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different kinds of persons—merchants, officials, teachers,
and peasants—and on different subjects. I soon, however,
discovered that the statements of my interlocutors were
often as contradictory as they well could be, and that I
seldom could rely on my authority. From my experiences
in this respect during my travels in Siberia, I feel inclined
to think that the somewhat strong opinion of the French
traveller, Professor Legras, concerning the way in which
truth is treated in Siberia comes very near the mark.
“Among certain classes of society in Siberia,” he says,
“people lie with enthusiasm for the pleasure of the thing,
most often without any personal interest as motive, simply
from habit, as a pastime, or from love of the art. If I
except a few personal friends who have given me reliable
information, I could count on my fingers those persons
whom I have not surprised in the very act of trying to
cheat and deceive me by wrong statements... They lie
naïvely, refinedly, or cynically, as it suits them best; they
lie with caressing looks and cordial shakings of the hand”...
This serious moral defect must not, however, be judged
too hardly by our western standard; it is, I believe, to be
explained by Asiatic conditions which create suspicion
between man and man, and make the art of dissimulation
a necessary weapon of self-protection of everybody against
everybody. In Siberia, where these Asiatic conditions are
still more pronounced than in European Russia, this art of
lying has assumed repulsive forms—has become, indeed, a
kind of popular amusement. The fault is not so much
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