Vlas Mikhaĭlovich Doroshevich

“ These are the carts of the buyers from Roslavl.
—For a bargain.
In the cart stands a muzhik, so as to see the road better than he would sitting down.
And lashes his horse.
Beside this horse and running at the sides of the cart, and behind it are a multiplicity of legs.
As if a spider were running quickly, quickly along the road.
The fugitives get out of the way, give up the road,—and no one even pays attention to the running spiders.
The road becomes more and more clear of forest.
All the land which has been cultivated, and the crops, are ruined. ”

“ Are you someone from the Government or a Relief Committee?
—Our little children are just freezing to death, says another fugitive.
And at this market where horses and people are crushed in one compact mass where from the heat of bodies and the smell of horses it is difficult to breathe, if any one is cheerful, it is only the purchaser.
The fugitives have not much to say for themselves, and that in a low voice. ”

“ So we can still count ourselves human beings! Still peasants!
—And if the money be all spent, and the peasant cease to be a peasant. What then?
The last thing that connects him with the past, the last thing that binds him to life.
Along the main street of Roslavl from earliest morning till the darkness of night without interruption, without ceasing, go two processions, one one way, the other the other.
On one side of the road come an endless series of grey carts, one after another endlessly—and pass away towards that stretch of the road where yesterday we saw innumerable camp bonfires. ”

“ A whole sea of bonfires.
It is damp. The smoke settles downward.
It is impossible to breathe along the road for the smoke.
It stops the breathing, makes the eyes smart.
The lights of the relief cars cannot penetrate this thick smoke.
And all around in the smoke are crimson fires.
Showers of sparks fly about in the sky.
This great glare is the necessary outcome of all these camp-fires.
Possibly only in the times of the Tartar invasion were there such pictures.
All around in the forest is the unceasing chatter of some gigantic crowd. ”

“ These are the bonfires of the fugitives.
At night the fugitives wander about in the neighbourhood.
They dig up the potatoes, take all the cabbages, drag off stacks of corn waiting to be ground, and piles of hay.
At some places where the fugitives have been out and foraged, the people complain:
—Lord a' mercy! The oats which were being brought to us have fallen into the hands of the fugitives on the road. So much oats was sent, and we have the invoice for it. But only half arrives. The fugitives have stopped the wagons on the road and taken away what they wanted. ”

“ The hungry cows blunder among the carts, and put up their forefeet on to the backs of them in order to pull out hay.
Cattle, relief cars, stray horses wandering about by themselves, peasant women, road menders, police, soldiers,—all in one great mass. ”

“ And the crosses, the crosses, along the length of the road.
See, they have brought from a village camp a newly joinered coffin, quickly put together by the village carpenter.
An open cart moves slowly along the middle of the road.
The horse with suffering pain-full eyes steps forward slowly with uncertain strides.
Just staggering.
Will fall in a minute.
Wavering also, as smoke in the wind, goes the attendant peasant beside his horse, and his eyes have that glassy look which seems to express nothing whatever.
In the open cart, with folded arms, with pinched nose, lies the corpse. ”

“ Here a man can be lost, as a needle in a bundle of hay.
—I've lost my husband, he's lost—I can still hear the monotonous expressionless voice of the peasant woman as I leave the encampment.
The man has been drowned in this river of people.
We come to the second relief point of the Municipal Alliance. Farther on we shall see them every fifteen or seventeen versts. ”

“ Neither do the horses pay attention.
They stumble upon people.
In the peasant huts occupied as relief points bread is taken in at the back door, cut up there, and handed out from a little window in the front.
So from morning to night bread flows in an uninterrupted stream.
Sentries keep the order of those who are waiting for bread.
In front of the bread windows range endless ranks of fugitives.
Thousands and thousands of people.
One person moves an inch, another person moves an inch, and from the midst is heard wails.
—You're suffocating me! Oh, suffocating.
People fall unconscious. ”

“ IN 1812 Moscow made a funeral pyre for herself, and burned
—For Russia’s sake. A hundred years have passed.
And the red glare of Moscow’s fire has paled.
The Moscow of those days!
A wooden city.
The burning of it was appalling.
The ground burned under the feet of the Napoleonic soldiers: even the roadways of Moscow were made of wood at that time.
But now!
More than ten provinces have been laid waste by the enemy.
Millions of people have become beggars. And have fled. ”

“ When they have absolutely made a space bare, they move on farther.
They eat into the forest.
And behind them they leave the fresh-hewn stumps of trees, the bare glade, the black traces of the bonfires.
They trample down everything. ”

“ Doves in hundreds circle over the fields and bathe in the transparent atmosphere, in the blue of the brilliant cloudless sky.
They turn, and the whole flock of birds glimmers and trembles white in the sunlight. ”

“ Rogachef is like a little white building, like a prison built on the high and beautiful bank of the Dnieper.
All the meadow-land beneath is alight with bonfires, bonfires, bonfires, and flocking with fugitives. ”

“ They offer it at sixty copecks an arshin at the relief points on the road:
Even in the extremity of their need they will not part with it for less than sixty copecks.
And with this precious material they now cover their carts!
All goes to ruin!
This is a twice-humbled people.
—First of all, good man, there came through our province fugitives from other places. They ruined us: dug up our potatoes, rooted up our cabbages, took off the hay, and carried away the unground grain in their carts. And as soon as this had happened we ourselves had to be on the move!—complain the peasants. ”

“ But with each ten versts of our onward journey we meet the fugitives more and more often, and the lines of them become longer and longer.
There, on the beautiful shore of the winding River Izvera, in one of its curves, under an acacia, in the clear sweet air a little smoke is curling.
Ten covered carts are encamped there.
The folk have stopped to cook dinner.
Near them sits a policeman in a cart.
I go nearer.
The policeman is talking to an old woman lying on the ground.
—Don't you know that a sick person mustn't lie on the ground like this? You're old, but you must understand that. ”

“ From hand to hand! says a tall, dark peasant with a long beard, standing beside a cart to which are tied six horses, all skin and bone.
He says in a contemptuous tone:
—You see the horses. A red note for each. Altogether. Take them. It will mean money. Without money there's no doing anything.
I say to a fugitive:
—Don't you know that in Muchin yard, beyond the town, they're buying for the Government. There you would get a fairer price.
The fugitive does not succeed in answering for himself.
Once more the crowd of people with quick movements and feverish eyes. ”

“ Oh, these relief stations beginning to be built after the fugitives had already arrived!
The peasants were really affronted by the people of Holm province
—The Holm people, these are the ones who were rude to us.
This is the general saying
In Kaluga province, in Mogilef, in Smolensk, and in Minsk.
The Holm peasants—are the most exasperating people.
Especially exasperating
How they talk of their own province!
—And is your land good?
—Our land? There's no such land anywhere else in the world. Do you call your ground land? I shouldn't think it worth cultivating. Now ours is land. ”

“ In a difficult moment our society has shown itself in the place where Russian society has always shown itself in moments difficult for the State and for the people.
Public organizations have set themselves to work for the fugitives, as in the past they have set themselves to work in time of famine or of epidemics. ”

“ We are met by a lady, the manager of the relief point.
—I'm quite a veteran—says she.
—I was a sister of mercy in the Russo-Turkish War.
She takes us over the place.
It is in perfect order, a model establishment.
There is excellent strong soup, with plenty of beef in it.
—We often read in the newspapers about the various horrors connected with the fugitives, and we are greatly astonished. Where do the papers get such accounts? There's nothing dreadful here. Not so many sick people. Chiefly peasant women who have given birth to children in the forest, in the cold. Yes, that's so. ”

“ Three more crosses.
More still.
Still new ones, more new ones, yesterday's cemetery.
They are white, like little Georgian crosses, crosses pinned to the much-suffering road.
Just like Georgian orders:
—For self-sacrifice.
And there was expressed, together with affliction, much warmth and much beauty.
"They" do the burying at nights.
Do not bury, but:
—Dig holes for the dead,
as the peasants say. ”

“ No harness of any kind, only a horse-collar.
And that lonely horse in the shafts has the air of an orphan, and imparts that air to the whole conveyance.
By the side of the horse walks the peasant or his wife, turn by turn.
They only go on foot in the mornings.
—To get warm.
In the mornings there are five degrees of frost in the fields.
But they all are travelling in their carts.
All of them have sore feet and many are lame.
Inside the carts, under feather beds, under old clothes and rags, sit or lie five or seven human beings.
The carts are crowded with people. ”

“ For the children nothing is made.
And the refugees' children die like flies.
—They lie with their stomachs to the fire, and their backs are as cold as ice. They turn their backs to the fire and their stomachs freeze. ”

“ The hewn stumps gleam oftener and oftener.
But if you ask the peasants
—Don't the fugitives do some damage?
They all reply
—Nitchevo. Nothing that matters.
In Smolensk province they already begin to add,
—At first they did. But now they have gendarmes in charge of them.
The fugitives are now met in large parties. Ahead of them goes a gendarme on horseback.
—And that's all right? In charge of the gendarmes they do no damage?—I ask.
—Eh, master!—answers the old peasant whom I am questioning—there's no animal that does so much harm when he strays to feed, as man! ”

“ WE are by no means a cruel people. But dreadfully cruel things happen in our country.
We can make penal servitude into hell, and life into penal servitude.
All thanks to our inability to take measures in time. ”

“ In the province of Mogilef, the potato country, as the farmers call it, hundreds of women are working in long rows hurriedly digging up potatoes.
—How the price for women's labour has gone up—says a peasant in one of the villages. They're wanted on the big farms. The potatoes must be dug, quickly, hurriedly, before the refugees flood over the ground. ”

“ How quickly in Nature every animal becomes wilder!
Let but blood be tasted.
See, once more come people from the village, one carrying a coffin lid, two others a coffin, and they run to overtake their cart. ”

“ They are building barracks in Dovsk.
Only on the eighteenth of October are they beginning to build barracks.
During the week, since I passed last along this road, all has changed.
In the south it is still warm, but here it is cold.
The morning frosts have changed everything.
The forests have become clear, and it has become light in them.
The birch trees stand like dark skeletons.
The ground under them is a golden carpet of leaves.
There is work going on on the road.
People are working and Nature is working.
Near Cherikof they are building barracks. ”

“ At the sides of the carts the peasants have slung their kitchen utensils, as gipsies do.
It cuts one to the heart to see these remains of what was lately—only yesterday—opulence and sufficiency.
One often sees enamelled ware
Enamelled kettles, frying-pans, basins.
Suddenly comes a cart with a watering-pot fastened at the side.
Just one watering-pot remains from the whole garden and vegetable plot!
Sewing machines stick out from the sides of the carts. ”

“ Going farther into the forest I come upon a crowd.
A priest is explaining to them how and where to go that their horses may be properly inspected and priced, how to go to Muchin yard, sell their horses, and receive the money; how to go to the railway station and wait their turn for a seat in the train, how much will be given to each man for food. ”

“ Down below, under the cliff, is an immense marshy meadow, and there, what a wild, what a strange picture . . .
At that point I thought of the late V. V. Verestchagin.
Only he with his grey tones could have painted the grey horror of this life, only he could have painted the dreadful picture in all its horror.
For several acres the whole meadow was covered with abandoned and broken carts. ”

“ The aching eyes of the horses, the aching eyes of the people, equally full of physical suffering and full of affliction, rend the heart.
Over the branches of the trees, whither a glance of the eyes will not take you, rise the many smokes. ”

“ The children of the refugees are their most precious possession. They grieve most of all for the children. But the children are almost without clothing.
The peasant men are warmly clad. Almost every one has a warm coat. ”

“ Roslavl. And they're going all over the place, seeking Yaroslav province—says the policeman.
—Here's a paper that will help you on all occasions when you're seeking the way. Now, I've written down the correct name of the town, Roslavl.
—But where can we look? said the peasant. The earth is great, and there are many roads upon it, and all the roads go in different directions. One man goes this way, another that way. It's no good looking. ”

“ The peasants, especially the women, are distressed by the "unsung corpses," [1] the dead which the fugitives have to bury by the roadside as they go.
In many places the people have told me:
—We said to them,—Give us your corpses. We will put them in their shrouds, sing the service, and bury them as Christians. But they have no time to do anything. They dig the grave the night before and next morning they go on. ”

“ Quietly and silently the fierce and cruel struggle goes on.
All around the people swarm like flies.
A man in a uniform has only to appear, or even a gentleman in civil attire, and the fugitives swarm about him. ”

“ One party has hardly been sent off when from Muchin yard comes out three times the number of these "horseless ones."
The crowd does not melt away but increases.
Here it is cold, here there is no forest.
And the fugitives press together closely, family to family.
Only warming themselves in the smoke of their bonfires.
There are bonfires day and night.
Wandering women go from house to house in the neighbourhood. ”

“ There are Orthodox and Catholic graves side by side and together.
Hundreds of thousands of beggared people go past, and of course no one touches an ikon or its setting, or an ikon box or the embroidered towel waving in the wind.
I stop at one collection of graves, at a second, at a third.
There are some which breathe horror.
Three, five, crosses, and on all:
—The 17th of September. [1]
—The 17th of September.
—The 17th of September.
In one day, all. In one night a cemetery grew up. ”