Russia

About the time of the Crimean War many of the Russian landed proprietors had become alive to the necessity of improving the primitive, traditional methods of agriculture, and sought for this purpose German stewards for their estates. Among these proprietors was the owner of Ivanofka. Through the medium of a friend in Berlin he succeeded in engaging for a moderate salary a young man who had just finished his studies in one of the German schools of agriculture—the institution at Hohenheim, if my memory does not deceive me. This young man had arrived in Russia as plain Karl Schmidt, but his name was soon transformed into Karl Karl'itch, not from any desire of his own, but in accordance with a curious Russian custom. In Russia one usually calls a man not by his family name, but by his Christian name and patronymic—the latter being formed from the name of his father. Thus, if a man's name is Nicholas, and his father's Christian name is—or was—Ivan, you address him as Nikolai Ivanovitch (pronounced Ivan'itch); and if this man should happen to have a sister called Mary, you will address her—even though she should be married—as Marya Ivanovna (pronounced Ivanna).

Immediately on his arrival young Schmidt had set himself vigorously to reorganise the estate and improve the method of agriculture. Some ploughs, harrows, and other implements which had been imported at a former period were dragged out of the obscurity in which they had lain for several years, and an attempt was made to farm on scientific principles. The attempt was far from being completely successful, for the serfs—this was before the Emancipation—could not be made to work like regularly trained German labourers. In spite of all admonitions, threats, and punishments, they persisted in working slowly, listlessly, inaccurately, and occasionally they broke the new instruments from carelessness or some more culpable motive. Karl Karl'itch was not naturally a hard-hearted man, but he was very rigid in his notions of duty, and could be cruelly severe when his orders were not executed with an accuracy and punctuality that seemed to the Russian rustic mind mere useless pedantry. The serfs did not offer him any open opposition, and were always obsequiously respectful in their demeanour towards him, but they invariably frustrated his plans by their carelessness and stolid, passive resistance.

Thus arose that silent conflict and that smouldering mutual enmity which almost always result from the contact of the Teuton with the Slav. The serfs instinctively regretted the good old times, when they lived under the rough-and-ready patriarchal rule of their masters, assisted by a native "burmister," or overseer, who was one of themselves. The burmister had not always been honest in his dealings with them, and the master had often, when in anger, ordered severe punishments to be inflicted; but the burmister had not attempted to make them change their old habits, and had shut his eyes to many little sins of emission and commission, whilst the master was always ready to assist them in difficulties, and commonly treated them in a kindly, familiar way. As the old Russian proverb has it, "Where danger is, there too is kindly forgiveness." Karl Karl'itch, on the contrary, was the personification of uncompassionate, inflexible law. Blind rage and compassionate kindliness were alike foreign to his system of government. If he had any feeling towards the serfs, it was one of chronic contempt. The word durak (blockhead) was constantly on his lips, and when any bit of work was well done, he took it as a matter of course, and never thought of giving a word of approval or encouragement.

When it became evident, in 1859, that the emancipation of the serfs was at hand, Karl Karl'itch confidently predicted that the country would inevitably go to ruin. He knew by experience that the peasants were lazy and improvident, even when they lived under the tutelage of a master, and with the fear of the rod before their eyes. What would they become when this guidance and salutary restraint should be removed? The prospect raised terrible forebodings in the mind of the worthy steward, who had his employer's interests really at heart; and these forebodings were considerably increased and intensified when he learned that the peasants were to receive by law the land which they occupied on sufferance, and which comprised about a half of the whole arable land of the estate. This arrangement he declared to be a dangerous and unjustifiable infraction of the sacred rights of property, which savoured strongly of communism, and could have but one practical result: the emancipated peasants would live by the cultivation of their own land, and would not consent on any terms to work for their former master.