Russia, as Seen and Described by Famous Writers

by Unknown

LADY VERNEY

The amount of territory given up to the serfs by the Emancipation Act of 1861 was about one-half of the arable land of the whole empire, so that the experiment of cutting up the large properties of a country, and the formation instead of a landed peasantry, has now been tried on a sufficiently large scale for a quarter of a century to enable the world to judge of its success or failure. There is no doubt of the philanthropic intentions of Alexander the First, but he seems to have also aimed (like Richelieu) at diminishing the power of the nobles, which formed some bulwark between the absolute sway of the Crown and the enormous dead level of peasants.

The serfs belonged soul and body to the landowner: even when they were allowed to take service or exercise a trade in distant towns, they were obliged to pay a due, "obrok," to their owner, and to return home if required; while the instances of oppression were sometimes frightful, husbands and wives were separated, girls were sold away from their parents, young men were not allowed to marry. On the other hand, when the proprietor was kind, and rich enough not to make money of his serfs, the patriarchal form of life was not unhappy. "See now," said an old peasant, "what have I gained by the emancipation? I have nobody to go to to build my house, or to help in the ploughing time; the Seigneur, he knew what I wanted, and he did it for me without any bother. Now if I want a wife, I have got to go and court her myself; he used to choose for me, and he knew what was best. It is a great deal of trouble, and no good at all!" Under the old arrangements three generations were often found living in one house, and the grandfather, who was called "the Big One," bore a very despotic sway. The plan allowed several of the males of the family to seek work at a distance, leaving some at home to perform the "corvêe" (forced labour) three days a week; but the families quarrelled among themselves, and the effect of the emancipation has been to split them up into different households. A considerable portion of the serfs were not really serfs at all. They were coachmen, grooms, gardeners, gamekeepers, etc., while their wives and daughters were nurses, ladies'-maids, and domestic servants. Their number was out of all proportion to their work, which was always carelessly done, but there was often great attachment to the family they served. The serfs proper lived in villages, had houses and plots of land of their own, and were nominally never sold except with the estate. The land, however, was under the dominion of the "Mir"; they could neither use it nor cultivate it except according to the communal obligations.

The outward aspect of a Russian village is not attractive, and there is little choice in the surrounding country between a wide grey plain with a distance of scrubby pine forest, or the scrubby pine forest with distant grey plains. The peasants' houses are scattered up and down without any order or arrangement, and with no roads between, built of trunks of trees, unsquared, and mortised into each other at the corners, the interstices filled with moss and mud, a mode of building warmer than it sounds. In the interior there is always an enormous brick stove, five or six feet high, on which and on the floor the whole family sleep in their rags. The heat and the stench are frightful. No one undresses, washing is unknown, and sheepskin pelisses with the wool inside are not conducive to cleanliness. Wood, however, is becoming very scarce, the forests are used up in fuel for railway engines, for wooden constructions of all kind, and are set fire to wastefully—in many places the peasants are forced to burn dung, weeds, or anything they can pick up—fifty years, it is said, will exhaust the peasant forests, and fresh trees are never planted.

The women are more diligent than the men, and the hardest work is often turned over to them, as is generally the case in countries where peasant properties prevail. "They are only the females of the male," and have few womanly qualities. They toil at the same tasks in the field as the men, ride astride like them, often without saddles, and the mortality is excessive among the neglected children, who are carried out into the fields, where the babies lie the whole day with a bough over them and covered with flies, while the poor mother is at work. Eight out of ten children are said to die before ten years old in rural Russia.

In the little church (generally built of wood) there are no seats, the worshippers prostrate themselves and knock their heads two or three times on the ground, and must stand or kneel through the whole service. The roof consists of a number of bulbous-shaped cupolas; four, round the central dome, in the form of a cross is the completed ideal, with a separate minaret for the Virgin. These are covered with tiles of the brightest blue, green, and red, and gilt metal. The priest is a picturesque figure, with his long unclipped hair, tall felt hat largest at the top, and a flowing robe. He must be married when appointed to a cure, but is not allowed a second venture if his wife dies. Until lately they formed an hereditary caste, and it was unlawful for the son of a pope to be other than a pope. They are taken from the lowest class, and are generally quite as uneducated, and are looked down upon by their flocks. "One loves the Pope, and one the Popess" is an uncomplimentary proverb given by Gogol. "To have priests' eyes," meaning to be covetous or extortionate, is another. The drunkenness in all classes strikes Russian statesmen with dismay, and the priests and the popes, are among the worst delinquents. They are fast losing the authority they once had over the serfs, when they formed part of the great political system, of which the Tsar was the religious and political head. A Russian official report says that "the churches are now mostly attended by women and children, while the men are spending their last kopeck, or getting deeper into debt, at the village dram shop."

Church festivals, marriages, christenings, burials and fairs, leave only two hundred days in the year for the Russian labourer. The climate is so severe as to prevent out-of-door work for months, and the enforced idleness increases the natural disposition to do nothing. "We are a lethargic people," says Gogol, "and require a stimulus from without, either that of an officer, a master, a driver, the rod, or vodki (a white spirit distilled from corn); and this," he adds in another place, "whether the man be peasant, soldier, clerk, sailor, priest, merchant, seigneur or prince." At the time of the Crimean War it was always believed that the Russian soldier could only be driven up to an attack, such as that of Inkermann, under the influence of intoxication. The Russian peasant is indeed a barbarian at a very low stage of civilization. In the Crimean hospitals every nationality was to be found among the patients, and the Russian soldier was considered far the lowest of all. Stolid, stupid, hard, he never showed any gratitude for any amount of care and attention, or seemed, indeed, to understand them; and there was no doubt that during the war he continually put the wounded to death in order to possess himself of their clothes.

The Greek Church is a very dead form of faith, and the worship of saints of every degree of power "amounts to a fetishism almost as bad as any to be found in Africa." I am myself the happy possessor of a little rude wooden bas-relief, framed and glazed, of two saints whose names I have ungratefully forgotten, to whom if you pray as you go out to commit a crime, however heinous, you take your pardon with you—a refinement upon the whipping of the saints in Calabria and Spanish hagiolatry. The icons, the sacred images, are hung in the chief corner, called "The Beautiful," of a Russian izba. A lamp is always lit before them, and some food spread "for the ghosts to come and eat." The well-to-do peasant is still "strict about his fasts and festivals, and never neglects to prepare for Lent. During the whole year his forethought never wearies; the children pick up a number of fungi, which the English kick away as toadstools, these are dried in the sun or the oven, and packed in casks with a mixture of hot water and dry meal in which they ferment. The staple diet of the peasant consists of buckwheat, rye meal, sauerkraut, and coarse cured fish" (little, however, but black bread, often mouldy and sauerkraut, nearly putrid, is found in the generality of Russian peasant homes). No milk, butter, cheese, or eggs are allowed in Lent, all of which are permitted to the Roman Catholic, and the oil the peasant uses for his cooking is linseed instead of olive oil, which last he religiously sets aside for the lamps burning before the holy images. "To neglect fasting would cause a man to be shunned as a traitor, not only to his religion, but to his class and country."

RUSSIAN FARM SCENE.