ST. PETERSBURG. 19 



moujiks in the blacksmith shop of Tchudovo would pre- 

 fer to place all their affairs in the hands of one reason- 

 ably honest stranger than to submit them to even their 

 own rural assembly. Yet theirs was a comparatively 

 prosperous community. They stated with pride that 

 their mir was free from debt, and with still greater 

 pride they pointed to their church and told us that it 

 was richer than even the churches in Novgorod. 



''No," they replied, to our last question. "St. 

 Petersburg doesn't bother us much. The Czar takes 

 only five young men each year for soldiers. They have 

 to be twenty-one years of age, and they are chosen by 

 the starosta and elders of the mir." 



They then went on, in reply to other questions, to 

 talk about the Czar. The Czar Alexander III, they 

 said, was a good man, who introduced many reforms 

 (the peasants use a number of English words, such as 

 reform, bank, per cent.), and if some of them didn't 

 work very well for the moujik it was not his fault, but 

 the fault of the local officials, or circumstances over 

 which he had no control. They spoke affectionately 

 of the late Emperor Alexander II, who, they said, 

 freed " the Christians." The Russian peasants never 

 called themselves serfs, but Christians, and so consider 

 themselves. The term as applied to them originated 

 with the Mongols, of Ghengis Khan. When the Mon- 

 gols conquered and enslaved them, they called them 

 Christians as a term of contempt. The moujiks accep- 

 ted the appellation as a compliment and an honor, and 

 have stuck to it ever since. To the moujik everything 

 Russian is sacred. Russia is Holy Russia, the Czar is 

 God's elected, the Russian army is the Orthodox army, 



