There is much of animal patience about the muzhik. He is a stolid, stubborn, creature. These qualities have led enlightened Russians to call him a child. When the Duma began landed proprietors and gentry were wont to speak of peasant deputies as “children.” But impartial observers soon formed their own opinions. The muzhik is wily. He may not have been so outspoken in the Duma as men more accustomed to town life, but he has the voice where voice means influence, and his vote is as good as a university professor’s in the assembly. The peasant members usually stand solidly together. They know what they want, they ask for it concretely: “Land and liberty,” and mark the craft! They know that they cannot work out the land problem, so they say to the Constitutional Democrats: “You want certain measures passed. Very well. We will vote for them, but you must turn your thoughts to the land question which is what we are interested in.” The Constitutional Democrats could not dispense with the peasant vote, so they were coerced into agreeing. And the muzhiks would sit on the benches in the lobby, swinging their legs and smoking cigarettes, while tedious debates lasted, going in when time to vote. The peasants know their time is coming. They have only to keep on smoking cigarettes in the lobby, going in in time for each vote, and to keep talking all the time about “land and liberty.” During the Duma session their telegrams went to every part of the empire. They well knew they could afford to appear indifferent to the details of working out any bill. The pretentious frock-coated gentlemen might see to that. The muzhik understood that it was his part to lie low for a time, only not to cease murmuring “land and liberty.” He had the whip hand and knew it then. No fool is this simple, untutored, rustic.
During the first Duma the peasant deputies awoke to a consciousness of their power and importance. Through painful surprises they realized that they had a destiny to fulfil. When these deputies returned to their respective villages, all over the provinces they related to their fellow villagers all that had transpired in the Duma. Then came the great peasant awakening which marked a new era for Russia. Just those few months from May to July did it. During that period the Russian peasants bounded forward almost incredibly, and in a few weeks advanced further than in many previous years.
To gather evidence of this change which literally swept over Russia during the spring and early summer of 1906 I planned a long trip through the interior where I would see typical peasant villages, and come in contact with many hundreds of the men upon whom it had suddenly dawned that they were indeed men, men of power, of ultimate influence, and with a future in which to work out their own great destiny.
CHAPTER XV
THE PEASANT AWAKENING
The period of repression following the Duma dissolution—Under arrest in Moscow—The cradle of the Romanoffs—A peasant gathering—Outspoken muzhiks—A “constituent assembly”—Rational opinions of the Viborg manifesto—Nijni Novgorod—The great fair—A disturbed province—Kazan—A journey to the interior—A visit to Prince Ouktomsky—Professor Vassiliev and his family—Advanced ideas of the peasants—Simbirsk, the “Mountain of the Winds”—An illiterate government—What the peasants want—Entering the famine belt.
HE dissolution of the Duma tore away the last remaining vestige of faith of the peasants in the Czar and in the government. I allowed a month to pass after the dissolution before I set out upon my journey into the interior, for I wanted the news to permeate everywhere before my arrival, in order that I might gather impressions of the effect of this step upon the peasants.
Intense repression was the aftermath of the dissolution, and martial law was spread to every quarter of the empire. The number of arrests made during the latter half of the summer was appallingly large. I left St. Petersburg on the night train, intending to leave Moscow the following evening. In Moscow I stepped into a book-shop to purchase a map. As I turned to leave the store a clatter of spurs and the rattle of a sword caused me to turn my head, and I saw an officer of gendarmes, accompanied by several regular soldiers, entering the shop by the rear door. A moment later a party of several officers and more soldiers passed through the front door by which I was about to pass out. The senior officer motioned me back, the doors were all locked, a soldier placed by each, and all of us who were there—proprietor, clerks, customers, understood that we were all under arrest. Thereupon we made ourselves as comfortable as we could pending the long and tedious search of the officers for forbidden books or pamphlets. From time to time I glanced out of the window into the streets, where I could see the radiant face of my droshky driver whom I had engaged by the hour. It was just the noon hour when I had entered the shop, and I began to get ravenously hungry, but I had to bide my time. After several hours of patient waiting we customers were taken into a rear room and subjected to a searching examination. I was able to establish my identity as an American citizen and was presently released, but all of the others were detained, some for over night, and two or three for several days. In the interior none of us would have got off so lightly. It was now early August and eighty-five of the eighty-seven provinces of European Russia were then under some form of “extraordinary protection,” or martial law. One of the five exempt, or officially “tranquil” provinces, was Kostroma, a government which lies across and above the upper Volga. The capital of this province, Kostroma city, is situated about 260 miles north of Moscow, and it was here that I planned to begin my long journey through the peasant country.
Kostroma once boasted historical consideration as the cradle of the House of Romanoff. Here lived Michael Feodorovitch Romanoff in the year 1613, when he was elected czar. Just outside the town rises the Convent of Ipatieff, which offered him a safe refuge when the embittered Poles marched thither to slay him, and were diverted from their intention through the wit of the peasant Soussanine, who, under the pretense of guiding the men of the south country to the hiding-place of the czar-elect, led them far into the forests out of whose bewildering vastnesses no man might hope to escape. To-day there are large imperial estates in Kostroma. I came here, turning over in my mind the probability of finding the loyal spirit of Soussanine still lingering among the Kostroma peasants, a devotion supposedly of traditional character.
I was recommended to several typical peasant villages within a radius of fifty miles of the town of Kostroma as worth my visiting. The town of Kostroma is an industrial rather than an agricultural center. Large linen mills, starch, and cutlery factories are there. The employees of these establishments are mostly peasants. Some of them contribute to the support of families in the villages, while not a few quit the mills and factories at every sowing and reaping time, to help with the labors of the field. Thus Kostroma peasants are not solely dependent upon their crops. There is yet another factor which helps to better their conditions, and which, according to the theory of some observers, should temper their feeling toward the government. The individual holdings of land are larger than in many sections. The average allotment is from eight to sixteen acres per adult male. This sometimes aggregates thirty acres to a family. Taken all in all, then, I had every reason to expect these peasants to be conservative, contented, and non-revolutionary.