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“That I do not know; but I have no power to let the
people go.”
I advised him again to dissolve the meeting, and started for
home. After I had walked some way I saw long rows of men
and sleighs leaving the village; the starshina had evidently
dismissed them.
Afterwards I learned that he had kept the starostas, and the
chief of the police had arrived at 7 p.m.; he gave strict orders
that the taxes were to be collected, threatening to sell up the
peasants to the last stick. Then he left.
What is the cause and purpose of all these unnecessary
sufferings?
It is night. The storm howls still more fiercely. I have had
only one applicant for relief to-day. Through this terrible
weather he had come a distance of six versts (about four miles).
When he came in he fell on his knees before me.
“Let me not die of cold!” he said, in a quivering voice.
“We have had no fire for two days.... My family...
the children—barefooted.”
I turned away. Hastily I wrote an order for five pud of
wood, and gave it him, trying to avoid his look. He left.
So far, my friend’s description. In another letter I was told
that these peasants had been publicly flogged in the cruellest
way by order of the authorities because they could not pay
their taxes.
Count Tolstoi allowed me to use an extract from his book,
then in preparation, which described the manner in which this
flogging takes place, as seen by himself. This book has since
been published (“The Kingdom of Heaven is Within You”),
but we retain the description as fitly supplementing the
narrative just given.
On 29th of September last (1892), as I was travelling to a
famine-stricken place, I saw, at one of the railway stations, a
General steam up in a special train, with a small company of
soldiers; they were on their way to Tula, to punish several
unruly peasants, who had dared to withstand a young lord,
who had flagrantly trampled on their rights...
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