- Project Runeberg -  Impressions of Russia /
63

(1889) [MARC] Author: Georg Brandes Translator: Samuel Coffin Eastman - Tema: Russia
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children and sick cattle, and besought him to undertake
a general cure: “Make them well, little father! make
them well!” When he assured them that he had not the
power to do it, there was not one of them who would
believe him. They begged, cried, asked him what they
had done to him that he would not help them: “You
know very well you can, if you will!”

In Benjamin Constant’s old work on “Religion,” it is
related that at the beginning of this century, when a
Russian general in full uniform rode out into a country
town in a part of Siberia but little frequented, he was
regarded by the natives as God himself, and that the
memory of his appearance got such a firm hold among
the people that when ten years later a Russian colonel
came to the same place he was greeted as the “Son of
God.”

That would hardly be possible now. Still, the following
happened last year. A cultured Russian passed
through a town inhabited by Cossacks of Little Russia.
He was asked the question: “Will you be so good as
to tell us if you have been in the other world?” He
was offended, since he supposed that the inhabitants
meant to indicate to him that they did not believe what
he had said. But the fact was that one of the inhabitants
of the town had returned from a pilgrimage and had told
them that he came from the other world, and those
recently deceased in the town had requested him to bring
greetings to their relatives. He had gone away again,
loaded with rustic presents, to the departed relatives of
the credulous Cossacks. Now they wanted to find out
from the Russian gentleman whether these gifts had
reached their proper destination.

In the presence of such ignorance and naïveté mutual
understanding is difficult,—most difficult, perhaps,

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