In general, the exiled Poles are not badly treated ; but those of them who have no means of their own are shockingly ill off.
Such men receive from Government fifteen roubles a month, to pay for lodgings, clothing, food, and fuel. In the larger towns, such as Kazan or Tobolsk, they can eke out a living by giving lessons or concerts, by playing at balls or painting portraits or teaching children to dance ; but at Perm and Vyatka even these resources did not exist. In spite of that, they never asked Russians for assistance in any form.
1 5
The Governoz's invitations to dine on the luxuries of Siberia were a real infliction to me. His dining-room was merely the office over again, in a different shape, cleaner indeed, but more objectionable, because there was not the same appearance of compuJsion about it.
He knew his guests thoroughly and despised them. Sometimes he showed his claws, but he generally treated them as a man 8. A Polish revolutionary ; born in t8o8, he was shot in February 1839·
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treats his dogs, either with excessive familiarity or with a roughness beyond all bounds. But all the same he continued to invite them, and they came in a flutter of joy, prostrating themselves before him, currying favour by tales against others, all smiles and bows and complaisance.
I blushed for them and felt ashamed.
Our intimacy did not last long : the Governor soon perceived that I was unfit to move in the highest circles of Vyatka.
After three months he was dissatisfied with me, and after six months he hated me. I ceased to attend his dinners, and never even called at his house. As we shall see later, it was a visit to Vyatka from the Crown Prince 9 that saved me from his persecution.
In this connection it is necessary to add that I did nothing whatever to deserve either his attentions and invitations at first, or his anger and ill-usage afterwards. He could not endure in me an attitude which, though not at all rude, was independent; my behaviour was perfectly correct, but he demanded servility.
He was greedily jealous of the power which he had worked hard to gain, and he sought not merely obedience but the appearance of unquestioning subordination. Unfortunately, in this respect he was a true Russian.
The gentleman says to his servant : 'Hold your tongue ! I will not allow you to answer me back.'
The head of an office says to any subordinate who ventures on a protest : 'You forget yourself. Do you know to whom you are speaking ?'
Tyufyayev cherished a secret but intense hatred for everything aristocratic, and it was the result of bitter experience. For him the penal servitude of Arakcheyev's office was a harbour of refuge and freedom, such as he had never enjoyed before. In earlier days his employers, when they gave him small jobs to do, never offered him a chair ; when he served in the Controller's office, he was treated with military roughness by the soldiers and once horsewhipped by a colonel in the streets of Vilna. The clerk stored all this up in his heart and brooded over it ; and now he was Governor, and it was his turn to play the tyrant, to keep a man standing, to address people familiarly, to speak unnecessarily loudly, and at times to commit long-descended nobles for trial.
9· Afterwards Alexander II.
P R I S O N A N D E X I L E
2 1 7
From Perm h e was promoted to Tver. But the nobles, however deferential and subservient, could not stand Tyufyayev. They petitioned for his removal, and he was sent to Vyatka.
There he was in his element once more. Officials and distillers, factory-owners and officials, - what more could the heart of man desire ? Everyone trem!Jled before him and got up when he approached ; everyone gave him dinners, offered him wine, and sought to anticipate his wishes ; at every wedding or birthday party the :first toast proposed was 'His Excellency the Governor I '
C H A P T E R V I I I
Officials - Siberian Governors - A Bird o f Prey - A Gentle Judge - An Inspector Roasted - The Tatar - A Boy of the Female Sex - The Potato Revolt - Russian Justice
1
ONE of the saddest consequences of the revolution effected by Peter the Great is the development of the official class in Russia.
These chinovniks are an artificial, ill-educated, and hungry class, incapable of anything except office-work, and ignorant of every·
thing except official papers. They form a kind of lay clergy, officiating in the law-courts and police-offices, and sucking the blood of the nation with thousands of dirty, greedy mouths.
Gogo! raised one side of the curtain and showed us the Russian chinovnik in his true colours ;1 but Gogo!, without meaning to, makes us resigned by making us laugh, and his immense comic power tends to suppress resentment. Besides, fettered as he was by the censorship, he could barely touch on the sorrowful side of that unclean subterranean region in which the destinies of the ill-starred Russian people are hammered and shaped.
There, in those grimy offices which we walk through as fast as we can, men in shabby coats sit and write ; first they write a rough draft and then copy it out on stamped paper - and individuals, families, whole villages are injured, terrified, and ruined.
The father is banished to a distance, the mother is sent to prison, 1. Gogol's play, The Revizor, is a satire on the Russian bureaucracy.
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the son t o the Army ; i t all comes upon them a s suddenly a s a clap of thunder, and in most cases it is undeserved. The object of it all is money. Pay up ! If you don't, an inquest will be held on the body of some drunkard who has been frozen in the snow. A collection is made for the village authorities ; the peasants contrib·
ute their last penny. Then there are the police and law-officers -
they must live somehow, and one has a wife to maintain and another a family to educate, and they are all model husbands and fathers.
This official class is sovereign in the north-eastern Governments of Russia and in Siberia. It has spread and flourished there without hindrance and without pause; in that remote region where all share in the profits, theft is the order of the day. The Tsar himself is powerless against these entrenchments, buried under snow and constructed out of sticky mud. All measures of the central Government are emasculated before they get there, and all its purposes are distorted : it is deceived and cheated, betrayed and sold, and all the time an appearance of servile fidelity is kept up, and official procedure is punctually observed.
Speransky 2 tried to lighten the burdens of the people by introducing into all the offices in Siberia the principle of divided control. But it makes little difference whether the stealing is done by individuals or gangs of robbers. He discharged hundreds of old thieves, and took on hundreds of new ones. The rural police were so terrified at first that they actually paid blackmail to the peasants. But a few years passed, and the officials were making as much money as ever, in spite of the new conditions.
A second eccentric Governor, General Velyaminov, tried again.