Sport in the Crimea and Caucasus

by Clive Phillipps-Wolley

It is a pitiful thing to see all this useful land untilled, and all the peasantry and the country itself so poor. My friend the Russian telegraph clerk told me a few more reasons besides the perpetual ‘prasnik’ for the want of agricultural energy and success in the Caucasus. The very abundance of land is an evil to the short-sighted Russian peasant. Here in the Caucasus I am told every ‘soul’ (the Russian phrase for every male subject) is allowed sixteen dissatines (acres) free of charge, and he may choose his land pretty well where he likes. The result is, the moujik argues with himself pretty much after this fashion: ‘In this particular spot where my cottage is, my corn won’t grow well, elsewhere it would grow better, and in a third place another crop would find a fitter soil.’ So on this principle of not trusting all his ventures to one bottom, he takes a few dissatines here and another few ten versts off, and still more beyond. In this way he wastes an infinite amount of time in making perhaps a threshing floor at each different farm, or in conveying the crop from one farm to another to be threshed. Add to this that water has often to be fetched from afar, that his tools are of the rudest, and that his men are, even if all were workers even in the English sense, far too small for the acreage, and you have some reasons for the want of that agricultural wealth which Russia ought to possess. It seems the greater pity, since the moujik is such a frugal, hard-living man, and barring vodka and ‘prasniks’ might do wonders. He can turn his hand to anything, is always cheerful, and almost his only glaring vice is drunkenness. A peasant family here, I am assured, will live in what is to them comfort, food and clothes and all included, for from eighteen to twenty roubles a head, i.e. from 2l. to 2l. 5.s., per annum. But then we must bear in mind that meat is a thing a Russian peasant rarely eats. In spring black bread and an onion; in summer black bread and arboose (water-melon); in winter black bread and cabbage soup, with a dry fish now and again as a bonne bouche, suffice for his simple wants. Then, too, his liquor is infinitely cheaper than that of our beer-drinking peasantry. For three copecks (about a penny) he can get nearly half an English tumbler of the abominable neat rye spirit, in which he delights, and some of them will even drink spirits of wine and petroleum, which, I presume, is even cheaper than vodka.

The proprietor of the oil-wells at Tcheerilek, Mr. Peters—since, I regret to say, dead—has himself told me that some men working on his estate thought as little of tossing off a ‘stakan’ (small tumbler) of petroleum as I would of drinking the like quantity of Bass. In addition to these things, the moujik’s clothes are as simple and inexpensive as his diet: in winter a toga of sheepskin, with the woolly side in, a scarf round his waist and sheepskin hat on his head, a pair of long boots that cost him more than all the rest of his outfit, but are unrivalled for their long wearing qualities; in summer a calico shirt; and summer and winter you may see his wife and brats going about, in snow or sunshine, with nothing but a single linen garment between them and the weather. His winter outfit is perhaps a trifle costly, as compared to the rest of his expenditure, but then it is wonderful how long one suit of clothes will last a moujik; and like a wise man he always prefers old clothes to new, so long as they will hold together.

With such a thrifty peasantry, and so much valuable land, surely better results might be obtained.

I believe that the whole of the misery of Russia, her political discontent, her Nihilism, and the foul crimes of which it has been the cause, are due, not to the autocratic form of government under which she exists, and to which, in spite of the outcry of the few, the majority of Russians are firmly wedded, but to the utter want of religious training amongst all classes, and to that widespread corruption in the official world, from which all who come in contact with it suffer continually. Were there less compulsory military service, more religious training, greater encouragement given to agriculture, and more inducements held out to foreigners to settle in the waste places of Russia’s vast empire, so that by their example they might teach her own people how to make the best of the natural advantages they enjoy, there might then be a chance of happiness and prosperity for Russia and her people.

There is in every Russian moujik an inherent love of the Czar, a personal loyalty to him, which deifies and renders its object infallible in the eyes of his subjects, and this takes much to eradicate. Could this feeling be fostered rather than destroyed by the injustices of petty provincial officials, who to the peasant are the only direct representatives of the supreme power, regicide and revolution would be things unknown.

The only complaint I ever heard from peasant lips in Russia of the Great White Czar was, he is too far off, he is deaf, our voices cannot reach him through the crowd of rascals who hedge him in.

To-day I myself was destined to dine on peasants’ fare; and though the bread was black and damp, it was wholesome, and hunger gave the meal the only sauce it needed. My night was passed on a wooden sofa at Tumerūk, with my pointer for a pillow, a style of repose that at least ensured early rising.

At 5 a.m. I was in the market chaffering with the peasant women for supplies for the journey. Ikra (fresh caviare) was nearly two shillings a pound, and fresh butter tenpence. It is one of the unpleasant characteristics of the Russian tradesman that you must always bargain with him for the merest trifle. It is only fair to say for him that it is the fault rather of his customers than himself; for in Kertch, where we were known, the tradesmen, knowing that the English residents did not care to haggle about a bargain, would ask the price they meant to accept in the first instance, instead of adding on an extra charge to be gradually taken off to please the customer.

Whilst waiting in the post-station for my horses to be put to, I chanced on the following passage in a Russian book of travels, by one Ivan Goutcharoff, which I have taken the liberty of translating for the benefit of my readers. Speaking of his sojourn in England, he says: ‘I did not make the acquaintance of any families, so that I only saw the women in the churches, shops, opera-boxes, streets, &c., so that I can only say (and that to prevent your being offended at me for neglecting this subject) that they are very beautiful, well built, and of a wondrous complexion, though they eat much meat and sweets and drink strong wine. Yet in other nations you will not find so much beauty as among the masses in England. Don’t judge of English beauty (as Russians too often do) by the red-haired gentlemen and dames who come out from England under the name of skippers, machinists, tutors, and governesses, above all governesses. That would be a grand mistake. Beautiful women don’t leave England for this. Beauty is capital. Women as a race are worth nothing in England if they have not some special talent. One foreign language or accomplishment for children is no great thing, so it only remains to go to Russia. The greater part of Englishwomen are tall, well built, rather proud and calm; according to many even cold. The colour of their hair is of never-ending variety.’ Such appears to be the judgment of one who evidently believed himself a connoisseur, and had had, moreover, an opportunity of studying the far-famed Circassian belles in their own land.

These Russian post-stations grow worse and worse; what may be the acme of evil at which I shall arrive before I reach the Caspian, I dare not fancy. They are bare of all save a wooden couch; no carpets, no provisions, no anything, except the thirstiest of what Mark Twain calls ‘seaside chamois.’ We passed to-day a Cossack village on the border of a large lake surrounded by ‘kamish’ jungles, said to be the scene of a strange tragedy in the Russo-Tscherkess war. ‘A band of Tscherkess warriors here met a party of Cossacks, who utterly routed them, and the wretched natives took refuge in the depths of the ‘kamish’ jungles. Here they stayed till nightfall, when the myriads of venomous mosquitoes, which make their home amongst these reeds, drove them out, preferring death at the hands of the Cossacks to slow torture from their insect foes.’ This is only a tradition, my authority my yemstchik; but from what I have seen of these pests myself, I have little doubt of its truth.