Education has made considerable progress in the towns of Siberia, and the wealthier classes are not behindhand in assisting the Government in this direction. At Tomsk a University has recently been established in an immense and very handsome edifice, which contains at present some 500 students. Admission has been wisely rendered much more easy than it is in Russia, and it is expected that before long a faculty of Law will be established, in which the students will be able to study the new legal reforms which Alexander II. introduced some years ago into the judicial system of Russia. Other professorial chairs will be introduced before long in addition to that of Medicine, which is already very well attended. The library contains over 200,000 volumes, the greater part gifts from private benefactors, and not a few of the rarer editions of French and English classics must have originally belonged to libraries dispersed at the time of the French Revolution. A number of comfortable houses have been built in the park attached to the University (only a very short time ago virgin forest) for the benefit of students, who can there receive board and lodging at a very moderate price. In addition to the University, another huge educational establishment, an Institute of Technology, is in progress of construction. Tomsk, although it is somewhat out of the way for commercial purposes, appears to me destined to become before long the intellectual centre of Siberia.

All the Siberian towns possess a theatre. The one at Tomsk was built by a rich merchant some years ago, and during the winter months two permanent troupes give on alternate nights representations of opera and drama. Troupes of Russian actors occasionally visit Siberia, and I remember once seeing two artists, who enjoy great popularity at Moscow, give at Krasnoyarsk a representation in Russian of Shakespeare’s ‘Taming of the Shrew,’ and on the following evening an excellent performance of ‘Madame Sans-Gêne.’ These plays were attended by large and highly appreciative audiences. At Irkutsk there is a really magnificent theatre capable of accommodating a thousand persons, the erection of which cost not less than £32,000. It was built entirely by public subscription, at the head of the list being the Governor. The prices of admission are—stalls 6s. 8d. in the front row; 2s. 2d. in the back seats; 1s. in the first row of the second gallery, and 6d. in the third. These latter are the cheapest seats in the house. Unfortunately, of late years, the wealthier classes show a distinct tendency, thanks to facilities of travel, to spend their money in Russia, and even in Paris, and the rich merchants are no longer inclined to dazzle the Siberians by a somewhat barbaric display of their wealth. At Moscow and Petersburg, doubtless, they find a greater variety of amusements, and no need, in order to spend their money, to follow the example of a certain Siberian millionaire who used to wash his chamber-floor with champagne. Other times, other manners. If the principals go to St. Petersburg, their representatives remain behind, and although they are unable to make any very ostentatious display, nevertheless, they contrive to live comfortably. The position also of the officials, owing probably to the increased facilities of communication and the spread of education, has lost a good deal of its former importance, and governors of provinces, who were in days of yore kings or demigods, are no longer looked upon with any sense of awe, everybody being aware that they receive their daily orders by telegraph from St. Petersburg. Irkutsk, which in former times was the capital, is now only a large provincial city. The grand old Siberian hospitality is disappearing rapidly, and there are not wanting, even in Siberia, old-fashioned people who curse the Trans-Siberian Railway, which is destined sooner or later to revolutionize the manners and customs of Northern Asia.

CHAPTER VII
IMMIGRATION

Causes of Russian emigration to Siberia—Its increasing importance—Absolute necessity for State intervention in the colonization of Asiatic Russia—Roads followed by the emigrants—Land concessions—Provinces towards which they direct themselves—Colonization of the Province of the Amur and the Littoral—Vladivostok—Chinese, Koreans and Japanese—Exiles and convicts—Conditions for the development of Siberia—Favourable and unfavourable elements—Necessity of employing foreign capital.

The immigrants who arrive in Siberia are almost without exception peasants. According to the census taken last January, there were in Russian Europe, exclusive of Finland and Poland, whose inhabitants rarely, if ever, emigrate, only 94,000,000 inhabitants scattered over a surface of 1,875,000 square miles, that is to say, fifty inhabitants per square mile. One would imagine, therefore, that there was ample space for all the subjects of the Tsar in his European territories; but the great northern Governments of Arkhangelsk, Vologda, and Olonetz, which occupy over a quarter of this area, and in which agriculture is almost impossible, do not contain more than 2,000,000 inhabitants in 540,560 square miles. Then, again, a great number of the Governments situated to the north of Moscow consist of only very inferior marshlands, and are but poorly populated, and, what is more, seem unlikely ever to improve. The majority of the inhabitants of the empire are therefore concentrated in the south, where the population is relatively dense, especially in the Governments of Kursk, Penza, Tambof, Orel, Voronej, and notably so in Little Russia, which is all the more remarkable when we consider that these regions are exclusively agricultural, and that the methods of farming are still very primitive. Notwithstanding, however, the rapid development of industry in Russia, many years will pass before these regions will be capable of supporting a population equal to that of Central or Western Europe, where the natural conditions are more or less identical. It is not therefore very surprising that a fraction of the population of Russia should go in search of better climes, and direct itself towards Southern Siberia, a more attractive and fertile country than Northern Russia.

Emigration, it must be borne in mind, is but a small item in the natural causes of the increase of the Russian population. The annual excess of births over deaths rises to about 1,500,000 in the whole of the Empire, and is from 1,100,000 to 1,200,000 in European Russia (Poland and Finland always excepted). The emigration towards Asia has up to 1895 scarcely exceeded a tenth of this figure, and does not even now reach more than a fifth or a sixth. According to an official work published at the end of 1896, the ‘Statesman’s Handbook to Russia,’ we find that during 1887–95, 94,000 families, forming an aggregate total of 467,000 persons, established themselves in Siberia. The average therefore would be about 52,000 souls per annum, but the last few years have witnessed a visible increase. The above figures do not apparently include emigrants who are destined for Central Asia (general Government of the Steppes and Turkestan), to which the total rarely exceeds 10,000 per annum. According to information received direct from Siberia, about 63,000 emigrants arrived in 1894 over the Ural from European Russia. On the other hand, 3,495 entered Siberia by sea, landing in the great Littoral Province on the Pacific. Lately the emigration movement has become much more active, and we should not be far out of our reckoning if we estimated the number of emigrants into Siberia for the years 1897 and 1898 as about 200,000 for each year. The number of persons who seek permission to leave Russia for Siberia is becoming greater every year. Many, however, are discouraged and even refused the necessary papers, so as to avoid burdening the newly-settled country with a superfluity of people who generally arrive without a penny in their pockets. It is natural in a country where the peasantry are still so primitive and ignorant as in Russia that the Government should closely watch the movements of emigrants, who might, on finding exaggerated promises and illusions dispelled, become troublesome and even dangerous. The following is the manner in which these matters are generally organized in European Russia. When several families belonging to a volost express a wish to emigrate they are requested to determine in what part of Siberia they desire to establish themselves. If the applicants are deemed suitable, two of their number, selected as delegates, visit the parcel of land which has been allotted to them, and on returning they are able to inform their friends as to the exact nature of the place to which they are destined. Formerly, the emigrants were allowed to choose their own land, which, as they were almost invariably very inexperienced, was usually quite unsuited to their requirements, and they either went further afield or, disgusted, returned home. In order, therefore, to prevent a recurrence of this unsatisfactory state of affairs, the sensible system of sending on two delegates or pioneers has been established.

The method selected by emigrants entering Siberia was, until quite recently, to ascend the Kama, and take the Ural Railway at Perm for Tiumen; thence, at this terminus, they embarked either on the Tobol, the Irtysh, or the Obi for Tobolsk, which used to be a great rendezvous for the emigrants. In 1893 the Siberian Railway had not reached Omsk, and out of 63,000 emigrants, 56,500 had entered Asia by the Tiumen, and 6,500 only had taken the Trans-Siberian Railway to Kurgan. Among the first, 36,500 followed the waterway which I have just described, and 20,000 performed the journey in carts. To-day the greater number are transported by the railway to the station nearest to the town selected for their future residence, or to the extreme limit of the line, if they are going farther east. There they are obliged to take the telega, a sort of Russian cart, shaped like a trough, on four wheels. I have often met on the highroads in Siberia long lines of these carts, each containing several persons, men, women and children, with their labouring tools and household belongings. The scene is very picturesque, especially towards evening, when the worthy folk encamp on the highroad: the men unsaddling the horses, the women going to the well for water, and the children playing about, whilst some old man, seated on the wayside, reads the Bible out aloud to a group of eager listeners. Sometimes the journey exhausts the resources of the family, and I have seen in Trans-Baikalia a caravan of Little Russians come to a full-stop for want of money, and the good people, encamped on the highway, quietly awaiting the arrival of the district Immigration Agent, to obtain from him the supplies necessary to enable them to continue the journey. Emigrants who travel by telega from their old home in Europe to the new one in Asia often consume as much as a whole year in the journey from Little Russia to the Amur, albeit the travellers frequently spend as many as three months at a time working on the railway, in order to add a little to their scanty supply of cash.

The majority of the emigrants arrive in spring. In the principal towns on the route refuges have been organized for their shelter. A number of these are to be found at Cheliabinsk at the foot of the Ural. I visited that at Kansk, the centre of a much-frequented region in the Government of Yenissei. Twenty iourdis, or enormous huts, built on the model of those used by the Kirghiz and from ten to twelve feet in diameter and nine feet in height, with an extinguisher shaped roof covered with camel’s hide, were here erected for destitute emigrants. A spacious hospital, kitchens and a Russian bath were at the time nearly completed. A winter habitation with an immense stove had also been erected, but there are not many emigrants travelling during the worst months of the year. All these buildings are of wood, after the fashion of most Russian houses, and seemed fairly comfortable. Three young women from the town acted as voluntary nurses attached to the hospital.

Emigrants who come from the same district in European Russia are as a rule grouped together in the same village, and, as far as possible, everything is done to prevent the crowding together of people who come from divergent provinces, which might give rise to trouble. Thus, the officials always endeavour to avoid mixing the ‘Little Russians’ with the ‘Great Russians,’ and never to introduce new-comers into villages already inhabited by old Siberians, who do not look upon emigration in a very favourable light, for the simple reason that formerly they could occupy as much land as they liked and redeem as much of it as they chose, whenever their own fields became exhausted, and they could, moreover, even tramp off in another direction in quest of better land if the spirit moved them so to do. The arrival of a great number of new people has naturally put an end to these irresponsible movements, and consequently given rise to a great deal of discontent.

The following are a few rules which have been adopted recently for the formation of fresh settlements, on the mir system of Russian collective communal proprietorship, which the Government has decided to introduce into Siberia. Fifteen dessiatines (37 acres) are given gratuitously to each man, and a sum of 30 roubles (about £3 1s. 8d.) can, if necessary, be advanced to each family immediately. Formerly it was necessary to await authorization from the Government at St. Petersburg, even for this small amount, before it could be paid, but, now, happily, it has been decided to leave the matter in the hands of the functionary who is placed at the head of the Immigration Bureau of the district, whereby a great deal of trouble and misery is avoided. Other sums of money can be advanced from time to time up to £9 10s. if the applicant is deemed worthy. Theoretically this money ought to be repaid at the end of ten years, which, needless to say, it rarely, if ever, is.