Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/174

 128 Siberian peasant. He will gradually come to see how the communal social state in which these peasants live, although it has some disadvantages, suits the Slavonic nature and has enabled it in Siberia to carry Slavonic civilization to the remoter corners of the empire where the individual Russian colonists would probably have failed. One sees evidences of this tendency to collective action in the power of the commune over the peasant holdings, the right of land distribution which exists, the communal grazing of live stock, the common barn for provision against bad harvests, the village games and the social life of the village in general. Among these peasants the business of one man is the business of everybody. The whole village is interested in what the outsider would regard as the private affairs of one of their number. For instance, we found that no peasant would sell to us a horse or anything that we wanted without first consulting with the whole village about the price, and it was always a very great difficulty to introduce the element of competition. Even in their own domestic arrangements one sees evidences of the free and easy relationship existing between the members of the community. The cattle and pigs belonging to different peasants wander together about the village, stray into the yards of those who are not their owners, and pick at the hay. No great trouble seems to ensue, and I often used to compare such episodes as this with what would probably happen if in an English village one man's pig broke into another man's allotment and ate his turnips. In Siberia the blessed word neechevo (nothing—never mind) seems to be an antidote even for circumstances such as these. On the other hand,