RUNAWAY  RUSSIA  233

This  may  seem  strange  to  people  whose  idea  of  the
Cossacks  is  that  they  are  lawless  marauders.  The
Cossask  is,  first  and  last,  a  landowner.  As  each
male  child  was  born,  he  was  endowed  with  so  much
land,  free  from  taxes.  For  this  they  gave  free  mil-
itary service  to  the  czar  himself.  When  the  czar
allowed  the  Duma  to  tax  the  lands  of  the  Cossacks,
he  signed  his  abdication  more  surely  than  he  did
that  day  at  Pskoff.  The  Cossack  is  opposed  to  the
Bolsheviki,  because  a  redistribution  of  the  land
will  mean  that  the  wide  lands  of  the  Cossacks  will
be  taken  from  them  and  distributed  to  the  peasant.
The  Cossack  will  cease  to  be  a  landowner,  as  he
understands  it,  and  will  degenerate  into  the  muz-
hik class.  For  the  free  Cossacks,  this  is  an  utter
impossibility.  They  are  men  of  character,  splen-
did character,  and  they  will  never  deteriorate  into
the  peasant  class  whose  horizon  is  bounded  by  the
ditches  surrounding  their  own  few  acres.
