There are indications in early legends and history that the most absolute liberty was enjoyed, or let me rather say, possessed by the Russian peasantry. Not only was every man's house his castle, but every man was king in his own family, and was the subject of no one. At a later period the so-called noblemen were nominally and to some extent under the authority of the prince, but it was a subjection which left the man free to do as he liked. By degrees the prince gained power, and the nobles lost it. And in reference to the changes going on in the times just alluded to, Mackenzie Wallace writes: — ' When the Grand Princes of Moscow brought the other principalities under their power, and formed them into the Tsardom of Muscovy, the nobles descended another step in the political scale. So long as there were many principalities they could quit the service of a prince, as soon as he gave them reason to be discontented, knowing that they would be well received by one of his rivals; but now they had no longer any choice. The only rival of Moscow was Lithuania, and precautions were taken to prevent the discontented from crossing the Lithuanian frontier. The nobles were no longer voluntary adherents of a prince, but had become subjects of a Tsar; and the Tsars were not as the old princes had been. By a violent legal fiction they conceived themselves to be the successors of the Byzantine Emperors, and created a new court ceremonial, borrowed partly from Constantinople and partly from the Tartar Horde. They no longer associated familiarly with the Boyars, and no longer asked their ad vice, but treated them rather as menials. W^hen the nobles entered their august master's presence they prostrated themselves in Oriental fashion — occasionally as many as thirty times — and when they incurred his displeasure they were summarily flogged or executed, according to the Tsar's good pleasure. In succeeding to the power of the Khans, the Tsars had adopted, we see, a good deal of the Tartar system of government/
To this has to be added the impoverishment of the nobles through extravagant expenditure, and the privations of the poor through lack of remunerative employment, and, it may be, want of energy and past wrongs done to them by petty local officials. The last mentioned evil is one not limited to this province, but an illustration taken from it may be more satisfactory than mere illusions to the general forms which it assumes throughout the empire.
By one of my personal friends I was informed that on the occasion of wide spread famine in this region some years ago, provision was made by the Government for the supply of the destitute with corn. He happened to be present when the Government official, appointed to enquire into the state of the poor in the locality where he was, came to the house of a poor man whom he knew to be in want. To his surprise, in answer to the enquiry of the official whether he needed help, he said, ' No.' The official seemed equally surprised, and varied the form of the question, but still got the same reply. He began to reason -with the man in regard to the folly of not availing himself of the provision which the Government had made for supplying corn to them free of all charge; but still the man maintained that he did not need it. And the apparent phiianthrophy of the official was completely baffled by the apparent independent spirit of the peasant. When the official had gone my friend astonished asked of him, ' How is this? You and your family are in danger of starvation, and yet you say you are not in want. I cannot understand it/ ' Yes,' said the peasant, ' we are in want. But of whatever grant may be made by the Government a great deal will be retained by those through whose hands it first passes; the same will be done again and again by all those through whose hands it must pass in succession before it could reach us; and reach us it never will. So if we must starve any way I would rather starve just as I am than give to these fellows an opportunity of making money under the pretext of saving us from starvation.'
But among the courtiers there was to be found, in the times spoken of by Mackenzie Wallace, or shortly thereafter, ' Lithuanian nobles, who found it more profitable to serve the Tsar than their own sovereign/
Of the treatment to which men of their order were subject twenty years ago, a picture is given by the Rev. Fortescue L. M. Anderson in a little volume entitled Seven Months Residence in Russian Poland in 1863.