Chapter XIV: Among the Muzhiks

Importance of the muzhik in the future--Ancient republican
traditions--Greek church and bureaucracy run Russian
institutions--Weight of the peasant vote in the Duma--How the
peasant’s belief in “God and Czar” is waning--Strokes of
disillusionment--Indifference to time--Muzhik nonchalance--Strange
sects--Muzhik religion--A characteristic legend--Practical
ethics--The muzhik not necessarily lazy--Muzhik shrewdness--The
dawning of self-consciousness.

The future of Russia lies in the muzhik. With an agrarian population aggregating eighty per cent. of the total population, the balance of power must ultimately rest with the majority. Since the war with Japan the world has begun to see the Russian peasant in a new light. No longer the ignorant, slothful creature he has been depicted, but a thinking man of strong frame, promising rare development in the future if individual advancement can be encouraged under a wise, sane, and humane administration.

“The Russian peasant is the best raw material in Europe from an industrial point of view,” an American manufacturer in Russia once said to me. “He is powerfully built, naturally imitative, and adaptable.”

Long before the Mongols invaded Russia, Russia held republican traditions. The states which now make up the Russian empire were formerly ruled by princes and dignitaries elected by the people, and, indeed, Michael Romanoff, the first of the present reigning house, was chosen czar without opposition of arms or other force, so that even Nicholas II is where he is to-day because of a republican custom which raised his forebears to the throne. The Russian church is not Russian. It calls itself Greek “Orthodox.” It is an importation from Byzantium just as the bureaucracy is an importation from Germany. The Russian peasant has submitted to these foreign impositions because they were foisted upon him, but in the village life there has been presented the spirit of pure democracy and republicanism. Therefore it is true that the Russian people do take kindly to reform, and herein lies the probability of the Russian peasant ultimately leading the world in social and economic reforms. When the power which must eventually be yielded to the peasantry has finally been wrested from autocracy and bureaucracy, the pendulum of the social revolution will swing wide, paralleling, if not surpassing, the French Revolution, and affecting the entire world.

The peasants were the weightiest group in the Duma. The Constitutional Democrats did more talking, and in their academic way were the shapers of the first Duma. But the peasants swung the votes. The government at first leaned on the peasants because of their supposed superstitious loyalty to the Emperor--their “Little Father.” The Constitutional Democrats knew, however, that this was a thing of the past, and at once began to proselytize among the men in homespun. The socialists and extreme radicals among the Social Democrats and Labor Deputies entered upon no end of negotiations to seal a compact with the peasants, and with perhaps better success. But the supposed gullible, guileless, ingenuous Muzhik showed himself as canny as a Scot. He listened to everything that anybody wished to say to

him, but when the moment came for exchanging pledges the long, shaggy head of the rustic would deliberately, but firmly, wag--“We want land and liberty.” That was the answer one heard a score of times each day in the Duma lobby. Other matters were of secondary interest to him.

The muzhik used to be terribly serious about two things in life: God and the Czar. This is no longer the case. The Czar sanctioned the calling together of the Duma. The peasants believed in it then--and in him. The Duma meant to them a place where representatives of all the people could come together to formulate requests and to explain in detail to the Emperor the ills of his majesty’s people in the remote country districts. Previous to the first Duma millions believed that this would suffice. Thousands of people in America hold a similar view in regard to the Czar--namely, that he is well-meaning, but kept from knowledge of actual conditions through the machinations of his ministers, counselors, and minions of the court. There was great rejoicing among the peasants when the first Duma framed a “response to the Throne Speech,” and many of them telegraphed most optimistic messages to their home villages. The Czar would hear their prayers and grant their requests, they thought. Alas, the pain of disillusionment that awaited them! Like a thunderbolt from a clear sky came the government’s answer. Every single request rejected and refused! I was in the Duma that afternoon. Amid the strained stillness of the great hall, the prime minister read the address. Only once did M. Gorymekin pause--to swallow a drop of water. As he raised the glass to his lips it seemed as if every one of the eight or nine hundred people in the room coughed nervously, as men do who sit under great strain. But in a breath the intense quiet returned. When the reading was ended a pin drop would still have been audible. Then, while the Constitutional Democratic leaders were answering the ministry in fiery speeches, one after another from the tribunal, the peasants alone, or two by two, as men in common trouble, filed slowly into the lobby. They all seemed instinctively to drift toward the telegraph booth. They were the men who had suffered a blow and were nonplussed. Their faith in the “Little Father” was now irretrievably shaken. In the Duma conservative and academic professors, stung to desperation, hammered and pounded the ministry, and finally introduced a resolution (which, incidentally, they asked a peasant to read) expressing their mistrust of the ministers, demanding their resignation, and a new and responsible ministry. This was parliamentary. The peasants acted differently--they voted in agreement, because they were told it was right to do so. What they did of their own initiative was to send scores of telegrams, which strangely enough the imperial wires carried that night, carried till they were hot. “We have been refused land, liberty, and new laws. Tell everybody.” This was the burden of the messages. That was the muzhik’s impulse. These messages were sent by sad men just coming to the realization of their situation. But having done this they were not materially relieved. They sat together on the lobby benches and conversed in low tones. When adjournment was announced they went sorrowfully away, several never to return. One resigned--utterly discouraged. A few days later one died as a result of his heart-breaking disappointment--Andrianov of Simbirsk government--and the Duma rose in the middle of the afternoon as a token of respect. Several remained ill in their lodgings for a week. It is difficult for us in America to understand and appreciate such intense feeling as these simple peasants reveal, but to them this Duma was the most serious event in their lives. Now they were utterly crushed by the realization that apparently the Czar did not care for his people, that the Duma was a mockery and a farce, and that if they were to escape from their plight it must be through their efforts. The telegrams sent that afternoon constituted the biggest piece of revolutionary propaganda since the Father Gapon labor demonstrators were shot down in cold blood in the square of the Winter Palace in January, 1905.

“How can you fight?” I asked of some peasants who had been sent as delegates to St. Petersburg, and who intimated that this refusal of the government’s meant open rebellion.

“The soldiers have taken our arms, it is true,” they replied. “But we have left our wood-axes and our scythes. We can cut telegraph posts. We can burn barracks and landlords’ houses.”

It is a commonplace psychological fact that the slower a man is to anger the more terrible will his wrath be. The muzhik is grim and determined. As for time, it does not exist for him. At any railroad junction in Russia one may see any number of peasants waiting about all night or all day between trains. Six, eight, ten hours’ delay in making connections troubles no peasant.

One night I stepped off a Volga steamer at a landing far too small to be mentioned on the biggest map. It was nearly midnight and the rain was descending in torrents. My destination was a place distant between twenty-five and fifty miles--my information was no more definite than this--and the journey must needs be by horse or wagon. My companion and I were utterly at a loss to know how to proceed from the landing, for we could not see an arm’s length before us and we had not the remotest idea which direction to take. Presently we discovered a muzhik whom we hailed with joy. He told us he was waiting for a boat down the river--which he expected would come along about five o’clock in the morning. Where had he come from, we asked. “Petrovka,” he replied. Our destination! Our delight at the coincidence was unbounded and we straightway asked him how we were to get there, and the distance. To proceed at night was impossible, he told us, for the roads were flowing streams and the mud ankle-deep. As to the distance he had not the dimmest idea.

“How long were you in coming?” we asked. “What time was it when you left Petrovka?”

The fellow laughed as he answered: “Friend, you must know we have no clocks. When I left the sun was there--” and he pointed to about five degrees above the eastern horizon, “and when I reached here the sun was there--” and he pointed to about five degrees above the western horizon. So we knew it to be about three quarters of a day’s journey. He told us further that though there was a village a little more than a mile away from the landing, we could never reach it in such a storm. Just then a horse neighed, not twenty feet away. We eagerly splashed through the mud in the direction of the sound and found a young peasant on the point of driving off. He had brought some goods to the steamer we had just left and now he was returning to the village. We begged him to take us home with him and put us up for the night. He assented readily. Arrived at his house--a typical peasant’s hut with roof of mud and thatch--we helped him put up the horse and

followed him inside. His father and mother, and several brothers, were asleep on the floor. Peasants usually sleep on the floor in summer. In winter there are “sleeping-boxes” over the stove. The old woman was the only one who moved at our entrance, and she did not look at all surprised. She pointed to an ancient home-made bed and told us we might lie there if we liked, but the floor was better. We knew the bed would be swarming with vermin, so we chose the floor. The old woman threw down a sheepskin for my friend. I rolled myself in my traveling rug.

This instance is typical of the muzhik’s placid hospitality. Not once but many times I knocked at peasants’ huts in out-of-the-way places and asked for shelter. Sometimes I received the greeting: “Where did God send _you_ from?” But muzhik curiosity is easily appeased.

The psychology of muzhik religion brings one to the realm of mysticism and superstition. Russia is filled with sectarians. The Doukhobors are known in America because of their wholesale immigration into Canada a few years ago. They were a Caucasian sect. The Molokani are another, kindred sect, also originating in the Caucasus. In central Russia are many other sects, holding and practising strange tenets--among them, suicide by fire and exposure of their naked bodies to the furious storms of winter. Certainly no country in Europe has so great a variety of mysterious beliefs. But these all belong in a category apart from the superstitious orthodoxy of the average muzhik. To describe the sectarians would necessitate the compass of a volume, whereas there are certain salient characteristics of the accepted orthodoxy which are ever impressing themselves upon the traveler.

At the outset, the forms of religion are well-nigh universally observed. Most peasants remove their hats when passing a church, or an icon, and cross themselves three times. In the interior one sometimes finds a small, crude shrine, set up at the entrance to a village. Before this shrine traveling muzhiks prostrate themselves, falling to their knees and bowing forward till their foreheads rest in the dust. Every muzhik has his revered icon and holy pictures. Usually the icon is set in the corner of the wall facing the door, so that every one who enters may reverence it. After each meal the peasants upon rising from the table bow before the icon, crossing themselves. I have seen icons in vodka shops thus reverenced by peasants coming to buy liquor. The peasant, too, has a blind, but sometimes very real, faith in miraculous images and pilgrimages to well-known shrines like the Madonna of Kazan and the Iberian shrine in Moscow are constantly maintained.

The ringing of the village church-bells on a Sabbath morning or on the occasion of a saint’s day is something wondrous and memorable. There is nothing melodious in the sound. A terrible clanging and pounding, loud, wild, sonorous, discordant. But the muzhik believes that these sounds drive away evil spirits.

In spite of all of these surface signs of ingrained religion, the muzhik is not a religious being. The Orthodox church has no real grip upon his life, and apart from the sectarians and old believers, the peasant is intensely ignorant of all religion and religious beliefs. He strictly observes the church fasts because it has been his custom to do so and because the priests tell him that he must. But it must be remembered that the priest is not so much a spiritual teacher as an agent of the government. Nor do the priests, by their example, show the people what Christianity might do for them. They are frequently dirty, slovenly creatures, guilty of many excesses, of public drunkenness, and not infrequently accused of dishonesty. Monasteries are sometimes dens of iniquity and I know of convents which are semi-public brothels. The muzhik abstains from flesh food during the long Lenten fast and on the regularly prescribed fast days, but he drinks at the same time, and as a result of his impoverished physical condition he falls easy victim to the strong drink. This gives rise to the common idea that Russian peasants are drunken.

During a certain long fast I was spending some time at a large house in south Russia. One afternoon, upon returning to the house after several hours’ absence, the master and I met one of the maids in the hall, weeping bitterly. She told us to go quickly into the dining-room. There we found the gardener and the laundress, both maudlin drunk, standing before a small icon of the Virgin repeatedly drinking the good health of the Holy Mother. This shocking irreverence had quite undone the maid. Flagrant as this incident sounds, it is less so than many of the stories one hears of priests, holy sisters, and mother superiors. Mother superiors, like abbots, are often appointed because of their social influence, and may be without any previous ecclesiastical or monastic training.

There is a classic story in Russia, told of Alexander III, who was once visiting a certain town near Moscow. A local monastery was pointed out to the Emperor and a little way off a convent. The Emperor looked from one to the other and then began to scan every point of the horizon.

“Does your majesty seek something?” asked one of the escort.

“Yes,” responded the Emperor. “You tell me yonder is a monastery and over the way a convent. I am looking for the third building--the foundling institution.”

The muzhik’s religion, so far as I had observed it, is a set of forms to which he bows--much as he pays his taxes--and an instinctive feeling which is never discussed nor thought about, that outside of himself is some great and mysterious power which he must not offend, and by observing the forms which this vaguely understood Being delights in he may expect in return protection in any hour of trial. The muzhik is naturally shrewd. This is a reasonable explanation, and adequate reason for his going regularly to church. And of course no God would see His children inflict the punishments of fasts and long ceremonials upon themselves without rewarding them at some future time.

That there is a genuinely practical element in the muzhik’s religion is indicated in a well-known popular legend which purports to explain how it comes that St. Cassian’s day falls only on the odd day of leap year. It also is a keen analysis of the psychology of the muzhik’s religious outlook.

The two saints, Cassian and Nicholas, so the legend goes, appeared before the Lord together.

“What hast thou seen on earth?” asked the Lord of St. Cassian.

“I have seen a muzhik foundering with his cart in a marsh by the way,” answered St. Cassian.

“Why hast thou not helped him?” inquired the Lord.

“Because I was coming into Thy presence, and I was afraid of soiling my bright clothes so that they would offend Thine eyes.”

At this moment the eyes of the Lord rested upon St.

Nicholas, who approached, falteringly, his dress utterly disheveled and spattered with mud.

“Why comest thou so dirty into My presence?” asked the Lord.

“Because I was following St. Cassian, and seeing the muzhik of whom he just spake, I have helped him out of the marsh.”

The Lord hesitated a moment, then said:

“Because thou, Cassian, hast cared so much about thy dress and so little about thy brother, I will give thee thy saint’s day only once in four years. And to thee, Nicholas, for having acted as thou didst, I will give four saint days each year.”

And that is how it comes about that St. Cassian’s day falls on February 29 and St. Nicholas’s day occurs quarterly.

In this case muzhik ethics are illustrated as eminently practical. And so with muzhik morality. Sexual immorality is so commonplace among the officers, and among certain court and aristocratic circles, that it is no longer scandalous. It is accepted. And also in the industrial towns among the proletariat. But among the peasantry an entirely different code exists--a code of sex honor, born of what Americans would call “horse sense.” Early marriages are the rule, to be sure, much earlier than in the towns, but the standard of morality is probably higher among the peasantry than among any other class of people in Russia.

In one village which I visited in south Russia the village school-mistress and school-master, aged, respectively, twenty-one and twenty-six, were living together in what they called a “free-love union.” Yet the matter was not noticed especially by the peasants. In other words, the muzhik, while morally strict with his own people, is highly tolerant of the lives of other people, and this tolerance does not stop here but is extended also to beliefs. The religion of the muzhik is so lacking in detailed creed that he is not inclined to quarrel over beliefs with any one. In this respect the sectarians are less amiable. They, not unnaturally, are dogmatic and largely inclined toward bigotry, but the sectarians are apart from the typical Russian peasant.

Laziness is frequently ascribed to the Russian peasant. Here one may not assent, nor at the same time repudiate, the charge. Between the peasants of different sections are differences in temperament and characteristics almost as great as between some races. The landed proprietor is the man who most often calls the muzhik lazy. He best should know. But by what standard is the Russian peasant adjudged lazy? The average Russian official comes to his office at ten or eleven o’clock in the morning and in three or four hours he feels that he has done enough for one day. Russia borders on the East. There are parts of Russia traversed by Bedouins, by camel-traders, by people whose months and years slip easily by on the hillsides and the deserts. Compared to any of these the Russian peasants are most industrious.

Soil is a factor. If a peasant has only one dessiatine of ground, as is the case with thousands of peasants in the interior in governments like Saratoff and Voronezh, it is quite impossible for him to keep busy the year through. Especially if he has no knowledge of modern agriculture, as most of them have not. There are thousands of muzhiks who have not yet heard of intensive cultivation, who know nothing of the advantage of rotating crops, and who use wooden ploughs because they have always used wooden ploughs, or have not the money to buy iron implements when they learn that such exist in the world. Russia is not equally fertile throughout. In some of the districts where an annual famine is recurrent, one finds soil which should be rich and productive. It lacks only water, which could be managed by irrigation. But the government has never taken large steps to solve this difficulty. So the soil is subjected to abuse by peasants who know no better. Then when the crops become meager, the peasants are reduced to starvation. But the great point of all is that it is less than half a century since the shackles of bondage fell from them. Surely not one generation nor two must pass before these recent slaves shall be judged by the side of men who have been free for centuries. Under serfdom the obligatory duties of peasants were vague, ill-defined chores. And even these were prescribed by some one else--some one who said when it was time to cut wood for the master, when it was time to sow, and when it was time to reap. The problem of adjustment is only a little less real and formidable to these people than it was to the American negro-slaves, and the differences of opinion in Russia to-day are quite as great in regard to the relative advantages of the present condition as compared to serfdom, as in America in regard to the welfare of the negro now and before the war. But one thing I have noticed: no muzhik ever desires to return to serfdom. The twinkle in his eye is full enough of intelligence when this question is put to him.

The muzhik is rarely indiscreet in his talk. This characteristic is noted by most travelers in Russia, and it is surely true. Not infrequently a man who has been talking most intelligently will give an answer to some simple question which is perfectly inane. He has suddenly become suspicious. So he shrewdly turns you so completely off the track that, metaphorically, you are ditched. This seems to be an instinctive ruse.

To learn that the forms of democracy are not new in Russian life one needs only to turn to the villages. The very word Duma is not new. Towns and even villages have their Duma. Tolstoi talks about the “Gospel as understood by the muzhik.” The ideal of civic life as conceived by the muzhik culminates not in the state and autocracy but in the people--an aggregation of muzhiks. There is an ancient proverb familiar throughout Russia which expresses this ideal of democracy: “Each for himself, but God and the Mir for all”--the Mir being an association of villagers coming together to work out the common weal of the village under the laws of the land. The national laws have allowed a wide scope in certain directions, and the opportunity has not been lost by the muzhiks. They have been left free to manage many of their local economic interests in common, like the allotment and periodic redistribution of land, their fisheries, cutting of timber, and also they have been given absolute freedom to divide and distribute among themselves the village share of the taxes collected from all of the people. They have elected their own immediate administrative officers, a certain number of local judges, and those in turn have limited freedom in regard to accepting local custom and tradition in precedence to civil or criminal law prescribed by the state. To the peasant, therefore, the Duma is an institution similar to this local town meeting he has always been used to, only on a national scale. The shock came when the Duma delegates in St. Petersburg found that to deliberate, come to conclusions and to vote for certain measures was wholly a different thing from

gaining those measures. This was not like the Duma they had been accustomed to at home.

There is much of animal patience about the muzhik. He is a stolid, stubborn, creature. These qualities have led enlightened Russians to call him a child. When the Duma began landed proprietors and gentry were wont to speak of peasant deputies as “children.” But impartial observers soon formed their own opinions. The muzhik is wily. He may not have been so outspoken in the Duma as men more accustomed to town life, but he has the voice where voice means influence, and his vote is as good as a university professor’s in the assembly. The peasant members usually stand solidly together. They know what they want, they ask for it concretely: “Land and liberty,” and mark the craft! They know that they cannot work out the land problem, so they say to the Constitutional Democrats: “You want certain measures passed. Very well. We will vote for them, but you must turn your thoughts to the land question which is what we are interested in.” The Constitutional Democrats could not dispense with the peasant vote, so they were coerced into agreeing. And the muzhiks would sit on the benches in the lobby, swinging their legs and smoking cigarettes, while tedious debates lasted, going in when time to vote. The peasants know their time is coming. They have only to keep on smoking cigarettes in the lobby, going in in time for each vote, and to keep talking all the time about “land and liberty.” During the Duma session their telegrams went to every part of the empire. They well knew they could afford to appear indifferent to the details of working out any bill. The pretentious frock-coated gentlemen might see to that. The muzhik understood that it was his part to lie low for a time, only not to cease murmuring “land and liberty.” He had the whip hand and knew it then. No fool is this simple, untutored, rustic.

During the first Duma the peasant deputies awoke to a consciousness of their power and importance. Through painful surprises they realized that they had a destiny to fulfil. When these deputies returned to their respective villages, all over the provinces they related to their fellow villagers all that had transpired in the Duma. Then came the great peasant awakening which marked a new era for Russia. Just those few months from May to July did it. During that period the Russian peasants bounded forward almost incredibly, and in a few weeks advanced further than in many previous years.

To gather evidence of this change which literally swept over Russia during the spring and early summer of 1906 I planned a long trip through the interior where I would see typical peasant villages, and come in contact with many hundreds of the men upon whom it had suddenly dawned that they were indeed men, men of power, of ultimate influence, and with a future in which to work out their own great destiny.