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- XVI. The two Worlds, Peasant and Official
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CHAPTER XVI.
THE TWO WORLDS, PEASANT AND OFFICIAL.
Two Nations in One—Study of “the People”—The “Mir”—Peasants’ Views
on Land Tenure—On Jurisdiction Generally—Later Corruption by
Officialism—Tchinovniks and the “Mir”—Examples of Official
Oppression—“Uriadniks” or Rural Police—Their Misdeeds—Wickedness in
High Places—The Logoschino Affair—Experiences of a Russian
Friend—Tolstoi’s Description of Russian “Justice.”
The student of Russian affairs must at the outset grasp this
fact very firmly, if he would hope to understand the inner life
of the nation—that the Russian people is not one but two.
We are not speaking of the different races to be found in the
Empire, but of the two worlds, the official and the popular,
that meet each other at many points, yet remain distinct in
kind. It is not simply a lateral division separating the
“upper classes” from the mass of the people, for the
ramifications of the official system are so wide and deep that there is
not a village omitted from their lists, not an individual whose
life is untouched by the ubiquitous tchinovnik. Yet this
tremendous organisation of bureaus, registers, bye-laws, &c.,
this intricate and complex network of red tape, this
all-penetrating and Argus-eyed system of police, remains completely
outside the real life of the peasants, incomprehensible to them,
because in its very nature opposed to their modes of thought
and judgment; while in its turn the world in which the
peasants live is as unintelligible to the genuine tchinovnik as
the spirit-world is to a confirmed materialist. This will be
illustrated by some account of the manners and customs of
each.
It is now about half-a-century or more since such men as
Dal, Jakushkin, Kirejevski, &c., began to study the life of the
peasants, before then a terra incognita to the educated world,
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