Читать книгу The Red Reign - Kellogg Durland - Страница 9

Table of Contents

A Cossack village—An exhibition of horsemanship—An accident—How Cossacks are trained for service—Cossack local government—Basis of Cossack loyalty—Their attitude toward massacres—Cossacks of the Caucasus, like other tribes of the mountains, still unconquered—Back to Vladikavkaz.

HERE is nothing straggling about a Terek Cossack stanitza. The houses run as a line, east and west, north and south. A paling defines the line. Without the pale is the steppe and the forest, within is the village. There are no scattering houses to mark that the village is near. The fence surrounding the village like a kraal is broken at either end of the village by a huge double gate.

A sentry stood by the right gate-post as we entered the village of Terek, in the Province of Terek.

Over under the arch the wood seemed lost in a stretch of bog. Mud, black and oozy, tempted heavy pigs from the house yards, where they are wont to wallow. Pigs are not confined to pens in Russia: they run loose like dogs and chickens. But this is Russian and not characteristically Cossack. Narrow paths edged the house fences and people passing on foot worked slowly along this less muddy marge, sometimes clinging to the fence lest a misstep land them in muck, ankle deep, or, not improbably, knee deep.

A Cossack house

Interior of the above

Our wagon clung to the narrow pathway also. A wheel once sunk in the soft, black depths of the road would be difficult to free. Turning to the right near the center of the village we approached the great square, which, so I soon learned, is invariably the heart of the villages of the Mountain Cossacks. The distance from side to side was fully two hundred yards. In the square, somewhat to one side, the church. A large, white church with domes and turrets painted green, and these surmounted by crosses of gold which caught the glint of the sun and seemed to crackle with flashes of golden light, like some heliograph left exposed, but uncontrolled. The largeness of the square in so small a village amazed me. And I wondered why so large a free space was left. There was no paving here, but the earth was hard and trampled as by the hoofs of many horses. As we drew nearer, a neat iron railing, painted green, set upon a brick foundation and encircling the church, caught my eye. A furious clanging of bells, wild, loud, disordered, proved distracting. Then the church doors seemed to belch forth people—women and girls mostly, with a few old men. The girls were bedecked with color, as bright and varied as girls in an Italian village. Gaudy yellows and deep oranges, startling reds and soft blues. Kerchiefs, scarfs, and aprons. The horses were stopped that I might watch the procession. It was a pretty sight. Twenty or more came in a party toward the street where we were halted, and I hastily made ready my camera. They passed us within a few yards and I stepped to the ground, that I might gain a better focus. As I looked into the finder, a piercing shriek from one of the girls startled me, and looking up I saw the entire group start madly down the road. Whether they mistook my camera for an infernal machine, I do not know, but their alarm was genuine. Some young Cossacks who were standing near laughed boisterously and pursued the girls and brought them back. When they had been made to understand what it all meant, they were highly pleased, and they stood round in all kinds of groups to be photographed. When I secured as many pictures as I wanted we continued across the square, and passed two high, heavy, wooden doors that barred the entrance of a yard. This was the home of my guide. A comely buxom girl of about seventeen, with red cheeks and eyes as blue as my guide’s, threw open the great doors, and we drove into a confusion of sledges and carts, broken hayricks, horses, cattle, pigs, and dogs. A more untidy yard I never saw. Cows and pigs adjusted themselves according to inclination. Mud, filth, straw, littered the whole place.

The yard was a small enclosure. A paling ten feet high on the side where we entered. On the right a house of stone and mud, whitewashed, with a thatched roof, an ornamented ridge pole and elaborate gables. A singular place to look upon. On the left a similar house. Immediately ahead, opposite the entrance, a crude shed with simple plank and railing stalls for horses and cattle. Two strong housewifely women stood on the porch of the house in the light, watching our entrance. Their sleeves were rolled up above the elbows, and their arms were folded—heavy, muscular arms, developed by constant toil. They greeted us kindly, even warmly, and bade us enter. Within I started in veritable surprise. The little kitchen with its Russian oven and sleeping box above for the young and the aged in one corner, a home-fashioned bed in another, was as clean as a drawing-room. Scrubbed, dusted, polished. The big brass samovar on the table shone like a door plate. Three icons were secured to the wall in one corner, next to the ceiling. Before them the perpetual light was burning, the oil cup suspended from a nail driven into the ceiling. After the filth and mud of everything in the yard, and the village, the cleanliness of the three simple rooms which made up the house was marvelous. They were models of household industry.

If it had developed that this condition was due to any special reason, or was in any way exceptional, it would not merit this notice. But our coming was not announced. In the afternoon I visited many houses in the village with my guide, who was now my host, and in nearly every one I found a similar degree of cleanliness. During the following days I visited homes in other stanitzas and cleanliness within the house, if not universal, was at least the rule. Since then I have been in so many Cossack homes that I know a typical one. Of the Terek and Kuban Cossacks my host’s house was fairly representative. In design and arrangement, in cleanliness, in the food we ate, it was neither better nor worse than the average. It was typical. Hence the minute details of my visit here may be taken as a description of an average household. In nearly every Cossack house in the Don country, as well as the Caucasus, one room is set apart as a sitting-room, or living-room. This room is left spotless. Flowers brighten the windows through the winter, and often tidy muslin draperies screen, or partially screen, the beds. Icons, elaborate according to the riches of the household, adorn the walls, one invariably across one of the corners and close to the ceiling, and others on the walls on either side of the center-piece. The ever present samovar with its cheery companionableness is always in evidence.

An hour after our arrival my host and all his family were transformed by a change of costume. The rough, home-made coat and worn shirt and the ancient cartridge-belt all disappeared, and instead he donned a cream-white tcherkaska, trimmed with blue. It was a very long garment, and hung to his ankles. This was evidently reserved for very special occasions. Indeed it could not be worn many times without becoming hopelessly soiled. He also brought out a special dagger and attached it to his belt. It bore an elaborate ornamentation in hand-worked silver of Circassian design and workmanship. Most of the arms worn by the Mountain Cossacks are obtained from their Circassian neighbors.

In the afternoon my curiosity regarding the great square was appeased. My host sent for his friend, the riding-master of the Cossack recruits, and he, desirous of doing what he could for the stranger, proposed a “jigitoffka,” or exhibition of horsemanship. At this I expressed my interest, and a messenger was sent to summon the young Cossacks left in the stanitza. They are famous horsemen, the Cossacks, and from their very cradles are trained to the saddle. The dexterity of some of the riders was quite remarkable. The first exhibition was a so-called “attack.” The riders divided into two ranks and charged each other at full gallop, separating just before they met, barely enough for the ranks to go through each other. Once two of the horsemen miscalculated and the horses came fairly together, one of them going over like a horse of wood. The riders remounted and continued their sport. After the men had got well limbered they went on to more difficult feats—leaping from the saddles, while the horses were going at full gallop, and then remounting; springing from one horse to another; riding double; one rider carrying another who was supposedly wounded. Snatching up coins from the ground, while a crowd of men, women, and children

Outside a Cossack yard

My Cossack driver at home with his family

stood by urging the horses to greater speed. The interest in these performances soon became most intense and I found myself, quite unconsciously, cheering as lustily as if it were a Varsity football match.

One trifling incident revealed a trait of Cossack character that would scarce find approval in England or in America. A young Cossack, reaching for a coin on the ground, almost succeeded in grasping it, but he lost his balance and fell to the ground amid the loud jeers of the people. Jumping to his feet he ran back to where the coin lay, picked it up, and ran off with it. The crowd laughed uproariously at this and did not call to him to come back with the prize thus unfairly captured. A moment later another rider failed completely in snatching at another coin which was thrown down, and he threw himself from the saddle and secured the money. This was a little strained, it seemed to me, so I asked a man near me why the crowd did not protest, and he answered: “Once a Cossack gets his fingers on money he never lets go. It does not matter how he gets it.”

There were several accidents. In no case was the slightest sympathy manifested toward the injured man. Once, when a man fell from his horse and was stepped on, the crowd laughed and even jeered as he dragged himself off. In another instance a young fellow of not more than twenty lost his balance while reaching for a coin on the ground. As he fell his foot slipped through one of the stirrups, and he was dragged several yards, and in full view of us all the horse stepped squarely on him. The crowd laughed uproariously at this and one old woman toddled up to him and handed him a rag with which to wipe the blood from his face. But she did not offer to assist him. The poor fellow was left quite by himself and after a few minutes I saw him climb slowly on to his horse and canter off. That evening I inquired about him and was told that he was all right. The men expressed surprise that I should have thought of him. About nine o’clock, however, he was brought in to me. “He is much worse than we thought,” said the men who brought him, “and there is no doctor within twenty versts.” They laid him on the bed, and upon examination I found the print of a hoof clearly on the man’s face, his nose being crushed flat to his cheeks. He complained of his chest, so I loosened his clothing and found another hoof-print. This one not so clearly outlined, nor was the skin bruised, but there was swelling and inflammation, and, as nearly as I could discover, two ribs broken. The nose I could do little about. It looked to me as if a very considerable amount of skill, and certainly instruments, would be needed to set it right. The ribs I was able to set, however, and, with poultices and massage, to reduce the inflammation and relieve the sharper pain. I found this injured Cossack every bit as susceptible to human pains as the rest of men, and every bit as appreciative of the little relief which I was able to give him. Their games are of the roughest and thus are they trained to that bigger game which is their life, the war game, but their feelings and sufferings prove them normal. The government of the country, as well as their local customs, encourage the most brutal sports, and roughest treatment of men, for the crueler and more callous they are the better soldiers do they make.

Each Cossack stanitza is provided with a government riding-master, who drills young Cossacks in rough riding. All young Cossacks eligible for military service are obliged to spend one month each year in rigorous training, so that when the call to arms comes to them they shall not be like new recruits. A Cossack soldier is never a recruit, really. He enters the service hardened by the experience of much training—and with the blood and spirit of the Cossack free and easy soldiering urging him to meet the expectations of his masters.

During the two days that I lingered at this village I found the meals were jolly times, though the food was neither delicate nor varied. The women did not sit at table with us, though in other houses I sometimes saw the women and men eating together. Nor did the children have places with us. The season being Lent, when a strict fast is prescribed, there was no meat on the table. Black bread, cakes of maize and chopped cabbage were the chief foods, followed by a kind of pie or tart. This consisted of an upper and lower crust with preserved grapes between. Tea was drunk freely. Likewise a light beer. Before meals, vodka. It must not be gathered from this, however, that moderation in drinking is the rule. When I asked several men if they were fond of drink, they laughed and replied: “We drink vodka at a birth, at every feast, during every fast, at every marriage, and every meal.” There appear to be no sentiments whatever with regard to temperance. There is a famous Cossack ballad ascribed to a Cossack leader named Davidoff, which runs,

Happy he who in the strife

Bravely, like a Cossack, dies.

Happy he who, at the feast,

Drinks till he can’t ope’ his eyes.

One man explained to me, when I was questioning him about Cossack massacres of Jews, that when the Cossacks were called upon to do particularly disagreeable work, that it was customary for them to get drunk first. Vodka looks like simple water or gin. The taste, to me, is of wood alcohol. It is gulped rather than drunk, as is an ordinary beverage, consequently vodka drinkers seek only the effect. It is slightly warming, though not so strong as whisky, being only forty, or little over forty, per cent. alcohol. The effects are marked. First a warming, then a numbing, dulling sensation. In excess it produces wild hilarity and jocularity, and intensifies the passions. In later stages it besots. Vodka drinkers soon become overpowered by sleep. This is why so many drunkards in Russia lie about the streets. Overcome by drowsiness they sink into sleep wherever they fall. The Cossack looks upon excessive drinking as his prerogative. Drink and plunder were what his ancestors fought for and in this the Cossack of to-day has not much altered. In the Don country the Cossacks are of distinctly inferior race to the Mountain Cossacks. There I saw excessive drinking among women as well as men. In the Terek and Kuban I saw none. This does not mean that it does not exist, but simply that I did not see it, and, therefore, it is probably less common.

In the late afternoon my Cossack host announced that it was time for him to attend the local Duma meeting, and I was invited to accompany him. It was held in a small building at one corner of the great square, and was attended by all the males resident in the stanitza, and then at home. There are always many young men absent from the Cossack stanitza, owing to the military obligations which fall upon them all.

The meeting was conducted not in the building but in the yard behind. As nearly as I could follow the proceedings they were as follows: The ataman, or chief, who is elected by popular vote, stood upon the steps of the building and addressed the “meeting,” which was gathered about him. The ataman announced the topic to be

Cossack women on frontier duty in the Province of Assouri

discussed and stated his views. He then retired and little knots of men discussed the matter with greater or less vehemence. Standing apart, the scene looked like a score of little meetings in one. After a lengthy wrangle a vote was taken and the matter ended. It was all very primitive, but very like a New England town meeting. In main features and principles I could discover no difference.

One matter that came up for discussion was the cutting of wood from the stanitza forests. My host was one of those elected to do this work.

The land belongs to the stanitza. When a lad becomes of age he is given his share. This may be used by him as he chooses, either for agriculture or grazing. The lands owned by the Cossacks originally were so vast that each Cossack had more than enough for his needs. But of late the stanitzas have been growing more rapidly and there has begun to be complaint from the Cossacks that they have not enough land. The average amount held by each Cossack is several times greater than that held by the common peasants, or muzhiks, but in many places the stanitzas have been obliged to re-allot the land and to cut down the individual allotments in order to supply those just coming of age. In some sections the land thus allotted is held through life, and at death it reverts to the stanitza, though provision is made for the widows. In other places it is re-allotted at the end of every few years, or even annually. Greater system exists among the Terek and Kuban Cossacks owing to the penalty of death which was long imposed upon the Don Cossacks for engaging in agricultural pursuits. This was many generations ago and only the effects are now found in the economic organization of the Don Cossack life. When the Don Cossacks were increased by serfs and others who fled, or emigrated, from Russia, people who had been accustomed to till the soil, this old idea gave way and more and more the Cossacks of the Don have been engaging in husbandry. To-day there is a large export of grain from the Don country as a result of the cultivation of the steppe by the Cossacks.

The splendid physique of the men, the strong wholesomeness of the women in my host’s stanitza, won my complete admiration. I have never seen a better average of the human animal. The weak, or sickly, if they existed, remained at home and out of sight. There was, too, a geniality, a cordiality, which little suggested the proverbial brutality of the Cossacks. On the Sunday afternoon the young people of the stanitza congregated together at one corner of the great square and sang folksongs. They have rare voices, the Cossacks, and from across the square the sound of their combined voices was thrilling. The picture they presented was a gay one, for the girls without exception wore dresses and scarfs of brightest colors.

My host was as good as his word in taking me to call among his friends. We went into houses in every quarter of the village, drank tea, and, through my interpreter, I told them about that far off place which to them was but a mysterious name—America. The stories of darkest Africa which were told me as a child never fascinated me more nor seemed more wonderful than did the things they heard about America seem to them. In every house I remarked upon the cleanliness of the interior. The floors in the crudest houses were scrubbed and polished, and the assortment of holy pictures near the icon was in some instances quite astounding. They were always pleased when I noticed their icon and holy pictures.

I tried never to lose sight of the fact that I was among “Cossacks,” but I must confess that this often required an effort. The kindliness of the men, the hospitality of the women, was constantly giving the lie to the traditions of these heartless people. Whenever I could I asked the men to tell me of their exploits—their soldiering, and of massacres and pogroms that they had taken part in. They would always relate these experiences in a matter-of-fact way, emphasizing that they did what their officers told them to do. Their disputes with their own neighbors—the Circassians, Ingoosh, and other Caucasian tribes—they viewed differently. These half-civilized people who live by brigandage and raiding they deemed it a mere matter of course to kill whenever they got the chance. On the other hand, they regretted that they were sometimes sent to massacre women and children, but, as the riding-master explained to me, it was the will of the Czar. That is one of the terrible things of czardom. In the name of the Czar are perpetrated the foulest deeds ever conceived by the diabolical minds of men. “It is a point of honor with us,” said the riding-master, “to obey. We are given our lands free. We have much freedom and many privileges—and in return we give our services. It is not our business, these massacres and pogroms. It’s the Czar’s. He gives us what we want and we in turn give him what he wants.”

“If your officers commanded you to run through school-children with your saber, would you do it?” I asked. The man colored perceptibly as he answered:

“Certainly. I would obey.”

Others in the room hastened to add that they would not do such things of their own accord, but only at the command of their officers, whom they were sworn to obey, or unless they were well plied with vodka.

The morning I left this stanitza a snow-storm was raging and our progress down from the Cossack plateau to the plain below was slow and labored. Part way down we passed another Cossack stanitza, and at the suggestion of my blue-eyed driver we halted here for a time to rest the horses and call on two or three of his friends. One man was building himself a new house. For the materials and workmen whom he was hiring he was paying five hundred rubles—two hundred and fifty dollars.

This brief experience among the Cossack villages I later followed up by visiting other villages in different parts of Russia—in the Kuban in the territory of the Don, in Orenburg, and in Siberia—and my conclusions in regard to Cossacks in general are summarized pointedly: The Cossack is a survival of medievalism, kept alive only by a government which finds it to its interest to employ medieval methods against its own subjects. After the Russo-Japanese war the Cossack will never again be relied upon in regular warfare. He won’t do. But as a particularly severe and drastic policeman, he is better than any one. Where there is an unarmed mob to quell, or crowd to disperse, where there is a village to “pacify”—there send the Cossack. If the job happens to present difficulties, dole out vodka to the Cossacks and they become dare-devils. But devil-may-care methods are no longer effective against a regular army. The Cossack is not scientific, and therein he fails. His hour has struck. Another generation will know him not. For several hundred years the Cossack has continued to maintain his own, but for such methods as his the twentieth century has no place.

I found the Cossacks of the Caucasus splendid raw material for the development of good citizens. They are physically strong and good. They have dash and daring. Their home life is clean. They have a superstitious

Orenburg Cossacks—a family group

(Not posed for the author)

loyalty to God and to the Czar—so long as the government continues to give them their land free, and attempts to exact no other tax from them than their military service, which they now render because it is a tradition among them.

The Cossacks are to-day as much of an unconquered people as the tribes of the Caucasus—or of Central Africa. But they are not of the same aggressive character as the other Caucasus people. They must be conquered by diplomacy. The Cossacks will not submit easily to a yoke, and not at all to a yoke which gives them no interest or occupation in life. To-day Cossack towns have neither mills nor factories. They are purely rural communities. They cannot subsist on this alone, and the young Cossacks who are ready for military service will not readily change their outlook and take up the peaceful pursuits of the farm. The wandering spirit is in his blood as much as in the blood of the gipsies. Yet he is so purely a survival of the past, maintained until the present time by so absolutely an unnatural system and combination of circumstances, that the continuance of his existence is unthinkable.

My observations would indicate that the Cossacks have all the elements of a strong and wholesome people. Their cruelty is the result of generations of encouragement, on the part of the Russian government. In one city, at the time of the barricades, a fear-crazed mob rushed forward with bared breasts, yelling, “Here we are! Strike us down!” and the Cossacks made answer, “Why do you taunt us? We also are men!” and rode past them without cutting down a single man.

The Caucasus Cossacks, I found, were not only men of manly feelings, but of exceptional physique. Surely they will lend themselves to civilization. Their land cannot be taken from them without a struggle. Submit to the regulations of civilized people immediately they never will. The problem is one that Russia’s next régime will have to work out. But the organization of the Cossacks, as perpetuated down to the present time, is without doubt one of the shrewdest and strongest pieces of interior administration ever adopted by a nation. If Russia were not torn from every center in the empire, the Cossacks would maintain peace indefinitely. Without the Cossacks, Russia, long ago, would have been overwhelmed. The Cossacks are the only branch of the army that can be relied upon absolutely, and they because they are now in possession of everything that the revolutionists are clamoring for. Freedom, liberty—all the shibboleths of revolutionism—are commonplaces in the life of the Cossacks. And when the time comes for this medieval institution to go under, it cannot be hoped that it will surrender without a struggle. So long as the House of Romanoff holds supremacy—and autocracy—the Cossacks will continue to flourish. If this régime is overthrown the next will have the Cossacks to cope with. The Cossacks will die hard. But die they must—or at least the institution of Cossackdom—and the Cossack must be saved to lend stamina and strength to the up-building of a strong state in Russia, whether constitutional monarchy or republic, and the individual Cossack turned into paths of productive labor.

During the two following days I passed through countless villages of the various tribes of the north Caucasus, and if this preliminary excursion did nothing more it, at least, disclosed to me the tremendous difficulties of civil administration in this wild region, and above all else the utterly blind, fanatical policies that have been pursued by the Russian government during the last twenty-five