Peasants! The other day I received news from my manager Mikhail Andreevich Zaveryachev that, thanks to God, all is well in our household, and that you through your elected officials have asked my office to give you rye in gratitude for your good behavior and for your refusal to plunder. I am particularly pleased that you have not followed the bad example of holding back and taking upon your soul such a terrible sin as robbing and burning the property of totally innocent people. I know that you have no malice towards me, and if you robbed me, it would be at the instigation of bad people. I cannot pay you because you behaved like honest people and did not commit a crime, but if in view of the shortage there are those among you who are in great need, I will not refuse to help them and will refer the matter to the assembly, asking it to decide who should be helped, for which I ask you to make a list, which I will have handed over to me through my manager. […]

I cannot come myself, so I am writing what I wanted to tell you. Pity yourselves and your children; robbery and violence will not do you any good, so try to restrain yourselves and others; if you follow my advice, you will thank me later. I sincerely wish that we may continue to live as peacefully as we have been living.

November 11, 1905.