THE AUTOBIOGRAPHIC DIARIES WRITTEN BY SAMUIL YAKOVLEVITCH PERVIN

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHIC DIARY

WRITTEN BY SAMUIL YAKOVLEVITCH PERVIN

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From the synagogue my farther invited homeless guest, vagabonds, who would find a shelter there, those who were not of a criminal nature. Our dwelling consisted of one small room and a kitchen. The dirt floor in the house was covered with yellow clay and sand over which canvas rags were placed. The room is brightly lighted with candles over which every woman cites grace prayers, and by a kerosene lamp with a brown fitil, with barely glaring fire. Freshly baked and nicely smelling baguettes (nicely baked bread made of wheat flour) are on the table, fish, ukha (fish soup), noodles, meat soup, in short testy courses of meal, artfully cooked by my mother. Saturdays were celebrated even by the poorest; there were special foundations to help them. The farther and a guest cited grace prayers over their glasses of wine and began their supper, in between singing prayers. Quite, peaceful, cozy -- and all of this refresh you, gives you a fresh start for an upcoming work week. During a work week, in our family, as well as in any other working family, food was not cooked, with an exception of something fast. The mother would buy for 2 kop. an half a funt of cottage cheese, put in it some water, spread this over pieces of bread, and we would eat it with the raven appetite, with a such one that those city ladies who take some medicine to acquire some would be jealous about. But in the evening, an extensive supper from buck wheat, beans, and several grams of veal per soul. During Saturdays any kind of work even home shores were forbidden and nobody would make fire on these days. All cooked food was prepared on Fridays and stored inside a well heated kitchen stove. A visiting Russian woman would take candle sticks off the table and make fire in the stove. On Saturdays in synagogues and prayer houses, in a celebration atmosphere, a reading of a chapter from the Bible took place, there were a total of 52 such chapters according to the number of weeks in a year that is torah readings, pergament scroll, written by a hand of a saint muzha by a duck feather. The reading was performed with a special intonation and motive by a qualified reader in antract of prayers on a specifically allotted elevated place, or stage in the presence of invited in turn senior visitors. During the days of the New year, and there were somehow two of those days, Judgment days, as well as other religious holydays, the right to be present during the torah reading was sold through the public action and the price for this right would reach a considerable amount of money. On the days of a holly day Goshana -- a slave, after a celebration, Kushi, when for the eight days the food was taken in speedy constructed Tents (sikos) Contor, escorted by the senior visitors, walked amvon, where every participant carried in their hands so called a heavenly apple(Yasroye) - fruit growing in Palestine, Greece, and a palm branch (Lilov). It walked with ceremonial march around several times, singing specific prayers. These heavenly apple and palm branch, sluzhka (a person who participated in this service, a servant) took to citizens houses so that a whole household could perform on them a grace ritual. By the way, every Saturday in all prayer houses, the prayers for a well being of the ksar and his family were said. The prayer houses(synagogue) belonged to different manufacturing quoters(Segments): shoe-makers, tailors, carpenters, painters, barrel-makers, water delivers, chimney cleaners etc. Some of them were private closely resembling the house churches which belonged to well-off Christians. A house owner in his golden years of his life to prolong the life and save his soul, would give part of his house a prayer place, give it its own name, with permission and sanction of authority of course, and autocratno rules in it, putting all income, the visitors donations, in his own pocket, killing, this way, in one shot two rabbits. A synagogue, by the way, served as a meeting place for the discussions of public affairs: there information about orders, regulations of appropriate authorities, and about decisions of the Jewish community concerning one or the other question were announced. A synagogue as such was an extension of a kheder and as the latter was the same breeding place for darkness, ignorance, all sorts of prejudices, savagery, in short was the same a psychedelic drug. Jewish kids alienated from any kind of games, entertaining, enjoyment, outdoors activities, locked in inadequately small, stuffy, stenchy kheders, lacked a good nutrition diet, grew up weak, feeble, frail, weak, lifeless, and cowed. The czars government cared less about the general masses and especially about people of another religion. The Jewish intelligencia, who provided an European education for their children allowing them to achieve their goals by all means, widely utilizing their privileged status and connections, was completely indifferent to the masses. By receiving a diploma with a license of doctor, physician, pharmacist, provisor, lawyer, engineer, a Jew would exclude himself from a status of dependency on the merchant class and would abandon his relation to kagal, that is a Jewish community. And the Jewish kagal, about which all eudophobs and all anti-Semite press loudly cried on all the crossroads, was its own country within the country. The community was electing a so called a merchant elder. It had its own meeting place (house) which had a big council office, respectable place, where records in revizskikh skazkakh, books for the records of the Jewish population census, registration and composition of the family lists for benefits in connection with the military obligations were made. In the past, during the reign of the previous czar, the main function of the community included a fulfillment a known yearly quote for recruits into the military service. These quotes were filled with recruits consisting from vagabonds, prestupniks(criminals), dregs of society, from the poorest classes of the population; who could not pay off to avoid the recruitment. To avoid the recruitment all kinds of tricks were used: substitutions were being made, the passports on dead souls were issued etc. For the purpose of the service avoidance, body parts mutelisation was common: chopping of puling off a thumb on the right hand, growing of two middle fingers to the palm of a hand, making hernia, artificial parshes on heads were made, piercing ear-drums, pulling out teeth. In short, many disabled themselves for the rest of their lives, and some would prematurely perish. There were many home-grown specialists operators in this field. The practices of a systematic exhaustion of a body was common such as food depravation, awakening, that is sleep deprivation for a period of two-three month before a recruitment day, and in addition to all of this, bribes to physicians and other members of military commissions were given. Different foreign passport were bought: Turkish, Romanian, Austrian, Valakhsky, etc. These fake foreigners who were born on the banks of Gnilopyat River (river in Berdichev, flowing into Teterev), paid a monthly endowment to the local police. A shortage of recruits growing from year to year brought some severe measures during the rein of Nicolas II. A law was passed according to which any person without rights that is a Jew without a passport, regardless his age, health condition, marital status, was send to be soldier into the penal unit. As a result of this law many outrageous abuses took place: there were some scum of the earth, scoundrels who would steal, swindle, extort passports and give away their prays for a good reword. Very often a family man, a father of adult children, and grandfather would go to the army and would never come back. Later on a more inhumane law followed. According to this law children of Jews were taking to the army: they were taken by force from the holds of their mothers, lured out of schools, apartments, houses, and given to the recruitment centers. From there they were sent to different villages, gumlets(Hamlets), given to peasants to help them in all sorts of farm, house, real-estate work. Many of these children could not survive a hardship of this slavery and perished, but those who would survive were sent to the, so called, kantonistskies schools upon reaching their teenage years. There they were baptized and forced to accept Orthodox Christianity. Immediately after the graduation they were taking to the military service. Many talented people and well known marshals came from these children whom, however, fanatics parents and all relatives refused to recognize and considered them outcasts of the religious Jewish community. A more detail description of this a reader will find in a writing of Rabinovicz Shtrafnoy (Penal), in a story Poymanik by Bogrov, grandfarther of a man who killed Stolipin, the Minister of Foreign Affairs during the time Nicolas II. These true stories are fragments of real life episodes. Special taxes were imposed on Jews: boxing tax was for the right to slaughter cattle or poultry according to Jewish ritual, on kosher meat. This right was sold (landed) on the public auctions for quite a big amount of money. The lender (the person who would buy this right for a period of time) employed many people: in his possession were cattle and poultry slaughter houses, in cities as well as in peripheral areas (rural), surrounding areas. A small amount in a tax form, the lender had to give as support of the Jewish religious congregation. A candle tax was directed on the support of the Jewish schools <<Talmud Tora>>, Jewish children studied not only Gods Law, but the Russian language grammar also. And, finally, there was a community tax as support of different community needs. In relation to the public life the fairness demands to say that orthodox part of the Jewish community, but not by any means, the praised intelligencia, somewhat cared about the ill-provided brothers. There were centers, foundations, of care for the poor who were provided with wheat, fuel, opresnokami on Pesakh, for pregnant women, foster kids, homeless and poor teenage girls brides, who were getting married, were provided with some garment on the first time, for the prisoners who were jailed for all sorts of economic crimes, and help was given to communicate with the superior authority, not easily reachable for everyday people etc. In short the care was provided in one or the other form, sometimes even in an ugly one. Small loan banks were in prayer houses , and , funny to say, unions, once again of the religious unity, something like an organization of psalm readers on Saturdays, reading of short excerpts from Talmud at the bodies of the deceased etc. Such unions, organizations were not anywhere found in the Christian community; only latter on, shelters, bogodelnyas, the khorugvenostsev organization etc. started to appear.

This gave a reason to the yudophobic fellows to talk about a great Jewish unity around their kagal, they did not notice or did not wish to see that a rich Jew, capitalist, plant or factory owner, was the same exploiter, vampire, as all capitalists, towards either Jews or others. Occupations and trades will be discussed below. My father stood out in his work environment because of his education, his knowledge of the Bible and prayers, and his secret dream, like many others, was to raise me a scientist, rabbi, for which I, according to the rebe words, had a great talent. I faintly remember that on my 11-12th year of my life, I studied the divorce law according to Talmud - that one can take a wife, make her stay with him, in three ways: by a written agreement; money, i.e. by a silver coin, handed to a virgin or a divorced woman in the presence of two witnesses while citing some particular words; and sexual intercourse. Upon my demand, of a curious boy, to explain the exact meaning of the latter condition, I received from the rebe a strong smack to my face, one such that the darkness clouded my vision. Kheder, rebe, and all this stomach sickening surrounding, the whole presentless figure of the despotic teacher, who had over us, his powerless servants, an unlimited power; all this Talmud's fancied twisted truth, like a tale about an egg brought by a chicken on a holiday, about sexual intercourse, about women's periods etc., made me sick and were grossly repulsive to me. I remember a strong hatred took over me towards one of my teachers, who beat us without any mercy and without any reason, for nothing, letting all his hate, accumulated from a hardship of everyday life, directed on us, his defenseless slaves. There is a need to note, that, besides his teaching as a profession, he had some other occupations: he was cantor of a small prayer house, was a shadkhenom, that was a factor specializing in marriages, something similar to a respectful match-maker; was a collector, a seller of a foreign, secret, tickets of a law value, had some realestate property in hamlet Romanovka, in 2-3 virst from Berdichev. About this Romanovka, I must say some words. During a rein of Nicolas I, the government passed a project which was supposed to bind Jews to land: in the form of an experiment, Jews were given a small piece of land in the area near Berdichev, supplied with agricultural tools, some little stock of other things, liberated from all kinds of monetary payments, all types of taxes, tolls and duties, and the most important from military obligations - from recruitment which was a scarecrow, monster, punishment. First the Jews snatched this opportunity, grabbed it as the safe anchor, but, were not accustomed to this hard physical labor, especially with the primitive method of a land cultivation of that time, accustomed, so to say, to easy bread, to the humiliating occupations like servitude, factorness, servitude to a master, a reach landowner, to a member of the religious congregation, and in the cities - office workers. Accustomed to kustarnichestvu, an easy home trade where they could freely exploit somebody else's labor, mostly teenagers, they soon cooled down, got disappointed, lost any interest to this hard but noble, honest, and clean work. The youth ran away in all directions, those who were left, more sober minded, could do nothing by themselves and as a consequence a good many collapsed in its very root, once more fuelling with hate against themselves and against all Jews the ruling circus (authorities) with anti-Semitism, the compulsive reactionary-podpevatelyami. And the problem was that all these newly born colonists did not have any unity, authority to organize them, and moral support from the side of well-offs, rich, the well established classes of the Jewish community, extensive class of Jewish intellectuals, who, I repeat, devoted their lives only to personal pleasure, widely using all kinds of available rights, power, and privileges, using all kind of means to ignore their poorer brothers.

In the hamlet of Romanovka, the rabbi had a piece of land, his wife owned a small (labaznuyu lavku) grocery store (pawn shop), and he was proletarian (in short he was well-off).  By the way, soon I escaped from him, categorically refused to see him, and, instead, found a peaceful and quiet old man.  My eldest brother did not have any scholarly inclinations and therefore was sent to learn a sales’ trade in a retail store. But in order to become a good salesman and/or a clerk, one had to go through a stern and demanding school to learn the trade.  The first two years, my brother was a call boy having to do the most difficult jobs; he was, mainly at the disposal of the merchant’s wife, doing all kinds of home and estate work.  His poor farther, however, had to supply him with food, shoes, and clothing for the three years of his service, until his mother, with relentless pleading and begging,  finally persuaded  the owner of the house to give him a 50 ruble a year salary.

And thus, he was growing steadily, according to his maturity in the service hierarchy, and received, like others, his salary according to his personal abilities to trick and cheat the local salesmen, who, in their turn, cheated their small in number customers. 

We lived on the outskirts of the city in our privately owned small house.  I remember my brother, who used to return home from the store at 1-2 hours pass midnight, often would come home terrified by his night encounters with criminals and/or other nightly adventures like running into a black dog, a sign of the dark power, which would following him closely all the way home. My younger sister passed the same stern school of apprenticeship; she trained under a local tailor for dressmaking, with the only difference that coming home at 1-2 o’clock after midnight she was risking not only as a woman, her woman’s honor, but even her life.  We lived through a lot of alarming episodes, having to wake up in the middle of the night, after a day of the hard labor, in order to meet her.  I bring up these examples to give a clear picture of the cruel and shameless exploitation, derision on the personality of a poor and defenseless worker.  I, back then a young and naïve man, was the most outraged by the fact that the whole surrounding society, the content intelligentsia, power holders, looked at all this as a normal way of life and none of them ever tried to raise their voices against this cruel reality.    

Time was passing, I was growing.  It happened one day that some of my friends somewhere found a Russian language introductory book – called “Bookvar”, from which they taught themselves how to read in Russian; and definitions of Russian words, they meticulously searched in the lingo-Jewish dictionary, Lifshitsa, working quite hard.  In this workshop of self educators, I found myself with a distinct, raging desire and diligence, I plunged into study of the Russian language, patiently spending whole nights with the book.  And a simple calculating story/tale would tell much more to my child’s heart than kazuistika of the Eastern fanatics.  My mother was very happy about that, but the farther did not share my mother’s feelings. He had reasonable concerns that my reading of Russian books would undermine in me the foundations of the Jewish religion. That is exactly what happened. 

In that time, one private teacher, Livonian, giving his private lessons at home, a man of older years, without family or family roots, and whose appearance was not trustworthy, displaying occasionally a strange behavior, hiding his nationality and family roots, some Likhtenshtein, rented a flat in our house.  My mother bragged to him about her son who could already read and speak Russian quite well.  He gave her advice to put me in a city college, promising to my mother, who was doing him some favors, to do everything in his power to help.  He was in a very good relation with a Russian language instructor there, Pesyatskim, with whom he was doing some shady business in area of bribes as an administrator to the city college, the only source of education in the big city with a population of one hundred thousand, was very difficult.

After several months of serious training, I passed an admission exam with an excellent score and was accepted my first year to the school, bypassing the three-year preparation courses, making my mother indescribably happy, but causing deep sorrow for my religious farther, who pointed out the fact that in the schools the pupils sit without hats and write on Saturdays (the reach religious Jews, with the permission of the school authority, did not send their children on Saturdays), and pointed out the fact that my interaction with goes, the children of non-Jewish religion, could have a negative influence on me.  After the repulsive kheder with its boorish teacher, in a small hut with a dirt floor, a sole window of which faced a dead end street, as if on purpose not to distract the children by the outside view; the new school filled with light, clean, roomy classes with high and big windows, facing a main street, with teachers dressed in suits (tailcoats) and a vitsuniform (kind of an uniform) with two-headed eagles on the shiny metal buttons, clean and nicely dressed male and elegantly dressed female students, with children playing outside in a very big school yard, with the gymnastic exercises on trapetsiakh and on a suspended from a high ceiling ladder, rooms with geographical maps, hanging from the walls, huge globes with a compasses, huge auditoriums of the pedagogical staff, where many books bonded in the most expensive golden covers sitting on the shelves of different pieces of ornamentally curved furniture, fundamental and students libraries, big portraits of the Russian czars, marble busts of poets, and writers, all put me in a state of awe, as well as triggered in me my curiosity.

During that time of kheder, I understood in what darkness I had been living, though later, during my mental development and observations, I gradually got convinced that all these teachers were instructors of a quite low qualifications, narrow-minded, uncivilized, poorly educated people, ferlyanuri of scholarly affairs, masters of low achievement, colorless filisteri, Gorky’s merchants. 

With gratitude I recall the brightest years of my education in that college, which gave me the first rays of knowledge.  I was one of the best students and had a good reputation among the instructors in addition to love and respect from my fellow students. Among the children of the reach classes of the population, who sent their children to this college, I was considered one of the poorest, and the instructors came to recommend me to tutor those who fell behind in their study; spoiled mother’s boys. Thus, after the classes, I started giving my lessons, earned money, got a sense of independence, supported myself, and finished school with excellence.  After graduation, I became a local teacher, running classes from morning until late at night.  

Despite my busy schedule, I managed to find time for my personal development. I was reading classics, magazines, and newspapers.  A big influence on my mental development was an organized literature workshop at our place. An organization that expanded education among Jews of Russia made up of students from the University of St. Petersburg, those from the city of Berdichev Pesis, Fradis and others, had been sending us books and magazines.  We had in our possession the Pisarev’s fictions, which I especially liked, loosing any concept of time while reading them, the fiction works of Belinsky, Mikhailovskogo, Dobrolyubov, and even the famous roman of Chernishevskogo “What to do”. Back then there was a very reach Russian – Jewish literature – the magazine “The Jewish Library”, published periodically and which became “Voskhod”(SunRize) with the weekly chronic, magazines: “Russian Jew”, “Down”, the fictions of Bogrov “Notes of a Jew”, Levanda, Frantsiska Orshanskogo, Rabinivitcha, and others, which are very rare books nowadays.  Those who are interested in the history of everyday life of Jews of that time can find them in the Leningrad Public library as well as in other central book archives.  These talents were marked by Russian literature and critics during their times.  The government authority had doubts in the political welfare of the state, conducted a thorough search of our workshop place, apprehended the owner of the flat where we had our bibliotheca, which was the place of our gatherings, and so the workshop ceased to exist.

Having a strong desire to continue my education, I, with the advice from a watchkeeper of the city college, Filip Andreevitch Gaesovskogo, whose son I was teaching, set off with a petty amount of money in my pocket to the city Romni, Poltavsky region, where a good college recently opened, but I was not accepted because of my older age. I should have knocked at some doors of the regional authority there as some others had done successfully, but I, an inexperienced young man, without any support in an unfamiliar city, seeing that my last sum of money was almost spent, turned around and set off back to were I came from, to the city of Berdichev were I continued to teach, supporting my poor parents, being their only sole strong support.  Later I tried once again to get into a higher society and left for Warsaw, where my elder brother served as a clerk (prikazchic) in a retail shop, but due to his unstable status (he was a deserted soldier and living with a foreign passport), could not settle and returned back to Berdichev.  At that time, I had to go to the czar’s army, but to serve to the czar and to the farther land, I did not have any desires to cripple myself, and therefore I gave a bribe of about several hundred rubles to a doctor in the military commission, to faltsevich, who visited me at home in order to support my claim about my illness, of course, accompanied by a factor (agent), and thus I was discharged from military service, and was put in ratniki of the opolachenia.

     The light and heavy industries just started to develop, were just born: in the city there were a few factories, mainly tanneries.  The workers of this category were just a few and the main work in the town, the business of most of the town’s population and adjacent to it areas, were different occupations like handicraft, money-lending, factorstvo and, mainly commerce; there were enough thieves, who fancied other people’s property too.  I want to repeat, for a deprived of civil rights Jew all roads were closed:  a Jew could not even be a city’s security guard (gorodovoy), or a clerk in some government institution, only really, handyman, artisan, merchant, salesman, underground lawyer, melamed, private tutor, kabatchik, holding a license with the name of a Russian merchant, landlord of the house of ill repute, agent, procurer specializing in recruitment of the public temper victims, huntsman for people, informer, and in the later years, at the end of a rein of the Nicolas II – instigator, manifesting remarkable talents à la Azef, to which any provincial governor would be envious of, or even restricted by minister[?].  Well, let the reader forgive me for my short detour but I must say a few words about governors, what I read in “Istorichestkiy Vestnik”(“Historical Informer”).  There lived once some governor, blockhead, idiot, perfect fool, but he had a quite intelligent wife.  Visits him once, for example, an acrobat to get a permission to open a circus, the governor makes him sit near him on the couch, gives him a cigarette and has a friendly conversation with him, and at the end signs the permission…  His wife advances a remark to him, that he demeans himself by treating some clown as his best friend.  The governor promises his wife next time to improve himself.  Next time, a diplomat of a foreign country visits him.  He measures him with a cold eye, arrogantly talks to him; the diplomat confused, informs his authority and all unpleasant for the governor consequences are followed.  Or visits him, a city Mayor and he receives him on his feet.  His wife comes in and tells him in his ear:  sit him.  The governor, without thinking too long, presses the button, calls orderly with the order to escort the Mayor to the guardhouse, and tells the wife that he executed her will: she falls into a panic: the Mayer was immediately, it is clear, released, the apologies was issued to him, everything is blamed on orderly, and  all is  hushed up. 

     The factors also were divided into specializations.  There were factors for buying and selling property, land, people’s personal possessions, leases – that were of the highest rank, those who leased apartments, servants, nuns for childcare, matchmaking, the ones who delivered life property to the houses of ill repute, and those who trafficked such across the boarder to the Middle Eastern harems of Turkish pashas, who priced very high the white slaves; adroit, well paid agents, went back and forth everywhere in a search for their international victims, matrimonial who were matching wedding couples, the uniters of harts and souls, those who would find and choose the right patents, merchant certificates, politsais who had an access to the strict authority and    all sorts of dark business, for landing money from merchants, lordly, serving to local lords, landowners, religious fathers serving to the local and district priesthood, quite a few, clerks and even thieves, so called profits, through whom the stolen property, for a reasonable reward,  was returned undamaged, and victims in most cases preferred to turn in to such profits rather than to the authorities.  Outside the boarders of Jewish habitant, the rights to live had only negotsianti, the merchant of the first guild, those who had a University degree, artisans, retired lowest ranks servants of the time Nicolas II, and prostitutes, the holders of the yellow tickets. 

As a result of such life without rights, a typical accident has occurred.  A Jewish girl, who has passed all her entrance exams for the next level classes in the Petersburg Woman’s gymnasium with excellence, was not accepted because she did not have a right to reside in the capital city.  She registered as a prostitute, and presented her yellow registration card as an official document.  The liberal press raised a lot of noise.  An innocence of the self ashamed girl was found and, with a permission of the highest administration, she was allowed to stay in the gymnasium.

Speaking about factors, I missed one point. One voluptuous pan, riding in his luxurious carriage in the town, noticed a sitting near the gates of one house a beautiful woman.  He took a note of the house number in his note book.  On the following day, when his court factor arrived, he offered him to gather all possible information about this woman and asked him to try to bring her over.  The factor has found that she is married, has five children, and her husband is a well off excise official, an owner of a big house, thus, implication has followed that there could not  be any conversation about  meeting her.  The Frenzied pan drove away his factor.  One week, then the second one has passed, but the pan would not allow the factor to come on the premises of his house, the Jew is in despair.  He came up with one cleaver idea: has bought different pieces of expensive silk and wool fabrics, haberdashery, he found and invited over one lively and shrewd woman and told her to visit the wife of the official and to offer her all these goods for a half price, in credit.  The woman started visitting the official’s wife and selling her all these goods for pennies, offering her a high credit.  When the amount of the debt accumulated, the factor was growing impatient; the wife of the official was told to pay off accumulated amount of debt at once.  The woman lost her head since she did not have the amount needed to pay, but to tell her husband about her purchases she did not have courage.   As a way out, she was offered to visit the owner of the store to ask to postpone the payment.  The woman was brought to the pan, everything worked out and the factor was reinstated to his job. 

For Jews there was only one way –commerce and, despite the difficulties of rightless status, they, in this field of endeavor, showed their great abilities, knack, and have achieved a great success.  All commerce, at least in Berdichev and adjacent towns, was concentrated in their hands.  The great urge to the quick-money, to the wealth – was a common occurrence in this horde.  A salesman-merchant, had taken a lot of goods in credit, on a quite large amount of money and then declared bankruptcy; later, he has found some way to get away from his creditors, the reach Moscow, Lodzinsky, Warshaw, Belarussian fabricants, by paying them 20-30 kopeeks on each rubble owned; restored his credit, and declared bankruptcy again until he had enough capital on hands to make a good profit.  Poor handyman borrowed 25-30 rubbles with 25-30% annual interest, used to pay off the borrowed amount in weekly payments, and in a case of a missing payment or inability to pay, on all his petty goods and chattels, on the tools of production, was ordered seizure and all his movable belongings would be sold on an auction.  

   The reach American company of sawing machines “Zinger” had their offices all over Russia.  Its quick agents received commissions from each machine sold and in addition to that some percents from the payments of those who made their purchases in credit. Darting about among the needy, the agents were persuading the needy, offered them some great deals, and conditions on purchases.  A machine buyer needed to sign a printed so called blank-agreement the content of which, because of outright illiteracy and ignorance, he did not understand.  When an unfortunate event would strike, the poor got sick for example and could not pay anymore, the machine would be taken away without any court hearings, in administrative procedure, and all paid, socked in sweat rubbles, would be left to the company.  A heart breaking scenes would take place during these expropriations which, as expected, led to nowhere.  A declared bankruptcy on ten thousand rubbles merchant was guaranteed not to loose his personal property, his own home possessions, which had much grater value than the amount of his debt.  Poor peasant woman for stilling ………..   or   moujik, who tried to still a cow would be sentenced to two years, if convicted, to round-house companies, invocation of all rights and would be tormented for months before his court hearing day.  A shrewd merchant, on the contrary, the evil bankrupt, was walking free and enjoyed in his environment exceptional attention, where he was praised and respected. 

The doctors and feldshers enjoyed their lives with the only difference between them, that the former used to buy big houses – chertogs – and lent money for interest, and the feldshers, because of their modesty, restricted themselves to one store houses, or country homes, and held in their possessions one-horse carriages.  To this “warm-hearted” pleyad of healers, I need to add Wisperers-Tatars.  A boy, girl or even an adult person, bitten, scarred by a dog or by some scary night sights, invites a Tatar, who negotiates to cure a schizophrenic patients all at once and day after day during two-three week period, he drives away spells, exorcises a malice, evil eye etc.  On such ignorance of the masses, tsadiki-chudodeis (chudodey - miracle performer) with their multiple swarms of parasites subsided, who, like Mongols often raided an ill-fated precinct of the Jewish settlement, and very often outside that area too, and gathered an extensive harvest.  They also used to give medical and, equally, any other advices and supplied the population with medicine, and talismans.  Tsadic the miracle performers had their own residences where dedicated pilgrims, carrying with them their contributions, gifts, used to go worshiping and receiving their blessings.  The merchant class materially supported and protected them from the government prosecution. 

By the way, I have to tell you about the way they used to treat mental illnesses.  Masses have no clue about the existence of nervous illnesses, and abnormal behavior of a mentally sick person, they used to aspire to the dark power inside the person’s body invisible to a simple sinful eye of an everyday man and which was presented in an image of the Devil with horns, Satan, etc.  And to liberate a possessed person from this force was only possible using the help of saint muzhes.  The Christians would bring such patients to monasteries and Jews appealed for help to all mighty ravines.  The later used to send their agents, cunning and experienced foxes, to secretly watch one or another mentally ill man or woman.  And when a moment of relieve, after a period of their violent impulses, would arrive to such person, the patient’s vision clears and he or she would get in touch with their senses, a ravine-tsadik opens an inauguration, calls on gathering and, referring to the patient, suggestively speaks with a reference to Satan, that in the name of saint Almighty Iyogov he orders it to free his victim at once. And imagine yourself, a miracle from all miracles takes place:  Satan himself, with horns, jumps out of a small finger of the patient’s arm, living on it a trace of blood from a tricky cut, like it were from a burst of a skin tissue, and disappears.  Fame about the tsadik the miracle performer spreads around the local area and a crowd of mentally ill people head towards his residence.  A writer Bogrov wrote a story in which a rich Jew, a tavern owner, living in his tavern in a field, and who has already lost several of his children, asked a righteous man the miracle performer on a road to bless his new born son.  The tsadik with a swarm of his service men visited him, but the greedy tavern holder with his reward did not appropriately satisfy the appetite of the higher guest, and they decided to give him a lesson.  In the moment of their departure, one of the venerable tsadik’s cunning agents runs into the child’s room and puts inside the pennies of the peacefully slipping child, an oat grain.  The child wakes up and raises unbelievable cry.  His poor mother makes her husband to run after the hastily left tsadik. The latter returns, cures the child on the fly, once again receives a good reward, and the fame about him spreads all over the place. 

About wild fanaticism of Jews, I will tell you in the next story.  A poor, slim body pale complexion Jew, with a hat and ermolka on his head, dressed in a long old style velveteen house-coat, with long paces, walks along a country road to the closest estate with a knapsack on his shoulders filled with different kinds of goods, to earn some money for the upcoming holidays of Pesakh.   To his misfortune, a landowner with a pack of his dogs goes hunting.  Having noticed the poor Jew, he for the sake of his personal amusement, sets his dogs on him.  The dogs pushed the Jew around a great deal, bit him all over, and tore up his entire clothes.  The poor Jew is lying on the ground with all his goods scattered about and weeping with tears.  Has amused himself completely, the land-owner promises to reward the Jew for his loses upon his return from hunting and orders him to go to his estate, castle to wait for him there.  The hunting was successful.  Many guest gathered.  They ate, drank, and had plenty of fun:  had a lavish and a boisterous feast.  A lackey reports to his highness Pan that a barely surviving Jew has been waiting in the kitchen since this morning.  The Jew is led into the manor-mansion and offered to try wine and all kinds of exotic food.  But he categorically refuses the offer, stating that his religion strictly prohibits for a Jew to eat and drink in a house of a goy.  Having seen that none of his admonitions is helping, the landowner gives him a handful of gold coins, silver and, in addition, a dozen or more geese, and orders to drive him home immediately, to avoid any bother and problems, in a case of the Jew’s death.  The poor Jew, after receiving such an amount of money, forgot about all his injuries and resentments, has recovered from all his wounds and became the richest man in the town.  A day of Pesakh celebration arrives.  The head of the family reads aloud in a sing-song voice the tale of the Jews repatriation from Egypt, from the pharaoh’s slavery.  The family observed lent, and prepared for supper but there is a misfortune:  the wife cuts a stuffed poultry and, oh, what a terrible thing, she finds a grain of oat, but during this celebration, in all eight days, it is strictly forbidden to consume any grain product.  But, already, the slightly buzzed from wine Jew tells his wife, that God would forgive them, and the supper successfully continuous to the end.  On the next day his happy, shiny wife dressed in a festive attire, comes to the synagogue, and in an intermission during her conversation with the neighbors, she tells them about the accident with the oat grain.   The rumors, going from one neighbor to the next, got to ravine’s wife and the latter, without waiting too long, told the unheard-of story to her true-believer husband, called by God to protect his congregation from all sorts of sins.  An urgent summon is immediately called and indignant Jews, defending insulted, desecrated believes of their ancestors, beat the felon couple up nearly to death and sentence them to anafem (shinning) that is to cutting all kinds of relationships with the heretic family. 

      In no less ugly form, a religious fanaticism appears among Christians, and, especially, among their different sects:  during fires, women ran around raging flames with icons in their hands to pacify the raging blaze.  Illnesses were cured by Holy water, taken from a river during baptism; consecration by Holy water was done on the sixth of January.  From time to time, fanatic’s monsters of cruelty spread rumors about materialization of saint images in one or another places, about their sudden rejuvenation, about appearances of mother Mary’s face on a surface of water in the bottom of a well.  As a consequence of these rumors, the multiple pilgrimages would go to those locations, secret places.  The ignorant masses went in mobs, carrying with them extensive sacrifices to religious fathers and their henchmen.