Siberia (Price)/Chapter 5

by Morgan Philips Price

CHAPTER V

LIFE IN A SIBERIAN VILLAGE

IT was on an afternoon of an April day, as the last touch of winter was disappearing, that I drove into a small Siberian village, the last outpost of the little Slav colonies which are scattered in every available corner of the Yenisei basin from the great railway southwards to the mountains of Mongolia. The village, about half-a-mile in length, consisted of two long straggling rows of single-storeyed log-houses, built on the open ground, where the birch and pine forest had been cleared. The usual broad space of about eighty yards separated the two rows, and here the passing to and fro of carts for a generation or more had worn deep ruts and hollows in the black earth, which were now filled with stagnant water. A small stream ran across the village, its banks covered with piles of rubbish and manure over which dogs, cows, sheep and other domestic animals roamed aimlessly. This was the village refuse-heap, which had accumulated during the last winter, and portions of which are periodically swept away by the spring floods; for no one here puts any value upon such an article as manure when the land will yield twenty bushels to the acre by the simple process of ploughing and sowing. Even in the straggling street bony specimens of cattle wandered about from one house door to another. The long winter's fast had made them hungry and lean, and they seemed to be begging for food. A rough-looking mongrel elk-hound lay at the door of each courtyard, while the long-legged Siberian pig rooted about in the streets and on the rubbish-heaps.

It was on such a scene as this that I entered after two days of travelling in a tarantass south-eastward from the town of Minusinsk toward the Mongolian frontier. This was the last village on the edge of the great and almost impenetrable forests which lay on the north side of the Sajansk Mountains dividing the Russian from the Chinese empires. "Kooda! Raz Pashol!" My "Yemshchik" cracked his whip, as the troikas of three Siberian ponies galloped furiously into the little village assailed on all sides by barking dogs and stared at by groups of hairy, fur-clad Siberian peasants. There was no hospitable post station at this place, where, by Government orders, a room and samovar of tea and bread must be provided at a special tariff for all travellers. This was far from any post road, and the last post town had been left some forty miles behind. I therefore had to look about and find some well-disposed Siberian peasant in this isolated spot to have compassion on me and take me in.

That morning there had been a service in the church, but all was now quiet. A few of the men were working leisurely in the yards at the back of the house, shifting hay and setting hemp to dry, but no one was working in the field that day, except the common grazier. A regular village institution in Siberia, he had taken the sheep of the village to nibble the dry remains of last year's grass on the steppes, some six or seven versts away. So eighty per cent. of the able-bodied men that afternoon had nothing in particular to do, and were doing it very well. Groups of five or six peasants sat on the benches at the entrance to the yards of their houses, chatting and eating the usual pine and sunflower seeds. As soon as it became known that a foreigner was in the village, glad of an excuse for something to do, the groups began to break up and a small crowd of kind but empty and lazy faces began to collect around me and I heard the following remarks:—"Who is it?" "English engineer!" "Gold seeker!" "Yes, he must be after gold, for the English always know where gold is." "Is there going to be war with China?" asked a youth who had just completed his military service and was hoping to settle down at home again. Not feeling exactly disposed to discuss Russia's foreign relations at that moment, I ignored the question and proceeded to explain that I was the advanced guard of a party of three Englishmen on their way to Mongolia. A considerable crowd had now collected, and it seemed almost hopeless for me to explain what I wanted, especially as they all talked at once in true Eastern style. But a few kindly old peasants quieted the crowd and told them not to press round me; for, they said, "after all, he is our brother." It was not long before these old men grasped the situation; several volunteered to take me in, and after some inspection I fixed on a square log-house in the centre of the village.

Inside, the house consisted of two rooms, one of which was inhabited by a middle-aged couple and the other was kept as a spare room. A rough wooden bedstead stood in one corner and the familiar huge square brick stove, serving both for heating and cooking, took up nearly half the available space in the room. A rough bench and a table completed the furniture, while the household utensils were kept in a small storeroom at the back of the house. The rooms had been whitewashed with scrupulous care for Easter. It is usual to assume in Western Europe that Russian peasants are very dirty and unpleasant to live with. As far as Siberia is concerned, however, especially in the remoter districts, I never have seen cleaner houses or peasants with more self-respect. In fact, the cleanliness and self-respect seemed to increase in direct proportion to the distance from civilization.

I noticed an interesting circumstance connected with the size of the rooms in a Siberian peasant's house. If the head of the family originally built a large living-room, with a view to retaining his children when they grew up, the younger generation would continue to live together with the older, marry, and raise up a third generation all under one roof. If, on the other hand, the paterfamilias was unable or unwilling to build more than a small living-room, the younger generation would go off, marry and make another home for themselves. One sees both kinds of household in a Siberian village. In each case the power of the family to provide for its needs is approximately the same, for, whether the family remains together or is dispersed, each one, when grown up, is entitled to take up a certain proportion of land from the commune.

 

There is little pretence of decoration in the house of a Siberian peasant, and the only attempt in this

SIBERIAN VILLAGE YOUTHS

TWO GENERATIONS OF PEASANTS LIVING UNDER ONE ROOF

direction consists in keeping during the summer a few pots of flowers in the windows. In this manner the peasants show a certain appreciation of surrounding nature, which is after all the forerunner of art. But beyond that the Siberian peasant's artistic taste is poor. There is, of course, in every room the usual icon, which is a brass picture of saints, often coloured very crudely, decorated with artificial paper flowers, and covered with the grease of old candles, which have dripped on to it from time to time. Then a few crudely coloured pictures, such as you find in the house of every peasant throughout the world, are used to adorn the walls. They depict the comedies and tragedies of life in little homely tales or fairy stories. One sees in a peasant's living-room a series of pictures representing the life of the child until he becomes a man, supporting his parents, raising his family, and finally sinking to old age; a fight in the Russo-Japanese War was often a favourite theme; an exciting hunt after wild animals or a shipwreck at sea; religious history and events in the lives of certain saints; pictures of heaven and the other place, according to the untutored hopes and fears of these children of nature. In fact, these represented the short but simple annals of the poor; and they are much the same among the peasants of every land, whether they be in Siberia, French Canada, Spain, Finland or rural England. The mind of the poor gravitates naturally toward the tragedies of life. The climax of the urban type might perhaps be found among the inhabitants of an East-End London slum. But the ideal of the peasant is more peaceful. His life is quiet and his mind less harassed, and so he balances more evenly the comedy and tragedy of everyday life. The Siberian peasant's little picture-gallery on the walls of his log house betokened to me a quiet and contented conception of the world in which he lived.

When I had got settled, I went out into the village street and wandered about. There was evidently something going on that evening, for small groups of peasant girls of all ages could be seen sitting or standing in front of some of the houses singing little catches of songs, the words of which I could not comprehend. Every now and then they were joined by a few more, and before long they became the nucleus of a small crowd. They were singing little ditties evidently well known to them; one of their number began the first words of each verse, and the rest followed in two distinct harmonies. I was surprised to find that these simple peasants should have developed, quite naturally and without training, the capacity for singing their native songs in harmony, and I doubt very much if in any southern English village a similar phenomenon could be observed. Indeed the harmony was remarkably good, although the voices often tended to be harsh. The tunes also were pleasing to the ear. Their little wandering motifs in the major key denoted peaceful and contented minds, and were the reflections of the life and existence of those who rendered them. This was the evening of one of the many religious holidays which abound throughout the Russian Empire. The adult peasants, typical representatives of a northern race, were celebrating the holiday by sitting on their doorsteps and eating nuts, while some of them were getting drunk. But the younger generation were doing what I had not seen before, they were celebrating the occasion by little impromptu concerts and by vigorous recreation.

Large crowds of youths and girls now collected and walked about aimlessly. Then all at once they broke off into separate groups. The older youths began tracing out circles in the middle of the street, and started to play a game which very much resembled English rounders. As I stood watching I was asked by a peasant youth to come and join them. I did so, and created great merriment whenever I clumsily missed the ball with the wooden stick. Some of the girls also, fine and healthy creatures and almost as strong as some of the youths, joined in the games. Others walked round and round in circles singing in harmony little verses from folk-songs. Then one of the girls was put into the middle of the ring; they all closed upon her and a tussle ensued as she tried to escape from the ring as soon as possible. It was a rather rough game, as I found when I subsequently played it with them; and when I was put in the middle I certainly did not relish the position. If Siberian girls play the same sort of rough games that are played by Lancashire collier youths, one can imagine what sort of games the Siberian boys play.

Some of the girls now formed into two rows, hand in hand, facing each other, and each side sang a line from some well-known folk-song. One of these songs I managed to understand, and found it related a story (common to the people of all countries) about two lovers and an angry parent. When they came to some little dramatic incident in the narrative, one of their number would step forward and act the little scene, and when it was finished would retire into the line amidst the cheers of the little village audience.

What struck me most in the social gathering that I have just described was the public spirit of the village community. It was a gathering not of different families but of a whole village, combined as one family, a gathering in which the individuality of each family was submerged. It was a distinctly different type of crowd to what one sees at a fair or flower-show in an English village. No family groups stood aloof, and no pairs of youths and girls went arm in arm apart. The whole village seemed to be living together a life of social intercourse, the like of which I had never quite seen before. It was a condition of society very favourable to the growth of a public opinion, as I show later in dealing with village institutions.

Not long after sundown the youths and girls had all returned to their houses, and quiet reigned in the village. I sat outside the house where I was staying and chatted to some friendly old peasants, who were most inquisitive to know all about me, while I in return tried to get all information I could from them about the country that lay beyond the frontier. "Ah!" they said, "it is a wild country. There is no bread there and only one place, at the house of a certain fur trader, where there is a chance of getting any vodka." "Why!" they added, "bread there costs 2 roubles 50 kopeks sometimes. But there is plenty of gold in the rivers, and some of our brothers have obtained rights to work on some of them, and we will sell you some of these rights." Thereupon a youth pulls out of his pocket a pebble, stained yellow with iron, and exhibits it, fully confident that it is worth 1000 roubles.

TYPICAL SIBERIAN PEASANT WOMEN

It is interesting to note what passes through the peasant's mind when he is asked to describe the wild country beyond his frontier. He always thinks of it in terms of bread and vodka. His estimation of the country is in inverse ratio to the prices of bread there, and in direct ratio to its facilities for obtaining vodka! The gold attraction plays a certain but, I think, a secondary part in his estimation. In fact, he is like a child who thinks of his immediate bodily comforts before all else. At the time I almost relished the idea of rough fare, without bread and vodka, but had I been six months older I should probably have thought more wisely, and my ardour for wandering in trackless forests on the off-chance of seeing primitive Finnish tribes would have been severely cooled.

I then asked the old men what they thought of the native Finns and Mongols across the frontier. "Oh! neechevo, all right, they can live on very little food, but they have good skins and wool to sell." "How do you get on with the Chinese over there?" "We don't see much of them, but we hear they will be coming there in large numbers before long to overrun our country and our land." And then I was asked again if I knew when there would be war between Russia and China. I replied that I thought their fears were quite unfounded, and that the quiet Chinaman was rather afraid of being disturbed by Muscovite bayonets than thinking of disturbing his neighbours. Then a middle-aged peasant told me that he had been out in the Russo-Japanese War in Manchuria, and had seen the yellow people. He was much afraid of them, he said, and hoped they would not attack Russia again. "We do not want to hurt other people. We want to stay at home and live with our wives and cultivate our lands."

The distorted ideas about the yellow races in the minds of these peasants interested me not a little. It is clear that there would have been no Russo-Japanese War if the Siberians could have spoken in the matter, and indeed it was obvious that they had been kept in ignorance the whole time of what they were fighting about. Beneath all there was a vague feeling of fear of the yellow races, such as the Japanese and Chinese, which they never seem to bear towards the Finns and Tartars; but being true Russian peasants their first desire was for peace and good- will with their neighbours. I then questioned my companions as to what were their occupations during the year. They replied that for most of the year they were engaged in "growing bread for themselves and their families," which occupied them in the spring and autumn. In the winter they said they went into the forest to cut what timber they wanted, and remained there for a few weeks, returning to spend most of the winter at home in idleness. A few of them went off for expeditions each year into the forest, and remained away for months at a time. During the summer these more enterprising peasants spent their time in fishing on the rivers and lakes in the wild country along the frontier, salting their catch and bringing it home in the autumn. Some of them spent the summer seeking for gold, which they wash from the gravel in the upper reaches of these rivers, while others who are skilled in the chase go after the furs during the autumn, or find the encampments of the Finnish tribes, where they barter tea for fur and sable. Some of them, they told me, actually make houses in these wild places and live there all the year round, coming back to see their friends and relations in the villages occasionally.

I then questioned them as to their past history and who their fathers were, but, as I expected to find, they had no ideas on this point. The village, they said, was eighty years old, and their fathers had come there from some of the neighbouring villages on the steppes. They had trekked toward the forests and made their colony on its edge. Their fathers and grandfathers had lived in those villages before them, and as far as they knew they were Siberians, who had always lived in Siberia. "Then you know nothing of European Russia?" I said. "Most of us have never even been to Krasnoyarsk or seen the Siberian railway," they replied. Here I was, then, among the true Siberians who knew nothing of old Russia, to whom "The Great White Tsar" is a mere name, and whose life is spent among the woodland glades and dark forests of the remoter parts of the Siberian provinces. We kept up our conversation till late in the evening, when I retired to the house of the peasant whose hospitality I was enjoying.

During my stay in this frontier village I made the acquaintance of many other village characters, for although the individual peculiarities of humanity are not perhaps so much developed in a Siberian as in an English village, they nevertheless do exist, as doubtless they do in every rural community throughout the world.

One evening I was sitting on a bench outside a peasant's house, talking with some of the peasants, when I discovered that one of their number, a youth dressed a little better than they were, was none other than the village schoolmaster. Surprised to find that there was even a pretence of education in this remote place, and knowing, as I did, the indispensable services which a village schoolmaster renders in an English village, I straightway hastened to find out all I could from him concerning his functions and his view of life in general. I found that he had studied at a middle school or gymnasium, but not having had facilities for going to the only university in Siberia, that at Tomsk, he was compelled to seek a living by becoming a village schoolmaster in this remote comer of civilization. His only task consisted of teaching or trying to teach thirty children, in a village of over 1000 inhabitants, how to read and write the elements of their mother tongue. He admitted that the task was not difficult in itself, but it was one for which he had never had a training, nor had he even learned himself the rudiments of the art of teaching. He gave me the number of the peasants in that village who to his knowledge were able to read and write, and they proved to be but two per cent. of the total population. Complete apathy towards education, he said, existed among these peasants, and when they know their children can write the alphabet and read a few sentences they take them away from school, in order that they may help them in their daily work upon the land. "No education is compulsory," he said, "and there is, after all, no real reason why the children should learn even what they do, because they forget it all, nor do they ever use it again in later life." And then an old peasant sitting next to me said, "Why should we trouble about our children's education? They will not go to the towns, and if they do they will become bad. We want them to remain here and help us with our work upon the land." Just so might a small English farmer have spoken about modern "schooling." It seems that education in its early stages must always be hindered by the apathy of all those who estimate the value of human life by mere animal strength, and regard it as a machine to be worked for material ends only. But there was something very natural about these peasants who could not see the use of education. Why should they? Their visions are limited by the life of isolation that they lead, and it was to me a cause for wonder that they had even heard of the word "education," or knew its meaning. The schoolmaster went on to say that there was a question of making education compulsory throughout the Russian Empire. " But," he added, "how is it ever possible to set up a compulsory system of education throughout a vast country like Siberia? It is difficult enough for the Government to administer the country as it is, to collect the taxes and perform the most general functions of government, but it will be a great work to introduce a system of compulsory education like that of Western Europe, and it cannot come for many years."

Later on the schoolmaster took me to see the little school. It was a low log-hut, with rude wooden forms. It had been built, he said, by the commune, the latter providing the books, and the only contribution from the State was a small salary to himself of 100 roubles, or £10 a year, which just enabled him to live in the village on the same level as the peasants themselves. Everything was of the roughest and most rudimentary kind. It was almost pathetic to see the crude efforts at rudimentary education made by these peasants in order to enlighten a few of their children.

One evening I found myself in conversation with another village character. He was the priest's assistant and choir trainer. At his request we took a little walk together to the outskirts of the village, and for some minutes as we walked along he remained silent as if pondering over something in his mind. Suddenly he turned to me and proceeded to ply me with one question after another about the country from which I came. "What political parties are there in England?" he asked. "Is there a Revolutionary party?" To this I replied by asking what he meant by a Revolutionary party, and I was informed that it meant an organization for the destruction of ministers and governments. I tried to explain that such a policy had not yet appeared in England, and proceeded to ask what good he thought such an organization would do. A blank stare came in his face; an expression which asked, "How could anyone with any education or culture doubt that an organization for destroying governments was necessary for the welfare of the State." What he proposed to put in its place appeared in his mind to be quite a secondary matter, which he refused even to discuss when I broached the matter to him. "An organization," he added, "is necessary to make the ministers of the Tsar go——!" and then with a gesture he imitated the explosion of a bomb. I realised then that I was in the presence of a member of the Socialist Revolution Society, and possibly of a former active member of that body for whom the authorities had prescribed a little pure country air in a remote frontier village of Siberia, as being more beneficial to mental health than an explosive factory in a back street in Warsaw. So here he was now, in this remote district, assisting the village priest in chanting and incense-burning on Sundays, and ruminating over projected assassination of ministers on weekdays. After studying the phenomenon of this mental disease, and deciding that it was a deformity which I could not comprehend, I took leave of this gentleman, and decided that it would probably not be wise to be seen in his company more than was necessary. The day after this incident happened to be Sunday, and early in the morning groups of peasant youths in bright red and blue tunics sauntered casually down the main streets of the village, while one of their number played Russian peasant airs upon the accordion. I somehow felt much safer in company with these innocent peasant youths, who, although strong, hardy and independent, would not hurt anyone unnecessarily, than I did in company with an assistant acolyte who was an exiled member of a socialist revolutionary society.

On that Sunday morning the bells of the little wooden church began tinkling and booming as they always do in Russia, and a crowd of peasants thereupon collected for the morning service. Eager to catch a glimpse of the religious life of this little community, I joined in the crowd and pushed my way to the little church. One or two of the peasants whom I knew recognized me and gave me a friendly wink, but otherwise I passed unheeded as one of them. The church was like any other of the Pravo-Slavonic faith, with a raised altar studded with brass icons and a simple nave without seats where the congregation stood. A middle-aged priest, with long flowing hair, large eyes and the restless absent look of the dreamy mystic, sang in clear tenor voice the Pravo-Slavonic chants. AU the while he waved incense jars, and opened and closed the doors behind the altar, giving fitful glimpses of the little chapel beyond. From a group of boys standing by the side of the altar came the responses to the chanting of the priest in rustic harmony, and at each response the standing congregation devoutly crossed themselves. Although there was no particular position assigned to the members of the congregation, it was noticeable that the youths, girls, and older members with children, stood in three groups apart. This I believe is generally the case in other parts of the Russian Empire, especially among the Armenians. The grouping of the congregation according to age and sex appears to be independent of family ties. In fact, in public worship, as in Siberian social life in general, the idea of the community prevails over that of the family. As usual the women were far more strongly represented among the congregation than the men; the latter prefer to rest in their houses after their work in the forests and the fields. To the women, however, a church service comes as a break in the monotony of their lives, when they can see brilliant icons and hear the chanting of the priest and choir.

After service I met the priest, and he showed me with great pride his icons and so-called sacred relics, which looked as if they had been recently ordered from Moscow. He then took me to his house, which was certainly the finest in the whole village. He had

SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN THE VILLAGE OF KUSHABAR. ON THE
RIGHT IS THE HOUSE WHERE THE AUTHOR RESIDED FOR THREE
WEEKS

 

THE VILLAGE STREET OF KUSHABAR, THE LAST RUSSIAN PEASANT
OUTPOST, ON THE NORTH SIDE OF THE MONGOLIAN FRONTIER IN
THE UPPER YENISEI

three splendid rooms, with much the same sort of comforts as I had seen last in the Siberian towns along the railway. There was even a gramophone! A gramophone at the last Siberian outpost village on the Mongolian frontier was certainly a surprise to me, and while we drank tea and ate bread the instrument performed. My host, the priest, was far more interested in his gramophone than he seemed to be in his spiritual flock, and when I referred to them a blank look came over his face. It was as if he wished to say, "I have performed my duty in the church this morning by saying prayers and burning incense; what further interests are the peasants to me, when I have a samovar of tea and a gramophone?" I wanted to find out how much interest he took in the people's education, but I found that he was quite indifferent, nor did he take any part in the elementary teaching that existed in the village. I managed, however, to extract from him the confession that education was perhaps not a bad thing, only it was not his sphere, and consequently he did not bother about it. As a matter of fact, in many places in Siberia the Church has played no inconsiderable part in elementary education, although now its activities are being generally surpassed by those of the State. In this village the school belonged partly to the commune and partly to the State, and so the priest had nothing to do with the teaching, and was apparently only too glad to be rid of the trouble of it. The village priest as I saw him in Siberia, and again later in other parts of the empire, is always the jovial monk, contented with his lot. And he may well be, for he lives in a house built for him by the peasants; he receives, even in the smaller villages, a salary equivalent to about forty pounds a year from the diocesan funds, which are under the administration of the Holy Synod; and besides this, he is continually receiving marriage, birth and funeral fees, and on every religious holiday contributions of food and money from the peasants. The village priest does next to nothing, and is perhaps the best paid man in the whole village. Nor does he seem to enter much into the lives of the peasants or help them in illness or distress. At the same time, men like these independent peasants in a communal state do not seem to stand in much need of priestly parental care on the social side. The commercial element is strong in the religion of a Siberian village. So long as the priest discharges his priestly functions the people are satisfied, while the priest is not disposed to do more than the work for which he is paid. The essentially material way in which they look upon each other's functions is rather characteristic of Russian society, and also, I think, of other Eastern countries.

I remember one evening sitting with some peasants outside their house, in company also with our Caucasian servant. The latter was in a facetious mood, and as the conversation turned on the subject of priests he said, "What do they care about you peasants, and your wants? All they care about is singing prayers which neither you nor they understand. The chief chant they sing is: 'Give us more money.'" There was a general titter all round among the Siberians at the southerner's caustic joke, and it was very evident that they all agreed more or less with his remarks.

Even as far away, therefore, as in the remote corners of Siberia the seeds of the emancipation of the peasantry from the priests have been sown. The peasants are beginning to ask themselves why large sums should be given to village priests. But, in spite of its faults, this much one must say for the Greek Church in Russia. Unlike the Roman Church, it is not the determined foe of "Modernism," nor does it enforce the maxim that "ignorance is the mother of devotion." It is true that it does little to help education, except in the most elementary way; but generally speaking it is indifferent, not hostile, to educational progress. It clings pertinaciously to the past, and keeps a firm grip on its revenues. An instance came to my notice in Siberia of a woman who changed over to the Roman Church on marriage, and had to pay to her former village priest the capitalized sum of her annual value to him! Russia in the future will probably see emancipation from the economic rather than from the spiritual thraldom of the Greek Church.

While I remained here I tried to discover all that I could about the social systems under which these peasants lived, and about their habits and customs. I went with them in the forests, I talked to them at the plough, and joined the children at their games in the little village street. More than once I went on little shooting trips for the day with Siberian youths who knew the woodlands, or roamed on foot over the grassy meadows, dotted with little groves of birch, along the edge of the great pine forest. We roamed among majestic giants of Scotch pine, through which one could walk for a whole day and imagine oneself in some great hall supported by noble pillars. There was a vast expanse of this beautiful forest lying between the agricultural zone of the steppes and the dense conifer jungle which lay along the Mongolian frontier. This zone of pine forest stretched in endless undulations of forested hill and vale for hundreds of miles, from the Altai Mountains to Lake Baikal. Here and there we came across open glades where the forest had been cleared by man or by a natural fire, while in the valley bottoms torrential streams bounded away to the great rivers which swept in a mighty flood from the frontier mountains north-westward to join the Yenisei. By the sides of these streams were little marshes studded with alder and willow copse, just as in rural England, but here it was all wild, without a sign of any human being except an occasional fur hunter's winter trail. Large flocks of duck and teal rise as one approaches the marshes, and in half-an-hour one can shoot enough to satisfy the demands of the larder and even one's love of sport, for the latter becomes quickly satisfied when there is superfluity of game. The peasants who came with me were true children of the forests. They knew the woodland tracks, the fords across the streams, the feeding places of the duck; they could recognise the call of the great black woodpecker, they knew the habits of the wood-mice, the haunts of the bear, the shoals where the fish abounded, and they could fell the largest pine or carve a dug-out boat from a poplar log.

 

It is worth some little digression to describe the Siberian spring, as indeed it is worth a journey of many thousands of miles to experience it, for there is no period of the year at which Southern Siberia is more beautiful. The snow was just melting when I made my first acquaintance with the pine forests. After it had gone I roamed one morning into the forest with a Siberian peasant as a companion. The rivers, filled with snow-water, had risen to the height of spring flood, covering the low marshes and swamping the grassy meadows. After a little while we came across an open grassy glade, where we found a little hut. Here an old Siberian peasant kept his bees, coming occasionally to visit his hives, which were cut out of hollow pine logs and picturesquely thatched with dry grass. What a romantic spot! In the pine forest, where the snow had just melted, the grass was beginning to shoot up, growing with those spearlike apexes which betoken rapid growth; and the music of many wings indicated the activity of the bees, collecting honey from the thousands of spring flowers that were bursting forth. The growth of the vegetation is indescribable. No sooner had the snow gone than millions of grasses, forget-me-nots, orange trollius, anemones, peonies and wild onions had shot up, and were forming an emerald carpet inwrought with the choicest colours of the forest. I had visited this glade in the pine forest a week before, when the snow was lying, and now I found myself wading two feet deep in herbage such as I have just described. All round me I heard the echoes of spring. I heard the call of the cuckoo ringing in the forest, the cry of the great black woodpecker, the chatter of the finches and the crossbills in the pine-trees overhead. A brilliant sun, a gentle breeze, and the fragrance of growing grass combined to perfect the picture. Beyond the pine forest there was a zone of aspen poplar, in the cool shade of which I often wandered. Nature here was not bursting with life, but its beauty of another kind was indescribable. For hours one could pass by the stems of the aspen poplar, like silvery pillars supporting overhead an emerald canopy of foliage, which rustled and quivered in the wind. Beneath my feet lay an endless carpet of anenome and peony, and as evening came on the slanting rays of the sun pierced sideways through the forest, and as they fell they lit up the silvery trunks with a splendour that was almost dazzling. Here and there in the poplar forest I came across open patches where the wild bird-cherry and spirea bushes were blossoming in profusion, making a natural shrubbery such as might surround a country mansion in England. Yet everything was wild; no sign of a human being all day long, and only the blackbird warbled in the cherry-trees and the great black woodpecker chattered from a dead poplar stump. Never before have I seen anything like the beauties of a Siberian spring. The sight of forested hill and vale stretching as far as the eye could see, throbbing with plant and animal life, in an atmosphere as clear as crystal, filled me with a new sensation and made here existence a deep and subtle joy. I felt that if the ideal in the next world is that of a boundless field of joyous, throbbing life, then the Siberian forest in spring more nearly approaches it than anything I have ever yet seen upon this earth.

One afternoon I wandered out from the village in another direction. I set my face away from the forest, directing my steps aimlessly towards the north, where I knew the peasants had their cultivated lands. As the villages in those districts were situated at the edge of the great forest, the cultivated lands all lay in a long belt, fringing the forest. Here the

FORESTED HILL AND VALE

 

ZONE OF ASPEN POPLAR ON THE NORTH SIDE
OF THE SAJANSK MOUNTAINS IN THE UPPER
YENISEI PLATEAU

land undulates in graceful sweeps as on the steppes, but is covered with fine black mould of unsurpassed richness. Patches of half-dry swamps with tufts of marshy grass lie in the hollows; groves of graceful Siberian birch, interspersed with an occasional pine, are scattered in profusion over the natural meadows. It looked as if the pine forest had once held undisputed sway here, but that the hand of man, and possibly the increasing dryness of the climate or other agents of nature, had caused the timber army to retreat. But even now, where cultivation was neglected, little birch and pine trees appeared again, fighting as it were to reclaim the ground that they had lost.

Here, again, the natural meadows were all bursting with spring, the emerald-green of the vegetation surpassing even the verdure of Ireland. Birch-trees which a few days ago, like cold and melancholy ghosts, stood waving and sighing at the last touch of winter, had in a single night become covered with brilliant foliage, and now, like forest fairies, were waving and dancing at the approach of their spring lover.

 

Turning my steps toward the cultivated lands, I found here and there upon the natural meadows strips of rough plough, where the peasants had been scratching the surface for their spring corn. I now came across one or two log-huts where the peasants were storing their implements, and where they sometimes sheltered for the night instead of going home. A man's plot of land is often three or four miles from the village, and so it becomes quite an expedition when he goes forth for the day to attend to its cultivation. But the Siberian peasant is too well off to take life other than leisurely. He starts for his field in the early morning, driving his cart with two or three horses. He scratches his ground lazily all day, and if the weather is fine during spring sowing and autumn reaping he rests for the night in his little hut. But at other times of the year he leaves his land severely alone. No hoeing or weeding is done, and during the summer no one looks at or tends his patches of wheat or rye, for often he goes fishing or seeking for gold in the wild country along the frontier.

Now I came to an open forest glade surrounded by graceful birch and a few sombre pines. Everything here was wild and primitive, and nature was bursting through from underneath the superficial work of man. Down the glade might be seen little copses of willow and wild cherry, while in a marsh beyond stood a heron, statue-like, watching the fish in the stagnant pools. Nature was undergoing her first discipline. An old Siberian peasant was leisurely ploughing the rich black soil with the aid of a horse and an old-fashioned wooden plough. The worker did not seem surprised when I appeared from out of the forest glade and approached him. One would have thought that the apparition of a stranger clothed in a rough gaberdine, with a grisly beard on his chin and a knowledge of a Russian language which obviously betokened another nationality, would have disturbed his labours in this secluded forest glade. Perhaps he thought I was a Tartar or one of the nomad Finnish tribes which roamed the forest. "Your land is rich and gives much bread?" I asked. "Neechevo," was the reply, which is the usual blank expression signifying neither approval or disapproval. "Is this your land?"

READY FOR THE PLOUGH

FERTILE BLACK-EARTH AT THE EDGE OF THE GREAT FOREST BELT IN THE UPPER
YENISEI

 

THE GROWTH OF ONE WEEK

A GLADE IN THE SIBERIAN FORESTS COVERED IN SPRING WITH FORGET-ME-NOT,
PEONY, TROLLIUS, AND WILD ONION

"I and my brothers have it together," he answered. "And how many pounds of corn can you grow here?" He stopped and lit his pipe. "This land is new," he said, "and sometimes gives 200 pounds on the desyatin, but we have some old land over there and that only gives 100 pounds; if the frost comes in the autumn it gives less. That old land has given us our bread for many summers past. It must have rest now. So I work on this land, which has not been touched before and is still young." "Do you ever use the manure of your horses or cattle?" I asked. "Not needed," he said. "We throw that outside the village, and the snow-water in spring carries it away. We have no trouble except the autumn frost, which often kills our wheat and makes our rye give less, and how can manure help us?"

This was a homely lesson in agriculture, which I had not thought of in quite the same light before. After all, there was sense in what the old man said. The boundless extent of virgin soil on the edge of this forest zone is such that he need not worry about those rules of husbandry which we consider indispensable in Western Europe. These peasants, therefore, treat their land superficially, and when one plot is exhausted move to another.

I could not help thinking how much better off these peasants were than their kinsmen in European Russia. There the land is limited and the population large, but here a little colony of Siberian peasants have a tract of land nearly as big as an English county, most of which could be roughly cultivated if the forest and scrub were cleared.

The old man now stopped his horse, and we sat down to smoke our pipes on the edge of a little willow copse. "And you," he said, "from whence are you?" "I come from Europe and am going to Mongolia," I replied. And then came a remarkable question. "Where is Europe?" I then discovered that his knowledge of geography did not extend beyond the southern parts of the Yenisei Government of Siberia. It sounds almost incredible, but is nevertheless true, that I, a foreigner, sat for some minutes with this old Siberian peasant, explaining to him that there was such a place as old Russia which along with other countries was called Europe. I found that he had vaguely heard of England, Germany and France, but they meant nothing to him. He had heard of the growing power of Japan, and was obsessed by a vague fear of the Chinese peril. This was the boundary of his political horizon, but how could it be otherwise in this vast country, in a corner of which he had lived for all his life. Then he plied me with many questions about Europe. "What sort of land is it there, and how much bread does it grow?" In reply to these puzzling questions I made a few hopeless attempts to enlighten him, and then proceeded to try and find out more about him and the system under which he lived. "Yes," he said, "I and my brothers work this land together, and divide the bread amongst ourselves." "But do you all do like that?" I asked. "Many of our comrades have their own plots for themselves, but my brothers and I keep this land together as we did when we were children. And we have not changed since then." "And what do your sons do?" I asked. "They have gone away. One is serving as a soldier and the other has got his portion of fifteen desyatines, which he claimed from the commune five years ago, and has now built his own house."

The evening was now coming on, and the old man and I began to think of making for home. The plough was thereupon left, and the horse was tied to the rough cart. "Ride home with me," he said, "for the way is long and darkness is coming." Soon another party of peasants who had been ploughing some land beyond joined in. And so a party of five peasants and myself squatted on a rough open cart and jogged steadily in the darkness back to the little village. As we went I asked them more about the system under which they held their land. "The land," they said, "is common [obshchee]; we all have a right to our part of it." "To whom do you pay your taxes?" I asked. "To the 'Obshchestvo,'" they replied, and by this I knew they meant the village commune. "We are the commune," they continued, "and we can divide up the land as we wish when we have paid our taxes to the 'Nachalnick.' In some districts they distribute the land so that each man gets a fresh piece every few years." "Have you had your portion of land for long?" I asked. "Fifteen years ago we divided the land, and I and my brothers have kept our land since then." "Will the land be redistributed again throughout the village?" "How am I to tell you?" he said; "we have much land and many of our brothers wish to keep it for themselves, for they have worked on it for many years. But for me, 'Vsyo ravno' [it is all the same]; I do not mind." This puzzled me not a little, but I learned more the next day, when I had the good fortune to converse with some other members of the commune.

Next day I happened to stroll past a little wooden house in the middle of the street, over the door of which was written the words "Selsky Upravlenye." As I happened to know one of the peasants who was sitting on the doorstep outside, I stopped and began to chat with him. I soon discovered that this little house was the meeting-place of the "Mir," or commune. When I heard that there was at that moment a meeting of the commune, I readily accepted an invitation to go inside and hear what was going on. On a row of wooden benches round the three sides of the room sat some two dozen hairy and venerable peasants. At a writing-desk in the middle of the room sat a youth, to whom I was introduced as the "pizar," or secretary. He was an academic person, with considerable ideas of his self-importance, and at his side sat a member with the weight of some threescore years upon his head. He was the "staresta," or chief elder of the village. A sort of select committee of the commune was sitting to consider the question of some taxes which had been claimed by the Krestyansky Nachalnick, or official in charge of peasant affairs, for certain lands recently reclaimed from the forest. I suggested to the staresta that I might be intruding on their private business, but was reassured and offered a seat behind him, where, like a foreign representative in the strangers' gallery, I listened to this little village parliament.

The conduct of the business seemed rather informal, and more like a friendly chat on a topic of common interest. But sometimes a speaker poured forth his views at length with gesture and no small volubility, reached his rhetorical climax, and ended with a little peroration. They were true Slavs, and even the severity of the Siberian climate did not freeze the stream of eloquence or chill the power of rhetoric which always seems to characterize the Russians.

Here then were the Hampdens of this remote Siberian village, sitting in conclave to withstand the little tyrants of their fields. And as I listened I wondered whether here in this village parliament there might not be some mute inglorious Milton, or a Cromwell eager to sweep away abuses. But for the fact that they were buried in the recesses of this remote spot, why should not some of them rise to fame and have a share of the pomp and glory of the world?

 

"Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destinies obscure,
Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor."

 

After talking for some ten minutes they agreed that one of their number should meet the peasant official to settle the claims of taxation, but I noticed that no vote was taken, and the opinion of the meeting was arrived at by mutual agreement. I then discovered that the next subject on the agenda appeared to be myself, and I was forthwith plied by the assembled company with all sorts of questions about myself and the land from whence I came, questions similar to those which the old ploughman had asked me the day before. These I answered to the best of my humble ability, but everywhere it was clear that the outlook of these peasants could not extend beyond this corner of the great Slavonic Empire in Northern Asia. I then tried to find out something from them about their village gatherings and the nature of their commune. "We elect our staresta every three years," said the pizar. "Every man in the village who has a house and who pays taxes for his land can choose him." "How do you elect him?" I asked. "We all assemble and we talk about it till we decide who is to be elected," was the reply. "But don't you have many candidates?" I said. Here the staresta interposed with a statement to the effect that no one of the peasants was anxious to hold his office. It was clear, then, that there was no hotly contested election with opposing candidates, no rival policies, and no vigorous campaigns in Siberian village politics. In fact the office of staresta seemed not unlike that of a president of a large and unwieldy committee, bringing with it a maximum of responsibility and a minimum of honour, and the procedure of electing this president evidently consists of inducing an unwilling peasant to accept the mantle of his predecessor. "What does the staresta do?" I asked. "He has to speak for us with the Krestyansky Nachalnick, and if necessary to interview the Uyesdy Nachalnick at Minusinsk, who is over all. And then he meets the starestas of every commune in this volost, and with them he discusses matters of common interest." "What is a volost?" I asked. "The volost is a collection of communes in a certain district, and a collection of volosts in their turn compose what is called an Uchastok, or administrative division." And then they showed me a published list, issued by the Government, of all the divisions, volosts and communes, with full details of their population and geographical position, throughout the length and breadth of the Yenisei Government. This marvellous publication I subsequently obtained, and found of much interest as demonstrating the extraordinary administrative system of the Russian Government, which succeeds in penetrating even to the wildest spots of Siberia. The villages are thus kept together in small geographical divisions, which are utilized by the Government for administrative purposes. Over each Uchastok, the Uyesdy Nachalnick appoints a Stanovy Preestof, who is a police official in charge of civil law and order; a Krestyansky Nachalnick, who collects the taxes; and a Mirobny Sud, or justice of the peace, whose duty it is to hear all judicial cases which the peasants cannot settle among themselves. This, briefly, is the administrative machinery which seemed to be at work in this part of Siberia.

From the above conversation I gained the knowledge that the staresta is the delegate of the commune to represent them before these officials. Moreover he pays the communal taxes for the peasants in their names, and generally presides over the meetings of the commune. Thus the commune or the majority of the male peasants in the village have a very democratic power, based on household suffrage, and the staresta is really more of a delegate than a representative.

I was anxious to find out from them how the administrative machinery was applied to the native Finnish and Tartar tribes, and I asked them whether the Abakansk Tartars, whom I knew to be not distant neighbours of theirs, were divided into communes, volosts and Uchastoks. They told me that the Abakansk Tartars also elected a staresta, or elder, and divided themselves into large communes which were separated out over the steppe, each commune, however, being brought in along with other Russian communes under the volost, and these in turn under the Uchastok. Furthermore, the Tartar starestas meet the Russian starestas on the Volost Council on a footing of perfect equality and discuss matters of common interest, and probably help each other against the officials over them. In fact, as I heard, and as subsequent investigations proved, the native Tartar and Finnish tribes are regarded by the Russian administration as native communes ranking alongside those of the Russian peasants.

The powers of the commune seemed to be very extensive. The heads of each family in the village are collected in the commune with full power to deal with all purely communal affairs, both judicial and economic. "If a man does something wrong," I asked, "can the commune give punishment?" "For serious criminal cases, such as murder," they said, "we must refer to the Mironby Sud, which exists in each volost; but we have very few such cases, for our brothers are peaceable [smierny]." For small disputes the commune meets, discusses the offence and can give punishment. Thus if a man has a dispute with a neighbour over a boundary, if he is drunk in church, quarrels or fights, the commune can give justice. "How much can they punish a man?" "That is not certain, for we sometimes make offenders pay in money and sometimes in vodka. Then the offender must give the oldest members of the commune each a bottle of vodka at his expense." This struck me as a practical if somewhat crude way of dispensing justice.

"How do you give out the land to your brothers," I asked? "Each man," said the pizar, "is entitled to have fifteen desyatines [40 acres], and another eight desyatines for each adult son living at home with him. He can take more if he wishes, but for this he pays at a higher rate." For his fifteen desyatines he pays a rent to the commune and the commune pays the Krestyansky Nachalnick. Besides this, the peasant pays a small house tax, a barn tax and a tax on the head of his live stock. Thus the economic functions of the Mir, besides the collection of taxes assessed by the Government officials, lie in the allocation and control of the agricultural land.

"I have heard," I said, "that you sometimes redistribute your land, dividing it up so that each peasant changes his plot. Is this so?" Some years ago," the staresta answered, "we divided the land again, because some new peasants immigrated here and we decided that they must not have all new land, which was too good for them as new-comers. So we divided up the land again between the new-comers and the old inhabitants, so that each should have equal shares of new and old land."

"If a man works on his land and improves it, can he not keep it for himself and his sons?" I asked. "If the commune thinks that he must let some of his brothers have it, the commune has the right." "But does the commune do this often?" I asked. "Not for some years has it done so," was the reply. "Some of our brothers have kept their land for many years, and their sons hold it now and they do not wish to change. They can speak and have a voice in the commune, so perhaps it will not change. If they always live on their land the commune will leave them alone. But some of our brothers go away for a long time to hunt sable in the forests or trade in Mongolia. Then the commune has the right to say who shall have the land, whether they must still pay for it or whether others shall have it."

From this conversation it appeared that in this village a feeling had arisen against the redistribution of the land except under some special circumstances, such as immigration of new colonists or temporary emigration of fur hunters to Mongolia. Thus the land of peasant families, who lived in the village all the year and worked on their holdings, had not been disturbed for some time. The commune, however, as the peasants said, retained the right to control the distribution of all fresh land brought into the commune, so that no man should have more than his share. The system is therefore communal in its essence and tends towards the levelling down of individual enterprise, but signs were not wanting of a movement to secure a sort of vague security of tenure for those peasants who settle and confine themselves entirely to cultivation. On the other hand, I heard of other villages in this part of Southern Siberia where periodical redistributions had taken place during the previous five years. A majority of the commune could carry this out, thereby confiscating all improvements that had been made by the peasants on their holdings. This is the system of land tenure which used to be in vogue throughout European Russia and which is now fast disappearing. In Siberia it still has more force, for where the population is sparse, the land plentiful, and the system of agriculture primitive, this communal land tenure can be better tolerated. In fact, under such circumstances the commune often has a progressive force. For, as the peasants told me, it safeguards them against the encroachments of squatters and wandering immigrants, and it co-ordinates and regulates the arable holdings, causing each peasant to make common cause in taming nature just where such collective action is most required.

Here, then, was a "socialistic" system—a system in which the little State owned the means of production—in process of change before the forces of "Individualism" and the rights of private property. A movement the very antithesis of that towards which the proletariat of Western Europe are said to be trending. Which of these two movements is "progress" and which is "reaction"?

 

Such a village as I have been describing is typical of the little communal colonies which lie scattered in all spots where cultivation is possible on the edge of the great forest zone which surrounds the Siberian-Mongolian frontier. In their general type they are very similar to those of European Russia, except that there is an atmosphere of prosperity which is not always the case in the old country. If a traveller tries to observe human nature in a Siberian village, he may at first fail to sympathize with the people or see any common bond between himself and them. He will be struck with their rather indolent and shiftless character, which is the common trait of all Russian peasants, the somewhat austere severity their life, and the absence of all pretensions to art. But even if he may see defects in the Slavonic nature, still if he observes intelligently he will soon be struck with the lovable, childlike character of the Siberian peasant. He will gradually come to see how the communal social state in which these peasants live, although it has some disadvantages, suits the Slavonic nature and has enabled it in Siberia to carry Slavonic civilization to the remoter corners of the empire where the individual Russian colonists would probably have failed. One sees evidences of this tendency to collective action in the power of the commune over the peasant holdings, the right of land distribution which exists, the communal grazing of live stock, the common barn for provision against bad harvests, the village games and the social life of the village in general. Among these peasants the business of one man is the business of everybody. The whole village is interested in what the outsider would regard as the private affairs of one of their number. For instance, we found that no peasant would sell to us a horse or anything that we wanted without first consulting with the whole village about the price, and it was always a very great difficulty to introduce the element of competition. Even in their own domestic arrangements one sees evidences of the free and easy relationship existing between the members of the community. The cattle and pigs belonging to different peasants wander together about the village, stray into the yards of those who are not their owners, and pick at the hay. No great trouble seems to ensue, and I often used to compare such episodes as this with what would probably happen if in an English village one man's pig broke into another man's allotment and ate his turnips. In Siberia the blessed word neechevo (nothing—never mind) seems to be an antidote even for circumstances such as these. On the other hand,

THE COMMON GRAZIER OF THE VILLAGE FLOCKS

 

THE HOUSE OF A SIBERIAN VILLAGE PRIEST

I observed that although the family is to a great extent merged in the community, the functions and duties of the sexes seemed to be kept very strictly apart. To the man falls all the outdoor work—the management of the land, expeditions to the forest and general bread-winning. The women, on the other hand, although quite prepared to turn their hands to hard work such as haymaking and harvesting whenever special help is required, have their sphere in the house. Here they rule with a rod of iron. It is always pleasant to see an old Moujik returning from his day's work, seat himself down in his house and give himself over entirely to the cares of his wife. The Siberian peasant woman is a true matron of the finest type. I sometimes found two or three generations in one household, yet, as far as I could gather, no serious domestic quarrel seemed to arise. The fact that they were living there all together was an indication to me of the contented communistic character of the Siberian peasant. I cannot imagine such conditions existing in an English village.

At the same time no one can deny the fact that the life of the Russian and Siberian peasants tends to create a dead level of society, and a mental apathy and lack of enterprise among the individuals which compose the society. Whether the communal system creates these social and mental conditions, or whether these conditions create the communal system, is a subject that I will not enter into here. It is sufficient to note that, for those who remain in these villages, there is but little incentive to wholesome progress. Desire for change and material advancement does not seem to appeal to the majority of these peasants. So rich are the resources of the country that they can with little labour satisfy all their material wants. Any further enterprise they may show is not likely to yield them greater fruit, because the heavy hand of the commune is liable to descend, imposing restrictions upon them and limiting their holdings. On the other hand, without this communal life and the social co-operation which it involves, it is difficult to see how the Slavs could have succeeded in colonizing the vast territories that they possess. Self-reliant as the Siberians are compared with the European Russians, there are, nevertheless, not many of them so independent of mutual support as to be able to exist in wild remote spots without their village communes. A few of the more adventurous peasants in the remoter districts break away from the commune and go off on their own, fur hunting or trading with the native Finns. These hardy Siberians often make their permanent abodes in the heart of the dense forest on the frontier country which divides Siberia from Mongolia. Here they build their solitary huts and live in the depths of primeval nature. Magnificent specimens of humanity, they more closely resemble the Canadian backwoodsmen than any men I have ever seen. I shall take the opportunity of describing them in the next chapter. To the majority of Siberians, however, the village commune seems to be an indispensable part of their lives. They may go off for a time on their own into the forest, but the majority prefer the social life which enables them to pass the long dark winter nights in dancing and singing in their log-houses, or drinking in each other's company. Furthermore, they find that when practical and material difficulties confront them, such as bad harvests or peculant officials, they can deal with them much better as a commune than as individuals. Historically the commune is an institution of social defence, formed by a people not very independent in character, for the purpose of overcoming the difficulties of nature, and of defending themselves against the tyranny of local Government officials. In the early days, when the power of the central administration over minor officials was less than it is to-day, the oppression of the communes by unjust taxation and other acts of petty tyranny was much greater. The system, therefore, has grown with the people. It is almost uniformly a feature of primitive society. But as conditions change, so this social system will also change. Stricter discipline over petty officials will in time diminish corruption, while the increase of population and the decrease of available land will in time bring into existence more intensive systems of agriculture, under which the individual will become more and more desirous of keeping the fruits of his labour for himself. All these forces will tend to break down the restrictions which the commune imposes upon the individual, although the Siberian peasants will probably always hang together in colonies for the sake of each other's society. But the conversations which I had with the peasants themselves and with some of the elders of the commune undoubtedly suggested that even in these parts of Siberia a movement was on foot for the greater recognition of individual rights by the commune itself.

 

Generally speaking, I was most favourably struck with the economic condition of the Siberian peasant and with the apparent prosperity which seemed to exist, especially in the remoter villages such as I am describing. I found that each male head of a family is entitled to a share of the communal land which he cultivates himself, and the produce of which he is entitled to retain. He is, moreover, practically self-supporting, and his chief articles of food—bread, meat and cabbage—cost him nothing except his labour, for he produces them all himself. Winter is, of course, the hardest time for him, but he provides for this by keeping certain supplies of meat underground in ice, and by salting part of his cabbage produce, which he uses to make cabbage soup, an important article of diet among these people. Much of his clothing also costs him nothing. The sheepskin coat, felt boots, and rough flax clothes are made locally by the peasants themselves. Almost the only expenditure of the year, except that for tea, tobacco and sugar, is for Moscow cotton prints out of which the women's clothes are largely made. Direct taxation, of which I give figures elsewhere, is extremely low, except on tea, sugar and tobacco; and there is generally an ample margin with which the peasant can buy those few extra necessaries and even a few luxuries to brighten his home.

The economic condition of the Siberian peasant shows, in fact, in a striking way how comparatively prosperous peasant communities may become when they are surrounded by fertile land and are content to live simple lives.^[1]

I had many surprises while I was in Siberia. Instead of convict prisons I had seen modern urban centres springing up amidst every sign of the growing spirit of Western commercialism. Instead of uninhabited wastes, I now saw wide tracks of the black earth zone dotted over with peasant communities, quietly pursuing their agricultural occupations. The agriculture was indeed rude and primitive, but the peasant farmers were living their simple lives with few wants and apparently few cares.

 

I have in this chapter attempted to give a description, admittedly imperfect, of the social and economic conditions of the Siberian peasants, from information which I gathered during the time that I lived in their midst. To one who wishes to see something of the real life of the Siberian peasant, and glean some small idea of the conditions of his existence, the isolated village communities at the head of the main valleys and tributaries of the Yenisei in Central Siberia are the most likely to present the truest pictures. It is these peasants, along with the fur traders and frontiersmen, who are the pioneers of Russia's Eastern Empire in Asia. For centuries past, by dint of their rapid increase, their hardy nature and their social organization, they have overcome the natural and physical difficulties which beset them. The Canadian settler is willing to go off on his own, build his log-hut in the backwoods and live a life of terrible isolation for months, perhaps years, for the sake of the material gains that he sets his heart upon. A few Siberian hunters and traders do this now for the sake of greater gains, but, speaking generally, the Siberians overcome the natural obstacles around them by attacking them in unison. As, however, communications improve and urban centres begin to spring up where villages were before, these pioneers move on as an advanced guard, avoiding the semi-civilization of the growing commercial town. And so they trek northward to the toundras, eastward to the Pacific, southward to the mountains of Mongolia, till they are stopped by some natural barrier or by some political boundary, and here you still can find these primitive village communities, these advanced waves of the Slavonic ocean.

1. See also Chap. IX., p. 231.