Nature’s Wrath Returns

UPON DRIVING TO NORKA on regular visits, Alexander would accompany Adam on his regular village walks. They were inspection tours, undertaken by his father to keep himself informed on all aspects of the village. He had become an elder, voted to the position by his fellow villagers who trusted him to look out for their best interests.

And so, in the early sixties, Alexander witnessed that, wherever Adam met other farmers their conversations always began and ended with the same topic. The question on everyone’s mind was, “What has happened to the weather?”

Adam could well remember his grandfather’s stories – stories that seemed designed to scare young children, stories of unseasonably early arriving frost, killing the fruit on the trees, ruining the crops in the fields before one could harvest, forcing people to heat homes well before the onset of winter, thereby decimating precious fuel meant to last into spring.

“It looks like a return to the olden days,” Adam would say to whomever had broached the subject, and then they talked of the monstrous Höhenrauch and the superheated winds scorching the land during summers surely to follow such early, miserably cold winters.

They had good reason to worry. For, henceforth, terrible winters were followed by hot, dry, crop-killing summers. Alexander’s tobacco crops, and those of his suppliers, suffered, but were not damaged as much as the wheat and rye crops of the Kamyshin and Saratov provinces. It seemed the proximity of the Volga provided nightly enough moisture for the plantations close by the river to survive.

“What will happen to the people if this climate continues for much longer, Father?” Alexander felt that his father would know if the authorities had planned for such eventualities – if anyone would – for he had been elected to the newly instated Zemstvo for the Kamyshin District.

Adam was the youngest of the Zemstvo members; he was only forty-nine, all others were older. The Zemstvo, das Landamt, was the brainchild of bureaucrats determined to accomplish several goals. Bringing the settlers into the fabric of Russian society, was one aim; to involve the newly emancipated serfs meaningfully on their path of self-determination, was another. Furthermore, they endeavored to charge the nobility and the gentry with the affairs and well-being of the countryside.

So far, as Alexander discerned from Adam’s talk, not much had resulted from their first deliberations. Adam hoped that, working within the Zemstvo, the elders could bring better medical care, better educational opportunities to the district.

“The nobility sent few representatives. Those who came – one a Vorontzov – expected not much change to occur from our muzhik-assembly,” said Adam after their first meetings.

Having considered his son’s question, he said, “We have had these terrible weather conditions for three years now. It began in 1861 and already we are 40,000 rubles in debt. Our public granaries are almost empty. A few more years like this and the people will face starvation.”

In the villages the people despaired. They had absolved themselves of their debt to the Crown with the greatest difficulties and been proud and happy when the deed had finally been accomplished. Now, new debt loomed in the future and their children were hungry. There was barely enough grass for the cattle. German farmers hated nothing more than having to look at thin, bony livestock.

Added to their burden were the settlement costs for the overflowing populations. For, each time a daughter colony on new open land was spawned, those leaving the parent colony were entitled to a beginning equal to the conditions they left.

In the year 1866 the Zemstvo announced through Adam to the people of Norka that the original colonies had once again accumulated the combined debt of 700,000 rubles.

Adam’s family was fairly well fed and supplied with winter fuel only because the women in the family wove sarpinka. Anna kept a loom in her house, and the girls hired themselves out to small factories, which had sprung up everywhere. There were even heated rooms where, for monthly rent, one could set up one’s own loom, and there were establishments with rooms and looms where the owners paid for labor.

Neighbors of Adam’s kept their heads above water, tanning hides, making pipes. And so they survived.