Siberia (Price)/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
A SIBERIAN PROVINCIAL TOWN
(MINUSINSK)
EVERY traveller before he has been long in the Russian Empire will become acquainted with prasniks or holidays. On a very large percentage of days in the year the Greek Church ordains that, because a tradition exists that some obscure saint, whose very existence may perhaps be open to question, performed a miracle or died on that day, the whole commercial and economic activities of the Empire are to be altogether suspended. These holidays are spent simply in eating nuts, doing nothing and getting drunk; and if, like my companions and myself, the travellers should be so unfortunate as to arrive at a Siberian frontier town after a week's journey in carts, and find the Easter prasniks just begun, he will experience no little inconvenience.
The first night we were in our new abode we thought it might not be out of place to get something to eat. Our servant and I went out into the town to try our luck. As usual, outside on the doorsteps of the houses sat groups of men and women, eating pine seed and doing nothing. "Where can we buy something to eat?" "Don't know," was the reply. "Are there no shops?" "All shut, holidays." "When will they be open?" "Don't know." "How long do holidays last?" "Don't know." Passing on we came to a place where it appeared that eggs were to be sold, and we accosted the owner, who was squatting outside and eating nuts. "Have you some eggs here?" "Yes." "Can you get us some?" "No; the shed where they are kept is locked up." "But can't you go and open it?" "No; it is a holiday." "Well, we will give you a higher price because it is a holiday." "I have not got any eggs at all," was the reply. It was obviously hopeless to do business with anyone in such a mental condition as that, and everybody else we tried was the same. At last, in despair, we hit upon a Jewish bootmaker, and entered a low, dingy room quite unlike the clean Russian houses we were accustomed to. There was no difficulty in getting the Jew to do business, but the quahty of his fare was distinctly below that of his Russian neighbours. All he could produce was a mouldy loaf of bread and half-a-dozen eggs that had seen better days. However, with that and some scraps that we had left from our journey we made our evening meal. On subsequent days it was always a struggle to get food enough to keep us going, as long as the Easter holidays lasted, and as for attempting to make preparations for the further journey it was utterly out of the question until these people awoke from the mental torpor of the religious holidays.
Meanwhile I amused myself as I had done at Krasnoyarsk, in studying humanity as it was exhibited in Minusinsk.
The next day there happened to be a great function at the Greek church in connexion with the celebrations of Easter week. Early in the morning small groups of citizens and peasants from the country round paraded the streets, carrying icons or sacred pictures, and chanting with uncovered heads. The church bells, which had been making the small hours of the morning unbearable, were now even more aggressive. One of the most indispensable parts of the "Pravo-Slav" religious ceremonial is its bells. From the Isaaki Cathedral at St Petersburg to the poorest village church they are rung on the same principle. A tiny bell, which makes a noise like a tin kettle, rings for a few minutes, just enough to irritate you when you know what is coming. Then, half-a-tone lower, so as to be precisely discordant with the first, comes another bell with a rather fuller sound; and after these two have jarred upon the ear for a few minutes comes another, a little lower down the scale, and then another, till finally a "Big Ben" booms out, to complete the babel of discord. When you have two Greek churches, one on each side of your house, all of whose bells are out of harmony with each other, and whose "Big Bens" are just half-a-tone different, then you may have some idea of the sort of frenzy into which we were driven after three days. But if the Russians are not exactly musical with their bells, the same cannot by any means be said of their voices. As I stood in the church, having pushed my way through a dense crowd of citizens and peasants, and listened to the men chanting, I felt that in no country in the world had I heard so full and rich a harmony of deep male voices. After the service, while the band plays the National Anthem, "Long live the Tsar," the priest blesses the water and sprays it over the people and on the soldiers lined up outside the church. As I looked  | An image should appear at this position in the text. If you are able to provide it, see Wikisource:Image guidelines and Help:Adding images for guidance. |
THE ORTHODOX CHURCH AT MINUSINSK
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THE TOWN OK MINUSINSK.
A RELIGIOUS PROCESSION PASSING THROUGH THE STREETS AT EASTER
When the religious functions were at last over we were able to set to work at some of our business. The chief means of transport in Siberia is horses, and as we intended crossing the Russo-Chinese frontier, and visiting Mongolia, it was necessary to supply ourselves with a caravan. Ponies from Western and Central Siberia are not so good as those from the Eastern and Trans-Baikal districts, nor are they so hardy as the little ponies from the Mongolian plateau across the frontier to the south. These horses from the Minusinsk country were of the mongrel type, mixed doubtless with all sorts of Tartar, native Siberian and Mongolian breeds, but being chiefly used in the open steppes were not first rate in rough and forest country. However, as it turned out, they were most of them hardy compared with anything in Western Europe, and could endure long stretches without food.
One morning we strolled down to the market-square and found a weekly bazaar going on. Local fairs and markets in these more outlying and isolated districts of Siberia are still important institutions, much more so than in such places as Krasnoyarsk, where direct communication between buyers and sellers and wholesale and retail dealers is now fairly established.
On that morning we found a good assortment of native types from the countryside assembled in the market-square. There were Siberian peasants, Kazan Tartars, Abakansk Tartars and Cossacks. Some were buying horses, some selling produce which was being weighed upon the public scales, and some were bartering over cattle and live stock. We had only to pass the word that a horse was wanted, and instantly half the population in the bazaars swarmed round us. Dozens of animals were produced, but it soon became impracticable to do any business. Whenever we tried to get at the value of a likely-looking animal, a jabbering crowd all tried to explain at the same moment that the price which was being asked by the owner was the correct one, and that we ought not to give less. It was apparently just the same in Siberia as in other parts of the East. No individual seemed to be able to do business on his own initiative, but required a whole crowd of his friends to back him up and support him in a bargain, and whenever you try to introduce the elements of competition you are overwhelmed in a babel of voices all declaring that the seller is in the right. So, after making a few futile attempts to do business, we decided to tackle them in truly Western fashion. We gave out that all who wanted to sell horses should come to our house with those horses. The next morning half Minusinsk appeared in the streets before our house and the crowd was so thick that special police were sent by the authorities to look after it. Every conceivable type of horse was brought, good, bad and indifferent. Our first job was to weed out those with worn hoofs, blind eyes and sore backs from the remainder, and we finally selected thirty. I was then deputed to ride them all up and down the main street of Minusinsk, while the whole populace of the town was looking on. One old Tartar brought a horse from the steppe, and in a rash moment I got on his back without a saddle, for he looked to me to be a quiet creature. But before I knew where I was I found myself careering down the main street at a mad gallop, the animal buck-jumping and kicking to get me off, while I was pursued by the mounted police and the populace on foot as if I had been robbing a bank. Fortunately with the aid of the police I stopped the horse before he reached the outskirts of the town, for he was making straight for his home on the steppes, and probably would not have stopped till he got there. I then experienced something of the "feel" of a Tartar horse's mouth, and was careful after that to pay due attention to the bit. After a few more of such incidents we got the number of possible horses down to twenty, and then we told the owners that we were only going to buy five (although we really wanted ten), and that each man was to come into the house to bargain alone. Inside everything was made as official as possible. We had an impromptu doorkeeper and usher, and the interpreter and one of us sat at the table, surrounded by papers, pens and ink, in order to give the whole thing an air of importance. The wretched fellows, who had never seen such solemnity in horse-dealing before, for once had to fall back upon themselves, instead of on a host of jabbering friends. Our keen-witted Caucasian servant was more than a match for them, and a trial of strength in the gentle art of Oriental blackmail, accompanied by torrents of unintelligible sentences, gradually ended in victory for the Caucasian. It was indeed almost impossible to keep one's face and avoid giving the show away while the farce went on. Here was our hired Caucasian blackmailer, a member of a subject race, outmanœuvring the dull-witted Slav in his own country. This was my first real introduction to business in the East. Eventually we got our horses at the reasonable average figure of £3 per head.
During the course of our stay in Minusinsk we had on more than one occasion to visit the local branch of the Siberian bank. The only bank in a town like Minusinsk is naturally the place to feel the pulse of local commerce. Thither repair the retail buyers of live stock or grain in the autumn to discount their bills on the wholesale firms at Krasnoyarsk or other big towns on the railway; and in the spring traders bound for Mongolia come to borrow lump silver which they hope to exchange for skins and wool across the frontier. A low, dingy wooden building with a signboard over the door was the best that Minusinsk could do in banks. At the entrance there stood a dirty, slovenly policeman with a loaded revolver and a fixed bayonet, a precaution which every bank in Russia still takes in case of conflict with certain members of society who have peculiar ideas about private property. This arm of the law, however, was not a very inspiring personality. He seemed to be engaged in the usual apelike habit of eating nuts. Inside the bank, before a long counter, was a motley assortment of Minusinsk traders, mostly Russians and Kazan Tartars, who had casually strolled in some hours before to get a bill of exchange drawn or a cheque cashed, and had been waiting many hours, squatting in the corner of the room in true Eastern style. It did not take long to discover that this was, after all, the true East with only a thin veneer of West upon it. Behind the counter was the row of loutish-looking clerks who might have just been brought in from ploughing the fields. They were engaged in leisurely writing out forms in large childlike letters, as if they were at a board school examination, stopping every few minutes to drink cups of tea, which were in a continuous process of circulation among the bank staff.
The chief clerk was an anæmic youth with an academic air, who had evidently not been to the barber for at least twelve months. He had been let loose from one of the middle schools after having acquired a knowledge of reading and writing, a smattering of history and geography, and a little dangerous political idealism. The bank manager, who was surrounded by a halo of sanctity in a special room, and to whom we presented letters, was an evil-looking creature, who looked as if a not remote ancestor of his had been sent away from old Russia for old Russia's good.
After a brief conversation we expressed a desire to draw some cash, and I was therefore left to attend to this process in the main room of the bank. I first had to wait till the greasy crowd of Kazan Tartars and Siberians had completed their financial transactions, for which they had been waiting all the morning, and that took at least an hour. I then explained what I wanted to a red-faced youth across the counter, who seemed partially to understand, and retired to the corner of the room. I waited till the hand of the clock had once gone round and then was asked by another red-faced youth if I would explain again what I wanted.
After another half-hour's wait I was informed that I had come to the wrong counter, and must go to the other end of the room, where another beautiful specimen of this menagerie was perched up on a high stool. It took roughly fifteen minutes for my ideas to filter in, another fifteen minutes for them to digest, thirty minutes more for them to be executed, and fifteen minutes more for the final signing of paper and handing over of cash. I left with the conviction that next time I had occasion to visit a Siberian bank on business, I should have to make a day's expedition, and take all my meals with me, and possibly even a bed for the night.
But I sympathized with the occupants of that bank, although they greatly inconvenienced me. They made a heroic attempt, while I was there, to put on the mantle of Western civilization, and to imitate, as far as they could in their crude, child-like way, an economic institution which was obviously beyond their powers of comprehension. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak. Nevertheless the beginnings of greater things were there ready for development, and I am one of those who believe that the Slavs some day will develop their crude human material on Western lines.
I must now relate something of our relations with officialdom in Minusinsk. We duly made acquaintance with the Uesdy Nachalnick or local authority, who is an official appointed in each district and responsible to the governor of the province. In the absence of local representative institutions in Siberia he corresponds to our County Council, Standing Joint Committee, and Quarter Sessions combined in one, and is the most powerful administrative authority in the district. But, as usual in official Russia, he refers everything that he cannot or does not want to deal with to the next authority above him—namely, the Governor of the Yenisei Government. Directly under his control come the civil officials who administer both urban and peasant affairs, the collector of taxes, the urban police officials and the "Stanovy Preestof," who is the head of the rural police. When we went to call on this gentleman we had to go through the usual red-tape formalities in connexion with passports and special permission to cross the frontier. This permission had been granted to us in St Petersburg, and held good apparently for a certain route only; our names, nationality, description, destination, contents of baggage, value of guns and ammunition had been telegraphed out to Minusinsk and had been sent on to every frontier post for 2000 miles along the Russo-Chinese frontier. But one route only, by which we had intended to go, had not been described exactly enough to satisfy bureaucratic minds, and as it was an unused route, where, as we ultimately found out, no frontier guards were kept, it was considered most important to refer the matter to the Governor of the Yenisei Government. Bureaucratic red tape could not possibly allow three foreigners to cross the frontier at indefinite points lying between two routes, for the passport, although specifying the routes, did not specify the area between them. Therefore permission to cross the frontier by any new route lying between these two points must at least be referred to the governor of the province, and, if necessary, to St Petersburg. In spite of this apparently ridiculous formalism one could not but be struck with the extraordinarily intricate passport system which controls the movements of all persons both native and foreign in all districts throughout the Empire. Our names and all about us were known to all frontier officials from the Yenisei Government to the Ili frontier in Western China. No native Siberian can move from his village without a village paper stating who he is and where he comes from and whither he is going. To leave the Empire a Russian subject must have a special passport from the peasant official in charge of the "volost" or district, in which he lives. And so this marvellous system works throughout the length and breadth of this great Empire; no one can move without the risk of having his papers demanded, and everyone can be traced if he is wanted for anything by the authorities. The expense of keeping the system in working order must be enormous, and one doubts its practical use, although no one can doubt that it works with reasonable efficiency.
The powers which the Uesdy Nachalnik exercise, without responsibility except to those officials above him, are, of course, liable to abuse, especially in remote districts. For instance I remember meeting the Uesdy Nachalnik of Minusinsk in the streets one evening while we were in the town, and being asked by him whether I would buy a gold concession which he had acquired in the mountains to the south from peasant communes. It seemed a little remarkable that an important official should be able to obtain gold concessions from the subjects he administers and then sell them to foreigners. I could hardly imagine the mayor of an English town or the chairman of a county council or a deputy chief constable of a county embarking upon a similar speculation and hawking it about the public streets. Undoubtedly there is corruption in the remoter parts of Siberia, but the opinion of everyone I conversed with was that in this respect improvement has taken place of late. Corruption is a social disease, and is not confined to Russia alone. In Siberia the officials are the victims of the environment which is created there by nature. Low pay and isolation from effective control are great incentives to the mischief. The rising scale of officials' salaries and greater centralization of government is having the effect of diminishing it, although the latter tendency will also bring evils of another kind in its train, if carried too far. Public opinion is the only thing which in the long run will put a stop to it, and although growing in European Russia, it is at present too little developed in the remoter parts of Siberia to have any effect. The day will come when public opinion will be sufficiently strong to ostracize officials who hawk gold concessions in the public streets.
Another official at Minusinsk, whose acquaintance we made, was the inspector of mines and mining concessions for the southern part of the Yenisei Government. This post exists in every district of every Government, but it does not seem important to the bureaucratic mind whether there are mines in the district or not, so long as the post exists. It was obvious to me that there was a great difference between the Canadian and the Russian method of administering mining concessions. A Canadian can register a claim and within a few days obtain the sole right of exploitation, but a Siberian has to encounter formidable regulations and long interviews with uniformed officials who are especially deputed to deal with mineral rights.
One would have thought that the post of a mining inspector would be filled by someone with a knowledge of his subject, but that is not thought necessary by the Russian Government. The gentleman whose acquaintance we made was a pensioned military officer of partly German extraction, who gave us a hospitable welcome and did everything to procure for us practical help and advice about travelling on the Russo-Mongolian frontier. His knowledge of mines and minerals did not appear to be vast, and he seemed to be more at home when he sat down to tea with us and recalled the military exploits of his earlier days, the memories of the Russo-Turkish War and the Battle of Plevna, in which he had taken part.
As one would imagine, public representative institutions at Minusinsk were limited both in number and in function. There is a town council elected by those who pay the apartment tax, but the duties of this body seemed to be even more restricted than those of the same body at Krasnoyarsk. The upkeep of an almshouse and a small town hospital, the repairing of a few primary school buildings, and the maintenance of tracks or so-called roads in the town in a fairly level condition seemed to be all that it had to do.
As regards education, the maintenance of the urban primary schools generally falls in part at least upon the urban local authority. In a town where wood is cheap, a low wooden building with desks and forms can be erected for a couple of hundred roubles and the only charge on the district is for repairs and the purchase of books, while teachers' salaries are found by the local branch of the Imperial treasury. And so the seeds of enlightenment are sown in these remote corners of the Empire, and the children of the citizens and of the local peasants learn to read and write their mother tongue. But the march of progress is slow, and in a town like Minusinsk with 15,000 inhabitants only five per cent, of the children are at school, and about that percentage of the whole population are literate.
In the middle school or "gymnasium," of which there was a boys' and girls' branch at Minusinsk, a more advanced education is given for the payment of £15 to £20 per year per pupil. In company with a Russian gentleman I visited it one day and found a large two-storeyed building, with spacious class-rooms and modern appointments. This was the only middle school for the whole of the southern part of the Yenisei Government of Siberia, and held at that time about 400 boys and girls. The expense of this establishment is met partly by the pupils' fees and partly by Government grants, and the whole administration of the middle school education is under the education authority in Krasnoyarsk, which in tum is directly under the Minister of Education in St Petersburg. In this school I found boys and girls from twelve to eighteen following the Government curriculum, which is the same all over the Empire from Poland to the Far East. The type of education is very similar to that of the classical side of our public schools in England, except that perhaps less attention was paid to Latin and Greek and more to French. French and German are obligatory, and English, Latin and Greek are at present optional. Elementary science was taught, but from books only. Such scientific instruction, to my mind, would tend to create only foggy notions about the laws of nature in the minds of the human raw material of these parts of Siberia. The lessons were accompanied by no sort of practical demonstration; and the teachers indeed informed me that they had never done any practical work themselves, and frankly stated that all their information came from books.
In fact the Government does not encourage modern scientific education in the middle schools, and is more desirous of instilling classical education into the minds of the growing Siberian bourgeoisie. In so far as they insist upon a grounding in history, geography and the German or French languages, I am inclined to think that this middle-school policy is right. The fault lies in not giving sufficient facilities elsewhere for the more practical scientific side of modern education, by the opening of technical schools and universities throughout Siberia. There is only one university in the whole continent where modern education can be obtained, and that is at Tomsk. Attempts to start one at Irkutsk have been vetoed by the Government in spite of the fact that all the money has been found by the Siberians themselves. The Siberians are very bitter about this, for they feel that they are being deliberately cut off from modern education by the officialdom of old Russia.
There is one remarkable monument in Minusinsk which marks the advance of education and enlightenment in Central Siberia during the last decade. This is the museum, which is, in spite of the isolation of Minusinsk, the best in all Siberia. Many towns in Siberia have museums created by the order of officialdom of the same type as that which I saw at Krasnoyarsk. In Minusinsk, however, there lived a few years ago a cultivated Siberian gentleman. A keen enthusiast on more than one scientific subject, he spent a large part of his life in the creation of a museum which should be representative of all the scientific knowledge of the Southern Yenisei Government. The museum building, which along with the vodka factory and the prison shares the distinction of being among the finest in the whole town, contains collections of geological, botanical, archaeological and historical interest, and also exhibits showing the economic possibilities of Southern Siberia. It is remarkable that such an educational monument should have been created by a private individual and his friends in Siberia without the aid of any Government department, and this indeed shows the Russian character in a very different light from that in which we usually regard it. There are no more enlightened people than the Slavs if once they are thoroughly imbued with Western ideas; but the number of those who really absorb these ideas is so far very small.
I found another interesting example of the extraordinary diversity of the Russian character in the acquaintance that I made with a certain Mr S in Minusinsk. He was a cultivated and well-to-do gentleman who had settled there in order to study the archaeological remains in which the district abounds. Absolutely oblivious to the wild country and the primitive social conditions around him, he was so preoccupied with his work that he could hardly think of anything else. One morning I went to call on him I found him in a typical Russian house, busy writing a paper on a scientific subject. It was to me passing strange to meet here a man whom you would associate rather with the old court at Trinity or with Balliol than with a Siberian frontier town. On my arrival he welcomed me with the cordiality of a true Russian, and although he began his conversation with general subjects he could not long keep away from his scientific theories on the early inhabitants of those districts. For an hour he held forth to me with the almost fanatical enthusiasm which is so typical of a really educated Russian. I noticed, too, that he seemed to have a thorough knowledge of the detail of his subject, such as one more frequently finds among the Germans. Other Russian scientists whom I have met have generally been fervent and enthusiastic, but erratic and truly Slavonic in nature, and the enthusiastic and impressionable character of a cultivated Slav blended with the laborious thoroughness of a Teuton is a combination as rare as it is excellent. I learned much from this gentleman and spent many hours with him.
A provincial town like Minusinsk, the last urban centre before reaching the Mongolian frontier, although more primitive in some respects, is, nevertheless, pleasanter than the towns nearer to so-called civilization. The quiet life of old Siberia is still most prominent here. The business of everyday life is slow and old-fashioned, and society is more dignified and less obtrusive than in those towns, situated on the great railway, which are permeated with Western influences.
Being the centre of a certain local trade, capable of a great future, and also of the barter trade with the Mongol and Finnish tribes on the frontier, modern commercial methods have just begun to develop even here. The population in Minusinsk consists chiefly of urban citizens or "meshchaneeny," who are without land. They carry on trade with the Abakansk Tartars and the Siberian peasants of the neighbourhood, and many of them engage in small domestic industries which they carry on in their homes, such as the making of coats, boots, small ironwork, etc. Others keep stores and little shops, while others, especially Jews, deal in furs, which come in from Mongolia. There are, of course, the civil officials and the usual military forces stationed in the town. But besides this there are a few Russian gentlemen of private means, engaged in various academic pursuits, and a few political exiles of high culture, one of whom I had the fortune to meet.
The backbone of society in a Siberian provincial town is to be found in the growing commercial bourgeoisie, or middle class, which in recent years has been created by the economic activities which are springing up on every side. There is the frontier wool trader, who earns his 400 roubles a year and lives in a four-roomed house with varnished tables and cheap furniture; there is the Kazan Tartar, who deals in horses and imitates the social habits of his Russian neighbour; there is the Russian watchmaker or the Polish hairdresser, who has left his home, perhaps for political reasons, and finds that in Siberia he can easily earn 450 roubles (£50) a year, while his food and general living cost him only half of what they do in old Russia. Just as the Englishman, if he has enterprise and a little capital to start with, improves his position by crossing the Atlantic to Canada, so can the Russian from the old country, if he is ready to endure the rough and free life, find a more open field for his enterprise and a more remunerative return for his labour when he crosses to the east of the Urals.
There is, as in every town in Russia, a boulevard or square space in the middle of the town where some stunted trees try to grow. When I was in Minusinsk, just after the winter snow had melted, the boulevard was like a ploughed field, while during the summer the heat and dust render the spot equally unfavourable for an urban pleasure-ground. A few rickety old seats are scattered about, and occasionally the colonel of the regiment stationed in the town allows the band to make discordant sounds on a Sunday afternoon. To this Garden of Eden every summer evening repair the fashion of Minusinsk. Well-to-do traders are to be seen with wife and family dressed in the latest costume, which was probably the fashion in Western Europe ten years ago. Children play games and roll in the dirt, while parents sit on benches and gossip. Smart young officers strut about in uniform with stick and spurs, and carry on diplomatic flirtations with the other sex. The poorer citizen on very festive occasions can also be induced to leave his doorstep and his bag of nuts, and walk with his wife, family and perambulator. In fact, human nature is much the same in this little Siberian frontier town as at Hampstead Heath or Earl's Court on a Bank Holiday. The difference that exists is superficial only and due to local circumstances, but beneath the surface Homo Vulgaris here has much the same habits as the same animal in Western Europe.
The chief thing that strikes a traveller is the absence of any indulgence in those sports of which Englishmen are so fond. There is no sign of a football or cricket club or of a racecourse. The only recreation is eating and drinking, doing nothing and walking on the boulevard to see other people in their best dresses. They appear to regard physical exertion for the sake of bodily exercise as mere waste of time. On the other hand, while at first I looked on the indolent Slav, who has no notion that time moves, as a reckless waster of a most valuable commodity, I have often wondered since whether I was quite fair in thus judging him, especially when I think now of the time-wasting crowds at a Saturday afternoon football match in England. In fact the "Citizen of the World" may be studied with advantage, and the old proverb, "So many nations, so many customs; so many men, so many minds," is an excellent corrective to critical infallibility. Perhaps here as elsewhere the via media is the safest.
In Minusinsk Slavonic civilization and the Russian social system are everywhere predominant. Nevertheless besides pure Russians there are Mohammedan Tartars of Kazan and Tobolsk; but these are in a minority and, except in religious matters, have few distinctive characteristics. They must not be confused with the Abakansk Tartars, who are the native aborigines of the southern part of Central Siberia. The Kazan and Tobolsk Tartars are Mussulman Russian subjects, who originally came from old Khanates of Kazan and Tobolsk in Western Siberia and European Russia, before they were overthrown by the early Russian Tsars. Most of those in Minusinsk had been born and had lived there all their lives, but a few had migrated recently from European Russia and Western Siberia. On visiting the houses of one or two, I expected to find some old Tartar "Hadji," with a skull-cap and turban, sitting squat-legged on a raised dais, surrounded by carpets and prayer rugs, and attended by veiled women from the harem. But I was disappointed. I found instead a Russian log-house. The room inside was furnished with tables and chairs, there was a samovar of tea and Russian food, and the family wore Russian clothes and spoke Russian, calling each other by Russified Tartar names, such as "Islamof," "Achmetof." In fact, by continual contact with Russians, though without any systematic Russification by officialdom, these Tartars were slowly losing their national characteristics. But their religion survives as strong as ever; for, on the one hand, the Russians make no attempt to proselytize, nor on the other do the Tartars show any signs of breaking from their old faith. Christian Russian and Mussulman Tartar in Siberia, as in old Russia, mutually respect each other's religion, and intermingle socially; as subjects of the Tsar they live their everyday life on terms of civic equality, enjoying the same privileges and bearing the same public burdens.
Perhaps the most interesting acquaintance that I made in Minusinsk, and one to which I attached the greatest value, was that of a certain gentleman who, on account of his previous history, his social isolation, and his high culture, was surrounded by a peculiar halo of tragic mystery. Formerly he had held high office in St Petersburg, but he was supposed to have become involved in certain affairs connected with secret police spies. Trials behind closed doors ensued, and, falling into Imperial displeasure, he had been compelled to live in this remote part of the Empire, socially ostracized. Not only was he a man of position and culture, but also a man of wealth. In the land to which he was exiled, however, money could not create what he formerly enjoyed in the centre of European civilization. Although he and his family lived in a large house with many well-appointed rooms, they had no servant now to attend to their wants. Hastily laid meals and untidy rooms contrasted in my imagination with what their surroundings must have been in the political and diplomatic circles of St Petersburg's society. This is the type of exile to whom one's sympathy most extends. The political exile from the peasant class or lower grade of urban citizen finds in Siberia an opening for his enterprise in a new land of riches and plenty. But to the cultivated man, who has moved in the social circles of the European capitals, exile to such a place as this must be little short of social death. When I went to call upon him he came to the door himself, and showing me in through a room where he and his wife had been having their evening meal, ushered me into a room beyond. I noticed his calm, philosophical face as that of a man who had evidently endured mental strain with stoical fortitude; but his wife, more nervous than he, showed signs of former anxiety. It seemed strange indeed that I should be sitting in company with two members of high Russian society, now ostracized by exile to Siberia, and stranger still to partake of their intelligent conversation on topics of human interest. First of all I was interested to know what sort of restrictions were placed upon the exile's liberty. I found that he was not allowed to leave the district in which he resided, and that every week he had to sign his name in a book kept at the house of the chief "Nachalink." With that exception his life was free. He had money and he could live as he liked and go where he wished within that district, but he was continually watched by spies, who dogged his footsteps wherever he went. I was surprised to find that he, too, had caught the fever of modern commercialism, which is beginning to run throughout Siberia. He related to me how he had acquired gold concessions on the Mongolian frontier and was hoping to find capital to float a syndicate for working them next year. This was not at all my idea of the life of a Siberian exile. Instead of being made to work himself in the galleries of the gold mines till death released him from his chains, the exile now floats syndicates to work these mines.
He spoke little about himself, and I thought it best not to draw him; so we kept to the one topic that was foremost in my mind—namely, Siberia and the Siberians. He told me that he was much impressed with the richness and the possibilities of Siberia; but, with the shrewdness of a cultivated man of the world, he realized that the primitive state of society and the inefficient and centralized bureaucratic administration were influences which precluded a very rapid and sudden development. He complained of the low standard of education in Siberia, which he said was far below the standard of even old Russia as regards the percentage of the population that could read and write. Nor did he hold out hopes of much improvement till a greater outlay of public money for elementary schools is sanctioned by the Imperial Government. But, he continued, difficulties lie in the way. Military railways on the Amur, strengthened fortifications in the Far East, and an immense standing army in Siberia, besides the constant drain of Russian peasant youths, who are being drafted into the army from all parts of the Empire, impose a gigantic and unproductive burden on the community, which it is almost impossible adequately to estimate. The overweighting of the finances of the Empire is crushing out progressive expenditure, and yet this is the policy favoured by those in authority in St Petersburg. Having once created unproductive official posts, the vested interests which become firmly established upon them use all the influence at their command to prevent their removal. Nevertheless, as he pointed out, and as I was bound to admit, Russia is not the only country where progress is arrested by the growth of the unproductive burdens and vested interests which fatten on war and rumours of war. And indeed I had to own that Russia, with her long land frontier and close proximity to the Yellow and Mussulman races of Central Asia, from whom she is divided by radical differences of race and religion, has far more cause for shouldering these burdens to preserve her peculiar nationality than any of the nations in Western Europe, where racial divisions are becoming submerged by the steady growth of international trade and finance.
We then discussed the relations of Siberia to European Russia, and I was interested to find that he agreed with me in comparing them with those of Canada and the United Kingdom. In Siberia, he said, the land is richer and less occupied, and the life is freer and less restricted, so that the Siberians have developed a more independent character and resent being treated like proteges by old-fashioned bureaucrats in St Petersburg. At present Siberia has only eight members in the Duma—far below its proper representation, according to population, as compared with European Russia. In fact Siberia is purposely under-represented, so that she may not become too powerful in the Duma. But it is not merely Russian officialdom, he continued, that Siberia has to contend with. There are great commercial vested interests in old Russia which oppose the growing feeling for Siberian local autonomy. If a Siberian local administration were formed it might carry out many fiscal reforms which would affect the interests of the great manufacturing trusts in Moscow. It might agitate for free ports at the mouth of the Yenisei and Obi and thus let in cheap foreign manufactures, making Siberia a less easy victim of the artificial monoply in cotton goods and small manufactures from European Russia. At present the Siberians are paying enormous prices for inferior manufactures, and have no voice in the Duma, so that special fiscal autonomy for Siberia would be strenuously fought by the great manufacturing interests. These Moscow trusts with millions of capital at their back are powers which the Government of Russia is forced to serve and obey, and so the development of Siberia is retarded by the high prices of the manufactures and machinery which are essential for agricultural and industrial development. But, he added, the subordination of Siberia to the commercial interests of old Russia is having the effect of creating a national feeling, and a desire for local autonomy, with a parliament in Tomsk and the right of fiscal autonomy such as the British self-governing colonies now enjoy. The question of Free Trade and Protection is one which Siberians consider vital for their future development, but they are powerless in face of the great interests of old Russia.
All this struck me as being remarkably analogous to the struggle which is going on in Canada at the present time between the agriculturists of the northwest territories and the manufacturers of the Eastern provinces, by whom the agriculturists are economically dominated and from bondage to whom they are endeavouring to free themselves.
"But how can the Siberians govern themselves as yet?" I asked. "Is not their state of society too primitive to develop a coherent public opinion?" Public opinion is growing, he said, in the towns, and particularly in those of Western Siberia along the railway, but the large bulk of the population are peasants, often isolated in colonies far distant from each other, and this makes the growth of public opinion in Siberia slow. "Am I not right, then," I said, "in assuming that although the Siberian national sentiment, and the demand for local freedom, is becoming more and more pronounced, still the vastness of the country and the isolation of the bulk of its inhabitants, will cause many years to elapse before public spirit and coherent opinion can ever become a real force?" "Yes," he said, "that is true; but come it will, in the inevitable change that comes with everything that is human." And I felt myself that his words will some day come true.
The pleasing conversations which I had with this exile were certainly the most interesting and enlightening that I had while I was in Siberia. Many political exiles are men of the most highly cultivated type. They and their forerunners of previous years have been not so much a disturbing as a progressive element in Siberian social life, introducing, as they do, new ideas from Western Europe and old Russia. They are subject to special laws and are kept administratively apart in a social caste of their own. A traveller is sure to encounter them on his way through Western and Central Siberia. Often drawn from the peasant or the lower urban citizen class, they have been sent out to Siberia for political reasons, and once settled in a Siberian village among the other peasants they take up land and merge in the community. I saw several such exiles in the parts of the Yenisei Government which I visited, and in no case was their social condition inferior to that of their free neighbours around them. In fact more than one declared his intention of remaining in Siberia after the expiration of his sentence. To these people exile opens up a new field for enterprise in a young and fertile country; it has the same effect as it would have upon an Englishman if he were sent to Canada and settled on the Western prairies. But in the principal towns of Siberia one always comes across the other type of political exile, cultivated, academic men who are sent to live in places where there are none around them of the same social or intellectual standing as themselves. A student from a university, or a cultivated Moscow gentleman, is thus made to live in company with Siberian peasants, gold miners and fur traders. To such as these exile is indeed a hardship.
There is certainly no great hardship in banishment to Siberia, but suffering is frequently inflicted in the administration of exile law. The object of that law is to isolate agitators, and to achieve this result the exiles are placed in contact with persons with whom it is difficult and often impossible for them to associate. Of course the whole system, according to our ideas, seems foolish; but the system, originated in order to deal with a dangerous revolutionary movement, sometimes includes persons not wholly connected with this movement. It must be remembered that one cannot treat a young country, just emerging from a primitive state, where new ideas often take a dangerous form, in the same way that one would treat a more developed people. It is on much the same principle that the Government of British India has arrested and deported political agitators who are believed to be dangerous to the existence of its authority in that country. In fact, in all countries which are in an early stage of political development, certain minds become obsessed with revolutionary formulæ and panaceas, which are always pushed to logical and consequently often unwarrantable conclusions. Russia is no exception to this. England had similar experiences in its earlier history ; India seems to have been passing through such a phase lately; in Russia also the existence of this revolutionary element has given an excuse for the reactionaries to use the system of political exile to hamper the actions of their opponents. In Siberia, however, the system defeats its own ends, and is often rather an agent for the spreading of progressive ideas than for the suppression of revolutionary movements. It is therefore not improbable that the system will in time die a natural death.
One evening while we were in Minusinsk a somewhat imposing personage, dressed in an old uniform with medals and other emblems of officialdom, came to our house. We wondered whether we were wanted by the Siberian police, for our visitor was the governor of the local gaol. We discovered, however, that his object, so far from being to arrest us, was to find a purchaser for a certain gold concession, in which he and some other officials in Minusinsk were interested. Not long before an advantageous offer had been made to us by the administrative official for the district, but I confess that I was even more surprised to have the offer of a gold concession from the governor of a prison! We informed the gentleman that this was not the object of our visit to Siberia. We entertained him at tea, and found that he was a pensioned military officer of a genial and pleasant type with the casual manner which characterizes all Russians. He had no objection to conversing with me about the prison which he controlled, and I thereupon took advantage of his communicative nature to obtain some useful information.
"I took the post," he said, "because I wanted a job, but it is a thankless office and unpleasant to be always an agent of punishment. It is not my nature to be thus, but I took the post because when I left the army I had to do something." I asked him if the common gaols in Siberia were overcrowded. "No," he said; "I have 200 at present in Minusinsk and room for 300, but they are continually going and coming."
On further inquiries I ascertained from him that each of the six towns in the Yenisei Government had a town prison, and that there were sixty-seven volost or district prisons in the rural districts. They were entirely kept for the punishment of small offences, which came under the jurisdiction of the "Mirobny Sud," or local stipendiary justices of the peace. Convicts, however, are never sent to these prisons.
I was afterwards able, by studying the statistical publication for the Yenisei Government, to ascertain the number of convictions and imprisonments in certain years and thereby to form some idea of the state of public morality in Central Siberia. I found that in 1909 there were 7896 convictions for indictable offences—i.e. one per cent. of the population. Of these ·3 per cent. were punishable by imprisonment and the rest by fines. The principal offence was theft, which accounted for forty per cent. of the total convictions. Most of the remainder consisted of offences against Government regulations. Threatening and intimidation formed about twelve per cent, of the convictions, and there were 160 convictions for murder (i.e. two per cent, on the whole). The condition of public morality in Central Siberia, therefore, is very much what one would expect in a country inhabited mainly by peaceful peasants ; the inhabitants are no less law-abiding than those of the average European country.
Before he left, the governor asked me if I would like to see the local gaol, and on expressing my desire to do so I was taken, a day or two later, to the "Tyumerny Zamok," a large, one-storeyed building, whitewashed and covered with red sheet-iron and surrounded by a high mud wall. Inside the building were large rooms, like dormitories in a private school, where the prisoners lived and slept, and which they all shared together. Men and women were kept in separate parts of the building, but they frequently saw each other in the course of the day in the large courtyard, where there was an open space for an exercise-ground and for the gymnastics in which the prisoners indulged. Inside the rooms were very clean, and it was almost difficult to believe that you really were in a prison. The place seemed to be pervaded by an air of informality and much resembled an ordinary boarding-house. There were about 200 prisoners in the gaol, and there appeared to be ample room for that number. Unfortunately I had not much time for further conversation with the governor, as he had business elsewhere, but one of his subordinates gave me some idea of the methods which the Russian authorities pursue in dealing with prisoners. The system in Siberia is just the same as that in any other part of the Empire. In the common gaols nothing is provided but bread and tea and a place to sleep in. The prisoners are, however, permitted to work at any useful occupation, but they must work hard if they are to live well. A prisoner who is in gaol for a week or under will not find it worth while to engage in any special work, and will generally prefer the discomfort for a short time. Those, however, who are sentenced for a month or more can get leave to carry on inside the prison any work they may have been doing before they came inside; if they have no occupation, they can undertake work that is specially provided for the prisoners. This consists of certain small trades such as the making of sledges, rough wheelwright work, carpentering and the making of any useful article which can be disposed of in the neighbourhood. The money which the sale of this work brings in is put to the credit of the prisoner's account by the prison officials, and he is enabled to draw up to that amount from the prison shop in order to provide himself with any comforts that he requires.
I found that the earnings of the prisoners in the six urban prisons of the Yenisei Government for 1908 was as follows:—1379 prisoners who were confined for periods of from one week to three months made total earnings of 12,770 roubles (£1419). Thus a prisoner who earns ten roubles (£1, 2s.) in a month can, in the country, where food is cheap and the standard of living low, provide himself without much difficulty with more than the necessaries of life. As far as I could judge, the disadvantages of this system were: first, that those prisoners who had no knowledge of the particular kinds of work adapted to a particular locality would not fare so well as those who had; and, secondly, that the competition of prisoners in a limited labour market has the effect of replacing certain trades by prison industries and thereby tending to lower the standard of living. This latter objection, however, has less weight in the remoter districts of Siberia, where industrialism is scarcely developed as yet, and where certain small trades can very well be left in the hands of local prisoners without any serious interference with the economic life of the community. On the other hand, there are considerable advantages derived from the system. The prisoners' ordinary fare is poor, as it ought to be, and the conditions under which he is compelled to live are worse than that of his home, unless he engages in useful work and thereby earns some money. In this way punishment for the offence is accompanied by an incentive to become a more useful member of society, which is the general principle upon which all prisons ought to be run. It was quite obvious to me that, whatever advantages or disadvantages the system possessed, it had evidently been thought out carefully, and that the system in vogue in European Russia had been transferred with but slight modifications to the eastern parts of the Empire.