LVII
The city of Kazan was buried in snow, frozen hard, and glittering on its surface as though strewn with myriads of diamonds. It was a little Moscow, more Oriental, less ruined by street fighting, strangely beautiful with its gilt-domed churches and Russian mansions, and wooden hovels, all canopied in snow. It had been a rich city before the Revolution. Many great nobles had had summer houses here. Its market received the wealth of the Volga and merchandise from the Far East. A third of its population was Tartar, and under the Soviet régime it had been made the capital of a new state called the Tartar Republic, subject to Moscow, but with a certain independence for local business.
The Tartar type was striking, in its contrast to the blue-eyed, yellow-bearded peasants amidst whom they dwelt, and Bertram, staring at the tall, lean men with Mongolian cheekbones, leathery skin, and straight black hair, thought of Ghengis Khan and his hordes of men like this, who had swept across Europe in the Middle Ages to the very gates of Vienna.
Kazan was now on the edge of the famine. Hunger was creeping about the city itself, though even here there was meat to be had in the market for those who had money to buy it. The peasants along the Volga valley were killing the last of their cows, for lack of fodder, and the flesh was sent up to Kazan by the last boats that could make the journey before the Volga froze. After that there would be no more meat, as now there was no grain, no milk, and but small stocks of bread and potatoes. Soviet officials were still getting rations direct from Moscow, but that system was to be abandoned, except for a favoured few, owing to the “New Economic Laws” which had been framed mainly because the means of rationing had broken down.
The Colonel of the A. R. A. and his party were met at the station with sleighs by four or five young Americans, in heavy fur coats and Tartar caps, remarkably cheery, in spite of the frightful picture they painted of the local conditions. They had established the first food kitchens in Kazan, and had pushed out the first relief to the villages beyond.
“What’s the situation?” asked the Colonel.
Cyrus Sims, a young man looking like a Bolshevik bandit, until he pulled off his shaggy cap with ear-flaps and revealed a good American head, typical of Harvard, gave a few preliminary facts to “put the Colonel wise,” as he called it, before an interview with the President of the Tartar Republic.
“The situation, sir? Well, briefly, these people are waiting for death. They can’t see any escape, except by our help, which won’t amount to much for some time to come, as you know. We’ve undertaken to feed fifteen hundred children within three weeks from now. Sounds good. There’s a child population in this state of one million seven hundred thousand, all hungry, and mostly starving. Child population, you understand, sir! Of course we’re not going to feed adults. They’ll die. The Volga’s trying to freeze. Another week or two and no boats can pass. That’ll mean sleigh transport to the starving villages. We shall want three thousand five hundred horses to feed those fifteen hundred babes. And the horses are dropping dead along the roads. No fodder. Certain supplies have come down from Moscow by Soviet authority. Potatoes mostly. They’re rotting on the barges.”
“Why, in God’s name?” asked the Colonel.
“Same reason, sir. Dearth of horses for sleigh transport.”