IV
Essays on Peasant Sentiments
(The election campaign, from Zemstvo impressions, agrarian developments)
From Peasant Sentiments
From the parliamentary rostrum of the State Duma, Mr. Zabolotny assured us that he was speaking on behalf of the population of 3 million that had elected him in the province of Kamenets-Podolsky. Others spoke with more force, — “100 million Russian people will follow us”… When one of the peasant deputies responded to speeches like these by saying that they were appropriate at rallies but not in the Duma, it probably seemed to many that one of the Erogin peasants was speaking (maybe it was so) or it was someone from the “non-Party” group. Putting aside the question of who made such a discouraging statement and why, this observation should be taken seriously since it offers a healthy grain of protest against sweeping and exaggerated, meaningless and unsubstantiated statements. The question of the country’s mood, the mood of the broad masses, is one of the most important questions when establishing political tactics which, in any given moment, are recognized as most expedient. These days, revolutionary tactics are very often contrasted with tactics that are moderate, ordered, and cautious. Not to mention the fact that, in practice, there is no single “revolutionary tactic” but at least three of them. Moreover, the supporters of each of these are confident in the merits of their own tactics and are filled with contempt for the tactics of others. Judging things by their merits, one has only to delve into the content of some revolutionary slogans, rather than their showy outward appearance, to see that their revolutionary essence is very conventional and relative. In their understanding of what is revolutionary, many still remind us of the prosecutor of whom Lassalle said: “He cannot read the word ‘revolution’ without seeing a raised pitchfork in his imagination.” A partiality for the revolutionary word has reached the point that some publicists are already promising to defend the people’s cause not only according to the voice of conviction and conscience, but “according to the voice of conviction and revolutionary conscience” (underscoring by author). [V. Chernov, “Delo Naroda”, № 8]. If tactics are seen only as a means to achieve set goals, we believe that they will be more expedient, more flexible, capable of adapting to specific situations and conforming to the country’s actual frame of mind. It is hardly possible to settle the question of the country’s frame of mind according to its subjective mood, according to the mood of progressive elements within the urban population, according to letters from the provinces, received by someone or other, from someone or other. The mood of the country should be studied on the basis of authenticated facts and real life observations.
The cursory notes offered here are meant to communicate some facts and observations of peasant sentiments in Ukraine and are, of necessity, fragmentary. The writer has two sets of observations in this respect: the first of them was compiled from contact with peasants while working among them on economic councils, Zemstvo conferences, pre-election and electoral meetings, etc. The other is based on impressions of the so-called agrarian court proceedings, in which we were called to act as defence council.
The meetings of the Economic Council, attended by representatives from the volosts of the entire county at the invitation of the county Zemstvo Council, took place on the 1st and 7th of August and the 2nd of October, 1905. The subject of conversation at the first meeting was the agrarian question, about which one of the Zemstvo councillors made a detailed report. The report was followed by a very lengthy debate in which many peasants took part. The meeting ended with the adoption of a whole series of resolutions which, on the whole, coincided completely with the current programme of the K.-D. Party, only adding more specific detail to some points. At the same time, it was very characteristic that the peasants themselves did not bring the land question to the fore, but demanded that the first of the resolutions be a demand for general civil equality and for doing away with landed estates. One of the orators said, “First of all, abolish the estates. Then, this constitution — “a universal, equal, direct and secret ballot”, — then there will be land, but if not, there will be no land, and none of this needs to be written!!”. An attempt was made to defend the “literary quality” of the written resolutions which, as it seemed to some, would require a different arrangement of the material. But the peasants categorically demanded “that the reference to equality be put first”, saying that, otherwise, “nothing needs to be written”.
Less than a week later, the Economic Council (7 August), with the same membership, was already discussing the 6 August Manifesto and the Establishment of the State Duma. All of the shortcomings of the Bulygin Duma were explained in detail, but the peasants immediately adopted the view that they had to use the Duma for their desired goals. At once, they became fully confident in the possibility of meeting their needs through the Duma. They were little troubled by “legislation”. “When the Tsar calls for representatives,” the peasants would say, “then, of course, he will do everything those representatives say”… “If they didn’t want to do what the people want, then why would representatives be called for?” By August 7, we were already convinced of the extent to which the tactics of the so-called boycott would be unacceptable in the village. Subsequently, this conviction only gained strength. When the peasants were made aware of this tactic, they treated it as if it were utterly frivolous. And if the boycott tactic had any chance of interfering with the convening of the Duma, there was no power capable of persuading the peasants to give up their belief that this was an intrigue among “gentlemen” afraid of losing their lands. And yet, the call to boycott was at one time considered to be the most revolutionary of slogans!..
Over time, faith in the Duma only grew stronger. Just before Christmas, an emergency Zemstvo meeting was held which was supposed to consider the issue of a proposed expansion of the Peasant Bank’s operation, and the forming of commissions for this, with participation by Zemstvo and popular representatives. The county government again invited representatives from all regions of the county to join the commission in discussing this issue. And here, with a single voice, the representatives said: “no commissions are needed, many lived under the yoke, we will somehow live to see the Duma, let the Duma decide the agrarian question. We have no faith in the government of Durnovo and Trepov, let the Duma do the peoples’ work”. One representative revealed: “We did not want to choose. They said: we will choose the Duma; and then they chose only for the Duma, in order to say — we don’t need anything, but let them convene the Duma faster”…
Later, at pre-election meetings, we could not help but become convinced once more of the peasants’ extreme expectations with regards to the Duma. These expectations were based, for the most part, on that same thought: “When they call for representatives, they will probably do as the representatives say”. This thought forced a certain careful thoroughness onto the elections. The conviction was established that it was necessary to elect the poorest, possibly landless, peasants who, it was said, “are familiar with all the peasants’ needs”. Registering the peasants’ needs — this, in the opinion of the majority of peasants, was the Duma’s only task. With exhaustive thoroughness, creating a factual yet image-filled depiction, the peasant orators presented their needs at the pre-election meetings. If the peasants did not like something in the electoral law, it was not a question of degree: the need for direct elections was explained in detail (by the writer of these lines as well, by the way) and they agreed with this necessity but only in theory. As a matter of fact, they regarded it rather indifferently. But they spoke often and fervently about the necessity of each volost’ being represented. The possibility that the outcome of the election might leave a district without representation was frankly dispiriting. “Then we will be completely forgotten in the Duma”. The desire to have their own local representative was explained not only by the fact that he would be an intercessor for his own people, but also by the sense of responsibility that would connect that representative with his voters — fellow countrymen from the same volost’. “If he does not tell everything about our needs in the Duma, then he should not return home”… The aim of ensuring that a representative from their volost’ attend the congresses of landowners where, as a rule, the peasants, as representatives of small landholders, prevailed, led to the fact that elections were always in danger of not yielding any results. The representatives of every volost’ only marked their ballots for their own candidates. In the county of Chernigov, this led to the fact that no one was elected and the county was left without representation at the provincial electoral meeting. Even the well-known Zemstvo figure, V. M. Khizhnyakov, brilliantly elected as a commissioner by the small landholders of his volost’, turned out to be blackballed. Persuading people to abandon volost’ separatism has always been very difficult. After a whole day was taken up by pre-election meetings, we had to listen to the following proposal for electoral systems: “We will put one from each volost’ on a box — 10 boxes, and then [only 4 needed to be chosen] we will see whom God will choose for the ballot.” The desire to choose only peasants prevailed. Sharp notes of distrust sounded, not so much of class but of estates. Any awareness that demands must be made on those elected — to be capable of the work that the Duma must accomplish — was almost absent. The task of the Duma, as mentioned above, was not understood in the sense of legislative work. “The poor are better at telling you what hurts.” Contempt for the local nobility was transferred to the intelligentsia in general. The speeches delivered at the pre-election meetings were listened to with great attention; clarifications were asked for and additions suggested. But the most fervent speeches did not win complete confidence, the reason for which was perfectly explained by one peasant’s ingenuous question: “Why have we never been told all of this before”?..
It became necessary to elucidate the political conditions which had created the Chinese wall between the people and the intelligentsia. As soon as these conditions began to change, every effort was made to openly distribute socio-political literature among the population of the county on a relatively large scale. Representatives of the peasantry were invited to participate in the Zemstvo economic councils which discussed what socio-political tasks should come next. The economic councils had considerable success, and while almost no small landowners’ commissioners took part in the work of these councils, it is due solely to the fact that the most conscientious of them were “removed”* at the time of the election. [* The way in which this “removal” was carried out can be seen in the sketch below, titled “Dead Souls”.] The County Committee of the Constitutional-Democratic Party took rather vigorous measures to distribute party literature. All voters at pre-election meetings were given a copy of the Party programme and the brochure “What the K.-D. Party Wants”. The division between the intelligentsia and the people, created over centuries, will not be eliminated easily or quickly; it will disappear only with the complete fall of the currently still strong police-bureaucratic regime. And it would be tendentious or blind to reduce this observed phenomenon to something like a conscious manifestation of the “class struggle”.
The candidatures of those non-peasants who enjoyed fame in the district for their benevolent attitude toward the peasantry had some chance of success. In some rare cases, Zemstvo activity served to increase the fame and popularity of certain figures. Any news of administrative persecutions to which the candidate was or had been subjected greatly strengthened the sympathies of the voters. “He has already suffered for the people, so he is probably a sincere man”. Bearing the full weight of unrestrained and arbitrary administrative forces, the peasantry involuntarily sympathizes with those who are at odds with “administrative” types. At pre-election meetings, representatives of the K.-D. Party openly declared their affiliation with the Party, explained and defended the Party programme, and also nominated themselves for the electorship as Party candidates. The results they achieved must be considered highly satisfactory: out of 4 electors from the county — two Constitutional-Democrats were chosen (1 nobleman and the other, a peasant by birth and a representative of the 3rd Zemstvo estate) and two peasants unaffiliated with any political parties. At the same time, it should be remembered that in the composition of the electoral congress, out of 78 votes, 62 belonged to peasants.
Having currently placed all of its hopes in the State Duma, the peasantry formulates its needs in a definite and rather explicit manner. But it would be a great mistake to think that, relying on this explicit definiteness, it is possible to enjoy the peasantry’s approval of any strong action. Essentially, the peasantry is not given to compromise but, having almost no idea of the conditions of political life and the functions of the legislative process, it creates for itself a very primitive and extremely simplistic idea of political struggle and the work of the Duma. In a conflict between the Duma and the government, the peasants will only side with the Duma if the conflict is palpably clear to them and occurs on the basis of primary popular demands. They will strictly condemn any harsh or unreasonable tone. At a pre-election meeting at which 62 of the 78 voters were peasants, when someone spoke of the possibility of dispersing the Duma, the peasant orators raised the point that: “when the Tsar calls us to work, it is necessary that we work humbly, and then they will not order us to disperse”. An indication of a possible halt to the Duma’s work by the State Council prompted this comment: “We should try to work together with the State Council, without quarrelling. When they work to achieve what the people need, no Council will stand in the way. The Council must agree to what the people want”. The press has already expressed criticism of the Duma for delaying its meetings by one day so that the Chairman could be presented to the Tsar, reproaching Muromtsev for visiting Peterhof on 6 May. We contend that if this had not been done, then the broad masses of the peasant population would certainly have interpreted it as a rejection by the Duma Delegation, with its response to the Throne Speech. If anything can be explained to the broad masses of the peasantry in terms of the actual balance of forces and the real meaning of state institutions, then it is only with the use of object lessons. Over the past year, the peasantry has changed beyond recognition, its development has proceeded and is proceeding with giant strides but, nevertheless, the political consciousness of the broad peasant masses is still quite primitive. It is still impossible to predict which weapon will ultimately resolve the cause of Russian liberation, but in order for the peasants to join those who are fighting for the liberation of the people at this decisive moment, it is necessary that all current political tactics, and especially the position taken by the State Duma, conform to the peasants’ current level of political development and frame of mind. Often, the political development of the peasants, and the raising of their mood, can be promoted much more by the appearance of caution and moderation than by an active performance under the banners of the most militant slogans. A revolutionary phrase is powerless to produce an effect on the peasantry although, in certain cases, it is capable of causing excesses. But excesses, as a rule, are followed by absolute despondency and a very prolonged reaction. And this happens regardless of the repressions that the population is subjected to after any excesses. We know of a case — from the region which we were observing — when, after the destruction of the richest estate, even before the arrival of the troops and authorities, a crowd gathered and the most abominable lynching began. The participants in yesterday’s pogrom were merciless to those “instigators and main culprits” that were hunted down: 17 people were killed in the cruelest way…
Any practical politician needs to reckon with this kind of reality.
Dead Souls
Reality convinces us that dead souls are found not only in the great Gogol’s immortal “poem”, but also in modern “practice”, at least in administrative practice…
In October, 1905 in the Gorodnyansky District of Chernigov Province, stormy agrarian unrest took place, accompanied by the destruction of a number of estates. For almost two weeks, small bands of pogromists moved around the county completely unhindered. They were stopped near the town of Gorodny by the militia which had been organized by the Chairman of the County Zemstvo Council, and this ended the “movement”… (By the way, the actions of the Council Chairman were later declared to have been “wrong”). As is always the case in such circumstances, reprisals began. Revealing the true nature of everything that happened in the Gorodnyansky District in October, 1905 is still a matter for the future; for now we will raise only the corner of the curtain to reveal some highly characteristic things. In the middle of April, we happened to be in Chernigov on the day of the State Duma elections. At the Assembly of the Nobility building, where the elections were taking place, we met a peasant acquaintance from the Gorodnyansky District. He explained that he was awaiting the election results so that he could meet the elected deputies and hand over his Rural Society Congress’s verdict on the release of “innocent prisoners”… In the verdict it was explained that the Society was seeking the release from prisons of members who had been arrested for exile under verdicts of the same Societies, held in November.
The November sentences were declared the result of “misunderstandings” and “mistakes”… These new verdicts were submitted to the highest provincial administration but, of course, they produced no results: two waves of peasants were sent to the Turgai region, supposedly according to the sentences passed by Rural Societies. Looking through the lists of prisoners, according to the sentences of the Societies, we found among them names of peasants who were known to us from the Zemstvo Economic Councils that took place on 1, 7 August and 2 October, 1905. They were intelligent and conscientious peasants who defended the need for peaceful, planned reform [underscoring by author]… Their conscientiousness turned out to be objectionable to the administration. Now we have received some firsthand indications of what the “misunderstandings” and “mistakes” of the November verdicts on the eviction of “vicious” members of the Societies consisted of. These verdicts are simply false sentences. In the village of Tupichevo, the signatures on the verdict included several names of individuals who are deceased. The same was done in the village of Veliky-Listven when drawing up a verdict by the Pekurov Society. Moreover, the verdicts are signed with the names of living persons who were not present at the meeting. They claim that in the village of Kulikovka,18 signatories of the verdict are deceased. In one case, the sentence bears the signature of the person referred to in the verdict. We are no longer talking about the fact that the living everywhere were forced to sign sentences… There were many complaints *) and protests against the verdicts, but they were approved by the provincial offices and carried out.
Perhaps this is the fulfillment of the current “Cabinet’s” programme to resolve the agrarian question through “resettlements”… According to the established formula, it remains for us to inquire of the Messrs. Ministers of the Interior and of Justice: “Are they aware of these given facts and, if so, do they believe that lawfulness is strengthened by “dead souls?”
*) During the trial of one of the most terrible agrarian cases — the destruction and burning of the estate of M. Korvolsky-Grinevsky, Gorodnyansky’s Marshall of the Nobility — quite a number of witnesses described the use of intimidation in drafting eviction sentences, something which village gatherings were subjected to when Adjutant General Dubasov arrived. These same witnesses told the trial that subsequently sentences were drawn up almost everywhere which expressed remorse for the eviction of the innocent and a request for their return, but such sentences produced no results…
Agrarian Legal Proceedings
It is impossible to approach these unhappy dramas, the last acts of which we experienced in the courtroom as the so-called Agrarian Trials, without feeling the deepest agitation. The violent destruction of the Mikhailovsky farmstead, Tereshchenko, in the Glukhovsky district; the destruction, in one night, of a million-dollar business; the attack on the house of the managing director of Prince Abamalek-Lazarev’s estate in the Balta region out of anger over the murder committed during the nighttime “raid” by employees of the estate; a peasant guilty of damage to crops; peaceful agricultural strikes on estates in the province of Kiev; all this, summed up under Article 269 of the Legal Code at the behest of the Prosecutor’s Office, revealed a boundless sea of crying national need, inescapable grief, and nightmarish cultural helplessness. At the same time, as a rule, the more painful the picture of economic ruin, the more sacrifices of “justice” to Moloch are secured; Article 269 requires the presence of “motives” arising from “class enmity” or “from economic relations”. That is why both the indictments in agrarian cases and the accusatory speeches of prosecutors in agrarian trials often spare no embellishment when depicting the situations that give rise to “agrarian movements”. The writer E. N. Chirikov, speaking at the Glukhovsky trial in defence of the peasants, listened to the first part of the Prosecutor’s indictment and, turning to his colleagues on the defence bench with joyful excitement, said: “This is a speech for the defence!” Of course, the second half of the prosecutor’s speech disappointed the inexperienced defender. And in his first speech for the defence, the writer spoke of his bewilderment in the face of this strange situation in which desperate need is the best proof of guilt. The agrarian movement is a very complex phenomenon and the forms that its external manifestations take on are extremely diverse. It is in agrarian legal proceedings that one begins to comprehend the actual psychology behind these movements of dark and hungry masses. And then it becomes clear how pathetic the efforts are to find the movement’s “roots” in bundles of proclamations handed out by an unknown agitator, in the student buttons that gleam from under the peasant clothes of a casual passer-by etc., and how pitiful the means of “achieving calm”, invented by the bureaucracy in agreement with the landowners. “Achieving calm” is only possible through meeting the needs and raising the cultural level of the starving and disadvantaged peasant masses. Wise, intuitive people, truly the “best” people, have long understood the danger of inattention to the voice of the people’s needs. Even the Decembrist I. D. Yakushkin, while being interrogated by General Levashov, said: “The peasant question is a knot that must be untied by the government or otherwise, if forcibly untied, it can have the most ruinous consequences”. It is inconceivable that, in a single day and by all possible means, one can do away with the “ruinous consequences” that have come upon us at this most decisive turn in the State’s treatment of the peasant question, even if its power is passed on to the people. Sickness enters by the kilo, but health returns gram by gram. The results of predatory bureaucratic omnipotence will make themselves felt for a long time.
When we heard talk in the State Duma that “clever, learned speeches” are useless and that the representatives were elected not to study, but to “get things done”, and that if the “conversations” dragged on, then the people “will decide the agrarian question for themselves”, we were surprised most of all by the naive idea, suggested in these comments, that resolving the agrarian question would be easy. “We must get things done”, rather than delivering “clever, learned speeches”… Apparently, according to this view, neither intelligence nor learning are required for “getting things done”. After all, Mr. Engelhardt already finds a “grain of truth” in the fact that the revolution has no need of scholars, of “children of the sun”… (“Narodny Vestnik”, № 16). “The people will decide the agrarian question for themselves”… We cannot understand what is meant by these words since, in any case, the masses will once again join in a spontaneous movement and no “solution” to the agrarian question will follow. Social reforms require not only the chaos of destruction, but also the planned organization of the new. And our impressions of the agrarian legal proceedings convince us that nothing creative, conscientious, or constructive was contained in the convulsive explosions that set the dark and hungry masses in motion once the limit of human patience was reached.
In our cursory notes, we will attempt to highlight those slogans, those hidden mainsprings behind the movements which we were able to detect within the chaos of the judicial investigation into agrarian cases, to reveal their psychology, their degree of conscientiousness, as well as the world views of separate individuals and the masses. At the same time, we cannot completely omit a number of curious details of psychology, of everyday life etc., from our observations, details which often have no direct connection to the former. While these details may take something away from the systematic presentation of our notes, we believe that they will add additional interest and liveliness.
In the Glukhov trial, 165 peasants ranging in age from extreme youth to very old age — over 70 years old — and from different villages in the Chernigov, Orel, and Kursk provinces, were sitting in the dock. Among them was one girl, accused of taking a saucer and a mustard pot from the destroyed apartment of one of the factory employees out of “motives” stemming from class enmity or “economic relations”…
The pogrom at the Mikhailovsky farmstead was the last wave of the movement that reached the Glukhovsky district from the adjacent Orel and Kursk provinces. How it began, what reasons and grounds were behind the outbreak, were revealed in the testimony of various types of expert witnesses — the priest Rozhdestvensky, the Zemstvo head Kusakov, district police officers and their assistants — witnesses from the provinces of Orel and Kursk. Their testimony formed the basis of the indictment. The priest Rozhdestvensky, in his generally benevolent testimony, gave a gloomy outline of the peasants’ economic ruin and pointed out that there are no means by which to drive the hope out of the peasant’s head that all of the land will “go” to the peasants; this is what they are constantly thinking of, talking of, and dreaming of. “I read the August 6 Manifesto in the church and the same day, the peasants came running to ask me whether the old women were telling the truth — that the Manifesto about the land had been read?”. “The dream of land is absolutely ineradicable”. Three weeks before the start of the movement, a “proclamation” appeared in Salyny. (In the Glukhov trial, there was neither the original nor a copy of it; the expert witnesses described it to the court). The proclamation invited all of the people to “rise up” and “crush” the officials and landowners. Some witnesses reported that there was talk that “the gentlemen need to be burned and beaten and then they will give themselves up, and in the spring — we will plough where we want”. Here, this slogan, “beat and burn”, so that the landowners themselves abandon their farming, thus enabling the peasants to take up agriculture on the abandoned lands, is the only indication of expediency, of a conscious motive behind the movement. There is no hint of what will happen if two, or three, or even more “ploughers” desire to work the same piece of land once it is abandoned by the landowners. The question of distribution was not raised. Only the unique method of expropriation was mentioned — “beat and burn, then the gentlemen will give themselves up!..” To prove that their motives arose from “class enmity” or “economic relations”, the evidence of a witness-surgeon was entered into the indictment. During the pogrom, the witness met a woman who was dragging along an easy chair. “What do you want with that?” the witness asked. “What do I want? It’s wrong that only gentlemen sit on soft chairs, we will sit on them too; the gentry has lorded it over us long enough…” So, talk about land, an “ineradicable dream” about it, the slogan “beat and burn” so that the landowners would “give themselves up”, and the single, mutinous cry “the gentry has lorded it over us long enough” — that is all, or almost all that could be learned in this case, where the destructive forces of the movement have reached such a high level of tension. Along with this, the indictment recorded the fact that the peasants were sure that the order for the pogrom came from the authorities, even from the Tsar… How did rebellious slogans connect with this naive belief in a commanding order? The indictment, recording both, did not consider such a question. Meanwhile, the entire psychology of the active pogromists was a tangled ball of these intersecting influences: the hope that the “landowners will give themselves up” and the peasants will get the land, the raging element of destruction, and the confidence that there is an “order” from the authorities. In fact, in many places the elders and other rural authorities who directed people to go to the pogrom said that they were acting under orders from a higher authority and threatened any disobedience with severe punishment. What motivated these elders? Did they themselves believe in the existence of an “order” from the higher authorities? It is impossible to answer this question in the negative just because they did not have any written instructions in their hands. Rumours coming from a distance were most often exaggerated, almost fantastic, and gullibility based on ignorance assumed incredible proportions. The prosecuting authorities focussed a lot of attention on the incident of a conversation about the murder of the Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich and some revolutionary committee or other. Here they thought they would find the threads of revolutionary propaganda. And what was found out?
On the morning of the day that the Mikhailovsky factory was destroyed, when the plant administrators had already begun to flee due to rumours of approaching gangs of pogromists, the Novozybkov peasant Zaitsev appeared at the plant. Arriving at the workers’ barracks that morning, Zaitsev met some of his fellow-villagers and had a drink with them. In the evening, the tide of events caught him up and, apparently, he took an active part in them. (Zaitsev was accused by the Chamber, under Article 269, and also for arson, and was sentenced to 4 years hard labour). While the fire was still blazing at the Mikhailovsky estate, Zaitsev found himself in one of the neighbouring villages in the company of some “student”: together they came to a small shop and frightened the shopkeeper to death. Both were drunk, referred to themselves as “students” and addressed each other as “Pasha” and “Sasha”. Later, Zaitsev told the owner of the shop and a casual witness whom he forced to drink vodka, that it was they, the students, who had taken action and asked: are we in agreement? The witness Bykov said that, in a fright, he assented to and approved all of the actions of the “students”. Zaitsev then opened up. He identified himself as the son of the Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich and confessed that he had killed his “papa”. “How is it that God allowed you to commit such a sin?” his interlocutor asked.
“I killed him according to the law of the revolutionary committee and my mother visited me in prison and blessed me with an icon”. Zaitsev got a taste for playing the part and spoke nonsense, saying whatever came into his head. During the trial, we asked the witness Bykov whether he believed Zaitsev’s stories. Bykov answered, “He has the face of someone who seems to come from insignificant origins, but he speaks with wit”… The answer made it clear that the witness believed everything Zaitsev had told him. Bykov somehow still fled from Zaitsev and went to the MIkhailovsky estate, arriving when the plant was already burning down. He was met there by strangers who offered to sell him some kind of technical book for 50 kopecks. “I was terribly interested in buying it but, with God’s help, I refused”. The strangers then asked him: “And are you familiar with the letters S.-D.”? But Bykov did not know these “letters”. The strangers then revealed themselves to be gendarmes working undercover. They declared that they had suspicions about Bykov and arrested him. When Bykov was brought to the station as a prisoner and pushed into some room, he recognized Zaitsev among the others who had been arrested. “Who are you arresting”? Bykov said to the gendarmes, “This man killed the Grand Duke, but I have done nothing”. The story of Zaitsev’s behaviour in the neighbouring village gave Bykov his freedom. Zaitsev was not the only one telling Khlestakov-like, incoherent lies. Witnesses said that someone calling himself the son of Admiral Marakov claimed that “my papa was killed in the war, and I have to die for the people”… It was characteristic of Zaitsev that Bykov’s testimony at the trial disturbed him. During the break, he turned to us with a frightened look: “Well, what will happen to me for that, as if — I killed the Grand Duke”?. The “student” accompanying Zaitsev was not detained, although Zaitsev swore that the man was a peasant and his fellow-villager. The search for “students” was generally unsuccessful. One of the defendants, a peasant of 60 years of age, related that when he was detained with a cart loaded with a barrel of sugar, they “wanted to beat me and said that I was a student, but I had never laid eyes on those students before”… There were also testimonies in the Glukhov trial that someone rode a bicycle “skillfully”, played something on a piano, there were indications of the use of spontaneously combustible substances in cases of arson, but all of this, apparently, should be attributed to the confused imaginations of witnesses, amazed by the unexpectedness, spontaneity, and absurdity of these events. During the destruction of the managing director’s house on the estate of Prince Abamelek-Lazarov in the Balta district, there were some rebellious cries of “parasite” but they related mainly to the specific case of the murder of a peasant guilty of causing damage during the “raid”. One old man among the accused, when questioned at the trial by the chairman about his age, answered “at least 102, or 104, Your Excellency.” He walked ahead of everyone and shouted, “Kill the freemason!”. Then, according to witnesses, he “stormed” into the fireplace with a stick and shouted, “He’s here, look for the dog here!”.
And this centenarian demonstrated his “class enmity” at every step of the trial: “That freemason-dog twisted us into a ram’s horn”, he shouted where he sat, while witnesses testified about the attitude of the estate towards the peasants. In vain, the chairman explained to the old man that it was not advantageous for him to display his “feelings”. “He is a freemason, and he bought all of the witnesses,” the old man answered stubbornly, thus explaining the false testimony of the witnesses who were employees of the estate. And their testimonies were so inconsistent and false that the president asked one of the witnesses: “Tell me, for God’s sake, what is driving you to lie?” No direct indications of any kind of agitation were found during the Vinnitsa trial (the case of the attack against Prince Abamelek-Lazarev was tried in Vinnitsa). In the trials of agricultural strikes in Kiev province, only general references to agitation and proclamations were made because “since then, the proclamations have spread everywhere.” Not once during the agrarian trials were we able to establish any concrete role or influence of agitation coming from the outside. Agrarian movements, in all of their manifestations, have much deeper roots than accidental and extraneous influences. True, the Zemstvo chief Kusakov testified at the Glukhov trial that “depravity” is brought into the village by those who have been away for seasonal work and have participated in city demonstrations. “My peasants”, Mr. Kusakov said, “took part in the Yalta pogrom. Here, undoubtedly, we are dealing with a moment more serious than proclamations “to suppress landlords and officials”. “In the village,” Kusakov continued, “samovars appeared, and willfulness: they do not bow when we meet”…
A new mood has appeared in the village — the village has sunk to the final stages of ruin and poverty, and yet the authorities who are its “guardians” continue to speak of “my peasants”… Cultural helplessness and darkness leave their mark on convulsive agitation in the village, often bringing new and hopeless grief. And if the state does not come to the aid of the village, we will witness even more “disastrous consequences”… On the eve of the attack on the Mikhailovsky estate, a vodka factory about 20 - 23 versts away was plundered in the village of Khinelsk (Orlov province). At the time, the pogromists got so drunk that, according to one witnesses’s testimony, “not only the women and children, but even the pigs were drunk”. And even as the attack on the Khinelsk factory was underway, there was talk that it was the Mikhailovksy estate’s turn the next day. Rumours of the attack reached the MIkhailovsky estate and the factory administration fled in a panic. This decided the fate of the estate. When thousands of carts arrived at the Mikhailovsky estate from different directions, it was not worth any effort to defend individual warehouses, if anyone had even chosen to take on this mission. It was enough to say, “Move along!” and the robbers would leave. Almost all of the accused pleaded guilty; at least, in response to the Chairman’s question: “Do you plead guilty to…, etc.” — the majority answered, “I am guilty in the case of sugar”… The plant was burning, warehouses were looted, people from neighbouring villages came to the fire and went home with carts loaded with sugar, oats, flour… The inhabitants of the villages located along the road which the pogromists took to MIkhailovsky unanimously, and apparently quite sincerely, related: “Some groups of Russian people were driving through the village, shouting “Hey, you idiots, go to Mikhailovksy or we will come back and burn you all. They shouted, and terrified us, so we went”. Many frankly admitted that they went to see “the great fire” but when they got there, they saw that no one stood in the way of their taking whatever they needed, so they “loaded up”. One old man said, “I didn’t want to go, but my wife said — Go, go — some have already come back with sugar twice — I had to go”. Some doubted the lawfulness of taking the sugar, but their hesitation was resolved by the fact that “others will just take it, anyway”. “I’ll take it, I thought, and if I’m ordered to, I’ll bring it back”. One person took a barrel of sugar, and “then I took a few oats, so I had something to feed the horses when the authorities ordered me to cart the sugar back”. On the next day, as one of the accused assured the court, all of the accused grasped their “sin” and “children asked their parents why this sugar was not sweet?” One old man vividly described how he collected pieces of sugar that he found lying in the snow… And for this, at the age of 73, he ended up in a prison chain gang for 1 1/2 years.
A loathsome administrative reprisal began, carried out by Governor Khvostov of Chernigov and the Permanent Secretary of the Government Office M. N. Shramchenko. Witnesses described it in detail. One of them, a village elder, having finished his testimony, turned to the chairman with a question: “And, why did Your Excellency have me flogged”?
“Who flogged you?”
“The authorities, but for what, I ask, did they flog me?”
“Certainly they explained to you why”…
“No, they explained nothing: maybe they’d been drinking”… the elder guessed.
“Who had been drinking?
“The Governor, and the other officials.”
The Chairman put a stop to these ill-advised inquiries and explained to the elder that he could file a “complaint” if he felt he had been treated unfairly or incorrectly…
Whole gatherings stood on their knees for hours in the melting snow… A peasant, the intercessor for his fellow villagers, described the reprisals in a petition he filed with the Governor, using terms that are usually reserved for describing the Last Judgement.
“When the authorities arrived, the cattle bellowed, the children cried, and one woman hanged herself, although she was taken from the noose just in time, barely breathing… and those who had received corporal punishment were half-dead, not from pain, but from penitential terror”… When one peasant was about to be flogged, he said that corporal punishment had been abolished by Imperial Decree. “But the official shouted back that he had orders from the Tsar to do whatever he wanted. If he wanted, he could hang everyone”… It was not possible, in the midst of the judicial investigation, to establish who this official with such an “order from the Tsar” was. Among the witnesses in the Glukhov case, there were several who had been flogged during the administrative reprisal. Here was an orgy of humiliation and administrative arbitrariness which instilled in the peasants a respect for the law and the sanctity of property…
Presumably, the lesson was not in vain…
More Agrarian Legal Proceedings
Acting as a defender in Chernigov during the agrarian trials last June, we first became acquainted with a new kind of court, left as a monument to Akimov’s legislative work, — we are speaking of the Law of March 18 which transferred cases under Article 269 to the jurisdiction of district courts with the participation of estate representatives. This measure was due to practical necessity, for the judicial chambers were physically unable to examine all the cases of agrarian movements that swept rural Russia. In the Law of 18 March, it is the legislator’s “confidence” in estate representation in court that is worthy of note: in the Court Chambers, weight was given to Crown Judges (4 judges and 3 estate representatives); in District Courts with participation by estate representatives, the number of crown judges and estate representatives is equal (three each).
The general picture of Chernigov’s “agrarian affairs” is the same, long-familiar one of the village’s economic ruin and cultural helplessness which we sketched out in the article, “Agrarian Legal Proceedings”. But the affairs in Chernigov also introduced some new features that characterized the painful process of peoples’ lives, expressed in the so-called “agrarian disorder”. The factual side of these matters is not devoid of interest and this is why we devote a short note to them.
These events took place during the “October Days” of 1905. The indictment in the first case related that, “In mid-October of that year, in the village of Begacha in the District of Chernigov, rumours began to circulate among the local peasantry that the estate of the landowner and British subject, Liddel Morton, located in the named village, would soon be attacked by the peasants of Begacha and other neighbouring villages”… According to the estates’ administrators, the rumours were “fully believable”: in the neighbouring District of Gorodnya the agrarian movement had already flared up sharply in the form of a pogrom, uprisings had occurred in several villages in the District of Chernigov and relations between the peasants of Begacha and the Morton Estate administration were “hostile”. “The immediate reason for these hostile relations was that the owner of the estate had prohibited not only the grazing of peasants’ cattle in his forests, which were adjacent to the peasants’ lands, but even walking or driving through the estate’s lands and woods. This order, stipulated due to the village owner’s desire to protect the pheasants and partridges he artificially bred in his forests for hunting, greatly hampered the local peasant population”… However, the indictment did not fail to add that “according to the testimony of local police officials” — “the grounds for the destruction of the estate” were prepared by “revolutionary propaganda” that was circulating throughout the district. There was no other testimony about this “revolutionary propaganda” apart from a reference to the authority of the local police officials as “witnesses”… On 23 October, a crowd of local peasants invaded the forest adjacent to the estate where the partridges and pheasants were bred, drove the gamekeeper away and burned down his hut. In the following days, during the destruction of the estate, all of the birds that were in the forest, numbering several thousand, were driven out onto the peasants’ fields where they were exterminated. On the morning of the 24th, the owner of the estate left for Chernigov with his family, leaving behind the manager, clerks, workers, and servants. At midnight, an alarm sounded from the bell tower of the village church. A huge crowd of several hundred people gathered at the signal and began to make its way toward the Morton estate, armed with stakes and axes. Events served as illustrations to the couplet:
Here come the peasants with axes in hand:
Something terrible is approaching…
By morning, the attack on the estate was over and the crowd dispersed… The plundered property had been carted away, and the large, two-story house — “the palace”, which consisted of more than forty rooms, was burned. As the fire was being lit, the crowd plundered the wine cellar. By dawn, many were inebriated and some of the robbers were found in the courtyard of the estate at noon the next day, dead drunk. It is interesting to note that on the day before the attack, there was a “gathering” at which, contrary to the proposal to immediately destroy the estate, it was decided to send a number of elected representatives to meet with the owner the following morning and demand that land be allocated to local peasants for grazing livestock. In the morning, after the destruction of the estate, the crowd came to the distillery and announced to the plant administrators that the distillery “now belongs to the peasants of the village of Begacha” and that the peasants had chosen a new chief estate manager from their own midst who began giving everyone orders. On October 26, the Morton estate was occupied by troops from Chernigov which removed, as the indictment ironically states, all members of the “newly organized estate administration” from the surviving buildings. [The hearing regarding the case of the Morton Estate’s destruction was postponed due to the absence of important witnesses, and was heard in September.] The attempt to organize and transfer the management and ownership of an estate to the peasants, as was the case in Begacha, resembles the case in Loknyste, which reflects such an attempt in its purest form. In the Loknyste case, the initiators of the movement did their best to prevent the plundering of property; the raiding of the wine cellar was an incidental episode and the guilt of certain individuals charged with this theft has not been established. A staff of servants remained at the estate at all times, and understood perfectly well that the responsibility for any loss of property would fall on the shoulders of the illegal stewards. Besides, when the publicly appointed “governors” in a neighbouring village fled after the arrest of the “chief governor”, the estate was left without a manager. A certain amount of time passed before the return of the official administrator, along with the authorities and their troops. Robbery was not included in the plans of the movement’s leaders.
When one of the prominent participants in the Loknyste case saw that the crowd had entered the courtyard of the Kaptsevich estate (whose owners, by the way, live almost exclusively abroad) and was stealing apples that had been brought up from the cellar, he shouted: “What are you doing!? We came to establish equality, not to rob”. Another exhorted the crowd: “For God’s sake, don’t touch anything. We will end up being responsible if anything gets taken away”… From these words it is clear that the leaders were convinced of the legitimacy of their actions and did not expect to be held “responsible” for them. The crowd that gathered at the estate arrived at a verdict that the estate would become the property of the entire community of Loknyste. By the same verdict, officials of the “newly organized administration” were appointed. There were conversations about where the public school should be located, and where the “democratic union” should be… The maid who had served the estate remained; they tried to dismiss her but after she declared that she should receive compensation, they left her alone. The cook was told that she was needed by the new management… The new management lasted 6 days, and the business of the estate was conducted, perhaps, not as “economically” as under the old order: in his speech the prosecutor insisted that under the old order, 3 pounds of lard were consumed per day, while the new administration went through about 80 pounds in 6 days. But it was certified by the servants of the estate that lard was given out to everyone who came and expressed a desire to eat. In any case, the new administration kept accounts of income and expenses and took note of all their spending.
According to the indictment, the story of the Loknyste estate’s take over, which occurred on 20 October, can be traced back to the May demonstrations. These were organized by locals on 19 April and 1 May when they decorated their boats with red flags and sailed up the Desna River to the estate. In the words of the indictment, the demonstrators were “defiant”, arriving at the estate without permission, ridiculing the estate manager, and making demands that the practice of labour for land be abolished and that rental prices be reduced. At the same time, they said that if their demands were not satisfied, there would be a “riot”. Both the May demonstrations and some other facts of the Loknyste case were, however, very poorly covered during both the preliminary and the judicial investigations, undoubtedly indicating some external influence of what the language of protocol calls “revolutionary propaganda”… If one compares the Begacha case with that of Loknyste, it must be admitted that the influence of propaganda led to a softening of the movement’s severity. I repeat, the facts of this propaganda and its ideological content were not elucidated with sufficient thoroughness during the trial. The chairman of the court hindered attempts at such elucidation in every possible way, insisting that since the defendants were not accused of a political crime, there was no need to establish the role played by political propaganda (!). [Underscoring by author] Meanwhile, even the indictment — as evidence against one of the defendants — cites two empty wine bottles from the Loknyste estate wine cellar and revolutionary literature found during the search… The composition of this “revolutionary” literature, taken from a peasant during a search by a policeman, is interesting. Among the finds, along with a description of the revolt on the “Potemkin” (Iskra Publishing House), there were quite a few sheets from (the newspaper) “Donskoi Rech’” which had been passed by the censors and 2 copies of a leaflet titled “What Is the Zemstvo?”. We asked the policeman, who appeared as a witness, what guided him in selecting this literature? and received the following reply: “If I found anything that was anti-government, I took it away.” The policeman evidently found that any printed material in the hands of a peasant was anti-government. But the chief of the gendarmes directorate also did not rise above such a view, and forwarded all of the selected “anti-government” literature to the judicial investigator. A gendarme’s covering letter was added to the collection and it was filed among the case papers. We are dwelling on this seemingly small fact in such detail because it testifies so loudly to one of the main reasons for the painful outbursts of popular movements which, even according to the administration, are based on the people’s needs *). Until now, they have not yet come to accept the powerlessness of police custody; until now they still look upon the people, at best, as they would a child, for quite often they see them as they would “cattle” that must be whipped to be controlled… They keep people in the dark and are then surprised when, driven by a loss of patience, the people sometimes act like savages and, with their convulsive campaigns, only tighten the noose around their necks. They fear “propaganda” like they fear fire, and want to eradicate, at once, both “revolution” and all other kinds of thought. Meanwhile, the Loknyste affair testifies to the fact that “propaganda” carries with it a clearly beneficial influence. The details of the case are full of naivety and fantastic nonsense but, after all, the step dictated by reality must be taken so that the people’s right to enlightenment is recognized: it is necessary to give them the opportunity to know what a zemstvo is, what a state is, and much more besides. Then the peasant struggle for land and freedom will proceed in a more natural and lawful way. This argument is basic to the point of banality. The agrarian movements did not start yesterday: government authorities responded with reprisals: judicial scorpions, administrative scorpions, Cossack whips — all this fell on the heads of the disadvantaged peasantry. And what of it? — every time the punishing sword of justice fell upon the guilty, something happened that is so beautifully depicted in the epic “Why the Russian Heroes Were Turned to Stone”.
“The heroes boasted of overcoming “an unearthly power” and two warriors appeared before them, challenging them to battle. Alyosha Popovich ran at them and hit them with all his strength.
“Now there were four of them, and all alive”… Dobrynya-the-Good flew at them.
“Now there were eight of them, and all alive…” The heroes flew at them all together — “They began to trample, to slash” and “their strength still grew, and grew, and everything went with the knights in the battle”…
“No matter how often their swords slashed,
How often their good horses trampled,
— Their strength — kept growing, and growing,
Everything goes with the knights in the battle”…
The punishing sword of justice and administrative punishment and the whips of the Cossacks have called forth — “an unearthly power” that threatens the state with ruin… We must stop thinking about suppressing the “riot”; salvation lies in opening the way for a natural, legal campaign. Pushkin said, “God forbid that we will see the Russian revolt — senseless and merciless”. All of the state’s domestic policies pushed the people to this “revolt”. We saw the senseless, we saw the terrible and, with horror, realized that mercy was not deserved… One witness in the Loknyste case related in muffled tones that a visiting propagandist, of course “almost a Jew”, said among other things that “autocracy was not needed”… There was a time when this would have sounded like an earthquake in the ears of the police. Times change… No matter what the propagandists say, no matter what unrealizable dreams they instil in the minds of the people, they will never desire those horrors that can only come out of impenetrable darkness… Unrealizable dreams are not dangerous if living conditions are normal. Illusions fade, while realism triumphs. They take up axes and arson only in savage darkness, in hopeless despair. More light must be brought into the darkness of the people’s lives!
During the two days of the Loknyste trial, we spoke frequently with the accused and with witnesses in the case: the latter were separated from the accused only by the “coincidences” of fate. Most of the witnesses signed the “verdict” on the transfer of the Kaptsevich estate to the peasants. In all of our conversations, we ascertained an ardent faith in the State Duma, which has become the focus of bright hopes…
Recalling these conversations, we clearly imagine the impression that the dissolution of the State Duma must have made on the peasants. “Our government is the Duma” —- the peasants of one village in the Chernigov district decided after the dissolution of the Duma, and even though it was dissolved, it is still — “our government”… They write to us about their resentment, the insult and the challenge — effects produced by the Duma’s dissolution. One correspondent from Chernigov wrote to us saying, “Rodichev said the Duma could not be dissolved, that the Duma would accomplish its task!..” — “The Duma was dismissed, but the Duma did accomplish its task. It rises to its full stature in the eyes of the most unobservant philistine”… But it is obvious to everyone who knows the palpable mood of the peasants that the dissolution of the Duma again opens up the possibility of acute excesses against which the administration, the courts, and the Cossacks’ whips will be powerless. The dissolution of the Duma poses a serious threat of cultural crisis…
*) Here, we completely omit any characterization of the dire poverty in the cases of both Begacha and Loknyste, which is well-documented by numerous statistics. In general, the picture of the peoples’ ruin is well known and the statistical data from the villages of Begacha and Loknyste, alas, do not represent anything out of the ordinary. The witnesses in the Loknyste case were quite unanimous and harsh about the fact that the estate manager “tore the skin” from the peasants. One of the main defendants also spoke about this in his closing statement. The presence of the motives required by Article 269 was thus undeniable.