The official would have concluded the business with threats and thrashings, but the peasants snatched up stakes and drove the police away; the military governor sent Cossacks. The neighbouring volosts came in on their own people's side.
It is enough to say that it came to using grape-shot and bullets. The peasants left their homes and dispersed into the woods; the Cossacks drove them out of the thickets like wild beasts; then they were caught, put into irons, and sent to be court-mar·tialled at Kosmodemyansk.
By an odd chance the old major in charge there was an honest, simple man ; he good-naturedly said that the official sent from Pe tersburg was solely to blame. Everyone pounced upon him, his voice was stifled, he was suppressed; he was intimidated and even put to shame for 'trying to ruin an innocent man.'
And the inquiry followed the usual Russian routine: the peasants were flogged during the examination, flogged as a punishment, flogged as an example, flogged to extort money, and a whole crowd of them sent to Siberia.
It is worth noting that Kiselcv passed through Kosmodemyansk during the inquiry. Hc> might, it may be thought, haw looked in at the court-martial or have sent for the major.
He did not do so!
The famous Turgot, seeing the dislike of the peasants for the potato, distributed seed-potatoes among contractors, purveyors, and other persons under government control, strictly forbidding thPm to giw thPm to the peasants. At the same time he gave thPm SPCrPt ordPrs not to prevPnt the pPasants from stealing them. In a few years a part of France \vas under potatoes.
Tout bien pris, is not that bPttPr than grape-shot, Pavel Dmitriyevich?9
In 1 836 a party of gypsies came to Vyatka and settled in a field.
ThPsP gvpsi<'s had wamiPrPd as far as Tobolsk and Irbit and, accompanied by their eternal trained bear and entirely un-B P. D. Kiselev. (A .S.)
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trained children, had led their free, wandering existence from time immemorial, engaged in horse-doctoring, fortune-telling, and petty pilfering. They peacefully sang songs and robbed henroosts, but all at once the governor received instructions from His Majesty that if gypsies were found without passports (not a single gypsy had ever had a passport, and that Nicholas and his men knew perfectly well) they were to be given a fixed time within which they were to inscribe themselves as citizens of the
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village or town where the decree found them.
At the expiration of the time limit, it was ordained that those fit for military service should be taken for soldiers and the rest sent into exile, all but the children of the male sex.
This senseless decree, which recalled biblical accounts of the massacre and punishment of whole races and him that pisseth against the wall, disconcerted even Tyufyayev. He communicated the absurd ukaz to the gypsies and wrote to Petersburg that it was impossible to carry it out. To get themselves inscribed as citizens they would need both money for the officials and the consent of the town or village, which would also have been unwilling to accept the gypsies for nothing. It was necessary, too, to assume that the gypsies should themselves have been desirous of settling just there. Taking all this into consideration, Tyufyayev-and one must give him credit for it-asked the Ministry to grant postponements and exemptions.
The Minister answered by instructions that at the expiration of the time-limit this Nebuchadnezzar-like decree should be carried out. Most unwillingly Tyufyayev sent a squad of soldiers with orders to surround the gypsy camp ; as soon as this was done, the police arrived with a garrison battalion, and what happened, I am told, was beyond all imagination. Women with streaming hair ran about in a frenzy, screaming and weeping, and falling at the feet of the police; grey-headed old mothers clung to their sons. But order triumphed and the lame politsmeystcr took the boys and took the recruits-while the rest were sent by stages somewhere into exile.
But when the children had been taken away, the question arose what was to be done with them and at whose expense they were to be kept.
There had formerly been foundling hospitals connected with the Charitable Board, which cost the government nothing. But the Prussian chastity of Nicholas abolished them as detrimental to morals. Tyufyayev advanced money of his own and asked the Minister for instructions. Ministers never stick at anything.
They ordered that the boys, until further instructions, were to be
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put into the care of the old men and women maintained in the almshouses.
Think of lodging little children with moribund old men and women, making them breathe the atmosphere of death-and charging old people who need peace and quiet with looking after children for nothing.
What imagination!
While I am on the subject I must describe what happened some eighteen months later to the head-man of my father's village in the province of Vladimir. He was a peasant of intelligence and experience who carried on the trade of a carrier, had several teams of three horses each, and had been for twenty years the head-man of a little village that paid obrok to my father.
Some time during the year I spent in Vladimir the neighbouring peasants asked him to hand over a recruit for them. Bringing the future defender of his country on a rope, he arrived in the to.,vn with great self-confidence as a man proficient in his business.
'This,' said he, combing with his fingers the fair, grizzled beard that framed his face, 'is all the work of men's hands, sir.
The year before last we pitched on our lad, such a wretched, puny fellow he was-the peasants were fearfully afraid he wouldn't do. So I says, "And roughly how much, good Christians, will you go to? A \Vheel will not turn without being greased." We talked it over and the mir10 decided to give twentyfive gold pieces. I went to the town and after talking in the government office I went straight to the president-he was a sensible man, sir, and had known me for ages. He told them to call me into his study and he had something the matter with his leg, so he was lying on a sofa. I put it all before him and he answered me with a laugh, "All right, all right; you tell me how many of them you have brought-you are a skinflint, I know you." I put ten gold pieces on the table and made him a low bow-he took the money in his hand and kept playing with it.
"But I say," he said, "I am not the only one you will have to pay; what more have you brought?" I reported that I'd got together another ten. "Well," he said, "you can reckon yourself what you must do with it. Two to the doctor, two to the army receiver, then the clerk . . . and any treating won't come to 10 Village council. ( R.)
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more than three-so you had better leave the rest with m e and I will try to arrange the affair." '