Serf Grigori approaches his duke’s palace. He is giving a portion of his year’s harvest to Duke Anatoli Sokolov. Grigori himself has no surname – serfs rarely have last names. Every year, he has to give an agreed amount to the Duke. Well, it is not exactly an agreed amount, Sokolov decides everything.
Grigori sighs. It is only late summer, but already the cold western Russian climate turns his breath into vapor. By law, the serfs have been freed, but the nobles still continue to control the serfs. The tax portion is getting larger and larger every year, building up like a load on his back. He and his family have been growing thinner.
Grigori arrives at the servant’s entrance. The gatekeeper, about the only friend Grigori has in the palace, lets him in. Grigori trudges on to the palace storehouse, and meets the overseer there.
“So, I suppose you have brought me the seventy bushels of wheat and thirty of sugar beets we agreed on?” questions Boris, the Duke’s overseer.
“Yes, Sir,” Grigori replies.
“Very well. And remember, your tax increases to eighty bushels of wheat and forty of sugar beets next time. Now be gone!” Boris commands. Grigori nods and backs out. He returns home.
It is the year of 1916, under the reign of the tyrannical Czar Nicholas Romanov II. Grigori is in his humble cottage. The straw roof has been thinning, and he has no time to repair it. The room is hardly furnished. A table in the middle, a single bed on one corner, and a blanket nearly as coarse as sand. He is not allowed to have anything too lavish, nor can he afford it. Soberly, he shakes his head at the thought of the taxes. The harvests have been bad enough already. He might not be able to support his family of six. When will things get better? He does not know that next year, the Czar will be overthrown.
