The dawn in Russia

by Henry Woodd Nevinson

It was all a fine piece of self-reserve, for inwardly their mood was serious and apprehensive. They had just heard that the country-house of a friend and neighbour had been burnt to the ground by his peasants, though the family had escaped with their lives. One of the ladies had a son in the army, and they had just heard of a terrible riot and mutiny in his garrison town. Another lady’s son had married a rich heiress, and they had just heard that the three country residences of her parents had been utterly destroyed by the peasants, and now she was rich no more. From every side came tales of loss and danger, and no one could say what the end would be.

For themselves, they were just waiting helplessly to see what would happen. Polite, charming, highly educated, well dressed, healthy, fond of sport and country life, full of good will and high intentions, they were so like our own country squires and aristocracy at their best—so like the people who used to be held up to us as the school of manners and the producers of the fine old English stock—that only the dreariest of Social Democrats could have refused them sympathy. They were themselves fairly conscious of the absurdities in their own position, but the only protest or complaint that they made was to say they were getting a little tired of perpetual parallels between themselves and the aristocrats of the French Revolution, whose heads were cut off so rapidly.

In the afternoon my sledge took me further into the unlimited and desolate country, till at last we came to a village fairly typical of that district—not a rich part of Russia nor yet so starving poor as the famine provinces which lay close by it. The village was built in one long street, with about forty separated cottages on each side. A few of the cottages had bits of brick in the walls or round the windows, but wood was almost the only building material, and the roofs, though sometimes of flat iron plates, painted green, were generally thatched. In this particular village there was no school and no church, but from the high ground above it I could see a church about two miles off, and that, no doubt, was near enough. There were two shops and an inn, all just like the other cottages. Each house had a separate wattle shed near it, for fodder, stores, and perhaps to shelter the beasts in summer. In winter they have to be brought into the dwelling-house for warmth.

By the invitation of a peasant I went into his cottage. The man was rather above the ordinary type, being tall and straight. But he had the thoughtful and quiet look of the average peasant, as well as the long, dark hair and shaggy appearance. His wife was quite the usual woman—short, ungainly, and possessing no visible beauty except, perhaps, patience. On the faces of both was the green look of hunger, almost invariable in the peasants I have seen. The outside door of the house opened into the cattle-room, where a sickly cow was dragging out the winter. There was room for a horse, but the people had been obliged to sell their horse that autumn to pay the taxes and their debts to the Koulak or village usurer. From the Koulak, too, I suppose, they would borrow the money to hire another horse in the summer, as they said they intended. For no peasant can get through his work without a horse.

A wooden partition separated the cattle from the dwelling-room, the house being designed exactly like an Irish cabin, except that the white brick construction of the stove projected on both sides of the partition, thus warming the cow and the family both. As every one knows, the peasant’s stove is a large and wonderful edifice, full of mysterious holes and caverns for cooking and baking, and even for the dry roasting process which serves the family as a bath. Close beside it were two broad, wooden shelves on which the inmates slept—the parents above, the five children underneath. There was no bedding of any kind, except one worn coverlet or shawl on each shelf.

The children had made their shelf into a day-nursery as well as a bed, for they were all rolling about on it and biting each other, imagining a game of wolf, I think, though wolves are not common there. All were bare-legged, and quite naked but for loose red shirts reaching to their knees. Of course, they went out sometimes, but there were not enough clothes to send them all out together at once in winter. The furniture of the home was a wooden box, which was the seat of honour, a short bench, a table, and a small wooden loom, on the universal model of primitive manufacture. Both man and woman could weave, and they were making yards of a coarse stuff dyed with red madder, exactly the same as the women make for their petticoats on Achill Island.

Probably the loom brought in an important part of the family’s income, for the sale of the horse showed that they could not live off the land alone. Yet the man boasted that his bit of land, on which he grew potatoes, oats, and rye, was his absolute property, and when I tried to ask him whether the village community did not redistribute his land with the rest every twelve years, as I had read in books, he became very violent and showed no scientific interest at all in the sociological importance of the Mir. The working of the Mir was the only thing I thought I did understand when I came to Russia, and it was disconcerting to find that the first peasant I spoke to had never heard of such an arrangement. I still do not know what mistake he or I can have made. He may have been only insisting on the peasant’s touching faith that the land is the natural possession of the man who cultivates it, and can never be taken from him, even by the Tsar. Anyhow, he was terribly afraid that I had come to shake that belief in some way, and I thought it best to turn the conversation to the cow.

As to the Tsar’s recent promise to remit next year half the annual payment still due to the Treasury for the original purchase of the land, this peasant, in common, I believe, with all others, thought nothing of it. To them the manifesto was so much “dirty paper.” They knew very well that even if half were remitted, the Crown agents would come down upon them for arrears. They also knew dimly that since the liberation of the serfs more than forty years ago, the peasants have paid the extreme value of the land twice over. So they have ceased to concern themselves about any manifesto which does not surrender to them the mass of land which they regard as rightfully theirs.

While I was in the cottage, an old man came up with a canvas bag over his shoulder, and knocked at the door. Though obviously in the sink of poverty, he was not a professional beggar, but only one of that large class of peasants who are driven by age or misfortune to go round the villages and ask for scraps to keep them alive till better times. Accordingly he came in as if for a friendly call, laid his bag on the table with its mouth open, and joined in the conversation. When we were going out again, the woman slipped some squares of black bread into the bag as though by stealth, and he took it up and walked off without further remark on either side. It was the perfection both of appeal and kindliness.