LIFE IN RUSSIA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22018, 26 January 1935, Page 11

LIFE IN RUSSIA

BT PETER FLEMING

STALIN'S BIRTHPLACE SHOOTING IN GEORGIA r ' HOSPITABLE PEASANTS ' HUNTERS AND THEIR BAG

(Copyright) No. H. . In this article Mr. Fleming describes' I a shooting trip in Georgia. He also gives glimpses of the lift? of the peasant inhabitants, of the Cauca»U3. The shooting party of three, of which I was a member, reached Tiflis in the middle of September, via. the Georgian military highway. This road, which was completed toward the close of the last century, is a magnificent piece of engineering; it is kept by the present regime in moderately good repair, but is closed by snow from November to May. From Ordjonikidze (formerly Vladikavkaz) it climbs steeply and tortuously for a great part of the ascent skirting the precipitous gorge of the River Terek.

Crossing an eastern shoulder of the 16,000 ft. Mount Kasbek, the road reaches its highest point at the Pass of the Cross (7000 ft.). Thence it dropsin less alarming convolutions into a valley, where on the crags above each small village slim rectangular watchtowers, oddly tapered, recall the ' clan warfare of not so long ago. In the. foothills above Tifliet the road passes through Mtskhet, an ancient town which, though formerly the capital of Georgia, might have dropped out of the history books but for the birth there, 55 years ago, of Joseph Djugashvilli, otherwise known as Stalin., v "Descended from Crusaders"

Before reaching this hallowed spot we had stopped at a village in the mountains, whence, obtaining what passed for horses, we made a two-days' journey to the territory of the Hevsurs. This: tribe of mountaineers, said to "number 10,000. is popularly supposed to be descended from the Crusaders under God' frey of Boulogne. The legend, about which ethnologists are disappointingly sceptical, probably owes its origin to the national costume, which consists principally of a leather jerkin, so decorated with metal that it suggests mail, and having the sign of the Cross, embroidered on both sleeves above the elbow.

One of the jerkins boasted as its centrals ornament a sixpenny bit boaring tha head of Queen Victoria; we brought the garment up to date by the gift of a similar y coin minted in the of her grandson. We found the Hevsurs, Ivho speak a dialedt of Georgian, a handsome, proud pteople, a queer oasis of dignity and dour reserve in the desert of Soviet garrulity. Change In Tiflls Tiflis, the capital of Georgia, to-day hardly reflects the volatile and rather exotic Georgian temperament. The bazaar has be & liquidated, the national costume is out of vogue—or out of stock, and the shops contain only the shoddy and standardised goods which are to be found all over Russia. In Georgia, as in all the diverse Soviet Republics, the native culture is being sedulously preserved, but by a process whose results are reflected only very palely outside the walls of museums and similar institutions.

We spent an amusma fortnight in th© mountains of Eastern Georgia. Ths Georgian peasants are hardy, hospitable and easily amused. As hunters they recall for the most part Tartarin rather than Nimrod.

Everyone, including the beaters, carries a heavy armament, usually comprising a revolver and either, a shotgun or a' rifle or (commonly) both. Some of the peasants are extremely good shots, and their powers of endurance are remarkable, particularly as their only footwear is a kind of rawhide moccasin, reinforced when the going becomes semi-precipitous by primitive climbing "irons.' They summon their dogs—though seldom with success —by a loud bl/ist down , the barrel of » shotgun. 'Sport in the Caucasus

We moved inconsequently from village to village, at one place lodging in Tsinondali, the former palace of Prince Chavehavadze, and now the headquarters of a State vineyard. The district is a fertile one, its chief products—tobacco and wine^— providing agreeably seasonal occupations, and the peasants live very well under the new regime. The best sport in the Caucasus is offered by the tour (capra cylindricornis, Blutch), a mountain sheep of the moufflon typd, which is found (with difficulty) on the alpine pastures or in the forest immediately below them, and whose pursuit requires- endurance and some cunning. The only tour which gave us a chance of a shot we wounded, but lost, on a steep place near the junction of the frontiers of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Daghestan, a nominally autonomous district, inhabited by & Turki-speaking tribe called Lesgins, much given to banditry.

In addition to the tour there are bears, wolves and wild boar; we killed a large specimen of the last across the Azerbaijan frontier, but apart from that our bag was confined to _ a few small deer, a wild cai, several jackals, some pheasants, quail and pigeon and a few antelope which I shot later near Baku. Of the giant red deer, preserved on account of their rarity, we saw only the phenomenal tracks. Life ol the hunters The chief attraction of the expedition lay in sharing the life of the hunters.. In the field their plans might miscarry, their dogs run into the next Republic, and their passion for impromptu target practice plear the nearest valleys prematurely; but at the end of the day they always recovered their -morale. Bits of whatever had been shot would be cut into small pieces, spitted on green wands, and made into shashlik over the ashes of a fire. Then they would sing songs with melodies Oriental rather thaa Slav, and perhaps. throwing their long knives on the ground, do fierce firelit dances liko a Scottish sword dance, before lying down to sleep. When we returned to our base in a village one of the men would ask the whole expedition to his house, and there huge quantities of wine and homemade delicacies would be produced. The host and hostess appeared to take a genuine pleasure in being eaten out of house and home.

On the way back to Tiflis we stopped for luncheon at a place where a new restaurant had. been built. It was the kind of shoddy, characterless institution that you find all over Russia, and as I looked at the redundant posters, on the walls, aris the mass-produced cutlery, and the bust of Lenin, and the menu on which no variations could be played, I realised that Soviet civilisation was marching up to the mountains, and that soon, m thevillagte.we had left, it would bo all like this.