Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/82

56 that he broke into sudden laughter. The camel must have helped him thru many weary wastes in the long winter.

Writers dwell upon the laziness of the Russian peasant. Watching the mujik lounging around market places and vodka-shops gives one that impression. But trying to keep up with the mujik in the fields very quickly takes it away. With the sun beating down on their heads and the dust rising from under their feet they mowed and raked and bound and stacked until the last straw had been gleaned from the field. Then they tramped back into the village.

Since our arrival the villagers had been asking Yanishev to make a speech. In the early evening there arrived a delegation beseeching him.

"Think of it," said Yanishev. "Ten years ago if these peasants had suspected that I was a Socialist they would have come to kill me. Now, knowing that I am a Bolshevik, they come begging me to talk. Things have gone a long, long way since then."

Yanishev was not a gifted man unless it be a gift to be deeply sensitive to the sorrows of the world. Tormented by the sufferings of others, he had chosen privation for himself. As an artisan in America he earned six dollars a day. Out of this he took enough for a cheap room and meals. With the rest he bought "literature" and carried it from door to door.