Something entirely new, unseen and unheard-of
formerly, has lately shown itself in
our country districts. To our village, consisting
of eighty homesteads, from half a dozen to
a dozen cold, hungry, tattered tramps come every
day, wanting a night's lodging.
These people, ragged, half-naked, barefoot,
often ill, and extremely dirty, come into the
village and go to the village policeman. That
they should not die in the street of hunger and
exposure, he quarters them on the inhabitants
of the village, regarding only the peasants as
"inhabitants." He does not take them to the
squire, who besides his own ten rooms has
ten other apartments: office, coachman's room,
laundry, servants' and upper-servants' hall and
so on; nor does he take them to the priest or
deacon or shopkeeper, in whose houses, though
not large, there is still some spare room; but he
takes them to the peasants, whose whole family,
wife, daughters-in-law, unmarried daughters, and
big and little children, all live in one room—sixteen,
nineteen, or twenty-three feet long. And
the master of the hut takes the cold, hungry,
stinking, ragged, dirty man, and not merely gives
him a night's lodging, but feeds him as well.
"When you sit down to table yourself," an
old peasant householder told me, "it's impossible
not to invite him too, or your own soul accepts
nothing. So one feeds him and gives him a
drink of tea."
Those are the nightly visitors. But during the
day, not two or three, but ten or more such
visitors call at each hut, and again it is: "Why,
it is impossible...," etc.
And for almost every tramp the housewife cuts
a slice of bread, thinner or thicker according to
the man's appearance—though she knows her rye
will not last till next harvest.
"If you were to give to all who come, a loaf
[the big peasant loaf of black bread] would not
last a day," some housewives said to me. "So
sometimes one hardens one's heart and refuses!"
And this goes on every day, all over Russia.
An enormous yearly-increasing army of beggars,
cripples, administrative exiles, helpless old men,
and above all unemployed workmen, lives—that
is to say, shelters itself from cold and wet—and
is actually fed by the hardest-worked and poorest
class, the country peasants.
We have Workhouses,[1] Foundlings' Hospitals,
Boards of Public Relief, and all sorts of philanthropic
organisations in our towns; and in all
those institutions, in buildings with electric light,
parquet floors, neat servants, and various well-paid
attendants, thousands of helpless people of
all sorts are sheltered. But however many such
there may be, they are but a drop in the ocean of
the enormous (unnumbered, but certainly enormous)
population which now tramps destitute over Russia,
and is sheltered and fed apart from any institutions,
solely by the village peasants whose own
Christian feelings induce them to bear this heavy
and gigantic tax.
Just think what people who are not peasants
would say, if—even once a week—such a shivering,
starving, dirty, lousy tramp were placed in
each of their bedrooms! But the peasants not
only house them, but feed them and give them
tea, because "one's own soul accepts nothing
unless one has them to table."
In the more remote parts of Sarátof, Tambóf,
and other Provinces, the peasants do not wait for
the policeman to bring these tramps, but always
receive them and feed them of their own accord.
And, as is the case with all really good deeds,
the peasants do this without knowing that they
are doing a good deed; and yet it is not merely
a good deed "for one's soul," but is of enormous
importance for the whole of Russian society. It
is of such importance for Russian society because,
but for this peasant population and the Christian
feeling that lives so strongly in it, it is difficult to
imagine what the fate would be, not only of these
hundreds of thousands of unfortunate, houseless
tramps, but of all the well-to-do—and especially of
the wealthy who have their houses in the country.
It is only necessary to see the state of privation
and suffering to which these homeless tramps have
come or have been brought, and to imagine the
mental condition they must be in, and to realise
that it is only this help rendered to them by the
peasants that restrains them from committing
violence, which would be quite natural in their
position, upon those who possess in superfluity
all the things these unfortunates lack to keep
themselves alive.
So that it is not the philanthropic organisations,
not the Government with its police and all its
juridical institutions, that protects us, the well-to-do,
from being attacked by those who wander,
cold, hungry, and homeless, after having sunk—or,
for the most part, having been brought—to the
lowest depths of poverty and despair; but we are
protected, as well as fed and supported, by that
same basic strength of the Russian nation—the
peasantry.
Yes! Were it not that there is among Russia's
vast peasant population a deep religious consciousness
of the brotherhood of all men, not only
would these homeless people, having reached the
last stages of despair, have long since destroyed
the houses of the rich, in spite of any police force
(there are and must be so few of them in country
districts), but they would even have killed all who
stood in their way. So that we ought not to be
horrified or surprised when we hear or read of
people being robbed, or killed that they may be
robbed, but we should understand and remember
that if such things happen as seldom as they do,
we owe this to the unselfish help rendered by the
peasants to this unfortunate tramping population.
Every day from ten to fifteen people come to
our house to beg. Some among them are regular
beggars, who for some reason have chosen that
means of livelihood, and having clothed and shod
themselves as best they might, and having made
sacks to hold what they collect, have started out to
tramp the country. Among them some are blind,
and some have lost a leg or an arm; and sometimes,
though rarely, there are women and children
among them. But these are only a small part.
The majority of the beggars that come now are
passers-by, without a beggar's sack, mostly young,
and not crippled. They are all in a most pitiable
state, barefoot, half-naked, emaciated, and shivering
with cold. You ask them, "Where are you
going?" The answer is always the same: "To
look for work"; or, "Have been looking for
work, but found none, and am making my way
home. There's no work; they are shutting down
everywhere." Many of these people are returning
from exile.
A few days ago I was barely awake when our
servant, Ilyá Vasílyevitch, told me:
"There are five tramps waiting near the porch."
"Take some money there is on the table, and
give it them," said I.
Ilyá Vasílyevitch took it, and, as is the custom,
gave each of them five copecks [five farthings].
About an hour passed. I went out into the porch.
A dreadfully tattered little man with a sickly
face, swollen eyelids, restless eyes, and boots all
falling to pieces, began bowing, and held out a
certificate to me.
"Have you received something?"
"Your Excellency, what am I to do with five
copecks?... Your Excellency, put yourself in
my place! Please, your Excellency, look ...
please see!" and he shows me his clothing.
"Where am I to go to, your Excellency?" (it is
"Excellency" after every word, though his face
expresses hatred). "What am I to do? Where
am I to go?"
I tell him that I give to all alike. He continues
to entreat, and demands that I should read
his certificate. I refuse. He kneels down. I ask
him to leave me.
"Very well! That means, it seems, that I must
put an end to myself! That's all that's left me to
do.... Give me something, if only a trifle!"
I give him twenty copecks, and he goes away,
evidently angry.
There are a great many such peculiarly insistent
beggars, who feel they have a right to demand
their share from the rich. They are literate for
the most part, and some of them are even well-read
persons on whom the Revolution has had
an effect. These men, unlike the ordinary, old-fashioned
beggars, look on the rich, not as on
people who wish to save their souls by distributing
alms, but as on highwaymen and robbers who
suck the blood of the working classes. It often
happens that a beggar of this sort does no work
himself and carefully avoids work, and yet considers
himself, in the name of the workers, not
merely justified, but bound, to hate the robbers of
the people—that is to say, the rich—and to hate
them from the depths of his heart; and if, instead
of demanding from them, he begs, that is only a
pretence.
There are a great number of these men, many
of them drunkards, of whom one feels inclined to
say, "It's their own fault"; but there are also a
great many tramps of quite a different type: meek,
humble, and very pathetic, and it is terrible to
think of their position.
Here is a tall, good-looking man, with nothing
on over his short, tattered jacket. His boots are
bad and trodden down. He has a good, intelligent
face. He takes off his cap and begs in the
ordinary way. I give him something, and he
thanks me. I ask him where he comes from and
where he is going to.
"From Petersburg, home to our village in
Toúla Government."
I ask him, "Why on foot?"
"It's a long story," he answers, shrugging his
shoulders.
I ask him to tell it me. He relates it with
evident truthfulness.
"I had a good place in an office in Petersburg,
and received thirty roubles [three guineas] a month.
Lived very comfortably. I have read your books
War and Peace and Anna Karénina," says he, again
smiling a particularly pleasant smile. "Then my
folks at home got the idea of migrating to Siberia,
to the Province of Tomsk." They wrote to him
asking whether he would agree to sell his share of
land in the old place. He agreed. His people
left, but the land allotted them in Siberia turned
out worthless. They spent all they had, and came
back. Being now landless, they are living in
hired lodgings in their former village, and work
for wages. It happened, just at the same time,
that he lost his place in Petersburg. It was not
his doing. The firm he was with became bankrupt,
and dismissed its employees. "And just
then, to tell the truth, I came across a seamstress."
He smiled again. "She quite entangled me....
I used to help my people, and now see what a
smart chap I have become!... Ah well, God is
not without mercy; maybe I'll manage somehow!"
He was evidently an intelligent, strong, active
fellow, and only a series of misfortunes had
brought him to his present condition.
Take another: his legs swathed in strips of rag;
girdled with a rope; his clothing quite threadbare
and full of small holes, evidently not torn, but
worn-out to the last degree; his face, with its
high cheek-bones, pleasant, intelligent, and sober.
I give him the customary five copecks, and he
thanks me and we start a conversation. He has
been an administrative exile in Vyátka. It was
bad enough there, but it is worse here. He is
going to Ryazán, where he used to live. I ask
him what he has been. "A newspaper man. I
took the papers round."
"For what were you exiled?"
"For selling forbidden literature."
We began talking about the Revolution. I told
him my opinion, that the evil was all in ourselves;
and that such an enormous power as that of the
Government cannot be destroyed by force. "Evil
outside ourselves will only be destroyed when we
have destroyed it within us," said I.
"That is so, but not for a long time."
"It depends on us."
"I have read your book on Revolution."
"It is not mine, but I agree with it."
"I wished to ask you for some of your books."
"I should be very pleased.... Only I'm afraid
they may get you into trouble. I'll give you the
most harmless."
"Oh, I don't care! I am no longer afraid of
anything.... Prison is better for me than this!
I am not afraid of prison.... I even long for it
sometimes," he said sadly.
"What a pity it is that so much strength is
wasted uselessly!" said I. "How people like
you destroy your own lives!... Well, and
what do you mean to do now?"
"I?" he said, looking intently into my face.
At first, while we talked about past events and
general topics, he had answered me boldly and
cheerfully; but as soon as our conversation referred
to himself personally and he noticed my sympathy,
he turned away, hid his eyes with his sleeve, and
I noticed that the back of his head was shaking.
And how many such people there are!
They are pitiable and pathetic, and they, too,
stand on the threshold beyond which a state of
despair begins that makes even a kindly man
ready to go all lengths.
"Stable as our civilisation may seem to us,"
says Henry George, "disintegrating forces are
already developing within it. Not in deserts and
forests, but in city slums and on the highways,
the barbarians are being bred who will do for our
civilisation what the Huns and Vandals did for
the civilisation of former ages."
Yes! What Henry George foretold some
twenty years ago, is happening now before our
eyes, and in Russia most glaringly—thanks to the
amazing blindness of our Government, which carefully
undermines the foundations on which alone
any and every social order stands or can stand.
We have the Vandals foretold by Henry George
quite ready among us in Russia. And, strange as
it may seem to say so, these Vandals, these doomed
men, are specially dreadful here among our deeply
religious population. These Vandals are specially
dreadful here, because we have not the restraining
principles of convention, propriety, and public
opinion, that are so strongly developed among the
European nations. We have either real, deep,
religious feeling, or—as in Sténka Rázin and Pougatchéf—a
total absence of any restraining principle:
and, dreadful to say, this army of Sténkas
and Pougatchéfs is growing greater and greater,
thanks to the Pougatchéf-like conduct of our
Government in these later days, with its horrors
of police violence, insane banishments, imprisonments,
exiles, fortresses, and daily executions.
Such actions release the Sténka Rázins from the
last remnants of moral restraint. "If the learned
gentlefolk act like that, God Himself permits us to
do so," say and think they.
I often receive letters from that class of men,
chiefly exiles. They know I have written something
about not resisting evil by violence, and for
the greater part they retort ungrammatically,
though with great fervour, that what the Government
and the rich are doing to the poor, can and
must be answered only in one way: "Revenge,
revenge, revenge!"
Yes! The blindness of our Government is
amazing. It does not and will not see that all it
does to disarm its enemies merely increases their
number and energy. Yes! These people are
terrible, terrible for the Government and for the
rich, and for those who live among the rich.
But besides the feeling of terror these people
inspire, there is also another feeling, much more
imperative than that of fear, and one we cannot
help experiencing towards those who, by a series
of accidents, have fallen into this terrible condition
of vagrancy. That feeling is one of shame and
sympathy.
And it is not fear, so much as shame and pity,
that should oblige us, who are not in that condition,
to respond in one way or other to this new
and terrible phenomenon in Russian life.[2]
As I sat at my work, Ilyá Vasílyevitch entered
softly and, evidently reluctant to disturb me
at my work, told me that some wayfarers and
a woman had been waiting a long time to see me.
"Here," I said, "please take this, and give it
them."
"The woman has come about some business."
I told him to ask her to wait a while, and continued
my work. By the time I came out, I had
quite forgotten about her, till I saw a young
peasant woman with a long, thin face, and clad
very poorly and too lightly for the weather, appear
from behind a corner of the house.
"What do you want? What is the matter?"
"I've come to see you, your Honour."
"Yes ... what about? What is the matter?"
"To see you, your Honour."
"Well, what is it?"
"He's been taken wrongfully.... I'm left
with three children."
"Who's been taken, and where to?"
"My husband ... sent off to Krapívny."
"Why? What for?"
"For a soldier, you know. But it's wrong—because,
you see, he's the breadwinner! We
can't get on without him.... Be a father to
us, sir!"
"But how is it? Is he the only man in the
family?"
"Just so ... the only man!"
"Then how is it they have taken him, if he's
the only man?"
"Who can tell why they've done it?...
Here am I, left alone with the children! There's
nothing for me but to die.... Only I'm sorry
for the children! My last hope is in your kindness,
because, you see, it was not right!"
I wrote down the name of her village, and her
name and surname, and told her I would see about
it and let her know.
"Help me, if it's only ever so little!... The
children are hungry, and, God's my witness, I
haven't so much as a crust. The baby is worst
of all ... there's no milk in my breasts. If
only the Lord would take him!"
"Haven't you a cow?" I asked.
"A cow? Oh, no!... Why, we're all
starving!" said she, crying, and trembling all
over in her tattered coat.
I let her go, and prepared for my customary
walk. It turned out that the doctor, who lives
with us, was going to visit a patient in the village
the soldier's wife had come from, and another
patient in the village where the District Police
Station is situated, so I joined him, and we drove
off together.
I went into the Police Station, while the doctor
attended to his business in that village.
The District Elder was not in, nor the clerk,
but only the clerk's assistant—a clever lad whom I
knew. I asked him about the woman's husband,
and why, being the only man in the family, he
had been taken as a conscript.
The clerk's assistant looked up the particulars,
and replied that the woman's husband was not the
only man in the family: he had a brother.
"Then why did she say he was the only
one?"
"She lied! They always do," replied he, with
a smile.
I made some inquiries about other matters I
had to attend to, and then the doctor returned
from visiting his patient, and we drove towards
the village in which the soldier's wife lived. But
before we were out of the first village, a girl of
about twelve came quickly across the road towards
us.
"I suppose you're wanted?" I said to the
doctor.
"No, it's your Honour I want," said the girl
to me.
"What is it?"
"I've come to your Honour, as mother is dead,
and we are left orphans—five of us. Help us!...
Think of our needs!"
"Where do you come from?"
The girl pointed to a brick house, not badly
built.
"From here ... that is our house. Come and
see for yourself!"
I got out of the sledge, and went towards the
house. A woman came out and asked me in.
She was the orphans' aunt. I entered a large,
clean room; all the children were there, four of
them: besides the eldest girl—two boys, a girl,
and another boy of about two. Their aunt told
me all about the family's circumstances. Two
years ago the father had been killed in a mine.
The widow tried to get compensation, but failed.
She was left with four children; the fifth was
born after her husband's death. She struggled on
alone as best she could, hiring a labourer at first
to work her land. But without her husband
things went worse and worse. First they had to
sell their cow, then the horse, and at last only
two sheep were left. Still they managed to live
somehow; but two months ago the woman herself
fell ill and died, leaving five children, the
eldest twelve years old.
"They must get along as best they can. I try
to help them, but can't do much. I can't think
what's to become of them! I wish they'd die!...
If one could only get them into some Orphanage—or
at least some of them!"
The eldest girl evidently understood and took
in the whole of my conversation with her aunt.
"If at least one could get little Nicky placed
somewhere! It's awful; one can't leave him for
a moment," said she, pointing to the sturdy little
two-year old urchin, who with his little sister was
merrily laughing at something or other, and evidently
did not at all share his aunt's wish.
I promised to take steps to get one or more of
the children into an Orphanage. The eldest girl
thanked me, and asked when she should come for
an answer. The eyes of all the children, even of
Nicky, were fixed on me, as on some fairy being
capable of doing anything for them.
Before I had reached the sledge, after leaving
the house, I met an old man. He bowed, and at
once began speaking about these same orphans.
"What misery!" he said; "it's pitiful to see
them. And the eldest little girlie, how she looks
after them—just like a mother! Wonderful how
the Lord helps her! It's a mercy the neighbours
don't forsake them, or they'd simply die of
hunger, the dear little things!... They are the
sort of people it does no harm to help," he added,
evidently advising me to do so.
I took leave of the old man, the aunt, and the
little girl, and drove with the doctor to the woman
who had been to see me that morning.
At the first house we came to, I inquired
where she lived. It happened to be the house
of a widow I know very well; she lives on the
alms she begs, and she has a particularly importunate
and pertinacious way of extorting them.
As usual, she at once began to beg. She said she
was just now in special need of help to enable
her to rear a calf.
"She's eating me and the old woman out of
house and home. Come in and see her."
"And how is the old woman?"
"What about the old woman?... She's
hanging on...."
I promised to come and see, not so much the
calf as the old woman, and again inquired where
the soldier's wife lived. The widow pointed to
the next hut but one, and hastened to add that
no doubt they were poor, but her brother-in-law
"does drink dreadfully!"
Following her instructions, I went to the next
house but one.
Miserable as are the huts of all the poor in
our villages, it is long since I saw one so dilapidated
as that. Not only the whole roof, but the
walls were so crooked that the windows were
aslant.
Inside, it was no better than outside. The
brick oven took up one-third of the black, dirty
little hut, which to my surprise was full of people.
I thought I should find the widow alone with
her children; but here was a sister-in-law (a
young woman with children) and an old mother-in-law.
The soldier's wife herself had just returned
from her visit to me, and was warming
herself on the top of the oven. While she was
getting down, her mother-in-law began telling me
of their life. Her two sons had lived together
at first, and they all managed to feed themselves.
"But who remain together nowadays? All
separate," the garrulous old woman went on.
"The wives began quarrelling, so the brothers
separated, and life became still harder. We had
little land, and only managed to live by their
wage-labour; and now they have taken Peter as a
soldier! So where is she to turn to with her
children? She's living with us now, but we
can't manage to feed them all! We can't think
what we are to do. They say he may be got
back."
The soldier's wife, having climbed down from
the oven, continued to implore me to take steps
to get her husband back. I told her it was impossible,
and asked what property her husband
had left behind with his brother, to keep her and
the children. There was none. He had handed
over his land to his brother, that he might feed
her and the children. They had had three sheep;
but two had been sold to pay the expenses of
getting her husband off, and there was only some
old rubbish left, she said, besides a sheep and two
fowls. That was all she had. Her mother-in-law
confirmed her words.
I asked the soldier's wife where she had come
from. She came from Sergíevskoe. Sergíevskoe
is a large, well-to-do village some thirty miles off.
I asked if her parents were alive. She said they
were alive, and living comfortably.
"Why should you not go to them?" I asked.
"I thought of that myself, but am afraid they
won't have the four of us."
"Perhaps they will. Why not write to them?
Shall I write for you?"
The woman agreed, and I noted down her
parents' address.
While I was talking to the woman, the eldest
child—a fat-bellied girl—came up to her mother,
and, pulling at her sleeve, began asking for something,
probably food. The woman went on talking
to me, and paid no attention to the girl, who
again pulled and muttered something.
"There's no getting rid of you!" exclaimed
the woman, and with a swing of her arm struck
her on the head. The girl burst into a howl.
Having finished my business there, I left the
hut and went back to the widow.
She was outside her house, waiting for me, and
again asked me to come and look at her calf. I
went in, and in the passage there really was a calf.
The widow asked me to look at it. I did so, feeling
that she was so engrossed in her calf that she
could not imagine that anyone could help being
interested in seeing it.
Having looked at the calf, I stepped inside, and
asked:
"Where is the old woman?"
"The old woman?" the widow repeated, evidently
surprised that after having seen the calf, I
could still be interested in the old woman. "Why,
on the top of the oven! Where else should she
be?"
I went up to the oven, and greeted the old
woman.
"Oh! ... oh!" answered a hoarse, feeble
voice. "Who is it?"
I told her, and asked how she was getting on.
"What's my life worth?"
"Are you in pain?"
"Everything aches! Oh! ... oh!"
"The doctor is here with me; shall I call him in?"
"Doctor!... Oh! ... oh! What do I
want with your doctor?... My doctor is up
there.... Oh! ... oh!"
"She's old, you know," said the widow.
"Not older than I am," replied I.
"Not older? Much older! People say she is
ninety," said the widow. "All her hair has come
out. I cut it all off the other day."
"Why did you do that?"
"Why, it had nearly all come out, so I cut it
off!"
"Oh! ... oh!" moaned the old woman;
"oh! God has forgotten me! He does not take
my soul. If the Lord won't take it, it can't go of
itself! Oh! ... oh! It must be for my sins! ...
I've nothing to moisten my throat....
If only I had a drop of tea to drink before I die....
Oh! ... oh!"
The doctor entered the hut, and I said goodbye
and went out into the street.
We got into the sledge, and drove to a small
neighbouring village to see the doctor's last
patient, who had sent for him the day before.
We went into the hut together.
The room was small, but clean; in the middle
of it a cradle hung from the ceiling, and a woman
stood rocking it energetically. At the table sat a
girl of about eight, who gazed at us with surprised
and frightened eyes.
"Where is he?" the doctor asked.
"On the oven," replied the woman, not ceasing
to rock the cradle.
The doctor climbed up, and, leaning over the
patient, did something to him.
I drew nearer, and asked about the sick man's
condition.
The doctor gave me no answer. I climbed up,
too, and gazing through the darkness gradually
began to discern the hairy head of the man on the
oven-top. Heavy, stifling air hung about the
sick man, who lay on his back. The doctor was
holding his left hand to feel the pulse.
"Is he very bad?" I asked.
Without answering me, the doctor turned to
the woman.
"Light a lamp," he said.
She called the girl, told her to rock the cradle,
and went and lit a lamp and handed it to the
doctor. I got down, so as not to be in his way.
He took the lamp, and continued to examine the
patient.
The little girl, staring at us, did not rock the
cradle strongly enough, and the baby began to cry
piercingly and piteously. The mother, having
handed the lamp to the doctor, pushed the girl
angrily aside and again began to rock the cradle.
I returned to the doctor, and again asked how
the patient was. The doctor, still occupied with
the patient, softly whispered one word.
I did not hear, and asked again.
"The death-agony," he repeated, purposely
using a non-Russian word, and got down and
placed the lamp on the table.
The baby did not cease crying in a piteous and
angry voice.
"What's that? Is he dead?" said the woman,
as if she had understood the foreign word the doctor
had used.
"Not yet, but there is no hope!" replied he.
"Then I must send for the priest," said the
woman in a dissatisfied voice, rocking the screaming
baby more and more violently.
"If only my husband was at home!... But
now, who can I send? They've all gone to the
forest for firewood."
"I can do nothing more here," said the doctor;
and we went away.
I heard afterwards that the woman found someone
to send for the priest, who had just time to
administer the Sacrament to the dying man.
We drove home in silence, both, I think, experiencing
the same feeling.
"What was the matter with him?" I asked at
length.
"Inflammation of the lungs. I did not expect
it to end so quickly. He had a very strong constitution,
but the conditions were deadly. With
105 degrees of fever, he went and sat outside the
hut, where there were only 20 degrees."
Again we drove on in silence for a long time.
"I noticed no bedding or pillow on the oven,"
said I.
"Nothing!" replied the doctor. And, evidently
knowing what I was thinking about, he
went on:
"Yesterday I was at Kroutoe to see a woman
who has had a baby. To examine her properly,
as was necessary, she should have been placed so
that she could lie stretched out full length; but
there was no place in the whole hut where that
could be done."
Again we were silent, and again we probably
both had the same thoughts. We reached home
in silence. At the porch stood a fine pair of horses,
harnessed tandem to a carpet-upholstered sledge.
The handsome coachman was dressed in a sheepskin
coat, and wore a thick fur cap. They belonged to
my son, who had driven over from his estate.
And here we are sitting at the dinner-table, laid
for ten persons. One of the places is empty. It
is my little granddaughter's. She is not quite
well to-day, and is having her dinner in her room
with her nurse. A specially hygienic dinner has
been prepared for her: beef-tea and sago.
At our big dinner of four courses, with two
kinds of wine, served by two footmen, and eaten
at a table decorated with flowers, this is the kind
of talk that goes on:
"Where do these splendid roses come from?"
asks my son.
My wife tells him that a lady, who will not
divulge her name, sends them from Petersburg.
"Roses like these cost three shillings each,"
says my son, and goes on to relate how at some
concert or play such roses were showered on a
performer till they covered the stage. The conversation
passes on to music, and then to a man
who is a very good judge and patron of music.
"By the by, how is he?"
"Oh, he is always ailing. He is again going to
Italy. He always spends the winter there, and
his health improves wonderfully."
"But the journey is very trying and tedious."
"Oh no! Not if one takes the express—it is
only thirty-nine hours."
"All the same, it is very dull."
"Wait a bit! We shall fly before long!"
Besides my ordinary visitors and applicants,
there are to-day some special ones. The first
is a childless old peasant who is ending his
life in great poverty. The second is a poor woman
with a crowd of children. The third is, I believe,
a well-to-do peasant.
All three have come from our village, and all
have come about the same business. The taxes
are being collected before the New Year, and the
old man's samovár, the woman's only sheep, and one
of the well-to-do peasant's cows, have been noted
down for seizure in case of non-payment. They
all ask me to defend them or assist them, or to
do both.
The well-to-do peasant, a tall, handsome, elderly
man, is the first to speak. He tells me that the
Village Elder came, noted down the cow, and
demands twenty-seven roubles. This levy is for
the obligatory Grain Reserve Fund, and ought
not, the peasant thinks, to be collected at this time
of year. I know nothing about it, and tell him
that I will inquire in the District Government
Office, and will let him know whether the payment
of the tax can be postponed or not.
The second to speak is the old man whose
samovár has been noted. The small, thin, weakly,
poorly clad man relates, with pathetic grief and
bewilderment, how they came, took his samovár,
and demanded three roubles and seventy copecks
of him, which he has not got and can't get.
I ask him what the tax is for.
"Some kind of Government tax.... Who can
tell what it is? Where am I and my old woman
to get the money? As it is, we hardly manage to
live!... What kind of laws are these? Have
pity on our old age, and help us somehow!"
I promise to inquire, and to do what I can, and
I turn to the woman. She is thin and worn-out.
I know her, and know that her husband is a drunkard,
and that she has five children.
"They have seized my sheep! They come and
say: 'Pay the money!' 'My husband is away,
working,' I say. 'Pay up!' say they. But
where am I to find it? I only had one sheep, and
they are taking it!" And she begins to cry.
I promise to find out, and to help her if I can.
First, I go to the Village Elder, to find out what
the taxes are, and why they are collecting them so
rigorously.
In the village street, two other petitioners stop
me. Their husbands are away at work. One asks
me to buy some of her home-woven linen, and
offers it for two roubles. "Because they have
seized my hens! I had just reared them, and live
by selling the eggs. Do buy it; it is good linen!
I would not let it go for three roubles if I were
not in great need!"
I send her away, promising to consider matters
when I return—perhaps I may be able to arrange
about the tax.
Before I reach the Elder's house, a woman
comes to meet me: a quick-eyed, black-eyed ex-pupil
of mine—Ólga, now already an old woman.
She is in the same plight: they have seized her
calf.
I come to the Elder. He is a strong, intelligent-looking
peasant, with a grizzly beard. He comes
out into the street to me. I ask him what taxes
are being collected, and why so rigorously. He
replies that he has had very strict orders to get in
all arrears before the New Year.
"Have you had orders to confiscate samovárs
and cattle?"
"Of course!" replies the Village Elder, shrugging
his shoulders. "The taxes must be paid....
Take Abakoúmof now, for instance," said he, referring
to the well-to-do peasant whose cow had
been taken in payment of some Grain Reserve
Fund. "His son is an isvóstchik: they have
three horses. Why shouldn't he pay? He's
always trying to get out of it."
"Well, suppose it so in his case," say I; "but
how about those who are really poor?" And
I name the old man whose samovár they are
taking.
"Yes; they really are poor, and have nothing
to pay with. But just as if such things get considered
up there!"
I name the woman whose sheep was taken.
The Elder is sorry for her too, but, as if excusing
himself, explains that he must obey orders.
I inquire how long he has been an Elder, and
what pay he gets.
"How much do I get?" he says, replying not
to the question I ask, but to the question in my
mind, which he guesses namely, why he takes
part in such proceedings. "Well, I do want to
resign! We get thirty roubles a month, but are
obliged to do things that are wrong."
"Well, and will they really confiscate the samovárs
and sheep and fowls?" I ask.
"Why, of course! We are bound to take
them, and the District Government will arrange
for their sale."
"And will the things be sold?"
"The folk will manage to pay up somehow."
I go to the woman who came to me about her
sheep. Her hut is tiny, and in the passage outside
is her only sheep, which is to go to support
the Imperial Budget. Seeing me, she, a nervous
woman worn out by want and overwork, begins
to talk excitedly and rapidly, as peasant women do.
"See how I live! They're taking my last
sheep, and I myself and these brats are barely
alive!" She points up at the bunks and the oven-top,
where her children are. "Come down!...
Now then, don't be frightened!... There now,
how's one to keep oneself and them naked brats?"
The brats, almost literally naked, with nothing
on but tattered shirts—not even any trousers—climb
down from the oven and surround their
mother.
The same day I go to the District Office, to
make inquiries about this way of exacting taxation,
which is new to me.
The District Elder is not in. He will be back
soon. In the Office several persons are standing
behind the grating, also waiting to see him.
I ask them who they are, and what they have
come about. Two of them have come to get
passports, in order to be able to go out to work
at a distance. They have brought money to pay
for the passports. Another has come to get a copy
of the District Court's decision rejecting his
petition that the homestead—where he has lived
and worked for twenty-three years, and which has
belonged to his uncle, who adopted him,—now that
his uncle and aunt are dead, should not be taken
from him by his uncle's granddaughter. She,
being the direct heiress, and taking advantage of
the law of the 9th November, is selling the freehold
of the land and homestead on which the petitioner
lived. His petition has been rejected, but he cannot
believe that this is the law, and wants to appeal
to some higher Court—though he does not know
what Court. I explain that there is such a law,
and this provokes disapproval, amounting to perplexity
and incredulity, among all those who are
present.
Hardly have I finished talking with this man,
when a tall peasant with a stern, severe face asks
me for an explanation of his affairs. The business
he has come about is this: he and his fellow
villagers have, from time immemorial, been getting
iron ore from their land; and now a decree has
been published prohibiting this. "Not dig on
one's own land? What laws are these? We
only live by digging the iron! We have been
trying for more than a month, and can't get anything
settled. We don't know what to think of
it; they'll ruin us completely, and that will be the
end of the matter!"
I can say nothing comforting to this man, and
turn to the Elder—who has just come back—to
inquire about the vigorous measures which are
being taken to exact payment of arrears of taxation
in our village. I ask under what clauses of the
Act the taxes are being levied. The Elder tells
me that there are seven different kinds of rates and
taxes, the arrears of all of which are now being
collected from the peasants: (1) the Imperial
Taxes, (2) the Local Government Taxes, (3) the
Insurance Taxes, (4) the arrears of Former Grain
Reserve Funds, (5) New Grain Reserve Funds
in lieu of contributions in kind, (6) Communal
and District Taxes, and (7) Village Taxes.
The District Elder tells me, as the Village Elder
had done, that the taxes were being collected with
special rigour by order of the higher authorities.
He admits that it is no easy task to collect the
taxes from the poor, but he shows less sympathy
than the Village Elder did. He does not venture
to censure the authorities; and, above all, he has
hardly any doubt of the usefulness of his office, or
of the rightness of taking part in such activity.
"One can't, after all, encourage...."
Soon after, I had occasion to talk about these
things with a Zémsky Natchálnik.[3] He had very
little compassion for the hard lot of the poverty-stricken
folk whom he scarcely ever saw, and just
as little doubt of the morality and lawfulness of his
activity. In his conversation with me he admitted
that, on the whole, it would be pleasanter not to
serve at all; but he considered himself a useful
functionary, because other men in his place would
do even worse things. "And once one is living
in the country, why not take the salary, small as
it is, of a Zémsky Natchálnik?"
The views of a Governor on the collection of
taxes necessary to meet the needs of those who are
occupied in arranging for the nation's welfare, were
entirely free from any considerations as to samovárs,
sheep, homespun linen, or calves taken from the
poorest inhabitants of the villages; and he had
not the slightest doubt as to the usefulness of his
activity.
And finally, the Ministers and those who are
busy managing the liquor traffic, those who are
occupied in teaching men to kill one another, and
those who are engaged in condemning people to
exile, to prison, to penal servitude, or to the
gallows—all the Ministers and their assistants are
quite convinced that samovárs and sheep and linen
and calves taken from beggars, are put to their
best use in producing vódka (which poisons the
people), weapons for killing men, the erection of
gaols and lock-ups, and, among other things, in
paying to them and to their assistants the salaries
they require to furnish drawing-rooms, to buy
dresses for their wives, and for journeys and
amusements which they undertake as relaxations
after fulfilling their arduous labours for the welfare
of the coarse and ungrateful masses.
A few nights ago I dreamt so significant a
dream that several times during the following
day I asked myself, "What has happened
to-day that is so specially important?" And then
I remembered that the specially important thing
was what I had seen, or rather heard, in my dream.
It was a speech that struck me greatly, spoken
by one who, as often happens in dreams, was a
combination of two men: my old friend, now
dead, Vladímir Orlóf, with grey curls on each side
of his bald head, and Nicholas Andréyevitch, a
copyist who lived with my brother.
The speech was evoked by the conversation of
a rich lady, the hostess, with a landowner who was
visiting her house. The lady had recounted how
the peasants on a neighbouring estate had burnt
the landlord's house and several sheds which
sheltered century-old cherry trees and duchesse
pears. Her visitor, the landowner, related how
the peasants had cut down some oaks in his forest,
and had even carted away a stack of hay.
"Neither arson nor robbery is considered a
crime nowadays. The immorality of our people
is terrible: they have all become thieves!" said
someone.
And in answer to those words, that man, combined
of two, spoke as follows:
"The peasants have stolen oaks and hay, and
are thieves, and the most immoral class," he began,
addressing no one in particular. "Now, in the
Caucasus, a chieftain used to raid the Aouls and
carry off all the horses of the inhabitants. But
one of them found means to get back from the
chieftain's herds at least one of the horses that had
been stolen from him. Was that man a thief,
because he got back one of the many horses stolen
from him? And is it not the same with the trees,
the grass, the hay, and all the rest of the things
you say the peasants have stolen from you? The
earth is the Lord's, and common to all; and if the
peasants have taken what was grown on the
common land of which they have been deprived,
they have not stolen, but have only resumed
possession of a small part of what has been stolen
from them.
"I know you consider land to be the property
of the landlord, and therefore call the restoration
to themselves of its produce by the peasants—robbery;
but, you know, that is not true! The
land never was, and never can be, anyone's
property. If a man has more of it than he requires,
while others have none, then he who
possesses the surplus land possesses not land but
men; and men cannot be the property of other men.
"Because a dozen mischievous lads have burnt
some cherry tree sheds, and have cut down some
trees, you say the peasants are thieves, and the
most immoral class!...
"How can your tongue frame such words!
They have stolen ten oaks from you. Stolen!
'To prison with them!'
"Why, if they had taken not your oaks alone
but everything that is in this house, they would
only have taken what is theirs: made by them
and their brothers, but certainly not by you!
'Stolen oaks!' But for ages you have been
stealing from them, not oaks but their lives, and
the lives of their children, their womenfolk and
their old men—who withered away before their
time—only because they were deprived of the land
God gave to them in common with all men, and
they were obliged to work for you.
"Only think of the life those millions of men
have lived and are living, and of how you live!
Only consider what they do, supplying you with
all the comforts of life, and of what you do for
them, depriving them of everything—even of the
possibility of supporting themselves and their
families! All you live on—everything in this
room, everything in this house, and in all your
splendid cities, all your palaces, all your mad,
literally mad, luxuries—has been made, and is
still continually being made, by them.
"And they know this. They know that these
parks of yours, and your race-horses, motor cars,
palaces, dainty dishes and finery, and all the nastiness
and stupidity you call 'science' and 'art'—are
purchased with the lives of their brothers
and sisters. They know and cannot help knowing
this. Then think what feelings these people
would have towards you, if they were like you!
"One would suppose that, knowing all you
inflict on them, they could not but hate you from
the bottom of their souls, and could not help
wishing to revenge themselves on you. And you
know there are tens of millions of them, and only
some thousands of you. But what do they
do?... Why, instead of crushing you as useless
and harmful reptiles, they continue to repay
your evil with good, and live their laborious and
reasonable, though hard life, patiently biding the
day when you will become conscious of your sin
and will amend your ways. But instead of that,
what do you do? From the height of your
refined, self-confident immorality, you deign to
stoop to those 'depraved, coarse people.' You
enlighten them, and play the benefactor to them;
that is to say, with the means supplied to you by
their labour, you inoculate them with your
depravity, and blame, correct, and best of all
'punish' them, as unreasoning or vicious infants
bite the breasts that feed them.
"Yes, look at yourselves, and consider what you
are and what they are! Realise that they alone
live, while you, with your Doúmas, Ministries,
Synods, Academies, Universities, Conservatoires,
Law Courts, armies, and all such stupidities and
nastinesses, are but playing at life, and spoiling it
for yourselves and others. They, the people, are
alive. They are the tree, and you are harmful
growths—fungi on the plant. Realise, then, all
your insignificance and their grandeur! Understand
your sin, and try to repent, and at all costs
set the people free...."
"How well he speaks!" thought I. "Can it
be a dream?"
And as I thought that, I awoke.
This dream set me again thinking about the
land question: a question of which those who
live constantly in the country, among a poverty-stricken
agricultural peasant population, cannot
help thinking. I know I have often written
about it; but under the influence of that dream,
even at the risk of repeating myself, I once more
felt the need to express myself. Carthago delenda
est. As long as people's attitude towards private
property in land remains unchanged, the cruelty,
madness and evil of this form of the enslavement
of some men by others, cannot be pointed out too
frequently.
People say that land is property, and they say
this because the Government recognises private
property in land. But fifty years ago the Government
upheld private property in human beings;
yet a time came when it was admitted that human
beings cannot be private property, and the Government
ceased to hold them to be property. So it
will be with property in land. The Government
now upholds that property, and protects it by its
power; but a day will come when the Government
will cease to acknowledge this kind of
property, and will abolish it. The Government
will have to abolish it, because private property
in land is just such an injustice as property in
men—serfdom—used to be. The difference lies
only in the fact that serfdom was a direct, definite
slavery, while land-slavery is indirect and indefinite.
Then Peter was John's slave, whereas
now Peter is the slave of some person unknown,
but certainly of him who owns the land Peter
requires in order to feed himself and his family.
And not only is land-slavery as unjust and
cruel a slavery as serfdom used to be, it is even
harder on the slaves, and more criminal on the
part of the slave-holders. For under serfdom—if
not from sympathy, then at least from self-interest—the
owner was obliged to see to it that
his serf did not wither away and die of want,
but to the best of his ability and understanding
he looked after his slaves' morality. Now the
landowner cares nothing if his landless slave
withers away or becomes demoralised; for he
knows that however many men die or become
depraved at his work, he will always be able to
find workmen.
The injustice and cruelty of the new, present-day
slavery—land-slavery—is so evident, and the
condition of the slaves is everywhere so hard,
that one would have expected this new slavery to
have been recognised by this time as out of date,
just as serfdom was admittedly out of date half
a century ago; and it should, one would have
thought, have been abolished, as serfdom was
abolished.
"But," it is said, "property in land cannot be
abolished, for it would be impossible to divide
equally among all the labourers and non-labourers
the advantages given by land of different qualities."
But that is not true. To abolish property in
land, no distribution of land is necessary.
Just as, when serfdom was abolished, no distribution
of the people liberated was necessary,
but all that was needed was the abolition of the
law that upheld serfdom, so with the abolition of
private property in land: no distribution of land
is needed, but only the abolition of the law
sanctioning private property in land. And as
when serfdom was abolished, the serfs of their
own accord settled down as best suited them, so
when private property in land is abolished, people
will find a way of sharing the land among themselves
so that all may have equal advantage from
it. How this will be arranged, whether by Henry
George's Single-Tax system, or in some other
way, we cannot foresee. But it is certain that the
Government need only cease to uphold by force
the obviously unjust and oppressive rights of
property in land, and the people, released from
those restrictions, will always find means of apportioning
the land by common consent, in such a
way that everyone will have an equal share of
the benefits the use of the land confers.
It is only necessary for the majority of land-owners—that
is, slave-owners—to understand (as
they did in the matter of serfdom) that property
in land is as hard on the present-day slaves, and
as great an iniquity on the part of the slave-owners,
as serfdom was; and, having understood that, it
is only necessary for them to impress on the
Government the necessity of repealing the laws
sanctioning property in land—that is, land-slavery.
One would have thought that, as in the 'fifties, the
best members of society (chiefly the serf-owning
nobles themselves), having understood the criminality
of their position, explained to the Government
the necessity for abolishing their evidently
out-of-date and immoral rights, and serfdom was
abolished, so it should be now with regard to
private property in land, which is land-slavery.
But strange to say, the present slave-owners,
the landed proprietors, not only fail to see the
criminality of their position, and do not impress
on the Government the necessity of abolishing
land-slavery, but on the contrary they consciously
and unconsciously, by all manner of means, blind
themselves and their slaves to the criminality of
their position.
The reasons of this are: first, that serfdom in
the 'fifties, being the plain, downright enslavement
of man by man, ran too clearly counter to religious
and moral feeling; while land-slavery is not a
direct, immediate slavery, but is a form of slavery
more hidden from the slaves, and especially from
the slave-owners, by complicated governmental,
social and economic institutions. And the second
reason is that, while in the days of serfdom only
one class were slave-owners, all classes, except the
most numerous one—consisting of peasants who
have too little land: labourers and working men—are
slave-owners now. Nowadays nobles, merchants,
officials, manufacturers, professors, teachers,
authors, musicians, painters, rich peasants, rich
men's servants, well-paid artisans, electricians,
mechanics, etc., are all slave-owners of the peasants
who have insufficient land, and of the unskilled
workmen who—apparently as a result of most
varied causes, but in reality as a result of one
cause alone (the appropriation of land by the
landed proprietors)—are obliged to give their
labour and even their lives to those who possess
the advantages land affords. These two reasons—that
the new slavery is less evident than the old,
and that the new slave-owners are much more
numerous than the old ones—account for the fact
that the slave-owners of our day do not see, and do
not admit, the cruelty and criminality of their position,
and do not free themselves from it.
The slave-owners of our day not only do not
admit that their position is criminal, and do not
try to escape from it, but are quite sure that property
in land is a necessary institution, essential to
the social order, and that the wretched condition
of the working classes—which they cannot help
noticing—results from most varied causes, but
certainly not from the recognition of some people's
right to own land as private property.
This opinion of land-owning, and of the causes
of the wretched condition of the labourers, is so
well established in all the leading countries of
the Christian world—France, England, Germany,
America, etc.—that with very rare exceptions it
never occurs to their public men to look in the
right direction for the cause of the wretched condition
of the workers.
That is so in Europe and America; but one
would have expected that for us Russians, with
our hundred million peasant population who deny
the principle of private ownership in land, and
with our enormous tracts of land, and with the
almost religious desire of our people for agricultural
life, an answer very different to the general
European answer to questions as to the causes of
the distress among the workers, and as to the
means of bettering their position, would naturally
present itself.
One would think that we Russians might understand
that if we really are concerned about, and
desire to improve, the position of the people and
to free them from the aggravating and demoralising
fetters with which they are bound, the means
to do this are indicated both by common-sense
and by the voice of the people, and are simply—the
abolition of private property in land, that is to
say, the abolition of land-slavery.
But, strange to relate, in Russian society, occupied
with questions of the improvement of the
condition or the working classes, there is no
suggestion of this one, natural, simple and self-evident
means of improving their condition. We
Russians, though our peasants' outlook on the
land question is probably centuries ahead of the
rest of Europe, can devise nothing better for the
improvement of our people's condition than to
establish among ourselves, on the European model,
Doúmas, Councils, Ministries, Courts, Zémstvos,
Universities, Extension Lectures, Academies, elementary
schools, fleets, sub-marines, air-ships, and
many other of the queerest things quite foreign to
and unnecessary for the people, and we do not
do the one thing that is demanded by religion,
morality, and common-sense, as well as by the
whole of the peasantry.
Nor is this all. While arranging the fate of
our people, who do not and never did acknowledge
land-ownership, we, imitating Europe, try in all
sorts of cunning ways, and by deception, bribery,
and even force, to accustom them to the idea of
property in land—that is to say, we try to deprave
them and to destroy their consciousness of the
truth they have held for ages, and which sooner
or later will certainly be acknowledged by the
whole human race: the truth that all who live
on the earth cannot but have an equal right to its
use.
These efforts to inoculate the people with the
idea of landed property that is so foreign to them,
are unceasingly made, with great perseverance and
zeal by the Government, and consciously or for the
most part unconsciously, from an instinct of self-preservation,
by all the slave-holders of our time.
And the slave-holders of our time are not the land-owners
alone, but are all those who, as a result of
the people being deprived of the land, enjoy power
over them.
Most strenuous efforts are made to deprave the
people; but, thank God! it may be safely said that
till now all those efforts have only had an effect on
the smallest and worst part of Russia's peasant
population. The many-millioned majority of
Russian workmen who hold but little land and
live—not the depraved, parasitic life of the slave-owners,
but their own reasonable, hard-working
lives—do not yield to those efforts; because for
them the solution of the land question is not one
of personal advantage, as it is regarded by all the
different slave-owners of to-day. For the enormous
majority of peasants, the solution of that problem is
not arrived at by mutually contradictory economic
theories that spring up to-day and to-morrow are
forgotten, but is found in the one truth, which is
realised by them, and always has been and is
realised by all reasonable men the world over,—the
truth that all men are brothers and have therefore
all an equal right to all the blessings of the
world and, among the rest, to the most necessary
of all rights—namely, the equal right of all to the
use of the land.
Living in this truth, an enormous majority of
the peasants attach no importance to all the wretched
measures adopted by the Government about this
or that alteration of the laws of land-ownership, for
they know that there is only one solution to the
land question—the total abolition of private property
in land, and of land-slavery. And, knowing this,
they quietly await their day, which sooner or later
must come.