Siberia To-Day

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

But when I asked him to name some of the works of these writers that he had read, he pushed back his cap and scratched his head with a ponderous paw. He could not remember the titles—but he had read all their works. But he was utterly ignorant of anything Tolstoy or Gorky had written—he merely recognized the titles when they were mentioned.

He changed the subject by asserting that we Americans wanted all Russians to agree on a government, when we Americans could not agree on our own. I agreed that there were some differences of opinion as to government in our country, but that in general we agreed fairly well.

“Then why do you have so many presidents?” he asked in triumph.

“We try to have but one,” I said.

“You have more than fifteen now,” he replied, and dug his elbow into the ribs of a brakeman sitting behind him, to indicate that he had made a point which I could not refute.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“I cannot remember their names,” he asserted, but holding up a hand, he began to count on his fingers: “You have presidents in Brazil, Argentine, Chile, Mexico, ——.” The Czechs interrupted him with roars of laughter, and Werkstein explained to me. But he insisted that he was right.

He switched to a map of his own country, a lithograph advertising American harvesting machinery, and showing by red spots the size of a dime, the location in Russian cities of their agencies. Naturally, the spot over Petrograd was as large as the spots on the smaller cities in the grain districts of Siberia, but he proudly asserted that all these spots represented cities the size of Petrograd. No, he had never been to Petrograd, but was it not as big as Harbin?

India, he said, was somewhere near Japan. He had read of Venice, and its streets of water, but Venice was not in Italy. How could it be in Italy? Venice was somewhere in Europe, and Italy was not in Europe—the book he had read about Venice had stated that Venice was not in Italy, and he stuck by the book.

This man was educated to his fellows. “If this man should go to a small Russian town, and read from a newspaper for the people of that town, he could become mayor,” said Werkstein. “He is so ignorant that he thinks he knows a lot.” Which is not an uncommon delusion, even out of Siberia.