A local Zemstvo official, known to the peasants, offered to accompany me to the villages, to introduce me and to vouch for the fact that I was seriously interested in knowing the precise feelings of the peasants in regard to the dissolution of the Duma, their attitude toward the government at that time, and their state of mind toward the next Duma. We traveled through the country in a native conveyance called a tarantass, a basket-like affair, drawn by three horses. Were it not for the incredibly rough roads a tarantass ride would be quite merry.
The peasants of one of the first villages at which we called proved not only communicative, but so frankly eager to express themselves that the experiences of the evening proved full of significance. This village was located about ten miles from Kostroma and consisted of a group of three or four hundred houses. As Russian villages go, this one had every appearance of comparative freedom from the ravages of poverty. To be sure, few of the houses were painted, and the streets were mere mud-rutted lanes, but the general appearance did not suggest squalor, or the grim life-struggle so often characteristic of Russian villages.
Our troika pulled up before a tea-house, near the close of the day. Within we found groups of peasants from the fields, who were loitering over glasses of refreshing tea. There may have been forty in the room when we entered. Mostly they were men of middle age. Their long hair was trimmed squarely; their beards shaggy and unkempt, though on the whole they had a neat appearance. Some wore shirts of bright red, others of blue. Their great boots were clodded with the soil. To foreign eyes it was a striking and picturesque scene. The rough rafters of the room, the bare walls, the home-turned benches and chairs, fittingly framed the picture of these massive, strongly built, peasant folk, enjoying the first respite from the day’s toil.
When our steaming, fragrant tea had been set before us, my companion told the men, briefly, that I had come all the way from another country to talk with them. Their interest was fixed instantly. Within a very few minutes the number in the room had swelled to nearly one hundred, and so intent did we all become that several hours slipped by all too quickly.
“Will you tell us why the people of other countries lent money to the Russian government to help keep us down?” This question came abruptly from a keen, blue-eyed muzhik, early in the conversation. “We don’t understand why the people of other countries should oppress us, because what have we done to them?”
My best explanations were obviously futile. The bald fact was clearly grasped by my questioner that the Russian government had borrowed money in France, and Austria, and England, at a time when it seemed as if lack of money would end the régime of insufferable oppression and wrong. His mind reached no farther than this and his sense of justice and right were hurt. This man nurtured bitter enmity against his government, so I pressed him to tell me the reasons for his strong feelings.
“Everything costs too much,” he replied. “In this village we are not like peasants in other places who need more land. We have enough. What we want is another government—a government that will help the people to live. We are tired of paying eighteen copecks (nine cents) for sugar, and too much for everything we buy. It is the government that does all this.”
A murmur of assent rolled round the room. Such boldness of speech in the midst of so large a company amazed me. Six or even four months before such daring was unheard of.
“When you say you want a change of government, what do you mean?” I asked.
“We want a people’s government,” answered a swarthy-faced man who leaned far over an adjoining table. “We want a real Duma.”