So it was with the office. The Ministry of Home Affairs had at that time a craze for statistics: it had given orders for committees to be formed everywhere, and had issued programmes which could hardly have been carried out even in Belgium or Switzerland ; at the same time there were to be all sorts of elaborate tables with maxima and minima, with averages and various deductions from the totals for periods of ten years (made up on evidence which had not been collected for a )"car before!) , with moral remarks and meteorological observati�ns. Not a farthing was assigned for the expenses of the committees and the collection of evidence; all this was to be done from love of statistics through the rural police and put into proper shape in the governor's office. The clerks, overwhelmed with work, and the rural police, who hate all peaceful and theoretical tasks, looked upon a statistics committee as a useless luxury, as a caprice of the ministry; however, the reports had to be sent in with tabulated results and deductions.
This business seemerl immensely difficult to the whole office ; it was simply impossible; but no one troubled about that: all they worried about was that then• should be no occasion for reprimands. I promised Alenitsyn to prepare a preface and introduction, and to draw up summaries of the tables with eloquent remarks introducing foreign words, quotations, and striking deductions, if he would allow me to undertake this very hard
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vvork not at the office but at home. After parleying with Tyufyayev, Alenitsyn agreed.
The introduction to the record of the work of the committee, in which I discussed their hopes and their plans, for in reality nothing had been done at all, touched Alenitsyn to the depths of his soul. Tyufyayev himself thought it was written in masterly style. "With that my labours in the statistical line ended, but they put the committee under my supervision. They no longer forced upon me the unpleasant task of copying papers, and the drunken head-clerk who had been my chief became almost my subordinate. Alenitsyn only required, from some consideration of propriety, that I should go to the office for a short time every day.
To show the complete impossibility of real statistics, I will quote the facts sent in from the unimportant town of Kay. There, among various absurdities, were for instance the entries: Drowned-2. Causes of drowning not known-2, and in the column of totals was set out the figure 4. Under the heading of extraordinary incidents was reckoned the following tragic anecdote: So-and-so, townsman, having deranged his intelligence by ardent beverages, hanged himself. Under the heading of the morality of the town's inhabitants was the entry: 'There have been no Jews in the to\vn of Kay.' To the inquiry whether sums had been allotted for the building of a church, a stock exchange, or an almshouse, the answer ran thus: 'For the building of a stock exchange was assigned-nothing.'
The statistics that rescued me from work at the office had the unfortunate consequence of bringing me into personal relations with Tyufyayev.
There was a time '"·hen I hated that man ; that time is long past and the man himself is past. He died on his Kazan estates a bout 1 845. NO\v I think of him without anger, as of a peculiar beast met in the wilds of a forest which ought to have been studied, but with which one could not be angry for being a beast. At the time I could not help coming into conflict with him; tha t was inevitable for any decent man. Chance helped me or he would have done me great injury; to owe him a g1udge for the harm he did not do me would be absurd and paltry.
Tyufyayev liwd alone. His wife was separated from him. The governor's favourite, the wife of a cook who for no fault but being married to her had been sent away to the country, was,
\vith an awkwardness which almost seemed intentional, kept out of sight in the back rooms of his house. She did not make her appearance officially, but officials who were particularly afraid of
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inquiries formed a sort of court about the cook's wife, 'who was in favour.' Their wives and daughters paid her stealthy visits in the evening and did not boast of doing so. This lady was possessed of the same sort of tact as distinguished one of her brilliant predecessors-Potemkin; knowing the old man's disposition and afraid of being replaced, she herself sought out for him rivals who were no danger to her. The grateful old man repeated this indulgent love with his devotion and they got on well together.
All the morning Tyufyayev worked and was in the office of the secretariat. The poetry of life only began at three o'clock. Dinner was for h im no jesting matter. He liked a good dinner and he liked to eat it in company. Preparations were always made in his kitchen for twelve at table ; if the guests were fewer than half that number he was mortified; if there were no more than two visitors he was wretched; if there was no one at all, he would go off on the verge of despair to dine in his Dulcinea's apartments.
To procure people in order to feed them till they felt sick was no difficult task, but his official position and the terror he inspired in his subordinates did not permit them to enjoy his hospitality freely, nor him to turn his house into a tavern. He had to confine himself to councillors, presidents (but with half of these he was on bad terms, that is, he would not condescend to them) , travellers ( who were rare) , rich merchants, tax-farmers, and the few visitors to the town and 'oddities.' Of course I was an oddity of the first magnitude at Vyatka.
Persons exiled 'hr their opinions' to remote towns are somewhat feared, but are never confounded with ordinary mortals. 'Dangerous people' have for provincials the same attraction that notorious Lovelaces have for women and courtesans for men.
Dangerous people are far more shunned by Petersburg officials and Moscow big pots than by provincials, and especially by Siberians.
Those who were exiled in connection with the Fourteenth of December were looked upon with immense respect. Officials paid their first visit on New Year's Day to the widow of Yushnevsky.
Senator Tolstoy, when taking a census of Siberia, was guided by evidence received from the exiled Decembrists in checking the facts furnished by the officials.
Miinnich6 from his tower in Pelym superintended the affairs 6 Mi.innich (also spelt Minikh) , Burchardt Christoph (Khristophor Antonovich), 1 683-1 767, was a minister and general prominent under Peter the Great and Anna. On the latter's death he brought about the downfall
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of the Tobolsk Province. Governors used to go to consult him about matters of importance.
The working people are still less hostile to exiles: on the whole they are on the side of those who are punished. The word
'convict' disappears near the Siberian frontier and is replaced by the word 'unfortunate.' In the eyes of the Russian people a legal sentence is no disgrace to a man. The peasants of the Perm Province, living along the main road to Tobolsk, often put out kvas, milk, and bread in a little window in case an 'unfortunate'
should be secretly slipping through that way from Siberia.
By the way, speaking of exiles, Polish exiles begin to be met beyond Nizhny Novgorod a nd their number increases rapidly after Kazan. In Perm there were forty, in Vyatka not fewer; there were several besides in every district town.