In one village which I visited in south Russia the village school-mistress and school-master, aged, respectively, twenty-one and twenty-six, were living together in what they called a “free-love union.” Yet the matter was not noticed especially by the peasants. In other words, the muzhik, while morally strict with his own people, is highly tolerant of the lives of other people, and this tolerance does not stop here but is extended also to beliefs. The religion of the muzhik is so lacking in detailed creed that he is not inclined to quarrel over beliefs with any one. In this respect the sectarians are less amiable. They, not unnaturally, are dogmatic and largely inclined toward bigotry, but the sectarians are apart from the typical Russian peasant.
Laziness is frequently ascribed to the Russian peasant. Here one may not assent, nor at the same time repudiate, the charge. Between the peasants of different sections are differences in temperament and characteristics almost as great as between some races. The landed proprietor is the man who most often calls the muzhik lazy. He best should know. But by what standard is the Russian peasant adjudged lazy? The average Russian official comes to his office at ten or eleven o’clock in the morning and in three or four hours he feels that he has done enough for one day. Russia borders on the East. There are parts of Russia traversed by Bedouins, by camel-traders, by people whose months and years slip easily by on the hillsides and the deserts. Compared to any of these the Russian peasants are most industrious.
Soil is a factor. If a peasant has only one dessiatine of ground, as is the case with thousands of peasants in the interior in governments like Saratoff and Voronezh, it is quite impossible for him to keep busy the year through. Especially if he has no knowledge of modern agriculture, as most of them have not. There are thousands of muzhiks who have not yet heard of intensive cultivation, who know nothing of the advantage of rotating crops, and who use wooden ploughs because they have always used wooden ploughs, or have not the money to buy iron implements when they learn that such exist in the world. Russia is not equally fertile throughout. In some of the districts where an annual famine is recurrent, one finds soil which should be rich and productive. It lacks only water, which could be managed by irrigation. But the government has never taken large steps to solve this difficulty. So the soil is subjected to abuse by peasants who know no better. Then when the crops become meager, the peasants are reduced to starvation. But the great point of all is that it is less than half a century since the shackles of bondage fell from them. Surely not one generation nor two must pass before these recent slaves shall be judged by the side of men who have been free for centuries. Under serfdom the obligatory duties of peasants were vague, ill-defined chores. And even these were prescribed by some one else—some one who said when it was time to cut wood for the master, when it was time to sow, and when it was time to reap. The problem of adjustment is only a little less real and formidable to these people than it was to the American negro-slaves, and the differences of opinion in Russia to-day are quite as great in regard to the relative advantages of the present condition as compared to serfdom, as in America in regard to the welfare of the negro now and before the war. But one thing I have noticed: no muzhik ever desires to return to serfdom. The twinkle in his eye is full enough of intelligence when this question is put to him.
The muzhik is rarely indiscreet in his talk. This characteristic is noted by most travelers in Russia, and it is surely true. Not infrequently a man who has been talking most intelligently will give an answer to some simple question which is perfectly inane. He has suddenly become suspicious. So he shrewdly turns you so completely off the track that, metaphorically, you are ditched. This seems to be an instinctive ruse.
To learn that the forms of democracy are not new in Russian life one needs only to turn to the villages. The very word Duma is not new. Towns and even villages have their Duma. Tolstoi talks about the “Gospel as understood by the muzhik.” The ideal of civic life as conceived by the muzhik culminates not in the state and autocracy but in the people—an aggregation of muzhiks. There is an ancient proverb familiar throughout Russia which expresses this ideal of democracy: “Each for himself, but God and the Mir for all”—the Mir being an association of villagers coming together to work out the common weal of the village under the laws of the land. The national laws have allowed a wide scope in certain directions, and the opportunity has not been lost by the muzhiks. They have been left free to manage many of their local economic interests in common, like the allotment and periodic redistribution of land, their fisheries, cutting of timber, and also they have been given absolute freedom to divide and distribute among themselves the village share of the taxes collected from all of the people. They have elected their own immediate administrative officers, a certain number of local judges, and those in turn have limited freedom in regard to accepting local custom and tradition in precedence to civil or criminal law prescribed by the state. To the peasant, therefore, the Duma is an institution similar to this local town meeting he has always been used to, only on a national scale. The shock came when the Duma delegates in St. Petersburg found that to deliberate, come to conclusions and to vote for certain measures was wholly a different thing from
A Russian farmer
gaining those measures. This was not like the Duma they had been accustomed to at home.