The way in which the Constitutional Democrats had dropped out of sight since issuing the Viborg manifesto had told strongly against them. Prince Baratieff, a Constitutional Democrat, a Simbirsk deputy to the Duma, told me frankly: “Formerly the Constitutional Democratic Party enjoyed the confidence of the peasants of this government, but since the dissolution I think they have moved more to the left.”
During the course of this journey I searched diligently for conservative peasants—peasants who still believed in God and the Czar, as of old, but the peasants themselves were always the first to say: “Before the Duma we thought differently.” It was a Simbirsk peasant, however, in a village twenty miles inland from the Volga, who said: “We had always believed in the Czar as our Emperor by ‘divine authority,’ but now we see that if we put a crown on a hitching-post and call it ‘Czar by divine authority,’ it is the same.”
About this time the government announced that it was prepared to alleviate the agrarian stress by placing certain appanage, or crown, lands at the disposal of the peasants—for a consideration.
“How do you feel in regard to the Emperor’s latest step in putting the appanage lands at the disposition of the peasants through the Peasants’ Bank?” I asked of a group of six peasants whom I was questioning in Simbirsk. A chorus of derisive exclamations immediately followed. “We believe no more in anything that comes from the government—or even the Emperor. We have had too many pieces of worthless paper read to us. It may sound good now, but in the end it will not be for our good.”
As a matter of fact, if all of the appanage lands of Simbirsk government were distributed among the peasants of that district, the allotments would average only one eightieth of an acre per capita. Furthermore, a large part of the 480,000 acres—the aggregate amount of imperial lands within the government—are wooded, and consequently unavailable for immediate agricultural purposes. It may be explained that the appanage lands are lands set apart for the support of members of the imperial family.
“How did you hear of this imperial proposition so soon?” I inquired, knowing that so remote a village could not yet have received newspapers.
“It was read out in the church on Sunday,” they answered.
“Then the priests must believe in it.”
“That is why we don’t,” they went on. “The priests are ‘Black Hundred,’ and we believe no more in them.”
“What do you believe in?” I asked.