strictly Polish organization. It extends into the Baltic provinces, and through those parts to south Russia which are included in the Jewish pale. But in Poland is its center, and in Poland is it most active. It is the fighting organization of the Jews. It aims to combat Jewish persecution in every way—politically, pacifically, terroristically, and from behind barricades when opportunity offers. This is a striking development, for traditionally the Jews are not a fighting people. Accustomed to centuries of persecution they have learned to meekly bow to the blows showered upon their heads—or to flee. It is only during the more recent years of the Russian revolution that the Jews have produced active rebels in formidable numbers. The Russian terrorists now number many Jews, and the Bund counts thousands of members, hundreds of whom are ready to perform terroristic acts when occasion demands. So powerfully menacing has this organization become that Austria and Germany both fear of its spreading across the frontier and of leaguing the young Jewish men and women of those countries into active Jewish defense organization. If this does happen, Austria and Germany may blame the blind, vicious government of Russia—none other. Fifty years ago a series of so-called “temporary” laws were enacted in Russia applicable to Jews—laws destined to arouse the very spirit of revolt which has culminated in the Bund.[17]

The Nationalist party is numerically the strongest in Poland. First, because it was in opposition to the Duma. It appreciates that Poland’s plight has no connection with Russia’s internal difficulties, so the Nationalist party opposed the first Duma on principle—simply because it was Russian. This was the clerical party, the Jesuitical party, for Poland continues to be Roman Catholic. The nationalists seek to establish the Polish language throughout the country and to gain a Polish administration. Being under clerical influences the Nationalist party is anti-Semitic.

Then follow two middle-class, bourgeois parties, each of considerable strength. The National Democratic party, and the Progressive Democratic party. The National Democrats are opportunists. The present régime is to them intolerable. Any kind of a change they hope will improve the situation. A party of despair, without ideals, but with some energy to continue fighting—for anything. The Progressive Democrats, on the other hand, represent the intelligenzia. They challenge comparison with the liberals of France and the free-thinkers of Germany. Distinctly a radical, if not a revolutionary group, they work for the autonomy of Poland under a Russian federation. They have some thought for the economic progress of the country, and are not unfriendly to the Jews. They want free schools, and universal suffrage.

The public schools in Poland under Russia, as if not heavily enough saddled with impositions and restrictions, are heavily taxed. A Polish child to attend a public school must study in a language not his mother tongue, must learn from a teacher who is a foreigner—to him—and who is utterly unsympathetic—and for these and adjunct privileges the Russian government exacts from each child fifty rubles ($25) per year.

There are all degrees of socialists in Poland. If all of the socialist parties in Poland were to combine there would be formed a party of such overwhelming strength that it would sweep all the others along with it. But socialism without factions would not be recognized by its best friends. The Bund is socialistic and entirely Jewish. The Christian Socialists are socialists but anti-Semitic. This latter organization is made up of a more or less dilettante element, kid-gloved radicals, tailor-made revolutionists.

To offset the Christian socialists are the realists. Formerly this was the great reactionary party but of late it has become the party of the landed proprietors. Not a formidable organization, yet the one monarchical conservative voice, crying in the wilderness of radicalism.

The labor movement in Poland, while a long way in advance of Russia, is yet leagues behind Europe. Still, the labor party nucleus are a grim lot, and they have it within their power to more completely paralyze all Poland for a limited time than any other party or organization. There are more than 300,000 factory or mine-workers in Poland, and as they have learned from their repeated experiences, the general strike is a most effective weapon. When not a factory-wheel turns; when the mines are left to flood; when the railroad lines are exposed to rust, and telegraph and telephone wires stretch useless across the miles of unhappy country, every human being in Poland feels the strain and stress. Europe takes fright and St. Petersburg cowers in panic. Three times has this taken place and each time with a similar result. So much for the labor party and its method of revolt.

There remains one large party. This is the party whose efforts are above all others propagandistic. The Polish Party Socialist, the “P. P. S.” as it is commonly called. If heredity counts in the abstract realm of politics this party should be the socialist party of Poland. It is the direct descendant of the first socialist organization established in Poland in 1875. Now, as then, socialism progresses by stealth. To admit that one holds socialistic opinions is to commit oneself to prison. In its earliest beginnings it was purely intellectual, but in the eighties it spread to the proletariat. Marxist doctrines were the regularly accepted gospel of these socialists. With the growth of nihilism in Russia, Polish socialism came to absorb something of the policy of violence and even the terrorism it still maintains. The P. P. S. as it exists to-day was definitely organized thirteen years ago. Twelve years ago it undertook the printing and circulating of a newspaper. At the outset this paper appeared only occasionally. But as its circle of readers extended it was published more regularly. Now it is a daily. This record represents one of the most remarkable “underground” achievements in Russia, for the police have never been able to discover it, or to suppress it, though to be found with a copy of it on one’s person means arrest. In spite of this it is one of the easiest papers to procure in Warsaw. Boys sell it stealthily on the streets. I asked a hotel porter where I could get a copy, and he promptly took one from his inside pocket and gave it to me. During the past year several hundred people have been arrested for no other offense than reading this paper. It is called Robotnik—“Laborer.”

The Polish Party Socialist, besides promulgating and propagating German socialist doctrines, works for the decentralization of the Russian empire. A United States of Russia, with state control and autonomy for Poland. The prime differences between this party and the Social Democrats—the powerful Russian proletariat organization—is that the latter demand an out-and-out republic, modeled on France.

And against all of these parties is Russia struggling in her frantic effort to hold Poland subject. It is commonly supposed that the conquest of the Caucasus which has been going on for a generation was without a parallel in the Russian empire. But in Poland the situation is equally grim. Poland carries Russia’s yoke because coerced by merciless force. But never for a day is the fight regarded as finished.

The idea of revolution is more universally understood in Poland than in Russia. The Russian peasants want “land and liberty.” The Russian proletariat want a reorganized industrial life. The Poles want freedom from Russian oppression—freedom to worship God in their own way. To-day there are several hundred thousand legally illegitimate children in Poland because the parents were united according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church instead of by the Greek Church, as stipulated by intolerant Russia. They want freedom to choose teachers for their young who are of their own blood and who speak their own tongue. They want freedom to select their own administrative officials, and to make their own laws. And for all these things they are actively and openly fighting. They do not expect to win them by a single coup. They are resigned to a prolonged fight. The people of Poland remember that the French Revolution lasted twenty years and the Austrian uprising of ’48 almost equally long. They understand that the progress of revolutions is like unto the onward roll of the sea—a succession of waves. The sea of revolution has washed completely over Poland and now the waves are mounting higher and higher. There are moments of quiet and apparent retreat, but these are growing fewer and briefer. In the grimness of the people is a dire significance that Russia has already recognized.

Just now is the reign of chaos. So far as one can see, Poland is in the grip of the old middle-class conception of anarchy—anarchy stripped of all its philosophy and idealism; stark, black, fearful. Yet the great underlying dynamic of this terrible unrest is a great hope.

CHAPTER XIV

AMONG THE MUZHIKS

Long before the Mongols invaded Russia, Russia held republican traditions. The states which now make up the Russian empire were formerly ruled by princes and dignitaries elected by the people, and, indeed, Michael Romanoff, the first of the present reigning house, was chosen czar without opposition of arms or other force, so that even Nicholas II is where he is to-day because of a republican custom which raised his forebears to the throne. The Russian church is not Russian. It calls itself Greek “Orthodox.” It is an importation from Byzantium just as the bureaucracy is an importation from Germany. The Russian peasant has submitted to these foreign impositions because they were foisted upon him, but in the village life there has been presented the spirit of pure democracy and republicanism. Therefore it is true that the Russian people do take kindly to reform, and herein lies the probability of the Russian peasant ultimately leading the world in social and economic reforms. When the power which must eventually be yielded to the peasantry has finally been wrested from autocracy and bureaucracy, the pendulum of the social revolution will swing wide, paralleling, if not surpassing, the French Revolution, and affecting the entire world.

The peasants were the weightiest group in the Duma. The Constitutional Democrats did more talking, and in their academic way were the shapers of the first Duma. But the peasants swung the votes. The government at first leaned on the peasants because of their supposed superstitious loyalty to the Emperor—their “Little Father.” The Constitutional Democrats knew, however, that this was a thing of the past, and at once began to proselytize among the men in homespun. The socialists and extreme radicals among the Social Democrats and Labor Deputies entered upon no end of negotiations to seal a compact with the peasants, and with perhaps better success. But the supposed gullible, guileless, ingenuous Muzhik showed himself as canny as a Scot. He listened to everything that anybody wished to say to

him, but when the moment came for exchanging pledges the long, shaggy head of the rustic would deliberately, but firmly, wag—“We want land and liberty.” That was the answer one heard a score of times each day in the Duma lobby. Other matters were of secondary interest to him.

The muzhik used to be terribly serious about two things in life: God and the Czar. This is no longer the case. The Czar sanctioned the calling together of the Duma. The peasants believed in it then—and in him. The Duma meant to them a place where representatives of all the people could come together to formulate requests and to explain in detail to the Emperor the ills of his majesty’s people in the remote country districts. Previous to the first Duma millions believed that this would suffice. Thousands of people in America hold a similar view in regard to the Czar—namely, that he is well-meaning, but kept from knowledge of actual conditions through the machinations of his ministers, counselors, and minions of the court. There was great rejoicing among the peasants when the first Duma framed a “response to the Throne Speech,” and many of them telegraphed most optimistic messages to their home villages. The Czar would hear their prayers and grant their requests, they thought. Alas, the pain of disillusionment that awaited them! Like a thunderbolt from a clear sky came the government’s answer. Every single request rejected and refused! I was in the Duma that afternoon. Amid the strained stillness of the great hall, the prime minister read the address. Only once did M. Gorymekin pause—to swallow a drop of water. As he raised the glass to his lips it seemed as if every one of the eight or nine hundred people in the room coughed nervously, as men do who sit under great strain. But in a breath the intense quiet returned. When the reading was ended a pin drop would still have been audible. Then, while the Constitutional Democratic leaders were answering the ministry in fiery speeches, one after another from the tribunal, the peasants alone, or two by two, as men in common trouble, filed slowly into the lobby. They all seemed instinctively to drift toward the telegraph booth. They were the men who had suffered a blow and were nonplussed. Their faith in the “Little Father” was now irretrievably shaken. In the Duma conservative and academic professors, stung to desperation, hammered and pounded the ministry, and finally introduced a resolution (which, incidentally, they asked a peasant to read) expressing their mistrust of the ministers, demanding their resignation, and a new and responsible ministry. This was parliamentary. The peasants acted differently—they voted in agreement, because they were told it was right to do so. What they did of their own initiative was to send scores of telegrams, which strangely enough the imperial wires carried that night, carried till they were hot. “We have been refused land, liberty, and new laws. Tell everybody.” This was the burden of the messages. That was the muzhik’s impulse. These messages were sent by sad men just coming to the realization of their situation. But having done this they were not materially relieved. They sat together on the lobby benches and conversed in low tones. When adjournment was announced they went sorrowfully away, several never to return. One resigned—utterly discouraged. A few days later one died as a result of his heart-breaking disappointment—Andrianov of Simbirsk government—and the Duma rose in the middle of the afternoon as a token of respect. Several remained ill in their lodgings for a week. It is difficult for us in America to understand and appreciate such intense feeling as these simple peasants reveal, but to them this Duma was the most serious event in their lives. Now they were utterly crushed by the realization that apparently the Czar did not care for his people, that the Duma was a mockery and a farce, and that if they were to escape from their plight it must be through their efforts. The telegrams sent that afternoon constituted the biggest piece of revolutionary propaganda since the Father Gapon labor demonstrators were shot down in cold blood in the square of the Winter Palace in January, 1905.

“How can you fight?” I asked of some peasants who had been sent as delegates to St. Petersburg, and who intimated that this refusal of the government’s meant open rebellion.

“The soldiers have taken our arms, it is true,” they replied. “But we have left our wood-axes and our scythes. We can cut telegraph posts. We can burn barracks and landlords’ houses.”

It is a commonplace psychological fact that the slower a man is to anger the more terrible will his wrath be. The muzhik is grim and determined. As for time, it does not exist for him. At any railroad junction in Russia one may see any number of peasants waiting about all night or all day between trains. Six, eight, ten hours’ delay in making connections troubles no peasant.

One night I stepped off a Volga steamer at a landing far too small to be mentioned on the biggest map. It was nearly midnight and the rain was descending in torrents. My destination was a place distant between twenty-five and fifty miles—my information was no more definite than this—and the journey must needs be by horse or wagon. My companion and I were utterly at a loss to know how to proceed from the landing, for we could not see an arm’s length before us and we had not the remotest idea which direction to take. Presently we discovered a muzhik whom we hailed with joy. He told us he was waiting for a boat down the river—which he expected would come along about five o’clock in the morning. Where had he come from, we asked. “Petrovka,” he replied. Our destination! Our delight at the coincidence was unbounded and we straightway asked him how we were to get there, and the distance. To proceed at night was impossible, he told us, for the roads were flowing streams and the mud ankle-deep. As to the distance he had not the dimmest idea.

“How long were you in coming?” we asked. “What time was it when you left Petrovka?”

The fellow laughed as he answered: “Friend, you must know we have no clocks. When I left the sun was there—” and he pointed to about five degrees above the eastern horizon, “and when I reached here the sun was there—” and he pointed to about five degrees above the western horizon. So we knew it to be about three quarters of a day’s journey. He told us further that though there was a village a little more than a mile away from the landing, we could never reach it in such a storm. Just then a horse neighed, not twenty feet away. We eagerly splashed through the mud in the direction of the sound and found a young peasant on the point of driving off. He had brought some goods to the steamer we had just left and now he was returning to the village. We begged him to take us home with him and put us up for the night. He assented readily. Arrived at his house—a typical peasant’s hut with roof of mud and thatch—we helped him put up the horse and

followed him inside. His father and mother, and several brothers, were asleep on the floor. Peasants usually sleep on the floor in summer. In winter there are “sleeping-boxes” over the stove. The old woman was the only one who moved at our entrance, and she did not look at all surprised. She pointed to an ancient home-made bed and told us we might lie there if we liked, but the floor was better. We knew the bed would be swarming with vermin, so we chose the floor. The old woman threw down a sheepskin for my friend. I rolled myself in my traveling rug.

This instance is typical of the muzhik’s placid hospitality. Not once but many times I knocked at peasants’ huts in out-of-the-way places and asked for shelter. Sometimes I received the greeting: “Where did God send you from?” But muzhik curiosity is easily appeased.

The psychology of muzhik religion brings one to the realm of mysticism and superstition. Russia is filled with sectarians. The Doukhobors are known in America because of their wholesale immigration into Canada a few years ago. They were a Caucasian sect. The Molokani are another, kindred sect, also originating in the Caucasus. In central Russia are many other sects, holding and practising strange tenets—among them, suicide by fire and exposure of their naked bodies to the furious storms of winter. Certainly no country in Europe has so great a variety of mysterious beliefs. But these all belong in a category apart from the superstitious orthodoxy of the average muzhik. To describe the sectarians would necessitate the compass of a volume, whereas there are certain salient characteristics of the accepted orthodoxy which are ever impressing themselves upon the traveler.

At the outset, the forms of religion are well-nigh universally observed. Most peasants remove their hats when passing a church, or an icon, and cross themselves three times. In the interior one sometimes finds a small, crude shrine, set up at the entrance to a village. Before this shrine traveling muzhiks prostrate themselves, falling to their knees and bowing forward till their foreheads rest in the dust. Every muzhik has his revered icon and holy pictures. Usually the icon is set in the corner of the wall facing the door, so that every one who enters may reverence it. After each meal the peasants upon rising from the table bow before the icon, crossing themselves. I have seen icons in vodka shops thus reverenced by peasants coming to buy liquor. The peasant, too, has a blind, but sometimes very real, faith in miraculous images and pilgrimages to well-known shrines like the Madonna of Kazan and the Iberian shrine in Moscow are constantly maintained.

The ringing of the village church-bells on a Sabbath morning or on the occasion of a saint’s day is something wondrous and memorable. There is nothing melodious in the sound. A terrible clanging and pounding, loud, wild, sonorous, discordant. But the muzhik believes that these sounds drive away evil spirits.

In spite of all of these surface signs of ingrained religion, the muzhik is not a religious being. The Orthodox church has no real grip upon his life, and apart from the sectarians and old believers, the peasant is intensely ignorant of all religion and religious beliefs. He strictly observes the church fasts because it has been his custom to do so and because the priests tell him that he must. But it must be remembered that the priest is not so much a spiritual teacher as an agent of the government. Nor do the priests, by their example, show the people what Christianity might do for them. They are frequently dirty, slovenly creatures, guilty of many excesses, of public drunkenness, and not infrequently accused of dishonesty. Monasteries are sometimes dens of iniquity and I know of convents which are semi-public brothels. The muzhik abstains from flesh food during the long Lenten fast and on the regularly prescribed fast days, but he drinks at the same time, and as a result of his impoverished physical condition he falls easy victim to the strong drink. This gives rise to the common idea that Russian peasants are drunken.

During a certain long fast I was spending some time at a large house in south Russia. One afternoon, upon returning to the house after several hours’ absence, the master and I met one of the maids in the hall, weeping bitterly. She told us to go quickly into the dining-room. There we found the gardener and the laundress, both maudlin drunk, standing before a small icon of the Virgin repeatedly drinking the good health of the Holy Mother. This shocking irreverence had quite undone the maid. Flagrant as this incident sounds, it is less so than many of the stories one hears of priests, holy sisters, and mother superiors. Mother superiors, like abbots, are often appointed because of their social influence, and may be without any previous ecclesiastical or monastic training.

There is a classic story in Russia, told of Alexander III, who was once visiting a certain town near Moscow. A local monastery was pointed out to the Emperor and a little way off a convent. The Emperor looked from one to the other and then began to scan every point of the horizon.

“Does your majesty seek something?” asked one of the escort.

“Yes,” responded the Emperor. “You tell me yonder is a monastery and over the way a convent. I am looking for the third building—the foundling institution.”

The muzhik’s religion, so far as I had observed it, is a set of forms to which he bows—much as he pays his taxes—and an instinctive feeling which is never discussed nor thought about, that outside of himself is some great and mysterious power which he must not offend, and by observing the forms which this vaguely understood Being delights in he may expect in return protection in any hour of trial. The muzhik is naturally shrewd. This is a reasonable explanation, and adequate reason for his going regularly to church. And of course no God would see His children inflict the punishments of fasts and long ceremonials upon themselves without rewarding them at some future time.

That there is a genuinely practical element in the muzhik’s religion is indicated in a well-known popular legend which purports to explain how it comes that St. Cassian’s day falls only on the odd day of leap year. It also is a keen analysis of the psychology of the muzhik’s religious outlook.

The two saints, Cassian and Nicholas, so the legend goes, appeared before the Lord together.

“What hast thou seen on earth?” asked the Lord of St. Cassian.

“I have seen a muzhik foundering with his cart in a marsh by the way,” answered St. Cassian.

“Why hast thou not helped him?” inquired the Lord.

“Because I was coming into Thy presence, and I was afraid of soiling my bright clothes so that they would offend Thine eyes.”

At this moment the eyes of the Lord rested upon St.

Nicholas, who approached, falteringly, his dress utterly disheveled and spattered with mud.

“Why comest thou so dirty into My presence?” asked the Lord.

“Because I was following St. Cassian, and seeing the muzhik of whom he just spake, I have helped him out of the marsh.”

The Lord hesitated a moment, then said:

“Because thou, Cassian, hast cared so much about thy dress and so little about thy brother, I will give thee thy saint’s day only once in four years. And to thee, Nicholas, for having acted as thou didst, I will give four saint days each year.”

And that is how it comes about that St. Cassian’s day falls on February 29 and St. Nicholas’s day occurs quarterly.

In this case muzhik ethics are illustrated as eminently practical. And so with muzhik morality. Sexual immorality is so commonplace among the officers, and among certain court and aristocratic circles, that it is no longer scandalous. It is accepted. And also in the industrial towns among the proletariat. But among the peasantry an entirely different code exists—a code of sex honor, born of what Americans would call “horse sense.” Early marriages are the rule, to be sure, much earlier than in the towns, but the standard of morality is probably higher among the peasantry than among any other class of people in Russia.

In one village which I visited in south Russia the village school-mistress and school-master, aged, respectively, twenty-one and twenty-six, were living together in what they called a “free-love union.” Yet the matter was not noticed especially by the peasants. In other words, the muzhik, while morally strict with his own people, is highly tolerant of the lives of other people, and this tolerance does not stop here but is extended also to beliefs. The religion of the muzhik is so lacking in detailed creed that he is not inclined to quarrel over beliefs with any one. In this respect the sectarians are less amiable. They, not unnaturally, are dogmatic and largely inclined toward bigotry, but the sectarians are apart from the typical Russian peasant.

Laziness is frequently ascribed to the Russian peasant. Here one may not assent, nor at the same time repudiate, the charge. Between the peasants of different sections are differences in temperament and characteristics almost as great as between some races. The landed proprietor is the man who most often calls the muzhik lazy. He best should know. But by what standard is the Russian peasant adjudged lazy? The average Russian official comes to his office at ten or eleven o’clock in the morning and in three or four hours he feels that he has done enough for one day. Russia borders on the East. There are parts of Russia traversed by Bedouins, by camel-traders, by people whose months and years slip easily by on the hillsides and the deserts. Compared to any of these the Russian peasants are most industrious.

Soil is a factor. If a peasant has only one dessiatine of ground, as is the case with thousands of peasants in the interior in governments like Saratoff and Voronezh, it is quite impossible for him to keep busy the year through. Especially if he has no knowledge of modern agriculture, as most of them have not. There are thousands of muzhiks who have not yet heard of intensive cultivation, who know nothing of the advantage of rotating crops, and who use wooden ploughs because they have always used wooden ploughs, or have not the money to buy iron implements when they learn that such exist in the world. Russia is not equally fertile throughout. In some of the districts where an annual famine is recurrent, one finds soil which should be rich and productive. It lacks only water, which could be managed by irrigation. But the government has never taken large steps to solve this difficulty. So the soil is subjected to abuse by peasants who know no better. Then when the crops become meager, the peasants are reduced to starvation. But the great point of all is that it is less than half a century since the shackles of bondage fell from them. Surely not one generation nor two must pass before these recent slaves shall be judged by the side of men who have been free for centuries. Under serfdom the obligatory duties of peasants were vague, ill-defined chores. And even these were prescribed by some one else—some one who said when it was time to cut wood for the master, when it was time to sow, and when it was time to reap. The problem of adjustment is only a little less real and formidable to these people than it was to the American negro-slaves, and the differences of opinion in Russia to-day are quite as great in regard to the relative advantages of the present condition as compared to serfdom, as in America in regard to the welfare of the negro now and before the war. But one thing I have noticed: no muzhik ever desires to return to serfdom. The twinkle in his eye is full enough of intelligence when this question is put to him.

The muzhik is rarely indiscreet in his talk. This characteristic is noted by most travelers in Russia, and it is surely true. Not infrequently a man who has been talking most intelligently will give an answer to some simple question which is perfectly inane. He has suddenly become suspicious. So he shrewdly turns you so completely off the track that, metaphorically, you are ditched. This seems to be an instinctive ruse.

To learn that the forms of democracy are not new in Russian life one needs only to turn to the villages. The very word Duma is not new. Towns and even villages have their Duma. Tolstoi talks about the “Gospel as understood by the muzhik.” The ideal of civic life as conceived by the muzhik culminates not in the state and autocracy but in the people—an aggregation of muzhiks. There is an ancient proverb familiar throughout Russia which expresses this ideal of democracy: “Each for himself, but God and the Mir for all”—the Mir being an association of villagers coming together to work out the common weal of the village under the laws of the land. The national laws have allowed a wide scope in certain directions, and the opportunity has not been lost by the muzhiks. They have been left free to manage many of their local economic interests in common, like the allotment and periodic redistribution of land, their fisheries, cutting of timber, and also they have been given absolute freedom to divide and distribute among themselves the village share of the taxes collected from all of the people. They have elected their own immediate administrative officers, a certain number of local judges, and those in turn have limited freedom in regard to accepting local custom and tradition in precedence to civil or criminal law prescribed by the state. To the peasant, therefore, the Duma is an institution similar to this local town meeting he has always been used to, only on a national scale. The shock came when the Duma delegates in St. Petersburg found that to deliberate, come to conclusions and to vote for certain measures was wholly a different thing from

gaining those measures. This was not like the Duma they had been accustomed to at home.

There is much of animal patience about the muzhik. He is a stolid, stubborn, creature. These qualities have led enlightened Russians to call him a child. When the Duma began landed proprietors and gentry were wont to speak of peasant deputies as “children.” But impartial observers soon formed their own opinions. The muzhik is wily. He may not have been so outspoken in the Duma as men more accustomed to town life, but he has the voice where voice means influence, and his vote is as good as a university professor’s in the assembly. The peasant members usually stand solidly together. They know what they want, they ask for it concretely: “Land and liberty,” and mark the craft! They know that they cannot work out the land problem, so they say to the Constitutional Democrats: “You want certain measures passed. Very well. We will vote for them, but you must turn your thoughts to the land question which is what we are interested in.” The Constitutional Democrats could not dispense with the peasant vote, so they were coerced into agreeing. And the muzhiks would sit on the benches in the lobby, swinging their legs and smoking cigarettes, while tedious debates lasted, going in when time to vote. The peasants know their time is coming. They have only to keep on smoking cigarettes in the lobby, going in in time for each vote, and to keep talking all the time about “land and liberty.” During the Duma session their telegrams went to every part of the empire. They well knew they could afford to appear indifferent to the details of working out any bill. The pretentious frock-coated gentlemen might see to that. The muzhik understood that it was his part to lie low for a time, only not to cease murmuring “land and liberty.” He had the whip hand and knew it then. No fool is this simple, untutored, rustic.

During the first Duma the peasant deputies awoke to a consciousness of their power and importance. Through painful surprises they realized that they had a destiny to fulfil. When these deputies returned to their respective villages, all over the provinces they related to their fellow villagers all that had transpired in the Duma. Then came the great peasant awakening which marked a new era for Russia. Just those few months from May to July did it. During that period the Russian peasants bounded forward almost incredibly, and in a few weeks advanced further than in many previous years.

To gather evidence of this change which literally swept over Russia during the spring and early summer of 1906 I planned a long trip through the interior where I would see typical peasant villages, and come in contact with many hundreds of the men upon whom it had suddenly dawned that they were indeed men, men of power, of ultimate influence, and with a future in which to work out their own great destiny.

CHAPTER XV

THE PEASANT AWAKENING

Intense repression was the aftermath of the dissolution, and martial law was spread to every quarter of the empire. The number of arrests made during the latter half of the summer was appallingly large. I left St. Petersburg on the night train, intending to leave Moscow the following evening. In Moscow I stepped into a book-shop to purchase a map. As I turned to leave the store a clatter of spurs and the rattle of a sword caused me to turn my head, and I saw an officer of gendarmes, accompanied by several regular soldiers, entering the shop by the rear door. A moment later a party of several officers and more soldiers passed through the front door by which I was about to pass out. The senior officer motioned me back, the doors were all locked, a soldier placed by each, and all of us who were there—proprietor, clerks, customers, understood that we were all under arrest. Thereupon we made ourselves as comfortable as we could pending the long and tedious search of the officers for forbidden books or pamphlets. From time to time I glanced out of the window into the streets, where I could see the radiant face of my droshky driver whom I had engaged by the hour. It was just the noon hour when I had entered the shop, and I began to get ravenously hungry, but I had to bide my time. After several hours of patient waiting we customers were taken into a rear room and subjected to a searching examination. I was able to establish my identity as an American citizen and was presently released, but all of the others were detained, some for over night, and two or three for several days. In the interior none of us would have got off so lightly. It was now early August and eighty-five of the eighty-seven provinces of European Russia were then under some form of “extraordinary protection,” or martial law. One of the five exempt, or officially “tranquil” provinces, was Kostroma, a government which lies across and above the upper Volga. The capital of this province, Kostroma city, is situated about 260 miles north of Moscow, and it was here that I planned to begin my long journey through the peasant country.

Kostroma once boasted historical consideration as the cradle of the House of Romanoff. Here lived Michael Feodorovitch Romanoff in the year 1613, when he was elected czar. Just outside the town rises the Convent of Ipatieff, which offered him a safe refuge when the embittered Poles marched thither to slay him, and were diverted from their intention through the wit of the peasant Soussanine, who, under the pretense of guiding the men of the south country to the hiding-place of the czar-elect, led them far into the forests out of whose bewildering vastnesses no man might hope to escape. To-day there are large imperial estates in Kostroma. I came here, turning over in my mind the probability of finding the loyal spirit of Soussanine still lingering among the Kostroma peasants, a devotion supposedly of traditional character.

I was recommended to several typical peasant villages within a radius of fifty miles of the town of Kostroma as worth my visiting. The town of Kostroma is an industrial rather than an agricultural center. Large linen mills, starch, and cutlery factories are there. The employees of these establishments are mostly peasants. Some of them contribute to the support of families in the villages, while not a few quit the mills and factories at every sowing and reaping time, to help with the labors of the field. Thus Kostroma peasants are not solely dependent upon their crops. There is yet another factor which helps to better their conditions, and which, according to the theory of some observers, should temper their feeling toward the government. The individual holdings of land are larger than in many sections. The average allotment is from eight to sixteen acres per adult male. This sometimes aggregates thirty acres to a family. Taken all in all, then, I had every reason to expect these peasants to be conservative, contented, and non-revolutionary.

A local Zemstvo official, known to the peasants, offered to accompany me to the villages, to introduce me and to vouch for the fact that I was seriously interested in knowing the precise feelings of the peasants in regard to the dissolution of the Duma, their attitude toward the government at that time, and their state of mind toward the next Duma. We traveled through the country in a native conveyance called a tarantass, a basket-like affair, drawn by three horses. Were it not for the incredibly rough roads a tarantass ride would be quite merry.

The peasants of one of the first villages at which we called proved not only communicative, but so frankly eager to express themselves that the experiences of the evening proved full of significance. This village was located about ten miles from Kostroma and consisted of a group of three or four hundred houses. As Russian villages go, this one had every appearance of comparative freedom from the ravages of poverty. To be sure, few of the houses were painted, and the streets were mere mud-rutted lanes, but the general appearance did not suggest squalor, or the grim life-struggle so often characteristic of Russian villages.

Our troika pulled up before a tea-house, near the close of the day. Within we found groups of peasants from the fields, who were loitering over glasses of refreshing tea. There may have been forty in the room when we entered. Mostly they were men of middle age. Their long hair was trimmed squarely; their beards shaggy and unkempt, though on the whole they had a neat appearance. Some wore shirts of bright red, others of blue. Their great boots were clodded with the soil. To foreign eyes it was a striking and picturesque scene. The rough rafters of the room, the bare walls, the home-turned benches and chairs, fittingly framed the picture of these massive, strongly built, peasant folk, enjoying the first respite from the day’s toil.

When our steaming, fragrant tea had been set before us, my companion told the men, briefly, that I had come all the way from another country to talk with them. Their interest was fixed instantly. Within a very few minutes the number in the room had swelled to nearly one hundred, and so intent did we all become that several hours slipped by all too quickly.

“Will you tell us why the people of other countries lent money to the Russian government to help keep us down?” This question came abruptly from a keen, blue-eyed muzhik, early in the conversation. “We don’t understand why the people of other countries should oppress us, because what have we done to them?”

My best explanations were obviously futile. The bald fact was clearly grasped by my questioner that the Russian government had borrowed money in France, and Austria, and England, at a time when it seemed as if lack of money would end the régime of insufferable oppression and wrong. His mind reached no farther than this and his sense of justice and right were hurt. This man nurtured bitter enmity against his government, so I pressed him to tell me the reasons for his strong feelings.

“Everything costs too much,” he replied. “In this village we are not like peasants in other places who need more land. We have enough. What we want is another government—a government that will help the people to live. We are tired of paying eighteen copecks (nine cents) for sugar, and too much for everything we buy. It is the government that does all this.”

A murmur of assent rolled round the room. Such boldness of speech in the midst of so large a company amazed me. Six or even four months before such daring was unheard of.

“When you say you want a change of government, what do you mean?” I asked.

“We want a people’s government,” answered a swarthy-faced man who leaned far over an adjoining table. “We want a real Duma.”

“But you had a Duma, and look what became of it,” I replied.

“We don’t want that kind of a Duma,” he persisted. “We want a Duma that can do something for the people—”

“A constituent assembly,” interrupted a younger man.

It did not seem possible that these men could be so clear on the situation as their words seemed to indicate, so I said: “You see, I am a foreigner; I know nothing about your conditions. What do you mean by ‘constituent assembly’?”

“We mean,” responded the man near me, “a Duma that can make all of the laws. We don’t want another Duma that is hampered by a lot of laws at the start. We don’t want any ministers except those appointed by this Duma, and we don’t want any other officials who are not appointed by our Duma. That is what we mean by constituent assembly.”

Whether this extraordinary development was the result of agitation, or of the peasants’ own progress toward a political concept, I did not then know. But there it was—a hundred peasants, in what amounted to a meeting, declaring for a “constituent assembly,” and explaining with perfect clearness and lucidity what it was they wanted to abolish, and what they hoped to attain.

“Have you seen the Viborg manifesto?” I asked.

“Of course we have read it,” they exclaimed, laughing.

“What do you think about it?”

“It is foolish,” answered one of the older men. “Stop paying taxes? We have not paid direct taxes in two years. Of course we shall not pay any this year. But can we stop drinking tea and vodka? Can we stop using matches? As for not sending soldiers to the army—suppose we don’t. Five soldiers are soon due from this village. Suppose we don’t send them—what will happen? Cossacks will come. The whole village will have to defend those five men. That will mean bloodshed. Is it not better that we should get every one of those men to promise that they will never shoot at their brothers? If we do this we can accomplish the same result without spilling blood in the streets of our village.”

One of the Constitutional Democratic Duma deputies from this province was urging a group of peasants to accept the Viborg manifesto, when up spoke a canny muzhik and said: “You ask us to stop giving taxes to the government. That means stop drinking tea and vodka. Very good. But you are a lawyer—will you stop putting stamps on all of your papers, and documents, and letters?”

These peasants, so far as I talked with them, had lost faith in the Constitutional Democrats. They felt that the members of this party were not always single-eyed; and in the Viborg manifesto they showed their lack of understanding of the peasants by asking them to do several ridiculous and impossible things, and then dropped into private life, leaving the peasants to muddle through with the practical side of the manifesto as best they could.

“Why should we shed our blood for a Duma that is dead?” asked the man who had asked why England helped the government with money. “The old Duma can do nothing for us. It is over. Give us a constituent assembly, a Duma that will make all of the laws, that cannot be dissolved, and then things will be different. We would then feel that we had something worth fighting for.”

“But your Duma has been dissolved, and you have no immediate prospect of a constituent assembly. What do you intend to do?”

“We will join any movement for a new government,” was the surprising answer. “We won’t begin, because in this village we have no pressing reason. But if the peasants in the districts where there is famine will begin, we will join in. The peasants must rise together.”

“How are you to do that?”

“The Duma has taught us that it is possible for us to be united. Whatever is done now must be done by all of the peasants and all of the people.”

“This being the province where the Emperor’s family came from,” I went on, “I expected to find the peasants here quite loyal.”

There was a loud laugh at this, more direful than words.

Up to this point the name of the Czar had not been mentioned. I was curious to know their feeling toward him, so I ventured a direct question:

“When did you begin to lose faith in the Czar?”

There was a momentary silence in which I almost regretted the question. Then some one answered: “We never speak of the Emperor now. But we cannot forget that when our representatives drew up a response to the throne speech, setting forth our needs, he refused to receive it.”

The Kostroma peasants now were sympathetic toward revolution because they had slowly reached the conclusion that the existing régime must go because it was evil and they saw no other way of getting rid of it. Their faith in the Czar, which once was so strong, was hopelessly shaken, and they no longer were soothed by the empty phrases which are periodically lavished upon them in hollow, religious solemnity, in the imperial ukases and rescripts.

The significance of the Kostroma situation lay in this, that here was the ancient home of the House of Romanoff, a province that had ever been loyal to autocracy; now not only had this loyalty disappeared, but open unrest prevailed and threats of rebellion were freely expressed. The feeling of the peasants toward the government—that remained as it was before, full of hatred. Toward the Czar they had changed. Previously they believed in him, but now they saw that Czar and the government were one. So they cordially hated both, and dared to tell us so. Here surely was evidence of a peasant awakening.

Midway between this officially “tranquil” province of Kostroma and the frankly revolutionary government of Kazan, the old Tartar capital, lay Nijni Novgorod; assertive, daring, ever since the good days of old, when independence was maintained for several centuries against all invaders. The ex-Duma deputies, Zemstvo officers, and other citizens to whom I brought introductions, assured me that this whole province was not unlike a powder magazine which a spark might touch off at any moment. Several estates near the city of Nijni Novgorod had just been burned. The landlords of others had fled in anticipation of a coming wave of destruction. To such an extent was this true that not one of the gentlemen with whom I talked could suggest one estate within a reasonable distance of the city where I might hope to find normal conditions. At the same time they all stated that the southern part of the government was thoroughly imbued with the idea of revolt, and that the completion of the harvest-taking might be followed by outbreaks regardless of the “peasant movement” in other parts of Russia.

Here in Nijni Novgorod, however, I found a charming relief from the serious business of observing the “peasant awakening” and the progress of the people toward revolution, in the world-famous fair. This proved like a childhood dream come true. The fires of insurrection were alight here and there through the province, landlords of estates near by were making off in anticipation of the rising tide of the peasant movement. But the great fair had all the charm of a world, wondrous strange, all the novelty of boyhood’s most bizarre phantasies. When life grants so delightful an experience as the realization of an olden dream without one tinge of disappointment, one is filled with gratitude. And so I blessed the dear old geographers who spared a corner of one of the broad, flat pages to a picture of Nijni Novgorod.

For the nonce I tried to forget the tumult and the struggle. Here was the fair. Landlords’ estates might burn to ashes. For a few days I determined to forget them, confident that ere long I should see other places in flames as I had already seen whole towns reduced to ashes.

A world exposition, whether at Paris, or St. Louis, is a wearisome thing after the first one has been seen. The sameness, the fatiguing miles we walk in vain search for something new—none of this in Nijni. Unless one has been to Calcutta, and knows his Turkestan, his Caucasia, his Siberia, and Lapland, Nijni is fascinatingly new.

It is a people’s fair above all else. A practical thing. The annual exchange of thousands of small things from the mysterious East and the frozen North, the one ample market of near a million peasants from the interior governments of Russia. The tourist will not find preparations to please his extravagant tastes. Utility is the underlying aim of the Nijni fair, but utility from the standpoint of the needs of the people who contribute to its upkeep and depend upon its resources. And the needs of the vast Tartar horde, of stolid muzhiks, and hardy peoples from polar regions, are wondrously unlike the needs of Europe and the western world. The bazars of Persia, of Daghestan, and Tashkent range side by side with booths of pelts from Archangel and Nova Zembla and, frequently enough to be noticed, a stall of old Cathay attended by narrow-eyed Orientals in rich, blue silks, their plaited pigtails glistening black against the bright cloth. A few enterprising European merchants are represented, but only a few. I met one surprise at a picture post-card counter. The proprietor, a native Nijni Novgorodian, asked me if I spoke English. When I answered that I did, he asked me if I had ever been in England. When I again answered yes, he asked if I had been also in America. Once more I told him yes. Then he came to the point. “Have you ever been in Boston?”

“Yes, I know Boston quite well,” I replied.

A wide smile of genuine joy spread over his face as he grasped both my hands and wrung them in excited cordiality—enthusiastic to a degree utterly foreign to Boston. Early in his life he had spent four years in Boston. Since then he has never ceased regretting his inability to return there. His uncompromising loyalty to what he called “the best city on earth” would have done credit to any Bostonian of Mayflower lineage.

Nijni streets flaunted gay colors, the myriad peoples who thronged the thoroughfares of the fair made up a crowd remarkably different from any I had ever before beheld. Here, I thought, it will not be difficult to forget Russia and her troubles. Alas! the Russian people make no such resolve. Never a day but some stroke against the government is contemplated. Never an event without some effort to turn toward the goal of Russian liberty. Hardly had I reached the fair when a chance acquaintance urged me to buy a ticket for a certain performance to be given that night, ostensibly for the benefit of an orphan asylum in a distant part of the country. But, as my friend explained, this orphan asylum was non-existent and the proceeds really were for the Social Democratic party. Next Tuesday another “charity” performance was advertised, the proceeds to go to the Social Revolutionary party, these being the two most active revolutionary organizations in European Russia at that time.

In the midst of the fair-grounds I met an old-time revolutionist whom I had known as an exile on the east side in New York. She was among the amnestied in October, 1905, and had returned, like a released prisoner of war, to the fight. When I met her she was about to start for a revolutionary meeting to be held in the depths of a forest a little way out of Nijni. Meetings of this nature were quite common at that time, despite the fact that they were attended at considerable risk. The place of meeting must be announced by word of mouth, through a small committee, to each and every one of the four or five hundred people who are to attend. Absolutely nothing may be committed to paper. In spite of these precautions the secret police frequently hear of the gatherings, and Cossacks are sent to fire upon the crowd. Twice within a fortnight my friend had been at such meetings which were surprised by soldiers. At one, the volleys from the Cossack rifles had brought down a number of men and several young girls.

The Nijni Novgorod fair was inaugurated long before the discovery of America. It owes its origin to the jealousy of the Muscovite princes of the commerce and trade which annually centered at Kazan, the seat of the Tartar khans. The Kazan fairs date from 1257, but the Muscovite fairs soon began to surpass those of the Tartars, and eventually the Kazan fair ceased to exist. Nijni has not always been the location of this fair, for in the early days Czar Michael Feodorovitch, the first Romanoff, and Ivan the Terrible, changed the site to other Volga towns, but so far as history is concerned the associations will remain clustered round the old fortified town, built at the junction of the Oka and the Volga and called Nijni Novgorod.

It is a big affair. At the last official rebuilding there were sixty buildings and twenty-five hundred bazars. Many small booths are added each year, and in addition are the usual “side shows”—usual in the East. To me they were most unusual. Beautiful Caucasian dancers, real Cossacks doing wonderful feats of horsemanship, old Russian tableaux, sectional characterizations such as singers from Little Russia; northern camps; Daghestanese, Turkestanese, and Persian industries.

All in all the fair comprises about eight thousand definite exhibits, some of which are very large. But the impression made is not of costly wares, designed for the homes of the rich, but simple things such as simple people need in daily life. The grand shops are there, as everywhere, but the ensemble effect was of useful, cheap articles for a workaday people.

The Caucasian bazars glisten with silver wares—bejeweled daggers, silver ornamented whips, bracelets, cigarette boxes, slippers adorned with hand-worked designs of gold and silver thread. Costly sounding articles, these, but in reality very cheap, and to Caucasians very necessary. To the rest of the world very pretty. A dagger is as much a part of Caucasian dress as a waistcoat of a European. All Caucasians are horsemen, and ornamented whips are as universal among them as embossed saddles among Mexicans. As for the bracelets and earrings and brooches—where is milady who will deny that these are among life’s essentials?

The Russian stalls show samovars, of brass and nickel, linens—peasant linens—often exceedingly pretty and ridiculously cheap, home-pounded metal candlesticks, cups, plates, and even small implements, the various kinds of Russian costumes of the present day and of long ago—ancient styles being frequently worn on Sundays and special feast-days by the peasants for their extra dress-up clothes.

Before the Persian bazars I was wont to linger longer. The stately mien, the innate dignity of these swarthy Easterners, commands interest. Their great, dark eyes suggest infinite depth lost in height, their strange, yet meaningful, expressions seem to flit from age to age as lightly and as swiftly as a woodland bird darts from bough to bough. Now soft as memory, recalling a long and mighty past; now stern and austere, remembering the hardness of the present. And the goods they sell are not of our world. Delicate embroideries, slight stuffs of silks as veil-like as dew webs on the grass of a summer morning, yet traced with bright colors by fingers we know not where—beyond the great mountains that divide Europe from Asia, far beyond the Caspian Sea.