From North Pole to Equator: Studies of Wild Life and Scenes in Many Lands

by Alfred Edmund Brehm

From the time that the Altai was declared the property of the Czar, the lot of its inhabitants was comparatively fortunate, not to say happy. Until their release from serfdom, they had all been employed either in mining, or in some work connected therewith. Those who were not actually in the mines were occupied, some with the felling and charring of trees, others with conveying of the charcoal to the smelting-houses, and others again with the transport of the metal. With the increase of the population the burden of compulsory service became lighter. In the fifties, there were so many able-bodied men available, that the compulsory service to their lord, the Czar, was limited to one month in the year, with the condition, however, that each serf-workman should furnish a horse. The distance which a workman had to cover with his horse was taken into account according to its length. As compensation for absence from home, each serf-workman received 75½ kopeks for the period of his work, but, in addition to this nominal pay, he had the right to cultivate as much of the Czar’s land as he could, and to till it as he pleased, as well as to cut down as much wood in the Czar’s forests as he required for building his house, and for fuel, and he was burdened with no taxes or tribute whatever. The number of workmen which a village was obliged to furnish was in proportion to the number of its inhabitants; the distribution of the burden of service among the different heads of families was left to the members of the community themselves.

The work of the miners was less easy. They were drawn from the towns and villages of the crown-estate, instead of the soldiers levied elsewhere, were treated like soldiers in every respect, and were only freed after twenty-five years of service. They were divided into two classes: the miners proper, who worked in regular relays, and the workers connected with the mine, who were obliged to perform a certain prescribed amount of work each year, the time being left to their own choice. The latter were engaged in charcoal-burning, felling trees, making bricks, transport, and the like, and they received 14 roubles yearly. Having yielded the required service, they were free for the rest of the year, and might do as they pleased. Those who worked in the mines, on the other hand, were compelled to give their services year in, year out. They worked in twelve-hour relays, one week by day, the next by night, and every third week they were free. Each miner received, according to his capability, from six to twelve roubles a year for such necessaries as had to be paid for in money, but in addition he was allowed two pood (72 lbs.) of flour a month for himself, two pood for his wife, and one pood for each of his children. He was also at liberty to till as much land, and breed and keep as many cattle as he could. Each of his sons was obliged to attend school from his seventh to his twelfth year; from his twelfth to his eighteenth he was engaged as an apprentice, and rewarded at first with one, later with two roubles a year. At the age of eighteen his compulsory service in the mines began.

On the first of March, 1861, the day of the emancipation of all the serfs in the Russian Empire, there were in the crown property of the Altai 145,639 males, of whom 25,267 were at work in the mines or smelting works. All these were released from their compulsory service, not indeed in a single day, but within two years. No fewer than 12,626 of them forsook the mines, returned to their native villages and began to till the soil; the rest remained in the mines as hired labourers.

Fig. 74.—Miners in the Altai returning from Work.

I do not think I am mistaken in referring the more comfortable conditions of life on the crown-property of the Altai, as compared with the rest of West Siberia, back to its own past. The parents and forefathers of the present inhabitants, notwithstanding their bondage, never felt oppressed. They were serfs, but of the lord and ruler of the vast land in which the cradle of their fathers stood. They were obliged to labour for their master, and to yield up their sons for nearly a generation to his service; but this master was the Czar, a being in their eyes almost divine. In return, the Czar maintained them, freed them from all the obligations of citizenship, permitted them to wrest from his land what it would yield, placed no hindrances in the way of their prosperity, protected them, as far as possible, from the oppressions of unjust officials, and was, besides, a benefactor to their children in that he compelled at least some of them to attend school. The officials under whose superintendence they were, stood far above the majority of the servants of the crown as regards culture; nearly all had studied in Germany, not a few were even of German extraction, and brought, if not German customs, at least widened views into the country over which they ruled in the name of the Czar. Even now, Barnaul, the capital of the crown-lands, is a centre of culture such as can be found nowhere else in Siberia; and, while the mining industry was at its best, it was the undisputed intellectual capital of Northern and Central Asia, and the light emanating from it shone the more brilliantly because it found in every mining centre a focus which helped to spread it more widely. Thus the royal domain of the Altai has always held a prominent position among the districts of Siberia.

It was probably never the intention of the administration of the Altai to specially favour the peasant class. Until the suppression of serfdom, at all events, the class was regarded much as a necessary adjunct to the working of the mines. But times have changed. From the day on which the serfs were emancipated, mining has retrograded as steadily as agriculture has advanced. The authorities have not yet been able to make up their minds to abandon the old routine of work, but they have to pay such high sums to get it carried on that the net profit from the mines is now inconsiderable. Throwing open the mines freely to energetic workers, probably the only thorough means of improving the present state of things, has been proposed in some districts, but is still far from being an accomplished fact. The free use of the soil, as far as the plough penetrates, has been customary so long that it has become, to a certain extent, a prescriptive right. To be sure, as I have already pointed out, no one owns the land he tills, not even the spot on which his house stands, but, in the peasants’ eyes, what belongs to the Czar belongs to the “good Lord God”, and the latter willingly permits every believer to make use of it. As a matter of fact, the administration of the crown-lands levies forty kopeks of annual rent on every hektar of land (2½ acres) which is brought under the plough; but it is not particularly strict in the matter, and the peasant on his side does not feel it at all incumbent on him to be very precise. Thus each peasant, in reality, cultivates as much as he can, and chooses it wherever he pleases.

It is doing the peasant of to-day on the crown-lands no more than justice to describe him as well-built, wide-awake, handy, skilful, intelligent, hospitable, good-natured and warm-hearted, and it is not too much to say that his prosperity has given him considerable self-esteem and a certain appreciation of freedom. His bearing is freer and less depressed than that of the Russian peasants. He is polite and obliging, submissive, and therefore easily managed; but he is not servile, cringing or abject, and the impression he makes on a stranger is by no means unfavourable. But he possesses all the qualities which we call loutishness in a high degree, and several others as well, which are calculated to weaken the first impression. Although he has had more educational advantages than any others of his class in Siberia, he is anything but in love with school. He is strictly religious and ready to give up what he possesses to the Church, but he looks upon school as an institution which spoils men rather than educates them. With a lasting recollection of a former state of things, when the old discharged soldiers, who held the educational sceptre in the times of his fathers, did not scruple to send the scholars for “schnaps”, and even to maltreat them while under its influence, he is exceedingly suspicious of everything connected with “education”. He also clings, peasant-like, to whatever has been in the past, and imagines that more knowledge than he himself possesses will be injurious to his children, and it is by no means easy to convert him from this opinion. The state of education is thus very low. It is only exceptionally that he has acquired the art of writing, and he invariably regards books as entirely superfluous articles. But he clings, on that account, so much the more firmly to the superstition which his Church countenances and promulgates. He rarely knows the names of the months, but can always tell off the names of the saints and their festivals on his fingers: God and the saints, archangel and devil, death, heaven, and hell occupy his mind more than all else. He cannot be described as easily satisfied, yet he is perfectly contented. He does not wish for more than the necessaries of life, and therefore only works as much as he absolutely must. But neither his farm premises nor the fields which he calls his can be too large, neither his family nor his flock too numerous.

“How is it with you here?” I asked, through an interpreter, one of the heads of a village whom we picked up on the way.

“God still bears with our sins,” was the answer.