Light on Russia.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XVII, Issue 5209, 16 February 1892, Page 4

Light on Russia.

MR GEORGE KENNAN'S VIEWS. (San Francisco Chronicle, November 21.) George Kennan. the writer and explorer, who has told the English-speaking world so much that is interesting about the Russian Empire, and who has given graphic pictures of the atrocious exile system, was in the city yesterday. He is on a lecturing tour, and came here from Stockton yesterday morning. He lectured at San Jose last night, and went from there to Santa Cruz. Mr Kennan was found by a Chronicle reporter to be a gentleman of about forty years, with a frank, uleasant manner that would win him friends anywhere. He is not a large man, but he looks tough and wiry enough to stand a few more seasons of hardship in the Caucasus or on the cold Siberian plains. Mrs Kennan accompanies her husband. She is a handsome woman, with an entertaining manner, and is several years her husband's junior. She is enthusiastically devoted to her husband's interests, and during his years of literary work lias labored with him constantly, copying manuscripts, translating, and reading proofs, and when the money comes in her business tact lias a good deal to do with its disposition. Everyone knows that George Kennan, about four years ago, saw every hideous feature of the Siberian prisons, and that he has given the world tlie first truthful pictures of the barbarities and sufferings of the Russian exile system. Few knew who Mr Kennan was before he acquired his latest fame. " I was a telegraph operator from my childhood," he said yesterday. "My father was manager of an office of the Wade, Speed, and O'Reilly telegraph line, the first one built west of Buffalo. Being about the office constantly, I could telegraph before I could write, and on my sixth birthday I did send two commercial messages. I was in a Cincinnati office aud was worn in health when I was 17 years of age. I wanted to get out somewhere, and asked to be sent to the front as an operator during the war. The Rus-sian-American Telegraph Company was then contemplating building a line to Asia by way of Alaska and Beliring Straits. I was sent out to explore a route through Alaska, and reached San Francisco by way of Nicaragua, 25 years ago. This is my first visit here since then. I was in Sacramento for six months, and was then sent to the Eastern Siberian coast, instead of Alaska. I reached Kamtchatka in a trading vessel in 1867, aud then spent two years and a half exploring a route on reindeer sledges, on snow shoes, on foot, and in canoes. I then took a sleigh ride of 6000 miles to St. Petersburg, remaining there some time. I had acquired the language, and my experience gave me a lasting interest in the country. My first lecture here next week, on "Camp Life in Kamtchatka," will deal with my experiences on this first trip. "I made .succeeding visits to Russia, to gratify my own interest. Once I visited Finland, and on another trip I explored the Caucasus mountains. I had taken a great interest in the Russian Government, had read Russian papers and literature extensively, and had written some magazine articles, and I saw that the country was a good field for a man with literary aspirations. "In 1579, while I was night manager of the Associated Press office in Washington, and when the terrorists were assassinating people constantly in Russia, it occurred to me that a good field was presented in an investigation of the socalled Nihilists to find out what they really wanted. I thought that one should go to Siberian prisons, where they might be found willing to talk. The project was long delayed by various circumstances, ancf it was not until 1884 that I started on the trip for the Century Magazine. I had before this written articles and delivered lectures in which I had vindicated the Russian Government from some of the charges concerning its exile system which I knew to be false, and these utterances, favorable to the Government, had reached St Petersburg. So when I applied there to the Assistant Minister of the Interior for permission to visit the prisons it was "ranted, wnile others were denied the privilege. On that trip I spent 16 months and travelled 25,000 nnles. '' Russians have denied much that I have written, hut if the Czar will let me «o to Russia and summon witnesses who will be guaranteed immunity from punishment for testifying, he may select his own court, and I will prove everything that I have said about the exile system. " A high Russian officer who had heard one of iny lectures came to me in New York last year, and asserted that many of the evils i described had been remedied. We spoke of the censorship of the press. He said : 'Of course, Mr Kennan, in a system of government like ours ive must keep some restraint on the press, but we do allow reasonable freedom.' I said : ' I beg your pardon, but I do not think you do? I have here two years' proof sheets of Russian papers as they came back from the censor.' He didn't care to discuss j that point any further." j Mr Kennan said that if he tried to return to Russia under his own name now, the officer who inspected his passport at the frontier would simply tell him that he could not enter the empire, and he would be asked to get oil the train. He is on the list of people who arc not allowed m the country. When asked about the present famine in Russia, Mr Kennan said that nearly all he knew about present affairs in Russia ho learned from Russian papers, which are subject to a strict censorship, and which are not reliable. He had some correspondence about which the writers were very careful. Not long ago he received a ietter without date or signature, which had been carried out of the country and mailed. . " How extensive the famine is 1 do not know, but it is very severe," he said. "They collect the taxes there with great rigor. If a family cannot pay its taxes the horse or cow is sold, and the knout is even used. The condition of the peasants has been growing steadily worse since the emancipation of the serfs. The conditions there are such that in 60 days from a failure of crops the people are reduced to a diet of roots and grass. They have no reserve. " I have not made a personal study of the Jewish question in Russia, and what I mi<dit say about it would be on the evidence of others," said Mr Kennan w hen the subject was changed again. ' 1 My impression is that there is a religious feeling mixed up with the present persecution of the Jews, and that the Czar is largely responsible for it. He is said to be a religious fanatic. Two years ago an accident occurred to a tram on which he was travelling, and the car in which he and some of his"family were dining was almost entirely demolished, but no one was seriously injured. I saw a photograph of the wrecked car, and it is wonderful how any of the occupants could have escaped being killed. I understand that the Czar believed his escape to bo an interposition of Providence, that he might continue liis holy policy of repressing everything opposed to the Greek Church.