Читать книгу The Awakening of the East: Siberia—Japan—China - Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu - Страница 8

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Enormous preponderance of the rural and peasant population in Siberia—Siberian Mujiks—Their rude and primitive manner of life—Excellent quality of the land, and backward methods of cultivating it—Mediocre and irregular manner of raising cereals—The necessity and difficulty of improving agricultural operations—The absence of large and enterprising ownership in Siberia a disadvantage.

Siberia resembles Russia not only in the matter of its immensity, its loneliness, the duration of its winters, monotonous expanse of its plains and enormous forest lands, but also in the leading characteristics of its peasantry; but in Asia and Russia these seem accentuated, possibly by reason of the peculiarity of the surroundings among which they are compelled to live. Even more than in Russia is this class of the people essentially rural; the exploitation of the gold-mines is the only other industry of any importance, and it employs relatively few people in comparison with its yield.

In Siberia great landlords are conspicuous by their absence. The only nobles mentioned by the official statistics are a few functionaries whose lands will be found on the other side of the Ural, and the only rich people in the country are the merchants residing in the towns, who occasionally add to their incomes, mainly derived from trade, by a certain interest in mining speculations. Some of these worthy people build themselves handsome country houses, but they do not take much interest in agriculture. A few concessions of land were made in the middle of the century, but they have long since passed out of the hands of their original owners into those of the Mujiks, to whom they have been ‘let,’ but these do not appear to care about their prosperity. All the rest of the land belongs either to the Government or to small farmers, who rent it from the Crown.

The Siberian peasant lives exactly as do his brethren in Russia, in villages or hamlets. Isolated houses are rare, the agglomeration of dwellings being an absolute necessity of the conditions of that collective and communal proprietorship which prevails throughout the Tsar’s dominions. A Siberian village is, therefore, a reproduction of a Russian village. On either side of the road is a succession of low, one-story houses built of dark wood, and separated from each other by yards, at the back of which are the stables. The appearance of these dwellings is exceedingly dreary, for they are invariably built of rough wood, blackened by age. Occasionally, however, some few planks are painted a vivid white. The usual doleful aspect of these villages is sometimes enlivened, especially in the larger ones, by the presence of a brick church, with cupolas painted a vivid green. In the hamlets these chapels are only outwardly distinguished from the rest of the isbas by an iron cross.

If anything, the general appearance of these Siberian villages is even more dreary and depressing than that of their counterparts in European Russia, where the houses are often gaily painted. Here they are built entirely of unhewn wood, like the log-huts of the Far West. Then, the few domestic animals to be seen wandering about the roadway are not reassuring, for the dogs look like wolves, and the enormous black pigs like wild boars. Nevertheless, I am of opinion that the Siberian peasant is better off than his Russian brother. His isbas are certainly more spacious, although, to be sure, six, seven, and even ten, persons are usually crowded into two or three tiny rooms, the immense stove in the centre of which, in winter, is usually used as a bedstead by the entire family, whereby whatever air otherwise might be admitted is hermetically excluded. For all that, I have never seen in Siberia any of those miserable hovels to be found in Russia, but undoubtedly the manners and customs of the Siberian peasants are even more primitive than those of the Russians. They possess less knowledge of hygiene and cleanliness, and are absolutely ignorant of everything calculated to render life in the least degree agreeable or rational. During the six winter months the Siberian keeps his house rigorously shut, excluding even a breath of air; in summer he does the same, for the double windows of the two or three very small sleeping-rooms are never opened on any pretext. These Siberian peasants are, moreover, astonishingly lazy and apathetic. Their only pleasure in life consists in dreaming away the time whilst smoking their pipes, and in drinking vodka, not to enliven themselves, but simply to get dead-drunk. Whilst the men are at the public-house the women stand by their open doors, listless and gossiping, indolently watching their fair-haired children, who, with only a red shirt on, fabricate the time-honoured dirt-pies of universal childhood in the mud or else roll about in the dust. Work is limited to what is absolutely indispensable, and the Siberian peasant is much happier doing nothing than in working to obtain what his fellows in other countries would consider the necessaries of life, but which he looks upon as ludicrously superfluous. Every village possesses a herd of cows, which you may watch in the early morning hours straggling off to the pastures, driven along by two or three old men or urchins, and although you can always get excellent milk, butter is very scarce, and cheese unknown. As to a garden, even for the cultivation of necessary vegetables, I have never seen one in the hundred villages I have visited, excepting, indeed, in Trans-Baikalia, where I perceived one or two attached to the stanitsas belonging to some Cossacks. It is not because vegetables will not grow, but because the peasants will not cultivate them. In the towns in the Amur district, such as Blagovyeshchensk, Khabarofsk, and a few others, vegetables are to be obtained, but even these are brought over by the Chinese from the opposite bank of the river.

In addition to laziness, the Siberian peasant adds the most surprising obstinacy, which is not precisely a bad quality, when, as in the case of the English, it serves to increase their dogged activity; but in Siberia it is simply another incentive to do nothing. Once a Siberian peasant has made up his mind to play dolce far niente, no power, Divine or human, will induce him to budge. I have often heard Europeans say that Siberia is the only country where you cannot get work done even for money; and this is perfectly true, for on certain holidays it matters little what you may offer, you will not get a coachman to take you a five-mile drive. The Siberian would rather lose money than earn it against his will.

If inertia is happiness, then the Siberians must be the happiest people on earth. They disdain progress and would rather die than better their condition. Their motto is, ‘What sufficed for our fathers is surely good enough for us,’ and this is the invariable answer a peasant will give you if you venture to suggest any sort of change for the better in his condition. His favourite texts from Holy Scripture are those which flatter his habit of intellectual stagnation, those which preach resignation and abstention, but certainly not those which teach action and effort. ‘He who is contented with little will not be forgotten by God,’ was the text I once saw stuck up in the waiting-room of one of the dirtiest stations in Trans-Baikalia. It struck me as being particularly appropriate, both to the place and the people. The prevailing lack of energy and perseverance, which has been noticed by travellers in every part of the Tsar’s Empire, seems to me to be one of the radical characteristics of the Russian nature. It may possibly derive its origin from the influences of Tatar blood, which was so largely infused among the lower classes of Russians from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century at the time of Tatar domination. Then, again, it must be remembered that extreme cold, like extreme heat, produces apathy, especially upon the men, who are thereby condemned to remain for many months inactive, and whose minds, owing to their excessive ignorance, are a blank.

Siberian peasants are supremely ignorant. In 1894 the Government of Tobolsk, the most progressive of any in respect of education, numbered only 19,100 children frequenting the schools out of a population of 1,400,000 souls. In the towns the proportion of scholars was 4·63 per 100, but in the country districts it did not rise to 1·05. One must not, however, be too severe on the Siberians for showing so poor an educational result, for we must not forget the enormous distance between village and village, and the difficulties of obtaining schoolmasters, owing mainly to the excessive ignorance in which the lower orders of Russians are plunged. Notwithstanding the very considerable progress which has been made in this direction in the last few years, there is probably no country in the world where reading and writing would be of greater advantage, for during at least one-half of the year the Siberian has literally nothing to do but to think, or, better, to dream, his life away.

Serfdom has never existed in Siberia, which accounts for the Mujiks having a much more independent air than their brethren in European Russia. They have, however, in common with these latter, that peculiar sort of charity which has been well called the ‘pity of the Slav.’ It is, however, not an active virtue, but a sort of dreamy pitifulness which induces these poor people to help each other, but does not prevent them from being exceedingly suspicious of strangers. They will, however, invariably leave on the sill outside their windows a hunk of bread or a jug of milk for the benefit of some escaped convict or some wretched outcast. Unfortunately, however, the extreme ignorance and the innate laziness of these people prevent their extracting from the soil much that, at a very small cost of labour, would greatly increase both their wealth and their comfort.

The soil of Siberia is exceedingly rich. The famous tchernozium, or black earth of Southern Russia, covers a great part of the Meridional Zone of the provinces of Tobolsk and Tomsk. The upper valleys of the Obi and the Yenissei, sheltered from the north winds, enjoy a milder climate than the plains, and are excellent for the growth of all sorts of cereals. On the borders of the Angara, the great tributary of Lake Baikal and on that of the Lower Amur, and its tributary rivers and its affluents, which are marshy, there are enormous tracts of extremely fertile land, but the methods of cultivation are of the most primitive. Then, again, the vast majority of the rural population obstinately refuses to work in the fields. All along the great postal highway, which stretches from the Ural to the Amur, and beyond to Kiakhta, the manner in which the peasants earn their living is considerably modified. They exist by trafficking along this main road, along which pass manufactured goods imported from Europe, which are forwarded to Central Siberia, the great caravans of the tea merchants, the gangs of exiles, and lastly the ordinary travellers. As this road is the only one which goes from west to east, it is very animated. Even in summer, when the traffic is not so active—the tea caravans only pass in winter—I have rarely seen fewer than 100 transports of one sort or another per day. Although every postmaster is obliged to keep no fewer than forty horses, and each carriage rarely requires more than three, occasionally it is impossible to secure a conveyance, and one is obliged to ask the peasants for assistance, which they are very ready to afford, making you pay from three to four roubles (six to eight shillings) for a relay of twenty-five versts (sixteen miles), a sum which, if they see that they have to deal either with somebody who is in a great hurry, or with a wealthy traveller, they persistently increase in the most barefaced manner. In winter the transport of tea also enables them to make considerable sums of money.

Thus it is that the country folk in these latitudes neglect agriculture, considering it merely as an accessory. In the neighbourhood of the villages you will find a few fields and pastures, where the cows, horses, and sometimes a few black sheep, are sent out to graze under the care of two or three boys or old men, or sometimes without any shepherd at all. A wooden barrier prevents their escaping into the neighbouring forest.

The number of horses in Siberia is very great. In the government of Tomsk in 1894 there were 1,360,000 horses to a population of only 1,700,000, that is to say, 80 horses per 100 inhabitants. In the government of the Yenissei the proportion is over 90 per 100 inhabitants, and the same proportion prevails in the government of Irkutsk. Almost the only other country where there are almost as many horses as men is, besides Russian Central Asia, the Argentine Republic, where there are 112 per 100 inhabitants. In the United States there are but 22, and in France only 7. The proportion of horned cattle is also very considerable, being about 60 per 100 inhabitants, rising in Eastern Siberia, in Tobolsk and Tomsk, to 80, whereas in the Yenissei and Irkutsk districts there are about 3 beasts per family. The greater part of these are cows. Bullocks are very scarce, not being employed either for food or burden. It is only along the Kirghiz Steppes, in the country traversed by the Trans-Siberian railway between the Urals and Omsk, and the region immediately below this line, that milk is used. The rain falls in this region very slightly, and the land is not cultivable, but purely arable, and as the Kirghiz are extremely capable herdsmen, the results are very satisfactory, and they export their cattle largely into Russian Europe, and even beyond. I remember coming across a train full of bullocks which were being conveyed to St. Petersburg, and I know of at least one large house in Moscow which receives weekly from the little town of Kurgan, situated on the railway line, many thousands of pounds of butter, a great part of which is exported thence to Hamburg.

If one wishes to become acquainted with the real Siberian farmers, one must leave aside the highroads and plunge into the country. True, the villages become much less numerous, but then they are surrounded by more extensive fields. In those districts which were first colonized in the Government of Tobolsk some rather thickly-peopled places are occasionally to be found, especially in the northern steppe between 55° and 58° latitude. In the Government of Tomsk a more inhabited region will likewise be met with to the south of the zone of the immense but well-wooded marshlands; but in this province, as in that of the Yenissei, the southern portion, instead of being covered by sterile steppes, contains the magnificently wooded valleys of the upper Obi, the Yenissei, and their affluents, which very naturally attract the greater number of Russian emigrants.

The agricultural resources in the districts of Barnaul, Biisk, Minusinck and Kansk, are extremely rich, and, besides excellent land, splendid water, and a relatively mild and agreeable climate, there are a variety of minerals. More to the east, if we wish to avoid the ever-silent desert, or the taiga, we must, on leaving the highroad, enter some of the valleys at the foot of the mountains on the Chinese frontier, on the borders of which the whole population is at present concentrated. The aspect of this region, however, differs very little from that crossed by the post-road between Irkutsk to the great prison of Alexandrof, where we behold fine wheat-fields and herds of cattle wherever there is an opening in the thick but marshy woodlands. Excepting for the extent of the cultivated lands which surround them, the appearance of the villages, however, does not change in the least. There is never a vestige of a garden or of any sort of verdure near the houses, unless, indeed, it be a few flowers growing in pots, which are never arranged on the ledge outside the window, but in the interior, and form, together with a few icons and the portraits of their Imperial Majesties, the only attempt at ornamentation indulged in by the inhabitants of these essentially comfortless and inartistic dwellings.

The only crops of the least value in Siberia are those of the various cereals, of which about 150,000,000 bushels are harvested, mostly in the western part of the country, which is not only the most thickly populated, but also the freest of forests.

The rest of Siberia, that is to say, the provinces watered by the Amur and the territory of the Irkutsk, which are very thinly peopled, does not produce a total of more than 5,500,000 bushels. Wheat, generally sown in spring, and oats form each about 30 per cent. of the total cereal product of Siberia. The balance is made up of rye, barley and buckwheat. The arable land has to undergo, especially when first reclaimed from the steppe, the usual process of preparation, manuring, etc. The Siberian peasants have not acquired even the most rudimentary knowledge of agricultural science, and, consequently, often have to abandon their farms. On the other hand, in certain favourable regions, in the Governments of Tobolsk and Tomsk, where the earth is exceptionally rich, the pastures have gone on fairly well for over a hundred years without any sensible diminution in the excellence of their grazing properties. However, land is so abundant in Siberia that often the peasants, when they find after they have reclaimed it that its productive qualities decrease, rather than be bothered with a repetition of the processes of manuring, etc., pack up their traps and migrate elsewhere, literally, to ‘fresh woods and pastures new,’ where probably the foot of man has never trod.

In Siberia, as stated already, great land-owners are non-existent. The soil is, therefore, exclusively in the hands of the peasants, but up to the present the mir collective communal property-ship, as is found throughout Russia, is quite exceptional, and then only in the more sparsely peopled parts of the west. Since 1896, however, the Government has decided to introduce, if not practically, at least theoretically, the mir principle as it exists in European Russia. Nevertheless, in Siberia the commune is not supposed to possess property, but simply to hold it on the principle of usufruct, the whole land belonging to the Crown. In those parts of the country which are nearly uninhabited the zaïmka system still holds good, whereby a peasant, although he may be a resident in a village, is allowed to build himself a hut on the steppe or in the forest where he passes the summer, and where he can cultivate and even enclose one or two large fields which are supposed to belong to him, and which he can sell or give away as he pleases, and which, in point of fact, he owns by right of being the first occupant; but this system is only provisional. With the increase of population it gives place to another, whereby the peasant is not considered an absolute proprietor, but only for so long as he chooses to cultivate his land properly. From the moment he ceases to comply with this condition another man can take his land. Everybody is allowed to cut hay in the prairies where he likes, and the pastures and woods are common property. On the other hand, it is forbidden to enclose any forest or pasture-land.

The climate of Siberia is naturally opposed to the cultivation of cereals, which have to struggle against droughts, autumnal fogs, and late and early frosts. During the last ten years some very interesting meteorological observations have been made at Irkutsk, whereby it has been discovered that July is the only month in which it never freezes. Then, again, in the government of Tobolsk, and to the west of that of Tomsk, in addition to these climatic drawbacks, the crops are often devastated by myriads of kobylkas, a sort of locust or grasshopper which comes from the Kirghiz Steppes. Under these circumstances, agriculture in Siberia may well be said to be an even more arduous way of earning a livelihood than it is in Russia proper. It not unfrequently happens that the crops fail utterly, and during the last ten years it has been noticed that these disasters are mainly due to increasing impoverishment of the soil. The irregular condition of the crops is all the more disastrous in Siberia because of the lack of means of communication which impedes the easy transport of corn from one district to another, and results in enormous fluctuations in prices, that often spell ruin to the unfortunate peasants. The introduction of the railway to Irkutsk occasioned a notable reduction in the price of bread in Eastern Siberia, but, on the other hand, the principal line, unfortunately, transports agricultural products from Siberia to the region of the Volga.

But a matter which is even of greater importance than that of intercommunication are the extremely antiquated methods of cultivation which the peasants insist upon retaining. In the first place, their notions of preparing the reclaimed soil for culture are absolutely barbarous. All they do is to scratch up the immediate surface of the earth with a sort of plough which dates from the Iron Age, and then sow their crop. When the field is exhausted, which, not having been properly manured, it very soon is, it is abandoned for a period of years until it recovers some of its reproductive qualities. With improved agricultural implements the earth could be more deeply ploughed, and at a very little distance beneath the surface it is almost invariably extremely rich. The question is how to induce the peasants to change methods which have been handed down to them from their ancestors through the ages. It is of course much to be regretted that in Siberia there exists no great land-owners wealthy enough to introduce modern improvements, and thus teach their humbler neighbours the value of progress by practical illustration; but until means of communication are facilitated and improved it will be difficult to induce men of wealth and education to settle in a country which, however naturally rich it may be, is, to say the best of it, exceptionally unattractive. Even in Russia, where so many noblemen, owing to the great losses which they sustained at the time of the emancipation of the serfs, have abandoned their lands to the peasants, and have retired to the larger towns, there are yet to be found men who have had the courage to face reverses, and who have taken their estates in hand on scientific principles, introducing the latest improvements in agricultural implements, and thereby have influenced for the better the peasantry by even inducing some of them to abandon their primeval methods of agriculture. This desirable state of affairs, however, cannot exist in Siberia, at least for the present. Then, again, there is another advantage which would accrue from the presence of rich land-owners in Siberia, namely, contact with persons of superior education and culture, which in the end would doubtless affect the peasantry for the better. In Russia the peasantry form a compact body which, by reason of its singular position in the social sphere, is absolutely unable to receive or absorb any influences from the more educated classes. This is a state of affairs which it is highly desirable should cease in the Asiatic colonies, where at present it is even more strongly marked than in Russia itself. The problem of the future of Siberia is the possibility and feasibility of inducing important land-owners to settle in the country.