Part 6

I was interested in the attitude of the peasants toward their priest in a large village that we were about to evacuate. The Bolsheviki would be there shortly after we should leave, and as they were reputed frequently to shoot priests the military had arranged to take him with us. He had received for his worldly needs a house to live in, the use of some land which he and his wife had cultivated as peasants do, a certain amount of money, and certain ecclesiastical emoluments. When the committee of peasants came to settle with him they said: "You are favored above the rest of us. You are taken to a place of safety while we are left to the cruelty of the Bolsheviki. The first thing they will do will be to demand much food from us. After that they may kill us. So you must help with the food. You may take with you only eight bags of flour. You may not sell your hay. You may sell your cow, but not the yearling." There was no appeal, as this had all been decided upon by vote, in a meeting. They took no money from him, nor gold, as they are told the Bolsheviki do not consider gold has any particular value. They were careful to see that he left everything pertaining to the church.

Talking with the priest afterward, having helped him build a fence around "his" haystack, I asked him what he should do in the future. He said he supposed he would be assigned to another church, but he wished he could get a permanent job with the Y.M.C.A.

The sense of private property is very strong among these people. They are jealous of what they own, and normally acquisitive. These easy expropriations and confiscations arise not from an absence of interest in private property but from the presence of a strong sense of common right and communal responsibility. Private property is not so "sacred" as with us but the acknowledgment of common responsibility is more general.

I had occasion at one time to sell quickly about three hundred thousand roubles' worth of supplies. I took a hurried trip through a string of villages sending messengers to others, calling upon the president of the co-operative society in each, and within a week I had sold out to the co-operatives of twenty-two villages. My chief concern had been that these goods should reach the peasants at cost, and they did. Each co-operative gave me a statement showing the number of houses and of people in the village, and showed me a statement giving the amount of money that had been collected from each family as purchasing capital. The staples, such as flour, sugar, and soap, were mostly distributed among the houses within twenty-four hours. Every family was given the privilege of buying its quota whether it had put up any purchasing capital or not. These were their regular practices.

The meeting of all the peasants by vote determines many matters of minor as well as major importance. The president of the co-operative at Shamova told me that he had asked the meeting to permit him to buy sardines, but they had voted against it. He wanted some sardines for himself, but could not buy them in the name of the co-operative. Would I sell them to him individually if he would sign a bond not to sell any at a profit? One committee had come under instructions to buy only flour and sugar, and as I had to ration these out with other goods in order to dispose of my cargo quickly they had to row their great carbosse back in the wind and rain twenty versts and call a meeting of the peasants for revised instructions. Married women and widows vote in these peasant meetings. One committee came with fifty thousand roubles in its bundle, but with instructions not to spend more than half of it unless they could buy cloth.

It seems to me almost unnecessary to say that I have found the Russian people and the Russian soldiers scrupulously honest in all my dealings with them.

The difference between their standards of morality and ours has been often dwelt upon by our writers. This difference as I found it consisted in the fact that they talk about sex more easily than we do and think about it less vulgarly. I believe the peasant woman is as virtuous as the average woman anywhere. And an intimate acquaintance with thousands of soldiers throughout the winter has given me this belief. Attractive women are not so rare as to fully explain the unusually excellent medical reports of the N.R.E.F. And nowhere in the West has the family tie been stronger nor the family organization so rigidly maintained.

The war-weariness of these Russian people is beyond words to describe. They are not in any sense militant in spirit. They do not believe in war. Passive resistance they will resort to in a thousand ways and with rare cunning and courageous persistence, but organized warfare is not to their taste. Who rules Russia against her will or ideals from now on will have a rocky road to travel, and who looks to her for militant alliance is doomed to certain disappointment. I have had a Russian officers' club in charge for two months and can say from personal knowledge of these men that from colonels down they are utterly sick of war and distrustful of its consequences. Before I went to Russia I felt that Tolstoy had perhaps weakened the Russian spirit with his doctrine of non-resistance. Now I think he only gave expression to what is most common in the ideals of the Russian mind.

In politics the Russian people are amateurs. They do not know the game. Not our game. They do not understand the compromises that are essential to the democratic state. They cannot agree to disagree in amity. They are inclined to be dogmatic. Like our own youth they are in search of the absolute in truth and righteousness and frequently think they have found it. But no higher ideals are to be found in any people than the political ideals of these Russians, and their interest in politics is a keen and vital one. I have attempted a number of speeches on political subjects to Russian soldiers by the aid of an interpreter and have been gratified both because I was understood and because I was asked questions that indicated real intelligence in political matters.

I have witnessed a few peasants' meetings. At one the ownership of a horse was hotly contested. A woman found the horse astray in the woods. A boy claimed it, but it appeared that he had found it also only a few days before. It probably had been owned in one of the villages that had been burned in the fighting. The debate was loud and warm. The peasants ranged themselves on the two sides and under the force of argument some of them changed their opinion and so changed sides, arguing with each other. Everybody argued. There was never an equal division. But the Russian does not like majority votes. He insists on unanimity. There came a calm, and an old peasant stood aside and said that neither claimant had a good title to the horse, as its real owner might appear and claim it, but suggested that if the boy would pay the woman ten roubles for finding the horse he should hold it for six months and if by that time no owner should appear the horse should be given to the staroster as the property of the village. Everybody slowly went over to the old peasant and the question was settled. The boy refused to pay the ten roubles, so the woman paid ten roubles to him and took the horse.

I do not know that they always do justice in the management of their local affairs, but I am sure that if injustice is done everybody is clearly responsible for it, for everybody seems to take a hand in everything.

An American "Y" man said to me once that he thought the reason the Russians were so ostensibly fond of Americans was because they are so much like us. Perhaps there is some truth behind his remark, but in many ways they are decidedly unlike us, and not all these divergencies are by any means to their disadvantage.

I do not anticipate that their political development will parallel that of America. I do not see why it should, nor do I see how it can. Their national ideals cannot take form in the molds cast by Jefferson and Hamilton. And in their struggle for freedom and righteousness it is quite conceivable that they will evolve political forms and practices adapted to the modern days and conditions.

Military men who characterize the Russian peasant as lazy, indolent, and indifferent do not know what they are talking about. They do not see through the peasant's whiskers. They resent too strongly the peasant's aversion to the military profession. The peasant is no mollusc as they learn who have to do with him long. He will fight a long fight for his freedom, and fight it in his own way. And he will win it, may I predict, and win it so gloriously that light will shine once more again from the East even into the West.

Standing on the key at Archangel and waving farewells to the American soldiers who filled the decks and rigging of a transport slowly moving off with the current, an educated Russian friend said to me: "They are good boys, I am glad they came and glad they are going away. But now as never before Russia knows that she cannot be a second America. Now we do not want to be a second America. Russia must find her own way, for herself." He had to wipe tears from his face as he turned for a moment from the ship to say, "And you will go soon too?"

"Yes."

"But I shall stay here, and die fighting for Russia--fighting men who love Russia perhaps as much as I do."

THE END