Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/129

Rh men, women, and children lay out for themselves a camp close to the sea or a river in wood or bush. All are crowded into one mass, where disappear all modesty and bashfulness, all respect of woman, and there remains only a sinister contempt of man for man. Against this background dramas and tragedies of life are enacted; martyred life passes hopelessly from day to day without a morrow, without a future.

Maxim Gorky, Skitaletz, and a number of writers of the realistic school took their subjects from the life of this proletariat, which later on so magnificently supported the Government of Lenin and Trotsky. Thus it happened that a Frantsuzov, an ex-workman from the barks, performed the functions of Minister of Commerce and Industry in Petrograd.

A still more glaring picture of human savagery was presented in the "burlaks," who boast a tradition many centuries old.

"Burlak" is the homeless, outlawed workman, who, possessing no documents or identity because of his past, dares not, for fear of prison, come to town. Thus he is obliged to look for work in some out-of-the-way place, where there will be nobody to ask him for documents or to oblige him to observe the existing laws.

Such places are the great Russian rivers, where the work consists of pulling the cables of the heavy river craft Hundreds of barks go up the Volga, Oka, Kama, Dnieper, and other rivers.