In addition to laziness, the Siberian peasant adds the most surprising obstinacy, which is not precisely a bad quality, when, as in the case of the English, it serves to increase their dogged activity; but in Siberia it is simply another incentive to do nothing. Once a Siberian peasant has made up his mind to play dolce far niente, no power, Divine or human, will induce him to budge. I have often heard Europeans say that Siberia is the only country where you cannot get work done even for money; and this is perfectly true, for on certain holidays it matters little what you may offer, you will not get a coachman to take you a five-mile drive. The Siberian would rather lose money than earn it against his will.
If inertia is happiness, then the Siberians must be the happiest people on earth. They disdain progress and would rather die than better their condition. Their motto is, ‘What sufficed for our fathers is surely good enough for us,’ and this is the invariable answer a peasant will give you if you venture to suggest any sort of change for the better in his condition. His favourite texts from Holy Scripture are those which flatter his habit of intellectual stagnation, those which preach resignation and abstention, but certainly not those which teach action and effort. ‘He who is contented with little will not be forgotten by God,’ was the text I once saw stuck up in the waiting-room of one of the dirtiest stations in Trans-Baikalia. It struck me as being particularly appropriate, both to the place and the people. The prevailing lack of energy and perseverance, which has been noticed by travellers in every part of the Tsar’s Empire, seems to me to be one of the radical characteristics of the Russian nature. It may possibly derive its origin from the influences of Tatar blood, which was so largely infused among the lower classes of Russians from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century at the time of Tatar domination. Then, again, it must be remembered that extreme cold, like extreme heat, produces apathy, especially upon the men, who are thereby condemned to remain for many months inactive, and whose minds, owing to their excessive ignorance, are a blank.
Siberian peasants are supremely ignorant. In 1894 the Government of Tobolsk, the most progressive of any in respect of education, numbered only 19,100 children frequenting the schools out of a population of 1,400,000 souls. In the towns the proportion of scholars was 4·63 per 100, but in the country districts it did not rise to 1·05. One must not, however, be too severe on the Siberians for showing so poor an educational result, for we must not forget the enormous distance between village and village, and the difficulties of obtaining schoolmasters, owing mainly to the excessive ignorance in which the lower orders of Russians are plunged. Notwithstanding the very considerable progress which has been made in this direction in the last few years, there is probably no country in the world where reading and writing would be of greater advantage, for during at least one-half of the year the Siberian has literally nothing to do but to think, or, better, to dream, his life away.
Serfdom has never existed in Siberia, which accounts for the Mujiks having a much more independent air than their brethren in European Russia. They have, however, in common with these latter, that peculiar sort of charity which has been well called the ‘pity of the Slav.’ It is, however, not an active virtue, but a sort of dreamy pitifulness which induces these poor people to help each other, but does not prevent them from being exceedingly suspicious of strangers. They will, however, invariably leave on the sill outside their windows a hunk of bread or a jug of milk for the benefit of some escaped convict or some wretched outcast. Unfortunately, however, the extreme ignorance and the innate laziness of these people prevent their extracting from the soil much that, at a very small cost of labour, would greatly increase both their wealth and their comfort.
The soil of Siberia is exceedingly rich. The famous tchernozium, or black earth of Southern Russia, covers a great part of the Meridional Zone of the provinces of Tobolsk and Tomsk. The upper valleys of the Obi and the Yenissei, sheltered from the north winds, enjoy a milder climate than the plains, and are excellent for the growth of all sorts of cereals. On the borders of the Angara, the great tributary of Lake Baikal and on that of the Lower Amur, and its tributary rivers and its affluents, which are marshy, there are enormous tracts of extremely fertile land, but the methods of cultivation are of the most primitive. Then, again, the vast majority of the rural population obstinately refuses to work in the fields. All along the great postal highway, which stretches from the Ural to the Amur, and beyond to Kiakhta, the manner in which the peasants earn their living is considerably modified. They exist by trafficking along this main road, along which pass manufactured goods imported from Europe, which are forwarded to Central Siberia, the great caravans of the tea merchants, the gangs of exiles, and lastly the ordinary travellers. As this road is the only one which goes from west to east, it is very animated. Even in summer, when the traffic is not so active—the tea caravans only pass in winter—I have rarely seen fewer than 100 transports of one sort or another per day. Although every postmaster is obliged to keep no fewer than forty horses, and each carriage rarely requires more than three, occasionally it is impossible to secure a conveyance, and one is obliged to ask the peasants for assistance, which they are very ready to afford, making you pay from three to four roubles (six to eight shillings) for a relay of twenty-five versts (sixteen miles), a sum which, if they see that they have to deal either with somebody who is in a great hurry, or with a wealthy traveller, they persistently increase in the most barefaced manner. In winter the transport of tea also enables them to make considerable sums of money.
Thus it is that the country folk in these latitudes neglect agriculture, considering it merely as an accessory. In the neighbourhood of the villages you will find a few fields and pastures, where the cows, horses, and sometimes a few black sheep, are sent out to graze under the care of two or three boys or old men, or sometimes without any shepherd at all. A wooden barrier prevents their escaping into the neighbouring forest.
The number of horses in Siberia is very great. In the government of Tomsk in 1894 there were 1,360,000 horses to a population of only 1,700,000, that is to say, 80 horses per 100 inhabitants. In the government of the Yenissei the proportion is over 90 per 100 inhabitants, and the same proportion prevails in the government of Irkutsk. Almost the only other country where there are almost as many horses as men is, besides Russian Central Asia, the Argentine Republic, where there are 112 per 100 inhabitants. In the United States there are but 22, and in France only 7. The proportion of horned cattle is also very considerable, being about 60 per 100 inhabitants, rising in Eastern Siberia, in Tobolsk and Tomsk, to 80, whereas in the Yenissei and Irkutsk districts there are about 3 beasts per family. The greater part of these are cows. Bullocks are very scarce, not being employed either for food or burden. It is only along the Kirghiz Steppes, in the country traversed by the Trans-Siberian railway between the Urals and Omsk, and the region immediately below this line, that milk is used. The rain falls in this region very slightly, and the land is not cultivable, but purely arable, and as the Kirghiz are extremely capable herdsmen, the results are very satisfactory, and they export their cattle largely into Russian Europe, and even beyond. I remember coming across a train full of bullocks which were being conveyed to St. Petersburg, and I know of at least one large house in Moscow which receives weekly from the little town of Kurgan, situated on the railway line, many thousands of pounds of butter, a great part of which is exported thence to Hamburg.
If one wishes to become acquainted with the real Siberian farmers, one must leave aside the highroads and plunge into the country. True, the villages become much less numerous, but then they are surrounded by more extensive fields. In those districts which were first colonized in the Government of Tobolsk some rather thickly-peopled places are occasionally to be found, especially in the northern steppe between 55° and 58° latitude. In the Government of Tomsk a more inhabited region will likewise be met with to the south of the zone of the immense but well-wooded marshlands; but in this province, as in that of the Yenissei, the southern portion, instead of being covered by sterile steppes, contains the magnificently wooded valleys of the upper Obi, the Yenissei, and their affluents, which very naturally attract the greater number of Russian emigrants.
The agricultural resources in the districts of Barnaul, Biisk, Minusinck and Kansk, are extremely rich, and, besides excellent land, splendid water, and a relatively mild and agreeable climate, there are a variety of minerals. More to the east, if we wish to avoid the ever-silent desert, or the taiga, we must, on leaving the highroad, enter some of the valleys at the foot of the mountains on the Chinese frontier, on the borders of which the whole population is at present concentrated. The aspect of this region, however, differs very little from that crossed by the post-road between Irkutsk to the great prison of Alexandrof, where we behold fine wheat-fields and herds of cattle wherever there is an opening in the thick but marshy woodlands. Excepting for the extent of the cultivated lands which surround them, the appearance of the villages, however, does not change in the least. There is never a vestige of a garden or of any sort of verdure near the houses, unless, indeed, it be a few flowers growing in pots, which are never arranged on the ledge outside the window, but in the interior, and form, together with a few icons and the portraits of their Imperial Majesties, the only attempt at ornamentation indulged in by the inhabitants of these essentially comfortless and inartistic dwellings.
The only crops of the least value in Siberia are those of the various cereals, of which about 150,000,000 bushels are harvested, mostly in the western part of the country, which is not only the most thickly populated, but also the freest of forests.