Evening star., 1902-05-08
Order Partially Restored in
Southern Provinces.
PEASANTS ARE HUNGRY
MANY FINE ESTATES HAVE BEEN
WRECKED.
Cossacks Fire on the People, Killing
Women and Children With
the Rioters.

LONDON, May S.-The St. Petersburg
correspondent of the Associated Press,
after personal investigation of the situa-
ton IN southern Russia, writes from Mos
COW, under date of Saturday, May 3, as fol-
lows:
Comparative order has been restored In
the governments of Poltava and Kharkofr
but the peasants are only outwardly quies-
cent believing that the grant of a division
of the lands of the noblemen will be effect
ed during the coming autumn. leaving the
hereditary land owners only twenty acres
and yoke of oxen each,
Authentic particulars of the disorders
prevailing during the last three weeks
show they were largely due to extreme suf-
fering from famine, which was utilized by
agitators to foment rising. The peasants
were not the only believers in the issue of
an imperial ukase permitting a division of
the property of the nobility, and a char
liable distribution of potatoes by the stew
ard of the Duke of Mecklenburgs estate at
kharIoHka tended to confirm this belief.
The people of the whole countryside, often
led by the village magnates, streamed to
the kharOffka and other estates afoot on
horseback and in wagons, demanded the
keys of the pantries, granaries and barns
and carried off their contents
Cossacks Suffered, Too.
noblemen. When land owners refused to
deliver up the keys the peasants broke
down the doors, quietly seized food stuffs
and returned home. even well-to-do peas
ants sharing in the pIUnder.
When unOpposed, the peasants contented
themselves with supplying their immediate
needs, but when baked they burned and
destroyed. carried off live stock and desc
lated estates. Most of the difficulties oc-
CURED where the inhabitants of the villages
Were already on a strained footing with the
neighboring landowners.
Violence is reported from twelve to fif-
teen villages, while three estates have been
devastated in the kharkOff government and
forty-three in the Poltava government To
add to the general CONSERVATION 300 cos
sacks arrived at POltava after the regular
military forces had restored order The
troops fired on the people in two or three
cases, and IN one instance the peasants at
tackled the troops with stones, whereupon
the latter fired, killing several persons and
"ouhaihg score, among whom were wo-
men and children. Corporal punishment
was administered right and left without
oVerscrupulous inquiry into the guilt of the
people hogged. Some estimates place the
3OOCO.
Turbulence at Kharkoff.
There was a similar occurrence at Khar-
koff whose governor general. Prince Obol-
ensky, was particularly severe.
General Eugene Michalovich-Dou
Sky was among the sufferers. His estate
at Mechek was ruined and he himself was
seized and beaten. He is still ill from the
effects of the treatment he received
AS an example of the extent to which
the ranks of the famine-stricken Villagers
are swollen by the return OF unemployed
factory workers, it is pointed out that one
iron works which heretofore employed H.
800 to @ooo people is now employing only
1900 for three days a week"