During those ticklish weeks of Bolshevik pressure of greatly superior numbers constantly threatening to besiege Pinega, and of a political propaganda which was hard to offset, the Americans held on optimistically. If they had made a single false step politically or if their White Guards had lost their morale they would have had a more exciting and desperate time than they did have in the defense of Pinega.
XIX
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE
Archangel Area—Occupations Of People—Schools—Church—Dress—In Peasant Homes—Great Masonry Stove—Best Bed In House On Stove—Washing Clothes In River Below Zero—Steaming Bath House—Festivals—Honesty Of Peasants.
To the doughboy penetrating rapidly into the interior of North Russia, whether by railroad or by barge or by more slow-going cart transport, his first impression was that of an endless expanse of forest and swamp with here and there an area of higher land. One of them said that the state of Archangel was 700 miles long by 350 wide and as tall as the 50-foot pine trees that cover it. Winding up the broad deep rivers he passed numerous villages with patches of clearings surrounding the villages, and where fishing nets, or piles of wood, numerous hay stacks and cows, and occasionally a richer area where high drying-racks held the flax, told him that the people were occupied chiefly in fishing, trapping, wood-cutting, flax raising, small dairying, and raising of limited amounts of grain and vegetables. He was to learn later that this north country raised all kinds of garden and field products during the short but hot and perpetually daylight summer.
Between villages the forest was broken only by the hunter or the woodchopper or the haymaker’s trails. The barge might pass along beside towering bluffs or pass by long sandy flats. Never a lone peasant’s house on the trail was seen. They lived in villages. Few were the improved roads. The Seletskoe-Kodish-Plesetskaya-Petrograd highway on which our troops fought so long was not much of a road. These roads ran from village to village through the pine woods, crossing streams and wide rivers by wooden bridges and crossing swamps, where it was too much to circuit them, by corduroy. North Russia’s rich soil areas, her rich ores, her timber, her dairying possibilities have been held back by the lack of roads. The soldier saw a people struggling with nature as he had heard of his grandfathers struggling in pioneer days in America.
To many people, the mention of North Russia brings vision of wonderful furs in great quantity. In normal times such visions would not be far wrong. But under the conditions following the assumption of central control by the Bolsheviks and the over-running of large sections of the north country by their ravenous troops, few furs have been brought to market in the ordinary places. In order to find the fur-catches of the winters of 1917, 1918 and 1919 before the peaceful security of the settled sections of Russia has been restored, it will be necessary to travel by unusual routes into the country far to the northeast of Archangel—into the Mezen and Pechura districts. There will be found fur-clad and half-starved tribes cut off from their usual avenues of trade and hoarding their catches of three seasons while they wonder how long it will be until someone opens the way for the alleviation of their misery. Information travels with amazing speed among these simple people, and they will run knowingly no risk of having their only wealth seized without recompense while en route to the distant markets. The Bolshevik forces have been holding a section of the usual road to Pinega and Archangel, and these fur-gathering tribes are wise and stubborn even while slowly dying. They absolutely lack medicine and surgical assistance, and certain food ingredients and small conveniences to which they had become accustomed through their contact with more settled peoples during the last half-century.
For those Americans in whose minds Russia is represented largely by a red blank it would mean an education of a sort to see the passage of the four seasons, the customs and life of the people, and the scenery and buildings in any considerable section of Russia.
In the north, the division of the year into seasons is rather uncertain from year to year. Roughly, the summertime may be considered to last from May 25th to September 1st, the rainy season until the freeze-up in late November, the steady winter from early December until early April, and the thaw-season or spring to fill out the cycle until late May. The summer may break into the rainy season in August, and the big freeze may come very early or very late. The winter may be extreme, variable or steady, the latter mood being most comfortable; and the thaw season may be short and decisive or a lingering discouraging clasp on the garments of winter. Summers have been known to be very hot and free from rain, and they have been known to be very cloudy and chilly. Indeed, twelve hours of cloud in that northern latitude will reduce the temperature very uncomfortably. The woodsmen and peasants can foretell quite accurately some weeks ahead when the main changes are due, which is of great help to the stranger as well as to themselves.
A little inquiry by American officers and soldiers brought out the information that the great area lying east, south and west of Archangel city has been gradually settled during four hundred years by several types of people, most of them Russians in the sense in which Americans use the word, but most of them lacking a sense of national responsibility. Throughout this long time, people have settled along the rivers and lakes as natural avenues of transportation. They sought a measure of independence and undisturbed and primitive comfort. Such they found in this rather isolated country because it offered good hunting and fishing, fertile land with plenty of wood, little possibility of direct supervision or control by the government, refuge from political or civil punishment, few or no taxes, escape from feudalism or from hard industrial conditions, and—more recently—grants by the government of free land with forestry privileges to settlers.
Notwithstanding all this, the Government of Archangel State, with its hundreds of thousands of square miles, has never been self-supporting, but has had to draw on natural resources in various ways for its support. This has been done so that there is as yet not noticeable depletion, and the people have remained so nearly satisfied—until recently aroused by other inflammatory events—that it is safe to say that no other larger section of the Russian Empire has been so free from violence, oppression and revolution as has the North.