Page:John Rickman - An Eye-witness from Russia.djvu/3



The relief unit of which 1 am a member went to the Buzuluk department of the Samara government in the summer of 1916, and worked almost all the time in the villages of that district. My contact with the people of Russia in this way was rather unique in that as a country doctor I was brought close to the home life and customs of the peasants, and I obtained an insight into the minds of a people who are slow to reveal themselves to strangers.

During the successive changes in government I watched the developing political consciousness of the peasants and noted their gradual change in attitude towards the Government and their generosity of sentiment with regard to it. I was always treated well in the villages, because my work was one which was considered of social value, and as a physician I was regarded as a workman with special training and therefore a valuable acquisition to the district.

In July, 1918, after the Czechs had captured the province and the railway and a Te Deum had been sung in the Cathedral in Samara by the Archbishop because Siberia was rid of the Bolsheviks, I travelled to Samara on the way to England. In that town I came into contact with the American Y.M.C.A. and the Czech officials, and mixed with consuls and in Russian society for the first time. I was now no longer a workman valuable because