F. Marion Crawford - "Via Crucis"

William Shakespeare - "The Tragedy of Julius Caesar"

William Shakespeare - "As You Like It"

R. M. Ballantyne - "Confessio Amantis"

The Moscow Census. From What to do?

L >> Lyof N. Tolstoi >> The Moscow Census. From What to do?



Please be advised that David sent the two Moscow Census pieces to me
as one file, and that I split it into two, since some people have a
bit of trouble when we put two titles in one file. However, I did NOT
change the numbering of the footnotes, so they all appear at the end
of each file.





This etext was produced by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk,
from the 1887 Thomas Y. Crowell edition.





THE MOSCOW CENSUS--FROM "WHAT TO DO?"
by Count Lyof N. Tolstoi




Translated from the Russian by
Isabel F. Hapgood




THOUGHTS EVOKED BY THE CENSUS OF MOSCOW. [1884-1885.]



And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then?

He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him
impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do
likewise--LUKE iii. 10. 11.

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust
doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single,
thy whole body shall be full of light.

But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.
If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that
darkness!

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and
love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the
other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye
shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye
shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than
raiment?--MATT. vi. 19-25.

Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall
we drink? Or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly
Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all
these things shall be added unto you.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take
thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the
evil thereof.--MATT. vi. 31-34.

For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a
rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.--MATT. xix. 24; MARK x.
25; LUKE xviii. 25.



CHAPTER I.



I had lived all my life out of town. When, in 1881, I went to live
in Moscow, the poverty of the town greatly surprised me. I am
familiar with poverty in the country; but city poverty was new and
incomprehensible to me. In Moscow it was impossible to pass along
the street without encountering beggars, and especially beggars who
are unlike those in the country. These beggars do not go about with
their pouches in the name of Christ, as country beggars are
accustomed to do, but these beggars are without the pouch and the
name of Christ. The Moscow beggars carry no pouches, and do not ask
for alms. Generally, when they meet or pass you, they merely try to
catch your eye; and, according to your look, they beg or refrain from
it. I know one such beggar who belongs to the gentry. The old man
walks slowly along, bending forward every time he sets his foot down.
When he meets you, he rests on one foot and makes you a kind of
salute. If you stop, he pulls off his hat with its cockade, and bows
and begs: if you do not halt, he pretends that that is merely his
way of walking, and he passes on, bending forward in like manner on
the other foot. He is a real Moscow beggar, a cultivated man. At
first I did not know why the Moscow beggars do not ask alms directly;
afterwards I came to understand why they do not beg, but still I did
not understand their position.

Once, as I was passing through Afanasievskaya Lane, I saw a policeman
putting a ragged peasant, all swollen with dropsy, into a cab. I
inquired: "What is that for?"

The policeman answered: "For asking alms."

"Is that forbidden?"

"Of course it is forbidden," replied the policeman.

The sufferer from dropsy was driven off. I took another cab, and
followed him. I wanted to know whether it was true that begging alms
was prohibited and how it was prohibited. I could in no wise
understand how one man could be forbidden to ask alms of any other
man; and besides, I did not believe that it was prohibited, when
Moscow is full of beggars. I went to the station-house whither the
beggar had been taken. At a table in the station-house sat a man
with a sword and a pistol. I inquired:

"For what was this peasant arrested?"

The man with the sword and pistol gazed sternly at me, and said:

"What business is it of yours?"

But feeling conscious that it was necessary to offer me some
explanation, he added:

"The authorities have ordered that all such persons are to be
arrested; of course it had to be done."

I went out. The policeman who had brought the beggar was seated on
the window-sill in the ante-chamber, staring gloomily at a note-book.
I asked him:

"Is it true that the poor are forbidden to ask alms in Christ's
name?"

The policeman came to himself, stared at me, then did not exactly
frown, but apparently fell into a doze again, and said, as he sat on
the window-sill:-

"The authorities have so ordered, which shows that it is necessary,"
and betook himself once more to his note-book. I went out on the
porch, to the cab.

"Well, how did it turn out? Have they arrested him?" asked the
cabman. The man was evidently interested in this affair also.

"Yes," I answered. The cabman shook his head. "Why is it forbidden
here in Moscow to ask alms in Christ's name?" I inquired.

"Who knows?" said the cabman.

"How is this?" said I, "he is Christ's poor, and he is taken to the
station-house."

"A stop has been put to that now, it is not allowed," said the cab-
driver.

On several occasions afterwards, I saw policemen conducting beggars
to the station house, and then to the Yusupoff house of correction.
Once I encountered on the Myasnitzkaya a company of these beggars,
about thirty in number. In front of them and behind them marched
policemen. I inquired: "What for?"--"For asking alms."

It turned out that all these beggars, several of whom you meet with
in every street in Moscow, and who stand in files near every church
during services, and especially during funeral services, are
forbidden to ask alms.

But why are some of them caught and locked up somewhere, while others
are left alone?

This I could not understand. Either there are among them legal and
illegal beggars, or there are so many of them that it is impossible
to apprehend them all; or do others assemble afresh when some are
removed?

There are many varieties of beggars in Moscow: there are some who
live by this profession; there are also genuine poor people, who have
chanced upon Moscow in some manner or other, and who are really in
want.

Among these poor people, there are many simple, common peasants, and
women in their peasant costume. I often met such people. Some of
them have fallen ill here, and on leaving the hospital they can
neither support themselves here, nor get away from Moscow. Some of
them, moreover, have indulged in dissipation (such was probably the
case of the dropsical man); some have not been ill, but are people
who have been burnt out of their houses, or old people, or women with
children; some, too, were perfectly healthy and able to work. These
perfectly healthy peasants who were engaged in begging, particularly
interested me. These healthy, peasant beggars, who were fit for
work, also interested me, because, from the date of my arrival in
Moscow, I had been in the habit of going to the Sparrow Hills with
two peasants, and sawing wood there for the sake of exercise. These
two peasants were just as poor as those whom I encountered on the
streets. One was Piotr, a soldier from Kaluga; the other Semyon, a
peasant from Vladimir. They possessed nothing except the wages of
their body and hands. And with these hands they earned, by dint of
very hard labor, from forty to forty-five kopeks a day, out of which
each of them was laying by savings, the Kaluga man for a fur coat,
the Vladimir man in order to get enough to return to his village.
Therefore, on meeting precisely such men in the streets, I took an
especial interest in them.

Why did these men toil, while those others begged?

On encountering a peasant of this stamp, I usually asked him how he
had come to that situation. Once I met a peasant with some gray in
his beard, but healthy. He begs. I ask him who is he, whence comes
he? He says that he came from Kaluga to get work. At first he found
employment chopping up old wood for use in stoves. He and his
comrade finished all the chopping which one householder had; then
they sought other work, but found none; his comrade had parted from
him, and for two weeks he himself had been struggling along; he had
spent all his money, he had no saw, and no axe, and no money to buy
anything. I gave him money for a saw, and told him of a place where
he could find work. I had already made arrangements with Piotr and
Semyon, that they should take an assistant, and they looked up a mate
for him.

"See that you come. There is a great deal of work there."

"I will come; why should I not come? Do you suppose I like to beg?
I can work."

The peasant declares that he will come, and it seems to me that he is
not deceiving me, and that he intents to come.

On the following day I go to my peasants, and inquire whether that
man has arrived. He has not been there; and in this way several men
deceived me. And those also deceived me who said that they only
required money for a ticket in order to return home, and who chanced
upon me again in the street a week later. Many of these I
recognized, and they recognized me, and sometimes, having forgotten
me, they repeated the same trick on me; and others, on catching sight
of me, beat a retreat. Thus I perceived, that in the ranks of this
class also deceivers existed. But these cheats were very pitiable
creatures: all of them were but half-clad, poverty-stricken, gaunt,
sickly men; they were the very people who really freeze to death, or
hang themselves, as we learn from the newspapers.



CHAPTER II.



When I mentioned this poverty of the town to inhabitants of the town,
they always said to me: "Oh, all that you have seen is nothing. You
ought to see the Khitroff market-place, and the lodging-houses for
the night there. There you would see a regular 'golden company.'"
{1} One jester told me that this was no longer a company, but a
GOLDEN REGIMENT: so greatly had their numbers increased. The jester
was right, but he would have been still more accurate if he had said
that these people now form in Moscow neither a company nor a
regiment, but an entire army, almost fifty thousand in number, I
think. [The old inhabitants, when they spoke to me about the poverty
in town, always referred to it with a certain satisfaction, as though
pluming themselves over me, because they knew it. I remember that
when I was in London, the old inhabitants there also rather boasted
when they spoke of the poverty of London. The case is the same with
us.] {2}

And I wanted to have a sight of this poverty of which I had been
told. Several times I set out in the direction of the Khitroff
market-place, but on every occasion I began to feel uncomfortable and
ashamed. "Why am I going to gaze on the sufferings of people whom I
cannot help?" said one voice. "No, if you live here, and see all the
charms of city life, go and view this also," said another voice. In
December three years ago, therefore, on a cold and windy day, I
betook myself to that centre of poverty, the Khitroff market-place.
This was at four o'clock in the afternoon of a week-day. As I passed
through the Solyanka, I already began to see more and more people in
old garments which had not originally belonged to them, and in still
stranger foot-gear, people with a peculiar, unhealthy hue of
countenance, and especially with a singular indifference to every
thing around them, which was peculiar to them all. A man in the
strangest of all possible attire, which was utterly unlike any thing
else, walked along with perfect unconcern, evidently without a
thought of the appearance which he must present to the eyes of
others. All these people were making their way towards a single
point. Without inquiring the way, with which I was not acquainted, I
followed them, and came out on the Khitroff market-place. On the
market-place, women both old and young, of the same description, in
tattered cloaks and jackets of various shapes, in ragged shoes and
overshoes, and equally unconcerned, notwithstanding the hideousness
of their attire, sat, bargained for something, strolled about, and
scolded. There were not many people in the market itself. Evidently
market-hours were over, and the majority of the people were ascending
the rise beyond the market and through the place, all still
proceeding in one direction. I followed them. The farther I
advanced, the greater in numbers were the people of this sort who
flowed together on one road. Passing through the market-place and
proceeding along the street, I overtook two women; one was old, the
other young. Both wore something ragged and gray. As they walked
they were discussing some matter. After every necessary word, they
uttered one or two unnecessary ones, of the most improper character.
They were not intoxicated, but merely troubled about something; and
neither the men who met them, nor those who walked in front of them
and behind them, paid any attention to the language which was so
strange to me. In these quarters, evidently, people always talked
so. Ascending the rise, we reached a large house on a corner. The
greater part of the people who were walking along with me halted at
this house. They stood all over the sidewalk of this house, and sat
on the curbstone, and even the snow in the street was thronged with
the same kind of people. On the right side of the entrance door were
the women, on the left the men. I walked past the women, past the
men (there were several hundred of them in all) and halted where the
line came to an end. The house before which these people were
waiting was the Lyapinsky free lodging-house for the night. The
throng of people consisted of night lodgers, who were waiting to be
let in. At five o'clock in the afternoon, the house is opened, and
the people permitted to enter. Hither had come nearly all the people
whom I had passed on my way.

I halted where the line of men ended. Those nearest me began to
stare at me, and attracted my attention to them by their glances.
The fragments of garments which covered these bodies were of the most
varied sorts. But the expression of all the glances directed towards
me by these people was identical. In all eyes the question was
expressed: "Why have you, a man from another world, halted here
beside us? Who are you? Are you a self-satisfied rich man who wants
to enjoy our wretchedness, to get rid of his tedium, and to torment
us still more? or are you that thing which does not and can not
exist,--a man who pities us?" This query was on every face. You
glance about, encounter some one's eye, and turn away. I wished to
talk with some one of them, but for a long time I could not make up
my mind to it. But our glances had drawn us together already while
our tongues remained silent. Greatly as our lives had separated us,
after the interchange of two or three glances we felt that we were
both men, and we ceased to fear each other. The nearest of all to me
was a peasant with a swollen face and a red beard, in a tattered
caftan, and patched overshoes on his bare feet. And the weather was
eight degrees below zero. {3} For the third or fourth time I
encountered his eyes, and I felt so near to him that I was no longer
ashamed to accost him, but ashamed not to say something to him. I
inquired where he came from? he answered readily, and we began to
talk; others approached. He was from Smolensk, and had come to seek
employment that he might earn his bread and taxes. "There is no
work," said he: "the soldiers have taken it all away. So now I am
loafing about; as true as I believe in God, I have had nothing to eat
for two days." He spoke modestly, with an effort at a smile. A
sbiten{4}-seller, an old soldier, stood near by. I called him up.
He poured out his sbiten. The peasant took a boiling-hot glassful in
his hands, and as he tried before drinking not to let any of the heat
escape in vain, and warmed his hands over it, he related his
adventures to me. These adventures, or the histories of them, are
almost always identical: the man has been a laborer, then he has
changed his residence, then his purse containing his money and ticket
has been stolen from him in the night lodging-house; now it is
impossible to get away from Moscow. He told me that he kept himself
warm by day in the dram-shops; that he nourished himself on the bits
of bread in these drinking places, when they were given to him; and
when he was driven out of them, he came hither to the Lyapinsky house
for a free lodging. He was only waiting for the police to make their
rounds, when, as he had no passport, he would be taken to jail, and
then despatched by stages to his place of settlement. "They say that
the inspection will be made on Friday," said he, "then they will
arrest me. If I can only get along until Friday." (The jail, and
the journey by stages, represent the Promised Land to him.)

As he told his story, three men from among the throng corroborated
his statements, and said that they were in the same predicament. A
gaunt, pale, long-nosed youth, with merely a shirt on the upper
portion of his body, and that torn on the shoulders, and a cap
without a visor, forced his way sidelong through the crowd. He
shivered violently and incessantly, but tried to smile disdainfully
at the peasants' remarks, thinking by this means to adopt the proper
tone with me, and he stared at me. I offered him some sbiten; he
also, on taking the glass, warmed his hands over it; but no sooner
had he begun to speak, than he was thrust aside by a big, black,
hook-nosed individual, in a chintz shirt and waistcoat, without a
hat. The hook-nosed man asked for some sbiten also. Then came a
tall old man, with a mass of beard, clad in a great-coat girded with
a rope, and in bast shoes, who was drunk. Then a small man with a
swollen face and tearful eyes, in a brown nankeen round-jacket, with
his bare knees protruding from the holes in his summer trousers, and
knocking together with cold. He shivered so that he could not hold
his glass, and spilled it over himself. The men began to reproach
him. He only smiled in a woe-begone way, and went on shivering.
Then came a crooked monster in rags, with pattens on his bare feet;
then some sort of an officer; then something in the ecclesiastical
line; then something strange and nose-less,--all hungry and cold,
beseeching and submissive, thronged round me, and pressed close to
the sbiten. They drank up all the sbiten. One asked for money, and
I gave it. Then another asked, then a third, and the whole crowd
besieged me. Confusion and a press resulted. The porter of the
adjoining house shouted to the crowd to clear the sidewalk in front
of his house, and the crowd submissively obeyed his orders. Some
managers stepped out of the throng, and took me under their
protection, and wanted to lead me forth out of the press; but the
crowd, which had at first been scattered over the sidewalk, now
became disorderly, and hustled me. All stared at me and begged; and
each face was more pitiful and suffering and humble than the last. I
distributed all that I had with me. I had not much money, something
like twenty rubles; and in company with the crowd, I entered the
Lyapinsky lodging-house. This house is huge. It consists of four
sections. In the upper stories are the men's quarters; in the lower,
the women's. I first entered the women's place; a vast room all
occupied with bunks, resembling the third-class bunks on the railway.
These bunks were arranged in two rows, one above the other. The
women, strange, tattered creatures, both old and young, wearing
nothing over their dresses, entered and took their places, some below
and some above. Some of the old ones crossed themselves, and uttered
a petition for the founder of this refuge; some laughed and scolded.
I went up-stairs. There the men had installed themselves; among them
I espied one of those to whom I had given money. [On catching sight
of him, I all at once felt terribly abashed, and I made haste to
leave the room. And it was with a sense of absolute crime that I
quitted that house and returned home. At home I entered over the
carpeted stairs into the ante-room, whose floor was covered with
cloth; and having removed my fur coat, I sat down to a dinner of five
courses, waited on by two lackeys in dress-coats, white neckties, and
white gloves.

Thirty years ago I witnessed in Paris a man's head cut off by the
guillotine in the presence of thousands of spectators. I knew that
the man was a horrible criminal. I was acquainted with all the
arguments which people have been devising for so many centuries, in
order to justify this sort of deed. I knew that they had done this
expressly, deliberately. But at the moment when head and body were
severed, and fell into the trough, I groaned, and apprehended, not
with my mind, but with my heart and my whole being, that all the
arguments which I had heard anent the death-penalty were arrant
nonsense; that, no matter how many people might assemble in order to
perpetrate a murder, no matter what they might call themselves,
murder is murder, the vilest sin in the world, and that that crime
had been committed before my very eyes. By my presence and non-
interference, I had lent my approval to that crime, and had taken
part in it. So now, at the sight of this hunger, cold, and
degradation of thousands of persons, I understood not with my mind,
but with my heart and my whole being, that the existence of tens of
thousands of such people in Moscow, while I and other thousands dined
on fillets and sturgeon, and covered my horses and my floors with
cloth and rugs,--no matter what the wise ones of this world might say
to me about its being a necessity,--was a crime, not perpetrated a
single time, but one which was incessantly being perpetrated over and
over again, and that I, in my luxury, was not only an accessory, but
a direct accomplice in the matter. The difference for me between
these two impressions was this, that I might have shouted to the
assassins who stood around the guillotine, and perpetrated the
murder, that they were committing a crime, and have tried with all my
might to prevent the murder. But while so doing I should have known
that my action would not prevent the murder. But here I might not
only have given sbiten and the money which I had with me, but the
coat from my back, and every thing that was in my house. But this I
had not done; and therefore I felt, I feel, and shall never cease to
feel, myself an accomplice in this constantly repeated crime, so long
as I have superfluous food and any one else has none at all, so long
as I have two garments while any one else has not even one.] {5}



CHAPTER III.



That very evening, on my return from the Lyapinsky house, I related
my impressions to a friend. The friend, an inhabitant of the city,
began to tell me, not without satisfaction, that this was the most
natural phenomenon of town life possible, that I only saw something
extraordinary in it because of my provincialism, that it had always
been so, and always would be so, and that such must be and is the
inevitable condition of civilization. In London it is even worse.
Of course there is nothing wrong about it, and it is impossible to be
displeased with it. I began to reply to my friend, but with so much
heat and ill-temper, that my wife ran in from the adjoining room to
inquire what had happened. It appears that, without being conscious
of it myself, I had been shouting, with tears in my voice, and
flourishing my hands at my friend. I shouted: "It's impossible to
live thus, impossible to live thus, impossible!" They made me feel
ashamed of my unnecessary warmth; they told me that I could not talk
quietly about any thing, that I got disagreeably excited; and they
proved to me, especially, that the existence of such unfortunates
could not possibly furnish any excuse for imbittering the lives of
those about me.

I felt that this was perfectly just, and held my peace; but in the
depths of my soul I was conscious that I was in the right, and I
could not regain my composure.

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