IVTHE COST OF LIVING
Eachtime returning to Moscow I notice change. Last year after the riots it was a city of broken windows and more or less empty streets. This summer I found the life patched up and the windows more or less repaired. There were more people; there was an obvious prosperity of a kind, among the shopkeeping class. Every one talked of the dearness of living and yet every one had more money wherewith to buy. And all shops were thriving. Many shops with German names have now put up a notice to the effect that the owners are Russian. Not that the German shops which were sacked in July, 1914 have recovered.Einem, the great confectioner, with all his branches seems to have sold his retail business. The first-rate art shop and publishing house of Knebel & Grossman has had to obtain a Government loan in order to make a start again and supply the schools, but most precious negatives and blocks and originals perished, and it will be a long time before the firm can make up for what was lost. Many new cafés and places of amusement have been opened, testifying to the money in people’s pockets. Rich fugitives from the districts conquered by the Germans and Austrians seem to have started businesses in Moscow and have imparted to it a tinge of the complexion of Warsaw—part of the extra gaiety of Warsaw seems to have arrived; one notices such new names as that of the Piccadilly Café opposite Phillipof’s.
Apart from that street gaiety, however,there is sufficient sadness and anxiety in the background. As in England and France, every family has its personal stake in the war, and for many that stake has become the wooden cross over a grave. Young and splendid regiments are still to be seen marching, however, and to look at them in their new uniforms one might think for a moment that it was only the beginning, Russia was entering the war, and no one had yet been lost.
There is engaging enthusiasm still, and withal the noted Slav patience that does not ask for things to be done quickly. A slow war in many respects suits the Russian temperament. The most characteristic thing in Russia is the waiting: waiting hours for your ticket at the booking-office, waiting hours for Chinovniks, waiting for one’s money at the bank, waiting for a turn to buy a seat for next week’s performance at thetheatre, whole days if Shaliapin be going to sing. And now they are waiting with their accustomed cheeriness and patience.
Certainly they have their hardships, those who dwell in the background. They have plenty of subjects for grumbling and complaints. Their talk is all of the terribledorogovizna. The pretty worddorogoviznameans dearness of living, and it is the commonest in the townsman’s vocabulary this season of the war. The price of nearly every commodity in Russia has doubled or trebled since the outbreak of war. One would expect the price of manufactured goods to rise there; but the surprising phenomenon is that, despite the overwhelming abundance of foodstuffs in Russia and Russia’s inability to export any of that abundance, food has become, on the whole, dearer than in Berlin. TheRussian Wordhas a long list of comparative prices, showingthat out of sixteen common articles of food ten have increased more in price in Moscow than in Germany. The price of mutton has increased 180 per cent. in Berlin, but it has increased 281 per cent. in Moscow; pork 114 per cent. in Berlin, 142 per cent. in Moscow; white bread 27 per cent. in Berlin, 45 per cent. in Moscow; sugar, 27 per cent. in Berlin, 57 per cent. in Moscow, and so forth. Sugar has in many districts disappeared entirely, and shop windows exhibit the notice “No sugar whatever,” which means not even the dirty brown soft sugar which has displaced therafinade. At Archangel there is a fixed allowance of 1 lb. of sugar per person per month, and that is only accessible for settled inhabitants. As a visitor I was lucky to purchase twenty-four lumps at a halfpenny a lump. At the railway stations at many buffets you are offered sugar candyor raspberry drops with your tea, or a wrapped caramel with your coffee. In cases where they have sugar the waiters have the audacity to put it in for you, lest you should secrete what you did not want. Now cards have been introduced for sugar almost everywhere, even in the villages. The possession of a card entitles you to purchase the article specified on it. At first receiving the food card the heart rejoices. But it is one thing to possess a card and another to find a grocer who has anything to sell. If we introduce cards in England we shall probably experience the same anomaly, though we have certainly more gift for organisation than the Russians. For food tickets to be a success an extraordinary thoroughness in administration is necessary and also a good social conscientiousness on the part of individuals.
When the blue food cards were distributedin one village a rumour spread that the Anti-Christ had arrived in Russia and was giving these out. It is said that one inhabitant of foreign origin bought up all the cards from the peasants at a low price, and they now contentedly buy their provisions from him when he has them.
Meat has so risen in price that throughout all Russia four meatless days have been proclaimed, and on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday you must keep to vegetables, fish, or fowls. On these days no meat may be sold and no cattle may be slaughtered. The meat may not be sold in a smoked state nor as sausage. When this measure was introduced the butchers wailed, if the cows and the calves rejoiced. The chickens suffered for it. But ask a Russian, and he will tell you all suffer for it. The price of vegetables has risen, the price of meat on the days when you buy ithas risen, the price of fish and fowl has risen. One day at the National Hotel in Moscow I noticed cauliflowers standing at the superb price of 3 roubles, 50 copecks, about 5s.
From scores of districts in Russia petitions have been sent to Petrograd—Cancel the regulations as to meatless days. But the regulations are not likely to be cancelled. At the restaurants such small portions are given that it is difficult to make a good meal even at large expense. And the soups which are made without meat are the same price as they used to be when meat was allowed. It seems that if meatless days are to be introduced in Britain it will not be merely one a week for it is always possible to buy meat for two days. They should be for three or four days a week as in Russia. But phenomena similar to those I noted will be repeated with us. Vegetables will riserapidly in price as a result of meatless days.
Sugar has disappeared because the Germans and Austrians are in possession of some of the richest beetroot country of Russia, and also of several sugar factories. Coffee is scarce because there is war with Turkey; butter and eggs because the peasants, being unable to obtain vodka, have no particular use for extra cash, and won’t sell their products. Speculators are holding large quantities of provisions in ice-houses and waiting till the prices are pushed higher and higher. The banks are holding quantities of sugar. There are many explanations.
In one window in Moscow is exhibited a notice, “Soap is received daily and is sold in lumps of not less than 10 lb. up to 10A. M.”; in other windows is the notice, “No soap,” and one involuntarily recalls that piece of nonsense—
A great she-bear passing down the street. What, no soap; and so she married the barber,
A great she-bear passing down the street. What, no soap; and so she married the barber,
in which some Mrs. Gallop might read an occult reference to the Russia of these days.
Boots have become difficult to buy. Existing supplies are nearly exhausted. In a boot-shop window in Moscow one pair of boots exhibited—the last. Second-hand boots are valuable. Boot thieves have appeared in the hotels, and a new notice has appeared in your room, “You are requested not to put your boots out at night.” My friend Beekof, of Archangel, made a huge pile of money selling boots. I met him lately in Moscow where he has been purchasing expensive works of art, and even thinks of buying an original Levitan. Boots are too expensive to buy. They say plaited birchbark or lime-bark boots, which used to be sold for 2d.a pair in the country, now fetch 5s.Peasants are sittingplaiting boots on suburban stations and selling them as fast as they make them. Repairs are so expensive that a parlourmaid spent a month’s wages on having her boots mended. Happily the town councils have fixed a tariff in Moscow and Petrograd at last, both for boots and for repairs.
Russian houses are heated with wood, and strange to say, in the midst of her enormous forests she is short of wood. Wood has doubled and trebled in price. The poor people must freeze. There are not working hands to cut wood—so many having been taken for more profitable occupations. I have been asked a shilling for a packet of rubbishy envelopes. Paper is very dear—some of the best Russian paper mills are in the hands of the enemy. All metal articles are expensive. A decent samovar costs 50 to 60 roubles. There is said to be famine in medicine, and the chemists’supplies are short. Certainly the Russians seem to be enjoying better health on the whole.
They say all is going to be regulated. The Government is going to take charge of the whole business of supply and there will be cards for everything, and you must call at the grocer and present your card. Once more calls and cards, and cards and calls. But our Russian friends are the most unpractical people. You see every day in Moscow queues a street long, waiting hours with cards in their hands, waiting for a pound or so of sugar. Such queues turned up at the butchers’ shops on the mornings of the meat days that the butchers decided to issue tickets the day beforehand—on each ticket a number designating your turn to buy meat on the morrow. Thus recently 2,000 waited on Arbat from 4P. M.to midnight for a ticket for a turn next day. The vegetarianpropagandist turns up to look at their solemn faces. “Is it worth it?” he asks. Happy vegetarians!
“But you know if I don’t get meat my stomach will go wrong,” says a Russian plaintively.
“What is tea without sugar?” says another. “And what is life without tea?”
Another comes to the doctor and says, “Prescribe, if you please. I’ve lost my appetite. I can’t eat.”
And the doctor replies, like that friend of Carlyle—
“My dear fellow, it isn’t of the slightest consequence.”
“The Army has meat, tea, sugar, white bread?”
“Yes, the Army has all these in plenty.”
“Slava Tebye Gospody! That’s all right.”