Russian peasant

“ The Russian peasant's artistic impulse is no legend. Besides the carving and embroidery which speak eloquently to peasant skill, one observes many instances in daily life. He will climb down, when his slowly-moving train stops by the wayside, to gather branches and flowers with which he will decorate the railway carriage both inside and out, he will work willingly at any task which has beauty for its object, and was all too prone under the old régime to waste his time and his employer's material in fashioning small metal or wooden objects with his hands. ”

“ Peasant women in clean cotton gowns elbowed members of the Court in silks; fat merchants, with well-greased, odorous hair and boots, in hot, long-skirted blue cloth coats, stood side by side with shabby invalid soldiers or smartly uniformed officers. Tiny peasant children seated themselves on the floor when their little legs refused further service, and imitated diligently all the low reverences and signs of the cross made by their parents. Those of larger growth stood with the preternatural repose and dignity of the adult Russian peasant, and followed the liturgy independently. ”

“ Ladies and gentlemen, connected with the aristocracy and nurtured in all the refinement of civilisation, patiently endured the nameless trials of living with the Russian peasant. They endeavoured to adopt the rough hands and swarthy weather-beaten complexion, as well as the dress of the peasant, that they might not excite his distrust, for the gulf between the lower classes and the gentlemen in Russia is wide and fixed. The peasants had experience of the gentleman only as the representative of the Government coming with the knout and the police to extort taxes and recruits. ”

“ But the Russian peasant possesses a degree of cunning which shows his dormant intelligence, and suspected the motives of those who said they wanted to benefit him, and this, added to his real affection for the czar, rendered the attempt of the nihilists a failure. The Russian peasant dreads a change in his condition, because experience has taught him that it will end to his disadvantage. In 1876 there were still 2,000,000 peasants who preferred serfdom. ”

“ The Russian peasantry was an enormous force which was not utilized to its fullest extent. It included almost the entire rural population of Russia. The peasant was legally a freeman. He lived unchanged under the old Slavonic patriarchal system of Mirs, or communes, and Volosts. These were the largest political organizations of which he had personal cognizance. He knew nothing about Muscovite consolidation, nor oligarchy, nor autocracy. ”

“ The Russian peasant is still largely a serf in his mentality, in his feeling of dependence, in his inertia and lack of individual enterprise, and, above all, in the smallness of his demands upon life. ”

“ There is nothing of the merely sentimental in this feeling that their government is, and ought to be, paternal in its character. Every Russian peasant drinks it in from the first, for he gets his training in the Mir of his native village. It is there he learns what family and social rule really mean, and they are identical. His home is ruled by his father, the village by the elder; and everything is as constitutional and as democratic as it can be, or is anywhere else in the world. The children have their rights, but look up to and obey their father. ”

“ With the passing of the first Russian regiment away from Grovno they had guessed what must inevitably follow.
There were bent-over old women and men carrying packs on their backs like beasts of burden, and in truth the Russian peasant has been nothing more for many centuries. The children, who ran along beside them, were incredibly thin and dirty and hungry. ”

“ Even in far-away times the Russian peasant was impatient of too much control over his personal liberty and his property, and when he was not strong enough to resist or powerful enough to drive out the offending prince he did the next best thing—disappeared himself, with all his belongings, and founded a new settlement elsewhere. ”

“ Amidst all the storms and struggles through which Russia has passed, the peasantry have ever clung with marvellous tenacity to their land and to their ancient communal institutions; and all attempts to rob them of the one or the other have been met and frustrated by that dogged passive resistance which the Russian peasant possesses in such a pre-eminent degree. ”

“ Instead of the rich or noblemen absorbing the land of the peasants, we find in Russia the peasant commune succeeding tot he property of the baron. An average Russian peasant is by far more democratic and educated, irrespective of his illiteracy than an average farmer of the New World. He has the culture of the ages in his traditions, religion and national folk-arts. Russia has more than a thousand municipal theaters, more than a hundred grand operas, more than a hundred colleges and universities or musical conservatories. ”

“ The Russian peasant too murmurs loudly at times against the governors and their [Pg 131] subordinates when he is requested to do something that he does not like, but with a solacing reflection to himself that “The Little Father would put everything right if he only knew.” ”

“ The Russian peasant, when he rises, will prove more terrible, more pitiless than were the men of 1790. He is less intelligent, more brutal. They sing a wild, sad song, these Russian cattle, the while they work. ”

“ Up to the present day the American farmer has met the Russian peasant on the international market, either as small farmer, or as cultivator of the greater part of the landlords’ property. In this competition the greater economy of labor and the cheaper methods of transportation secured the prize to the American producer. From now on the mortgaged American farmer will have to stand the competition of the Russian capitalist. It hardly needs a prophet to foretell that the breakdown of the Russian peasantry will hasten the decay of small agriculture in America. ”

“ The Russian peasant is the ultimate master of the Russian Revolution, as the Bolsheviks are learning to their pain. Once I did set out, several months later, to invoke his help in escaping pursuit, but had to turn back. Uncle Egor lived in a very inaccessible spot, the railway line that had to be traversed was later included in the war zone, travelling became difficult, and sometimes the trains were stopped altogether. ”

“ The Russian peasant, supposed to be a grown-up and bearded cherub, lifting his eyes in adoration to his Little Father in the Winter Palace and his Big Father in Heaven, is discovered to have precisely the same desires as every other farmer in the world—that is to say, more land, and fewer tax-collectors.
Russian literature is a great literature, because it voices the hopes and resolves of a great people groping their way to freedom and understanding. ”

“ Thus are being laid the economic foundations of that Russia which must by its nature be a great peasant democracy, based on free co-operation of a multitude of small cultivators, working on their own land.
It is a country of a peasant democracy growing in all respects—both in quantity and in quality—and at the same time it is a whole world in itself. ”

“ Production for the international grain market is a phantastic dream of Russian “large agriculture.” The reality belongs to the peasant, who produces for home consumption. Large estates are in decay. Small peasant farming is spreading in all the dominions of the nobility. Economic development will compel the noble to cede to the triumphant ploughman the use of the land, while taking for himself the modest role of an absentee. ”

“ Our French allies have also taken a similar step by forbidding the sale of a very poisonous spirit known as absinthe. [24]
The Russian peasant can do little work during the long winter, when the land is in the grip of ice and snow, so that he has a long period of enforced idleness every year. Perhaps for this reason he does not love continuous work. But he can, if he chooses, do a large amount of hard labour in a short space of time. When, for instance, he is putting out a village fire, or working in the fields, or intent on finishing a job, he will work like an inspired giant. ”

“ The agricultural Russia is that steadily growing market on the basis of which Russian industry will develop. The Russian peasant democracy is still in swaddling clothes, and its development in the atmosphere of economic independence and political freedom will mean the growth of industrial culture throughout the Empire. ”

“ I remarked, "I am sure that the Russian peasant does, occasionally, murder with premeditation. He is a fine-tempered, much-enduring, admirable fellow, I admit, but he is human. He cannot be so different in this respect from all other races of men. Moreover, I have the testimony of a celebrated Russian author on my side." ”

“ Serfdom began later in Russia than in any other European country, and perhaps that fact excuses the Russians for being the last to give it up. Down to the eleventh century the peasant could move about pretty much as he liked. The land was the property of all, and he could cultivate any part of it as long as he did not trespass upon any one else. In many of the villages the land is still held on this communistic principle, and is allotted every year, or every two or three years, by the elders. ”

“ And both writers agree that the Russian peasant is essentially humane and gentle, and more humane than Europeans of the same class. He will calmly beat a man to death for stealing a horse, yet will also show a compassionate and generous hospitality that is tender in the last degree. ”

“ Although it causes a yearly deficit of 65.20, which must be covered through loans, and probably through the sale from time to time of their chattels, yet they are tax-payers, and contribute 8.00 yearly toward the expenses of the state.
In short, it is manifest that even the most favored classes of [57] the Russian peasantry are hardly able to make a living, however moderate, by farming on their plots. Hence the economic dependence of the Russian peasant, evidenced in various ways. ”

“ It would be much more satisfactory to one’s self to try and write a book about the peasantry of Russia, rather than attempt to say all that one wants to say in a single chapter, for there could hardly be any more interesting and promising people in the world than the peasant folk of Russia. The future of the empire depends upon the development and improvement of its agricultural population, as they form three-fourths, according to the last census of three years ago, of its grand total of over 171,000,000 souls. ”

“ No power on earth can deprive the peasant of the land now acquired, in the teeth of landlord and 302 Bolshevik alike, on a basis of private ownership. By a strange irony of fate, the Communist régime has made the Russian peasant still less communistic than he was under the Tsar. And with the assurance of personal possession, there must rapidly develop that sense of responsibility, dignity, and pride which well-tended property always engenders. ”

“ That the Russian peasant is by nature one of the cheeriest, the noisiest, and lightest-hearted of men is only another proof of the Creator’s power; for this dimly lighted “soul” has nothing to cheer him on his forlorn way but the memory of the last indulgence in strong drink and the hope of more to come. ”

“ We made the acquaintance of the real Russian peasant, and it gave us confidence later on when we knew that they were unanimously favourable to us, We also learned how to treat them and what to expect from them when our troubles with the Bolsheviks started. The peasants were to a man on our side in every town, village, and country spot. They are also fond of going shooting game. ”

“ The Russian peasant knows very decidedly that it is more profitable for him to live in one house with his father and brothers ; yet he Separates from them, builds his own cottage, and prefers to bear privations rather than obey his elders, or quarrel and have disagreement, " better but a pot of broth, and to be one's own master. " I think the majority of reasonable people will prefer to clean their own clothes and boots, carry water, and trim their own lamps, than go to a factory and do obligatory labour for one hour a day to produce machines that would do all these things. ”

“ So the Tsar told the peasant, "Tell your foundling that he is to come to me neither naked nor dressed, nor on foot nor on horseback, neither by day nor by night, neither in the courtyard nor in the street." ”

“ What the Russian peasant does in this country has nothing to do with the case except to show that removed from Russia he forges ahead. But the Russian who comes here is of a higher type than those of his fellows he leaves behind—he must be energetic, ambitious, adventurous, aspiring to better things to take the trip of his own initiative and to have acquired by himself passage-money. If he gets aid from relatives already here in order to make the journey, there are members of his family who have shown ability in getting ahead. ”

“ The Russian bourgeois was, for a long time, nothing but a peasant who had grown rich, while the noble was distinguished more by the number of his serfs and his authority than by his moral superiority. Deprived of independence, these two classes blended and still blend with the immense number of peasants who surround them on all sides and submerge them irresistibly, however they may wish to free themselves. ”