The peasants were the weightiest group in the Duma. The Constitutional Democrats did more talking, and in their academic way were the shapers of the first Duma. But the peasants swung the votes. The government at first leaned on the peasants because of their supposed superstitious loyalty to the Emperor—their “Little Father.” The Constitutional Democrats knew, however, that this was a thing of the past, and at once began to proselytize among the men in homespun. The socialists and extreme radicals among the Social Democrats and Labor Deputies entered upon no end of negotiations to seal a compact with the peasants, and with perhaps better success. But the supposed gullible, guileless, ingenuous Muzhik showed himself as canny as a Scot. He listened to everything that anybody wished to say to
A group of leading men in a starving village
him, but when the moment came for exchanging pledges the long, shaggy head of the rustic would deliberately, but firmly, wag—“We want land and liberty.” That was the answer one heard a score of times each day in the Duma lobby. Other matters were of secondary interest to him.
The muzhik used to be terribly serious about two things in life: God and the Czar. This is no longer the case. The Czar sanctioned the calling together of the Duma. The peasants believed in it then—and in him. The Duma meant to them a place where representatives of all the people could come together to formulate requests and to explain in detail to the Emperor the ills of his majesty’s people in the remote country districts. Previous to the first Duma millions believed that this would suffice. Thousands of people in America hold a similar view in regard to the Czar—namely, that he is well-meaning, but kept from knowledge of actual conditions through the machinations of his ministers, counselors, and minions of the court. There was great rejoicing among the peasants when the first Duma framed a “response to the Throne Speech,” and many of them telegraphed most optimistic messages to their home villages. The Czar would hear their prayers and grant their requests, they thought. Alas, the pain of disillusionment that awaited them! Like a thunderbolt from a clear sky came the government’s answer. Every single request rejected and refused! I was in the Duma that afternoon. Amid the strained stillness of the great hall, the prime minister read the address. Only once did M. Gorymekin pause—to swallow a drop of water. As he raised the glass to his lips it seemed as if every one of the eight or nine hundred people in the room coughed nervously, as men do who sit under great strain. But in a breath the intense quiet returned. When the reading was ended a pin drop would still have been audible. Then, while the Constitutional Democratic leaders were answering the ministry in fiery speeches, one after another from the tribunal, the peasants alone, or two by two, as men in common trouble, filed slowly into the lobby. They all seemed instinctively to drift toward the telegraph booth. They were the men who had suffered a blow and were nonplussed. Their faith in the “Little Father” was now irretrievably shaken. In the Duma conservative and academic professors, stung to desperation, hammered and pounded the ministry, and finally introduced a resolution (which, incidentally, they asked a peasant to read) expressing their mistrust of the ministers, demanding their resignation, and a new and responsible ministry. This was parliamentary. The peasants acted differently—they voted in agreement, because they were told it was right to do so. What they did of their own initiative was to send scores of telegrams, which strangely enough the imperial wires carried that night, carried till they were hot. “We have been refused land, liberty, and new laws. Tell everybody.” This was the burden of the messages. That was the muzhik’s impulse. These messages were sent by sad men just coming to the realization of their situation. But having done this they were not materially relieved. They sat together on the lobby benches and conversed in low tones. When adjournment was announced they went sorrowfully away, several never to return. One resigned—utterly discouraged. A few days later one died as a result of his heart-breaking disappointment—Andrianov of Simbirsk government—and the Duma rose in the middle of the afternoon as a token of respect. Several remained ill in their lodgings for a week. It is difficult for us in America to understand and appreciate such intense feeling as these simple peasants reveal, but to them this Duma was the most serious event in their lives. Now they were utterly crushed by the realization that apparently the Czar did not care for his people, that the Duma was a mockery and a farce, and that if they were to escape from their plight it must be through their efforts. The telegrams sent that afternoon constituted the biggest piece of revolutionary propaganda since the Father Gapon labor demonstrators were shot down in cold blood in the square of the Winter Palace in January, 1905.
“How can you fight?” I asked of some peasants who had been sent as delegates to St. Petersburg, and who intimated that this refusal of the government’s meant open rebellion.
“The soldiers have taken our arms, it is true,” they replied. “But we have left our wood-axes and our scythes. We can cut telegraph posts. We can burn barracks and landlords’ houses.”
It is a commonplace psychological fact that the slower a man is to anger the more terrible will his wrath be. The muzhik is grim and determined. As for time, it does not exist for him. At any railroad junction in Russia one may see any number of peasants waiting about all night or all day between trains. Six, eight, ten hours’ delay in making connections troubles no peasant.