Siberia To-Day

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

Through them we got our sympathy for the peasants, and as these writers understood that the lower classes were victimized and exploited by the system, they presented to us all Russians as people of great ideals—they extolled the virtues of the exploited and minimized their faults and limitations. At the same time, they depicted with great power all the cruelties of the ruling classes.

Thus the Russian peasant reasoned that he had no faults, that if he had the power he could produce an ideal government, and that because the ruling classes ruled badly, all that was needed to run the nation was a kind and generous heart. Thus also the Bolshevist leaders found it easy to take the Empire into their hands. The upper class of Russia made Bolshevism possible by keeping the lower class ignorant. And ignorance is the greatest menace to any nation—the spark in a powder magazine.

As we went eastward, I studied the people, keeping in mind the attitude of the young woman who felt that Russia was ruined because all the good things she had known were gone, and because the peasants were worse off than ever.

And I found that the peasants did not consider themselves any the worse for having destroyed the old régime; at least, they seemed willing to endure the hardships they had imposed upon themselves, in the hope that in due time things would be better.

But my feeling was that they will never live to see things bettered, no matter how long they may live. There may be less disorder of a kind, but I doubt if these people will ever escape being exploited till they have acquired a leaven of education. But to educate them in the sense by which we define education, means to change their whole mental attitude toward themselves, their country, and life in general.

To the Russian of the lower class, who has been inarticulate for generations, there are no degrees of education. He does not realize that among a thousand persons who have, say, graduated from a university in the same class, all members of which have taken the same courses of study, there is any variation of intellect, and difference in ability, any deeper sense of meanings of things in one individual than in another. Why should there be? he asks. Are they not all educated? He thinks of education, as a certain moment in which the student becomes aware of all knowledge, and acquires all wisdom. And to the primitive minds of these people, “education” means the ability to read, write, and figure.

At one station where we changed train crews, a big fellow, with a gigantic wooly cap, came into our car and sat by the stove. His assistants paid him much deference. He began to talk with the Czechs, and once set going, went on like a great phonograph. The Czechs finally ignored him, and he began to question Werkstein, my interpreter. Werkstein had difficulty in concealing his amusement at some of the things the big fellow said, and I got into the conversation.

“This chap is educated,” said Werkstein. “That is why the provodnik and the brakeman sit here and listen to him talk—they feel that they are learning something. They almost worship him because he can tell them things he has read in books.”

“What books has he read?” I asked. “Gorky, Puskin, Tolstoy?”

The conductor threw up his hands in a delirium of joy as he heard me pronounce the names of the Russian novelists. Now he could show his fellows that he could talk to the American on common ground.