“Yes, the Army has all these in plenty.”
“Slava Tebye Gospody! That’s all right.”
V
LIFE IN THE COUNTRY
From Moscow I journeyed to see some friends of the artist Pereplotchikof, the E. family, on a small estate in the Government of Voronezh. At the small wayside station an unfamiliar figure greeted me—this was an Austrian prisoner, a Hungarian who could not speak a word of Russian. He was the new coachman, and would drive me the ten miles to the farm. The former coachman has gone to the war, and so now an Austrian prisoner, in the same uniform in which he surrendered and wearing the familiar high military hat, is doing his work. He carried my bags from the station, for there was no porter, and put them in the carriage, and then drove me on through verdant forest and along the terrible road deep in liquid mud and water.
A great feature of the new country life in Russia is the Austrian prisoners at work. One seldom comes across any Germans. But of Austrians there are great numbers. They volunteer to go out to work, rather than remain in the internment camps. In order to obtain Austrian prisoners to work on an estate you apply to the government town, and they are hired out to you at eight roubles a month, four roubles of which are allowed to be deducted for keep. It turns out that on the whole the prisoners work merely for board and lodging and what would keep an ordinary smoker in tobacco. Prisoner labour is altogether cheaper than that of ordinary Russian labourers. So if you can get a strong detachment of prisoners on your estate you are somewhat advantageously circumstanced. No guards, however, are supplied with the prisoners, and you are held responsible for them in case they attempt to escape. The prisoners on the land are generally those who were agriculturists in their native Austria and they are highly serviceable. They do not take their new duties too seriously, but all the same do more work than the average hired Russian labourer would do. To work is more pleasant to them than to sit together and talk or sing, and their industrious habits are a matter of pleasant surprise for their employers.
On Mme. E.’s estate the prisoners were Hungarians. She knew no Hungarian, they no Russian, and no grammars or dictionaries of the Hungarian language were obtainable in Moscow or Petrograd—the only aid to learning the language which Mme. E. was able to obtain was an officer’s war guide containing maps, geographical details, and five or six pages of military phrases with translations. Even so, good progress was being rapidly made in mutual understanding. These Hungarians will carry back to their own country many funny-sounding Russian words, and on the other hand some Hungarian expressions may remain locally.
Certainly the prisoners are of great economic aid to Russia. Each Austrian captured is not only one Austrian less in the enemy ranks, but one harvester more to take in the precious grain. The Russian women, the old men and the children, seem to be insufficient to keep up the present extent of cultivation and to reap the harvest—the labour of the prisoners makes up the deficiency.
In many respects the prisoner of this foreign element in the midst of Russian country life is sufficiently objectionable from the Russian point of view. There are said to have been a number of marriages, though the difference in religion must have precluded the possibility of legal marriage in most cases where it may have been desired.
There is a cloud over the village, and it cannot be said that the war is popular among the women. They want the men back; the wives want their husbands, the girls want their sweethearts. Girls of sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen are persistently gloomy. They feel that time is slipping past without bringing the necessary bridegroom. They should have been betrothed and married by now. Nineteen is a dreadful age for an unmarried girl—she feels herself already an old maid, and is disinclined to tell her age. Pretty Tania the serving-maid does not look so pretty this year; she has let the fact that she is eighteen prey upon her mind. She knows that when the boys come back they will not look at any one so old as she, and she will be left.
On festival nights there is the same singing in the village street, the parade of village fashions, but somehow it is rather meaningless since there are no male partners and no weddings can be arranged. Letters of course go to and fro between the Army and the village, but the soldier does not write to “his sweetheart,” or if he does it is because his sweetheart is his wife. For long engagements do not take place in the country. Queer letters the soldiers send back, full of greetings to neighbours and relatives, and containing little or nothing about the war. There is never any need to censor them. The peasant wives bring their letters to Mme. E. and she reads them aloud. Or they come to her when they want to write their letters, for though most of the men can read and write, the women seldom are able.