzy. " Are
you not ashamed," she said to the deputies of the
Strelzy at a confidential meeting, "to desert us,
the Tzar's children, for the sake of half-a-dozen
monks ? " And the Strelzy felt ashamed, and
gave the following characteristic answer: "We
have nothing to do with the defence of the old
faith, most gracious Tzarevna. That is the
Patriarch's business, not ours." They were faith-
ful representatives of the spirit of their comrades,
who also considered religion to be " the business
of the Patriarchs." The following day the more
prominent among the Rascolniks were arrested,

412 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

their leaders executed, and nobody moved. The
Rascolniks were not a force even in Moscow.
They knew this, and showed their discernment in
the great moderation of the demands they formu-
lated. All they asked for was a little toleration.
There was not as yet, in the Rascolzs a body, any
spirit of wild fanaticism and implacable hatred
towards the dominant creed. They humbly
petitioned that people should be suffered to save
their souls with the aid of the same books and rites
their forefathers and all the holy Patriarchs and
Tzars of the past had used before them. Had
these demands been conceded, even at this late
hour, the growth of the Rascol would have been
checked, and the spirit of religious rebellion would
gradually have softened and melted away, swamped
by the flood of general indifference.

But neither the jealous, narrow-minded clergy
of the orthodox Church nor the government
were prepared to grant toleration. The Moscow
riots well over, and the authority of the State
re-established, Tzarevna Sophia initiated a per-
secution against the rebels to the Church and
to her authority, which may be compared to
those of the pagan emperors against the early
Christians.

THE RASCOL. 413

All the officers of the Administration and of
the police, had orders, under pain of heavy punish-
ment, to proceed to the discovery and extermina-
tion of the Rascol. As soon, therefore, as these
officials heard that in their respective districts
there were people who did not attend mass, or
who declined to admit the pops into their houses,
or who absented themselves in any sense from
the sacraments of the orthodox Church, they
apprehended them, put them to the torture, and
questioned them as to who had converted them
to the Rascol, and as to who were their co-
religionists. All those whose names were men-
tioned during these investigations had to be put
to the torture in their turn, and so forth. Those
Rascolniks who proved obstinate and impenitent
were burned alive. Those who recanted were
knouted and set free ; but if they relapsed into
heresy a second time no mercy might be shown
them, and they were burnt, even though they
recanted a second time.

The extreme section of the Rascol — the so-
called " Re-baptists," who proclaimed the ineffi-
ciency of the Baptism administered by the
orthodox — were placed in the same category as
the recidivists ; they were consigned to the

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

stake even if they repented. The avowedly
orthodox, who showed little zeal in the cause of
the Church, and did not apprehend the Rascolmks
within their reach and deliver them up to the
authorities, were knouted and fined according to
the extent of their carelessness ; whilst those who
had Rascolniks lodging under their roofs, even
though unaware of the fact, were punished with
fines. If a relative or a friend of an imprisoned
Rascolnik brought him nourishment or inquired
after him, he was arrested and knouted.

This was a war of extermination, and in it the
Rascolniks were pushed to the wall, and had to
choose between the sacrifice of their faith and
the sacrifice of their lives. Thousands perished ;
others fled in all directions, seeking refuge for
themselves and their creed in the wildest and
most deserted parts of the country, on the extreme
verge of the Empire, or in the vast tracts of
uninhabited land in the interior. Some crossed
the Ural Mountains and settled in Siberia ; others
found new homes among foreigners, and esta-
blished colonies in Sweden, in Poland, and in the
Caucasus. The inclement north, the shores of
the Frozen Ocean, and the region of the great
seas of the North- West — which now form the

THE RASCOL. 4I?

provinces of Archangelsk, Volo / w^g the

— were the places to which cc £ / £ -i-ac-

^ / £ <L>

stream of Rascolnik colonizati "S ^

In these vast wildernesses
penetrable forests, infested w
cut up by deep seas, rivers, an._
Rascolniks were better protected than anywu^
else. But even here their persecutors did not
leave them in peace.

The government started a regular chase after
them, and in 1687 issued a special ukaz, command-
ing the authorities of all the northern regions " to
look to it carefully that the Rascolniks did not dwell
in the woods, and that whenever they were heard
of, a body of armed men should be despatched in
pursuit, so that their refuges might be discovered
and destroyed and their property confiscated, and
every man, woman, and child apprehended, in
order that their abominable heresy might be
exterminated without any chance of revival."

In 1689 this order was repeated in terms more
stringent still, under the penalty of death for
negligence.

Special officers were appointed for superin-
tending the hunt after Rascolniks.

In 1693 there was issued another ukaz to the

414

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

stake Affect, with an amendment with respect to
ortK buildings and property : everything was to
tte burned to the ground, " in order that their
companions should nowhere find any refuge."
• This Draconian policy towards the Rascolniks
was persisted in for more than thirty years with-
out relaxation. Hunted down from one part of
the country to another, the Rascolniks were scat-
tered far and wide through the land and spread
the seeds of their creed.

The torpor of the people was broken. The
impudent appeal to brute force in matters of such
delicacy, and so dear to men's souls, began to
produce its wonted effect. The masses began
to stir ; the unprecedented persecution of men
and women of unquestioned morality, who met
their trials with such fortitude, began to tell
even on the wooden nerves of their contempo-
raries. The two fingers — the emblem of the
Rascolnik's cross and creed — shown to the awe-
struck crowd from amidst the flames of the stake,
produced a stronger effect than the preaching or
arguing of any number of Rascolniks could have
done. Thus was the scarcely perceptible spark
ol earnest religious exaltation in old Muscovy, in
fifty years fanned into a huge conflagration.

THE RASCOL. 41?

N. Kostomarov has preserved from among the
judicial documents of the epoch a graphic ac-
count of a case, in the reading of which we seem
to be able to put our finger on the very root of
the question, and to realize at once how and why
the Rascol became so contagious.

" It was in Tumen, a town in Western Siberia ;
time, Sunday morning. The pops were cele-
brating the mass in the cathedral on the lines of
the new missals, as usual. The congregation was
listening calmly to the service, when, at the
moment of the solemn appearance of the conse-
crated wafer, a female voice shouted, 'Orthodox!
do not bow ! They carry a dead body — the
wafer is stamped with the unholy cross, the seal
of Antichrist.'

" The speaker was a female Rascolnik, accom-
panied by a male co-religionist of hers, who thus
interrupted the service. The man and woman were
seized, knouted in the public square, and thrown
into prison. But their act produced its effect.
When another Rascolnik, the monk Danilo, shortly
after appeared on the same spot and began to
preach, an excited crowd at once gathered around
him. His words affected his audience so deeply
that girls and old women began to see the skies

27

4i 8 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

open above them, and the Virgin Mary with the
angels holding a crown of glory over those who
refused to pray as they were ordered by the
authorities. Danilo persuaded them to flee into
the wilderness for the sake of the true faith.
Three hundred people, both men and women,
joined him, but a strong body of armed men was
sent in pursuit. They could not escape, and
Danilo seized the moment to preach to them, and
persuade them that the hour had come for all of
them to receive ' the baptism of fire.' By this
he meant they were to burn themselves alive.
They accordingly locked themselves up in a big
wooden shed, set fire to it, and perished in the
flames — all the three hundred with their leader."

This awful instance of self-immolation was not
unique.

Every Rascolnik who fell into the hands of
the orthodox was doomed to the stake unless
he abjured his faith. The majority, who were
" Re-baptizers," had not even this base means of
escape. It was better and nobler to die at once
for the glory of the faith than to fall a prey to
their enemies, and to die in passing through the
long ordeal of frightful tortures. Religious ideas
were blent together with the impulses of manly

THE RASCOL. 419

courage. Death at the stake was the baptism by
fire which Christ bestowed on the faithful ; it was
the Prophet's chariot of fire, which was to carry
their souls straight to heaven. Overflowing reli-
gious exaltation created a yearning after martyrdom.
This is unmistakably shown by some of the more
terrible self-inflicted auto-da-fe.

On the Sea of Ladoga, on a small island, there
stands an orthodox monastery, which bears the
name of Paleostrovsky. The place was particularly
hateful to the surrounding Rascolniks, because
the monks who dwelt there, and who knew the
locality thoroughly, always guided the invading
parties to the Rascolnik settlements. In 1688,
when the persecutions were at their height, and
a party of the most fierce champions of the
orthodox faith was devastating the Rascolnik
settlements in the Onega district, a Rascolnik
monk, Ignatius of Solovezk by name, conceived
the idea of achieving a great holocaust for the
glory of the true faith. At the head of a great
crowd, armed with bludgeons and axes, he passed
the frozen lake, drew off the Paleostrovsky monks,
put Ensign Gleboff and his soldiers to precipitous
flight, and took possession of the monastery.

For several months the Rascolniks stood their

420 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

ground. The troops, a battalion of infantry and
guns, did not arrive from Novgorod, the head
quarters of that region, until Lent. When the
soldiers marched to the assault, the Rascolniks
locked themselves up in the big wooden church,
which they had previously filled with a great
quantity of bituminous matter and very com-
bustible wood. The windows, too, were carefully
closed with thick boards, so that when the troops
broke into the monastery and began to pick holes
in the walls of their refuge, the Rascolniks set fire
to it and burnt themselves to death. In all they
numbered 2,700. The number has probably been
magnified by Rascolnik historians. The orthodox
authorities reduce the figures for this first Paleo-
strovsky " locking up" to 1,500,

The monastery was rebuilt, and the orthodox
monks reinstalled in it ; but a few years later
the Rascolniks were once more seized with the
wild desire to repeat the same act of faith
in this stronghold of the Niconians. In this
second " locking up " the besieged Rascolniks
challenged the Niconians to sham debates on
religious questions, and used various other
devices in order to gain time, and to receive
into their midst those of the inhabitants of the

THE RASCOL, 421

surrounding villages who were also anxious " to
win the martyr's diadem," but for some reason
or other could not arrive in time for the "locking
up." It is reported that the few whom the
soldiers pulled out of the flames with boathooks
showed themselves sorely aggrieved at their
rescue. They regarded it as a proof that God
considered them to be the greatest among sinners,
and would not accept a sacrifice at their hands.
The number of victims in this second Paleo-
strovsky "locking up " was also about 1,500.

Religious mania could go no further. About
ten thousand people, men and women together,
met their deaths in this terrible way in the
North of Russia only, during this long period of
persecution. The number of those who perished
on the scaffold, or in the torture-chamber, or in
dungeons, must have been still greater.

But the Rascol was no longer extinguishable.
Its members grew red-hot in their religious
ardour, which carried them triumphantly through
two centuries, and stood the test of fire and sword,
as well as of the incredible hardships of every-
day life, which these people had to endure for
the sake of their faith.

With all their zeal the authorities could not

422 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

succeed in finding out the hiding-places of all the
Rascolniks. The vastness of the country, its
peculiar topography, the great sparseness of the
population, and the absence of roads, all combined
to paralyse their efforts. Modern investigators
of the Rascol state that even nowadays there
exist in the virgin forests of Perm and Viatka
whole villages of Rascolniks who are totally
unknown to the authorities, and who live perfectly
independently, paying no taxes and furnishing
no conscripts for the army.

Two centuries ago such a state of things was
yet easier to bring about. The Rascolnik settlers
gathered together in these secluded hamlets were
mostly destitute wanderers, without money, often
only half clad, and but imperfectly provided with
implements for work. They had to win a pre-
carious livelihood from the ungrateful earth,
struggling all the time with the severity of the
Arctic winter and the wild beasts of the forest,
with the constant additional anxiety of never
feeling secure against their sudden discovery
by the imperial soldiers and police. The noble
courage and undaunted endurance displayed by
the early Rascolnik pioneers is perhaps a more
convincing, though less striking, illustration of

THE RASCOL. 423

their religious fervour than those outbursts of
mixed frenzy and despair which resulted in self-
immolation.

The Rascolniks overcame everything. They
established their small agricultural colonies on a
permanent footing far and wide over the northern
littoral, up to the woody slopes of the Urals.

Many of their colonists crossed the mountains
and founded colonies on the Siberian main, and
even beyond the dominion of the Niconians.
Others again found shelter in the enormous vir-
gin forests of the interior Provinces, Tchernigov,
Novgorod, Orel, and others. In short, the
Rascol conquered for itself a vast though frag-
mentary territory, and has never since lost it.
This fact is of the greatest importance, and
accounts for much in the whole history of the
Rascol which would otherwise be perplexing, — its
great stability as well as the social and political
influence exercised by it on orthodox or official
Russia.

From its very beginning, or rather from the
moment when the Rascol was taken up by the
peasantry, it was something more than an ex-
clusively religious movement. There were only
too many grievances, besides that of the compul-

424 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

sory introduction of a new ritual, to burden
the minds of the people in the middle of the
seventeenth century. The gradual subjection of
the people to the nobility ; the centralisation of
ecclesiastical power in the hands of the Bishops,
to the prejudice of the parishes, which had
formerly elected and controlled their own curates ;
a corresponding suppression of local franchise,
and the increasing abuses of bureaucratic central-
isation ; the unprecedented overburdening of the
people with taxes, in order to meet the growing
expenditure of the unwieldy Empire, — all these
evils were so many distinctive marks of the Tzar
Alexis' reign.

A peasant converted into an apostle of the
Rascol, and throwing his whole soul into his
creed, could not keep silence on the wrongs in-
flicted on his kith and kin by the same hateful
Niconians who had corrupted the faith, whilst
the ill-treatment of the Christians was only one
more proof of the apostasy of the so-called
Orthodox. Thus did political and economical
discontent walk hand in hand with religious
opposition.

The Rascol grew to be the embodiment of
popular aspirations in their entirety, as opposed

THE RASCOL. 425

to those which the bureaucratic State and Church
forced upon the people. This much increased its
attractiveness to the masses.

When the Rascolniks conquered a new terri-
tory for themselves, they were as a matter of
course able to put their ideas into practice, They
at once established there, a social and political
order in accordance with the popular ideas of
freedom, equality, and autonomy. The more
numerous the Rascolnik settlements became, the
better were they able to protect themselves
against the government, either by bribery, by
craft, or by the imposing display of their forces.

Up to quite recent times there have always
been vast tracts of land, belonging to the Ras-
colniks, over which, protected by distance and
topographical position, the State has practically
wielded no authority whatever. Serfs no longer
able to bear the yoke of slavery, soldiers or con-
scripts escaping from the rod of the drill-masters,
criminals, insolvent tax-payers, — all found a safe
refuge in the RascoL settlements, lost to the out-
side world in the depths of the trackless forests.

In former ages the discontented had repaired
to the free steppes which bordered the Empire.
Here, in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries,

426 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

arose the powerful military Republic of the Don
Cossacks, with affiliated branches on the rivers
Yaik and Volga. Many of the first Rascolniks
followed the same well-known track, and found
a warm welcome and safety amongst this warlike
population.

It is a suggestive fact that nowhere else were
the propagandists of the Rascol so successful as
in these centres of social and political discontent.
The Cossacks of the Don and Yaik sided in a
body with the Rascol. Later on, under the leader-
ship of Pugatchev, they fought its battles as well
as those of the enslaved peasantry.

This terrible insurrection, which imperilled the
Empire of Catherine II., was planned and got up
in the Rascolnik monasteries of the Irghis. The
Pretender fought under the standard on which
the Rascolnik cross, with eight points, was em-
blazoned. In his proclamatious he announced that
to his people were granted, " with the cross and
with the beard, cheap salt and free land, meadows,
and fisheries." This was the joint programme of
the religious and social rebellion.

Since the time of Peter the Great, the Cossacks,
though maintaining their full autonomy, had no
longer been allowed to receive fugitives from the

THE RASCOL. 427

inner provinces, in their midst. The hand of
the Tzar had been laid heavily upon them since
the bloody suppression of the Boulavin rising.
The Rascol was the only outlet for the accumu-
lated popular discontent excited by this tem-
pestuous reign, which marks a new epoch in the
history of the Rascol as in all other branches of
our social and political life.

The total remoulding of the State ; the long and
heavy wars ; the building of new towns ; the con-
struction of new roads and new canals, demanded
enormous sacrifices in men, money, and gratuitous
work. It was a colossal investment, of which
posterity has reaped the benefits, but its burden
was often too heavy for the shoulders of con-
temporary men. Serfdom assumed a new and
most hateful form ; the peasants, who had formerly
"gone with" the soil, now became the private
property of the masters. The conscription for
the newly-created standing army was established.
There were as many as forty levies during the
reign of Peter the Great alone, five of which were
throughout the country. Forty thousand people
were ordered to come at their own expense to aid
in the building of St. Petersburg, without count-
ing those who dug the canals. The hated poll-tax

4»8 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

was established, and the money collected with
great cruelty. Peter, in one of his ukazes, repri-
mands his officers for behaving so " coarsely "
to the peasants that sometimes whole villages
were dispersed. Indeed, they tortured their
victims by the rope and by fire, and cast them
out naked into the bitter frost.

The townspeople fared no better. Endless
suffering was inflicted on them by the Tzar's
capricious ukazes about changing their national
dresses, saddles, boots, etc., which were always
accompanied by threats of " capital punishment
and the confiscation of all goods in the event of
disobedience," — the usual refrain of all these
proclamations, of the impatient Tzar. It is easy
to realize what a field was opened to abuses
and plunder on the part of the officials by
such Draconian prescriptions, which were often
absolutely unexecutable, and always most unsuit-
able in our climate.

In addition to all this, there was only too much
in the work of reformation undertaken by the
great Emperor that deeply wounded the feelings
as well as injured the material interests of the
people. In his fiery, almost frenzied energy he
made allowance for nothing and respected nothing ;

THE RASCOL.

he trampled down inveterate habits and sacred
traditions for the sake of a hobby with as little
compunction as when a masterly piece of states-
manship depended on it. He horrified the masses,
who considered many of his orders to be nothing
less than sacrilege. When Strelez Stepan, the
prime mover in Boulavin's insurrection, arrived in
Astrakhan from Moscow, he terrified the citizens
by the report that the Tzar, who had recently
returned from a visit to foreign countries, had
ordered the people to "shave off their beards"
(which was true), adding, by way of amplification,
" and to bow down to idols." This latter man-
date was, in the popular imagination, the natural
outcome of the former.

Since the council of 1666 had pronounced an
anathema against the old faith, the Rascolniks
had announced that the reign of Antichrist had
begun. The date of the council, 1666, was held
to be a most clear confirmation of this view ; for
did it not combine the apocalyptical thousand
years of Satan's bondage with the " number of
the beast " ? The popular theologians had no
doubt whatever about it, and announced, on the
authority of the same book, that as the reign of
Antichrist was to last over three years, the end

430 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

of the world would therefore come in 1 669. They
fixed even the date of this portentous event.
Some declared it would come about on the eve of
Whitsunday, others at the same hour on the eve
of Quinquagesima Sunday.

The discovery was striking enough to stir the
popular imagination, and many took the bait.
When, however, the fatal nights had passed over,
and the whole of 1669 with them, and yet the
world was left standing pretty much as before, the
overbold prophets had to experience the usual meed
of jokes and abuses from the disappointed people.
Protopop Avvacum, the most prominent of the
early Rascolniks, explained, as most unsuccessful
oracles are wont to do, that his prophecy about
the reign of Antichrist must be taken in a spiritual
sense — that Antichrist had not yet come in the
flesh, but that he reigned in the spirit in the
contaminated Church.

With the advent to power of Peter the Great,
the Rascol substituted for the spiritual Antichrist
a living and strikingly concrete one in the person
of the Tzar himself. A sovereign who strove to
deprive the men of their likeness to God by
taking off their beards ; who had numbered the
people in defiance of a clear prohibition of the Lord ;

THE RASCOL.

who changed the times of the years and the days
of the saints (introduction of the new calendar in
place of the old one, which had begun the year
on the ist September); who had married an un-
christened heathen (a Protestant, Catherine I.),
and had had her crowned as Empress in the
Church ; who daily committed what was by the
people regarded as sacrilege, — could not be other
than Antichrist himself. A certain Talizin,
merchant by occupation and Rascolnik by creed,
was the first to formulate these views in writing.
He was arrested, tortured, and condemned to be
suffocated to death by smoke. But the idea
struck root — it generated spontaneously in the
minds of thousands.

Panic-stricken by the dread of Antichrist, and
driven on by the unbearable hardships of their
lives, scores of thousands of the peasants and
artisans of the towns fled to the RascoFs settle-
ments in search of bodily and spiritual safety.

During the first years of his reign, Tzar Peter
persecuted the Rascolniks fiercely, seeing in them
the mainstay of all his political opponents. But
when he became convinced of their political
harmlessness he left them alone. Religious
intolerance was repugnant to his broad, secular

432 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

mind. Provided the Rascolniks paid a double
poll-tax, they might pray after which fashion they
chose.

The long war of extermination waged against
the Rascol came to a standstill. It was far from
being a complete peace. But the Rascolniks were
no longer hunted down by the Government.
Thenceforth they were able to make permanent
homes for themselves, and to devote themselves
to the ordinary pursuits of life — to business and
to study. Their persecution became fitful, and
was never carried to anything like the same
excess as in former times.

Thus does the epoch of Peter the Great mark
both the definite constitution of the Rascol as
a separate creed, and also the starting-point of
that curious sort of popular culture which the
Rascol has developed.

CHAPTER III.

THE vast movement of popular thought known
by the name of Rascol, and which extended over
two centuries, was not an uniform one. It was
composed of very many differents currents of
thought, and embodied many different sects,
bitterly hostile to one another, and having in
common only their hatred towards the dominant
Church.

To describe and classify them is not an easy
task. There were numberless "splits" among
the Rascolniks of all denominations. Hundreds
of sects were founded, destined sometimes to melt
away again in a few years, sometimes to embrace
some millions of adherents within their folds, and
to give rise to further " splits " and sub-divisions.*
Our moujiks, who are the most associative and
orderly race of men, and combine together for all

* In the eighteenth century, according to our ecclesiastical
writers, the number of sects known to the authorities reached
to upwards of two hundred.

28

434 1HE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

kinds of work almost as readily and naturally as do
the bees for the construction of the honeycomb,
seem to share with their brethen of the educated
classes an absolute unruliness in the matter • of
speculative thought, — that is, when they begin to
have any at all. Orthodox peasants were wont
to say that among the Rascolniks " every moujik
formed a sect, and every baba (peasant women)
a persuasion." It was not so bad as this, of
course, but there was a grain of truth in the
imputation, especially in the more extreme and
thoroughgoing sects.

The very earnestness of the people in their
newly awakened yearning after religious truth,
made it impossible that one mould should fit all.
Their lights were scanty, but every man of strong
individuality wished to grope his own way.

Few of these self-taught theologians yielded
to the weight of established opinion, and when
they began to preach their own, they invariably
found at least a few people willing to accept their
doctrine, and ready to cause a split. The big
Rascolnik sects must not be considered as homo-
geneous bodies holding to one profession of faith,
as do, for instance, the Western Protestant sects
of various denominations.

THE RASCOL. 435

With reference to our Rascol, the word " sect "
will always mean a more or less numerous group
of distinct creeds, having some common cha-
racteristics— a current of thought, rather than
definite articles of belief.

We will not go into details, of course, and will
only mention those few sects which tend to
illustrate the Rascol as a whole, marking broadly
some new departure in the history of their
religious thought or religious emotions. We
will begin with a few words about a very
interesting group of mystic sects, which stand
somewhat apart from the main current of the
Rascol.

Whilst the newly-awakened religious enthusiasm
of the masses found an outlet for its energies in
the formation of the several branches of the
ritualistic Rascol, a considerable fraction were
gathered into sects having a far more exalted
ideal, which left mere formal ritualism altogether
behind. Their over-excited religious feelings
longed for something more than the mere posses-
sion of true books, true rites, true ikons. The
hearts of the faithful yearned to come to closer
quarters with the object of their passionate
worship. They were unsatisfied alike by the

436 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

records of past or the hope of future fellowship
with God ; they spurned the distance which
separates the earth and sky, and dreamed that
it might be possible to bring back the days when
they were joined. The obedient imagination is
never slow to answer to aspirations and longings
of such intensity. The spontaneous shooting up
of mystic sects of various kinds, which is always
one of the phenomena of periods of general
religious excitement, is the natural outcome of
such a state of the public mind. The higher
or lower standard of culture prevailing among
the people determines the more or less refined
or gross form in which this mysticism finds its
manifestation. No wonder, then, that with the
Russian peasants of two centuries ago mysticism
assumed the grossest form of belief in the living
incarnation of God, Christ, and the Holy Virgin.
There are indications in our ancient annals that
erratic sects of this class have appeared sporadi-
cally almost since the first introduction of Chris-
tianity into Russia, but it is difficult to determine
whether these are to be regarded as samples of
Christian mysticism, or simply as the last refuge
of some form of aboriginal or Finnish Shamanism,
which had so strong an attraction for our people.

THE RASCOL. 437

At all events, the vast spread of mystic sects
among the Russian peasantry sprang from the
excitement consequent on the great schism of
the seventeenth century.

The founding of these sects is by regular
tradition attributed to one Danilo Filipovitch, a
peasant of the Province of Kostroma, who lived
in the time of Nicon, and is represented as being
a man of great piety. He spent many years in
prayer in a cave near the Volga river, and in
studying the old as well as the new missals.
At last he put all of them into a sack and threw
them into the river, declaring that " revelation
came from the living God alone."

At a public gathering, where Danilo Filipovitch
was surrounded by his followers, God Sabaoth
descended upon him, and thenceforth took up His
abode in his body ; thus was Danilo Filipovitch
God:s first incarnation. This man had many dis-
ciples and worshippers who believed in him.

At a later date these sects developed into a
vast secret society, disseminated far and wide
through all the big towns and many of the pro-
vinces of the empire. They called themselves
the Christs, but the orthodox derisively converted
this name into Chlists, which in our language

438 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

means Whips. The name was appropriate, as
self-flagellation played an important part in their
religious rites. It is under this name — Chlists—
that the sects belonging to this class are known
among our people and to ecclesiastical history.
Their ramifications are the " Jumpers," " Dancers,"
" Shaloputs," the Skopzy, and others. Most
of them remained undiscovered, as the greatest
secrecy was observed by all of them, and their
existence was only accidentally revealed. Their
radenias, or nightly worship, consisted in various
practices calculated to excite the nerves and to
raise their religious enthusiasm to fever-heat by
artificial means, such as by dancing round with
their eyes fixed on their living Christs or Virgin
Marys seated in their midst ; by singing the
choruses of religious songs and verses ; by jump-
ing, by spinning round like pegtops on their
heels, by shaking their bodies from side to side,
by flagellation.

As the sexual instincts were also excited by
these spiritual orgies, the radenias of the Chlists
generally wound up in a svalny grekt or promis-
cuous orgie, the lights being suddenly put out.
It is an interesting fact that of all the dissenters
the Chlists were the only ones who made converts

THE RASCOL. 439

among the " educated " elements of Russian
society — among officials, the military, and the
landlords, of whom several appeared in the
Chlist trials of the eighteenth and the beginning
of the nineteenth centuries.

The relations between the sexes present much
irregularity among all the Chlistic sects. Some
of them revive, by a sort of social Atavism, certain
obsolete forms of family life, wherein the " head-
ship" was accorded to women. Others admit
polygamy and heterism ; whilst others again protest
vehemently against family life under any form,
preaching absolute abstinence and the mutilation
of the body as the only means whereby man can
attain to physical purity. These latter are the
Skopzy or Castrati, founded by Selivanov at the
close of the eighteenth century.

It must not be supposed, however, that there
was nothing about these Chlists save these pro-
miscuous orgies on the one hand and the mon-
strosity of self-mutilation on the other. Time
wrought its changes both in their religious views
and in their practices. The Skopzy, who have
been the most studied, and who are the wildest
of all the Chlistic sects, offer an illustration of this
gradual triumph of reason over the darkest

440 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

regions of superstition. Nowadays the number
of regular Skopzy is small. Most of them view the
doctrine of abstinence as directed against excess,
and accept the view that regular matrimony
is the best aid to moral perfection.

The fundamental doctrine of the Chlists — that
of repeated Incarnation — offered ample latitude
for the difference between gross idolatry and the
simple belief in the personal presence. They,
from the first, admitted their belief in a certain
gradation of inspiration or incarnation, bestowed
in varying degrees by the three Persons of the
Trinity. God the Father, since the inspiration
of the body of Danilo Filipovitch, the founder of
the Chlists, has, they believe, only twice descended
upon men, and both occasions were in times
remote. God the Son has according to them
appeared oftener, though still at long intervals.
The Holy Ghost, on the contrary, very frequently
descends on men : he permanently inspires the
bodies of recognised prophets, and temporarily
dwells in all the faithful during the hours of
worship (radenias), when they are seized by religi-
ous frenzy.

The sobering influences of time, labour, and
meditation have suppressed in some of their

THE RASCOL. 441

number the grossest forms of worship, and have
reduced religious intoxication to a milder state,
in which they no longer trammel the regular
functions of the mind. The Chlistic sects, which
entirely rejected the shackles imposed by the
rites, as well as those of the letter of the Scripture,
were the only ones in which religious thought had
no obstacle to its boldest flight. We should not
for our part wonder if it was some day discovered
that the DukJwborzy, the most original and philo-
sophical of our denominations, whose origin is
unknown, had been cradled in some branch of
the Chlistic Church.

We cannot, however, dwell at any length on
the sects which fall under this category. They
are interesting on their own account, but they
have had no great historical influence. The
people, as a whole, shunned them, and kept aloof
from them. Let us, therefore, pass on to the
bigger sections of old nonconformity.

The Rascol proper, the " Old Believers," who
held stoutly to their ancient books and rites,
split, at a very early stage, into two great
sections.

I. The Popovzy, or sacerdotal section, and—

JI. The Beapopovsy, or priestless section

442 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

The great point was, that when the split in
the Church occurred, only one Bishop, Paul of
Kolomna, sided with the Rascol. But he died
soon after, without having ordained a successor.
Now, according to the orthodox canons of Scrip-
ture, only a Bishop can lawfully confer ordination
on a priest.

When, therefore, the Rascolnik pops, who had
been ordained in bygone days, died out, in the
ordinary course of nature, there was nobody to fill
their places. In this perplexity some of the
Rascolniks proposed to accept as rightful ministers
the newly ordained orthodox (Niconian) pops,
provided that they abjured Niconian fallacies and
returned to the true faith (i.e., old books and rites).
They admitted that, by the peculiar grace of God,
the sanctity of the priesthood was preserved in
the Niconian church, its apostacy notwithstanding.

But the majority of the Rascolniks indignantly
rejected such a compromise. They refused to
recognise any value in the Niconian ordainment,
whilst rejecting as worthless their Baptism,
Eucharist, and all other ministrations. They
accordingly remained without any pops at all.
Thus did the two great branches of the ritualistic
Rascol spring into existence.

THE RASCOL. 443

The former, the Popovzy, number at the present
day about three to four millions. In the course
of time they divided into four denominations,
which differ only in their mode of obtaining
priests.

The original Popovzy or Beglopopovzy, which,
in olden times, formed the great majority, but
now are confined to a few scattered Communes,
received the renegade orthodox priesthood.
With them the ecclesiastical practice resolved
itself into this : —

They kept a keen eye on all the orthodox pops
(vithin their ken, and when one of them was
dismissed or likely to be dismissed by his Bishop
for drunkenness or bad behaviour, or was eager
to get a good living coupled with an easy life,
some cunning emissary of the Popovzy was sent
to him to try to win him over to the Rascal.
A converted pop, before being allowed to offi-
ciate, was re-baptized by his new parishioners,
as was also the practice with every Niconian,
only the pop had in this case to jump into the
water in full clerical vestments as a precaution,
lest the sacrament of the Holy Orders should not
be washed off in the operation.

Needless to say that the article thus procurable

444 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

by the Rascolniks was not the best of its kind,
especially as time passed, and the clergy became
sufficiently literate to understand the ridiculous
narrowness of the RascoL

But the Popovzy did not care about their priests'
morality. They wanted them, and they paid
them liberally for performing certain rites in
which they believed, — a view which, in another
form, is still shared by the bulk of their orthodox
brethren.

In 1800, the Government, advised by the
Metropolitan of Moscow, Platon, resolved to take
a step which it ought to have taken at least one
hundred years earlier. The stupid excommunica-
tion, launched by the Council of 1666 against those
who adhered to the old books, was cancelled, the
points of divergence declared irrelevant, and the
Metropolitan of Moscow permitted to ordain men
for the Rascolnik priesthood chosen by their own
body and observing in the ceremony the old
anti-Niconian rites, and authorizing them to use
their old books. Had a similar course been
adopted in time, there would have been no Rascol
at all. Now it was too late. The Rascol, such as
it was, had come to be " the creed of their fore-
fathers." The Popovzy were suspicious lest these

THE RASCOL. 445

concessions might conceal some design to allure
them into Niconianism altogether. The attempt
at reconciliation practically collapsed. The total
number of reunited Popovzy only amounted to a
few hundreds of thousands, and there is little
likelihood that they will ever noticeably increase :
many have relapsed once more into the RascoL

Their early suspicions were confirmed only
too soon, — the Edinoverzy have been gradually
deprived of the right of choosing their own
ministers, a right by which they set great store.
Now their pops are nominated or removed by the
Bishop's chapter, without the parishioners having
any voice in the matter. So utterly unable is our
Church to tolerate even the appearance of any
shadow of independence.

The bulk of the Popovzy tried to manage with
their runaway priesthood as a makeshift, but as
they were both scarce and expensive, a new and
far more convenient mode of supplying the
religious wants of the community was gradually
introduced. Old men — starik — well read in the
Scriptures and of good morals, were appointed by
the parishes as the pops substitutes. They did
not celebrate the mass, which is the privilege of
those in Holy Orders, but they purchased from

446 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

the neighbouring Popovzy Church a supply of
consecrated wafers and oil, and administered it
when needful. They confessed, conducted funerals,
and performed a sort of provisory marriage
ceremony. People got accustomed to being
ministered to by these elected stariks, who were,
moreover, always at hand, took no fees, and
expected no revenue from their office, which they
accepted as an honour. Thus did the starikovshina
grow into existence.

In 1844 ti& ^Popovzy, by a stroke of good
fortune, obtained what they had vainly sought
since their first secession, a Bishop of their own.
Ambrosius of Bosnia quarrelled with the Patriarch
of Constantinople, and after much hesitation
consented to exchange his precarious position
for that of the head of the three millions of
Rascolniks, — so at least he was promised by his
tempters. He established his seat at Belo-
Kriniza in Austria, as it would have been absurd
for so precious a man to risk his life within the
dominions of the Emperor Nicolas. The success
of Ambrosius was very great indeed. He was
acknowledged by most of the Popovzy, especially
by those in big towns, and supplied them with
as many/0/.y, and archpops, and Bishops as they

THE RASCOL. 447

required. A complete and independent ecclesi-
astical hierarchy was thus established for all the
Popovzy who desired it, but their religious ardour
had by this time cooled down so much that a
good many of them preferred to remain with their
elected stariks, wrho were much less exacting and
more accommodating. A fraction, the Popovzy
of the Province of Tula, stuck with strange per-
sistency to the traditional " runaway priesthood."
The same feeling prevailed amongst their fellow-
worshippers in Siberia,

As . a whole, the Popovzy offers one of many
illustrations of the remarkable associative capacity
of the Russian moujiks. Their organization, em-
bracing several millions of people, with a permanent
administrative Council, a number of vast public
benevolent institutions, and an exchequer contain-
ing upwards of ten millions of roubles (confiscated
or simply robbed by the Emperor Nicolas I.),
presents the most extensive example on record
among similar popular organizations. For the
rest, the Popovzy are the most backward and
obtuse of all the members of our Rascol. Their
opponents, the Bezpopovzy, or priestless, who
form the larger section of the two, are also by far
the more intellectually active. They number about

448 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

eight or nine millions of adherents, but these are
divided into no end of sects and persuasions, which
may be grouped into four distinct branches.

I. Pomorzy, or the sea-shore sects, so named
from the place, the northern sea coast, where they
founded their first settlements ; thence, later on,
disseminating their tenets all over the Empire.
This is the oldest and most moderate branch of
the " priestless," and at the same time the most
intellectual, numbering among its leaders the
best educated and most clear-headed men of the
Rascol.

II. The Fedoseevzy, who separated from the
main body of the Pomorzy in the beginning of the
eighteenth century. They form another powerful
branch of the "priestless," vying in social and
political importance with the Pomorzy, though
standing considerably behind them intellectually.
They are younger and more extreme in their
views than the Pomorzy, but have preserved
more of the wooden formalism of the old Rascol.

III. The Beguny or Wanderers. This is the
youngest branch of the " priestless," and by far
the most extreme. Its numbers are small com-
pared with the two former, but its influence is
very considerable, as it has drawn within its

THE RASCOL. 449

fold the boldest and most passionate elements
of dissent.

IV. Finally come the Filipovzy (the middle of
eighteenth century), which has much in common
with the Fedoseevzy, though it is somewhat more
extreme. The Filipovzy represent a tardy revival
of the narrow fanaticism of the old Rascol. Their
early followers went to the length of renewing, as
an article of faith, the doctrine of " baptism by
fire," or self-immolation. They cooled down
after a time, but have not developed to the same
extent, nor played so important a part in Russia,
as the three above-named branches of the priest-
less Rascol.

Each of these sects, as well as each of their
numberless sub-divisions, presents of course some
point of difference in its doctrines. But these
divergencies are quite irrelevant in themselves.
True to the spirit of the Rascol, they refer to
matters of exterior worship or symbolism. Thus,
Theodosius of Fedosy, the founder of the great
sect which bears his name, summed up his points
of disagreement with the Pomorzy in nine theses,
among which the following are to be found.
"It is wrong and heretical to write the words
'Jesus Christ, the King of Glory,' over the

29

450 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

crucifix as the Pomorzy do. The crucifix should
bear Pilate's inscription, ' Jesus of Nazareth King
of the Jews.' ' In another thesis he strove to
establish the doctrine that at the Easter service,
when exclaiming " Christ is risen," the faithful
should raise their hands. A third thesis pro-
hibited men from bowing to the earth during all
fast days save those of Lent. Only one of the
nine theses deals with a matter which sounds
like something more essential : whilst insisting
on celibacy and abstinence for all the faithful,
Fedosy forbade any of his disciples to assume
the position and the name of " monk."

The doctrinal divergences of the Filipovzy
are of exactly the same stamp.

As to the Beguuy, or Wanderers, they are not
so advanced even as this implies, accepting with-
out any noticeable modification the doctrine of
the Fedoseevzy.

The real difference between the various sects
of the " priestless " Rascolniks refers to the
emotional rather than to the doctrinal elements
of their creed. They differ greatly in their mode
of enunciating a doctrine on which, theoretically,
all the " priestless " sects are agreed ; namely,
that of the reign of Antichrist. All the " priest-

THE RASCOL. 451

less " started with admitting the real and bodily
existence of Antichrist, in the person of the Tzar
Peter, and then in the persons of his successors.
The doctrine was not rejected by any of their
sect, but it was considerably modified in the
course of time.

The Pomorzy broadened and " spiritualised "
this idea, until so little of the essence of Anti-
christ attached to the men in authority that it
might be disregarded — so small indeed was it
that it could not even stand in the way of public
prayers being offered for their head, the Tzar.
They modified, it is true, the orthodox formula
of the prayer, rejecting the laudatory epithets
referring to religion. The compromise still
proved to be unpalatable to a good many
Rascolniks.

Fedosy, and afterwards Filip, gave expres-
sion to these grovelling sentiments. This was
at the bottom of their split, and also of their
success. Both these sects vehemently denounced
this practice of the Pomorzy as an abomination,
reinstating the doctrine of the bodily presence of
Antichrist in all its strength.

Both the Fedoseevzy and Filipovzy were cruelly
persecuted by the government, whom they obsti-

452 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

nately vilified as the ministers of Antichrist.
The Fedoseevzy admitted no prayers for the Tzar,
even after, thanks to underhand influence, they
had obtained a good deal of toleration, and had
established their head-quarters at Moscow, where
they owned a vast almshouse, large enough to hold
several thousand inmates, a school, a board of
administration, and a treasury, which all appeared
in the police reports under the heading " burial
ground."

When the Emperor Paul I. ascended the
throne, most exaggerated rumours concerning his
rashness and unruly temper were rife among such
Russians as took any interest in politics. It was
reported that he was particularly ill-disposed
towards the Rascolniks, and wished to put them
down at any price. The then spiritual leader of
the Moscow Fedoseevzy, a certain Kovylin, a
merchant of great wealth and not unexceptional
morality, was seized with such a panic that he
at once ordered that prayers for the Emperor
should be introduced into the Liturgy, and even
went so far as to add to the Emperor's name the
epithet of "truly believing," which was a sort of
covert denial of the Rascol and recognition of
the dominant creed.

THE RASCOL. 453

After the Emperor Paul I. had been killed, and
the tolerant Alexander I. filled his place, Kovylin
wanted to drop the prayers for the Emperor from
the Liturgy and to return to the old practice,
but the cooling process was by that time so far
advanced that he met with strong opposition.
An influential Rascolnik preacher, Jacob Kholin,
began to agitate among the Moscow Fedoseevzy in
favour of " rendering unto Caesar the things which
are Caesar's." For this purpose he visited the
affiliated colonies of his sect in Yaroslav, Starodub,
Riga, and St. Petersburg, and easily prevailed in
inducing a considerable number of the Fedoseevzy
parishes of their own free will to sanction that
which Kovylin had done in a moment of panic.

Here once more the old legacy of hatred was
revived, probably for the last time, and certainly
in the most furious and uncompromising form.
In 1811 the authorities discovered in the Province
of Tambov the existence of a new sect called
Stranniky, or Beguny (Wanderers), who were at
once declared to be "very dangerous," and accord-
ingly knouted and transported to the Siberian
mines. The Stranniky were an offshoot of the
Fedoseevzy, their founder having been one of
them, a certain Ephimius or Efim, the deserter.

454 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

For a long time these people had their head-
quarters in Sopelki, a village in the province of
Yaroslav. The distinct characteristics of their
sect consisted in the full development of the
doctrine of the reign of Antichrist.

The " wanderers " made this article of faith the
keynote of their teaching. The Tzar is in their
opinion the Prophet of the Beast ; the officials are
his ministers ; the two-headed Imperial eagle is
the seal of Antichrist, the sign of the dragon.
Everyone who offers any kind of homage to the
agents of Antichrist, or who pays taxes for their
unholy purposes, or allows himself to be numbered
and registered, or accepts a passport or any other
document sealed with the Imperial emblem, ex-
cludes himself from the book of the living, and
is doomed to perdition, as Antichrist's servant and
abettor.

They look upon their co-religionists, who came
to terms with the Beast, with the same disgust
and abhorrence as they lavish on the Niconians.

In describing " the renewing of Antichrist," as
the" wanderers" call the Emperor's coronation,
their founder Efim indulges in the following
details. " Then there come to worship him, i.e.,
to offer him the oath of allegiance, those fierce

THE RASCOL, 455

fiends the Bishops, then the mock-pops (Satan's
horses, who transport souls to hell, to their father
the evil one) ; next follow the various foul apo-
static sects — the Niconians first, then the Old
Believers (Popovs}}, the accursed Armenians,
and the Pomorzy, who are hateful to God. "

The faithful are warned to resist anything
emanating from the Tzar, and, as they cannot do
this successfully, that their only safety lies in flight.
The most zealous of these sectarians carry out
this principle to the letter. They spend their
lives in wandering from place to place. They
never remain for long together in the same
locality, always living concealed in the houses of
their hosts without the knowledge of the authori-
ties. They pay no taxes, apply for no passports,
give no bribes, and avoid all contact with the
agents of Antichrist. Those who have not the
courage or the worldly means wherewith to lead
such an existence continue to live in the world,
concealing those who have attained to a higher
grade of perfection and purity than themselves.
The houses of the settled adherents of the sect
are always built after a peculiar plan, and
ingeniously provided with hiding-places, undis-
coverable by the uninitiated, wherein they lodge

456 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

their guests. Each member of the sect, however,
with but a few exceptions, towards the close of
his life betakes himself to actual wandering, or
secludes himself in some way from the world
polluted by the presence of Antichrist, in order
that he may have his soul cleansed through
repentance before he lies on his death-bed.

With the authorities the regular " wanderers "
are even at the present time at daggers drawn.
They are persecuted as " particularly dangerous,"
even when there is no offence to be laid to their
charge. On their part, too, the " wanderers "
make no concessions to the civil authorities, and
are bitterly offended against such of their co-
religionists who offer up prayers for their enemy
the Tzar.

" They (the other Rascolniks) meet in their
churches and begin to offer prayers to God for
him, the apostate — Antichrist ! They sing and
they read : ' God, preserve our reigning Tzar,
and give him victory over those who stand up
against him.' . . . But think, O you blasphemer,
for which victory are you praying ! . . . The
victory against those who in obedience to the
Holy Word hide themselves in mountains and
forests and in the caverns of the earth to avoid

THE RASCOL. 457

his face, and who will not swear allegiance to
him, nor give their children up to him, nor pay
him taxes, nor allow him to number their souls.
What you are praying for is, that he should
overcome them and make them his prisoners.
O you servants of Antichrist, upholders of the
devil, defenders of the seven-headed serpent ! "
Yet notwithstanding all the intensity of feeling
and singleness of mind displayed by this interest-
ing sect, it has not been able to avoid undergoing
the same transformation which the Old Believers,
the Pomorzy and the Fedoseevzy, had experienced
before them. Of the three chief ramifications of
this sect, two, namely the Poshekhon Wanderers
and the Pless Wanderers (so called after the
name of their respective head-quarters), still
adhere to the above described doctrine ; whilst
the third, the Sopelky Wanderers, have changed
their views. According to them, Antichrist reigns
spiritually. By this is signified all deviation from
the true faith. All heretics are in this sense
Antichrists, and Antichrist was embodied in Tzar
Peter more completely than in all others only
because he held greater power in his hands.
They preach the virtue of disobedience only to
such orders of the government as are unchristian.

458 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

They also decline to take passports, and con-
tinue to lead a wandering life, but only because
in the official passports delivered to sectarians
they are designated as Rascolniks, and not as
"orthodox Christians," as they believe them-
selves to be. As to the " two-headed eagle "
which embellishes the passports, this no longer
scares them.

Two other ramifications of the same sect have
gone still further, and have stepped out of Rascol
ritualism altogether. But of them hereafter.

Thus, excluding some branches of the " wan-
derers," and a few denominations belonging to
intermediate sects, the whole of the ritualistic
Rascol has cooled down as far as political opposi-
tion goes. They have put up with the Tzar's
habit of crossing himself with three fingers,
smoking tobacco, and wearing a German overcoat.
Even those among the Fedoseevzy and Filipovzy
who do not pray for him are not the same class of
men as those who fled into the wilderness in the
first transports of a newly-revealed creed. The
Rascol has become a commonplace religion. Its
members received it as an inheritance — they did
not win it at the cost of inner struggles, doubts,
and pains They can be earnest in religious

THE RASCOL. 459

matters, but nothing more. The warmer mani-
festations of the religious feelings are the birth-
right of new sects fresh from the toils of creation.
It is worth noticing that most of the founders of
new sects and authors of discord are themselves
proselytes, newly converted to the RascoL from
the orthodox Church.

It is in the nature of all emotions to subside
after a time, if the provocation ceases to be an
active one. The Rascolmks are far from enjoying
complete tolerance even now. The petty jealousy
of the dominant Church still imposes on them
humiliating restrictions, lest they should think
themselves the equals of the orthodox. Thus,
whilst foreign Christians and all the non-Christian
creeds, Mohammedans, Jews, and idolaters, are
permitted to freely worship after their own manner,
the Rascolniks are expressly prohibited from
giving any outward public sign of their worship.
They may not give to their houses of prayer
the exterior appearance of churches ; they are
forbidden to form processions ; they may not
announce their hours of prayer by the ringing of
bells.

The position of the Rascolniks in the Russia
of to-day is very much the same as that of the

460 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY,

Christians in ancient times in Turkish and
Saracen countries, where they were tolerated with
the same vexatious restrictions. Of course, all
this must be very irritating to the Rascolniks.

And this is not the worst — they have more
serious grounds for discontent. The ancient laws
of Nicolas I., which make "conversion of others"
amenable to the criminal code, are not yet abro-
gated. Every " non-registered " Rascolnik, which
is tantamount to saying nine-tenths of them, is
liable to prosecution in virtue of this law, — if
only the police or the administration choose to
take the trouble.

The common Rascolnik^ are rarely molested.
But the cowardly uncertainty of the law makes
it a terrible weapon against any prominent dis-
senters whom somebody in power may have the
stupidity to fear or the wickedness to hate.

It will suffice us to mention the fate of three
Popovzy Bishops, Cannon, Arcady, and Hennady,
who were kept in the prison of Suzdal monastery
from 1856 till 1 88 1, twenty-five years ! (the whole
of the reign of Alexander II.), for no other offence
than that they declined to renounce their ecclesi-
astical grade as the price of their liberty, in
compliance with a mean request of the orthodox

THE RASCOL. 461

consistory ; or the case of the unfortunate Adrian
Pushkin, a merchant of Perm, who was possessed
with the craze that he himself was a new incar-
nation of Jesus Christ, and sent a paper and a
synoptical picture to the Holv Synod to establish
his claims. For this offence the unhappy man
was kept in strictest solitary confinement for
fifteen years, and was released when a broken
old man, only to die a few months afterwards.

These petty vexations and occasional acts of
tyranny must of course keep alive amongst the
Rascolniks, a certain amount of irritation of a
political nature. There is, however, little pro-
bability that the Government should so extend
the persecutions — of Ritualistic dissent at all
events — as to foolishly provoke a fresh outburst
of what is called religious fanaticism.

CHAPTER IV.

ALL the emotional force developed in the Rascol
did not disappear without leaving any trace be-
hind, by the mere fact of its exposure, to the
cooling influences of life and time ; neither was
it wasted in acts of self-immolation. A fraction
of that living power was spent on the useful
work of the inner regeneration of the social body
which gave it birth. In stirring up thought,
and inducing a number of people to exercise their
sleeping intellectual faculties, the Rascol pro-
duced certain intellectual habits, which remained
as a permanent gain after religious excitement
had subsided.

The Rascol was set up in the name of absolute
conservatism, and for the unconditional denial of
the right of the human mind to criticise or investi-
gate. The Niconians, on the other hand, appeared
as the champions of progress, as compared with
the obtuse Rascolniks. But the opponents soon
changed their weapons. A Rascolnik wanted to

THE RASCOL. 463

think and to discover the truth for himself. He
stuck to his ancient creed because he cared for it
so much, and believed himself to be in the right,
not because he was ordered by the superior to
believe such and such a thing. His creed was of
his own choice, the highest interest of his life, not
the "business of the Patriarch," as was the case
with his orthodox brethren. The knowledge of
the Scriptures and of the history of the Church
was essential to him, to remove his own doubts,
to defend his creed against his opponents, and to
spread it, if possible, among his enemies : it was a
defensive and offensive weapon. Thus, whilst the
orthodox peasants, with their well-revised and
well-spelt books, remained utterly ignorant and
careless about the religion into which they were
born, the Rascolniks, from the first, spared no
efforts to gain some rudiment of scriptural know-
ledge.

When they were allowed to found perma-
nent settlements and to live peacefully on their
patches of ground somewhere on the shores of
the icy ocean, one of the chief cares of the
Rascolniks was to provide for the regular educa-
tion of the community. The first, and in many
respects the most important, of these early settle-

464 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

ments was the so-called Wygorezie, a series of
villages on the River Wyg, which had for their
centre the Wyg monastery. This association
took the lead in the inner history of the Rascol,
and may serve as a fair model of many similar
institutions founded in various times by all the
big sects of the " priestless " as well as the
"priestly" Rascol.

The Wyg settlement was founded, in 1696, by
a small body of " priestless " dissenters, under the
leadership of two brothers, Ignaty and Andrey
(Andreas) Denisov.

The elder, Ignaty, did not stop long with the
Wyg people. He was a remnant of other and
more fanatical days, which were drawing to a
close. The author of the first " locking up " of
the Paleostrovsky monastery, he perished in the
flames " for the glory of the faith," with about
fifteen hundred others — his followers. Andrey
Denisov lived to an advanced age, working with
head and hands to build up the Wyg community,
and to consolidate the Rascol Church, then
scattered all over. the Empire. This remarkable
man was a good representative of a long series
of Rascolnik leaders, who united the exaltation
peculiar to apostles of new creeds with the talents

THE RASCOL. 465

and shrewdness of men of business. As a writer
and preacher he took an active part in the then
pending controversy between the priestly and
priestless Rascol, and was instrumental in giving
definite shape and the decided victory to the
priestless faction over their opponents. At the
same time, by his example and eloquence he kept
the Wyg people together, sustaining them amidst
hardships which were trying even to Russian
moujiks.

The colony was so badly provided with the
means of subsistence that for several winters,
which followed bad harvests, they had to feed on
what they called " straw bread." The straw was
pulverized on a mill and diluted flour added to it,
in so small a quantity that when baked the loaves
could not hold together ; the dough crumbled
up on the bottom of the oven, and had to be
swept out with a broom and eaten with spoons.
Yet even this meagre diet was so scarce that it
was only partaken of once a day. Even in the
better years, agriculture in these high latitudes
hardly supplied the colony with their daily bread.

One generation saw the whole economical
condition of the Wyg people improved past all
recognition, thanks to their spirit of co-operation

30

466 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

and to the remarkable business talents of their
abbot, Andrey Denisov. He was the first to
conceive and to apply the idea that the mutual
confidence and trust existing between the members
of his sect, scattered all over the country, might
be made the base of extensive business relations.
The Rascolniks of the Volga, of the Don, and
of Moscow readily trusted the abbot of Wygorezie
with their capital, and with unlimited credit, whilst
on their side the Wyg people could place equal
confidence in the representatives of the local
congregations with regard to their commercial
affairs. Without giving up agriculture altogether,
the Wyg settlers nevertheless devoted most of
their spare time to the manufacturing industries.
They produced leathern wares, clothes, iron wares,
and agricultural implements. Their most extensive
and lucrative trade was in brass-casting. They
discovered copper mines in the Province of
Olonezk, where they extracted the metal and
worked it to great advantage. They supplied,
moreover, the whole Rascolnik world with ikons,
crosses, and other sacred utensils, made strictly
after the pattern of ancient orthodox samples.

The production of these articles was carried
on on the ordinary Russian co-operative principle,

THE RASCOL. 46?

enriching both the monastery and the individual
workers, who had their share in the profits. The
capital thus realized was not left lying idle. It
was chiefly invested in the corn trade, the most
profitable in Russia up to the present time. The
VVyg monastery had at its disposal vast sums of
money of its own, and also money deposited with
it by the Rascolnik communities of other towns.
The traders of the monastery purchased corn in
the southern Provinces and transported it by
their own craft to the northern markets, and
became after a time the chief purveyors to the
new Capital. During Denisov's lifetime the
Wyg monastery grew to be the wealthiest joint-
stock company in the Empire.

The death of Andrey Denisov changed nothing
in the position of the Wyg community or its
policy. The popular principle of communal self-
government formed the base of all Rascolnik
organizations. The abbot ruled in the monastery
with the assistance of a body of directors ; all were
elected, and transacted the business of the com-
munity "in common," consulting it on all important
occasions. The Wyg monastery ruled in the
same spirit over the whole siizemok, or " land-
union," as the little territory occupied by the

468 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Rascolnik settlers was called. There was little
formality in this kind of administration, but still the
control of all the business was in the hands of the
community. Change of persons mattered little.
This arrangement, reproduced in all Rascolnik
organisations, accounts for their solidity and the
good management of their public affairs.

Regular educational institutions were started
in the Wyg monastery as soon as the community
could make both ends meet. The monastery had
two regular schools, one for adults, another
capable of holding several hundred children, both
male and female, who were brought by their
parents to the monastery from distant towns and
Provinces. There were also a special body of
scribes, who copied books ; a collection of old
ikons, which served as models for their ikon
painters, and a good library, furnished with ancient
books and manuscripts for the use of the studious.
Many of the future leaders and teachers of the
Rascol, both male and female, received their
education in the Wyg monastery.

The participation by the women in the studies
and activities usually confined to men is one of
the most sympathetic peculiarities of the whole
Rascol. The women, so completely subjugated and

THE RASCOL. 469

so often ill-treated amongst the Great Russian
peasantry of the orthodox creed, recovered their
dignity in the Rascol. The sects were the only
bodies among the peasantry where intellectual
gifts were valued highly, and formed the chief
claim to respect and influence. Religion was to
them the supreme interest, and such members of
the community as showed the greatest spiritual
gifts were naturally the most appreciated. Wealth
and physical strength bowed reverentially before
intelligence, eloquence, and devotion to the
common creed. In the religious bodies the
women took their place by the side of the men,
as their birthright. They showed the same zeal
for their faith and the same courage on the
scaffold and in the torture chambers. They
studied the Scriptures and preached the Gospel
as well as the men. Sometimes they founded
new sects. The names of Akuline Ivanovna,
Marianna, Hania, and other women were much
renowned among the Rascolniks of various per-
suasions. Very often the posts of "readers,
or unordained presbyters in various Rascolnik
parishes, were filled by women. In one sect,
the Ochislienzy (the Purified), every family had
its own priestess. One of the girls --the one

470 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

who seemed the most gifted — was from her child-
hood exempted from all household work, and
devoted all her time to study and to the reading
of the Scriptures. When she came of age, she
was made the family chaplain, confessor, and
general spiritual adviser. No important business
was decided upon without her approbation.

In all sects alike the women take the leading
part in the work of education. A special class
of women, who renounced marriage, the Belizy
(White Ones), devoted themselves to the educa-
tion of the Rascolnik children as a profession.
Sometimes they wandered from village to village,
sometimes they resided permanently in cloisters
specially intended for females, to which girls were
sent as to boarding-schools.

All the sects of the Rascol, the "priestly " as
well as the " priestless," the Pomorzy as well as
the Fedoseevzy, spared no pains in order to supply
their co-religionists with the means of education.

Thus the Rascolniks had their regular popular
schools a hundred years before the first official
schools, for the benefit of the State peasants, were
founded on paper, because until 1861 there were
practically no popular schools for the orthodox
peasantry to attend. Men who knew how to read

THE RASCOL. 471

and write were in those times a great rarity
among the orthodox moujiks, whilst among the
Rascolniks education was common among men
and with many women.

The Rascolnik schools, supported and managed
by the people themselves, without any thievish
tchinovnik to pocket the funds intended for them,
worked tolerably well. The instruction the
Rascolniks received there was not extensive, and
had an exclusively religious tendency, but it
satisfied the wants of the people for the time
being.

The splits which very soon occurred in the
Rascol only increased this desire for instruction,
as each sect had to defend its own position.

The Rascolniks were exceedingly fond of reli-
gious discussions, and were constantly arranging
controversial conferences. Sometimes they de-
bated with the orthodox, but this was neither
safe nor particularly interesting. They preferred
the debates arranged between representatives of
various branches of the Rascol. Famous preachers
and debaters met, coming from the farthest ex-
tremities of the Empire to take part in, or to
be present at, these tournaments, which made a
stir all over the Rascctlnik world.

472 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

The subjects of discussion were either general,
the whole doctrine of the respective denomina-
tions, or special. Sometimes questions of mere
detail furnished the Rascolnik schoolmen with
matter for discussion which lasted over several
days. The thing was taken in great earnest.
When three famous disputants of the Pomorzy
sect came to Staraia Russa, to hold a disputation
with Eusign Fedoseevitch (son of Fedosy, the
founder of the sect), about "Pilate's Inscription,"
the latter imposed a fast of several days' duration
on all his household, that he might obtain from
God the needful inspiration for the contest.

As a rule these disputations resulted only in
the greater embitterment of the animosity between
the sects, as none went to these meetings in a
spirit of conciliation ; but it did not prevent the
parties from meeting on the field again and again.

After the debates, the chief disputants were
wont to set down their views in writing in
pamphlets and treatises, which were copied and
widely circulated. The price of these manuscript
volumes and pamphlets was very moderate, anc
within reach of an average purchaser, owing t(
the great competition between the numerous
copyists. Thus a vast clandestine literature wa.«

THE RASCOL, 473

gradually created, which, notwithstanding the
narrow field of its speculations, sometimes exhibits
remarkable subtlety and acuteness of mind. Mr.
Mackenzie Wallace, who had an opportunity of
perusing some of these pamphlets written by
these self-taught moujiks, says that they were not
inferior to the dissertations of the trained School-
men of the Middle Ages.

Such an amount of intellectual life must have
appeared exuberant when compared with the
dead stagnation in which the orthodox peasantry-
lived.

" Orthodox peasants," says Ivan Axacoff, " en-
dowed with spiritual gifts and anxious to exercise
them in some intellectual pursuit, indifferent to
orthodoxy and suspicious of the clergy and the
government, generally went over to the Rascol,
where they found the society of men who were in
a certain sense highly cultured, libraries, readers,
publishers, copyists, and every aid to a free inter-
change of thought and opinion."

Thus did the Rascol become the embodiment
of a kind of moujik culture entirely different to, and
perfectly independent of, that of the upper, or
Europeanized Russians. The Rascolniks knew
no foreign language, and for a long time shunned

474 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

even Russian literature, because they considered
the secular alphabet introduced by Peter the
Great to be heretical. They only taught their
children the Slavonic alphabet in which the
Scriptures were printed. They lived, isolated
by their religious prejudice, as completely apart
from the world outside as if they were surrounded
by impassable deserts. Still, they formed among
the- in selves a nation of more than ten millions of
men, in active intellectual interchange of thought.
They could not relapse into utter stagnation.

Rascolnik culture offers indeed unmistakable
signs of progress in its particular domain. With
the small intellectual capital they possessed, the
actual progress was necessarily a very modest one,
being confined to religious matters. Still, it is
even now not devoid of interest, because so
perfectly independent of any exterior influence,
and entirely evolved from its own scanty materials.

The Bible (the ancient unrevised edition, of
course), with a few ecclesiastical books, some old
translations from the Greek, formed the only
intellectual food of the Rascol up to recent times.

The first steps of the Rascol were exceedingly
slow. For seventy years it floundered in the
slough of ritualism from which it had. started.

THE RASCOL. 475

The Fedoseevzy doctrine mentioned in a former
chapter is an illustration of this. People caused
discord and quarrelled, and excommunicated one
another, for differences in the mere detail of ex-
terior worship. One denomination, for instance,
seceded upon the question of the folding brass
ikons, which they considered heretical, only ad-
mitting as correct those that were solid, and
formed from one piece of metal or wood.

From the middle of the eighteenth century on-
wards, questions of broader interest have been
mixed up with those of ancient ritualism. The
"priestless" take the lead in this movement,
bringing the burning question of marriage, the
stumbling-block of the sect, to the front.

The " priestless " — those who refused to ac-
cept the runaway orthodox pops as ministers — had
a hard course to pursue. Strict observers of all
the traditions and canons of the orthodox Church,
they could perform for themselves only such
rites as simple laymen are allowed to celebrate,
i.e., baptise, hear confessions, and read certain
parts of the mass. They could hold no com-
munion service, and what was in practice more
difficult to avoid — no marriage ceremony. Ac-
cording to the canons of the orthodox Church

476 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

only ordained clergymen can perform this cere-
mony. No clergy meant no wedlock. Monastic
celibacy was imposed on all the adherents of the
" priestless " Rascol as the only state free from
sin and fitting a Christian.

The leaders of the "priestless" Rascol tried
hard to enforce this prescription both by preaching
and by example. All their settlements were
originally intended to be monasteries. The
numbers of the faithful, however, of both sexes
made the realisation of this intention exceedingly
difficult. At the Wyg settlement — that beacon
of the True Faith — the men and women were
rigorously kept apart. They were lodged in two
different groups of houses, and they never met in
common rooms. In the chapel during the service
each sex stood in a place specially assigned to
it, and separated from the other by a double
curtain of mats. Even the whole length of the
passage which led from the women's lodgings
to the door of the chapel was lined with mats,
so as to render the fair sex invisible to the other.
Private interviews were strictly prohibited. Rela-
tives and fellow-villagers were allowed to meet
in a common hall under the eyes of six elderly
sisters of no less than sixty years of age, carefully '

THE RASCOL, 477

chosen for this office by the Elder or Abbot of
the Wygorezie.

Needless to say that all these precautions
proved of no avail against nature. The number
of transgressors was so great that it was im-
possible to deal harshly with them. They were
excommunicated for a period, and had some
penance imposed on them, after which they were
readmitted into the Church, and as a rule after
an interval had to undergo the same punishment a
second time, by way of expiation and purification.

When the once small colony had increased to
many thousands of souls, mostly husbandmen,
whose scattered farms covered vast tracts of land
won by their labour from marshes and brush-
wood, the separation of the sexes became quite
impracticable. A moujik cannot cultivate his
land without the constant assistance of his baba,
to perform all the household work, to cook his
dinner, and mind the cattle. The inhabitants of
Pomorie — as the whole of the Rascolnik territory
was called — naturally fell into two different classes
— the monks, who inhabited the centres of the
settlement, such as the Wyg monastery, and
formed some other minor religious societies and
Chapels ; and the laymen, who lived scattered in

478 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

small villages all around in regular peasant house-
holds with their unwedded wives. They could
condone the contraction of these unauthorised
unions by r the performance of a penance, which
varied in severity according to the austerity or
mildness of the elected readers or informal pres-
byters of their respective congregations.

These anomalous conditions could not fail to
give twinges of conscience to the Rascolniks, but
from the point of view of strict ritualism they had
no choice ; what they considered a transgression
against morality was a venial sin when compared
with a breach of the sacred ordinances of the
Church.

About the middle of the eighteenth century
the question of marriage began to be treated from
another point of view. In 1750 a very popular
writer of the Pomorzy sect, Anikin, boldly ap-
proached the essential question of wedlock, main-
taining that marriage is a sacred institution before
God, independently of the Priest's benediction
and the Church ceremony.

His treatise made a great sensation, and excited
a good deal of discussion. Among his followers
was Basili Emelianov, the elder of the Moscow
Pomorzy, who began to perform a sort of

THE RASCOL. 479

marriage ceremony in his Chapel. This pro-
duced a scandal among his fellow-worshippers.
The Abbot of the Wyg monastery, Archip
Dementiev, the head of the whole Pomorzy sect,
was strongly opposed to this innovation. A
council was summoned, Emelianov was excom-
municated, and, being a rather weak man, sub-
mitted and made a hypocritical recantation.
His case was, however, taken up by several
popular writers and debaters of the sect, such as
Krilov, Paul the Curious, Skachkov, and others.
They advanced the thesis — very sweeping for
the Rascol — that in the absence of a clergyman
laymen can, by appointment of the Church, per-
form certain rites proper to the ordained clergy.
The Pomorzy Church became divided within itself.
The Abbot of Wygorezie, Archip Dementiev,
Grigory Ivanovitch, author of more than twenty
works on various subjects, and Dolgy, a merchant,
wrote and preached vehemently against those
who married.

The times were, however, ripe for a change,
and the advocates of marriage gradually gained
ground. Several of the former opponents of
marriage passed over to the opposite side. In
1795 Archip Dementiev, the Abbot, made the

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

declaration, that, " fearing God he does not
consider Emelianov a heretic, nor the couples
united by him, adulterers."

After Emelianov's death his successor, Habriel
Skachkov, went to Wygorezie, whence he re-
turned in 1798 to Moscow, with a declaration,
signed by the united Pomorzy sects, to the effect
that " marriage does not consist in the Church
ceremony, which may or may not be performed,
but in the eternal vows of the married couple."
This was an important victory, and a marked
proof of the broadening out of the Rascolmk
mind. Religion had ceased for them to be a
mere rite — it had become a principle of conduct.

When the Pomorzy tried to bring the other
great sect, the Fedoseevzy, over to their views,
they met, however, with fierce opposition.
Kovylin brutally pushed the ancient principle
(of the rite above all things) to its logical con-
clusion, as follows : —

" Better to live as a Turk than to marry ;
better to have ten illegitimate children than one
wedded husband." His followers made a picture,
in which a wedded couple was represented, and
the devil with a poker putting the soul into the
body of the baby.

THE RASCOL. 481

The example, nevertheless, spread among the
Fedoseevzy too. The St. Petersburg elder of the
sect began to unite some of his parishioners
in matrimony. He was excommunicated. The
St. Petersburg Fedoseevzy split off into two
parties, and instituted a new persuasion, that of
the Speshnevo.

In 1876 the Government gave countenance to
this movement by recognising the legality, in the
eyes of the law, of the marriages registered in
Rascolnik Chapels.

Having thus settled according to the light of
their individual reason and conscience one im-
portant question, that of matrimony, the " priest-
less " practically stepped out of the bonds of the
RascoL In thus admitting the Protestant prin-
ciple of freedom of interpretation, in one question,
i they opened the way to its further conquests.

This nineteenth century, especially the last
twenty-five years, has been a period of very
rapid progress towards rationalism in religion
i among former Rascolniks.

Ten years before the Emancipation, a teacher
belonging to the Wanderers, Nicolas Kiseleff,
'wrote against the spirit of obtuse conservatism
: which characterised the Rascol, advocating the

482 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

very opposite ideas of progress in religion.
" You call yourselves ' Old Believers ' and ' wor-
shippers of old rites,' and you are proud of
these names, though they are against the very
spirit of Christianity. The Christian creed has
nothing old in it, but ever grows younger and
Iresher, and for the believers in Christ there can
be no other name than Christians."

These new ideas produced a great stir in the
Rascolnik world, and Kiseleff found many sym-
pathisers and adherents.

Another writer, a learned Rascolnik monk,
Paul, in his book, Thz Kings Way, which had
a very great sale, rejected the authority of some
of the canonised Fathers of the Church. In
another work of his he attacks the principle of
an ecclesiastical hierarchy, proving on historical
grounds that before Nicon's time, and up to 1685,
there were in the Pskov Bishopric one hundred
and sixty parishes in the hands of the peasants,
who appointed presbyters without their having
been ordained by the Bishop.

Many prominent Rascolnik teachers attacked
various other important dogmas of the orthodox
Church. One man, Efim Blokhin, who wrote
in 1840, rejected all the Sacraments ; other

THE RASCOL. 483

accepted Baptism but rejected the Eucharist, on
the authority of St. John and St. Augustine, who
said, " Believe, and thou hast eaten and hast
partaken of the Eucharist." Very many reject
three or four of the less important sacraments
peculiar to the Greek Church.

The leading spirits of the Rascol have long
since relinquished the petty ritualistic hobbies of
their forefathers. The questions as to crossing
with two or with three fingers, or of the Greek
versus the Latin form of the cross, are replaced
by questions as to the binding force of the letter
of Scripture, the amount of freedom of interpre-
tation permissible, the authenticity of certain
prophecies in the Old Testament, the reality of
the miracles in the New.

A vast intellectual work of transformation is
evidently in progress within the old Rascol, of
which the writings just mentioned are a symptom
and an instrument. A noticeable change has been
wrought during the last two generations in the
spirit of our ritualistic dissent. The respective
positions of the orthodox and the Rascolniks has
been completely reversed. Fifty years ago the
Orthodox reproached the Rascolniks with their
narrowness, and their slavish adherence to the.

484 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

letter, to the neglect of the spirit of religious
doctrines. Now the Rascolniks levy the same
reproaches against the Orthodox, whom they call
" Ritualists of the Church Hierarchy." To use
the pertinent expression of I. Aksakoff, the
Rascolniks think that "the so-called Orthodox
creed is a perfunctory, official one, which does
not spring from the living faith of those who
profess it, and which serves merely as one of the
instruments used by the Government for the
maintenance of order."

With the Rascolniks^ the tendency to disregard
exterior formalities and to seek after the " inner
sense " of the Scriptures constantly gains ground.
The Scriptures must be understood according to
the spirit, and not according to the letter. This
transformation has already spread very far among
the " priestless." Their main body can be said to
have given up the Rascol as a ritual altogether.
The Popovzy are much slower to move, and
stick tenaciously to the antiquated creed of their
forefathers.

There exist a number of sects, founded during
the last twenty or thirty years, in which the most
advanced rationalistic theories of the Rascol are
embodied. Such are the Nemoliaki (Non-prayers),

THE RASCOL. 485

founded in 1835-7 by Zimin, a Cossack of the Don,
and now widely spread among the Rascolniks
in Siberia, Perm, Moscow, Odessa, and Nijni
Novgorod ; the Vozdykhanzy (the Sighers), who
appeared about twelve years ago in the Province
of Kaluga, and afterwards spread into the
neighbouring provinces ; the Kalikovzy of the
Province of Tchernigov ; the several new ramifica-
tions of the Yaroslav Beguny, and many others.
These sects are the only ones which have latterly
had any considerable success within the Rascol.
All are more or less rationalistic ; they reject
the Sacraments (sometimes all of them, but
occasionally making exceptions in favour of Bap-
tism and the Eucharist), the Church Hierarchy,
the ikons, and the saints, also the worship of
relics, and temple-worship. All bear traces, how-
ever, of their Rascolnik origin, for they always
contain something about Nicon as Antichrist either
in the fantastic views set forth as to the history
of the world, or in some other peculiar tenets.

All these are pregnant signs. Vast communi-
ties, composed of from twelve to fifteen millions
of men, everywhere present the widest intellectual
differences. Whilst the more advanced elements
of the Rascol have ceased to be Rascolniks at all,

486 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

among the most backward we hear now and
again of isolated cases of self-immolation. But the
painstaking investigators of the modern Rascol
have brought to light sufficient proof of the vast-
ness and intensity of religious rationalism in the
leading body of the Rascol to show unmistakably
in what direction it is moving.

The Orthodox Church has been quite right in
asserting that the Rascol cannot stand the pro-
gress of time and culture. The great ritualistic
schism is mightily shaken, and as such its years
are numbered. But the Church was wrong to
suppose that when their eyes should be opened to
the narrowness of their doctrine the people would
return to the bosom of the Mother-Church.
What we may expect, with a good deal of certainty,
is that they will reverse their tactics and attack
it from the opposite side.

Before passing on to the consideration of purely
rationalistic dissent, unmixed and unconnected
with the Rascol proper, we must say a few words
about one strange sect of which we have heard
pretty often of late. It is the so-called sect of the
Ne Nashy, or the " Negators." It is not exactly a
" sect," as they are avowed freethinkers, denying

THE RASCOL. 487

everything in religion. Nevertheless they exhibit
a fierce fanaticism in their negation, and to this we
are unaccustomed in connection with the sobering
influences of scientific thought. These popular
freethinkers have been met and observed by
educated people in several prisons. H. Lopatin
described in the Vperiod several of those
detained in the Irkutsk prison. Mishla, an official
in the civil service, had an opportunity of studying
them in one of the prisons of Western Siberia.
W. Korolenko, our talented young writer, when on
his way to Siberia met one of them in Perm
prison. They are said to be very numerous in
the Province of Saratov.

All accounts agree in representing these people
as unflinching, fierce rebels, denying all authority,
whether Divine or human, bearing, and often pro-
voking, the most appalling punishments, rather
than show any sign of submission, or deference to
their gaolers or any other men in authority.

It would be an honour to us to call them
popular Nihilists, were they not imbued at the
same time with a sort of worship of individual
selfishness, and with gloomy pessimist views as
regards all things human. It is difficult to com-
prehend what good purpose is served by all the

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

frightful sufferings they bring down on their own
heads by wilful, sometimes wanton, insults and
roughness. It seems as though they enjoyed
suffering on some incomprehensible psychological
grounds of their own. Mishla describes a mild
type of these popular freethinkers, a certain
Nicolas Tchukhmishov, who did not refuse to
work in the prison, who answered all questions as
to his name and origin when asked by the prison
authorities, and who did not worry them much in
any other fashion, as his companions were wont to
do. He was accordingly treated with mildness
by the gaolers, who were glad to overlook as
"crotchets " his habit of wearing his hat in their
presence, and using rather free language towards
his superiors, etc. But suddenly, when the new
Governor of the Province, who is as absolute a
monarch in Siberia as a Turkish Pacha, came to
visit the prison, Nicolas Tchukhmishov publicly
abused him in most opprobrious terms, though
quite unprovoked. He was instantly condemned
to be flogged. The next day, when the sentence
had to be carried out, he assaulted the ispravnik
and overthrew the zerzalo, a sort of fetish intended
to represent the Emperor, for which offences the
infuriated ispravnik had him flogged almost to

THE RASCOL. 4*9

death. When Mishla, with whom he was on
friendly terms, paid him a visit at the hospital,
and asked him for what reason he had done all
this, Tchukhmishov quietly answered, " I had to
do it, it was necessary," and offered no further
explanation.

There is something which recalls the early
self-immolators of the Rascolnik in these strange
yearnings after martyrdom. A. Prugavin names,
as the founder of this "sect," a certain Vasily
Shyshkov, a peasant from the Province of Saratov,
sentenced to exile in Siberia for his religious
opinions. He was by birth a member of the
Fedoseevzy, but not being satisfied with it he
changed. Four times he altered his creed, and in
the meantime was thrice rebaptized. None of the
Churches satisfied him, so he began to study the
Scriptures for himself, with the hope of finding
his own way to God. Instead of finding peace,
however, he was struck by the contradictions con-
tained in the Scriptures, and after great inward
struggle and anguish he ended by abjuring the
Scriptures, Religion, God, and the future life. To
the question " How was the world created ?" he
answered, that " it had never been created at all,
but had existed from all time." As to the immor-

490 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

tality of the soul, he taught that the mind and
the body of man are perpetuated in his children,
all else perishes absolutely.

This negative sect appears under two other
names — the Netovzy, or " Deniers," and probably
also the Molchalniky, or the " Dumb" — the same
whom a Governor of Western Siberia has again
and again put to regular torture for the fun of
verifying whether it would be possible for them
not to utter a sound during the frightful ordeal.

It is not necessary to relegate all these negative
sects to one common source. Most probably they
sprang up sporadically here and there ; but from
its general character it is easy to infer that this
form of free thought grew on the religious hotbed
of the Rascol, independently of the influence of the
positive sciences.

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT.

CHAPTER I.

RUSSIAN rationalism is of very ancient date.
The great Protestant movement which began to
agitate the whole Christian world in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, and which culminated in
the Reformation, had its feeble echoes even in
far-distant and secluded Muscovy.

The new influence first became manifest in the
northern commercial republics, which were more
advanced in their culture and less prejudiced against
foreigners. As early as 1370, we read that in
the town of Pskov there was a sect founded by
a Dean named Nikita, and a certain Karp, pro-
bably by profession a barber, at any rate so his
surname of Strigolnik seems to indicate. The
doctrine of the Strigolniks, or " barbers," as
they were dubbed by the orthodox, was that
of a rudimentary rationalism. They rejected the
priesthood and the sacraments ; they taught the
people that they ought not to receive either
Baptism or the Eucharist at the hands of

494 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

the priests. According to them, people could
confess without the assistance of a elegy man : the
penitents had only to prostrate themselves on the
ground and whisper their sins to mother earth.
Some of the adherents of the sect even went
so far, it is said, as to reject the infallibility of the
Scriptures, the doctrine of the immortality of the
soul, and resurrection of the dead.

The Strigolniks led a very severe ascetic life,
devoted to fasting and prayers. They mixed little
with their orthodox fellow-citizens, and are said to
have been very proud, stiff, and unsociable. This,
if we are to believe the statements of their oppo-
nents, was the chief cause of the odium in which
they were held by the people of Pskov and of
Novgorod. The sect had but a short existence,
and was destroyed without the intervention of the
authorities. The people of Pskov expelled them
from the town, and a few years later they
migrated to Novgorod, where the crowd laid
hands on them and threw them from the Volchov
bridge into the river.

A hundred years later, in the same town of
Novgorod, there appeared an heretical rational-
istic sect of much wider influence and importance
— the so-called " Judaisers" This sect was

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 495

founded about 147080 by a Jewish scholar,
named Skhary or Zacharia. He had come to
Novgorod from Lithuania in the suite of Alex-
ander Olelkovitch, the last Prince of free Novgo-
rod. Skhary, whom the chroniclers mention as
a man of great learning and acute intellect, took
up his abode in Novgorod, and began an active
propaganda among the most advanced theolo-
gians of the Christian Church. He attacked the
dogma of the Trinity, the doctrine of the
Redemption, the sacraments, the worship of the
ikons, and the worship of the saints on logical
grounds. He furthermore strongly objected to
monastic celibacy as contrary to human nature.

All this was new and attractive to the Nov-
gorod divines, who had hitherto had to exercise
their minds on mere formalities. The first
disciples who joined this Jewish scholar were two
prominent clergymen, Alexy and Dionisy, and
soon afterwards Gabriel, the Dean of Novgorod
Cathedral. The more educated among the
laymen soon followed their example, attracted by
the clear logic and the simple and comprehensible
ethics, which the new sect carefully elaborated.

In 1480 the Tzar, John III., paid a visit to
Novgorod, and made the acquaintance of the two

496 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

chiefs of the sect, the pops Alexy and Dionisy,
and on returning to Moscow took both of them
with him to his Capital. The sect spread very
rapidly at the court of Moscow, and among a
group of the clergy. Some too of the most
influential officials, and even members of the
Tzar's own family, were in its favour. In ten
years the sect had spread over the chief towns
of the Empire.

In 1489 they obtained the nomination of
Zossima, their secret adherent, to the headship of
the Muscovite Church, a thing which no sect had
ever before succeeded in doing. The Tzar him-
self lent a favourable ear to their teachings, but
they had no root among the masses, so that the
members of the orthodox Church, when roused from
indifference by the passionate appeal of Hennady,
obtained an easy and complete victory over them.
The council, convened at Hennady's instigation,
condemned \htjudaisers as heretics, and deposed
the Metropolitan. Zossima was permitted, by
exceptional leniency on the part of the Tzar
to end his days unmolested in a monastery.
Some of the minor lights of the sect were de-
livered over to the tribunals and executed. The
remainder dispersed, and the whilom powerful

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 497

sect vanished, we may safely say without leaving
a trace behind. There exists, it is true, among
the many popular sects of to-day a body of
Sabbatarians which in some of its subdivisions
reproduces the doctrines of the early Judaisers.
It would, however, be perfectly absurd to suppose
them connected by some mysterious links of
heredity with a sect which only existed three
hundred years before. The "Epistles" and the
" Acts" show so many unmistakable proofs of the
judaising tendencies of some of the founders of
Christianity, that they offer a perfectly satisfactory
explanation of the spontaneous development of
judaizing sects in Russia as well as in other
countries.

The following generation offers another, but
much more feeble manifestation of the same ration-
alistic tendencies, founded this time on a purely
Christian basis. This movement is generally
connected with the literary activity of a remarkable
man, Maxim the Greek, an Albanian scholar, who
succeeded in grafting upon the country of his
adoption some elements of the vigorous European
culture of his day.

Maxim the Greek studied in Paris, Venice, and
Florence. He was a contemporary and a warm

32

498 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

admirer of Girolamo Savonarola. When sum-
moned to Moscow, he could not help criticising
the wooden formalism and narrowness of Russian
religion.

There was nothing adverse to orthodoxy in
the teachings of Maxim the Greek, though he was
accused of "heresy" and condemned to life-long
imprisonment. In his numerous writings and
speeches he merely tried to persuade the Russians
to give a little thought to their religion, — which
was a great and dangerous service in that be-
nighted epoch.

Prince Kurbsky tells us that at that time the
orthodox priests themselves tried to damp the
ardour of such young people as were lovers of
book-lore and religious study. " Do not read
many books," they said ; "the source of all sin is
reasoning : it is like the second fall. You have,
forsooth, acquired superior wisdom, when lo ! yoi
stop to reason on some text ; and behold ! yov
have fallen into some heresy." Matvey Seme-
novitch Bashkin, condemned in 1555 for heresy,
and probably burned alive — a vague but vei
touching figure — was probably one of those youn^
people in whom such advice and warning were
powerless to still the longing after light and truth.

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 499

During the Lent of 1554, Simeon, the pop of
the Cathedral of the Annunciation, was approached
by a stranger, who asked to be confessed. It was
a well-to-do nobleman, Matvey Bashkin. At the
confession, the penitent asked the pop questions
as to the moral obligations and religious duties
of men which appeared " awkward " to the pop
Simeon. Bashkin showed him a book of Epistles
full of marks, indicating those texts which had
struck the reader most ; he asked Simeon to
explain some of these texts to him ; but the pop
not being a man of large resource, Bashkin
offered his own explanations.

" Look," he said once, pointing to the gospel ;
"is it not written, ' For all the law is fulfilled in
one word, even in this, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself ? and yet people all around
us do nothing but torment one another. Christ
ordered us to live like brothers, and we, being
Christians, hold other Christians in bondage.
I, thank God, have torn the kabalas I had on
my men into pieces. Those who live on my
estates do so of their own free will, and not
because of my rights as a certificated slave-owner.
If they are satisfied with me they remain, if not
they are free to go whenever they like. You who

500 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

are our spiritual fathers, you ought to visit us
laymen oftener, and to teach us how to live, and
how to do our duty towards the people who are
subjected to us."

This inquiring tone of mind and these ideas
revealed a different spirit from that which then
prevailed in the Muscovite Church. Pop Simeon
was hurt, and denounced Bashkin, whose doctrine
he termed "a debauchery." Bashkin was arrested
and tried by the council in the following year,
together with a small group of friends, among
them some of the most educated and advanced of
the clergy. When questioned, Bashkin summed
up the theological part of his doctrine thus :
" We reject the sacraments, the traditions of the
Church, the worship of the saints, and their
ikons. By ' the Church ' we understand a
congregation of believers, and not a human
institution, still less a mere building of stones."
To these doctrines, which reflected the Protes-
tantism of the West, Bashkin is supposed to have
united the views of the Arians. "We do not
recognise," he went on to say, " the divinity of
the Son, nor his equality with the Father."
It is difficult to determine what, in this profession
of faith, represented the real views of the Russian

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 501

latitudinarians of the sixteenth century, and which
were put into their mouths by the inquisitors.
The very fact that Bashkin went to confession
to a pop speaks against his rejection of the
Sacraments, though this may perhaps have been
the mere device of a propagandist to enter into
communication with a man whom he expected to
convert to his views. At all events, the general
rationalistic character of Bashkin's heresy cannot
be doubted.

Bashkin's ultimate fate is a matter of uncertainty.
Popular tradition says that he was burned at the
stake, though there is no mention of him in the
official records. Popular rationalists of modern
times look reverently upon Bashkin as the
founder of their creed, though of course this title
must be accepted only as an honorary one.

As another symptom of the fermentation going
on in men's minds, we may also mention another
interesting heresiarch — Theodosius the Squint-
eyed, whose heresy was discovered at about
the same time as Bashkin's, but, according to
Kostomarov, was not directly connected with it.
Theodosius, or Fedosy, the Squint-eyed, was
the first genuine self-taught moujik who, owing
to his superior intelligence, appears at the head

502 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

of a sect. He was a serf on some nobleman's
estate on the river Volga. He contrived to
escape from his master, and for some years
wandered as a vagabond under assumed names,
till he found refuge, as so many of his fellow-
vagabonds had done before him, in Baloosero,
one of the northern monasteries. Here he
began to preach, and converted several of the
brethren and some of the laymen of the neigh-
bourhood. According to an account which some
of his followers gave to a friend of theirs,
Fedosy appears to have been a very bold thinker
and a fine dialectician. He knew the Bible tho-
roughly, and was as skilful in the art of discovering
heaps of texts in support of his opinions as the
best of the RascolniKs " readers " of more recent
date. In many points the doctrine of Fedosy
reminds us of that of Bashkin, though he went
much farther. In his striving after a stricter
monotheism, he rejected the divinity of the Son
and his equality with the Father.

"How dared they," he was wont to ask, "in-
sert in the creed, in reference to Jesus, the words
' begotten, not made,' when the Apostle Peter
had said that God created Jesus ? He did not
say ' begot/ but created. And the Apostle Paul

RATIOXALISTIC DISSENT. 503

likewise says : ' Ttiere is one God and one
Mediator between God and men, the man Christ
Jesus."'

Quoting numerous passages from the Penta-
teuch, .the Psalms, the Proverbs of Solomon,
and the Prophets, Fedosy stigmatized ikon-
worship as idolatry, and called the Churches
"idol shrines," and the pops "idol priests." He
rejected the Sacraments and the external rites of
the Church, and showed a great respect for the
books of Moses, which he called " fundamental
ones." He admitted men's freedom to question
even the authenticity of the Scriptures, rejecting,
for instance, as unauthentic the Epistle of St.
Paul to the Hebrews, which he attributed to
some other man of the same name.

He differed from the Christians inasmuch as he
denied the immortality of the soul, as well as the
doctrine of the Redemption and of the fall of
man. He taught that man was created mortal,
as were all other living creatures. " Why should
death mean something exceptional to man ? " he
asked. " The big fishes of the sea and the whales
and serpents, the birds of the air and the beasts,
the lions and elephants, who are the biggest
creatures on the earth, all have to die, and nothing

504 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

is left of them after death. All these are like
men, creations of God."

Against the doctrine of the Redemption he urged
that human nature had undergone no change
since the coming of Christ : " Men are as liable
now as they were before to infirmities, death,
and sin."

Fedosy the Squint-eyed, with one of his chief
disciples, had the good luck to escape from the
Moscow prison, thus avoiding the otherwise in-
evitable execution. He and his friend took refuge
in Lithuania, where their propaganda is said to
have met with great success.

Such were the most important of the early
manifestations of religious rationalism in Russia.
They are so exceedingly feeble, these dying
echoes of the far-distant thunder, that but for the
dead silence of everything around it would be
difficult to catch the sound at all.

The real harbingers of rationalism, who carried
its standard through the cold blasts of time and
the blows of persecution, are two popular sects,
— the Dukhoborzy, or " Champions of the Spirit,"
and the Molokane, or " Milk-eaters."

CHAPTER II.

THE Dukhoborzy and Molokane are of the same
extraction, and the exterior forms of their worship
are pretty much the same. For a long time they
were confounded. Closer observation showed,
however, a considerable difference between the
Molokane, who are strict Christians of the Pro-
testant type, and the Dukhoborzy, who have deve-
loped a sort of theosophy differing in some
essentials from orthodox Christianity. It was
generally thought that the more moderate and
much more numerous Molokane was the elder of
the two sects. The Dukhoborzy were supposed
to be an offshoot generated as usual by a more
extreme minority. This view has been adopted
by Baron Haxthausen and other foreign writers.
Modern investigations have, however, proved the
contrary to be the case. The Molokane seceded
from the Dukhoborzy during the last quarter of
the eighteenth century, and the Dukhoborzy is
much the elder.

506 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Nothing can be said with certainty about the
origin of this sect, but the doctrines of the
Dukhoborzy are so extremely complicated, and
contain such strange ideas, that it is particularly
unlikely that they should have been developed
at one stroke on orthodox soil, without some
previous work in the realm of thought having
been expended in religious matters. Very pro-
bably we see in the Dukhoborzy and Molokane the
two last links of a long series of transformations
and religious efforts of the popular mind, links in
a chain which it is impossible for us to review for
lack of any written record.

Absorbed by the struggle with the powerful
Rascol, the Government disregarded the small
body of rationalist dissenters, sometimes even
confounding them with the extreme sect of ritual-
istic dissent. When the Dukhoborzy were first
discovered in 1750-5 by the Imperial police, it was
as a numerous and fully-organized body, with
ramifications in four Provinces of the Empire.
At their examination the Dukhoborzy of the village
of Okhochee (Province of Kharkov) made a de-
position in which some scholars thought to find a
cue to the origin of the sect. On being asked by
the police, who taught them their criminal faith,

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 507

he prisoners answered that they had learned it
if a foreigner, a military man, who had stayed
or many years among them and went away again,
lobody knowing whither.

No particulars were given as to the nationality,
he name, or the creed of this foreigner. In com-
paring dates it was conjectured that he must
lave been a prisoner of war taken during the
seven years' campaign. As, after a superficial
ixamination, the tenets of the Dukhoborzy were
bought to be much the same as those of the
Quakers, it was concluded that the mysterious
tranger must have been a member of the Society
»f Friends.

This legend made the turn of the world and
ed to some curious disappointments. Whether it
las some historical basis or not it is difficult
o decide. A stranger who had learnt Russian
tnd took an interest in popular religion may have
ived in those parts, or he may never have existed
.t all, and the whole story about him be a fabri-
ation of the accused Dukhoborzy in order to stave
>ff the annoyances caused by the police. The
nner-evidences of the Dukhoborzy doctrines make
breign influence very probable, but we must look
or their sources rather to the East, or to the old

5o8 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Christian heresies, than to modern Protestantism,
and to an epoch in all probability much anterior
to the seven years' war.

The base of the Dukhoborzys' creed is their
conception of the Deity as the Soul of the World,
the reasoning principle of the universe ; not as
a Personal Being, superior to and independent
of the world.

" The Dukhoborzy" says the Orthodox Inter-
locutor of 1859, " believe that God does not exist
as a separate personal Being. The Deity, accord-
ing to them, dwells in the souls of men, inseparable
and indistinguishable from them, and unable to
reveal its substance and glory otherwise than
through them." The Dukhoborzy accordingly con-
sider the soul of man to be a faithful image of God.
With the above-named restrictions, the Dukhoborzy
accept the dogma of the Trinity of the Godhead,
and see it reproduced in the spiritual capacities
of man, — God the Father is the Memory; God
the Son is the Reason ; God the Spirit is the'
Will.

They also accept the whole of the Scriptures,
but in the spirit ol symbolic individualisation.
According to them, the whole of the New and'
the Old Testaments merely prefigure in some

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 509

i ritual way the mysteries which are accomplished

the soul of every faithful man.
The " Inner Word," or " Speculating Reason,"
lich is identical with "God the Son," performs,

a spiritual sense, the office of redemption in
e soul of every faithful human being ; here it
is its spiritual birth, here it preaches, works
iracles, suffers, and brings to life — as Christ did
n earth.

The fall of Adam is likewise merely a symbol-
ation of what is daily performed in the souls

men. The Dukhoborzy accept it as an histori-
il event, but they deny the degenerating influence

the fall of the first man on all his descendants,
dam's fall was his individual fall, a source of mis-
rtune and deterioration for his soul alone. They
sject therefore the dogma of redemption and
incarnation. " We believe that Christ was
nly a good man," they said to Allan and Grilet,
wo English clergymen who came over to inquire
hether the Dukhoborzy were really Russian
)uakers, as it had been rumoured.

The Inner Word — the revelation of God in
1e soul of man — is the supreme authority in
sligious questions, and the source of all wisdom,
e totality of that wisdom, possessed by the

5io THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

whole Church, is what the Dukhoborzy understand
to be the "Book of Life." This "Book" is
traced out practically, by a vast number of religi-
ous hymns, meditations, precepts, and commen-
tories, of which every Dukhoborzy tries to retain
in his memory as much as he can, that he may
transmit it through oral tuition to his children.
The share of this sacred knowledge enjoyed by
each individual man is small, but the Dukhoborzy
believe that the religious truth possessed by their
Church as a whole is superior to that recorded
in any of the Scriptures. " Ask our old people,"
they say ; "they will teach you better."

The Dukhoborzy proudly consider themselves
as the only true worshippers of God, and consider
that the rest of mankind is wallowing in super-
stition and idolatry. They show, however, a
remarkable and quite exceptional liberality of
mind in determining who are to be considered
as the true Dukhoborzy — champions of the spirit.

According to them, the Church is the congrega-
tion of those whom God himself has called from
amongst the worldly and ordained to walk in the
path of light. These chosen ones are not recog-
nizable by any peculiar sign, nor are they
associated with any outward religion. They form

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 511

an invisible Church, whose members are scattered
all over the world and recognize the authority of
many religions.

Thus there are people belonging to this Church
not only among all Christian sects, but among
those who do not study the Scriptures and who
do not know Jesus Christ. It includes men of all
nations, all races, and all tongues. Even among
the Jews and the Turks, members of this Church
may be found — all those who are guided by their
"inner light," and cultivate in their souls the
seed of goodness (Novizky, 67-68, from "Westnik
Europy," 1880).

The Dukhoborzy believe, in their own fashion,
in the immortality of the soul: God, who dwells in
the souls of men, is immortal, therefore so are the
souls ; but they entirely reject the Christian con-
ception of immortality. According to them, the
individual immortality of a man consists " in the
memory which the deceased leaves behind him
among his fellow-men." They do not believe in
either hell or paradise. According to them, the
promise of future life we find in the Scriptures
refers to the future destinies of mankind on earth,
and not to a life beyond the tomb in another
world. " There will be no resurrection of the body,

?I2 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

and there will be no destruction of the visible
world. Physical nature as the abode of an
Eternal God will last for ever. The difference
between the present life and the future is this :
now the faithful have to live among sinners,
whilst in the future they will overcome the sinners
and will inherit the earth alone, though people
will be born, will work, and die just as they do
now."

Believing that souls are a part of God, which
cannot perish at the destruction of the bodies, the
Dukhoborzy admit the doctrine of the transmigra-
tion of souls. Yet here we^find a curious peculi-
arity, in opposition to the common version of this
doctrine : the Dukhoborzy do not suppose that the
soul enters the body before or at the moment of
the birth of a child. The newly-born baby is only
a piece of soulless matter.* According to the
Dukhoborzy, the soul enters into the child's body
gradually from about the sixth to the fifteenth
year of its age, the period during which the child
is learning from the " Book of Life," and the triune
manifestation of the spirit — memory, reason, and

* This article of faith served as a ground for the absurd
accusation brought against these people by the orthodox, of
infanticide.

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 513

will — are developed and shaped in it. This indi-
cates clearly in what, according to the Dukhoborzy,
the transmigration of souls consists.

Whence have our moujiks got all these ideas ?
From India ? from ancient Gnostics ? Or are they
the popular version of the views of some Western
heresiarch ? Or have they evolved them all out
of their own heads by meditating on the Scrip-
tures ?

Any and all of these surmises may be true,
though not one has more than mere conjecture
to support it. As to the Dukhoborzy themselves,
they have no distinct tradition as to the origin
of their creed ; or if you like they have, and a
very strong one, but one which can hardly be of
any use as an historical fact. They declare that
the founders of their creed were the three youths
whom King Nebuchadnezzar ordered to be
thrown into a flaming furnace. Some again go
back to still earlier times for the founder of their
Church, and believe him to have been Abel, the
first innocent man slaughtered, as so many of
their own prophets and teachers have since been.

At all events, the formation and constant de-
velopment of a similar doctrine among the simple,
uneducated moujiks is a very suggestive fact, for

33

514 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

it must be borne in mind that all the Dukhoborzy,
both past and present, are simple moujiks, tillers
of the soil, or tradesmen. " Hitherto," says
Haxthausen, " none of the educated classes have
been found among these sects. No Russian
clergyman has ever gone over to them or become
their leader : their members are all ordinary
Russian peasants. The more wonderful there-
fore, is the acuteness of intellect and force of
imagination which they manifest, and which testify
to the great intellectual gifts that still lie dormant
in the Russian common people."

So high, indeed, was the speculative part of the
Dukhoborzy doctrine carried, that its followers
often could not comprehend it so as to preserve
its purity. The early Dukhoborzy, like the Jews of
Moses' time, appear to have easily relapsed into
certain lower forms of religion. They fell back
on the worship of man, in this respect reminding
us of the Chlists. The first of their authentic
leaders, whose name has been preserved, was
Silvan Kolesnikov, a peasant of the Province of
Kharkov, who died an octogenarian. He is re-
membered as a man of wonderful eloquence and
power of persuasion, as well as of great practical
piety. Few men have ever contributed so much

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 515

towards the enlargement of the Book of Life as
has this Patriarch of the pure Dukfioborzy Church.
But in the next generation Savva Poberikhin, a
peasant of the neighbouring Province of Tambov,
played the part of a Dukhoborzy Aaron — only that
instead of a golden calf he erected his own person
as idol.

Poberikhin introduced a new dogma, proclaiming
the eternal separateness of each transmigratory
soul, and the possibility that during its wanderings
it might retain the memory of its former state in its
new habitation. This dogma was really intended
to serve one purpose — the discovery of the abode
of the soul of Jesus since his death. Poberikhin
thought that God revealed himself in his whole-
ness in Jesus, having descended upon his soul
at his thirtieth year, choosing him before all
others because the soul of Jesus was the most
perfect and pure that ever animated a human
body. After the death of Jesus, his soul, in
passing into the bodies of other men, had, by a
special grace of God, always retained the remem-
brance of its former state. Every man whom it
animated knew that he possessed the soul of
Jesus. Savva Poberikhin named those whom
in the olden times he supposed to have been

516 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

the guardians of this precious loan. For the
present he declared that the real Jesus was him-
self, and he accordingly claimed a tribute of
obedience and veneration suited to that high
dignity. He obtained recognition, and established
among the Dukhoborzy a sort of temporal
theocracy, and surrounded himself with a body
of zealots called " angels of death," because it
was their duty, it is said, to punish those who
resisted his orders, with death.

There are some indications, though these are
not so well authenticated, of the appearance of
other "Christs" of Poberikhin's type, in the earlier
part of this century among the Dukhoborzy.

The doctrine introduced by Poberikhin was
afterwards rejected as contrary to the essence of
the Dukhoborzy theology, and in its application
repugnant to their ideas regarding the social and
political equality of all men as children and har-
bingers of God.

An almost religious respect for man is the basis
of all mutual relations with the Dukhoborzy. They
deny even paternal authority, which is, as a rule,
so much respected among our patriarchal popula-
tion. The family ties among the Dukhoborzy are
being based on mutual affection, never on the

RATIONALISTIC DISSECT. 517

obedience due to a father. "The act of generation
and of being born, with them constitutes no tie of
relationship," says Haxthausen, in describing the
colonies of this sect on the Molochnaia. " The soul,
the image of God, recognizes no earthly father
or mother : the body springs from matter as a
whole ; it is the child of the earth. With the
body of the mother which bore it for a time, it
stands in no nearer relationship than does the
seed with the plant from which we pluck it. It
is matter of indifference to the soul as to which
prison, or body, it inhabits. There is only one
father, the totality of God, who dwells in each
individual ; and one mother, universal matter, or
nature, the earth. The Dukhoborzy, therefore,
never call their parents ' father ' and ' mother,' but
only 'old man' and 'old woman.' In the same
way a father calls his children not ' mine,' but
' ours ' (the commune's). The men call their
wives 'sisters.' Natural sympathies and instincts,
however, are stronger than dogmas. Thus we
have both heard and seen that the deep and
affectionate veneration of children lor their
parents, and the tender love of parents for their
children, which is a universal characteristic among
the Russians, showed itself here likewise, in nearly

5i8 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

every relation of family lif$ among the Dukkoborzy,
outward signs of relationship only, being avoided."

The only claim to authority with them is the
possession of a greater share of the divine revela-
tion. Occasionally the Dukkoborzy have bowed to
some man in whom they have recognized excep-
tional spiritual gifts ; but, as a rule, their religion
has harmonized with the popular feeling of demo-
cratic equality. The only permanent authority
with the Dukhoborzy is that of the whole body of
believers, the commune, whose collective light in-
dividuals are willing to recognise as being higher
than their own.

From a sect professing such theories as these,
as to human dignity and human rights, a Govern-
ment which bore no other credentials for respect
and obedience, than a display of brute force, can
have expected no recognition. The Dukhoborzy
consider the subjugation of one man to another
by brute force as equivalent to an act of
sacrilege. They accordingly denounce the present
Government as an abomination before God.

It would be a mistake to conclude from this
that the Dukhoborzy are practically so many
revolutionists, only waiting for an opportunity to
put their philosophical convictions to the test.

RATIONALISTIC DISSE\'T. 519

A religious negation and a political negation are
two quite different things. The very elevation of
the Dukhoborzys theosophy, from which they draw
such excellent conclusions, helps to divert their
minds, and to create for them a world of their
own, whither they transport their negations and
affirmations in a perfectly innocuous and even
stingless state. The sect of the Beguny, for
example, with their narrow doctrine of Antichrist,
contains far more of the pugnacious spirit, which
would answer a direct appeal to rebellion. Who,
however, can stand their apocalyptical nonsense,
and who can expect to make anything out of it ?
As for the Dukhoborzy, they are, and always have
been, very peaceful citizens. Outbursts of fanati-
cism against the established Church or the
Government have been of much rarer occurrence
amongst them than amongst the extreme section
of the Rascol. As long as the orders of the
Government have not been in direct opposition to
their creed, they have offered no resistance, and
have scrupulously paid their taxes. With them
the negation of the Tzar's authority was therefore
strictly a matter of " conscience." They them-
selves offered no provocation, even by deliberate
roughness of language. The Dukhoborzy, when

520 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

arrested, without saying anything untrue, always
trjed to conceal their higher and more dangerous
articles of faith from the inquisitors, by abstruse,
ambiguous subtleties of language, — a feat of war in
which they were very skilful. Still, the police had no
difficulty in getting scent of the kind of views held
by the Dukhoborzy with regard to the authorities.

This gave rise to frightful persecutions, to
which they have been subject so late as the
middle of the present century, when purely
religious persecutions were no longer possible.

The penalties inflicted on the political offenders
of the educated classes — from the Decembrists to
the Nihilists — reflect but a faint image of what the
guileless Dukhoborzy and their younger brothers
the Molokane have had to undergo almost unin-
terruptedly for the space of about sixty years.
Catherine II., very tolerant with the Rascol, per-
secuted the Dukhoborzy fiercely, when they were
first discovered at about the close of her reign.

Savage Paul I., on being informed that the
Dukhoborzy denied his authority, gave orders
that " all the adherents and members of this
pernicious sect, unworthy of any clemency, should
be banished to the Siberian mines for life, and
set to do the hardest work, and that they should

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT.

never have the chains removed from their hands
and feet; in order that they who deny the su-
preme authority of earthly potentates, enthroned
by the will of God, should feel sharply on their
own bodies that there are authorities on earth
established by God for the defence of the good,
and for the terror and chastisement of villains
like themselves " (Ukaz of Aug. 28th, 1799)-

Hundreds upon hundreds of the Dukhoborzy
have been seized, fiercely knouted, and then sent
to the mines. Sometimes in addition they have
had to undergo the barbarity of bodily mutilation.

When Paul I. was killed and Alexander I.
ascended the throne, the Dukhoborzy enjoyed
a short respite. The young Emperor, greatly
moved by the report of two senators about the
sufferings inflicted on perfectly innocent people,
issued a tolerant ukaz, and permitted the Dukho-
borzy to establish a vast colony of their own on
the River Molochnaia, in the Province of Taurida.
The second and reactionary half of Alexander I.'s
reign again changed the position of the Dukho-
borzy much for the worse.

On the advent of Nicolas I., with his well-known
jealousy of his authority, the Dukhoborzy and the
Molokane entered into the gloomiest period of

522 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

their existence. In 1826, the year after his
accession, Nicolas I. issued an ukaz that all the
able-bodied Dukhoborzy and Molokane should be
enrolled in the army, and those unqualified for
military service exiled to Siberia.

Thus the alternatives before them were re-
cantation or Siberia, or the " red hat," i.e.,
compulsory enrolment for the twenty-five years
of military service, — a fate which our people
had in those days ample grounds for dreading
as much as the Siberian hulks. It was decreed,
moreover, that the Dukhoborzy recruits should
be sent to the Caucasian corps, then in permanent
war with the Circassian tribes. As the Dukho-
borzy (together with the Molokane] strictly object
on religious grounds to the profession of arms,
this was a terrible trial to them.

They did not decline to fulfil the peaceful,
everyday duties of the service, but when brought
face to face with the enemy they threw their arms
to the ground and refused to march or to fire.
The most awful corporal punishment awarded
under the military code could not make them
obedient, so that after a time the Commander
of the Caucasian army was compelled to pray the
Emperor not to send him Dukhoborzy or Molokane,

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT.

who "demoralized " the soldiers by their example
and their propaganda ; for wherever these sectarians
appeared they at once made converts. From
Siberia, the Governor of the Eastern Provinces,
General Soulema, in 1835 reported to the
Emperor upon the necessity of isolating the
Dukhoborzy from other people.

As soon as one of the Dukhoborzy appeared
amongst them, were it in a prison or in a mine
or in some far-off village, the conversions to the
sect began at once. In the Siberian hulks and
mines the propagandism of the sect assumed
such large proportions that an order was issued
to send all the Dukhoborzy to one mine — that of
Nerchinsk — the deadliest of them all. As to
those condemned to deportation, they had to
be settled among the aboriginal savages who
did not understand Russian. In 1839 the same
remedy — i.e. paralysing the Dukhoborzy propa-
ganda by isolation among aliens — was applied on
a large scale to the big Molochnaia Colony.

Profiting by a false denunciation * of tlie Council

* Made by a police officer to whom blackmail had been
refused. This has been proved by the researches of Mrs.
Filiber, made on the spot in 1867, whilst the facts of the case
were still fresh in men's minds.

524 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

of the Elders, the Government ordered all the
eight thousand Dukhoborzy, men, women, and
children, either to recant or to be transported to
Transcaucasia. This barbarous measure was put
into force during the years 1839-41, causing in-
describable suffering, and condemning this hard-
working people to many years of misery.

All these severities and cruelties did not extir-
pate the sect. Rationalistic dissent, in both its
forms, spread with particular rapidity during
Nicolas I.'s time. The last five years of his reign
show a gradual relaxation, almost cessation, of
the persecutions. The Emperor seemed tired.
After twenty-five years' experience, the idea that
the knout is not an efficient weapon in spiritual
warfare seemed to penetrate even his dull brain.

CHAPTER III.

THE doctrine of the Dukhoborzy had the deepest
influence on the development of religious thought
throughout the whole body of our nonconform-
ists. This sect was a kind of ready-made
parent stem of popular philosophy, from which
many of the extreme sects of all descriptions, the
ritualist as well as the rationalist, had borrowed
their boldest doctrines. The Dukhoborzy creed
in its primitive form, however, was preserved by
a comparatively small body of people. The
Dukhoborzy proper probably now numbers about
fifty thousand people. Their chief centres are in
the provinces of Tambov, Ekaterinoslav, Saratov,
and in Transcaucasia, with a sprinkling in the
Central Provinces, in Southern Siberia, and in
Transbaicalia.

The Molokane sect was a transformation and
simplification of the Dukhoborzy into a strictly
rationalistic Christian sect. They have altogether
dropped the superstructure of the Dukhoborzy s

526 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

theosophy, and have developed a rational and
comprehensive system of popular ethics. The
secession of the Molokane took place about 1770.

When Savva Poberikhin, whom we have already
mentioned, declared himself and was accepted as
the Dukhoborzys Christ, his son-in-law, Semen
Uklein, a tailor of the same village, disagreed
with him, and fearing his vengeance left the
village of Horki and went to preach among the
peasants in the Province of Tambov. In him
the Molokane recognised the founder of their
creed. The official records of the activity of
Semen Uklein are scanty. It is known that he
was arrested and kept for a time in Tambov
prison. After his liberation he went to preach
again, was arrested once more, knouted, and sent
to Siberia.

Nothing more was heard of him. But the
seeds he had scattered evidently fell on favour-
able ground.

In 1802, the Molokane formed a regularly con-
stituted sect, and in the Molochnaia colony
requested to have their Communes separate from
those of the Dukkoborzy. During Nicolas I.'s
reign they spread very rapidly, cropping up all
over the Western, Central, and Southern regions.

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. $27

It is impossible to fix the number of the Molo-
kane with exactitude, owing to the absence of
reliable statistics. Bushen's tables fix the number
of registered Molokane and Dukhoborzy com-
bined, at 110,000. Deducting the Dukhoborzy,
this would only leave about 60,000 for the
Molokane. The figure is evidently too small.
In the province of Tambov alone, according to
official records, the number of the Molokane
registered and unregistered reached, in 1842-46,
the figure of 200,000. (Vestnik Europy, 1880,
VI.)

There are besides this Molokane settlements in
many other places : in the Provinces of Riazan,
Kherson, Ekaterinoslav, and all along the southern
part of the Volga, for instance.

On the whole, the Molokane cannot be com-
pared as far as numbers go with any of the big
Rascol sects. The old rationalistic sects absorbed
only a small fraction of our population — some
hundreds of thousands only. The Molokane,
however, greatly outnumber the Dukhoborzy.

They are subdivided into Sabbatarian and
non-Sabbatarian Molokane. But the former
constitute a mere handful, five to six thousand
all told. The bulk are non-Sabbatarian Chris-

528 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

tians, and present a rare uniformity in their
doctrine and religious observances.

We cannot give a more graphic and clear idea
of this important sect than by quoting a few
pages from the personal reminiscences and
impressions of our historian N. Kostomarov,
who has enjoyed exceptional opportunities of
observing them during the several years of his
exile in Saratov.

" I had much difficulty," says N. Kostomarov,
" in overcoming the excessive diffidence of these
sectarians towards every stranger. At last I was
introduced, by a common friend, to a Sabbatarian
teacher, a fisherman by trade. He was, I was
told on good authority, the most obstinate and
most learned of all the congregation. His very
meagre face, furrowed by the wrinkles which
always denote a passion for thinking ; his sunken
but glittering, fiery eyes ; a long lean neck ; lips
twitching from impatience ; the hurry to pour out
in a moment what can only be told in time ;
finally, the habit of tracing figures in the air with
his fingers whilst speaking — a habit which I have
often noticed among our peasant-philosophers — all
showed me at once that I was in the presence of
one of those fanatics who govern sects and inspire

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 529

heresies. He knew the Scriptures, especially
the Old Testament, almost by heart. He was
well read in ecclesiastical history, and poured out
names and dates from memory after the manner
of a ' crack ' pupil before a board of examiners."

In his religious views this honoured friend
was a strict Unitarian. He recognised in Jesus
Christ a great prophet, a man inspired by God,
as Isaiah and others had been. He believed in
his miracles, and even in his resurrection, but
emphatically rejected the dogma of his divinity.

He saw no proof of the Trinity of God either in
the Old or in the New Testament. There God
is everywhere represented as being One ; Jesus
Christ is his prophet, who calls himself, and
is called by the apostles, a man. The Holy
Ghost means God's grace and wisdom bestowed
upon man, and not the third person of the Trinity.
He explained that the Sabbatarians accepted the
whole of the New Testament as inspired, but as
they saw in Jesus Christ only one of the prophets,
they gave no precedence to those books over the
old ones. They therefore consider the Mosaic
laws to be as binding nowadays as they were to
the contemporaries of Jesus. They keep Saturday
as their day of prayer ; they eat nothing that

34

530 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

is prohibited by Moses ; they reject, as offensive
to the dignity of God, all material representa-
tions of divinity. Many are circumcised : Kos-
tomarov's friend was of the number, and he had
circumcised his sons. He held that his co-
religionists ought to offer sacrifices according to
the ancient law. " The modern Jews do not
offer sacrifices," he said, " because they are in
exile ; but we, who are the new Israel, — we ought
to offer sacrifices."

Of the Jewish law he recognised only the written
one. The posterior superstructure of Judaism
was exceedingly distasteful to him. He called
the Talmud "a collection of foolish ravings." He
expected the coming of the Messiah because the
promise of the Prophets was as yet unfulfilled, as
Jesus was not a Messiah but only a great prophet.
He called it a gross superstition on the part of
modern Jews to believe in a Messiah — King
and Conqueror. He tried to prove that the
promised dominion of Israel must be understood
in a spiritual sense, as signifying the reign of
truth and reason, and not as the establishing
of a great political power. According to him,
the promised Messiah will be a great philosopher
and moral teacher, who will discover to mankind

RATIONALISTIC DISSECT. 531

the greatest truths, and will scatter the Mosaic
creed all over the world, and thus establish the
reign of universal happiness on earth.

His views as to the Future Life and God's
providence towards mankind presented a sort of
compromise between the teachings of the Old
and of the New Testaments. He believed in a
Future Life beyond the tomb, on the authority
of the New Testament, though he found no
word about it in the Old ; but he rejected the
doctrine of hell. He believed that God will in
the Future Life forgive all infidels and sinners,
whom he chastises for their transgressions here
on earth just as he did in the old biblical times.
Wars, pestilences, famines, and fire, and all the
tribulations of this earthly existence, are but
punishments inflicted by God for the people's
unbelief. After the coming of the Messiah, he
will spread the true faith all over the world, and
peace and happiness will reign for ever.

The rites and worship of the Sabbatarians
of Russia Proper contain nothing Jewish. On
Saturdays they assemble in their houses of prayer,
where their elders or teachers deliver a sermon,
which is interrupted from time to time by the
sacred songs of the congregation. The Sabba-

532 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

tarians hold these meetings in great secrecy, and
also, as a rule, conceal their affiliation to the sect.
The criminal code, which still punishes conversion
to " Judaism " with deportation and hard labour,
and the easily-aroused aversion of the surround-
ing Christian peasantry, are sufficient grounds for
this. A lady friend of mine, a Socialist, who
lived among the Molokane peasantry for the sake
of propagandism, was once invited by her hostess,
a Sabbatarian, to one of their secret meetings,
when a famous wandering preacher of the sect
was expected to speak. She was instructed not
to speak to anybody and not to answer any
questions. On entering the house they had to
give a pass-word.

As to the service, it was very unlike that of
the Russian Jews. The small congregation was
seated in rows on wooden benches on one side
of the room. Opposite there was an open space,
on which stood the preacher, in silent prayer,
clad in a sort of black mantle, with an open Bible
before him. When all were assembled and the
doors shut, he delivered a prayer, animated by
the broad Deistic spirit of the Jews, and then
began to address the audience. He spoke about
God, the Soul, Penitence, and Salvation in the

RATIONALISTIC DISSEI\T. 533

same Unitarian spirit, appealing with great power
to the emotions of his hearers. After a very
pathetic allocution he fell to the ground, as if
overwhelmed by the vehemence of his feelings.
Then he rose and intoned a hymn, which was
taken up by the congregation, and then resumed
his preaching.

Among the non-Sabbatarian Molokane the
service is more simple, being stripped of anything
theatrical or showy. It merely consists in read-
ings from the Bible, interrupted now and again
by some pious observation or comment from the
reader. There is neither a peculiar dress nor
permanency attached to the office of reader.
There are generally, in each congregation, some
five or six people who are tacitly admitted to
be the most versed in the Scriptures, and one of
these takes the chair and reads, indiscriminately.
At intervals, and at the beginning and conclusion
of the service, a choir sings psalms. The tunes
are various, and generally very pleasing — some-
thing between the regular Church music and the
melodies of our national songs. It is a pity that
our collectors of popular songs have paid no
attention to the religious melodies of some of our
nonconformists.

534 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

The Sabbatarian colony in the Caucasus, where
they were deported in Nicolas I.'s time, have
developed into a sect much more nearly allied to
Judaism than that of their Russian co-religionists.
They accept the Talmud, and they expect the
Messiah in the guise of a King and Conqueror,
who is to appear at the close of the seven thousandth
year, dating from the creation of the world
(Mosaic style). They follow the Jewish ritual in
the marriage ceremony and the burial service,
and permit divorce ; and they use the Jewish
prayers in a Russian translation.

Among the Caucasian Sabbatarians we meet
with another curious sub-division of the sect — the
so-called Herrs, who are as completely judaised
as is possible to any of their nationality. They
elect a born Jew as Rabbi, and they pray in the
Jewish language, which they try to learn. The
number of these Russian moujiks who strive for
the sake of their creed to become Jews is small,
about one thousand — one-fifth of the whole body
of Sabbatarians. None of the branches of this
sect give any sign of great vitality. They do not
increase, and they have no influence on the popular
religious movements among the masses. They
are shunned, and in their turn shun the people.

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 535

Nevertheless, as one of our theological curiosities,
they must not be ignored.

The Molokane proper present, on the contrary,
a sect which above all is distinguished by its
spirit of proselytism.

"It would be difficult for me " — we return to
the reminiscences of our celebrated historian — "to
forget two men to whom I owe most of my infor-
mation about the doctrine of the Molokane. One
of them, with whom we became fast friends, a
worthy man, formerly a member of the sect, has
long since passed over to the orthodox Church.
The priest of his parish considers him to be the
most zealous and virtuous member of the congre-
gation. There was, however, a time when he was
looked upon as being most learned and dangerous
among the propagandists of the Molokane heresy.
Scores of people were won over by him from the
orthodox Church. It was rumoured that in those
days none could resist his intellectual power. It
sufficed that he should have one or two hours'
talk with a man ; then if his interlocutor were not
so obstinate as to remain deaf to his arguments,
notwithstanding his own inner conviction, the
heresiarch was sure to convert him. There was
in him a power of logic, accompanied by a sort of

536 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

irresistible personal fascination, which predisposed
the interlocutors in his favour. He knew a lot of
texts, and applied them with great ability, putting
insoluble questions to his opponent, confounding
him, and deducing from his opinions contradic-
tions and absurdities.

" His greatest exploit as a dialectician was about
the year 1820, in the reign of Alexander I., before
the Emperor gave free play to the spirit of
reaction. The Molokane were in the enjoyment
of comparative toleration, and the bureaucracy had
not as yet extended its attentions to the region of
the Volga, which still remained a vast wilderness.

" With the accession of Nicolas I. began the era
of persecution. The Saratov Molokane preserve
bitter recollections of these hard times, up to the
present day. There was among them a certain
Isaeff, a zealous and obstinate preacher. Some
honest priests had, in the kindness of their hearts,
tried to persuade him to give up his errors, but in
vain. Isaeff was so skilful a dialectician that he
confounded and routed the priests themselves.
After several ' correctional ' punishments, he was
indicted before the criminal court and condemned
to the knout. He expired on the scaffold under
the blows of this instrument, which was applied

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 537

to his back with particular ferocity, because the
obstinate heretic refused to make any recantation.

" Then the priest declared that the devil had
taken the soul from the body of the heretic just
knouted to death, and had placed it in the living
body of a certain Trofim, who thus becoming
possessed of two souls, his own and Isaeffs,
began to preach with twice the ardour of the
deceased. The propagandism of Trofim was soon
brought to a close, however, and his voice silenced
by the knout, like that of his predecessor.

"It was at this time that my friend passed over
to the orthodox Church. Having been the fore-
most in deeds, he had reason to expect that he
would also be the foremost in punishment. But
he assured me that his change of faith was the
result of conviction, ascribing his conversion to
the reading of the Fathers of the Church, such as
St. John Chrysostom."

The other Molokane leader mentioned by
N. Kostomarov, a man of a younger generation,
fairly illustrates the changes wrought by modern
thought upon the best elements of our rural classes,
both nonconformists and orthodox. A staunch
and inflexible adherent of his creed, he had
endured for it, several years of arbitrary im-

538 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

prisonment. Purely theological questions did not,
however, absorb his awakening intelligence, and
he strove for something else besides. "He was a
man of surpassing natural intelligence," says our
historian. "He had picked up some knowledge
here and there out of the few books he could
obtain, and felt deeply the necessity of a broader
education. The fact that his co-religionists were
deprived of any means of substantial education,
and were thus compelled to limit their reading to
the Scriptures, afflicted him sorely. He showed
a lively interest in modern secular literature, and
in the many questions, both social and political,
discussed therein. He was, in a word, a man
who excited in me a mixed feeling of respect and
sorrow : — great is the number of people, endowed
with such high gifts, who perish nowadays among
our rural population under the weight of circum-
stances."

The Molokane call themselves Spiritual Chris-
tians, a title very appropriate to their doctrines ;
but they do not object to be called Molokane,
which simply means milk-eaters. This was
originally a nickname given to them by the
orthodox commonalty, because they keep no fasts
and use milk freely on fast-days. By twisting

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 539

an expression of St. Paul's about the " milk " of
Christian love, they made the name square with
their views.

The Molokane are strict Christians, and even
orthodox as regards the fundamental theological
dogmas. They accept in its entirety the Christian
conceptions of God, the Trinity, the Incarnation,
the human soul, and the life beyond the grave.
They do not trouble themselves with theosophy
and cosmogony, as their elder brothers the
Dukhoborzy do. Their doctrine commended
itself to the people by its perfect sobriety and
absence of any tendency to mysticism. They do
not recognise " inspiration," or the "inner word,"
as of supreme authority in matters pertaining to
faith, accepting the Bible as the only base of their
religion. They, however, distinguish two things
in the Scriptures — the letter, and the spirit, or sense.
They completely neglect the former, accepting
the sense, or meaning of the Scriptures, as they
understand it, for guidance. Thus they reject all
external signs of worship, from the ikons and
mass down to the sign of the Cross. They
reject likewise all the sacraments, Baptism and
Eucharist included, as unnecessary, though they
fully recognize that the first of these sacraments

540 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

was performed by the apostles, and the second by
Jesus Christ. They believe that these outward
signs were meant only as a means for the better
singling out of the early Christians from the
heathen population by which they were sur-
rounded. Now that Christianity has become
an inherited creed, professed by entire nations,
there is no need for these outward distinctions.
" The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life,"
quote the Molokane. Baptism in itself is in-
efficient ; it cannot aid in the salvation of the
soul, because it can neither prevent the baptised
from doing that which is evil nor screen him
from the punishment he will thereby merit. A
man christened in childhood may remain in total
darkness as to God's commandments ; he may
yet live as a heathen, and has therefore no right
to bear the name of Christian ; whereas if a man
has not been plunged in the baptismal font, but
yet believes in Christ and fulfils all his command-
ments, is it possible that he shall be damned ?
On sending his Apostles to preach the Gospel
to the world, Jesus Christ commanded them, " Go
ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Ghost : teaching them to observe

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 541

all things whatsoever I have commanded you. '
The Molokane conclude from this that by Baptism
is meant the purification and renewing of man
by the teachings of Christ. They quote many
passages from Scripture in which the word "water"
is used metaphorically, in the sense of " doctrine ; "
for instance, in the prophecy that " living waters
shall go out from Jerusalem." If, say the
Molokane, immersion in water is essential to
salvation, because thus runs the letter of the
Scriptures, why should we not take the word
"fire" in the same literal sense, and burn our-
selves as some Rascolniks do ?

The Molokane argue in a similar spirit to
account for their rejection of the Eucharist. The
Sacrament is to be accepted in a spiritual sense,
representing, through a thorough impregnation,
on the part of the believer, with the doctrines of
the Gospels, so close a communion with Christ
as to make him one with Christ in blood and
body, and able to destroy, in himself, any sinful
impulses.

This kind of communion alone is efficacious as
a means to salvation, whereas those who eat of
the holy wafer and drink of the consecrated wine
in church are not in the least improved thereby,

542 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

and continue to sin as before, nor are they pre-
served from condign punishment.

As regards marriage, which the orthodox Church
considers to be a sacrament, they say : Are the
unchristian life and mutual offences between a
husband and wife sanctified by their having been
wedded in a church ? Mutual love and confidence,
that it is which makes marriage sacred, not the
rite. God created men and women, and esta-
blished a law that they should unite. If they have
chosen one another, and mutual love is kindled
in their hearts, it means that God has singled
them out for one another and blessed them, to
love each other and to live in friendship and
peace, and not to separate. If there is no longer
union and confidence between them, it is better
that they should part company.

Marriage among the Molokane is based ex-
clusively on the wishes of the young people.
The parents have no right to interfere, beyond
the point to which the children should be in-
clined to allow them to go. They have no power
to force their will, even by refusing them material
assistance towards setting up a new house. The
rrnr would interpose, and compel the fathers to
give their share of property to the young people.

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 543

The ceremony of marriage is reduced to a
public declaration by the contracting parties
The elder reads some appropriate passage from
the Scriptures — the account of Tobias' marriage,
for instance — delivers a short address, and invokes
the blessing of God upon the young couple.

Divorce is permitted by the Molokane, though
practically hardly known amongst them. The well-
established habit of mutual deference between
the sexes, helps to preserve the union when once
contracted, more effectually than any canonical
prescription could do.

We will not here expend more time on the
further exposition of other details of the Molo-
kane s creed.

The former examples suffice to illustrate the
peculiar bent of their doctrines. In their striving
after the sense and spirit of the Scriptures, they
may be accepted as a protest on the part of the
popular mind against the extreme formalism of
the State Church. Yet, as far as the dogmatic
part of their doctrine is concerned, the Molokane
keep within the bounds of Protestantism. They
disagree with the Protestants in some of their con-
clusions, but adhere to the same method : they
hinge all their opinions on the documentary

544 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

evidence of the Scriptures ; they compare one
text with another ; they comment on the Scrip-
tures by the lights borrowed from the Scriptures.

But the Molokane apply their usual principle
of separating the kernel from the husk, to the
historical part of the Scriptures, which puts them
on a somewhat different footing. In all the
Gospels and in the Bible they seek after the
spiritual sense and the moral idea conveyed by
the narrative.

" There are parts of the Scriptures," they say —
" the parables — which are plainly given to us as
stories which never happened in reality, but are
intended to convey certain moral or religious
lessons. Suppose that the whole of the Gospel
is only a Parable, which by God's Providence
was written for our edification ; men can use it
for their salvation all the same." The Molokane
do not really deny the historical side of the
Gospel. They only think that a man might doubt
the historical value of all, or some part, of the
Scriptures, and yet need not thereby necessarily
cease to be a Christian, the Scriptures, according
to them, being intended as a source of moral
perfection for humanity. This perfection can be
attained by any man who has assimilated the high

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 545

doctrines contained in the Gospels, and lives
according to them ; but not by a mere belief in
the reality of the events described therein.
Whether these events happened exactly as they
are represented in the Scriptures ; or whether,
owing to the great lapse of time, they have
reached us in a modified form — this is, according
to the Molokane, a question of history, not of
religion. The Gospel remains a Divine revelation,
whatever be the solution of the controversy.

Leaving the question of the theological signifi-
cance of these views alone, it is easy to see that
the Molokane have remained throughout, faithful
co the national spirit of our people. Moved by
the same intellectual need of a reasoned-out and
freely-chosen religion which inspired the Protes-
tants of the West, they drew from the Bible and
developed with great consistency their funda-
mental doctrine of Salvation by Good Works as
opposed to the doctrine of Salvation by Faith
held by the individualistic West.

The modern sects, which shall be described in
the following chapter, exhibit exactly the same
tendency. Though they have sprung up quite
independently of Molokane influence, they stand to
the latter in the same relation as the Molokane

35

546 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

stand to the Dukhoborzy ; they have simplified
their theology in order to render their ethics more
comprehensive and accessible to the mind of the
people. That is why they have obtained such an
unprecedented success.

In the first quarter of this century we see
among the Molokane some interesting attempts
to carry the Christian ideals of social life and
organization to their full length. In 1820 a
remarkable man, Maxim Akenfievitch Popoff, a
peasant of the Province of Samara, began to preach
the communism of the early Christians to his
fellow Molokane. After several years of untiring
effort, he succeeded in bringing all his fellow-
villagers over to his views. They accepted his
plan of social reform and organisation. Private
property was abolished altogether ; all the money
they possessed was brought to the common bank,
and the herds of cattle declared to be the common
property of the whole village. Field labour and
most of the household labour was performed in
common. The commune elected special officials,
members of seven denominations, as judges, a
cashier, a teacher, and several directors, both
male and female, to superintend the various
branches of work. Together they formed an

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 547

administrative council, which decided upon every
question.

The example of Nicolaevka produced a great
effect among all the surrounding villages. Some
of them, Yablonovka and Tiagloe-Ozero, for
instance, joined in a body, and introduced the
organization proposed by Popoff. In others, his
followers were active in propagating his doctrines.

At this juncture, however, Popoff was arrested
and exiled to Transcaucasia. For several years
he had to suffer many hardships there, but after a
time succeeded in winning another village over to
his views, and organised a new communistic as-
sociation on the same plan. He was re-arrested,
and this time exiled to Siberia.

The communistic experim<u.is started by him
held their ground for some time, but the com-
munes gradually returned, one after another, to
the old methods, and re-established the ordinary
system of land tenure and private property. The
Transcaucasian followers of Popoff, forming
several villages, containing five hundred and forty -
five families in all, have preserved from their
ancient communistic organisation only the follow-
ing form of mutual assistance. They give every
tenth rouble, and every tenth sack of corn they

548 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

harvest, to charity. The task of distributing this
is superintended by a judge and a cashier.

About twenty years later, in the middle of
the present century, another Molokane teacher,
Lukian Sokoloff, made a second attempt in the
direction of Christian Communism, but without
any marked success.

This was more than the people could put up
with, and, after the religious excitement had
subsided, they declined to try it. The bulk of
the Molokane do not go beyond the social and
economical principles common to all Russian
peasants.

Constant meditation on matters pertaining to
religion, in the broad and rational spirit of their
creed, and the diligent and intelligent study of
the Bible, have, in the course of two or three
generations, made the Molokane the most intellec-
tually developed body amongst the whole of our
rural population. Then, too, the Molokane are
always much better off than their orthodox
brethren, — all sectarians are, the " rational " as
well as the perfectly irrational ones. The com-
munity of religious interests has developed
amongst all of them a spirit of cohesion and
mutual assistance which makes them proof

RATIONALISTIC DISSENT. 549

against external pressure, especially when isolated
and persecuted, as the Molokane were up to quite
recent times. Though based on the same prin-
ciple, the communal life of the Molokane is in-
finitely superior to that of the common Orthodox.
If we want to see what a genuine Russian mir
can be, when composed of intelligent and well-
to-do peasants, we must go among the Molokane.
As regards the Imperial Government, the
Molokane are not so straightforward as the
Dukhoborzy. They do not deny it altogether,
adopting St. Paul's teaching in matters of civil
authority, but thev do not consider implicit allegi-
ance to be a Christian duty. They resist, though
passively, all orders contrary to their convictions ;
they do not take oaths, either before the tribunals
nor when enrolled into the army, and they do not
fight. The Government has been compelled to
put up with these insuperable aversions. The
Molokane (and the Dukhoborzy) are enrolled
without being sworn, and are told off to non-
fighting departments of the army.

MODERN SECTARIANISM.

CHAPTER I.

IN passing from the rationalistic sects of old
standing to the modern ones, we shall have to
deal with a series of denominations of very recent
date. The most conspicuous of these, the Stunda,
is only seventeen years old. The famous Sutaev
founded his sect about the year 1877. The oldest,
the Shalaput, assumed its present rationalistic
character about the year 1860. Other sects of
the same class date their existence from yester-
day

Only one of these sects has been studied in
a thoroughly satisfactory manner. Of many we
know little but the name. Yet what we do know
about modern sectarianism is sufficient to show
that we are in the presence, not of a few new
sects alone, but of a new and important phase in
the religious history of our people

First of all, one peculiarity of the present reli-
gious movement must be noted. It was started
among the Southern Russians (Ruthenians),

554 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

known in the past for their unswerving ortho-
doxy and indifference to sectarianism. It spread
thence chiefly among the orthodox population of
Great Russian descent, amongst whom sects of
exactly the same character have been spontane-
ously formed. The new sects invade the Rascol,
making converts at its expense.

Formerly the lead in any religious movement
was invariably taken by the Rascol, the reli-
gious elements animating the orthodox population
being too feeble, both numerically and intellec-
tually, to form independent nuclei. Religious
people passed over to the various sects of the
Rascol, swelling that huge body of from twelve
to fifteen millions of people, contributing thus, by
the infusion of new elements, to keep it brisk and
healthy.

The Molokane and Dukhoborzy were the only
sects which grew on their own ground, indepen-
dently of the Rascol. But these sects only at-
tracted the picked men from among the orthodox
masses. They spread steadily but slowly. In
the hundred years covering their historical exist-
ence they hardly mustered more than half a
million of adherents. The modern sects, on the
contrary, spread with the rapidity which is

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 555

characteristic of genuine popular movements. By
1878, according to Yousoff, these new sects, after
some ten or twelve years of existence, had won
over more, or at least as many, adherents as the
Molokane and Dukhoborzy had done in a cen-
tury.

The Russian Government is very unwilling to
advertise its weaknesses. We have therefore no
official figures as to the progress of modern sec-
tarianism during the last decade ; but the special
council of bishops, held under the presidency of
Pobedonoszev himself (September 1884, at Kieff),
the repeated circulars of the Holy Synod, enjoin-
ing the clergy to boldly fight the spread of
popular Protestantism, — all prove that the move-
ment has not slackened.

In a recent telegram from the St. Petersburg
correspondent of a morning paper we are told
that the Stunda is supposed, by well-informed
persons, to be several millions strong in the
south of Russia (Daily News, November 24th,
1887).

No religious movement in Russia has shown
half the same power of contagion. The great
Rascol of the seventeenth century, if the reader
remembers, mustered, after the first twenty-five

5$6 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

years of its existence, a mere handful of people-
nothing when compared with these new sects.

This movement is so sprightly and fresh, so
full of young reformatory zeal, that it is not easy
to determine its precise formulation ; but its
novelty affords us, on the other hand, a precious
opportunity for the immediate observation of the
very process of its creation, and for feeling the
very palpitation of the popular heart, which seeks
in religion a solace for its pains and the satisfac-
tion of its yearnings.

The sect which is the most carefully studied,
and which is in many respects the most charac-
teristic, is that of the Stunda, or Evangelicals, as
they prefer to call themselves. None afford a
better insight into the inner motives and impulses
at work within the new sectarian movement. The
Stunda being at the same time the most numerous
and the most pushing, these observations are of
the greatest general interest.

The Stunda was founded under the direct
influence of the German Protestants settled in
Southern Russia. The sect still preserves the
traces of its origin in the name given to it. The
word Stunda, according to Znachko Yavorski, is
derived from Stunde, or " the hours," as the

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 557

church service was called among the Germans
of the same persuasion in the German colony of
Rorbach.

The founder of the sect, Michael Ratushny, a
peasant of the neighbouring village of Osnova,
worked there as a wage labourer for several
summers. He was invited by his employer, a
German Stundist, to take part in their services.
They talked about religious matters, the Stundist
advocating the superiority of Protestantism over
orthodoxy. Ratushny was much impressed by
what he saw and heard. On returning home for
the winter he talked the matter over with his
fellow- villagers. He had no intention as yet of
founding a new sect, as he afterwards explained
at his first trial. Everything happened quite
naturally and unexpectedly to himself.

" One day," he said. " at a village meeting the
people began to discuss spiritual matters, and the
priest who was present could not explain anything
to the people's satisfaction. Thereupon I felt
within myself a burning desire to understand God's
words with my own mind, and to explain them
to others. There were many people desirous of
hearing me, and I went on teaching the Gospel,
as I understood it myself, to all of them."

558 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Thus was the first nucleus of the Stunda gra-
dually formed at Osnova during the years 1864-66.

There was no spirit of proselytism among the
German Protestants, who had lived side by side
with the Russians for a hundred years without
making any converts. Neither did any of them
pass over to the Russians to preach among them
now ; but Ratushny and several of the early
Stundists repeatedly visited the Germans of
Rorbach. It was natural that they should wish for
more detailed instructions from those who had been
the first to awaken within them a new religious
life. It is certain that the German Stundists
contributed much towards giving definite shape
and formulation to the creed of their early Russian
brethren, though at the trials the latter wisely kept
silence on the matter, so as not to get their
German friends into trouble.

The early Stunda fully accepted the Protestant
catechism, the Protestant sacraments, and the ritual
of the service. The simplicity of the Presbyterian
service, so well suited to the tastes of our people,
has been preserved up to the present time, but
in other respects the Russian Stunda very soon
underwent a modification. It rejected the two
Protestant sacraments. One branch of the sect —

MODERN SECTARIANISM.

the Old Stunda — preserved them as simple rites ;
the other branch — the young Stunda — rejected
them altogether, abolishing likewise the dignity
of the elder brother, or elected Presbyter. They
adopted the same mode of service as we have
seen among the Molokane.

As regards the higher theological dogmas, the
Stunda do not seem to differ in any way from
Orthodox Christians. It is not quite clear whether
they push the freedom of interpretation and the
spiritualisation of the Scriptures to the same point
as the Molokane do. The sect is still in the state
of being formed, and its doctrinal side is not yet
definitely settled. The Stundists show, however,
a marked tendency to simplify the speculative
part of their doctrine by accepting the views of
the Orthodox Christians, such as they are.

Still, the real difference between the Molokane
and the Stundists — the first representing ancient,
the second modern, popular Protestantism — con-
sists in their general physiognomy rather than
in any particular tenets. The Stundists are the
Protestants of the New Testament. The Molo-
kane are the Protestants of the Bible. Both sects
of course accept the whole of the Scriptures, but
the Stunda makes little use of the Old Testament.

560 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

" To the Gospels the Stundists look for general
principles — for examples of Christian virtues, and
for the whole code of individual morality. In
the Epistles and Acts they see the legislative
part of the New Testament, embodying the
principles on which Christian communities ought
to be based " (Slovo, 1880).

The most erudite Stundists read the Bible, and
will make an occasional quotation from it, but they
consider the New Testament as quite sufficient
for the edification of a Christian. All the impor-
tant points of their doctrine are based upon the
New Testament, whilst the Molokane use the Old
and the New Testaments indiscriminately. Thus,
for example, the Molokane reject the orthodox
fasts, which consist in abstinence from certain
kinds of food on prescribed days and at certain
seasons, whilst they admit the old Jewish method
of fasting, i.e., total abstinence from food and
drink, leaving every Christian free to choose the
time and the duration of his self-imposed mortifi-
cation of the flesh. The Stzmdists, however, con-
sider that fasts are abolished altogether, like the
whole of the Jewish law. They declare the
practice to be one of the many inventions of
the priests, intended the better to secure their

.\fODERN SECTARIANS: /. 561

dominion over their people. They deny that the
words of Christ, " The spirit is willing, but the flesh
is weak," justify the practice of fasting, but, on
the contrary, interpret it in just the opposite
sense : " Since the flesh is weak," they say, " it
must not be further weakened by insufficient
nourishment" In controversies with the ortho-
dox, they are fond of likening the body to an ox,
and the soul to its driver, and they ask trium-
phantly : " When is your ox likely to work the
best — when it is kept in good condition or when
it is under- fed?"

The MoLokane are fully penetrated with the
high precepts of Christian love and charity ; but,
with a fellow-feeling with the thrifty patriarchs of
biblical times, they consider the accumulation of
worldly goods, and the " multiplication of herds
and of slaves," as a special sign of God's grace, and
in nowise objectionable in a true Christian.

The Stundists do not preach community of
goods, but with them the levelling tendencies of
the Gospel, unalloyed by the traditions of Jewish
customs and class distinctions, appear more pro-
minent and pure and binding. All this makes
them simpler, fresher, and more popular in their
social conceptions.

36

562 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

This difference, combined with the ardour of
a first explosion, which the Molokane spent in an
earlier struggle, carried on in more ungrateful
times, has caused the Stunda to spread like wild-
fire, whilst the Molokane have moved very slowly.

The new sect has spread, indeed, rather by
contagion than by active propagandism.

As soon as the neighbouring villages learned
that the Osnova people had gone over to the
Stunda, they followed their example. Congrega-
tions were formed in the villages of 'Rastopol,
Ignatovka, etc., in the same Odessa district.
The Stunda next appeared in the neighbouring
town of Nicolaev, and in the village of Zlynka in
the Elisavetgrad district — all in the same Province
of Kherson.

Three years had not elapsed before the sect
had spread over the provinces of Ekaterinoslav,
Kharkoff, and Poltava, and then leaped over the
boundaries into Tchernigov, Mogilev, and Kieff.
In 1877 it appeared in St. Petersburg, and then
in Moscow.

Such extraordinary rapidity in the propagation
of the new creed is the most conclusive proof of
the spontaneity of the movement, all the more
so that neither Ratushny nor any of his early

MODERN SECTARIANISM. $63

followers showed any particular talent as pro-
pagandists. The ground was evidently well
prepared beforehand.

In the literature of the Stunda there is one
precious document, which throws much light on
the spiritual conditions of the South Russian
people, who form the bulk of the members of the
new sect. It is Tfie Autobiography of a Southern
Stundist, from the pen of a former serf, who in
the thirty-seventh year of his age came across
the Stunda and immediately became one of its
converts.

The account of his conversion only occupies a few
of the concluding pages of his story. The bulk of
it relates in a naive, unconcerned way the history
of a life of almost uninterrupted suffering. It
reveals to us a delicate moral nature, eminently
sensitive to right and wrong, struggling from
childhood under the blows of brutal selfishness,
wickedness, and cruelty. There is no bile in
his heart. He does not rebel, though some-
times he disobeys; but in the innermost depths
of his soul he never submits. He never over-
looks injustice done to others or inflicted on
himself. Against such trespasses his heart pro-
tests keenly and passionately, and when over

564 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

whelmed with pain, and disgust, and despair,
there arises within it a vehement appeal to God,
the Protector of the distressed.

We see before us a man with the intensely
religious temperament, so common among the
peasants of all branches of the Russian race,
whose notions, associated with the name of religion,
are, however, exceedingly limited. Of the faith
to which he belonged by birth he knew only some
parts of a prayer his mother had taught him. He
tells us how, on one occasion, he remembered the
priest had one day said in his sermon, " Pray to
God and the saints in heaven." "These words
came to my mind when I was taking the horses
into the steppes to graze, and I said to myself, I
wish I knew how to become a godly man. This
thought laboured within me for a long time. How
glad should I be to take counsel of somebody who
is wise in such matters ; would it not be well to
ask father when he comes home ? But no, father
won't be able to explain such things to me, he
himself is a great sinner. And so I went on,
looking after the herd and ruminating within
myself, What shall I do to become a godly
man ? I pondered over the question for several
months.

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 565

" And there were three hillocks * on this steppe.
One day I, with my drove of horses, reached the
biggest of these hillocks, which stood in the
middle. The drove began to graze, the colts in
the middle, and the mares keeping watch over
their little ones, as they usually do. I left them
alone and climbed the hillock by myself. When
I reached the top of it, I saw a cavity of such
depth that when I descended into its centre
I could not be seen from any part. ' What a
fool I was ! ' said I to myself. ' I have lived here
for such a long time, and yet did not know that
there were cavities on the tops of the hillocks.'
I kneeled down and began to pray. That is the
way to become a godly man. thought I.

" I prayed there for many days. When I had
climbed to the top of the hillock I felt as if I was
nearer to God. But then there came over me
doubts about my prayer. ' Is it the right one ?'
I asked myself. ' Mother taught it me, so it is
probably the right one.' And I began to think
that mother was better than father, because she
took no drink, and worked harder than father,
that she was never idle at home, and always tried

* Mohilas in the original, — small artificial hills, supposed to
be remains from pagan times.

$66 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

to earn something out of doors, wherewith to feed
her children, and that father spent all his earnings
in drink. Then I remembered, that people had
said to me. that, if you pray to God for yourself
alone, your prayer will not be heard, but that if
you want to be heard you must pray for some-
body else besides. And I said to myself, ' I will
not pray for father, because he drinks, but I will
pray for my mother and brothers.' And so I
did. And I resolved to pray on each hillock in
turn, one day on the first, the next on the second,
the third on the last. Thus I prayed for three
years, as long as father was employed on the

estate of Mr. D , and I had to take the drove

of horses to the steppe."

Later on he had another religious fit, produced
by accidentally hearing an Acathistus * in honour
of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. For five years he
prayed, repeating the few disjointed sentences
from these hymns, which his memory retained.
He rose by night, and wept and prayed in his
almost inarticulate way with such fervour and

* A hymn in honour of the Virgin Mary, used in the Greek
Church, in memory of the deliverance of Constantinople from
the barbarians in the seventh century, so called because those
who sing it do not sit down.

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 567

intensity that at one time he feared his brain
would give way.

What was he asking for in these ardent sup-
plications ? He was not clear himself. He
wanted to become a godly man, which to him
meant to live a pure moral life, dedicated to
spiritual works, and undefiled by that which he
saw around him.

He was told that at Kieff there was a monastery
in which men led such a life. He ran away from
his master and went thither. But what he saw
and learned of the life and morals of the monks
disgusted him so exceedingly that he escaped
from the monastery on the third day and returned
to his master, to be flogged for disobedience,
rather than live in such a place.

When, at the mature age of thirty-seven, he
met a Stundist who, after a few explanatory
remarks, put into his hands a copy of the Gospel
for the first time in his life, it was a revelation
to him, and his conversion to the new creed was
at once assured. In the society of his new friends,
and in the doctrines which they taught him, he
found the solution of the doubts of his life, and
the fulfilment of the ideals which he had always
cherished in the innermost depths of his soul.

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

The " Southern Stundist " belongs to the rank
and file. Neither by his intelligence nor by his
energy of thought can he be placed above the
average. He was exceptionally unfortunate in
the circumstances of his life, being the son of a
homeless, hun ted-down, fugitive serf, and there-
fore exceptionally ardent in his search after a
refuge and consolation. There is, however, no
lack of suffering in any of the walks of Russian
peasant life, and many are bolder and more active
in the search after truth than was the "Southern
Stundist."

There were several trials of the early Stundists,
at which the accused made a candid deposition as
to their creed and the causes of their conversion.
The only new factor in the accounts of these
wholesale conversions, which is pointed out with
greater clearness by all these declarations, is the
incapacity of the clergy of the orthodox Church
to satisfy the spiritual needs of the people, whilst
in our story the clergy are merely conspicuous by
the absence of any trace of their existence. For
the rest, all of the sectarians who pass before us
are shown to have been moved to join these sects
by the same inner discontent and unrest at the
sight of the wrongdoings which surround them.

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 569

With most of them conversion was effected in the
same simple and easy way as with the " Southern
Stundist" that is, by the reading or hearing of
the Gospel, with little, if any, additional effort on
the part of the propagandist.

The founder of the Stunda, Michael Ratushny,
on his second trial explained, with modesty and
unmistakable good faith, how wrong were those
who accused him of having propagated the
Stunda all over the Province of Kherson.

" I had not the time to do it," he said. " but
when the police came from the town to arrest me,
and assembled the people, the priest came also,
and when the people talked to him on scriptural
matters he could prove nothing from the Scrip-
tures, and then it was that the people began to
doubt whether he was well versed in the Scriptures
himself. When I was cast into prison all knew
that I was locked up because I had read the
Gospel. They wondered exceedingly, and all
who could read procured the Gospel and began
to read it for themselves. . . . Now the Scriptures
can enlighten everybody and show them the
way to salvation. When I was locked up for the
second time people wondered again, and began
to search after the Gospel with greater zeal, and

570 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

to read it. That is how our doctrines have spread,
and not, as some people think, through my having
propagated it."

At the trial of the Riazan Stundists in Septem-
ber 1880, the Stundist Drosdov spoke about his
spiritual experiences as follows : —

" I once stood in the church, and my soul
was heavy within me, and I groaned in my heart,
when suddenly a kind of unutterable exaltation
came upon me. Then I went to the priest and
said to him, ' Speak to me, father, and explain to
me, for kindness' sake, everything according to
the Scriptures.' He only abused me: 'Go away
from me,' he said, ' you heretic ! '

At the first Odessa trial the Stundist Lopata
said that nobody had urged him to embrace the
Stunda. " I once heard a small boy read from
the Gospel, and I then felt that one must forsake
evil behaviour and lead a righteous life." He had
many times heard the Gospel read in the church,
but as the reading had not been distinct he had
been able to understand nothing.

At Khotiatino, near Kieff, a peasant woman
had heard a vague account from someone as to
in what the doctrine of the Stunda consisted. She
had, however, already read the Gospels, and was so

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 571

struck by the truth of the new creed that she im-
nediately accepted it and put it into practice. She
hrew all her ikons out of window, and began to
Dreach that God must be worshipped in spirit and
n good actions, and that men should live like
brothers, and divide all they possessed amongst
Dne another.

Thus the Stunda spreads, the spontaneous sym-
)athy of the hearers doing far more than any skill

the part of the propagandists — a trait common
o all popular religions.

In conclusion, we will quote the words of an
orthodox clergyman, a recognised authority on
he matter, who gives in the Cherson Diocesan
Messenger the following opinion as to the mode
and the causes of the rapid propagation of the
Stiinda.

"A closer study of the history of the propaga-
ion of the Stunda has led me to the conclusion
that its foundation and strength are to be sought
n the spread of popular education among the
people. There are among the Stundists illiterate
people, but the bulk of the sectarians can read.
When a common orthodox peasant goes over to
the Stunda the first thing done is to teach him to
read. Then they give him a copy of the New

572 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Testament, in which all the texts considered by
them to be the most important are marked, and
duly explained to the neophyte, after which he is
definitely accepted as a member of their congrega-
tion. There exist illiterate Stundists who know
whole chapters of the New Testament by heart,
and all the most important of its texts, with the
indication of the chapters and verses.

•

" Education is to a Stundist the chief means by
which to win respect and authority in his congre-
gation, and also the best vehicle for the propagation
of the heresy. A Stundist well read in the Scrip-
tures, and knowing to a nicety the doctrine of his
sect, enters the house of some acquaintance may
be — or not rarely that of a perfect stranger — and
begins to read from the Gospel. A discussion is
the natural result. The propagandist declares
that he walked in darkness, but that now he has
seen the light ; that the orthodox faith is not the
true faith taught by Christ ; that the priesthood,
for the sake of lucre, has invented a lot of cere-
monies and rites ; that instead of the workings of
God, in spirit and in truth, they have introduced
idolatry (ikons and saints), and concealed the true
Gospel from the people. Then the propagandist
goes on to analyse the separate dogmas of the

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 573

orthodox creed, proving their fallacy by quotations
from the Scriptures, adding that they, the Stundists,
have been much persecuted for their creed, and
are persecuted still, but having once seen the light
of the true creed they would rather die than
return to darkness.

11 The visit is repeated, and the thing invariably
ends in the conversion of a part of the audience
to the Stunda"

The New Testament was a rare book in our
villages until quite recent times. The Greek
Church permits laymen to read the Scriptures,
and, in principle, encourages the translation of the
Bible into the native tongues. Old Slavonic, into
which the Scriptures were translated when Chris-
tianity was first taught to the Balkan Slavs, is
not a foreign language to Russians. It is the
root of both branches of the living Russian
language : of Great Russian, which is the literary
and official Russian, as well as of Ukrainian, or
Southern Russian.

There are, moreover, no popular dialects in our
country. The fourteen millions of Ukrainians,
settled in the plains of south-west Russia, all
speak exactly the same language. The fifty

574 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTS.

millions of Great Russian peasants, from the
shores of the Baltic to those of the Pacific, speak,
with but slight provincialisms, pure, unsophisti-
cated Russian — the language in which Tolstoi
writes his simpler stories and Lermontoff wrote
the gem of his poems. To a Russian peasant Old
Slavonic is no more difficult to learn than to an
average educated Russian. If he were to set
himself to read the Slavonic Bible, by the time
he reached the middle of the book, if not sooner,
he would, without the assistance of any teacher,
have mastered the language completely. The
Rascolniks, for example, find no difficulty in read-
ing the Scriptures in the ancient version. This
is not so, however, with the common orthodox
peasantry.

A translation of the Scriptures into modern
Russian was, therefore, very essential to them.
Yet it is a fact very characteristic of our clergy
that for centuries they never thought of making
it. It was thanks to the untiring efforts of the
three English clergymen, Paterson, Pinkerton, and
Henderson, founders and promoters of the St.
Petersburg branch of the London Bible Society,
that the Russian version of the New Testament
was published. Instituted in 1812, this branch

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 575

society only succeeded in issuing a parallel
Russian and Slavonic Gospel in 1818, and a
separate Russian version of the complete New
Testament only in 1824, by which time it had
already published one in forty-one dialects of
various savage and semi-savage tribes living on
the outskirts of Russia.

Two years later, in April 1826, the Russian
branch of the Bible Society was suppressed by
the Emperor Nicolas. The then Minister of
Public Instruction, Admiral Shishkoff, and the
Arch-Abbot, Totius, denounced the Bible Society
as "a revolutionary association, intended for
the overthrow of thrones and churches, of law,
order, and religion throughout the world, with a
view to establishing a universal republic," *

As to the Russian branch of the said society,
the Minister reported that "a most careful investi-
gation of all the actions of this body shows clearly
and unmistakably that, in translating the Scrip-
tures from the language of the Church into that
of novels and of the stage, the Russian Bible
Society's sole objects were to shake the founda-
tions of religion, to spread unbelief among the

* " The Russian Bible Society," by the well-known Pypin,
in the Vestnik Europy, 1868, vol. vi., p. 264, sqq.

576 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

faithful, and to kindle civil war and foster rebellion
in Russia."*

The Society was suppressed, its property con-
fiscated, and the printed sheets of the Old Testa-
ment then in progress (reaching down to the
Book of Ruth) put under lock and key. The
work was not resumed until forty years later, in
the second half of the next reign.

The New Testament was not, however, with-
drawn from circulation, and new reprints were
issued by the Synod. In the reign of Alexander II.
the Bible Society was partially resuscitated, under
the more modest name of " Society for the En-
couragement of Moral and Religious Reading."
It had its committee in St. Petersburg and its
affiliated branches in the provinces, and was com-
posed of both clergy and laymen. But this
society, with all its branches, was in its turn
suppressed by the Emperor Alexander III., April
24th, 1884. The Synod and the clergy in office
cannot tolerate the idea that any other than the
regular village pops, who are under their absolute
control, should interfere in what they consider
their exclusive business.

The progress of popular education — for it is

* Idem.

MODERN SECTARIANISM. $77

progressing unmistakably and rapidly, in the teeth
of the Ministry of Public Instruction, which does
everything to hinder it, — this progress has achieved
more than any amount of effort from the outside
could have done. The awakening of the popular
intelligence has created a spontaneous demand
for spiritual food. Up to the present time religion
has been the chief means of satisfying this new
demand, and hence the enormous popularity of
the Russian version of the Gospels. The book
is as eagerly sought after by the Rascolniks as
by the orthodox. As early as 1824, when the
superstitious estrangement of the Rascolniks from
anything connected with the Niconians was at its
height, a Moscow agent of the St. Petersburg
Bible Society reported that " most of the copies
of the New Testament in the Russian version
(then just issued) had been purchased by the
Rascolniks, who read this salutary book, in their
native tongue, with great attention."

It must be added, however, that the Stundists,
who in the first ten or twelve years of their exist-
ence, at least, were almost exclusively Ukrainians,
are peremptorily denied this satisfaction. They
use the Great Russian version of the Gospels,
the Church and the Government strictly pro-

37

578 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

hibiting the Ukrainian version of any part of
the Scriptures ; and there is little chance of
the revocation of this interdict, the religious
question in this case being complicated by the
political one.

CHAPTER II.

WHILST the Stunda spread from the south and
south-west, northwards, another sect, which is
now an entirely rationalistic one, the Shalaput,
gained a firm footing to the south-east. It also
spread towards the north, keeping chiefly to the
more eastern districts.

This sect has not as yet been so well studied
as the Stunda, though it is comparatively an old
one. From what we know about it, the Shalaput
sect appears to be somewhat clumsier and drier
than its Ruthenian protagonist, but it offers the
same distinctive characteristics of modern rational-
istic dissent. It is a New Testament sect above
all. It places the ethical and social side of Chris-
tianity in the foreground as much as the Stunda
does, and it has put these doctrines more
thoroughly and skilfully into practice than the
St2cnda has, owing partly to the greater associa-
tiveness of the Great Russians, who form its chief
contingent, partly to its longer existence.

$8o THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

The Shalaput embraced religious rationalism
some ten or fifteen years before the Stunda was
founded. The circumstances of their conversion
offer an additional illustration of the spontaneity
and strength of rationalistic tendencies among the
whole of the peasantry of modern Russia.

The Shalaput sect did not start as a rationalistic
one. Its founder, Abbacum Kopylov, an orthodox
peasant of the province of Tambov, who died in
prison in 1840, is said to have wandered for
many years among the various sects, in search of
the true faith. Judging by the Shalaput doctrine
as first preached by Kopylov in 1820-30, the sects
which impressed him as being the nearest to
heaven must have belonged to some milder
variety of the popular mystics, i.e., Chlists. The
Shalaput maintained its mystical character during
the leadership of Kopylov's son Philip, whilst
it at the same time extended considerably to the
Russian south-east. From the middle of the
present century, however, a strong revulsion in the
Shalaput doctrine shows itself. Three teachers,
amongst them a woman named Hania, began to
preach in favour of a practical, informal creed,
based on the ethics of the Gospel, and strongly
opposed to the former contemplative mysticism.

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 581

In one generation the reformers succeeded in
forming a curious sect, which hold their exterior
forms of worship and their fundamental dogmas of
ethics in common, whilst presenting considerable
divergencies in matters of speculative doctrine.

The main body of the Shalaput has gone over
to genuine rationalism. It is in that capacity that
they compete with the Stunda. But there are
sections of the Slialaput who lean to the
theosophy of the Dukhoborzy, or to the strange
cosmical and historical generalisations of the
Nemoliaki (Non-prayers), or to the reformed
" Wanderers," or to some other rationalistic branch
of the Rascol, In the Caucasus, the land of exile,
whither all extreme sects have been huddled
together, these divergencies sometimes appear
within the same congregation.

"In many congregations of the Caucasian
Shalaput" says Abramov, the historian of this sect,
" the members differ widely on many religious
questions. Yet the complete uniformity of their
social and ethical views keeps them together as
a strong organic whole."

This is not indifference towards religion. The
Shalaput heads and the Sfialaput speeches are
as crammed with texts, and their hearts are as

582 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

strongly moved by the Gospel, as need be ; only
they leave points of theology to individual taste
as " irrelevant," putting up with all sorts of views.
The form of worship — had there been any dis-
agreement about it — would have offered more
chance of endangering their unity ; but the ex-
treme simplicity of their service, the absence of
a priesthood, and the suppression of the formality
of the sacraments, is acceptable, pleasing, and
convenient to all alike.

The ethics of the Gospel is the part they single
out and exalt as the supreme religious truth.
The earnest religious zeal of the sect seems to
be spent entirely in this direction. As far as we
know, the Shalaput is the only one of all our sects
in which there exist, in working order, some
practical examples of Christian communism.
Abramov knows of four such communistic associ-
ations in the Northern Caucasus. One of them
which he has visited consists of forty households
grouped together in five groups, one at each of
the five ends of a large orthodox village. Each
" end " forms a kind of big family. The fences
between the houses have been removed, thus
throwing open to all the houses an entrance into
a vast common court. Clothes and household

MODERN SECTARIANISM. $83

utensils are the only things which every family
keeps to itself ; all the rest is common property.
The five ends together form but one communistic
association as regards both production and con-
sumption. The field work is executed in common,
according to a plan previously agreed upon by
all. The produce is divided into four parts : one
part is distributed between the families according
to tfte number of eaters, i.e., their respective needs,
independently of the amount of labour they can
put at the service of the commune. Two parts
of the produce are kept for seed, and for cases
of emergency. The last quarter is taken to
market. The money received is divided in the
same communistic spirit between the five groups,
according to their respective needs for the current
year. One portion of it is sent to the reserve
fund of the Shalaput of the province ; another is
forwarded to the central fund of the whole SJiala-
put federation, which has its seat in the Province
of Tambov.

The ordinary SJialaput congregations, which
have nothing exceptional in their economical
arrangements, have all some provision for the
common good, quite irrespective of ordinary
beneficence. Most members regularly contribute

584 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

the "tithe" of all their earnings to the special fund
intended for the relief of the needy. This is a
heavy tax for a Russian moujik, whose resources
are so limited. Yet the sacred tithe is paid,
though there is no police to force it upon anybody.

Some of the Shalaput congregations, moreover,
impose upon themselves a good deal of gratuitous
work for the benefit of the destitute, which they
perform in the same spirit of religious discipline.
"Whoso labours, prays," is their favourite saying.

A life of labour is, according to the Shalaput,
the surest path to salvation, and they always have
a lot of texts ready to prove this. To live by the
work of others is, on the other hand, considered
as a particularly heavy sin. " I knew," says
Abramov, "a rich peasant of the Province of
Stavropol, a regular koulak, who held whole
villages in bondage. Having married a young
girl who was a leading Shalaputka, he turned
Shalaput himself, and, by way of expiation for
his former sins, opened his granary and his house
and his purse to all who wanted to receive some-
thing from him. In half a year he became as
poor a labourer as the rest."

The sect of the Shalaput s exists in eleven
provinces of south-eastern and central Russia.

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 5»5

It is constantly on the increase, mostly at the
expense of orthodoxy, though it is very successful
with the Rascol likewise.

In the Province of Stavropol, and in the region
of Terek, they form from 5 to 1 5 per cent, of the
whole population.

The Shalaputs are united into a sort of federa-
tion. The elected Elders or " readers " of each
congregation, performing the simple functions of
ministers, are likewise invested with a sort of
administrative authority. Once a year or so the
Elders of the congregations meet in some town —
generally at "fair" time, — and hold — in secret, as
a matter of course — the so-called " Councils of the
Fathers," to discuss and settle questions of general
interest. It is said that the Shalaputs have a kind
of postal service of their own, not trusting to the
discretion of the general Post Office. Special
"travellers " periodically visit all the congregations
of the Provinces, and transmit all messages of any
importance to their destinations. To avoid detec-
tion they sometimes use a cipher alphabet. The
key to it was found out in 1875 by an orthodox
pop, who communicated his discovery to the police.
It was of such a rudimentary character as to prove
it to be of their own invention.

586 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

These signs of the existence of a compact
organization must not be regarded as anything
unusual or extraordinary. It is simply a proof
that the Shalaputs are an old sect, which under-
went a certain intellectual transformation whilst
preserving its outward cohesion. All Russian
sects of long standing find means of developing
into a kind of loose federation. The "Wanderers"
have done this. The "Priestless" and "Priestly"
have done it in a better form even than that
described above.

The Stundists, who are still in their infancy as
a sect, have also taken the first steps towards the
formation of a future organisation : they now and
then hold local councils, and have a common fund,
intended for the support of those brethren who
have suffered for the creed, and also for the
equipment and support of the propagandists who
undertake the mission of " preaching the Gospel
to the idolaters," which means, the orthodox.

There is one curious thing amongst the Shala-
puts which is worth mentioning. Some sections
of this sect still hold strange views on the relations
of the sexes. There are Shalaputs who preach the
doctrine of complete abstinence : one must live,
they say, with a wife as with a sister. Others

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 587

temporise in favour of comparative abstinence, at
the same time admitting a certain gradation in the
sinfulness of matrimonial life. The less objec-
tionable form, in their opinion, is that which is based
on strong spiritual attraction. The SJialaput of this
persuasion chooses accordingly among the women
of his congregation a "confessor," — his wife being
of course at liberty to do the same in her turn.
Thus, outside the legitimate families, others —
illegitimate — grow up, the legitimate ones not
being dissolved. With the views held by our
peasants as to property, which are fully endorsed
by the sectarians, a man and wife who have
worked side by side for a long time, have become
joint partners in everything they have earned
together. The legitimate families are therefore
preserved as an economical union, but the
husband maintains and rears the children of his
illegitimate wife, whilst his own are maintained
and reared in the family of his "confessor."

All these peculiarities are evidently the last
remains of the old Chlists to which the Shalaputs
formerly belonged. Driven from the domain of
speculative doctrine, it has lingered longest in the
common institutions of everyday life.

CHAPTER III.

BESIDES the two large rationalistic sects, a number
of smaller ones of the same type are reported as
being founded here and there, almost every week,
showing an exuberance of religious feeling which
nowadays generally finds vent within the rational-
istic bodies. Here we will describe only one of
them, which is interesting both on its own account
and as a fair sample of the majority.

In 1876, in consequence of a denunciation by the
local priest, a peasant of the Province of Novgorod,
named Vasily Sutaev, was indicted before a
magistrate under the charge of having refused
to christen his grandson. At the interrogation
Sutaev answered that he had refused to christen
his grandson because it is said in the Scriptures,
" Repent, and be baptized every one of you, in
the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of
sins," and the child could not repent his sins.
The tribunal acquitted Sutaev.

The next year, 1877, the same priest lodged a

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 589

new denunciation against the man, accusing him
and his handful of followers of being " socialists
who recognize no authorities." This caused the
sect and its founder to be for the first time brought
before the public.

A well-known investigator of our nonconformist
bodies, A. Prugavin, paid a visit to the social
reformer of Shevelevo, and published a very inter-
esting paper about the new sect and its founder
in one of our periodicals.

Of late the name of Sutaev has acquired con-
siderable notoriety, owing to his great intimacy
with Count L. Tolstoi, the novelist, who has also
recently joined the sectarians. In relating the
story of his inner struggles he says that the man
who helped him most to issue victoriously from
out of the net of contradictions and falsehoods,
and to form his present creed, was Sutaev.

Such a testimonial, from the author of War
and Peace, makes it doubly interesting to follow
the development of the religious idea in him.

Sutaev gave definite shape to his doctrine when
he was about fifty years of age. His creed was
the summing up of a life's experiences. Born
before the Emancipation, he came of age and
married at twenty, when serfdom was at an end.

590 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

The first use he made of the comparative inde-
pendence of married life was to learn to read.
He mastered this, to grown-up people, rather
difficult art, and went to St. Petersburg to work
as a stonecutter at a monumental mason's shop.
After some ten or twelve years of work he suc-
ceeded in scraping a small capital together, and
started in a shop of his own. His business
prospered. In time he got some leisure, which
he and his eldest boy, who served as shop assis-
tant, were fond of spending in "salutary" reading.
Their favourite book was, of course, the Gospel.
They were very much impressed by the con-
stant contradiction of practical life, their own
included, to the teachings of the Scriptures.
Their profession gave them many twinges of
conscience. The son, Dmitri, was particularly
sensitive about it.

"We are sinning, father," he repeated "There
is a good deal of sin in commerce. We must
give it up."

The father tried to persuade him to let the
matter rest for a short time, only for one year,
but the young man could not stand it, and leaving
the shop engaged himself as manual labourer
somewhere else. Both the son and the father,

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 59'

faithful to their peasant origin, considered com-
merce to be not " work," but "usury."

A year later Sutaev closed his shop as he had
promised. The 1,500 roubles, which represented
all he had made in commerce, he distributed
among the poor, and tore the bills he held on
some one else, to pieces.

He returned to his village, and resumed the
agricultural work in which there was no sin, but
sin was all around him. " I saw that there was
no love amongst the people. All ran after money ;
and I began to reason with myself as to where-
fore it should be thus. Why this thing? why
that ? I spoke to clever people, and applied to
the/0/."

The pop* s explanations did not satisfy Sutaev
in the least. So he began to think for himself,
and gradually relinquished the rites and observ-
ances of the Orthodox Church. First he left off
wearing the cross on his breast, as the orthodox
are wont to do.

" I felt it was sheer hypocrisy," he explained
to his friend and biographer. " We wear Christ's
cross on our breasts, but in our lives we do not
care about Christ, and do nothing for the sake of
his truth."

592 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

A child was born in his family. People won-
dered why he did not christen it.

" Wherefore ? " he asked. " We are all of us
christened, and yet continue to live worse lives
than the infidels."

He did not christen the child at all. Once,
when on the occasion of a great festival the priest
came to his house, Sutaev put him in the place
of honour, and asked him to explain to him some-
thing about the rite of christening.

" What do you want of me, you blackguard ? "
said the pop. " Do you wish me to christen you
with this stick ? "

Sutaev began to argue his point, but the pop
made short work of his arguments.

" If I had only known what you would turn
out, I should have drowned you in the baptismal
font!"

He called him names, and said to Sutaev that
he was the devil.

When the pop had become a little more com-
posed, Sutaev took up a copy of the Gospel, and
pointing to one text asked him to explain it.
Hereupon the pop lost his temper again, and
snatching the book from Sutaev's hands threw
it under the table.

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 593

After this scene Sutaev abstained from going
to church altogether.

Several of the members of the future sect had
had somewhat similar experiences with their
spiritual fathers.

A relative of Sutaev's, a certain Elias Ivanov,
who had at one time kept a retail shop in the
village, but who gave up commerce " for the sake
of his soul," explained why he had ceased to go
to confession as follows : One year he had not
taken the Sacrament for want of time. The pop,
on meeting him, upbraided him vehemently for
this negligence, but then agreed to put down his
name in the confession register for the sum of
twenty kopecks (fivepence).

''Well, father," asked the peasant, "have I
now received absolution for my sins ? Does my
soul run no further risk of being roasted in hell ?"
The pop took offence.

" Hold your tongue," he said, threatening with
his finger. " I know to whom to apply to silence
you."

A third, a retired soldier, Lunev, deposed
before a magistrate that nobody had tried to
convert him, but that when the pop had refused
to christen his baby for less than a certain sum,

38

594 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

he had christened the child himself, and when
after a time it died, he buried it himself, without
applying to the pop. He had not gone to church
since, because, he said, "it is not a house of
prayer, but a house of plunder."

The final secession from the church was accom -
plished naturally and gradually. One day Sutaev
and his followers dropped the fasts, on the author-
ity of the well-known text : — " Not that which
goeth into the mouth defileth a man ; but which
cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man."
Another day they collected all their ikons, and
carried them in a bundle to the house of the priest,
bidding him take care of these idols, for they did
not want them. A couple had to be married :
Sutaev opened the Gospel, read the chapter on
the miracle in Cana of Galilee, delivered a short
allocution, and pronounced the benediction over
the young couple.

On Sundays instead of going to church they
met at Sutaev's house to read the Scriptures,
especially the New Testament, of which they
were particularly fond. The dissenting Church
was definitely constituted, and spread among the
Shevelevo peasants, extending thence among the
surrounding villages.

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 595

Inspired by a feeling of moral rebellion against
the iniquity and injustice prevailing among men,
the new creed aims above all at improving the
mutual relations of humanity.

" What do you say about my sect ? " Sutaev said.
" We have no sect whatever. All we want is to
be true Christians, and true Christianity is Love.
We believe in the Trinity, but God the Father is
Love; Jesus Christ taught the principles of love,
and the Holy Ghost, through the Apostles, taught
us the same. Our doctrine is that there ought
to be no plunder, no killing, no fighting, no usury,
no commerce, no money. Of what use is money,
if we all live as brothers, and each can have all
he needs from the others ? "

Sutaev and his followers tried to give practical
application to these principles. Their attempts
were often unsuccessful, but always generous and
sympathetic. Sutaev greatly objected, for in-
stance, to the universal suspicion which prevailed,
and to the many precautions people take against
one another, just as if all were criminals.

One evening the following scene took place in
the street at Shevelevo.

" Nicolai Ivanovitch," said Sutaev to one of
his fellow-villagers, "are you a thief?"

596 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

" No, thank God ! "

He put the same question all round, and, having
received the same answer from all, said in his
turn, —

" Neither am I a thief. Well, not one of us
is a thief. Why then do we lock everything up
as if we were thieves all round ? "

He declared that as to himself he " should
take all the locks from off his house and stores."

Robberies began. He did not mind. One
night some peasants of a neighbouring village
came with a car to rob his storehouse. They
had already filled the car, and were preparing to
depart, when Sutaev, awakened by the unusual
noise, appeared before them. They felt much
alarmed, but Sutaev entered into the storehouse,
took the single remaining sack of grain on his
shoulders, and threw it on to the car.

"If you are in need of bread, take this also."

The thieves departed. But the next day they
returned ashamed, bringing back their booty.

" We have changed our minds," they said.

It was not easy, however, to confound all the
thieves of the neighbourhood, the vagabonds
particularly. Sutaev held out for a long time,
but finished by putting on the locks again.

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 597

"When all have accepted the community of
goods," he said, " there will be no thieves."

The Shevelevo congregation made an un-
successful attempt at practical communism. They
agreed to follow the example of the early Chris-
tians, and to possess everything in common. All
went well for a time ; but the old Adam broke
out again in a certain soldier, Lunev, a former
koulak and usurer, who had abandoned his practice
under the influence of the new creed. Now,
Lunev was accused of having retained, for his
private benefit, a part of the crops he had to
deposit in the common granary. People began
to quarrel ; therefore, to avoid further scandal, the
congregation reverted to the ordinary system of
property. They, however, still practise mutual
assistance to a great extent, preferring exchange
of work to any form of pecuniary help.

The dogmatic side of Sutaev's doctrine is ex-
ceedingly plain. The only part clearly developed
is the negative. No ikons, no saints, no relics,
no fasting, no priesthood, no Sacraments. They
have a sort of christening ceremony, which they
perform themselves ; but it is not clear whether
they consider it in the light of a sacrament or not.
Probably not. The marriage ceremony is per-

598 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

formed by the father of the bride, and merely
consists in the reading of some appropriate
chapters from the Scriptures. Their views on
the higher theological dogmas, such as the Trinity,
the Redemption, the Immortality of the soul, are
not clearly determined.

" Paradise must be made here on earth. What
will be found there " (pointing to the skies) " I
do not know. I have not seen the other world.
This question is a hidden one."

The points on which they are precise, resolute,
sometimes passionate up to the point of martyr-
dom, are those concerning human' ethics. One of
Sutaev's sons (John), when the question of military
service, the rock on which all spiritual Christians
split, came before him, refused point blank, not
only to take the oath, but even to touch the
soldiers' guns or to put on the sword. "It smells
of blood," he said. " Christians should fight with
spiritual swords only." After several attempts
to break through his obstinacy he was locked up
in Schusselbourg.

Sutaev's views as to civil authorities are those
common to all spiritual Christians : the good ones
must be obeyed, the evil ones resisted, though
passive resistance only is permissible.

MODERN SECTARIANIS.V. 599

The spirit of inquiry has as yet hardly touched
upon general political questions, but even so early
as 1882, which is the date of Mr. Prugavin's
publication, the payment of taxes devoted to
purposes of violence and war excited in Sutaev
some scruples. In 1880 he refused to pay his
share of the taxes unless the official who super-
intended that department would first explain to
him on what his money would be spent. The
official naturally laughed in his face, and took
out a summons against him. Part of his property
was sold and the taxes deducted. The next year
the story was repeated.

Whether Sutaev has continued this practice up
to the present time or not we do not know.

It is easy to recognise, in most of Sutaev's
views on matters religious and social, the doctrine
now preached by his famous disciple of Yasnaia
Poliana. Count Tolstoi's doctrine of passive
resistance, his views on the questions of taxation,
military service, tribunals, money, mutual assistance
by direct exchange of labour, as well as the great
stress he lays on ethical questions — all are identical
with the doctrines of Sutaev. Since Count
Tolstoi rejects the dogmas of future life and the
immortality of the soul, as well as the divinity of

6oo THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Jesus Christ, it may be permissible to infer that
his friend has also moved in that direction.

Possibly he was not far from these conclusions
when Prugavin gave his account of Sutaev's views.
A certain reticence on such delicate points as
these is indispensable to a Russian writer.

The so-called Sutaevzy, or followers of Sutaev,
are constantly gaining ground in many villages
in the Province of Novgorod and those surround-
ing it.

It is doubtful, nevertheless, whether such a
sect can ever become a really popular one. As
a man of exceptional intellectual power and bold-
ness of thought, Sutaev has gone farther than
most of the modern sectarians. His creed has
too much of the secular element in it for it to be
accepted by very many. But the general ten-
dencies of his doctrine, as well as the spiritual
and moral experiences which led him to found
his sect, are eminently typical. There are in
every village and hamlet, perhaps in every house-
hold, of rural Russia, men and women in exactly
the same mood as Sutaev, and who are ready to
follow in the same path.

CHAPTER IV.

WE should gain little by giving a longer list of
modern sects. The examples cited show clearly
the causes, the character, and the extent of the
religious movement in Russia, which is now
spreading all over the orthodox and the Rascol
world. Its striking uniformity, spontaneity, and
contagiousness clearly indicate in it an incipient
general movement on the part of the masses.
Being, as far as mere doctrine goes, very similar
to the Molokane, the new sectarianism, as a factor
of social life, corresponds with the Rascol of the
seventeenth century. Like the Rascol, it is the
outcome of the combined influence of social and
political discontent, built upon the freshly-awakened
religious feelings of the people.

Two centuries of national life have so tar
developed our people intellectually as to modify
both the character of the modern creeds and the
method pursued in order to awaken popular
interest in them.

602 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

The Rascolniks of the seventeenth century, their
fetish-like devotion to forms and rites notwith-
standing, were as truly religious and Christian
as the Stundists of to-day, or any of the Western
sects. They were fully penetrated by the spell
of the personality of Christ, and acted under the
direct influence of this feeling. What their
Christ required them to do makes no psycho-
logical difference ; this was merely a reflection
of the low intellectual level of the people of that
epoch, which evidence is further corroborated
by the fact that at that period the chief thing
which roused the people from their apathy was
the personal example of martyrdom, as has been
clearly proved in those chapters which refer to
the RascoL They were like young children, who
can only understand and feel strongly and vividly
those things which are presented to them in a
palpable form, calculated to strike their senses.

They now no longer need material demonstra-
tion in the domain of religion, at all events. Per-
secution plays a perfectly immaterial part in the
rapid spread of modern sectarianism. Only at
the beginning did the Government try to apply
the usual methods of criminal courts and deporta-
tion without judgment, against the new sectarian-

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 603

ism. After a short experience these methods
have been prudently abandoned, and the sectarians
have been left almost unmolested. The only
means resorted to to awaken the religious spirit
nowadays, as we have plainly seen, is the simple
reading of the Gospel ; and what they read in its
words now, is very different from what their fore-
fathers understood in times of yore. The masses,
or, to be exact, the leading section of the masses, has
taken, in the last two centuries, a step forward.
It stands now upon the same level where, one
century ago, stood a small minority, which furnished
the contingent of our old rationalistic sects — the
Molokane and the Dukhoborzy.

And the minorities ?

The minorities have nowadays stepped out of
the tutelage of religion altogether, and are fully
able to participate in the stream of positive scientific
European thought. The flower of our working
men turn socialists, read John Stuart Mill, Spencer,
and Darwin, Kostomarov and Setchenov, Tur-
ghenev and Ostrovsky, just as the young people of
the privileged classes do. It isimmaterial whether
they turn freethinkers or not, though for the
most part they do. All that is essential is, that
they have dispensed with the crutches of religion.

604 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

They are one with the whole of educated
Europeanized Russia, upon which the future
destinies, as well as the present salvation, of the
country certainly depend. For it is here that are
conveyed in various forms and stored up the
knowledge, the understanding, and the creative
ideas evolved by the dull books of various
denominations, which in the last resort rule the
world.

To describe this Europeanized Russia does not
come within the limits of this study. But it is
fully within our scope to enquire, What are the
mutual relations of these two cultures — the strongly
positive one, which radiates from the towns ; and
the strongly religious one, harboured in the
villages ?

We need not enter upon generalities. It is
certainly a fact that religion, whilst stimulating
thought, at the same time hampers it by tracing
for it certain impassable barriers. All, however,
who come into direct contact with the new sects,
or have studied them with attention, concur in the
opinion that to our peasants religion has given
much more than it has withheld. The rational-
istic sectarians, as a body, represent the most
intellectual elements of our rural population.

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 605

They know how to read almost to a man, and
what is more, they do read, not the Scriptures
only, but very many other books and papers which
are within their reach. They are open to all the
influences of modern civilisation and literature,
which is still a dead letter to a large mass of the
orthodox peasantry. Thus our rural culture is by
no means hostile to the culture of the towns ; it
marches forward on the same road and to the same
goal, following the latter at a certain distance.

Some of the exponents of sectarianism — Pru-
gavin and Abramov amongst them — expect that our
sects will take the lead. They see in them popular
attempts to discover and work out new and
higher forms of social life — almost experiments of
practical socialism. We do not exactly share this
too flattering opinion. The practical attempts
of Christian socialism, such as that of Popoff
and others, were so small and shortlived, and as
a rule so wanting in originality, that they cannot
be considered as a new departure. The real
sphere of sectarianism, in which it has succeeded
wonderfully, is not creation, but conservation.
The social ideals which the rationalistic sects
profess and maintain were our mirs ideals, pure
and simple, no whit higher nor better, though

606 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

more fully applied, protected as ^hey are by the
impregnable walls of religion. Sectarianism is
for our people a means of defending what they
hold dear, and not of developing anything new.

This function performed by the sects in our
social dynamics is a very important one, and the
service rendered by the sects to the people is
very great. They will help to preserve and trans-
mit to a future generation the inheritance of
habits and moral ideas which are of great social
value in themselves, and yet more so as the
materials and starting-point of future development.

Yet even in this more modest, though very
valuable office, the influence of modern sectarian-
ism can hardly be counted upon as likely to
endure for a very long period of time. The
Rascolniks who stood their ground for two hun-
dred years had a much easier task to perform.
They rebelled against the iniquities of the political
order : the institution of serfdom, the poll-tax,
conscription, centralization of the Church, and
administrative abuses. They possessed a territory
of their own, and their enemies were outside of
it. The modern sectarians who have rebelled
against the koulaks, wzV-eaters, usurers — "the
new Pharaohs who enslaved the people," to
use the Stundists phrase, have to fight a more

MODERN SECTARIANISM. 607

dangerous enemy within their own precincts.
It is doubtful whether they will be able to
hold their own beyond a certain very limited
extent Religion cannot stand for long against
the battering-rams of economical influences. It
never did, though it has often tried, and there is
no reason to suppose that our sectarians will
form an exception to this rule. They will hold
their own as long as they are isolated and few,
and religious enthusiasm has not cooled down to
its natural point. When this is over, the eco-
nomical decomposition must needs penetrate into
the sectarian mirs as it has penetrated into the
orthodox ones. However opportune the assist-
ance our people receive at this critical moment
from religion, it is only a temporary one, — a
glass of strong wine, which reinvigorates an ex-
hausted traveller for a time, but will not prevent
his falling on the road at last, if in the meantime
he does not receive more substantial nourish-
ment ; unless indeed there comes a moment
when from a purely defensive weapon this religion
changes into an aggressive one, stimulating the
people to open rebellion, in one form or another,
against the kingdom of Baal.

The rationalistic sects, though so very peaceful

608 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

now, are in reality more dangerous to the existing
order of things than the old Rascol was. They
have touched the root of the evil in traducing the
existing institutions before the tribunals of reason
and conscience. They are consistent and thorough,
and they do not, from superstition, shun the
orthodox masses. The negation of the authority
of the Government, whether absolute, as with the
Dukhoborzy, or conditional, as with all the rest of
the rationalists, has up to the present time only
led them to individual acts of passive resistance.
It may become a collective one in time ; it may
change its nature altogether. Religion can ex-
press everything, assume any shape. The spirit
of active rebellion is unmistakably growing among
the peasantry outside the realms of sectarianism.
Why should it not invade the sects also when
their power to satisfy the actual desires of the
people shall be exhausted ? At all events, it
is impossible to depend much upon the loyalty
of a well-organised body of perhaps three or four
millions of people who, for aught we know, may
become ten or twelve in a few years, and who
all view the existing government as admittedly
wrongful. The religious question in Russia is
to some extent a riddle.

THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORV—
CONCLUSION.

' J

VO'

- Pa

39

CONCLUSION.

IN throwing a rapid retrospective glance over all
that has been said upon the economical, social, and
intellectual life of our peasantry, we shall every-
where perceive the existence of a deeply-rooted
dualism. Two hostile principles are in a death-
struggle in all the spheres of popular life — the
one springing from the inner consciousness of
the masses, the other forced upon them from the
outside by those in power.

This antagonism is not a peculiarity of modern
times. The few glimpses into our past history
which the Rascol offers us, prove that this antago-
nism was keenly resented by the people at least
two centuries before the present era. As a matter
of fact, it goes back to much earlier times. An
underhand struggle between the people and the
Government has been going on almost ever since
the establishment of autocracy in Russia, — in other
words, for four or five centuries.

The fact that the people did not re-mould the

612 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

State so as to make it fit in with their tastes is in
itself a conclusive proof that there must have been
some fatal shortcoming in the people them-
selves. Remarkably flexible in the combination
of labour, and rich in resources in the higher
domain of thought, the Russian popular mind
seems to have been stricken with the curse of
utter sterility in the domain of politics. They
were never able to rise above the most rudimen-
tary and strictly patriarchal conceptions of State
and statecraft.

Perhaps this was due to the overwhelming pre-
dominance of the agricultural classes, constitu-
tionally patriarchal ; perhaps the result of the
great facility offered to interior emigration, which
was the easy and common wind-up to all our civil
discontents, whilst in other countries people,
volens nolens, had to stay and fight out their
grievances, finding by means of friction some
mutual compromise. Perhaps we should attribute
it to the absence on our soil of anything which
could suggest to our people some new political
form, such as the rich inheritance of Roman
civilisation suggested to the West. Whatever the
reason, the fact is that through all the centuries
of ancient political self-government, anterior to

THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 613

the creation of the Muscovite Monarchy, Russia
remained at the same embryonic stage of polity
from which she started.

The vast popular republics which existed up to
the end of the fifteenth century were established
in the form of big families. The metropolis stood
in the position of father to the whole land, and
the metropolitan crowd, when assembled in the
public square, ruled over the whole of it, advanc-
ing the same claims to unlimited confidence and
obedience as characterize all forms of paternal
despotism. The centralized monarchy had no
difficulty in overcoming these communities, which
had made no provision to secure inner cohesion
and unity of action. The main body of the rural
population, and even the lower orders of the
townspeople, accustomed to obey the patriarchal
despotism of an assembly, had no difficulty in
transferring their allegiance to the patriarchal
despotism of one Prince.

The Muscovite rule disgusted the people wher-
ever it was introduced ; the Moscow bureaucracy,
which was the real form under which monarchy
came into contact with the people, proved worse
than anything they had ever experienced before.
But the people never regarded the shortcomings

614 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

of his agents as a reproach to the Tzar. The
worse the officials, and the more impossible the
access to the Tzar, the stronger grew the people's
conviction that he would redress their wrongs did
he only know of them. The perennial influence
of hero-worship, combined with the patriarchism
prevailing in the everyday life of the multitude,
strengthened the legend of the Tzar-Tribune and
champion of the people. The faith in him grew
upon the masses in proportion as the person of
the Tzar was farther removed from all chance of
practical usefulness to them.

This is the fatal superstition which constitutes
the tragedy of our history.

In its palmiest days autocracy represented the
interests of the State and not those of the people.
The well-being and the rights of the people were
matters of secondary importance, when the power,
the glory, the expansion of the State were at
stake.

Now, the force of the State, offensive and
defensive, being in the last resort represented by
the force of the organized minority, the Tzar's
enormous power naturally grew to be an instrument
wherewith to squeeze from the toiling masses the
utmost they could be made to yield for the benefit

THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 615

of these organized privileged minorities. No
other form of government could have gone to
the same length in imposing upon the labouring
classes obligatory sacrifices for the sake of the
State.

Up to a certain point this was done in the
interests of the people themselves, who needed to
have their nationality and soil protected just as
much as the rest of the community ; but it was
so difficult to keep within the limits of the strictly
necessary, and it was so easy to overshoot the
mark. It is doubtful whether there has been one
single Tzar who has hesitated before imposing an
additional burden on the people, or in withdrawing
another privilege, in order to increase the military
or the administrative power of the State, no
matter whether it were needed or superfluous ;
and, with the single exception of Peter the Great,
there has been neither Tzar nor Tzarina who, in
assessing these burdens, has not shown a criminal
partiality for the upper classes which have formed
their immediate surroundings.

Thus, instead of maintaining popular rights, as
they were expected to do, the Tzars went on
gradually curtailing them in favour of the privileged
classes and of the bureaucracy. The process was

616 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

very slow at first. Centuries after all traces of
self-government had been destroyed in the big
towns, — seats of the sovereign vetches — the rural
population preserved many of their ancient political
privileges. The regional assembly of the people
elected high officials, and could summon before
them, and judge, even the landlords and noblemen
resident in their respective districts. Up to the
beginning of the sixteenth century these assem-
blies in some places even preserved the name of
vetche.

In like manner the distribution of the best arable
and cultivated land to to the Tzar's militiamen
and courtiers did not much offend the peasants,
so long as their personal freedom was not inter-
fered with, and they could make arrangements
with the new landlords as regarded rent, or remove
elsewhere if they chose.

The people began to fight, and to fight des-
perately, when at the end of the sixteenth century
the Tzars deprived them of their right of removal,
thus laying their hands upon their individual
freedom, and gradually putting on their necks the
yoke of serfdom.

For two centuries the terrible struggle lasted,
but by this time the legend of the Tzardom had

THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 617

obtained such a hold upon the people's minds that
their cause was doomed beforehand. The peasants
withstood an evil whilst worshipping and uphold-
ing its cause. They rebelled against the unbear-
able tyranny of their masters and of the officials ;
but their hearts fell and their hands dropped when
they met an authoritative spokesman of the Tzar.
They were in the position of the pugilist who
should have to fight with a slip-knot round his
neck, which would throttle him at any bold move.
They took heart and fought their great battles
only when they had at their head some Imperial
phantom — a false Demetrius, or a second Demetrius
of Tushino, who was ihefatse false Demetrius ; or
the Russian Spartacus, the Cossack Emelian Ivano-
vitch Pugatchev, who under the name of Peter III.
stirred to open rebellion one half of enslaved
Russia, and made Catherine II. tremble upon her
throne, — an unique spectacle among popular risings,
made in the name of truth and justice, and at the
same time backed by an impudent lie, which was
an open secret to very many of its champions ;
which strove to attain to the progressive ideals of
freedom, equality, and social justice, and was at
the same time a downright reaction. If successful
it would have merely thrown Russia back from

618 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

the eighteenth into the fifteenth century, with the
prospect of a gradual re-bestowal, of the privileges
taken from Catherine's nobility in favour of
Pugatchev's Cossacks and generals and their
descendants.

After the bloody suppression of Pugatchev's
rising, no further popular insurrection of any
moment ever took place. For one century the
people bore the frightful chains of slavery, which
the Tzars supported merely to please the idle
nobility ; for, since the day when the nobility —
at one time militiamen — had been exempted from
obligatory service to the State (1762), serfdom
had become an inexcusable act of tyranny, and
its support by the Tzars an act of treachery.

Did such a flagrant, palpable treason to the
popular cause throw a damper upon the popular
belief in the Tzars ? No, it did not. The people
seemed to be more than ever devoted to them.
It is astonishing how feeble both logic and reason
are when they have to cope with imagination and
certain other vague aspirations of the human heart.

The patriarchism of our people once again
played us a trick. The self-governing patriarchal
institutions, entirely driven from the upper walks of
life, and completely forgotten by the people, nestled

THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 619

within the village communes, their last refuge and
stronghold. Here they exhibited a marvellous
tenacity and adaptability. As long as the econo-
mical equality between the members of the mir
was not entirely broken down, the small village
communes could realize the ideal of a patriarchal
government much more truly than the popular
republics, based on the same principles, could. The
mir is not an ideal human institution, destined to
break the teeth of time. It is only a phase of
development, which will certainly have to begin
by first suppressing, or at all events restricting,
its political functions. Of all forms of authority
the patriarchal one is certainly the most insup-
portable to a thoroughly independent mind, just
as paternal tutelage is to a full-grown man.
Yet this is no argument against the usefulness of
a good family education.

The mirs life and the mirs authority must
be looked upon somewhat in the same light.
They were an excellent school, which developed
many precious qualities in the bulk of our people
which will not soon disappear. But it is to this
same institution that we owe the enormous
tenacity of that plague of Russia, the superstition
of the Tzar.

620 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

For all primitive minds the monarchical idea
has a kind of peculiar fascination. The balance
of powers, the mutual checks and the control
of the various springs of a complicated political
machinery, are pure Hebrew to them ; whilst they
can grasp the idea of a good, benevolent man,
without an effort. It is difficult for them not to
take the empty official phraseology as to their
Sovereign's love, and solicitude for their good,
literally. Of human temptations and weaknesses
they know only those sordid ones which they see
in their own everyday life. A man who is placed
so much above them is naturally fancied by them
to be above human nature altogether. In the
continental monarchies there has always been, and
there still lingers, much of this superstition within
the rural classes, notwithstanding all their consti-
tutions. This is why in Russia monarchical
superstitions have penetrated even into those
regions where they would seem to have no
historical reason for existence, — for instance, in
the Ruthenian provinces annexed to Russia in
the seventeenth century, and enslaved by
Catherine II. at the end of the eighteenth.

We have not come across any positive state-
ment on the subject with regard to the English

THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 621

peasantry, but we were struck by an amusing
scene in George Eliot's Middlemarch, the en-
counter between Mr. Brook and his tenant
Dagley (p. 293, ed. of 1874), upon the " Rin-
form " the king will send upon the landlord's
back. It is too lifelike to be invented, and it
seems to indicate that even in England there
exists something of the kind, or did exist at all
events at that time, notwithstanding her three
centuries of constitutional government

As for our moujiks, who in their mir had before
them a tangible embodiment of this patriarchal
idea of government, they performed a curious
psychological operation. They mentally trans-
ferred to the Tzar the whole of the functions
performed by the mir, thus giving to his authority
a remarkably precise and clear definition. The
Tzar's authority is the mirs authority, magnified
so as to suit the requirements of the State, with-
out being in the smallest degree changed in its
most characteristic attributes. The Tzar is the
common Father of the country, its Protector, and
the supreme dispenser of impartial justice to all,
defending the weaker members of the community
from the stronger. The Tzar "pities" everybody
like the mir. The whole of the nation's riches

622 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

1 belong to the Tzar " exactly in the same sense
as the land and meadows and forests within the
boundaries of the commune belong to the mir.
The most important function the peasant's imagi-
nation imposes on the Tzar is that of universal
leveller, — not, however, of movable property The
Tzar, like the mir, has the right to impose taxes
on whomsoever he chooses, and on whatever he
chooses, but he is expected not to interfere with
what the people regard as the private property of
each household, i.e., movable capital. On the
contrary, the Tzar is in duty bound to step in and
to equitably redistribute the natural riches of
the country, especially the land, whenever this
is needed in the common interest.

All these restrictions and obligations are purely
moral. The people repose implicit confidence in
the Tzar's wisdom and justice. He is absolute
master of the life and property of every man
within his dominions, and no exception may be
taken to his orders. The occasional blunders
made by the Tzar, however heavy they may be,
must be borne with patience, as they can be only
temporary ; the Tzar will redress the evil as soon
as he is better informed on the matter.

Nobody would accuse us, I suppose, of unfair-

THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 623

ness in defining the popular legend of the auto-
cracy, though we are not really sure to what extent
it represents the past, and how far the present
views of our peasantry as a body. Since the Eman-
cipation many new influences have been at work
in an opposite direction, in addition to which it
must also be remembered that the two pillars of
our patriarchism — the mir and the family — have
changed vastly during the last twenty years, the
mir for the worse, the family for the better.

Before the Emancipation, and for from ten to
fifteen years afterwards, these institutions were in
their full vigour, and so was the superstitious belief
in the monarchy. It seemed to be something
immutable, and so frightfully earnest that it over-
whelmed and crushed the hopes of many noble
Russian hearts. Thus a melody, which we dismiss
as flat and commonplace when sung by a single
voice, becomes strikingly solemn and impressive
when taken up by an enormous crowd. During
the three reigns which preceded the present one,
to oppose autocracy seemed an act of madness.
Yet all the thinking men of the day, in whom
pusillanimity did not obscure judgment, could see
that the Tzars were less capable than ever of
playing the part of people's Tribunes.

624 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

A century ago, many years before any opposi-
tion was dreamt of in Russia, namely, after the
outbreak of the French Revolution, autocracy
lost the most essential element of a patriarchal
Government, i.e., full confidence in its own im-
mutability. Abject fear took possession of the
hearts of the autocrats — fear of the surging
Democracy that they were expected to champion.
The Tzars were no longer sure of their position,
or even of their personal security, and they
wanted to protect themselves by making common
cause with the privileged classes. They ceased
to be the representatives of the State as a whole,
with no vested interests in any particular party.
Prior to the Emancipation the Tzars were pleased
to parade their title of " first nobleman (dvorianin)
of Russia " ; but after the Emancipation they
might well have assumed the name of " first
broker of the Empire."

The sentimental, liberal Alexander I., and the
tory-democrat Nicolas I., both so intensely wor-
shipped by the poor moujiks, kept them enslaved
because they feared a revolution. The Emperor
Alexander II. had the courage to break the spell
and to cancel this terrible injustice, but he wanted
to remain an autocrat at all costs, and only grew

THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 625

the more obstinate the more the new needs
pressed upon him. He was inevitably driven to
the fatal course of re-establishing with his left
hand, abuses which he had overthrown with his
right. Instead of inaugurating a new and brilliant
era of progress for the nation, and securing a
happy reign for himself, he merely introduced the
last phase in the terrible struggle between the
people and their Government

The enemy is now at their door. If our people
at the present crisis lose the battle, they will
never again have anything of their own to lose.
With a nation of hereditary husbandmen, the land
question is the question of life and death. It is
silly and cruel to consider the problem as in any
way solved by the inquiry as to whether the
peasants themselves would or would not prefer a
return to their former state of serfdom. Certainly
they would not ; but they would prefer yet more,
to be free without the danger of starvation.

They received the announcement of their libera-
tion with transports of joy, but they were utterly
disappointed by the details of the new agrarian
regulations. Their secular superstition gave rise
to some very curious phenomena of social psy-
chology.

40

026 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

To begin with, they declined to believe in the
authenticity of the Emancipation Act. To their
candid, unsophisticated minds it seemed utterly
incredible that their Tzar should have " wronged "
them so bitterly as to the land. They obstinately
repeated that their "freedom," i.e., the Emanci-
pation Act, had been tampered with by the nobility,
who had concealed the Tzar's real " freedom,"
which had been quite a different thing. The
most emphatic declarations made before the
peasants' deputies and elders by the Emperor's
ministers and by the Emperor in person could
not disabuse them. They persisted in believing
against belief. There were hundreds of peasants'
rebellions in all parts of the empire, owing to this
misunderstanding, especially during the first years
which followed the Act of Emancipation. They
subsided at last. After ten years of incessant
persuasion through the medium of speeches,
ukazes, floggings, and an occasional shooting, this
superstition began to give way. It did not dis-
appear, however, — it only changed its shape.

Since 1870 or thereabouts we hear no more of
the peasants' doubts as to the authenticity of the
agrarian arrangements of 1861. They have ended
by admitting that it was really the work of the

THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 627

Tzar's own hands, but the whole of our peasantry
have made up their minds, and expect a new
agrarian arrangement from the Tzar, which will
rectify the blunders of the old regulations.
Rumours as to the coming agrarian ravnenie or
" redistribution," which is to take place next
spring, next summer, and so forth, now and
then spread like wildfire over whole provinces
and regions. It is not uncommon for them to
give rise to " disorderly " and illegal conduct, such
as refusal to pay the rent due to the landlords,
or the arbitrary appropriation of his fields by
the peasants. The authorities of course intervene,
and the central Government, which ascribes all
things to the Nihilist propaganda, makes strenuous
efforts to dissipate these dangerous rumours.

Up to the present time official and Imperial
declarations have not opened the peasants' eyes.
The moujiks see in them either a new trick of
the nobles (landlords), or by some strange aber-
ration of intellect understand the plainest state-
ments in an exactly inverse sense to the real one.
We know, for instance, cases where peasants'
deputies, expressly summoned before a Governor-
General to be instructed in the right views on the
agrarian question, have on their return to their

628 THh RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

villages emphatically affirmed that " His Excel-
lency has positively charged them to be reassured,
because the Tzar will ere long effect an agrarian
' redistribution.' ' They have doubtless been
spoken to " about the land," and then probably
the General has indulged in some vapouring about
the Tzar's solicitude and benevolence. The two
things when put together could for them mean
nothing but " agrarian redistribution."

In 1878-79, after the enormous strain of the
Turkish war, rumours relating to this supposed
coming agrarian " redistribution " assumed par-
ticular definiteness and enlargement. They pene-
trated everywhere, and even into the ranks of
the army ; people openly discussed the coming
rearrangements at the village meetings, in the
presence of the rural authorities, who, as peasants,
fully shared in the common expectations.

General Makov, then Minister of the Interior,
issued a circular letter, to be publicly read in all
villages, and affixed to the walls in all communal
houses. This circular contradicted these rumours,
and declared positively that there would be no
" redistribution," and that the landlords would
retain their own property. It produced no effect.
Professor Engelhardt, who wrote one of his Letters

THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 629

from a Village at the time of this fit of popular
hopefulness, says that the moujiks who heard
Makov's circular understood it in the following
sense : — " It is requested that people shall, for a
time, abstain from gossiping at random about the
'redistribution. '" * As to the ministerial warnings
against the evil-intentioned disseminators of false
reports, and the orders to apprehend them, they
produced the most amusing bewilderment. The
superior and the inferior agents of the adminis-
tration could not understand each other's language.
The superior officers, the gentlemen, as Engelhardt
calls them, by "evil-intentioned people" meant
to imply the Nihilists, the advocates and partisans
of agrarian " redistribution ; " whilst according to
the Elders and other village authorities the " evil-
intentioned " were those who opposed this move-
ment.

The year 1880, which was almost a year of
famine, gave new zest to the popular expectations.
" There is no bread in the country," they said,
" the moujiks are so pressed that they cannot

* When three years afterwards, in March 1884, General
Makov, compromised by some bribery business, committed
suicide, the peasants said that he had destroyed himself
because he had issued this famous circular without the Tzar's
consent, and that the Tzar had just discovered his treachery.

630 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

move on their little patches of land, and the land-
lords have no end of land lying waste." A
universal conviction grew up among the peasants
that in the course of the next spring (1881) the
Tzar's surveyor would come and start upon the
work of general readjustment.

It must be borne in mind that, with our
peasants, this idea of the coming " redistribution "
never assumed the character of expropriation of
one class of men — the landlords — for the benefit
of another class of men — the peasants. They
expected a general readjustment, a fair redivision,
in the exact sense of the word. All who dwelt
on the land, the landlords included, would receive
their fair share of the land, according to the
number of their children. Several facts relating
to this period show unmistakably that such was
the peasants' idea as to the "redistribution." In
some places small landlords, after being asked
how many children they had, received the tran-
quillising assurance from the peasants that " they
had nothing to fear, because at the coming re-
distribution they would receive an extra piece of
land in addition to that they already held." In
other districts the impatient peasants have been dis-
covered in the fields in the act of performing some

THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 631

strange geodetic operations. On being asked
what it all meant, they answered that they were
"cutting off their landlord's share beforehand."

Thus, to use the authoritative words of Prof.
Engelhardt, "The thing (the redistribution) about
which so much has been said is understood by
the moujiks in the following sense. At certain
periods, namely, at the time of taking the census,
there must be a general redivision of land all
over Russia, as there are now and then local re-
divisions of land within the boundaries of each
commune. The communal re-division means the
equalization of the shares of land held by the
various households. The general redistribution
is to be the equalisation of the shares of land held
by the different Communes. It is not a ques-
tion of the expropriation of the landlords, but
of the fair distribution of the land of the whole
country, whether held by landlords or by
peasants. The rich peasants who had estates
of their own, purchased ' in perpetuity ' (private
property), spoke of the coming redistribution in
exactly the same sense as the poorer peasants did.
They never doubted but that these legally acquired
estates could be taken from their legal owners
and given to other people." (P. 511.)

632 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

In the eyes of genuine moujiks these specu-
lations in land are similar to mutual sale or
exchange, or pawning, of their respective lots of
land between the members of a village commune.
They are private arrangements made at the
personal risk and peril of the contracting parties.
When the land division comes, the mir takes no
notice of any such agreements, which are as a
matter of course only binding up to the time of
the redivision.

Every moujik, whether rich or poor, proletarian
or landowner, mirs man or even wzir-eater, provided
always that they have not broken their ties with
the peasantry, hold the same views as to landed
estates in general. They all therefore expect a
universal redistribution of the land ; those who
have in the meantime succeeded in appropriating
a nice piece of this most precious commodity
look upon it as a sad but unavoidable necessity ;
the destitute and landless as an occasion for
great rejoicing ; whilst both wonder why the Tzar
tarries so long over giving the signal for it, to
do which, according to the multitude, is both his
right and his duty

Stripped of their monarchical trappings, these
ideas present themselves as a very sound and

THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 633

thorough economical theory of land nationalization.
The most advanced advocates of the system
would have nothing to teach our people as to its
general principles. They have from their child-
hood been educated in the soundest theories of
land nationalization, and exclude not only the
right of private persons to monopolize land, but
also prohibit its engrossment by some privileged
Communes to the permanent injury of others.

The theory of land nationalization, for which
an extreme faction of social reformers have to
fight so hard in Europe, is with us not a subver-
sive but a conservative doctrine. It exists with
us as a fact of universal knowledge, an ancient
and traditional right, which our people have never
renounced and never forgotten, only they did not
know, and for the most part do not even now
know, how to protect it. They trust to an
authority which, whatever the individual intention
of its representative may be, is fatally hostile to
these rights and these institutions, and has brought
them to the verge of a complete subversion.

We Russians are now living in a critical, nay,
almost solemn moment, when, to arrest this decay
and to convert it into a rapid revival, no violent
upheaval would be necessary. This moment will

634 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

not last long : imbecility is nowhere allowed to
have its way free of cost, no, not even in Russia,
but it certainly has not passed as yet. If the
nation obtains control over the political powers
within a measurable distance of time, land
nationalization will be a reform as easy and
peaceable as it is unavoidable ; and that once an
accomplished fact, there are ample grounds for
expecting it will give to Russia a splendid start
on the road of social progress.

It will relieve our agrarian distress enormously.
The industry of our people and their passionate
attachment to agriculture are a guarantee for
prosperity when they shall have a sufficiency of
land to apply their hands to. Freedom of inter-
course, a larger share of local self-government,
independence of the village communes, and a
better education would, to say the least, certainly
secure to our people, that amount of mutual assist-
ance won by the members of the Rascol and other
sects through their religious organization. There
is nothing unreasonable in supposing that when
protected by general and local freedom, a fair
agrarian arrangement would be likely to possess
considerable stability. Land nationalization will
be a great thing for Russia, even if it merely takes

THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 635

the form of an equitable redistribution of this
source of work, as our people understand it to be.

But is it probable that a measure of such magni-
tude would lead to no corresponding improve-
ments in the methods of agricultural labour ?
We do not mean small improvements in agri-
cultural implements and modes of culture, things
which individual peasants can do on their own
plots of land ; these we take to be a matter of
course. Every intelligent husbandman will do
this, provided he has the means. The main road
to any really great improvement in the productive-
ness of national labour, in agriculture as well as
in other walks of life, lies in the combination
of individual effort, in the extension of the area
under culture, and in the co-operation of the
labourers.

Would our peasants be equal to the demand
made upon them in this direction ?

Well, judging by what they now are, in all
probability they would.

There exist no people on the face of the earth,
or, to keep within the boundaries of the better
known, on the face of Europe, who, as a body,
are so well trained for collective labour as our
moujiks are. Whenever a group or a crowd of

636 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

them have some common economical interest to
look after, or some common work to perform,
they invariably form themselves into an artel, or
kind of trades union, which is a free, purely
economical mir, purged of the compulsory, des-
potic elements of political authority. It is a free
union of people, who combine for the mutual
advantages of co-operation in labour, or consump-
tion, or of both. Its membership is voluntary, not
imposed, and each member is free to withdraw at
the close of the season, or upon the conclusion of
the particular work for which the artel was formed,
and to enter into a new artel. Quarrels between
members, as well as offences against the artel, if
not settled in an amicable manner have to be
brought before the common tribunals. The artel
has no legal authority over its members. Expul-
sion from the artel is the only punishment, or
rather the only protection, these associations
possess against those who break their rules. Yet
the artels do very well, and in permanent work
often prove to be lifelong partnerships. The
fishermen of the north ; the carpenters who go to
work in the towns; the bricklayers and builders;
the diggers and the freight-carriers, — all the hun-
dreds of thousands of peasants who move from

THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 637

the villages in search of work, either start by
forming artels, or join some artel when they reach
their destination. Every artel accepts work,
makes engagements, etc., as a body, distributing
or dividing the work they have to do amongst
themselves. The principle followed is, that every
man's pay shall be strictly proportioned to the
amount of his individual labour, or, that this ideal
shall be approached as nearly as the nature of the
particular industry will admit of.

There is endless variety in the economical cha-
racters and the size of these artels, some being
regular owners of industrial establishments or
trading companies (a machine manufactory in
Ural), whilst others are only temporary and
limited associations of vast numbers of men,
blown together by the four winds of heaven,
such as those of bargemen or railway servants,
etc., though in substance they all reproduce the
leading features of the village mir.

The principle of co-operation is applied as
frequently and as naturally to agricultural as to
non-agricultural work. Of late years co-operation
in agriculture has become even more varied and
more extensive than ever before, partly because
of the impoverishment of the people, and especially

638 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

because of the wholesale breaking down, throughout
Russia, of the big patriarchal families. So long as
they existed they formed compulsory co-operative
associations, and were held together by family
despotism. Now they are supplanted by free
associations or self-electing artels.

Thus we know that in Southern Russia and in
the south-west, as well as among the Kuban and
Terek Cossacks, the great diminution in the
number of cattle gave rise to co-operative plough-
ing. Several households join their cattle to form
the team of four to six horses or oxen necessary
to move the heavy plough used in the black earth
region. Sometimes they do the harrowing in
common, likewise. It is a suggestive fact that
those districts where the families have been most
broken up are just those where this form of
co-operation is most in vogue. In the Borzensk
district 90 per cent, of the householders plough
their land in this manner.

In the impoverished districts of the Province
of Moscow, the peasants who have no cattle at
all, unite in the purchase of horses on the joint-
stock principle, keeping them and using them in
turn.

In the Province of Kostroma, flourishing Com-

THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 639

munes invest in thrashing-machines for the common
benefit, at the expense of the mir.

The habit of renting plots of land of neighbour-
ing landlords, by artels of five, six, or more
peasants for purposes of tillage, is practised every-
where. The peasants join their capitals to pay
the landlord, and join their hands to till the land,
and divide the profits accordingly. In many
places whole mirs rent considerable tracts of land
in the same way, tilling it by the mir on the
principles of the artels. They divide such work
as can be done by the job, and that which cannot
be divided they do in a body. The renting of
meadows by mirs is a universal practice, and
hewing of wood is always done in a body, in the
same way as all other public work. All labour
of this nature is executed with an almost military
precision and regularity. The working power
and the obligations of each household are known
to a nicety, and accounts are kept in the memories
of all and of everybody, of the whole year's
budget of public labour. Any given quantity of
the working power of a village can be produced
at a moment's notice.

The peasants are fully trained for combined
work of greater dimensions, — in the draining of

640 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

large marshes, the digging of big ditches, the
construction of bridges, etc., in which several
villages may be concerned, or in the mowing of
large meadows belonging to several, sometimes
five or ten villages, in common. Every village
sends its contingent of men, horses, waggons,
implements, etc. They divide the work, and make
the most complicated mental calculations, and
keep all accounts without the use of a scrap of
paper or a pencil, owing to the great development
of their memories, which astonishes people ac-
customed to the aid of a note-book. As a rule,
all these works and operations are completed
without any hitch or friction. Their long training
has developed in our moujiks two valuable
qualities. These are (i) honesty in the work,
which prevents a man from cheating the artel by
supplying work of an inferior quality, when control
is difficult ; (2) self-command, which teaches the
member of an artel, for the sake of the general
advantage, to bear the burden with equanimity,
when it so chances that he has to exert himself
a little more than his neighbours.

Now, if our people are so much accustomed
to co-operation in general, and co-operate so
frequently on a small scale, why should they be

THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 641

unable to co-operate on a larger one ? If they
unite to make a full team for a common plough,
or buy a thrashing-machine out of the general
funds of the mir, or, as an artel, till a tract of land
they rent, etc., etc., why should they be unable
to till the whole of their communal land with
improved implements on the co-operative system,
which would be so immeasurably more profitable ?

Why should not they in the natural course
of their intellectual and economical growth pass
from communal and local co-operation to general
national co-operation, gradually embracing all the
branches of national industry, which is nothing
but socialism ?

This eventuality will probably be dismissed by
most of our readers as a chimera. Well, we do
not think they will prove right. Taking into
account the present economical ideas, the train-
ing, and the moral habits and aspirations of
our rural classes, as well as the intellectual and
moral dispositions of their educated brethren,
there is nothing chimerical in supposing that,
under the inspiring influence of Western social
science, our economical evolution, when once
begun, may lead to a full and comparatively rapid
realisation of socialism. Or, to put it beyond

642 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

theoretical controversy, we will say that, sup-
posing socialism is not entirely a dream, of all
European nations the Russians, provided they
become a free nation, have the best chance of
realising it. The future will decide as to how
much the Russian nation is fitted for it.

But whether altogether socialistic or only half
way towards these luminous ideals of the future,
Russia, to the Russians, will be something entirely
different, as a factor in international life, to that
ignoble and disastrous one which she now is. A
nation of labourers, she is to bring to the brother-
hood of nations something peculiarly her own, in
the development of new forms of labour. If she
cannot do this, if we are to suppose that the solu-
tion of the political crisis under which she is now
struggling will come after the aspirations of
labour shall have been stifled, and that Russia
will have to plod on her painful way to social
reorganisation in the rear of Europe, she will be
but a poor imitator, and a drag upon civilisation
for many generations to come.

The abstract sciences are the only things
which are cosmopolitan. All that deals with, or
refers to, masses of living men may be great on
condition of its being national. In one domain

THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY. 643

only has Russia attained to the glorious summit
of human achievements : this is in her art ; because
this was the only domain in which the genius of
individual creators has been inspired and sup-
ported by the genius of the people ; with the
result that it has produced a complete thing,
which is as original as it is national. As it is
now being rapidly incorporated as an inter-
national inheritance, it has certainly added its
deep and powerful note to the general choir.

As to her polity as a nation among nations,
Russia can be great otherwise than by her size, if
only political freedom walks hand in hand with
the growth of those ideals of labour which spring
from the collective aspirations of her people.
We are not European enough to successfully
imitate a progress based upon the fruition of
individual interest.

THE END,

INDEX.

AFANASIEFF, IVAN, 244-249.
Agrarian disturbances, 180.

Question, 3-114, 625, sqq.

Agricultural Proletariats, 76,

77, 79, 80.

Andrey Denisov, 464-467.
Aleshka, 305-307.
Antichrist, Reign of, 429-431
Arcady, Bishop, 460.
Artel, 636, 637, 638, 639.
Assistance, Mutual, 292-301
" Autobiography of a Southern

Stundist," 563-569.

BALKANS, LAND TENURE IN,

10.

Banks, 25, 36-37.
Peasant, Loan and Sav-
ings, 104, 105.
Bashkin, Matvey, 499-504.
Bashkir, 173, 177, 178, 180.
Batrak, 95, 250-251, 265.
Beglopopovzy, The, 443.
Beguny, The, 448, 450, 453.
Bdizy, The, 470.
Bezpopovzy, The, 441, 447.
Bible Society, London, 574,

575' 576.

Bishops Cannon, Arcady, and

Hennady, 460.
"Black" Clergy, 373.
Bobylkas, 269.
Bobyls, 269.
Bolshak) 119.
Bondage System, 51, 63, 77,

80, 81, 82, 97.
Bosykh, Ivan, 323-333.

CANNON, BISHOP, 460.
Capitalists, Russian, 18, 36.
Castrate, The, 439.
Cattle, Export of, 35.
Caucasus, Administration of

the, 183-186.
Cheremukhin, 316-319.
C Mists, The, 437-441.
Circulation of money, 26-29.
Clergy, Black, 373.

Indifference of, 401-

402.

Relations between, and

people, 376-378.

Want of culture among,

397-398.

White 373.

646

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

Coalition, Trepoff-Shouvaloff-

Potapoff, 194-196.
Colonel Kapger, 200-207.
Communes, Village, 126, 166,

275, 276.

Constabulary, Rural, 208-228.
Conversions, Popular, 133,

Corn, Exports of, 32-35.
Council of Moscow, 407.
-- 1666-7, 4°7-
Count Leo Tolstoi, 589, 599.

- Valueff, 175-176.
Credit, Form of, 60-63.
Crimea, Administration of,

187-188.

" DANCERS," The, 438.
Danilo, 417-418.
-- Filipovitch, 437.
Death-rate, 85-90, in.
Debt, National, 19.
" Deniers," The, 490.
Denisov, Andrey, 464-467.
Dissent, Rationalistic, 493-504.
Disturbances, Agrarian, 180.
Dukhoborzy, The, 441, 505-

525. 554-

- Number of, 527.

-- Persecution of, 520-524.
"Dumb," The, 490.

Edinoverzy, The, 445.
Education, Popular, 106, 120,

576, 577-
Elders, 156, 157, 160, 161,

165.

Emancipation, Act of. 4 sgq.,
14, 15, 42, 71, 626.

of Serfs, 153.

Embezzlement of land, 167,
168, 171-207.

of money, 103-105.

Employments, Non-agricul-
tural, 256-261.
Ermolaeff, Ivan, 310-312.
Export of corn, 32-35.
cattle, 35.

Fedoseevzy, The, 448-453,

passim.

Filipovitch, Danilo, 437.
Filipovzy, The, 449, 451.

GAGARINE, Princess, 185, 186.
Gerassimoff, 225, 226.
Gorshkovs, The, 280-289.
Paternal, 153-228.

Government, 5, 6, no, 148,

153-228.
Grain, Average Returns of, 98-

99.
Greedy Pop, Legend of the,

361.
Grey Moujik, 273-289.- 310-

312.

HALLELUIAH'S wife, 370-371.
Hard Times, 231-336.
Havrila Volkov, 314-323.
Hennady, Bishop, 460.
Home Policy, 107 -no, passim.
Hromadas, The, 125, 126.

INDEX.

647

IDEAL CHRISTIAN LIFE, At-
tempts at, 546.
Ignatius of Solovezk, 419.
Industries, Indoor, 53.
Inheritance, Laws of, 127-129.
Insurrections, Popular, 618.
Interest, Rate of, 64, sqq. 70-

7i-
Jspravnik, 102, 164, 167, 210,

211.

Ivan Afanasieff, 244-249.

Bosykh, 323-333.

Ermolaeff, 310-312.

Izba, 233-234.

Furniture of, 234-235.

JAROFF, 58.

/ua'aisers, The, 494-497.
"Jumpers," The, 438.
Kabala, 51, 63, 77, 97, 499.
Kalikovzy, The, 485.
Kapger, Colonel, 200-207.
Karmaly, 66.
Kalmuks, 182.
King's Way, The, 482.
Koulak, 54-57, 74-76,83, 271,

272, 279.
Kovylin, 452.

LAND, EMBEZZLEMENT of, 167-
168, 171-207.

Question, 625.

Hunger, 232, 241.

- Love for the, 240-242.

Nationalization, 622, 627-

395-

Land Redistribution of, 109,

622, 627-635.

Reform, 99, 100, sqq.

Tenure in Russia, 8, 9,

11-15, 4°-

,, „ the Balkans,

10.

Lastochkin, 222.
Laws of Inheritance, 127 129.
Legal Rights of Women, 129.
Legend of the Devil and the

Smith, 362-363.

Greedy Pop, 361.

Marvellous Thrashing of

Corn, 368-370.

Noah the Godly, 362.

St. Nicolas and St Elias,

365-368.

Loghishino, 194,195, 197-207.
London Bible Society, 574,
575. 576.

MAKOORINE, 219, 200.
Marriage Question, 475-481.
Marvellous Thrashing of Corn,

Legend of, 368-370.
Mass book, The Revised, 385-

389, 404, 407.
Matvey Bashkin, 499-504.
Maxim, A. Popoff, 546-547.

the Greek, 497.

Mediators, 163, 178.

" Milk-eaters," 538.

Mir, 101, 102, 125, 126, 131,

132-134, 136, 138-140, 143,

*54-i56> 279> 280, 619,
623.

648

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

J//V-eaters, 54, 83, 84.

Mir's men, 162.

Missal, The Revised, 385-389,

404-407.

Modern Sectarianism, 553-608.
Molchalniky, The, 490.
Molokane, The, 505, 522, 525-

527, 535-549> 554-

Differences between

Stundists and, 559-562.
Non-Sabbatarian, 533.

- Number of, 527.

Persecutions of, 520-524.

— Sabbatarian, 528-534

- Views of Marriage, 542-

543-
Money, Circulation of, 26-29.

- Paper, 29-32, 35, 36, 93,

94-

" Morsels," going for, 293-300.
Mortality in Russia, 85-90,

in.
Moscow, Council of, 407.

- Riots, 410-412.
Moujiks, i, 2, 116-149, 242"

249, 251, 252-254, 621,

635.

Grey, 273-289, 310-312.

Mutual Assistance, 292-301.
Mystic Sects, spread of, 436,

437-

NATIONAL DEBT, 19.
" Negators " The, 486-489.
Ncmoliaki, The, 484-485,
Ne-Nashy, The, 486-489.
Netovzy, The, 490.

Nicolas Tchukhmistov, 488-
489.

Nicon, Patriarch, 385-389
passim, 404-405.

Nihilists, 112, 210.

Nikitina, 188-189.

Noah the Godly, Legend of,
362.

Non-Agricultural Employ-
ments, 256-261.

Nonconformity in Russia,
General review of, 601-608.

" Non-Prayers," The, 484-485.

"OLD BELIEVERS," The, 441.
Orbeliany, Princess, 186.
Orthodox Church, 143.

PALEOSTROVSKY, " LOCKING
UP," 419-421.

Monks, 419.

Paper money, 29-32, 35-36,

93-94-

Paranka, 283-288.
Paternal Government, 153-

288.
Patriarch Nicon, 385-389,

404-405.

Patriotism, Russian, 148-149.

Peasant Loan and Savings

Banks, 104, 105.

— proprietorships, 96-97.

Rebellions of, 192-207,

626.

- State, 44-45, 254-255.

Tribunals, 126-127.

Peasantry, Capacity for Co-

INDEX.

649

operative Work, 635-

642.
Co-operative Mutual

Assistance, 290-301.
Curtailment of Privi-
leges, 615-619.

Dissatisfaction, 113-114.

Dress, 235-236.

Food, 236-237, 264, 265-

268.

Loyalty, 112-113.

Migration, 241-242.

Religiousness, 339, sqq .

372, 381.

Starvation, 38.

Struggle for their own,

250-272.

Superstitions, 355-371-

Truthfulness, 252-253.

Persecutions of Molokane,

520-524-
— Rascolniks,4i3-42i,459-

461.

Pissars, 131, 159, 160.
"Planters," 163.
Pless Wanderers, 457.
Policy, Home, 107-1 10 passim.
Pomorzy, The, 448, 451.

Pop, i43> 373-375-

the Greedy, Legend of,

361-

Popoff, Maxim A., 546-547.
Popwzy. The, 441, 443' 447,

484.
Bishopric, Founding of,

446, 447-
Popular Conversions, 133-134.

Popular Education, 106, 120,

576-577;

Insurrections. 618.

Religion, 120-121, 339-

382.

J Poshekhon Wanderers, 457.
; Potapoff Coalition. 194-196.
Princess Gagarine, 185-186.

Orbeliany. 186.

Proletariats, Agricultural, 76..

77, 79, 80. 124.
Property, Rights of, 129-130.
Public Relief, 308-309.
Pugatchev, Rising under. 426,
617.

RAILWAYS, 20-22, 37.

Construction of, by

Government, 18-19.

Debt, 19-20.

Traffic, 22-24.

Raseol, The, 385-490.
Rascolniks, Excommunication,
407-408, 444.

The, intellectual activity,

462, sqq.
Peculiar culture, 473-

474-
Persecution, 413-421,

459-461.
Pops, ordination of, 442-

443-
- Religious Debates, 471-

473-

Schools, 470-471.

Self-government, 425.

Villages, 422-423.

42

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY

Rate of Interest, 64, sqq. 70-

?i-

Rationalistic Dissent, 493-504.
Ratushny, Michael, 557, 569.
Ravnenie, 627.
Re-baptists, 413, 418.
Redistribution of Land, 109,

622, 627-635.
Relations between Clergy and

People, 376-378.
Religion in Russia, 120-121

339-382.

Remission of Taxes, 231-232.
Rights of Property, 129-130.
—— Women, 129.
Rising under Pugatchev, 426,

617-618.

of the Strelzy, 410-411.

Rural Constabulary, 208-228.
Russia, Capitalists in, 18,
36.

Conception of Statecraft,

in, 612-614.

Land Tenure in, 8, 9,

11-15, 40.

Mortality in, 85-90, in.

Nonconformity in, 60 1-

608.

Patriotism in, 148-149.

Religion in, 120-121,

339-382.
Russian History, Tragedy, of

611-643.
Rvanzeff, 66.

SABBATARIAN, Molokane, 528-
533.

Sabbatarian, Non-, Molokane,

533-
Scriptures, Translation of, 573-

576.
Sectarianism, Modern, 553-

608.

Serfdom, 12, 40-43.
Serfs, 124-125.
Shalaputs, The, 438, 553, 579-

587-

- Communistic Associa-

tions, 582-584.
-- Federation, 585-586.

- Marriage Relations, 586-

587-
Shevelevo, Congregation at,

594-600.

Shouvaloff Coalition, 194-196.
Shyshkov, Vasily, 489-490.
" Sighers," The, 485.
Skopzy, The, 438, 439-440
Solovezk, Ignatius of, 419.
Sopelky Wanderers, The, 457.

458.

" Southern Stundist, Autobio-
graphy of," 563-569.

, 102, 167, 210-

211.

Starik, 445.

Starikovshina, The, 446.
Starvation of peasantry, 38.
State and Railways, 18-22.
- Peasants, 44-45,254-255.
St. Cassian and St. Nicolas

Legend of, 144, sqq.
St. Nicolas and St. Elias,

Legend of, 365-368.

INDEX.

65.

Stratmiky, The, 453.
Strelzy^ Rising of the, 410-41 1.
Strigolniks, The, 493-494.
Struggle of Peasantry lor their

own, 250-272.
Stunda, The, 553-573-

Literature of, 563, sqq.

Stundists, Differences between,

and Molokane, 559-562.
Stundists, Federation of, 586.
Sutaev, Vasily, 588, sqq.
Sutaez'zy, The, 594-600.
System, Bondage, 51, 63, 77,

81-82, 97.

TAXES, 43-46, 92.

Remission of, 231, 232.

Tchin, 154, 164-165.
Tc'hinovnik, 154-155, 157,

191.
Tchukhmistov, Nicolas, 488-

489.
Theodosius the Squint-eyed,

501-504.
Tokareff, Trial of General,

193-207.

Tolstoi, Count Leo, 589, 599.
Tragedy of Russian History,

611-643.

Trepoff Coalition, 194-196.
Trial of General Tokareff, 193-

207.
Tzar, Popular conception of

the, 621-623.

URIADNIK, 209-228.
Usurers, 54-55
Usman. 66.

VALUEFF, COUNT, 175-176.
Vasily, Shyshkov, 489-490.
Vttchc, 6 1 6.
Village Communes, 126, 166,

275-276.

Volkov, Havrila, 314-323.
Volost, 126-127, 154, 158.
Vozdykhanzy^ The, 485.

WAGES, VARIATION IN, 48-49
"Wanderers" The, 453-457

PUss, 457.

Poshekhon, 457.

" White " Clergy, 373.

Ones, 470.

Women, Education of, 468-
470.

held in honour, 469-470.

Legal rights of, 129.

Wygorezie, The, 464.
Wyg Settlement, 464-468, 470-
479-

YIELD of Grain, 47.
Yusefovitch, 173.

ZEMSTVOS, 104.
Zossima, 496.

THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRKSS LIMITED-

1752

BINDING Stu I . AUb

DK
32
K8
1905

V v'

Kravchinskii, Sergei
Mikhailovich, 1652-1895
The Russian peasantry,
their agrarian condition,
social life and religion^
New ed.

G. Routledge
(1905)

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY