When one considers that all this work is done by hand—the planting, plowing, reaping, threshing, etc., in the majority of cases by home made instruments, it is really a more remarkable thing that the Russian peasant accomplishes so much in such a short space of time. About the end of September, however, the field labor is finished and on the first day of October the harvest festival begins. At this particular season of the year our troops on the Vaga river were operating far below Shenkursk in the vicinity of Rovdinskaya and it was our good fortune to witness a typical parish fete—celebrated in true Russian style. While it is true during the winter months that the peasant lives a very, frugal and simple life, it is not in my opinion on account of his desire so to do but more a matter of necessity. During the harvest festivals the principal occupation of the peasant seems to be that of eating and drinking. In each household large quantities of braga or home brewed beer is prepared and a plentiful supply of meat pies are constantly on hand. There is also another delectable dish, which I am sure did not appeal to our troops to the fullest extent. It was a kind of pie composed of cabbage and salt fish, but unless one was quite accustomed to the odor, he could not summon up sufficient courage to attack this viand. It, however, was a very popular dish among the peasants.
After a week or so of this preparation the fete day finally arrives and the morning finds the entire village attending a long service in the village church. All are dressed in their very best and the finest linens and brightest colors are very much in evidence. After the service they repair to their different homes—of course many of the poorer ones go to the homes of the more well to do where they are very hospitably received and entertained. All sit down to a common table and the eating begins. I attended a dinner in a well-to-do peasant’s house that day and before the meal was one-third through I was ready to desist. The landlord was very much displeased and I was informed confidentially by one of the Russian officers who had invited me that the landlord would take great offense at the first to give up the contest—and that as a matter of fact instead of being a sign of poor breeding, on the contrary it was considered quite the thing to stuff one’s self until he could eat no more. As the meal progressed great bowls of braga and now and then a glass of vodka were brought in to help along the repast. After an almost interminable time the guests all rose in a body and facing the icon crossed themselves—then bowing to the host—made certain remarks which I afterward found out meant, “Thanks for your bread and salt”—to which the host replied, “Do not be displeased, sit down once more for goodluck,” whereupon all hands fell to again and had it not been for a mounted messenger galloping in with important messages, I am of the opinion that we would probably have spent the balance of the day trying not to displease our host.
If the Russian peasant’s food were always as good and plentiful as at this season of the year, he would have little reason to complain, but this is by no means the case. Beef, mutton, pork and the like are entirely too expensive to be considered as a common article of food and consequently the average peasant is more or less of a vegetarian, living on cabbage, cabbage soup, potatoes, turnips and black bread the entire winter—varied now and then with a portion of salt fish.
From the festival time until the following spring there is no possibility of doing any agricultural work for the ground is as hard as iron and covered with snow. The male peasants do very little work during these winter months and spend most of their time lying idly upon the huge brick stoves. Some of them, it is true, have some handicraft that occupies their winter hours; others will take their guns and a little parcel of provisions and wander about in the trackless forests for days at a time. If successful, he may bring home a number of valuable skins—such as ermine, fox and the like. Sometimes a number of them associate for the purpose of deep sea fishing, in which case they usually start out on foot for Kem on the shores of the White Sea or for the far away Kola on the Murmansk Coast. Here they must charter a boat and often times after a month or two of this fishing they will be in debt to the boat owner and are forced to return with an empty pocket. While we were there we gave them all plenty to do—village after village being occupied in the grim task of making barb wire entanglements, etc., building block houses, hauling logs, and driving convoys. This was of course quite outside their usual occupation and I am of the impression that they were none to favorably impressed—perhaps some of them are explaining to the Bolo Commissars just how they happened to be engaged in these particular pursuits.
For the female part of the population, however, the winter is a very busy and well occupied time. For it is during these long months that the spinning and weaving is done and cloth manufactured for clothing and other purposes. Many of them are otherwise engaged in plaiting a kind of rude shoe—called lapty, which is worn throughout the summer by a great number of the peasants—and I have seen some of them worn in extremely cold weather with heavy stockings and rags wrapped around the feet. This was probably due to the fact, however, that leather shoes and boots were almost a thing of the past at that time, for it must be remembered that Russia had been practically shut off from the rest of the world for almost four years during the period of the war. The evenings are often devoted to besedys—a kind of ladies’ guild meeting, where all assemble and engage in talking over village gossip, playing games and other innocent amusements, or spinning thread from flax.
Before closing this chapter, I wish to comment upon an article that I read some months ago regarding what the writer thought to be a surprising abundance of evidence disproving the common idea of illiteracy among the Russian peasants. It is admitted that the peasants of this region are above the average in the way of education and ability, but as I have later learned they are not an average type of the millions of peasants located in the interior and the south of Russia, whose fathers and forefathers and many of themselves spent the greater part of their lives as serfs. While the peasants of this region nominally may have come under the heading of serfs, yet when they were first driven into this country for the purpose of colonization and settlement by Peter the Great, they were given far greater liberties than any of the peasants of the south enjoyed. They were settled on State domains and those that lived on the land of landlords scarcely ever realized the fact, inasmuch as few of the landed aristocracy ever spent any portion of their time in the province of Archangel unless compelled to do so. In addition to this liberty and freedom, there was also the stimulating effect of the cold, rigorous climate and therefore it is more readily understood why the peasants of this region are more energetic, more intelligent, more independent and better educated than the inhabitants of the interior to the south.
After becoming somewhat acquainted with the family life of the peasantry, and no one living with them as intimately as we did, could have failed to have become more than ordinarily acquainted, we turned our attention to the local village government or so-called Mir. We had early learned that the chief personage in a Russian village was the starosta, or village elder, and that all important communal affairs were regulated by the Selski Skhod or village assembly. We were also well acquainted with the fact that the land in the vicinity of the village belonged to the commune, and was distributed periodically among the members in such a way that every able bodied man possessed a share sufficient for his maintenance, or nearly so. Beyond this, however, few of us knew little or nothing more. We were fortunate in having with us a great number of Russian born men, who of course were our interpreters, one of whom, by the way, Private Cwenk, was killed on January 19th, 1919, in the attack of Nijni Gora when he refused to quit his post, though mortally injured, until it was too late for him to make his escape.
Through continual conversations and various transactions with the peasants (carried on of course through our interpreters) the writer gradually learned much of the village communal life. While at first glance there are many points of similarity between the family life and the village life, yet there are also many points of difference which will be more apparent as we continue. In both, there is a chief or ruler, one called the khozain or head of the house and the other as above indicated, the starosta or village elder. In both cases too there is a certain amount of common property and a common responsibility. On the other hand, the mutual relations are far from being so closely interwoven as in the case of the household.
From these brief remarks it will be readily apparent that a Russian village is quite a different thing from a provincial town or village in America. While it is true in a sense that in our villages the citizens are bound together in certain interests of the community, yet each family, outside of a few individual friends, is more or less isolated from the rest of the community—each family having little to interest it in the affairs of the other. In a Russian village, however, such a state of indifference and isolation is quite impossible. The heads of households must often meet together and consult in the village assembly and their daily duties and occupations are controlled by the communal decrees. The individual cannot begin to mow the hay or plough the fields until the assembly has decided the time for all to begin. If one becomes a shirker or drunkard everyone in the village has a right to complain and see that the matter is at once taken care of, not so much out of interest for the welfare of the shirker, but from the plain selfish motive that all the families are collectively responsible for his taxes and also the fact that he is entitled to a share in the communal harvest, which unless he does his share of the work, is taken from the common property of the whole.
As heretofore stated on another page of this book, the land belonging to each village is distributed among the individual families and for which each is responsible. It might be of interest to know how this distribution is made. In certain communities the old-fashioned method of simply taking a census and distributing the property according to same is still in use. This in a great many instances is quite unfair and works a great hardship—where often the head of the household is a widow with perhaps four or five girls on her hands and possibly one boy. Obviously, she cannot hope to do as much as her neighbor, who, perhaps, in addition to the father, may have three or four well-grown boys to assist him. It might be logically suggested, then, that the widow could rent the balance of her share of the land and thus take care of same. If land were in demand in Russia, especially in the Archangel region, as it is in the farming communities of this country, it might be a simple matter—but in Russia often the possession of a share of land is quite often not a privilege but a decided hardship. Often the land is so poor that it cannot be rented at any price, and in the old days it was quite often the case that even though it could be rented, the rent would not be sufficient to pay the taxes on same. Therefore, each family is quite well satisfied with his share of the land and is not looking for more trouble and labor if they can avoid it, and at the assembly meetings, when the land is distributed each year, it is amusing to hear the thousand-and-one excuses for not taking more land, as the following brief description will illustrate.