Two years afterwards, when the Crown Prince was passing through the district, these peasants presented a petition, and he ordered the matter to be examined. It was at this point that I had to draw up a report of all the proceedings. Whether anything sensible was done in consequence of this fresh investigation, I do not know. I have heard that the exiles were restored, but I never heard that the land had been given back.
§13
In the next place I shall refer to the famous episode of the “potato-rebellion.”
In Russia, as formerly throughout Europe, the peasants were unwilling to grow potatoes, from an instinctive feeling that potatoes are poor food and not productive of health and strength. Model landlords, however, and many Crown settlements used to grow these tubers long before the “potato revolt.”
In the Government of Kazán and part of Vyatka, the people had grown a crop of potatoes. When the tubers were taken up, it occurred to the Board of Agriculture to start communal pits for storing them. The pits were authorised, ordered, and constructed; and in the beginning of winter the peasants, with many misgivings, carted their potatoes to the communal pits. But they positively refused, when they were required in the spring to plant these same potatoes in a frozen condition. What, indeed, can be more insulting to labouring men than to bid them do what is obviously absurd? But their protest was represented as a rebellion. The minister despatched an official from Petersburg; and this intelligent and practical man excused the farmers of the first district he visited from planting the frozen potatoes, and charged for this dispensation one rouble per head. He repeated this operation in two other districts; but the men of the fourth district flatly refused either to plant the potatoes or to pay the money. “You have excused the others,” they said; “you are clearly bound to let us off too.” The official then tried to end the business by threats and corporal punishment; but the peasants armed themselves with poles and routed the police. The Governor sent a force of Cossacks to the spot; and the neighbouring districts backed up the rebels.
It is enough to say that cannon roared and rifles cracked before the affair was over. The peasants took to the woods and were routed out of their covert like wild animals by the Cossacks. They were caught, chained, and sent to Kosmodemyansk to be tried by court-martial.
By a strange chance there was a simple, honest man, an old major of militia, serving on the court-martial; and he ventured to say that the official from Petersburg was to blame for all that had happened. But everyone promptly fell on the top of him and squashed him and suppressed him; they tried to frighten him and said he ought to be ashamed of his attempt “to ruin an innocent man.”
The enquiry went on just as enquiries do in Russia: the peasants were flogged on examination, flogged as a punishment, flogged as an example, and flogged to get money out of them; and then a number of them were exiled to Siberia.
It is worthy of remark that the Minister passed through Kosmodemyansk during the trial. One thinks he might have looked in at the court-martial himself or summoned the dangerous major to an interview. He did nothing of the kind.
The famous Turgot,[[104]] knowing how unpopular the potato was in France, distributed seed-potatoes to a number of dealers and persons in Government employ, with strict orders that the peasants were to have none. But at the same time he let them know privately that the peasants were not to be prevented from helping themselves. The result was that in a few years potatoes were grown all over the country.