the cost of living in the caucasus is one-half of what it is in the most thriving agricultural district in great britain. this is because russia is a self-supporting empire; it does not depend on other countries for its food supply. i think the comparative economic positions of england and russia are inadequately known. in england the land has been sacrificed to manufactures; by adopting free trade it made a bargain with other countries in these terms—that it would manufacture iron goods and cloth in exchange for food. it gave up agriculture and it gave up the country. it became a land of towns. the people of the english towns are the english people. russia, on the other hand, remained an agricultural country, and its manufactures have developed little. it is content to take foreign manufactured goods in exchange for its own superfluous food. the people of russia are the peasants; the liberals in the towns don’t really count. for town life and factory life democracy is most suitable, and for country life conservatism and squiredom—for english people democracy, for russians autocracy. 263those in england who have a strong wish to have russia democratised are also, strange to say, free traders. are they aware that if russia becomes a manufacturing country it will need its food for itself, and will not need to buy our wares? russia is really the employer of england. what if england loses its job?
“turning over cottons”
an ossetine village
the newspaper boom of the revolution has done much harm; it has given english people a false idea of russia. that notion of russia as a place of anarchists and gendarmes, secret societies, spies, plots, prisons is ridiculous. as after the slaves war the romans lined the way home by poles on which the heads of the conquered were fixed, so to the ordinary outsider appears the boundary line of russia—a palisade of heads on poles. in truth, it is only fenced in by passport officers, unless the outworks of lies in the european press must be counted. behind the fence, however, stands, not what so many imagine—cossacks, cannon, prisons—but an extraordinarily fertile, fruitful country, and a people happy enough to be unaware of their happiness or unhappiness. i have spoken to peasants from all parts of the country, and i have not found one who had a word to say against the tsar, or who felt any grievance against his country’s governors.
there are a hundred millions of peasants who swear by god and the tsar, and who believe implicitly in both god and tsar, a hundred million strong, healthy peasants, not yet taught to read or write, not yet 264democratised and given a vote, not yet crammed to death in manufacturing towns. these are europe’s unspent capital, her little store of unspoiled men set against a rainy day, the solid wall between china and the west.
it was with these thoughts uppermost in my mind that i came away from one of the july fairs at vladikavkaz. such revelations of the bounty of nature in the abundance of food, and in strong limbs to be nourished by it, i scarcely expect to see easily again. this fair took place at one end of the great military road that traverses the caucasus, and connects tiflis and the persian marches with rostof and the north. in a great open square, paved unevenly with cobbles, the stalls are set up. at one end are five open forges, where horses are strapped in and shod. behind these, about a hundred sheep and lambs struggle together, whilst a shepherd milks the ewes into a bucket. at another end of the “bazaar” there is a covered place for cotton goods, and there the georgian girl buys her kerchief, and the peasant woman turns over all manner of brilliant printed cotton. between the sheep and the drapery, for a full hundred yards, stand carts and barrows, or, it may be, merely sacks and baskets, full of cucumbers and tomatoes. the cucumbers are piled up on the carts like loads of stones for road-making. the vendors stand beside them and shout their prices. the customers fumble about and pick out the best they can 265find of the stock. behind or below the stalls the rotten ones lie yellow and soft under the burning sun, and hens come in and peck at them. several thousand have to be sold before afternoon; more than half will not be disposed of before they are spoiled by the sun. picture the peasants outbidding one another, fat and perspiring in the heat. ten for three-halfpence is the highest price, ten for a halfpenny the lowest. by two o’clock in the afternoon one will be able to buy forty for a penny, just to clear. meanwhile children are dancing about, eating them as one would bananas in england, munching them as if they were large pears, and in a way that would have brought bewilderment to the mind of sairey gamp, who so clearly loved a “cowcumber.” a fortnight ago a single cucumber cost twopence—assuredly the tide has risen.
scarcely less in evidence than the luscious green of cucumbers is the reposing yellow and scarlet of the tomatoes—golden apples they call them. these also must be disposed of; they go for a penny a pound, and the baskets of many traffickers are adorned by the purchase of them. behind the cucumber row is the potato market, where, for sixpence, you may buy two stone of new potatoes. with these are a long array of stalls with vegetables and fruit, everything super-abundant, and at surprising prices. raspberries and apricots go at twopence a pound, peaches at fourpence, cherries and plums at a penny, gooseberries at a halfpenny, 266blackberries at three-halfpence, and all this fruit in at the same time. strawberries came suddenly at the beginning of june, and as suddenly disappeared; the summer progresses at quick pace here. new-laid eggs are sold at this fair at a farthing each, cheese at threepence a pound, butter at tenpence, bacon at fourpence and fivepence a pound. herrings and river fish, sun-dried and cured, are sold ten on a string for twopence halfpenny; live green crayfish, ten for threepence. at shops near by, mutton is sold at threepence halfpenny, and lamb at fourpence halfpenny a pound; beef at threepence.
the fair is, however, a poor people’s market. the richer get their things at the shops, but it is difficult to persuade a peasant to buy at a shop when he can get what he wants at a fair. from time immemorial the country people have met and bargained at fairs, so that it is now in the blood. hence it is that russia is the country of fairs, having as its greatest object of that kind the fair of nizhni novgorod, that stupendous revival of the old times. the difficulty of buying at a fair is no obstacle; the crowds of people, the mountebanks among them, the stalls without scales, the haphazard bargains, and chance of bad money, are more alluring than deterrent. potatoes are sold by the pailful, cucumbers by the ten, fish by the string, bacon and cheese by the piece, and mutton mostly by the sheep. one needs to be a connoisseur, a ready calculator and 267eye-measurer, if one is going to acquit oneself honourably in the eyes of the fair bargain-drivers. no one ever takes anything at the price offered; everyone chaffers and bargains for at least five minutes before settling yes or no. then nothing bought is wrapped up. one has to bring one’s own paper with one, or one may buy earthenware pots or rush-baskets, and put together the things that may touch without harm. a pound of meat without paper puts the unprovided purchaser in a dilemma. at the fair there is no dividing line between tradesmen and buying people. whoever wishes may go and take his place, or he may take no place, and simply hawk his things about through the crowd. there are men hawking old clothes, old boots, iced beer and ices. at ten o’clock in the morning the scene is one of the utmost liveliness. peasants are standing round the ice-cream men and smacking their lips; would-be purchasers of mutton are standing among the sheep, weighing them and feeling them with their hands in primitive fashion; at the back of the forges meal and flour sellers, white from head to foot, are shovelling their goods into the measures of gossips; girls are raking over the cottons; the cucumber sellers are shouting; and those who have finished their buying are moving off with carts and barrows, sacks or baskets, as the case may be, and not infrequently one may see a man with a sack of potatoes in one hand and a fat sheep under the other arm.
268later in the summer this became a melon fair, and later still a grape fair. the melons were piled on the ground and resembled heaps of cannon balls, reminding me forcibly of the trophies of 1812 preserved in the kremlin at moscow. there were acres of the large melon, that one known as the arbuse, dark, swarthy green without, blood crimson within. this is a national fruit. it keeps well, and will be on every peasant’s table at christmas. the deacon at lisitchansk ate half a melon at every meal when i was there last christmas. in august they are as plentiful as apples, and sell for a halfpenny or a farthing apiece. there are so many of them that they overflow the towns and the villages; one imagines them rolling away and filling up all the ditches if a wind came in the night. then their colour is a delight, and it is very pleasant to see the chubby children munching big red chunks of it.
wagons of grapes, cartloads of honey, in such terms did the season express itself as it grew older. grapes were two pounds a penny, and honey threepence a pound! and this also was the season of chilis, which were bought in great quantities for pickling. then vegetable marrows and beetroots overflowed the plain—beetroots too sweet for english palates. tomatoes were eventually sold by the bucketful. peaches came and were sold at a penny a pound, and apples at prices that it seems absurd to mention. i said to alimka one morning, “let’s buy twopennyworth of apples,” and 269we received so many that we had to return home and empty our basket before we could make any more purchases. i should only have bought a farthing’s worth. then a very interesting feature of the fairs were the rosy cherry apples, no bigger than cherries, and very hard, but making a jam that is beautiful and delicious.
it was pleasant to note the preparations for the winter. stores were being laid in which would not be exhausted even in the spring. the miller was making jam in the yard three times a week; even the tatar woman below, whom ali befriends, was taking immense stock of cheap fruit, boiling it for jam or nalivka, infusion of fruit, or drying it for comp?te. even the koutia, which will be eaten on christmas eve, was being prepared now. in the yards of all the houses, in the fields about the cottages, cooking and curing and pickling was going forward. brine was prepared for the cucumbers and the fish, syrup for the jam—russian housewives always make their jam by preparing a syrup first. apples cut into squares, wild plums and apricots, were drying on the roofs; chains of onions three yards long, chains of dried mushrooms and baranka biscuits were being hung up on the walls. all day one smelt the savoury odours of food fresh cooked, all day one saw little urchin children like alimka and fatima running in and out of doors with tit-bits that they had stolen, or that an indulgent mother had dealt out. the flies 270buzzed about the doors and windows as if in quest of paradise.
such is the picture of life in connection with the fairs; the picture is somewhat inadequate, but i hope it may serve to show the feeling there was of abundance. it was an exhilarating element in the atmosphere, and together with the impression of immense mountains and deep wide skies allowed one to live in the large things of life. and russia is the land of a few large things as opposed to england, a land of many small ones. no disparagement to my native land! russia is neither greater nor less than england, but it is different.
