CHAPTER VIII

Officials—Siberian Governors—A Bird of Prey—A Gentle Judge—An Inspector Roasted—The Tatar—A Boy of the Female Sex—The Potato Revolt—Russian Justice.

ONE of the saddest consequences of the revolution effected by Peter the Great is the development of the official class in Russia. Thesechinóvniksare an artificial, ill-educated, and hungry class, incapable of anything except office-work, and ignorant of everything except official papers. They form a kind of lay clergy, officiating in the law-courts and police-offices, and sucking the blood of the nation with thousands of dirty, greedy mouths.

Gógol raised one side of the curtain and showed us the Russianchinóvnikin his true colours;[97]but Gógol, without meaning to, makes us resigned by making us laugh, and his immense comic power tends to suppress resentment. Besides, fettered as he was by the censorship, he could barely touch on the sorrowful side of that unclean subterranean region in which the destinies of the ill-starred Russian people are hammered and shaped.

97.Gógol’s play,The Revisor, is a satire on the Russian bureaucracy.

There, in those grimy offices which we walk throughas fast as we can, men in shabby coats sit and write; first they write a rough draft and then copy it out on stamped paper—and individuals, families, whole villages are injured, terrified, and ruined. The father is banished to a distance, the mother is sent to prison, the son to the Army; it all comes upon them as suddenly as a clap of thunder, and in most cases it is undeserved. The object of it all is money. Pay up! If you don’t, an inquest will be held on the body of some drunkard who has been frozen in the snow. A collection is made for the village authorities; the peasants contribute their last penny. Then there are the police and law-officers—they must live somehow, and one has a wife to maintain and another a family to educate, and they are all model husbands and fathers.

This official class is sovereign in the north-eastern Governments of Russia and in Siberia. It has spread and flourished there without hindrance and without pause; in that remote region where all share in the profits, theft is the order of the day. The Tsar himself is powerless against these entrenchments, buried under snow and constructed out of sticky mud. All measures of the central Government are emasculated before they get there, and all its purposes are distorted: it is deceived and cheated, betrayed and sold, and all the time an appearance of servile fidelity is kept up, and official procedure is punctually observed.

Speranski[98]tried to lighten the burdens of the people by introducing into all the offices in Siberia the principle of divided control. But it makes little difference whether the stealing is done by individuals or gangs of robbers.He discharged hundreds of old thieves, and took on hundreds of new ones. The rural police were so terrified at first that they actually paid blackmail to the peasants. But a few years passed, and the officials were making as much money as ever, in spite of the new conditions.

98.Michail Speranski (1772-1839), minister under Alexander I, was Governor of Siberia in 1819.

A second eccentric Governor, General Velyaminov, tried again. For two years he struggled hard at Tobolsk to root out the malpractices; and then, conscious of failure, he gave it all up and ceased to attend to business at all.

Others, more prudent than he, never tried the experiment: they made money themselves and let others do the same.

“I shall root out bribery,” said Senyavin, the Governor of Moscow, to a grey-bearded old peasant who had entered a complaint against some crying act of injustice. The old man smiled.

“What are you laughing at?” asked the Governor.

“Well, Iwaslaughing,bátyushka; you must forgive me. I was thinking of one of our people, a great strong fellow, who boasted that he would lift the Great Cannon at Moscow; and he did try, but the cannon would not budge.”

Senyavin used to tell this story himself. He was one of those unpractical bureaucrats who believe that well-turned periods in praise of honesty, and rigorous prosecution of the few thieves who get caught, have power to cure the widespread plague of Russian corruption, that noxious weed that spreads at ease under the protecting boughs of the censorship.

Two things are needed to cope with it—publicity, and an entirely different organisation of the whole machine. The old national system of justice must be re-introduced,with oral procedure and sworn witnesses and all that the central Government detests so heartily.

Pestel, one of the Governors of Western Siberia, was like a Roman proconsul, and was outdone by none of them. He carried on a system of open and systematic robbery throughout the country, which he had entirely detached from Russia by means of his spies. Not a letter crossed the frontier unopened, and woe to the writer who dared to say a word about his rule. He kept the merchants of the First Guild in prison for a whole year, where they were chained and tortured. Officials he punished by sending them to the frontier of Eastern Siberia and keeping them there for two or three years.

The people endured him for long; but at last a tradesman of Tobolsk determined to bring the state of things to the Tsar’s knowledge. Avoiding the usual route, he went first to Kyakhta and crossed the Siberian frontier from there with a caravan of tea. At Tsárskoë Seló[99]he found an opportunity to hand his petition to Alexander, and begged him to read it. Alexander was astonished and impressed by the strange matter he read there. He sent for the petitioner, and they had a long conversation which convinced him of the truth of the terrible story. Horrified and somewhat confused, the Tsar said:

99.I.e., “The Tsar’s Village,” near Petersburg.

“You can go back to Siberia now, my friend; the matter shall be looked into.”

“No, Your Majesty,” said the man; “I cannot go home now; I would rather go to prison. My interview with Your Majesty cannot be kept secret, and I shall be murdered.”

Alexander started. He turned to Milorádovitch, who was then Governor of Petersburg, and said:

“I hold you answerable for this man’s life.”

“In that case,” said Milorádovitch, “Your Majesty must allow me to lodge him in my own house.” And there the man actually stayed until the affair was settled.

Pestel resided almost continuously at Petersburg. You will remember that the Roman proconsuls also generally lived in the capital.[100]By his presence and his connexions and, above all, by sharing his booty, he stopped in advance all unpleasant rumours and gossip. He and Rostopchín were dining one day at the Tsar’s table. They were standing by the window, and the Tsar asked, “What is that on the church cross over there—something black?” “I cannot make it out,” said Rostopchín; “we must appeal to Pestel; he has wonderful sight and can see from here what is going on in Siberia.”

100.Herzen is mistaken here.

The Imperial Council, taking advantage of the absence of Alexander,—he was at Verona or Aix,—wisely and justly decided that, as the complaint referred to Siberia, Pestel, who was fortunately on the spot, should conduct the investigation. But Milorádovitch, Mordvínov, and two others protested against this decision, and the matter was referred to the Supreme Court.

That body gave an unjust decision, as it always does when trying high officials. Pestel was reprimanded, and Treskin, the Civil Governor of Tobolsk, was deprived of his official rank and title of nobility and banished. Pestel was merely dismissed from the service.

Pestel was succeeded at Tobolsk by Kaptsevitch, a pupil of Arakchéyev. Thin and bilious, a tyrant by natureand a restless martinet, he introduced military discipline everywhere; but, though he fixed maximum prices, he left all ordinary business in the hands of the robbers. In 1824 the Tsar intended to visit Tobolsk. Throughout the Government of Perm there is an excellent high road, well worn by traffic; it is probable that the soil was favourable for its construction. Kaptsevitch made a similar road all the way to Tobolsk in a few months. In spring, when the snow was melting and the cold bitter, thousands of men were driven in relays to work at the road. Sickness broke out and half the workmen died; but “zeal overcomes all difficulties,” and the road was made.

Eastern Siberia is governed in a still more casual fashion. The distance is so great that all rumours die away before they reach Petersburg. One Governor of Irkutsk used to fire cannon at the town when he was cheerful after dinner; another, in the same state, used to put on priest’s robes and celebrate the Mass in his own house, in the presence of the Bishop; but, at least, neither the noise of the former nor the piety of the latter did as much harm as the state of siege kept up by Pestel and the restless activity of Kaptsevitch.

It is a pity that Siberia is so badly governed. The choice of Governors has been peculiarly unfortunate. I do not know how Muravyóv acquits himself there—his intelligence and capacity are well known; but all the rest have been failures. Siberia has a great future before it. It is generally regarded as a kind of cellar, full of gold and furs and other natural wealth, but cold, buried in snow,and ill provided with comforts and roads and population. But this is a false view.

The Russian Government is unable to impart that life-giving impulse which would drive Siberia ahead with American speed. We shall see what will happen when the mouths of the Amoor are opened to navigation, and when America meets Siberia on the borders of China.

I said, long ago, that the Pacific Ocean is the Mediterranean of the future; and I have been pleased to see the remark repeated more than once in the New York newspapers. In that future the part of Siberia, lying as it does between the ocean, South Asia, and Russia, is exceedingly important. Siberia must certainly extend to the Chinese frontier: why should we shiver and freeze at Beryózov and Yakutsk, when there are such places as Krasnoyarsk and Minusinsk?

The Russian settlers in Siberia have traits of character which suggest development and progress. The population in general are healthy and well grown, intelligent and exceedingly practical. The children of the emigrants have never felt the pressure of landlordism. There are no great nobles in Siberia, and there is no aristocracy in the towns; authority is represented by the civil officials and military officers; but they are less like an aristocracy than a hostile garrison established by a conqueror. The cultivators are saved from frequent contact with them by the immense distances, and the merchants are saved by their wealth. This latter class, in Siberia, despise the officials: while professing to give place to them, they take them for what they really are—inferiors who are useful in matters of law.

Arms are indispensable to the settler, and everyoneknows how to use them. Familiarity with danger and the habit of prompt action have made the Siberian peasant more soldierly, more resourceful, and more ready to resist, than his Great Russian brother. The distance of the churches has left him more independence of mind: he is lukewarm about religion and very often a dissenter. There are distant villages which the priest visits only thrice a year, when he christens the children in batches, reads the service for the dead, marries all the couples, and hears confession of accumulated sins.

On this side of the Ural ridge, the ways of governors are less eccentric. But yet I could fill whole volumes with stories which I heard either in the office or at the Governor’s dinner-table—stories which throw light on the malpractices and dishonesty of the officials.

“Yes, Sir, he was indeed a marvel, my predecessor was”—thus the inspector of police at Vyatka used to address me in his confidential moments. “Well, of course, we get along fairly, but men like him are born, not made. He was, in his way, I might say, a Caesar, a Napoleon”—and the eyes of my lame friend, the Major, who had got his place as recompense for a wound, shone as he recalled his glorious predecessor.

“There was a gang of robbers, not far from the town. Complaints came again and again to the authorities; now it was a party of merchants relieved of their goods, now the manager of a distillery was robbed of his money. The Governor was in a fuss and drew up edict after edict. Well,as you know, the country police are not brave: they can deal well enough with a petty thief, if there’s only one; but here there was a whole gang, and, likely enough, in possession of firearms. As the country police did nothing, the Governor summoned the town inspector and said:

“‘I know that this is not your business at all, but your well-known activity forces me to appeal to you.’

“The inspector knew all about the scandal already.

“‘General,’ said he, ‘I shall start in an hour. I know where the robbers are sure to be; I shall take a detachment with me; I shall come upon the scoundrels, bring them back in chains, and lodge them in the town prison, before they are three days older.’ Just like Suvórov to the Austrian Emperor! And he did what he said he would do: he surprised them with his detachment; the robbers had no time to hide their money; the inspector took it all and marched them off to the town.

“When the trial began, the inspector asked where the money was.

“‘Why,bátyushka, we put it into your own hands,’ said two of the men.

“‘Mine!’ cried the inspector, with an air of astonishment.

“‘Yes, yours!’ shouted the thieves.

“‘There’s insolence for you!’ said the inspector to the magistrate, turning pale with rage. ‘Do you expect to make people believe that I was in league with you? I shall show you what it is to insult my uniform; I was a cavalry officer once, and my honour shall not be insulted with impunity!’

“So the thieves were flogged, that they might confess where they had stowed away the money. At first they wereobstinate, but when they heard the order that they were to be flogged ‘for two pipes,’ then the leader of the gang called out—‘We plead guilty! We spent the money ourselves.’

“‘You might have said so sooner,’ remarked the inspector, ‘instead of talking such nonsense. You won’t get round me in a hurry, my friend.’ ‘No, indeed!’ muttered the robber, looking in astonishment at the inspector; ‘we could teach nothing to Your Honour, but we might learn from you.’

“Well, over that affair the inspector got the Vladímir Order.”

“Excuse me,” I said, interrupting his enthusiasm for the great man, “but what is the meaning of that phrase ‘for two pipes’?”

“Oh, we often use that in the police. One gets bored, you know, while a flogging is going on; so one lights a pipe; and, as a rule, when the pipe is done, the flogging is over too. But in special cases we order that the flogging shall go on till two pipes are smoked out. The men who flog are accustomed to it and know exactly how many strokes that means.”

Ever so many stories about this hero were in circulation at Vyatka. His exploits were miraculous. For some reason or another—perhaps a Staff-general or Minister was expected—he wished to show that he had not worn cavalry uniform for nothing, but could put spurs to a charger in fine style. With this object in view, he requisitioned a horse from a rich merchant of the district; it was a greystallion, and a very valuable animal. The merchant refused it.

“All right,” said the inspector; “if you don’t choose to do me such a trifling service voluntarily, then I shall take the horse without your leave.”

“We shall see about that,” said Gold.

“Yes, you shall,” said Steel.

The merchant locked up his stable and set two men to guard it. “Foiled for once, my friend!” he thought.

But that night, by a strange accident, a fire broke out in some empty sheds close to the merchant’s house. The inspector and his men worked manfully. In order to save the house, they even pulled down the wall of the stable and led out the object of dispute, with not a hair of his mane or tail singed. Two hours later, the inspector was caracoling on a grey charger, on his way to receive the thanks of the distinguished visitor for his courage and skill in dealing with the fire. This incident proved to everyone that he bore a charmed life.

The Governor was once leaving a party; and, just as his carriage started, a careless driver, in charge of a small sledge, drove into him, striking the traces between the wheelers and leaders. There was a block for a moment, but the Governor was not prevented from driving home in perfect comfort. Next day he said to the inspector: “Do you know whose coachman ran into me last night? He must be taught better.”

“That coachman will not do it again, Your Excellency,” answered the inspector with a smile; “I have made him smart properly for it.”

“Whose coachman was it?”

“Councillor Kulakov’s, Your Excellency.”

At that moment the old Councillor, whom I found at Vyatka and left there still holding the same office, came into the room.

“You must excuse us,” said the Governor, “for giving a lesson to your coachman yesterday.”

The Councillor, quite in the dark, looked puzzled.

“He drove into my carriage yesterday. Well, you understand, if he did it tome, then ...”

“But, Your Excellency, my wife and I spent the evening at home, and the coachman was not out at all.”

“What’s the meaning of this?” asked the Governor.

But the inspector was not taken aback.

“The fact is, Your Excellency, I had such a press of business yesterday that I quite forgot about the coachman. But I confess I did not venture to mention to Your Excellency that I had forgotten. I meant to attend to his business at once.”

“Well, there’s no denying that you are the right man in the right place!” said the Governor.

Side by side with this bird of prey I shall place the portrait of a very different kind of official—a mild and sympathetic creature, a real sucking dove.

Among my acquaintance at Vyatka was an old gentleman who had been dismissed from the service as inspector of rural police. He now drew up petitions and managed lawsuits for other people—a profession which he had been expressly forbidden to adopt. He had entered the service in the year one, had robbed and squeezed and blackmailedin three provinces, and had twice figured in the dock. This veteran liked to tell surprising stories of what he and his contemporaries had done; and he did not conceal his contempt for the degenerate successors who now filled their places.

“Oh, they’re mere bunglers,” he used to say. “Of course they take bribes, or they couldn’t live; but as for dexterity or knowledge of the law, you needn’t expect anything of the kind from them. Just to give you an idea, let me tell you of a friend of mine who was a judge for twenty years and died twelve months ago. He was a genius! The peasants revere his memory, and he left a trifle to his family too. His method was all his own. If a peasant came with a petition, the Judge would admit him at once and be very friendly and cheerful.

“‘Well, my friend, tell me your name and your father’s name, too.’

“The peasant bows—‘Yermolai is my name,bátyushka, and my father’s name was Grigóri.’

“‘Well, how are you, Yermolai Grigorevitch, and where do you come from?’

“‘I live at Dubilov.’

“‘I know, I know—those mills on the right hand of the high road are yours, I suppose?’

“‘Just so,bátyushka, the mills belong to our village.’

“‘A prosperous village, too—good land—black soil.’

“‘We have no reason to murmur against Heaven, Your Worship.’

“‘Well, that’s right. I dare say you have a good large family, Yermolai Grigorevitch?’

“‘Three sons and two daughters, Your Worship, andmy eldest daughter’s husband has lived in our house these five years.’

“‘And I dare say there are some grandchildren by this time?’

“‘Indeed there are, Your Worship—a few of them too.’

“‘And thank God for it! He told us to increase and multiply. Well, you’ve come a long way, Yermolai Grigorevitch; will you drink a glass of brandy with me?’

“The visitor seems doubtful. The Judge fills the glass, saying:

“‘Come, come, friend—the holy fathers have not forbidden us the use of wine and oil on this day.’

“‘It is true that we are allowed it, but strong drink brings a man to all bad fortune.’ Thereupon he crosses himself, bows to his host, and drinks the dram.

“‘Now, with a family like that, Grigorevitch, you must find it hard to feed and clothe them all. One horse and one cow would never do for you—you would run short of milk for such a number.’

“‘One horse,bátyushka! That wouldn’t do at all. I’ve three, and I had a fourth, a roan, but it died in St. Peter’s Fast; it was bewitched; our carpenter Doroféi hates to see others prosper, and he has the evil eye.’

“‘Well, that does happen sometimes. But you have good pasture there, and I dare say you keep sheep.’

“‘Yes, we have some sheep.’

“‘Dear me, we have had quite a long chat, Yermolai Grigorevitch. I must be off to Court now—the Tsar’s service, as you know. Have you any little business to ask me about, I wonder?’

“‘Indeed I have, Your Worship.’

“‘Well, what is it? Have you been doing something foolish? Be quick and tell me, because I must be starting.’

“‘This is it, Your Honour. Misfortune has come upon me in my old age, and I trust to you. It was Assumption Day; we were in the public-house, and I had words with a man from another village—a nasty fellow he is, who steals our wood. Well, we had some words, and then he raised his fist and struck me on the breast. “Don’t you use your fists off your own dunghill,” said I; and I wanted to teach him a lesson, so I gave him a tap. Now, whether it was the drink or the work of the Evil One, my fist went straight into his eye, and the eye was damaged. He went at once to the police—“I’ll have the law of him,” says he.’

“During this narrative the Judge—a fig for your Petersburg actors!—becomes more and more solemn; the expression of his eyes becomes alarming; he says not a word.

“The peasant sees this and changes colour; he puts his hat down on the ground and takes out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat off his brow. The Judge turns over the leaves of a book and still keeps silence.

“‘That is why I have come to see you,bátyushka,’ the peasant says in a strained voice.

“‘What can I do in such a case? It’s a bad business! What made you hit him in the eye?’

“‘What indeed,bátyushka! It was the enemy led me astray.’

“‘Sad, very sad! Such a thing to ruin a whole family! How can they get on without you—all young, and the grandchildren mere infants! A sad thing for your wife, too, in her old age!’

“The man’s legs begin to tremble. ‘Does Your Honour think it’s as bad as all that?’

“‘Take the book and read the act yourself. But perhaps you can’t read? Here is the article dealing with injuries to the person—“shall first be flogged and then banished to Siberia.”’

“‘Oh, save a man from ruin, save a fellow-Christian from destruction! Is it impossible ...’

“‘But, my good man, we can’t go against the law. So far as it’s in our hands, we might perhaps lower the thirty strokes to five or so.’

“‘But about Siberia?’

“‘Oh, there we’re powerless, my friend.’

“The peasant at this point produces a purse, takes a paper out of the purse and two or three gold pieces out of the paper; with a low bow he places them on the table.

“‘What’s all that, Yermolai Grigorevitch?’

“‘Save me,bátyushka!’

“‘No more of that! I have my weak side and I take a present at times; my salary is small and I have to do it. But if I do, I like to give something in return; and what can I do for you? If only it had been a rib or a tooth! But the eye! Take your money back.’

“The peasant is dumbfounded.

“‘There is just one possibility: I might speak to the other judges and write a line to the county town. The matter will probably go to the court there, and I have friends there who will do all they can. But they’re men of a different kidney, and three yellow-boys will not go far in that quarter.’

“The peasant recovers a little.

“‘Idon’t want anything—I’m sorry for your family; but it’s no use offeringthemless than 400roubles.’

“‘Four hundredroubles! How on earth can I get such a mint of money as that, in these times? It’s quite beyond me, I swear.’

“‘It’s not easy, I agree. We can lessen the flogging; the man’s sorry, we shall say, and he was not sober at the time. Peopledolive in Siberia, after all; and it’s not so very far from here. Of course, you might manage it by selling a pair of horses and one of the cows and the sheep. But you would have to work many years to replace all that stock; and if you don’t pay up, your horses will be left all right but you’ll be off on the long tramp yourself. Think it over, Grigorevitch; no hurry; we’ll do nothing till to-morrow; but I must be going now.’ And the Judge pockets the coins he had refused, saying, ‘It’s quite unnecessary—I only take it to spare your feelings.’

“Next day, an old Jew turns up at the Judge’s house, lugging a bag that contains 350roublesin coinage of all dates.

“The Judge promises his assistance. The peasant is tried, and tried over again, and well frightened; then he gets off with a light sentence, or a caution to be more prudent in future, or a note against his name as a suspicious character. And the peasant for the rest of his life prays that God will reward the Judge for his kindness.

“Well, that’s a specimen of the neat way they used to do it”—so the retired inspector used to wind up his story.

In Vyatka the Russian tillers of the soil are fairly independent,and get a bad name in consequence from the officials, as unruly and discontented. But the Finnish natives, poor, timid, stupid people, are a regular gold-mine to the rural police. The inspectors pay the governors twice the usual sum when they are appointed to districts where the Finns live.

The tricks which the authorities play on these poor wretches are beyond belief.

If the land-surveyor is travelling on business and passes a native village, he never fails to stop there. He takes the theodolite off his cart, drives in a post and pulls out his chain. In an hour the whole village is in a ferment. “The land-measurer! the land-measurer!” they cry, just as they used to cry, “The French! the French!” in the year ’12. The elders come to pay their respects: the surveyor goes on measuring and making notes. They ask him not to cheat them out of their land, and he demands twenty or thirtyroubles. They are glad to give it and collect the money; and he drives on to the next village of natives.

Again, if the police find a dead body, they drag it about for a fortnight—the frost makes this possible—through the Finnish villages. In each village they declare that they have just found the corpse and mean to start an inquest; and the people pay blackmail.

Some years before I went to Vyatka, a rural inspector, a famous blackmailer, brought a dead body in a cart into a large village of Russian settlers, and demanded, I think, 200roubles. The village elder consulted the community; but they would not go beyond one hundred. The inspector would not lower his price. The peasants got angry: they shut him up with his two clerks in the police-office and threatened, in their turn, to burn them alive. The inspectordid not take them seriously. The peasants piled straw around the house; then, by way of ultimatum, they held up a hundred-roublenote on a pole in front of the window. The hero inside asked for a hundred more. Thereupon the peasants fired the straw at all four corners, and all the three Mucius Scaevolas of the rural police were burnt to death. At a later time this matter came before the Supreme Court.

These native settlements are in general much less thriving than the Russian villages.

“You don’t seem well off, friend,” I said to the native owner of a hut where I was waiting for fresh horses; it was a wretched, smoky, lop-sided cabin, with windows looking over the yard at the back.

“What can we do,bátyushka? We are poor, and keep our money for a rainy day.”

“A rainy day? It looks to me as if you’d got it already. But drink that for comfort”—and I filled a glass with rum.

“We don’t drink,” said the Finn, with a greedy look at the glass and a suspicious look at me.

“Come, come, you’d better take it.”

“Well, drink first yourself.”

I drank, and then he followed my example. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Have you come on business from Vyatka?”

“No,” I answered; “I’m a traveller on my way there.” He was considerably relieved to hear this; he looked all round, and added by way of explanation, “The rainy day is when the inspector or the priest comes here.”

I should like to say something here about the latter of these personages.

§10

Of the Finnish population some accepted Christianity before Peter’s reign, others were baptised in the time of Elizabeth,[101]and others have remained heathen. Most of those who changed their religion under Elizabeth are still secretly attached to their own dismal and savage faith.

101.Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, reigned from 1741 to 1762.

Every two or three years the police-inspector and the priest make a tour of the villages, to find out which of the natives have not fasted in Lent, and to enquire the reasons. The recusants are harried and imprisoned, flogged and fined. But the visitors search especially for some proof that the old heathen rites are still kept up. In that case, there is a real ‘rainy day’—the detective and the missionary raise a storm and exact heavy blackmail; then they go away, leaving all as it was before, to repeat their visit in a year or two.

In the year 1835 the Holy Synod thought it necessary to convert the heathen Cheremisses to Orthodoxy. Archbishop Philaret nominated an active priest named Kurbanovski as missionary. Kurbanovski, a man eaten up by the Russian disease of ambition, set to work with fiery zeal. He tried preaching at first, but soon grew tired of it; and, in point of fact, not much is to be done by that ancient method.

The Cheremisses, when they heard of this, sent their own priests to meet the missionary. These fanatics were ingenious savages: after long discussions, they said to him: “The forest contains not only silver birches and tall pines but also the little juniper. God permits them all to grow and does not bid the juniper be a pine tree. We menare like the trees of the forest. Be you the silver birches, and let us remain the juniper. We don’t interfere with you, we pray for the Tsar, pay our dues, and provide recruits for the Army; but we are not willing to be false to our religion.”

Kurbanovski saw that they could not agree, and that he was not fated to play the part of Cyril and Methodius.[102]He had recourse to the secular arm; and the local police-inspector was delighted—he had long wished to show his zeal for the church; he was himself an unbaptised Tatar, a true believer in the Koran, and his name was Devlet Kildéyev.

102.In the ninth century Cyril and his brother Methodius, two Greek monks of Salonica, introduced Christianity among the Slavs. They invented the Russian alphabet.

He took a detachment of his men and proceeded to besiege the Cheremisses. Several villages were baptised. Kurbanovski sang theTe Deumin church and went back to Moscow, to receive with humility the velvet cap for good service; and the Government sent the Vladímir Cross to the Tatar.

But there was an unfortunate misunderstanding between the Tatar missionary and the local mullah. The mullah was greatly displeased when this believer in the Koran took to preaching the Gospel and succeeded so well. During Ramadan, the inspector boldly put on his cross and appeared in the mosque wearing it; he took a front place, as a matter of course. The mullah had just begun to chant the Koran through his nose, when he suddenly stopped and said that he dared not go on, in the presence of a true believer who had come to the mosque wearing a Christian emblem.

The congregation protested; and the discomfited inspector was forced to put his cross in his pocket.

I read afterwards in the archives of the Home Office an account of this brilliant conversion of the Cheremisses. The writer mentioned the zealous cooperation of Devlet Kildéyev, but unfortunately forgot to add that his zeal for the Church was the more disinterested because of his firm belief in the truth of Islam.

Before I left Vyatka, the Department of Imperial Domains was committing such impudent thefts that a commission of enquiry was appointed; and this commission sent out inspectors into all the provinces. A new system of control over the Crown tenants was introduced after that time.

Our Governor at that time was Kornilov; he had to nominate two subordinates to assist the inspectors, and I was one of the two. I had to read a multitude of documents, sometimes with pain, sometimes with amusement, sometimes with disgust. The very headings of the subjects for investigation struck me with astonishment—

(1)The loss and total disappearance of a police-station, and the destruction of the plan by the gnawing of mice.

(2)The loss of twelve miles of arable land.

(3)The transference of the peasant’s son Vasili to the female sex.

The last item was so remarkable that I read the details at once from beginning to end.

There was a petition to the Governor from the father of the child. The petitioner stated that fifteen years agoa daughter had been born to him, whom he wished to call Vasilissa; but the priest, not being sober, christened the girl Vasili, and entered the name thus on the register. This fact apparently caused little disturbance to the father; but when he found he would soon be required to provide a recruit for the Army and pay the poll-tax for the child, he informed the police. The police were much puzzled. They began by refusing to act, on the ground that he ought to have applied earlier. The father then went to the Governor, and the Governor ordered that this boy of the female sex should be formally examined by a doctor and a midwife. But at this point, matters were complicated by a correspondence with the ecclesiastical authorities; and the parish priest, whose predecessor, under the influence of drink, had been too prudish to recognise differences of sex, now appeared on the scene; the matter went on for years, and I rather think the girl was never cleared of the suspicion of being a boy.

The reader is not to suppose that this absurd story is a mere humorous invention of mine.

During the Emperor Paul’s reign a colonel of the Guards, making his monthly report, returned as dead an officer who had gone to the hospital; and the Tsar struck his name off the lists. But unfortunately the officer did not die; he recovered instead. The colonel induced him to return to his estates for a year or two, hoping to find an opportunity of putting matters straight; and the officer agreed. But his heirs, having read of his death in the Gazette, positively refused to recognise him as still alive; though inconsolable for their loss, they insisted upon their right of succession. The living corpse, whom the Gazette had killed once, found that he was likely to die overagain, by starvation this time. So he travelled to Petersburg and handed in a petition to the Tsar.

This beats even my story of the girl who was also a boy.

It is a miry slough, this account of our provincial administration; yet I shall add a few words more. This publicity is the last paltry compensation to those who suffered unheard and unpitied.

Government is very ready to reward high officials with grants of unoccupied land. There is no great harm in that, though it might be wiser to keep it for the needs of an increasing population. The rules governing such allotments of land are rather detailed; it is illegal to grant the banks of a navigable river, or wood fit for building purposes, or both sides of a river; and finally, land reclaimed by peasants may in no case be taken from them, even though the peasants have no title to the land except prescription.

All this is very well, on paper; but in fact this allotment of land to individuals is a terrible instrument by which the Crown is robbed and the peasants oppressed.

Most of the magnates to whom the leases are granted either sell their rights to merchants, or try, by means of the provincial authorities, to secure some privileges contrary to the rules. Thus it happened, by mere chance, of course, that Count Orlóv himself got possession of the road and pastures used by droves of cattle in the Government of Saratov.

No wonder, then, that the peasants of a certain district in Vyatka were deprived one fine morning of all theirland, right up to their houses and farmyards, the soil having passed into the possession of some merchants who had bought the lease from a relation of Count Kankrin.[103]The merchants next put a rent on the land. The law was appealed to. The Crown Court, being bribed by the merchants and fearing a great man’s cousin, put a spoke in the wheel; but the peasants, determined to go on to the bitter end, chose two shrewd men from among themselves and sent them off to Petersburg. The matter now came before the Supreme Court. The judges suspected that the peasants were in the right; but they were puzzled how to act, and consulted Kankrin. That nobleman admitted frankly that the land had been taken away unjustly; but he thought there would be difficulty in restoring it, because itmighthave been re-sold since, and because the new ownersmighthave made some improvements. He therefore suggested that advantage should be taken of the vast extent of the Crown lands, and that the same quantity of land should be granted to the peasants, but in another district. This solution pleased everyone except the peasants: in the first place, it was no trifle to reclaim fresh land; and, in the second place, the land offered them turned out to be a bog. As the peasants were more interested in growing corn than in shooting snipe, they sent in a fresh petition.

Back to Index Next