Near the end of Spring 1916, Marie found herself to be drained with pleurisy attacks. Dr. Tishin strongly recommended to Mare to rest. She was not go to Crimera or Caucasus. The doctor stated her venture there was out of the question. So Father Michael and Marie went to the monastery, 20 miles from Pskov. During the summer, there was a threat from a German advance. Father Michael was dealing with flares of his erysipelas and he desired a retreat. Marie chose a small home within the monastery grounds. Father Michael stayed in a small house which included a small chapel. Aunt Ella had build that for Father Michael and Father Gabriel who has since passed on from earth.
Once a week, Marie had a car take her from Pskov to the hospital so to keep in touch with things there. Marie had memories there of “contentment.” (Page 242)
In this small home, she was on the 1st floor and the maid lived on floor above Marie. Marie enjoyed the company of the dog who was given to her by Dmitri.
The monastery was built in the 13th century in an old pine forest. This forest was within a “thick, low wall on the corners of which stood round towers with green pointed roofs.” (Page 242) The monastery was modest and low in money. The monks wore tattered cassocks, and their hair was unkept and long against their backs. They participated in numerous church services and they also worked in the fields.
Marie would sit under large pines for hours at a time. She would bring a book though she did not always read it. She also bathed in a “deep pond fed by springs.” (Page 243) Spending time outside provided her with a sense of “Russia’s vastness and her potency, her strength.” (Page 243)
Suppers were modest and they would sit on a small house veranda. Topics they would discuss over supper were “Russia, life, future, and how in future (Marie) might be of use to her country.” (Page 243)
In church, the monks would sing incongruently. During the holiday mass and in the little chapel, a monk was appointed by the abbot. Father Michael and Marie would “read and sing.” (Page 243) In small church, they were “friendly.” (Page 243) “Sunshine lay bright on the floor in vibrant spots and a stray wasp beat rapidly at the pane, seeking to escape.” (Page 243) A breeze would pass through coming from an open window, along with chirping birds. The candles would flicker. The pine aroma would also pass through. “Looking through the pane,” she saw “far stars above the dark trees.” (Page 244)
In the mornings, the women and children peasants would await for Marie to come out to speak with them. Marie would spend time with them listening about them and their lives. Marie noticed they were not feeling joy. In that particular area of Russia, the peasants lived a poor lifestyle and Marie noted they lived “in filth.” (Page 244) They did not seem upset with their situation.
“Old muzhiks and peasant women” would come for Sunday mass and for holidays. Many of the women would bring their ill children and Marie had medicines available to help them. She had received the medicines from Pskov. The women in response would give Marie “several eggs in a handkerchief, some mushrooms, or a basket of berries.” (Page 244) They “gathered in groups, would talk and scratch their necks, and ate sunflower seeds.” (Page 245) They did not appear to be aware of “internal politics or the Duma.” (Page 244) They seemed unclear how long the war has been going on and they seemed like there was no ending. Many women had lost their husbands at the front. What they seemed to be aware of, is related to rumors related to the Tsar. As Marie stated an old saying, “The Tsar is gracious but his dog-keeper is not,” and that was an example of their thought process. (Page 245)
Marie wrote more of a revealing aspects.
“They told how the Tsar, while visiting the front, would forgive delinquent soldiers and would reward others according to their merits and would punish those in command for their unjust attitude towards their men. They liked these stories of theirs much better than my (Marie’s) explanations as to the meaning of the war and the activities of our distant Allies. All that was incomprehensible to them, beyond their understanding, inaccessible to their imagination.” (Page 245)
“On the other hand they quite definitely were expecting the division of the land after the war. They found it only natural that the earth they tilled should be taken from the landowners and given to them.” (Page 245)
“Looking at them, hearing them talk, I often was conscious of something close to fear. Millions of peasants throughout Russia, I thought to myself, are reasoning exactly this same way. They bear us no ill-will, but neither we, the government, nor a public opinion headed by an intelligentsia has the slightest power to reach and sway this stubborn, instinctive judgment of the overwhelming majority of out population. We have failed to understand the peasant psychology, or to enlighten it; and it is now too late.” (Page 245)
“Somewhere far away parties joined issue, conventions assembled, members of the Duma made their speeches, ministers were discharged, groups pulled this rope and the other. Yet none of this reached the people, none of it was done in their behalf.” (Page 245-246)
At the time of writing the memoir, the peasants seemed not to have changed since summer 1916.
“It has always puzzled me how my relatives and the people surrounding me could have failed even to worry about the agrarian problems in Russia. During their their travels abroad, they must have observed the comparative welfare of the Western agricultural class. In Sweden before the war, every hired hand had his own bicycle. The farmers lived in clean houses behind muslin curtains, and their children were college graduates. I was never able to get used to the thought that those healthy, cheerful people, always cleanly dressed, were peasants.” (Page 246)
Marie spoke of the peasants’ public education had many difficulties. “Climatic conditions, transportation problems, the vastness of the land, the psychological inertness of the sons and grandsons of serfs - all this had to be taken into account.” (Page 246)
The organization of the peasant education was not good. The village priests and teachers were to teach that which they were not educated on. “They excelled, on the other hand, in vague abstractions and half-baked revolutionary dogma. Sent to remote villages they yearned for more expansive subjects and neglected teaching the children in preaching sedition to their gaping elders.” (Page 246)
The servants who were released from servitude in 1861, owned the land as a community which brought with it problems of individuals wanting their own land and problems with the actual land distributions.
Some landowners did try to address the dangers in this situation. “They tried to introduce new methods of culture, better breeds of cattle, new agricultural machines, and to explain to the people the importance of personal hygiene. But such attempts did not get very far, and they were all too few.” (Page 247)
Marie had learned much during her short time with there. As she stated, “I now saw plainly that our former existence, as a ruling class, was founded on illusions alien to real life; that the basic fabric of out national life was pitiably flimsy and insecure.” (Page 247)