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- III. Tolstoi on the Famine
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CHAPTER III.
TOLSTOI ON THE FAMINE.
Tolstoi’s Warnings to the Government—Their Reception—Government
Measures and Tolstoi’s Criticisms—The True Cause of the Distress—
Russian Society—The True Remedy.
Count Tolstoi had for some time foreseen that such a famine
must inevitably come, and had warned the authorities of it.
He had also, long before they had any correct ideas of the
extent and nature of the distress, or had taken any measures to
obviate it, laid before them such proposals as would, if adopted,
have lessened its terrible ravages to a considerable extent at
least. Such were the establishment of public works on a large
scale to give remunerative employment to the people; the
regulation of the prices of provisions by a fixed standard, and
forbidding the hoarding of flour, &c., while the people wTere
starving; the opening of free eating-houses in adequate
numbers and capacity in the famine-stricken villages; the
organisation of all available voluntary forces in rational relief work,
&c. But the “powers that be” in St. Petersburg not only
refused to listen to his warnings or to take his advice, but
devised a fiendish policy of persecution against the noblest
man their land contained. His warnings were treated as
revolutionary threats, and made the basis of a report of a
“widespread Nihilistic conspiracy.” He had offered the
Russian papers an article suggesting the best modes of meeting
the distress; they refused it. According to his usual custom,
he allowed it to be published by the press of other countries.
In England The Daily Chronicle gave an English translation, in
which the meaning of one sentence was not made clear.
Tolstoi had said that the peasants must not only be fed, but
roused from their hopeless apathy and lifted up from their
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