THE RUSSIANS AT HOME.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Volume 4, Issue 170, 30 October 1880, Page 2

THE RUSSIANS AT HOME.

A correspondent of the New York Times, writing from the interior of Russia, say*: j The villages of, the interior are the .true field for observation for those- who wish to see 'Russia as slio is, and the contrast which they present is a startling cuo indeed. Half-clothed vagabonds loafing about tumble-down wooden khanties; sallow, heavy-looking-men scratching the earth with wooden ploughs and harrows, acres of uncleared forest or oozy morass, rough country roads, worn into ruts a foot deep, clumsy carts of the seventeenth century build jogging drowsily to markot nt the rate of two miles an hour, begging monks tilling their sacks with the contributions of hard-pressed peasants, famine and cholera working thoir will in remote hurnlets, far from the possibility of help —such is the aspect of Russia behind the scenes. . It docs not follow, of course, that all Russian villages are of this kind, any more thun that all Eastern towns am like Jerusalem, or all English public buildings like the Albert Hall. But even in a thriving "Selo," possessing one church and four shops, six taverns, and a real live magistrate, frequently honest and occasionally sober, the brisk, hearty activity of Anglo-Saxondom is wholly wanting. In a Western hamlet, however remote, there is always abundant life of some kind. One sees tho forgo blazing cheerfully, and the stidwart farm labourers going whistling to their work ; one hears the clang of the smith's hammer, and the " crish, crish " of the wheelwright's adze, and the merry voices of children at play in front of tho houses, and now and then the rumbling of a heavy waggon that comes jolting and creaking along the broad white road. But on the steppes of " Holy Russia" it is far otherwise. All is backward, lifeless, unpromising. The few pcoplo whom you see in the wide, straight, dusty streets creep about in a slouching, spiritles way, as if they had nothing in hand worth hurrying for. The peasant dozes on his door-sill, the postmaster on his bench, not to bo easily awakened, as you will lind to your cost if you are in a hurry to change horses and go forward. The tall, green church tower, looking down upou the tiny log huts that nestle around it like chickens under the wing of the mother hen, has an antique air suggestive of centuries of unbroken repose. The very dogs seem too much depressed to bark, and only show their teeth at yon as a matter of forni. Tho barefooted lasses who stand gossiping around tho village well scum to make it a point of honour to be as lonir as possible in filling the two clumsy pails which thoy carry balanced on one shoulder, at either end of a wooden yoke. In a word, the only sign of life is to" be found in the children, who go racketing about in thoir oalicoshirtsof the most glaringly unwashed character, the heartiest, dirtiest, happiest, littlo savages in existence. In many parts of the interior, the primitive horse-transport of the country actually competes successfully with the newly-opened railways. " You see," said a Russian trader to me tho other day, with a knowing wink, " the railway people mako us pay three kopecks (two cents) a pood (361b5.) for the carriage of goods, and that's dear, very dear! Well, then steps in Ivan Ivanovieh (the peasant) with his horses and say* to us,' It's no use for these beasts to stand in the stables all winter doing nothing; let me carry your goods and I will chirgo you only a kopeck and a half. Well, I there it is; you sec, half the money saved at once, and if it docs take a littlo longer, where's tho harm ? Botter a long job than a bad bargain." And the man of proverbs rubbed his dirty hands with a complacent air, as if applauding his own superior knowledge of business. Those who have heard TourgncniefT read one of his own novels may form a perfect idea of the Russian " mnjik " without having seen him at all; but no description loss vivid and powerful than that of the great master himself could do justice to the strangest of all the countless waifs stranded upon tho shoro of the present by the ebb of the past. Ignorant as an Australian savage, superstitious as an Athenian, accepting as every-day matters hardships and privations worthy of St. Simon Stylites; at onoe a glutton and an ascetic; lying habitually, with no apparont object, in the strange, purposeless fashion of a gyps ay or a Bedouin ; ungovernable save by extreme severity, although intensely susceptible of kindness; peaceable even to sluggishness, yet capablo of the most frightful oxtrcmesof vengoanco; 6tartlingly shrewd and knowing within his own narrow circle, brutally stupid as regards everything beyond it. To a casual obsorver, Ivan Potrovich might appear an easy-going, harmless follow onough, with no particular tastes oxcopt a perfect mania for weak tea or strong whisky, a curious habit of blacking his boots with tar, and putting a red shirt ovor his other clothes on a Sunday, and .so strong a passion for gay colours that his only word for "beautiful" (prekrasni) means literally "bright scarlet." But behind that flat, heavy, expressionless face lurk terrible possibilities, which no Russian ruler can safely ignore. In romoto villages far in the interior, greyhaired men •will toll you undor their breath that bofore the emancipation tho peasants " got up " ono black autumn night, burned the "great house" to tho ground, split tho " Barm's " skull with a hatchet, flung the "Barina" from a third- j story window, tossed the scrcamingehildron ' into the flames with pitchforks, and then, exhausted by thoir own fury, sat sullenly

down amid the ruins till the grey-coated "children of the Csar" cams and prodded their Ufa out with levelled bayonet*. Nor is it so long tinea I mysaJf stand from an eye-witness how a coasjeek hotnostcaler, taken red-handed in th.> act, was ! tied to a tree by his captors and flayed j alive, his cats and note uut off, his oye> gouged out, and his mangled remain* flung into the nearest river. Yet these aud not sleek diplomatists in gold-rimmed spectacles, or jaunty officers with trim moustaches, aru the true representatives of Russia. Dimly and slowly, across the waste of a thousand barren years—Tartar conquests, Polish invasions, Turkish wars, Borodino battles, Crimean disastei* co-mes the dawn of the great truth which every nation must learn sooner or later, that a man belongs to himself, and to no other under heaven; that his life and soul are his own, ami that no nystcui ba6cd upon any other principle, "be it ever so strongly established, can bo otherwise than a falsehood and a wrong. But even this blessing has not come unalloyed. Russia's present position is that of a mutinous crew, whose leaders, not content with the granting of thoir demands, insist upon taking command of the ship themselves. But for NetchaiciT and Bakunin, Russia would hare had at least the outline of a free Constitution in 1871, but forSoloviefl ami Vladetski, she would probably have the reality now. Tho true opponents of Russian liberty are tho Nihilists themselves; and the day on which the Russian people shall discover that fact shall be a very awkward one for them.