Maintaining Order in a Russian Village

SOON after my appointment as Resident at a county hospital in the district of Buzuluk in the government of Samara, I was honored by a visit from the chief of police of the neighborhood. He was very polite, and offered to assist me so far as he was able. If I got into trouble with the peasants, I had merely to call on the constables and everything would be put right. I was told that the police had genuine Tashkent horses worth six hundred roubles, and if I cared for riding he was sure everything could be arranged. Finally, he mentioned that his daughter was dying of heart-disease and would I see her?

During the frequent visits that that disease involved, I became acquainted with the family, and found the report true that the chief of police was as kindhearted as any man in the province. The peasants respected him and no one had a bad word for him. His usual price was three roubles, but any work which he did for the people involving extensive silence called for a higher rate. People said that they respected the way in which he took the money — he was friendly, easy, and gave confidence without ‘stooping to the people’ or lowering himself in any way.

One day the village postman burst into the out-patients’ department with a notice. He said, with a meaning smile, that he had n’t time to discuss it then, but there would be plenty of time later. It was an official manifesto from Nicholas the Second; with it, a circular that began, ‘At last. It has happened!’ and went on to encourage the people by telling them that liberty lay in their hands, and that, if they used self-restraint, they would enjoy the privileges they had so long coveted.

I nailed the notice up on the wall, and proceeded with the work. The peasants came into the consulting-room beaming with delight. ‘Well, so he’s gone, just think of that! and he has been our Tsar for God knows how many years, and when he leaves us everything is the same as ever. I suppose he will go to manage his estates somewhere; he always liked farming’ — and so on. Only an old woman cried, ‘Poor man! he never did anyone any harm; why did they put him away?’

She was interrupted: ‘Shut thy mouth, thou old fool! They are n’t going to kill him; he’s run away, that’s all.’

‘Oh, but he was our Tsar, and now we have no one! ’

In the village street I met the chief of police; he forced a grim smile and said, ‘Now I’m unemployed. Look at this.’ And he slapped his left hip, ‘Unarmed! And I, chief of police, this morning gave up my sword to a woman! In Russia!’

He turned, and we walked down the street to the square; but he would not go into the village Council-Room, as he still felt a little bit ridiculous in the presence of that woman. The person in question was a schoolteacher from a neighboring village who, because of her executive ability and public service in the past, had been chosen to fill the post of Keeper of Public Order for the time being.

Several weeks passed without anything of note happening, till the time drew near for a local horse-fair which attracted thousands of people from outlying districts. In the Old Régime, this had always been a time of anxiety for the police, so we were anxious to see how the schoolmistress would cope with the situation. Going out to the fair, I noticed twelve old men, gray-beards, walking with long staves very like a Greek chorus, each wearing an armlet of white linen. I went up to one and asked him who they were.

He said, ‘ We are the militia. It is my first day out and I feel a bit foolish, but it will be all right in an hour or two when I get to talking with some of the people.’

I asked what his duties were.

‘God knows. I’ll just do what they all do.’

This militia was in force for several months. One or two old men, when appointed by their village councils to the duty, wrote to me asking for medical certificates that they were too old and feeble. The matter became so pressing that I paid a special visit to one village council to inquire what I had better do. The elders said that my sole criterion was to be real physical disease; they told me that they specially selected old men because they had tact and judgment and were of all people least likely to antagonize a young man if he was drunk or disorderly; they said that no one would dream of knocking down an old gray-beard, whereas, if they appointed a young man as militiaman, there would be trouble all the time. ‘We don’t need to be kept in order, we only need to be reminded.’

The deserting soldiers contributed with several other causes to produce a new militia. In my district I was told so many times that I should be shot if I did not give certificates of exemption from army service, that I wrote to headquarters requesting that a military tribunal should settle the cases in the villages. The threatenings in Russia are as a rule much more serious than the shootings. After a few weeks such a tribunal was instituted, and a military militia came into the district. In the middle of the summer several men in our village took exception to me because I was a friend of the ex-policeman, and must therefore be a counter-revolutionary. I received ‘warnings,’ and anonymous notes telling me of my danger were slipped under my door in the early hours of the morning, one written by the daughter of the would-be murderer.

Of course, nothing happened. The friends of my critic told the military militia of the danger I was in, in order to get the militia to take sides and so divide the village sentiments. But the militia said that it was ‘all nonsense,’ and that the whole affair would blow over. About a week later the would-be murderer was admitted to the hospital for scalp-wounds because he had told the villagers that they wore not revolutionary enough. Perhaps he was the first Bolshevik we had in our village. Everyone was sorry for him — they said he was a bit ‘cracked.’

The militia went away in the fall, and the village elected constables of their own. Not old men this time, but middle-aged men who were serving on the council. On one occasion it was discovered that four men whom the village trusted had been robbing the public coffers. An enraged people, on hearing their confession, led them out into the public square and clubbed them to death. Next day they were buried at the public expense, and their families pensioned.

Some months after this, just before the snow melted, I was driving through the street, when a man who was drunk, a rare condition at that time, clutched at the collar of my coat and told me that he had a headache and wanted immediate treatment. My driver said, ‘Come on, barin, he is drunk; shake him off.’ So we got away from him. Outside the village boundary we stopped, and the driver said in a solemn way, ‘You will please remember, barin, that he does not live in our village, he is not one of us.’ I promised to remember.

About a month later, a man came to the out-patient department and sat down, not able apparently to speak for some time. Then he said, ‘Do you not recognize me?’ ‘No.’ ‘I am the man who insulted you.’ ‘When?’ ‘That night, that terrible night; and I want to apologize, and here’s a letter.’ The letter was a request from his village elders that, if I received his apology, I would please be good enough to write an acknowledgment of it to them. I gave the man a document: ‘With this I certify that I am not aware that I have been

insulted by ——.’ He was so grateful

that I felt ashamed, as I if had committed some sin and had been discovered by a child.

Later, I went to his village elders to ask the meaning of their letter, and they told me the whole story. My driver had gone to them and told them of what one of their villagers had done. They regarded the matter as serious, affecting their honor, and agreed that action must be taken. So they waited a week and lived with the man as before; and when occasion arose, told him that he had not treated me in a brotherly way, that rough language and rough handling were not proper treatment for a man who had done no harm, and that he ought to apologize. One day he saw this and agreed to come and apologize. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I was wrong, I will go to apologize now.’ ‘No,’ they replied, ‘wait till we give you a letter, you must take our letter.’

I asked the elders why they waited about two weeks before they gave the man the letter. They replied, ‘ If a man in the heat of feeling goes to you and apologizes, it is good; but we wished to know if his heart was true. So we waited day after day, and we lived with him and saw him all day. And we saw that his heart was changed and he was cleansed. Then we knew that he could have the letter.’

Under the latter days of the Bolsheviks, a few of the Red Army were put in charge in the villages — poor frightened boys, armed and set against the trained fighters of the allied Czechs and Cossacks. When the writer left, the village was patrolled by Cossacks, and the villagers lived in terror. I asked the people why they were frightened and they said, ‘Because they are Cossacks and we know them.’

When working for order in Russia, there are two opposing agents between which we must choose: the force of the police and Cossacks, and the influence of the village elders. A peasant said to me, explaining the police, ‘ When a Russian is armed by the government he is made into a brute. We do not use force in our villages because it stands between men; our way brings them together.’ And judging from my own experience, the period when gray-beards were clothed in authority was the period of greatest security and of fullest development of political and domestic life.