Russian Life To-day

In this vast area of which we are thinking there must indeed be great varieties of experience and conditions of life, and it is not contrary to what one might expect to find much nearer home, that the people of one village may be clean in their habits and those of another quite the reverse. But from all I have seen, heard, and read the Russian labouring and peasant class have a great desire to be clean. Nor is this a new thing at all in the national life. It is nearly forty years ago since Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace told us, in the first edition of his work, of the important part taken by the weekly vapour-bath in the life of the Russian peasantry, and described “the public bath possessed by many villages.” How many villages of our own, even now, have a public bath? And how many of our own peasantry dream of having what is a perfectly ordinary and weekly habit of the Russians – the bath in his own house?

My Russian and Siberian friends tell me how they have always to arrange for their domestic servants to get a good bath, before they change for Sunday, every Saturday afternoon and evening. Mr. Rothay Reynolds says the same: “My friend took me to see his bath-house. Russians are exceedingly clean. In villages one may see a row of twenty cottages, and, thirty yards from them, a row of twenty bath-houses. The one the peasant showed me was a hut with a stove intended to heat the great stones placed above it. On bath nights the stove is lit, and when the stones are hot a bucket of water is thrown on them, so that the place is filled with steam. The bather lies on a bench in the suffocating atmosphere, soaps himself, and ends his ablutions with ice-cold water. In town and country it is held to be a religious duty to take a steam-bath once a week. Servants ask if they can go out for a couple of hours to visit one of the great baths in the cities. They go away with clean linen bound up in a handkerchief, and return shining with cleanliness. Admission to the cheapest part of a steam-bath is usually a penny farthing, but in the great towns there are luxurious establishments frequented by the rich.”

There is another custom connected with the bath which testifies to the hardy character of the Russian moujik. They often rush straight out of the almost suffocatingly hot bath which they have been taking inside the huge earthenware oven that they all possess and, naked and steaming, roll themselves contentedly and luxuriously in the snow. This, as a writer has well said, “aptly illustrates a common Russian proverb which says that what is health to the Russian is death to the German” – a proverb which has had striking illustration again and again this very winter. Probably some of my readers saw the account of the arrival at the Russian front, soon after war began, of the bath-train which was so completely furnished and arranged that two thousand men could have a clean bath during the day or twelve thousand in the course of the week. No doubt others have followed since then.

The bath to the Russian has a certain religious significance also, as in Moslem countries; “and no good orthodox peasant,” I have read, “would dare to enter a church after being soiled with certain kinds of pollution without cleansing himself physically and morally by means of the bath.” “Cleanliness is next to godliness” is not a bad motto for any people, and possibly Russians will like to know that we have an order of knighthood which dates from 1398, and is named “The Most Honourable Order of the Bath,” and mentioned regularly in the services at Westminster Abbey.

A great sense of initiative and personal responsibility, as well as corporate spirit at the same time, is clearly given early in life to the peasant mind in Russia, for nowhere, I fancy, in the world, except in countries where primitive ideas and customs still obtain, is there the same standard of village life and self-government. There are two kinds of communities. First, there is the village community with its Assembly or Mir, under the presidency of the Staroshta, who is elected by the village. He presides over the Assembly, which regulates the whole life of the village, distributes the land of the commune, decides how and when the working of the land has to be done; and it is specially interesting to know that in this most remarkable and exceptional village government of the Mir all women who permanently and temporarily are heads of houses are expected to attend its meetings and to vote – no one ever dreams of questioning their right to do so.

In addition to the village assembly and chief elder there is also the “Cantonal” Assembly, consisting of several village communities together, meeting also under the presidency of a chief elder. All this is, of course, a development of family life where exactly the same ideas of corporate duty in its members, and responsibilities in its head, are held.

It is evident that Russia has a great future if this view of self-government is gradually carried upwards. The right beginning in constitutional government, surely, is in the family, for there we find the social unit. A state is not a collection or aggregate of individuals, but of families, and all history shows us that the greatness or insignificance of a country has always been determined by the condition of its homes and the character of its family life. If from the family, village, and commune Russian constitutionalists work slowly and carefully upwards, giving freedom to make opinions and convictions felt in the votes, just as responsibility is understood and met in the home, until one comes to the head of it all in “The Little Father”; and if he really rules – or administers rather, for no true father rules only – just as any good father would do, Russia the autocratic and despotic, associated in the minds of so many with arbitrary law in the interests of a few, enforced by the knout and prison-chain, may yet give the world a high standard of what the government of a free and self-respecting people ought to be.

I should doubt if any peasantry in the world live so simply and frugally or, as they say in the North of England, “thrive so well on it,” as the Russians. The men are of huge stature, and their wives are strong, comely, and wholesome-looking also. Their boys and girls are sturdy, vigorous, and full of life; and yet how bare the table looks at the daily meal, how frugal the fare and small the quantity! It has been the greatest joy to me to have Russian boys and girls, in out-of-the-way places, to share my sandwiches or tongue or other tinned meats, when stopping at a rest-house, and see their eyes shine at the unexpected and unusual treat.

Black rye-bread and cabbage-soup form the staple food of a peasant family, while meat of any kind is rarely seen. The many and rigorous fasts of the Church make very little difference to the quality of the food, but only to its quantity. The thanks given by guests to their host and hostess, Spasibo za kleb za sol, “Thanks for bread and salt,” tell their own story of a bare and simple diet. Many of us have read in The Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem of the sacks of black and hard crusts the peasants take with them, which quite content them.

What a tremendous difference it must have made this winter in the Russian food transport from the base to the front, to know that, if a serious breakdown took place, or a hurried march was ordered with which it was difficult for them to keep up, and the worst came to the worst, the men would have their crusts. It has been said in years gone by, and may be true still in many places, that the Russian peasant’s ideas of Paradise is a life in which he would have enough black bread to eat.

This bare subsistence and monotonous diet, perhaps, is responsible for the break-out from time to time when the attraction of vodka is too strong to be resisted in a life in which there are no counter-attractions. Counter-attractions there ought to be for a being who is created not for work alone, but for that recreation which, as its very name betokens, his whole nature needs if he is to do his best work. “There is a time to work and a time to play,” says the proverb writer; and if we hold that in school life “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” we can hardly wonder that, the world over, those for whom work is provided and play refused will seek, as they have ever done, to make up for its absence by the exhilaration of stimulating and intoxicating drinks. It is when writing upon the drunkenness to be seen at every Russian village holiday that one whom I have often quoted in this book,4 truly says, “As a whole a village fête in Russia is a saddening spectacle. It affords a new proof – where, alas! no proof was required – that we northern nations who know so well how to work have not yet learnt the art of amusing ourselves.”

As an instance of the real and natural friendliness and essential good nature of the Russian, I may say that even when drunk I have never seen or heard of men quarrelling. They do not gradually begin to dispute and recriminate and come to blows or draw the knife, as some of the more hot-blooded people of the South do, when wine excites or spirits cheer them. They seem to become more and more affectionate until they begin to kiss each other, and may be seen thus embracing and rolling over and over together like terriers in the snow. If wine unlooses the tongue, and brings out what is usually hidden away beneath the surface, it evidently brings out nothing very evil from the inner life of the Russian peasant.

In time to come, if all’s well, Russia is to be opened up to the traveller, and everywhere the British tourists will be welcomed, and even though the beaten track of the railway may never be left there will be abundant opportunities for observing the habits and customs of the people. A modern writer who, apparently, in passing through Siberia never went far from the railway, though he probably stayed for some time at different places on the way, and sat in third and fourth-class carriages even if he did not actually travel in them, managed to see a great deal of peasant life. The railway train is open from end to end, and a great deal may be learnt thus about the people while merely passing through. There are also the long waits at the stations where there are invariably interesting groups of the most romantic and picturesque character – the women vivacious and full of conversation, while the men stand more stolidly by, always making one long to speak and understand their language and to know more about them.

There is a story of Mr. Maurice Baring’s which illustrates what I have already said of the way in which the Russian peasant mind begins to move freely, independently, and responsibly upon lines undreamed of by those who may be addressing him, and shows how far he is from receiving merely conventional and stereotyped impressions, but is always ready to think for himself. Mr. Baring considers it an instance of his common sense. The reader may also have his own ideas of what it illustrates, but the story is this: —

“A Socialist arrived in a village to convert the inhabitants to Socialism. He wanted to prove that all men were equal, and that the government authorities had no right to their authority. Consequently he thought he would begin by disproving the existence of God, because if he proved that there was no God it would naturally follow that there should be no Emperor and no policemen. So he took a holy ikon and said, ‘There is no God, and I will prove it immediately. I will spit upon this ikon and break it to bits, and if there is a God He will send fire from heaven and kill me, and if there is no God nothing will happen to me at all.’ Then he took the ikon and spat upon it and broke it to bits, and said to the peasants, ‘You see God has not killed me.’ ‘No,’ said the peasants, ‘God has not killed you, but we will’; and they killed him.”

It is not difficult to imagine that closing scene, knowing Russia. There would be no excitement, but all would be quickly and effectually done.

The same writer draws our attention to Turgenieff’s wonderfully appealing sketches of country life, though not many of his works have been translated for English readers as yet. He alludes especially in an essay of last year on “The Fascination of Russia” to his description of the summer night, when on the plain the children tell each other bogey stories; or the description of that July evening, when out of the twilight from a long way off a voice is heard calling, “Antropk-a-a-a!” and Antropka answers, “Wha-a-a-at?” and far away out of the immensity comes the answering voice, “Come home, because daddy wants to whip you!”

Perhaps the reader may feel nothing as he reads, but all who know and love Russia, and are stirred by thoughts of its life and people will feel that it was abundantly worth while to write down such a simple incident. They will understand and feel that stirring within, which Russia never fails to achieve again and again for those who have once lived and moved amongst her peasantry, and come under her strange spell and felt her charm.

Gogol, the greatest of Russian humorists, has a passage in one of his books, where, in exile, he cries out to his country to reveal the secret of her fascination: —

“‘What is the mysterious and inscrutable power which lies hidden in you?’” he exclaims. “‘Why does your aching and melancholy song echo unceasingly in one’s ears? Russia, what do you want of me? What is there between you and me?’ This question has often been repeated not only by Russians in exile, but by others who have merely lived in Russia.

“There are none of those spots where nature, art, time, and history have combined to catch the heart with a charm in which beauty, association, and even decay are indistinguishably mingled; where art has added the picturesque to the beauty of nature; and where time has made magic the handiwork of art; and where history has peopled the spot with countless phantoms, and cast over everything the strangeness and glamour of her spell.

“Such places you will find in France and in England, all over Italy, in Spain and in Greece, but not in Russia.

“A country of long winters and fierce summers, of rolling plains, uninterrupted by mountains and unvariegated by valleys.

“And yet the charm is there. It is a fact which is felt by quantities of people of different nationalities and races; and it is difficult if you live in Russia to escape it; and once you have felt it you will never be free from it. The aching melancholy song which, Gogol says, wanders from sea to sea throughout the length and breadth of the land, will for ever echo in your heart and haunt the recesses of your memory.”5

CHAPTER IV

The Clergy

The Russian Church is a daughter of the Byzantine Church – the youngest daughter – and only dates from the close of the tenth century, when monks came to Kieff from Constantinople during the reign of Vladimir. There would be little “preaching of the Cross of Christ,” I should fancy, as the great means of conversion for that great mass of servile population. We are told, indeed, that Vladimir gave the word and they were baptized by hundreds at a time in the River Dnieper, and that no opposition was offered to the new religion as the old Nature worship had only very lightly held them, and had no definite priesthood.

The new religion, however, soon acquired a very strong hold upon the people of all classes, and the power and influence of the Church grew just as the State gained ever-new importance; the power of the Patriarch increasing as that of the Tsar increased, until in a comparatively short time the Orthodox Church stood alone, and owned no Eastern supremacy on the one hand, nor yielded to the approaches of the Roman Papacy on the other. By the end of the sixteenth century the other Eastern Patriarchs recognized and accepted the Patriarchate of Moscow as being an independent one, and fifth of the Patriarchates of the East.

This absolute independence only lasted about a hundred years, and the masterful Peter the Great laid his hands upon the Church as upon other parts of the national life, for he certainly had little cause to love the clergy, and appointed no successor to the Patriarch of Moscow when he died in 1700. It was very interesting to hear, from the Procurator of the Holy Synod himself, M. Sabloff, when I first went to Petrograd, what great importance Peter attached to this office when he constituted the Holy Synod in 1721 to take the place of the Patriarchate.

“He used to say,” he mused, looking down upon the ground, “that the Procurator of the Holy Synod was the oculus imperatoris (the Emperor’s right hand, literally ‘the Emperor’s eye’),” and as he said so one could not but remember how his predecessor, M. Pobonodonietzeff had upheld that tradition, and, next to the Emperor, had himself been the most prominent and autocratic figure in the whole empire.

The Procurator, however, is not the President of the Holy Synod, as the Metropolitan of Petrograd fills that office, but he is present as the Emperor’s representative, and though all the other members of the Synod are the highest ecclesiastical dignitaries of the Russian Church, yet as they are summoned by the Emperor, and his special lay representative is there always to represent and state his opinion and wishes, the Emperor himself must have an infinitely greater influence than our own sovereigns possess, though theoretically they fill the same office of “Defender of the Faith.” He is described in one of the fundamental laws as “the supreme defender and preserver of the dogmas of the dominant faith,” while immediately afterwards it is added “the autocratic power acts in the ecclesiastical administration of the most Holy Governing Synod created by it.” The Emperor must have unlimited power, typified by his crowning himself at his coronation, in ecclesiastical administration, and the bishops and other clergy, who are intensely loyal, would probably not wish it otherwise; but he could not affect or change, even by a hair’s breadth, any of the doctrines of the Church nor one of the ceremonies of its Liturgy.

Should the reader wish to know more about Church and State in Russia he will find a most admirable chapter (XIX) with that heading in Sir Donald M. Wallace’s book. Interesting and important as the position of the Russian Church – in many ways so like our own – is for us to-day, it is only possible now to glance briefly at its constitution.

The clergy are divided into two classes, the black and the white, the black being the monastic and the white the secular and married clergy. All the patriarchs or archbishops, bishops, abbots, and higher dignitaries are taken from the ranks of the celibate and monastic clergy and have attained a high standard of education. All the parochial clergy, on the other hand, are educated in seminaries, or training colleges, but only those who show special ability go on to the academy, an institution which occupies the same position for the clergy as the university fills in civil education. They do not reach a very high standard as a rule, and before being appointed to a parish must be married. No unmarried priest can be in charge of a parish, and should he become a widower he must resign his parish, and either enter a monastery or retire into private life; but, in either case, he must not marry again.

Many years ago (1890) there appeared an interesting story of Russian life in the chief Russian literary magazine, and it was translated for the “Pseudonym Library” in a cheap form under the title of A Russian Priest.6 It is still to be obtained, and it is most refreshing to read again this brief story of a brilliant young seminarist going on to the academy and attaining such distinctions, that he might have aspired to any high office in the Church, yet impelled by his ideals, and full of the Christ-like spirit, choosing the lowest grade of humble and village life, and “touching bottom,” so as to speak, in his Church’s work. As far as I can judge it describes still quite faithfully and clearly the relations of clergy and people in Russian villages and hamlets.

Let me now, however, speak briefly of some of the clergy I have met, taking such as I consider fairly representative of the different classes. I have felt myself that I have learnt a great deal more about the spirit and aims of the Russian Church, and what we may regard as its present and future attitude to ourselves, from knowing its clergy and devout laity than ever I could have hoped to do by reading books about them, or from lectures, addresses, or letters written by them.

I will speak first of the Archbishop of Warsaw, who received me at Petrograd on my first visit, in place of the Metropolitan Antonius who had sent a very brotherly message of welcome from his sick-room, where shortly afterwards he died. The Archbishop Nicolai – Russians speak of their bishops and archbishops in this way, using the Christian name and not that of the See – is a most imposing and fatherly figure, and received me attired, just as his portrait shows him, wearing a very rich-looking satin robe, decorated with orders, and with a large cross of magnificent diamonds in the centre of his black cap or mitre. He had been in the United States, in charge of the Russian work there, and also in England, and spoke a little English, but it was so little that I was glad to have Mr. Feild, a churchwarden of the English Church, who has lived in Russia all his life, to be my interpreter.

His Grace was full of interest, sympathetic and intelligent, in all that I could tell him about our own Church at home, in Russia, and on the Continent generally, very keen to know of my impressions, and of my reception by the Procurator of the Holy Synod, and by the official at the Ministry of the Interior, who is responsible for religious administration. I shall have to speak later of the status of our Anglican Church in Russia, and so here I will only say that it led me to speak of the work of our Anglican Chaplain (the Rev. H. C. Zimmerman) at Warsaw, whereupon the archbishop said at once, “Ask him to come and see me when I am at Warsaw three months from now.” I did so, and Mr. Zimmerman wrote to tell me afterwards that he had had the kindest reception, with quite a long conversation, had been presented with souvenirs, and dismissed with a blessing, his Grace saying to him as he left: —

“Now, regard me as your bishop, when your own is not here, and come to me whenever you are in need of advice or information.”

The archbishop loves to think of his pleasant recollections of England and its Church life.

“Ah,” he said, “your English Sunday! How beautiful it is to walk along Piccadilly on Sunday morning, with all the shops closed, and no one in the streets except quiet-looking people, all on their way to Church!”

London is very different in that respect on Sunday mornings, whatever it is later in the day, from every capital in the world. All is quiet, and Church and worship are in the air. Then the archbishop told me of his going to S. Paul’s Cathedral, sitting in the congregation, and enjoying it all, until it had gradually come home to him during the Second Lesson that something was being read from one of the Gospels. On finding by inquiry that this was so, he rose at once to his feet, and looked with amazement upon the people sitting all round him while the Holy Gospel was being read. I’m afraid my telling him that we always stand for it in the Liturgy only added to his surprise, for he murmured to himself in a puzzled way, “Why in one place and not in another?”

Dear old man, he presented me with his portrait, here given, and all his published works, and hoped, as I do, that it would not be long before I went to see him again.

When at length the Metropolitan Antonius, after a long illness, passed away, he was succeeded by the Archbishop of Moscow who, in his turn, was succeeded by Archbishop Macarius, and it is of the last-named that I will next give briefly my experience. It was on January 10, 1914, according to our calendar, and on December 28, 1913, according to the Russian, when I had the feeling of being in two years at the same time, and of spending the same Christmas first in London and then in Russia, that he received me in his palace at Moscow. Palace it certainly is in the character and spaciousness of its rooms, but the furniture is what we should consider, in our own country, simple and rather conventional. The salon, or drawing-room, was very large, with the usual polished floor and rugs laid upon it. At one side two rows of chairs, facing each other, stood out from the wall, against which a sofa was placed, and in front of that a table. It was exactly the same at the Archiepiscopal Palace at Riga, where I had been a few months before, and the same procedure was followed on both occasions.