OLD RUSSIA.*

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 229, 27 September 1930, Page 8

OLD RUSSIA.*

It is hard to believe that oppression and •persecution will ever eradicate from the Russian mind and heart the love of religious observances. God and the Czar so long represented authority in the Russian mind that the masses cannot well exist without attributing all good to God and all earthly authority to a ruler appointed 'by Him. The Russian peasantry were heavily taxed by their Government and their priests and gave of their poverty without rebellion. The nightmare present, one would think, cannot long endure, hut the natural sadness of the uneducated Russian, accounted for by generations of unenlightenment, can hardly have been increased by the recent turmoil and rapid changes in authority. The Russian priest was - the most exalted personage the peasants could approach. There were np police, and might was right, for in any village disagreement a iight settled it. The hero of a village was the man who had been beyond it and returned, especially if he had made money. A single unaided bandit would terrorise an entire district and could take anything he wanted. The people did not resent military conscription, but would do anything, even to personal mutilation, to escape it. The Rotnik, or Government representative, paid infrequent visits, and during his presence the village would be as quiet and ordeily as one deserted. There was plague, there was smallpox, but all such things were, accepted as the will of God. The only remedy known was to fly elsewhere. The Rabbi was adviser and teacher and nearly everybody was anxious to learn to read, but those who could were looked upon with suspicion by those who could not. The food was mostly potatoes and grain, and, as with the Arabs, a common dish, into which each member of the family dipped at will_ with a wooden spoon. The men were clever in rough carpentry and in carving. They made carved door locks with keys two feet long and as many as twenty wards. Beside fish spearing the villagers fished with bread covered in pepper. The fish eating peppered bread would float belly upwards for some time aftei' and were ■easily caught. Dying persons were given messages to take to the next world, the Recording Angel, who gave a good mark ("mitzvar") for a good deed and an "avairah" (bad mark) for an evil deed, was wholly believed in, and all Old Testament laws wore rigidly obeyed. So much were members of the community puzzled by the difficulty of making money "within the Law" that special honour was shown to those men who were strictly honest and yet made material progress. To 'be a bootmaker was to be of the lowest caste, and the tailor stood but little higher. These people and others could obtain moral credit by ceremoniously having the good marks,, or mitzvare, of others transferred to them by gift. In the remoter villages of Old Russia the Jews and Gentiles lived happily together and it was in the great towns only that "pogroms"—attacks on Jews —made the world familiar with one stiong reason for America's immigrant quota bar. * "Tales of a Vanished Land," by H. E. Burroughs. (Allen Umvin.)