Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/123

Rh diseases, or vanished without trace behind the walls of houses, the doors of which were illuminated by the sinister "red lantern."

The villages even coined a special name for those who went into factories or mines. They called them "posadski," which may mean a thief, a criminal, an adventurer, and a ragamuffin of the suburb.

Sometimes a peasant family struggled hard to stick to the land. Then it sent its members, men and women, as temporary wage-earners into the towns. Rarely, however, did such envoys return home directly. Usually they sent the money and stayed themselves for a long time in the towns. And if they cropped up in the village they brought with them customs and habits alien and hostile to the village, licentiousness of word and gesture, contempt for family traditions, and indifference to religion. With the newcomers and their "European" clothes, hats, silks, and transparent stockings, crept into the life of the villages terrible diseases, which decimated the population and reduced it soon to a state of degeneration. This was a phenomenon which could be observed particularly in the Central Provinces of European Russia.

But really, justice demands that these poisoners of the village should not be condemned too harshly, for it is not they who were so very and exceptionally guilty.

The guilt lay with the Government and society.

I shall draw a few scenes from the life of those