Russian Life To-day Part 3

That's what a Russian peasant's home is also, simple and yet attractive.

It is built of logs, the interstices well plastered up with moss and clay to keep out all cold air, cool in summer and warm in winter by reason of the thickness of these outer walls; and it usually has an inner entrance or small room, before the large and chief living-room.

There will be two or more small square windows in the latter, an _ikon_ in a corner with a lamp before it and a shelf for flowers below--every one on entering looks towards it, bowing reverently and making the sign of the Cross--a very large stove of bricks, whitewashed, upon the top of which rests a wide shelf, carried along the wall as far as is necessary for the whole family to be able to find sleeping-s.p.a.ce upon it. There will also be a long wooden bench, a great table, a few wooden stools, and a great cupboard, and, nearly always, cheap coloured pictures of the Emperor and Empress, whose portraits are to be found in all shops, inns, post offices, and places of public resort.

These are the simple surroundings described and made familiar to us by all writers of Russian stories of which peasants form a part, and all over the empire they are found just as Tolstoi, Dostoviesky, Turgenieff, and others bring them before us in their interesting tales. Take for example Tolstoi's _Where Love is there G.o.d is also_, _Master and Man_, and other parables and tales. When Martin Avdeitch is looking out from his small abode through his one small window upon the pa.s.sers-by as simply as man could do, and yet with shrewd and discerning eyes, he is ready for the old pilgrim who comes into his life just at the right moment, and shows him the way to G.o.d.

Or take Nikita in _Master and Man_, in the same volume. In some ways he is extraordinarily simple, and does not appear to know how shamefully he is being exploited by his avaricious and grasping master. We are told in the story that he _does_ know even though he goes on as if he didn't, and does his duty by him as if he were the best of masters, just as he does by an unfaithful and unfeeling wife. It would be difficult to imagine a peasant one would more love to know and understand than Nikita, strong, capable, affectionate, and shrewd, as he comes running before us in the story, to harness the horse for his master, the only man on the place that day not drunk, talking to the little brown cob which noses him affectionately, and in the end making a tremendous struggle for his own and his master's life, and winning through himself.

Thus he goes on steadily as long as he lives, with no other thought but that of duty, until he lies down beneath the _ikon_, and, with the wax candle in his hand just as he had always wished, pa.s.ses away at peace with every living creature and with G.o.d.

There are no peasants like the Russians, or who think as they do. They are young, one feels, and "The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts," and that is just what those who know them best find out.

A friend of mine told this story the other day at a meeting, at which we both had to speak, and I am sure it will bear repet.i.tion. A _moujik_, or peasant, was driving a German commercial traveller across the open country, and in the course of their conversation together his companion said to him:--

"Your countrymen are nothing but a lot of idolaters. You wors.h.i.+p those _ikons_ of yours, and bow down to them as the heathen do," and so on.

The _moujik_ was very indignant, and grumbled out his disapproval of all this.

"Wors.h.i.+p our _ikons_ indeed! We don't." And as they went driving on he suddenly drew up, and, pointing to a tree, demanded of the astonished traveller:--

"Do you mean to say that I would wors.h.i.+p that tree?"

"No, no. Of course not! Drive on."

With a very disapproving grunt he drove on, and when they reached their destination, where there was a painter at work upon an outside door, the _moujik_, pointing to the paint-pot beside it, again demanded of the traveller:--

"Would you say I could wors.h.i.+p that paint?"

"No, certainly not! You could not be so silly."

"But yet you say I wors.h.i.+p an _ikon_, which is only painted wood, and can't see that I only use it to help me to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d."

Let the reader reflect upon the way in which that peasant had been thinking over the charge made against him of idolatry, thinking what idolatry really was, and how far he felt himself from it. Let him try and imagine how one of our own agricultural labourers would think over such a subject if he were entering into conversation with us as he was digging in our garden, or driving us in a farmer's cart to a country station. I am writing this chapter in a quiet part of the country, and I can't conceive of any of the labouring people here even approaching that line of thought upon which the mind of that _moujik_ began at once to move, though slowly enough no doubt, when he was told he was little better than a wors.h.i.+pper of idols.

I read the other day in a book on Russia that the peasantry are very dirty in person, and never wash; but again it must be borne in mind, as another remarkably well-informed and sympathetic writer[3] says also: "When people generalize about the intense misery of Russian peasants and the squalor in which they live they should remember that Russia is a large country, that it possesses a North and a South, an East and a West, and that what is true about one place is quite untrue about another." I shall be quite prepared, therefore, to be told by people who know Russia far better than I can ever hope to do, that their experience has been altogether different from my own, and I shall not dream of questioning or doubting the truth of what they say as far as their own experience goes.

In this vast area of which we are thinking there must indeed be great varieties of experience and conditions of life, and it is not contrary to what one might expect to find much nearer home, that the people of one village may be clean in their habits and those of another quite the reverse. But from all I have seen, heard, and read the Russian labouring and peasant cla.s.s have a great desire to be clean. Nor is this a new thing at all in the national life. It is nearly forty years ago since Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace told us, in the first edition of his work, of the important part taken by the weekly vapour-bath in the life of the Russian peasantry, and described "the public bath possessed by many villages." How many villages of our own, even now, have a public bath?

And how many of our own peasantry dream of having what is a perfectly ordinary and weekly habit of the Russians--the bath in his own house?

My Russian and Siberian friends tell me how they have always to arrange for their domestic servants to get a good bath, before they change for Sunday, every Sat.u.r.day afternoon and evening. Mr. Rothay Reynolds says the same: "My friend took me to see his bath-house. Russians are exceedingly clean. In villages one may see a row of twenty cottages, and, thirty yards from them, a row of twenty bath-houses. The one the peasant showed me was a hut with a stove intended to heat the great stones placed above it. On bath nights the stove is lit, and when the stones are hot a bucket of water is thrown on them, so that the place is filled with steam. The bather lies on a bench in the suffocating atmosphere, soaps himself, and ends his ablutions with ice-cold water.

In town and country it is held to be a religious duty to take a steam-bath once a week. Servants ask if they can go out for a couple of hours to visit one of the great baths in the cities. They go away with clean linen bound up in a handkerchief, and return s.h.i.+ning with cleanliness. Admission to the cheapest part of a steam-bath is usually a penny farthing, but in the great towns there are luxurious establishments frequented by the rich."

There is another custom connected with the bath which testifies to the hardy character of the Russian _moujik_. They often rush straight out of the almost suffocatingly hot bath which they have been taking _inside_ the huge earthenware oven that they all possess and, naked and steaming, roll themselves contentedly and luxuriously in the snow. This, as a writer has well said, "aptly ill.u.s.trates a common Russian proverb which says that what is health to the Russian is death to the German"--a proverb which has had striking ill.u.s.tration again and again this very winter. Probably some of my readers saw the account of the arrival at the Russian front, soon after war began, of the bath-train which was so completely furnished and arranged that two thousand men could have a clean bath during the day or twelve thousand in the course of the week.

No doubt others have followed since then.

The bath to the Russian has a certain religious significance also, as in Moslem countries; "and no good orthodox peasant," I have read, "would dare to enter a church after being soiled with certain kinds of pollution without cleansing himself physically and morally by means of the bath." "Cleanliness is next to G.o.dliness" is not a bad motto for any people, and possibly Russians will like to know that we have an order of knighthood which dates from 1398, and is named "The Most Honourable Order of the Bath," and mentioned regularly in the services at Westminster Abbey.

A great sense of initiative and personal responsibility, as well as corporate spirit at the same time, is clearly given early in life to the peasant mind in Russia, for nowhere, I fancy, in the world, except in countries where primitive ideas and customs still obtain, is there the same standard of village life and self-government. There are two kinds of communities. First, there is the village community with its a.s.sembly or _Mir_, under the presidency of the _Staroshta_, who is elected by the village. He presides over the a.s.sembly, which regulates the whole life of the village, distributes the land of the commune, decides how and when the working of the land has to be done; and it is specially interesting to know that in this most remarkable and exceptional village government of the _Mir_ all women who permanently and temporarily are heads of houses are expected to attend its meetings and to vote--no one ever dreams of questioning their right to do so.

In addition to the village a.s.sembly and chief elder there is also the "Cantonal" a.s.sembly, consisting of several village communities together, meeting also under the presidency of a chief elder. All this is, of course, a development of family life where exactly the same ideas of corporate duty in its members, and responsibilities in its head, are held.

It is evident that Russia has a great future if this view of self-government is gradually carried upwards. The right beginning in const.i.tutional government, surely, is in the family, for there we find the social unit. A state is not a collection or aggregate of individuals, but of families, and all history shows us that the greatness or insignificance of a country has always been determined by the condition of its homes and the character of its family life. If from the family, village, and commune Russian const.i.tutionalists work slowly and carefully upwards, giving freedom to make opinions and convictions felt in the votes, just as responsibility is understood and met in the home, until one comes to the head of it all in "The Little Father"; and if he really rules--or administers rather, for no true father rules only--just as any good father would do, Russia the autocratic and despotic, a.s.sociated in the minds of so many with arbitrary law in the interests of a few, enforced by the knout and prison-chain, may yet give the world a high standard of what the government of a free and self-respecting people ought to be.

I should doubt if any peasantry in the world live so simply and frugally or, as they say in the North of England, "thrive so well on it," as the Russians. The men are of huge stature, and their wives are strong, comely, and wholesome-looking also. Their boys and girls are st.u.r.dy, vigorous, and full of life; and yet how bare the table looks at the daily meal, how frugal the fare and small the quant.i.ty! It has been the greatest joy to me to have Russian boys and girls, in out-of-the-way places, to share my sandwiches or tongue or other tinned meats, when stopping at a rest-house, and see their eyes s.h.i.+ne at the unexpected and unusual treat.

Black rye-bread and cabbage-soup form the staple food of a peasant family, while meat of any kind is rarely seen. The many and rigorous fasts of the Church make very little difference to the quality of the food, but only to its quant.i.ty. The thanks given by guests to their host and hostess, _Spasibo za kleb za sol_, "Thanks for bread and salt," tell their own story of a bare and simple diet. Many of us have read in _The Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem_ of the sacks of black and hard crusts the peasants take with them, which quite content them.

What a tremendous difference it must have made this winter in the Russian food transport from the base to the front, to know that, if a serious breakdown took place, or a hurried march was ordered with which it was difficult for them to keep up, and the worst came to the worst, the men would have their crusts. It has been said in years gone by, and may be true still in many places, that the Russian peasant's ideas of Paradise is a life in which he would have enough black bread to eat.

This bare subsistence and monotonous diet, perhaps, is responsible for the break-out from time to time when the attraction of _vodka_ is too strong to be resisted in a life in which there are no counter-attractions.

Counter-attractions there ought to be for a being who is created not for work alone, but for that recreation which, as its very name betokens, his whole nature needs if he is to do his best work. "There is a time to work and a time to play," says the proverb writer; and if we hold that in school life "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," we can hardly wonder that, the world over, those for whom work is provided and play refused will seek, as they have ever done, to make up for its absence by the exhilaration of stimulating and intoxicating drinks. It is when writing upon the drunkenness to be seen at every Russian village holiday that one whom I have often quoted in this book,[4] truly says, "As a whole a village fete in Russia is a saddening spectacle. It affords a new proof--where, alas! no proof was required--that we northern nations who know so well how to work have not yet learnt the art of amusing ourselves."

As an instance of the real and natural friendliness and essential good nature of the Russian, I may say that even when drunk I have never seen or heard of men quarrelling. They do not gradually begin to dispute and recriminate and come to blows or draw the knife, as some of the more hot-blooded people of the South do, when wine excites or spirits cheer them. They seem to become more and more affectionate until they begin to kiss each other, and may be seen thus embracing and rolling over and over together like terriers in the snow. If wine unlooses the tongue, and brings out what is usually hidden away beneath the surface, it evidently brings out nothing very evil from the inner life of the Russian peasant.

In time to come, if all's well, Russia is to be opened up to the traveller, and everywhere the British tourists will be welcomed, and even though the beaten track of the railway may never be left there will be abundant opportunities for observing the habits and customs of the people. A modern writer who, apparently, in pa.s.sing through Siberia never went far from the railway, though he probably stayed for some time at different places on the way, and sat in third and fourth-cla.s.s carriages even if he did not actually travel in them, managed to see a great deal of peasant life. The railway train is open from end to end, and a great deal may be learnt thus about the people while merely pa.s.sing through. There are also the long waits at the stations where there are invariably interesting groups of the most romantic and picturesque character--the women vivacious and full of conversation, while the men stand more stolidly by, always making one long to speak and understand their language and to know more about them.

There is a story of Mr. Maurice Baring's which ill.u.s.trates what I have already said of the way in which the Russian peasant mind begins to move freely, independently, and responsibly upon lines undreamed of by those who may be addressing him, and shows how far he is from receiving merely conventional and stereotyped impressions, but is always ready to think for himself. Mr. Baring considers it an instance of his common sense.

The reader may also have his own ideas of what it ill.u.s.trates, but the story is this:--

"A Socialist arrived in a village to convert the inhabitants to Socialism. He wanted to prove that all men were equal, and that the government authorities had no right to their authority. Consequently he thought he would begin by disproving the existence of G.o.d, because if he proved that there was no G.o.d it would naturally follow that there should be no Emperor and no policemen. So he took a holy _ikon_ and said, 'There is no G.o.d, and I will prove it immediately. I will spit upon this _ikon_ and break it to bits, and if there is a G.o.d He will send fire from heaven and kill me, and if there is no G.o.d nothing will happen to me at all.' Then he took the _ikon_ and spat upon it and broke it to bits, and said to the peasants, 'You see G.o.d has not killed me.'

'No,' said the peasants, 'G.o.d has not killed you, but we will'; and they killed him."

It is not difficult to imagine that closing scene, knowing Russia. There would be no excitement, but all would be quickly and effectually done.

The same writer draws our attention to Turgenieff's wonderfully appealing sketches of country life, though not many of his works have been translated for English readers as yet. He alludes especially in an essay of last year on "The Fascination of Russia" to his description of the summer night, when on the plain the children tell each other bogey stories; or the description of that July evening, when out of the twilight from a long way off a voice is heard calling, "Antropk-a-a-a!"

and Antropka answers, "Wha-a-a-at?" and far away out of the immensity comes the answering voice, "Come home, because daddy wants to whip you!"

Perhaps the reader may _feel_ nothing as he reads, but all who know and love Russia, and are stirred by thoughts of its life and people will feel that it was abundantly worth while to write down such a simple incident. They will understand and feel that stirring within, which Russia never fails to achieve again and again for those who have once lived and moved amongst her peasantry, and come under her strange spell and felt her charm.

Gogol, the greatest of Russian humorists, has a pa.s.sage in one of his books, where, in exile, he cries out to his country to reveal the secret of her fascination:--

"'What is the mysterious and inscrutable power which lies hidden in you?'" he exclaims. "'Why does your aching and melancholy song echo unceasingly in one's ears? Russia, what do you want of me? What is there between you and me?' This question has often been repeated not only by Russians in exile, but by others who have merely lived in Russia.

"There are none of those spots where nature, art, time, and history have combined to catch the heart with a charm in which beauty, a.s.sociation, and even decay are indistinguishably mingled; where art has added the picturesque to the beauty of nature; and where time has made magic the handiwork of art; and where history has peopled the spot with countless phantoms, and cast over everything the strangeness and glamour of her spell.

"Such places you will find in France and in England, all over Italy, in Spain and in Greece, but not in Russia.

"A country of long winters and fierce summers, of rolling plains, uninterrupted by mountains and unvariegated by valleys.

"And yet the charm is there. It is a fact which is felt by quant.i.ties of people of different nationalities and races; and it is difficult if you live in Russia to escape it; and once you have felt it you will never be free from it. The aching melancholy song which, Gogol says, wanders from sea to sea throughout the length and breadth of the land, will for ever echo in your heart and haunt the recesses of your memory."[5]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Metropolitan of Moscow._]

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Just as I go to press Mr. Lloyd George has told the House of Commons that productivity is already increased 30 per cent. in Russia.

[3] The Hon. Maurice Baring.

[4] Wallace, _Russia_, vol. i, p. 129.

[5] _Russian Review_ for February, 1914.