RUSSIA OF TO-DAY.

Evening Star, Issue 11450, 18 January 1901, Page 7

RUSSIA OF TO-DAY.

THE PEOPLE AS THEY ARE. What impressions of the Russian people does one gather from several months' travel through the whole Empire—a journey of fifteen thousand miles (says a writer in 'Scribners Magazine')? The first thing that attracts your attention in the two capitals themselves is. a curious detail. All the shops which offer wares to the people do so. not in words, as with us-, but with pictures. The provision merchant's shop is a veritable picture gallery of sausages and cheeses and bread and butter and hams, and everything eatable. The ironmonger hangs out illustrations of the knives and forks and scissors and chisels and foot rules, and the like. The tailor shows paintings of coats and trousers. Why is this? Simply because a majority of potential CUSTOMERS CANNOT READ. I noticed the same thing.later in going over barracks. In one large frame, for instance, is a series of " penny dreadful" pictures, showing all the duties" of a sentry —what the good sentry does if a fire breaks out, if a burglar is seen entering a house, if a citizen is attacked, if a sportsman comes shooting birds near a powder magazine, aud so on. Very few of the soldiers can read, and this is tho only way to impart information. In a classroom at another barracks was a schoolmaster teaching the letters of the alphabet on a blackboard to a large number of men. " This is the class for mo to join." I remarked, to the great glee of these good-tempered • grown-up children. The Russian people, then, ase illiterate, in Ihe strict sense of the word. And millions upon millions of people who read no books and no newspapers, write and receive no letters, must inevitably be the HELPLESS VICTIMS OF SUPERSTITION and prejudice. This is, of course, the fact. Russia is the home of more, religious manias and crazy notions than could be enumerated. Not a month passes without some almost incredible instance of religious fanaticism. The eud of the world is a constant recurring belief. The horrible skoptsi. whose practices one cannot mere nearly describe than by saying that they carry out literally tho exhortation " If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out," are represented all over Russia, and in spite of the severest measures the police cannot stop their abominable propaganda. A friend told me of a travelling impostor he had seen, who went from village to village offering, for a small fee, to show some hairs from the HEAD OF THE VIRGIN MARY. One person at a time was admitted ; a small parcel was produced, and many wrappings taken off in succession, until in ihe last paper of all the visitor was invited to gaze on the miraculous hairs. The paper was quite emptv, and the peasant would aver that he could not see them. Then the importor would sorrowfully explain that the hairs were invisible to sinful eyes, and that only the pious could see them. In order to escape the reproach, his customers would loudly and proudly assert that they saw them clearly, and so he did a brisk trade. The Russian Government is anxious to change its old Gregorian Calendar to that of the rest of the world (the Russian date is now twelve days behind our own), but. it cannot, do so, because the peasants would be furious if the favorite saints were robbed of their proper birthdays. Sunday, by the way, is a person to the Russian lower classes. POVERTY AND ILLITERACY naturally ro hand in hand. In no other great country of the world is poverty —universal, monotonous, hopeless poverty—the national characteristic of the people! The only parallels I know arc in sonic of the Balkan States. At. almost any point in rural Russia you might think yourself in the interior of Servia or Bulgaria, except that even in these countries the poor peasant is not quite so poor, and his bearing is more independent. Long train journeys in Russia are depres.-ing experiences. Once past the limits of tho towns, every village is the same —a wide strret or two : not really streets, of course, but deep dust or mud. according to the season, and from a score to a couple of hundred GREY. ONE-STOREY. WOODEN HOUSES, usually dilapidated, and a church. Russia is still first and foremost an agricultural country; she produces (including Polandf two thousand million bushels of grain, and grain products form more than half her total exports to Europe; therefore at the right season there are great stretches of waving fields, and later the huge mounds of straw whence the grain has been threshed. But it is in her most fertile districts that the worst famines occur, for famine—a little one every year, a big one every seven years —-hits now become a regular occurrence. And the country, as one flies across it, leaves the general impression of indigence. In sharp and painful contrast with western Europe, there are virtually no fat stackyards, no cosy farmhouse, no chateau of the local landowner, no squire's hall—pitiful assemblages of men and women just on the hither side of the starvation line. And, from all one learns, disease is rife. . , . DRUNKENNESS, TOO, IS A NATIONAL VICE, the peasant having his regular bout whenever he has saved up a small sum. The new Government monopoly of the sale of vodka, which is gradually coming into force over the whole countryf' will, I believe, exert a beneficial influence in this matter, and much of the denunciation levelled at it is, in my opinion, unjust. Nothing is more common in the towns than to see a policeman drag a sleepy, half-drunken peasant from his cart aud set him to walking by the side of his horse. Personally, the Russian common people are attractive. Thev are SIMPLE, GOOD-NATURED, "KINDLY, very ready to be pleased or to laugh. Nobody can fail to like them. The ordinary Russian policeman—the gorodovi, not the secret police—is the gentlest specimen of his kind I have ever met. And the soldier, typical of his class, is a great child, and is treated as such. is left to his intelligence or his initiative. Of virtues he has many—ho is brave, obedient, faithful; of wits he is not supposed or even desired to show any signs. The very words he is to say are put in his mouth. If an officer asks him a question that he cannot answer, he may not say "I do not know "; he must reply "I am not able to know." Whsn his colonel greets him collectively he has one answer: when the Czar greets him he has another—a whole sentence carefully learned by heart and shouted in unison by the whole regiment in a long series of explosive syllables. His pay is about fortvfour cents every three months. From the ( point of view of the military martinet, he 'is the ideal soldier. To his number there is no limit.