Russia

When the traveller has visited the Cathedral and the granaries he has seen all the lions—not very formidable lions, truly—of the place. He may then inspect the kumyss establishments, pleasantly situated near the town. He will find there a considerable number of patients—mostly consumptive—who drink enormous quantities of fermented mare's-milk, and who declare that they receive great benefit from this modern health-restorer.

What interested me more than the lions of the town or the suburban kumyss establishments were the offices of the local administration, where I found in the archives much statistical and other information of the kind I was in search of, regarding the economic condition of the province generally, and of the emancipated peasantry in particular. Having filled my note-book with material of this sort, I proceeded to verify and complete it by visiting some characteristic villages and questioning the inhabitants. For the student of Russian affairs who wishes to arrive at real, as distinguished from official, truth, this is not an altogether superfluous operation.

When I had thus made the acquaintance of the sedentary agricultural population in several districts I journeyed eastwards with the intention of visiting the Bashkirs, a Tartar tribe which still preserved—so at least I was assured—its old nomadic habits. My reasons for undertaking this journey were twofold. In the first place I was desirous of seeing with my own eyes some remnants of those terrible nomadic tribes which had at one time conquered Russia and long threatened to overrun Europe—those Tartar hordes which gained, by their irresistible force and relentless cruelty, the reputation of being "the scourge of God." Besides this, I had long wished to study the conditions of pastoral life, and congratulated myself on having found a convenient opportunity of doing so.

As I proceeded eastwards I noticed a change in the appearance of the villages. The ordinary wooden houses, with their high sloping roofs, gradually gave place to flat-roofed huts, built of a peculiar kind of unburnt bricks, composed of mud and straw. I noticed, too, that the population became less and less dense, and the amount of fallow land proportionately greater. The peasants were evidently richer than those near the Volga, but they complained—as the Russian peasant always does—that they had not land enough. In answer to my inquiries why they did not use the thousands of acres that were lying fallow around them, they explained that they had already raised crops on that land for several successive years, and that consequently they must now allow it to "rest."

In one of the villages through which I passed I met with a very characteristic little incident. The village was called Samovolnaya Ivanofka—that is to say, "Ivanofka the Self-willed" or "the Non-authorised." Whilst our horses were being changed my travelling companion, in the course of conversation with a group of peasants, inquired about the origin of this extraordinary name, and discovered a curious bit of local history. The founders of the village had settled on the land without the permission of the absentee owner, and obstinately resisted all attempts at eviction. Again and again troops had been sent to drive them away, but as soon as the troops retired these "self-willed" people returned and resumed possession, till at last the proprietor, who lived in St. Petersburg or some other distant place, became weary of the contest and allowed them to remain. The various incidents were related with much circumstantial detail, so that the narration lasted perhaps half an hour. All this time I listened attentively, and when the story was finished I took out my note-book in order to jot down the facts, and asked in what year the affair had happened. No answer was given to my question. The peasants merely looked at each other in a significant way and kept silence. Thinking that my question had not been understood, I asked it a second time, repeating a part of what had been related. To my astonishment and utter discomfiture they all declared that they had never related anything of the sort! In despair I appealed to my friend, and asked him whether my ears had deceived me—whether I was labouring under some strange hallucination. Without giving me any reply he simply smiled and turned away.

When we had left the village and were driving along in our tarantass the mystery was satisfactorily cleared up. My friend explained to me that I had not at all misunderstood what had been related, but that my abrupt question and the sight of my note-book had suddenly aroused the peasants' suspicions. "They evidently suspected," he continued, "that you were a tchinovnik, and that you wished to use to their detriment the knowledge you had acquired. They thought it safer, therefore, at once to deny it all. You don't yet understand the Russian muzhik!"