§7
Of the second affair I was myself an eye-witness.
Vitberg bought up land with a view to his cathedral. His idea was that the serfs, when transferred with the land he had bought, should bind themselves to supply a fixed number of workmen to be employed on the cathedral; in this way they acquired complete freedom from all other burdens for themselves and their community. It is amusing to note that our judges, being also landowners, objected to this measure as a form of slavery!
One estate which Vitberg wished to buy belonged to my father. It lay on the bank of the Moscow River; stone had been found there, and Vitberg got leave from my father to make a geological inspection, in order to determine how much stone there was. After obtaining leave, Vitberg had to go off to Petersburg.
Three months later my father learned that the quarrying operations were being carried out on a great scale, and that the peasants’ cornfields were buried under blocks of stone. His protests were not listened to, and he went to law. There was a stubborn contest. The defendants tried at first to throw all the blame on Vitberg, but, unfortunately for them, it turned out that he had given no orders whatever, and that the Commission had done the whole thing during his absence.
The case was referred to the Supreme Court, which surprised everyone by coming to a fairly reasonable decision. The stone which had been quarried was to belong to the landowner, as compensation for the injury to his fields; the Crown funds spent on the work were to be repaid, to the amount of 100,000 roubles, by those who had signed the contract for the work. The signatories were Prince Golitsyn, the Archbishop, and Kushnikov. Of course there was a great outcry, and the matter was referred to the Tsar.
The Tsar ordered that the payment should not be exacted, because—as he wrote with his own hand—“the members of the Commission did not know what they were signing”! This is actually printed in the journals of the Supreme Court. Even if the Archbishop was bound by his cloth to display humility, what are we to think of the other two magnates who accepted the Tsar’s generosity under such conditions?
But where was the money to be found? Crown property, we are told, can neither be burnt by fire nor drowned in water—it can only be stolen, we might add. Without hesitation a general of the Staff was sent in haste to Moscow to clear matters up.
He did so, restored order, and settled everything in the course of a few days. The stone was to be taken from the landowner, to defray the expenses of the quarry, though, if the landowner wished to keep the stone, he might do so on payment of 100,000 roubles. The landowner was not to receive special compensation, because the value of his property had been increased by the discovery of a new source of wealth (that is really a noble touch!)—but a certain law of Peter the Great’s sanctioned the payment of so many kopecks an acre for the damage done to the peasants’ fields.
The real sufferer was my father. It is hardly necessary to add that this business of the stone quarry figured after all among the charges brought against Vitberg at his trial.