Siberia To-Day

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

“But the people suffered under that régime,” I said.

She looked at me with surprised eyes.

“Suffered! They were never so happy, and they will never be so happy again. They do not know what they want. I went into a refugee barrack last month outside Vladivostok, and found there an old woman who had been one of our servants for years. She was afraid to speak to me—afraid that I would be marked as one of the aristocracy, and probably suffer for it. But I talked with her—and how she wished that she were back in our happy home. She knows she was better off with us in the old days, than she can ever hope to be again. She would have lived a few more years in peace and comfort as our servant, and wanted nothing. Now she will probably have to live and die as a beggar. The poor people suffer more by this than the wealthy do—even if a few rich people are killed, and their property taken. My Russia was all right, as it was. And if I don’t find my father and mother, I am going to South America.”

As an individual attitude, the expressions of this young woman might not be regarded of much value, or at all typical of the well educated Russian. Yet I found her ideas to be general with all the better class Russians I met—that Russia under the old régime was an ideal country, and that the peasant and servant classes were as happy as they wished to be, and better off than they would be if they lived under a democratic form of government which gave them all a hand in the government.

It is an attitude similar to that held in the South regarding our negro slaves—they were better off as slaves, than they could be if free. It is a feudal frame of mind, in which it is granted that there are two classes of people in the country, those who know all and have all, and those who are inherently inferior in brain quality and so require to be held in leash, giving their labor in exchange for such kindnesses as the over-lord wishes to dispense to them.

This mental attitude toward an inferior class, held by the upper class of Russia, accounts for the American failure, generally speaking, to understand Russia and the Russians. We persist in thinking of all Russians as the same, with the exception that some are better educated than the others, when as a matter of fact there are two different peoples in Russia. One is a class which expects as a matter of course to have all the best things which the country provides, and the government is merely a system upon which hangs a social code, and which gives out orders, titles of nobility, and administrative positions which provide incomes.

In a way, the feudal attitude in old Russia was the proper one, provided the ideal feudal system was carried out; that is, if the over-lords all used their power to lift up such of their menials as gave evidence of being possessed of some mental ability.

But the feudal system as it operated, granted no mental ability to any underling, or “low-born” person, and worked with no other object than to keep the low-born submerged, and lift to power and position even worthless members of the upper class.

The son of the noble who could not pass his examinations, graduated from the university and despite profligacy and licentiousness, rose to power in the government.

The commoner, though displaying great brilliance, found himself unable to pass in his examinations year after year if he ever entered the university at all, and had to give up in despair. But in the arts, genius succeeded, and produced authors and painters—and the result was that all writers of great natural ability became revolutionists.