The Russians at Home and the Russians Abroad: sketches ... of Russian life under Alexander II

Preface

. A long preface is sometimes a worse evil than even a big book ; and the two volumes now offered to the public form a work of rather formidable dimensions. The author has nothing to say about them except that the first volume is wholly unpolitical, and that it consists for the most part of chapters selected, and in many cases abridged, from a book published not many years after the accession of the Emperor Alexander II., under the title of the Russians at Home ; while the second volume, which deals with the Russians

PREFACE.

. VI Abroad (the Russians are abroad in more than one sense just now), is devoted to political ques tions, and is intended in particular to show what of late years the action of the Russian Government has been, not only " at home," but also in connec tion with Poland, with Central Asia, with the Slavonians of the Balkan peninsula, and with Panslavonianism generally. This volume includes a certain number of articles reproduced, with all necessary alterations, from newspapers, magazines, and reviews. The reader will see for himself that they have not been put together at random. CONTENTS. PAGE

Chapter I

— St. Petersburg ; and prom St. Petersburg to Moscow . . .1

CHAPTER IL

— Prom Moscow to St. Petersburg, and prom St. Petersburg to the Prussian Frontier . . . .11 CHAPTER HI.— Comedy and Corruption . 28

CHAPTER IV.

— Society and the Stage . 56

CHAPTER V.

— Moscow "the Holy" . . 71

CHAPTER VI.

— Krilopp and the Russian Fabulists ..... 115

CHAPTER VII.

— The Troitza Monastery . 163 CHAPTER VIH.— Winter ; at Home and in the Streets ..... 184

CHAPTER IX.

— Fire and Water . . CONTENTS. PAGE

CHAPTER X.

— Eating and Drinking . . 230

CHAPTER XL

— Tea-houses and Tea . . 255 CHAPTER XH.— Clubs, Assemblies, and Balls 275 CHAPTER XIH.— The Russian Gipsies . 283

CHAPTER XIV.

— Portrait of a devout Russian Gentleman .... 296

CHAPTER XV.

— A Russian Wedding . . AND THE RUSSIANS ABROAD.

CHAPTER I. ST.

PETERSBURG ; AND FROM ST. PETERSBURG TO MOSCOW. The first sight the traveller gets of St. Petersburg is infinitely more beautiful in summer than in winter. In the latter season he approaches it after a tedious, snowy, railway journey through a flat and uninteresting coun try; in the former he probably sails towards it on the waters of one of the most beautiful rivers in Europe, and certainly by far the most beautiful of those on which the great capitals are built. Like a great many other fair things, the Neva is not so useful as it is ornamental ; for it is too shallow for the navigation of large vessels, and it has, moreover, the disadvantage of being solid during half the year. Occasionally, too, it inundates the metropolis ; and in every street watermarks are to be seen, showing the height to which the waves rose during the terrible flood of 1825 — which a believer in symbols might regard as correlative with the lamentable insurrection of Pestel that same year.

Numbers of the insurgents were sent to Siberia. The waves could not be exiled ; but they were imprisoned between two long lines of granite ramparts, which form the most magnificent quays in the world. It is beyond the quays, however, where the Neva disports itself freely, that the beautiful river is seen in all its beauty. Its soft, green banks, which it continually overflows, come down to the very edge of the water ; and the water everywhere, even in the heart of the capital, is as clear and transparent as the Seine at Asnieres, or the Thames at Twickenham. The Neva at St. Petersburg is in some parts not unlike the Seine at Paris. Let the Winter Palace, the Hermitage, and the other Imperial mansions in the same line, stand for the Tuileries and the Louvre ; the Government buildings on the other side for the Insti tute, the houses on the Quai cFOrsay, the Palace of the Legion of Honour, &c, aud the resemblance will be at once perceived by all who are familiar with the two cities.

The Neva, however, is twice as broad as the Seine, and the St. Petersburg quays are in all respects superior to those of Paris. The golden cupola of a church, strange object in the North, is the first thing that meets the traveller's eye as he approaches Cronstadt from the Gulf of Fin land. Going from Cronstadt up the Neva to St. Petersburg, the first indications he sees of the capital are a long golden spire, like a needle — or, when the sun is shining on it, like the flight of a distant rocket — and a large golden dome, like a balloon. The needle like spire adorns the Admiralty, the ball of gold is the centre cupola of St. Isaac's Cathedral. For at least half an hour the steeple and the dome are all that can be seen of St. Petersburg. They seem to belong to nothing, and to be floating in the air.

And if the appearance of St. Isaac's is marvellous at a distance, it is certainly magnificent to a spectator at a few hundred yards. The exterior is quite worthy of the splendid and elaborate ornamentation of the inside. The immense central dome is surrounded by four small ones on the same model, which form a square. Seen from the other side of the river, when the slanting rays of the evening sun fall upon them, these five golden cupolas assume the most fantastic colours, and are in turns gold, bronze, green, and fire-coloured, like the back of a beetle ; while the gold-lettered inscription on the facade glows like pure light. In sailing up the Neva, almost every building one sees is of present or of historical interest. There is the statue of Peter, for instance, which tells a different story to each beholder.

According to Mickieviecz, it is " an avalanche of despotism," that will some day come 1 * rolling to the ground. Count Joseph de Maistre, the enthusiast for order, and who, writing immediately after the French Revolution, respects Russia as the great conservative Power, is in love with the Neva, but says of the statue, that " Peter is lifting his arm above the city with a gesture which we know not whether to regard as one of menace or protection." Others, of a more prosaic turn of mind, content themselves with telling how the immense block of granite on which the statue stands was hewn out of the Finland quarries, rolled towards the Neva, and borne down the river to St. Petersburg on a raft constructed specially for its reception. Or they will relate the anecdote of the Russian officer who used to gallop his horse to the very edge of a cliff, and suddenly haul him up when his head and neck were already hanging over the preci pice ; and will explain how the sculptor Falconnet, to whom the feat of the said officer is supposed to have suggested the attitude of the equestrian figure (but who, in fact, copied it from the antique), poured so many tons of molten metal into the legs and haunches of the animal, in order to maintain it in its present erect position.

Others tell the story of the foreigner who, having lost his way, got on to the isvostchik' s horse, and put himself into the attitude of Peter - upon which the intelligent driver at once understood that he was to convey the gentleman to the neighbourhood of the bronze man on horseback. Indeed, this statue says something to every one, and every one has something to say about the statue. Ascending the river, we come to the Fortress of Peter and Paul, which stands opposite to the magnificent Winter Palace, on the other bank of the river. The relative position of the Imperial mansion and of the Imperial dungeons has struck many writers, who thereupon remember that " it was not far from the Capitol to the Tarpeian rock." Some, again, see in the fortress the last resting-place of the Tzars (since the time of Peter), and reflect that, in the midst of their power and prosperity, the Russian emperors cannot look from the windows of their palace without beholding their tomb.

The French king avoided St. Germain, because from its terrace the spire of the funereal St. Denis was visible ; but no such weakness belongs to the sovereigns of Russia. Their St. Denis stares them in the face, and side by side with the church where they hope to repose in peace are the dungeons in which lie those whom some call traitors and others patriots. Not only is this approach from Cronstadt to St. Petersburg, and the passage along the quays, full of interest; but nearly everything that is beautiful or interesting in St. Petersburg is found on the banks of the Neva. For instance, the Isaac Cathedral, the Winter Palace, the Taurida Palace, the Palace of Marble, the Hermitage, the Exchange, the Admiralty, the Fortress, the Summer Gardens, with the admirable statue of Kryloff the fabulist in his dressing-gown, the Review Ground, &c. After the quays, the most interesting part of St. Petersburg is the celebrated Nevski Prospect, along which we pass to reach the ter minus of the Moscow Railway.

When for the first time I travelled from St. Peters burg to Moscow immense preparations were being made for the coronation of Alexander the Second. The new capital was gradually emptying itself into the old ; and instead of one train, as many as two were despatched daily along the line. The Moscow houses had all been repainted, and the Moscow beggars, that they might not annoy the visitors, had, with infinite consideration (for the visitors), been imprisoned. At the same time the cost of everything, necessaries as well as luxuries, had risen to such an alarming extent that the Government, in the in terest of the working classes, felt called upon to fix the maximum price of beef at threepence a pound : the reader need scarcely be told which were the favourite meats with the proprietors of tables d'hote as long as this curious alimentary edict remained in force.

Even the officials in the passport office and in the office of printed books were considerate, and neither delayed the traveller nor confiscated his literary luggage. Those who arrived in St. Petersburg one day could start the day afterwards for Moscow. The most remarkable thing at the railway station was this : that, although according to law every one who wished to travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow must show his passport when he purchased his ticket, more than one person who had forgotten or had not had time to get his " papers " put in order, obtained his ticket by simply paying the ordinary price and exhibiting a rouble or half a rouble in addition. Indeed, the amount of cheating and corruption practised in con nection with the Moscow and St Petersburg Railway was at that time ludicrous or appalling, according to the disposition of the person witnessing it.

I confess that it amused me — at least a great deal of it did ; though it was impossible to think of it seriouslv without disgust, and without some misgiving as to whether the Russians as a mass would ever regard office as anything but an opportunity for extorting money. Sometimes an employe, civil or military, wearing the Government uniform, would refuse to pay, on the pretext that he was travelling on State service; or without any pretext at all. At others, a person who had not taken a ticket would give the conductor a rouble or so for the privi lege of travelling without one; or with a third-class ticket he would travel in the first-class. Another plan consisted in taking a ticket at the last station and giving it up at the terminus — a permission to travel twenty miles, instead of a permission to travel four hundred and eighty.

Of course the conductor of the train found his account in all these swindles, which took place beneath his eyes, even if he was not a direct and active participator in them. Materially speaking, there is nothing to be said against the Moscow Railway. The stations, the engine houses, which with their large Eastern domes look like mosques, the refreshment-rooms along the line, are all commodious, well-constructed buildings. The carriages are constructed on the American plan. Those of the first class are elegant little drawing-rooms, furnished with chairs, tables, sofas, &c. To these, however, the traveller by the first class is not admitted as a matter of course ; they are usually taken by families, and parties of friends. It is the second and third class carriages, I believe, that are specially American in their construction.

A second-class carriage on the Moscow line is a long saloon, fitted up with " boxes " like a London coffee-room. Down the centre is a passage, and on each side are seven of the said "boxes," each " box " being made for the accommodation of four persons. Thus the carriage has altogether fiftysix seats. At each end is a little platform, which serves as an observatory or station for the guard, and for those who wish to breathe the outer air or to smoke. It is usual to purchase these luxuries with a little bribe of about fourpence — smoking and standing on the platform being strictly forbidden by the railway regulations. The cost of refreshments at the various stations is moderate, if you take what the Russians take themselves. You can get excellent tea, with as much cream as you like, for fourpence a tumbler - and biscuits and cakes for what they cost in most other countries.

Slices of caviare, cheese, and the awful butter-brod ofthe Germans, are also sold ; and fair ordinary Bordeaux costs only a rouble or a rouble and a half a bottle. Dinner, con sisting of soup, some more or less national entree, roast meat and salad, one rouble. Breakfast (different kinds of meat, &c), thirty copeiks — about a shilling. Guin ness's Stout and Bass's Ale are found at the chief stations, but you are charged a rouble the quart bottle for these luxuries. The great article of con sumption, all along the line, is tea. It is impossible to travel with greater security than on this Moscow railway. As there are only two passenger trains a day, and a luggage-train twice or three times a week, there is not much danger of a collision. Then there are no tunnels, and no cuttings or embankments sufficiently important to deserve the name.

A French lady, who had lived all her life in Russia, and who once travelled in the same diligence with me from St. Petersburg to the Prussian frontier, exclaimed, when she saw near Tilsit a hill-side about fifty feet high, " I have at last seen a mountain ! " — and so in a comparative sense she had, for round St. Petersburg, and between St. Petersburg and Mos cow, there are not even hillocks. At Valdai, celebrated for its bells, not very far from Moscow, the Russians pretend that there is a chain of hills. They are not perceptible to the naked eye, though, doubtless, an engineer would discover them. An English engineer, who travelled with me on the Moscow line, was quite charmed with the capabilities of the country for rail way construction, in a political as well as in a scien tific sense.

" No tunnels, no viaducts, no cuttings, no embankments — and above all, no Act of Parlia ment ! " he exclaimed. One serious inconvenience, however, presented it self in connection with the Moscow line ; some of the land being so boggy that in certain spots small forests of logs had to be sunk before the rails could be laid down with any chance of their remaining level. After the wet season, when the water in these bogs expands into ice, the rails are sometimes forced up ; and though no serious accident has yet occurred from that cause on the Moscow line, it is not certain that passengers would be equally fortunate in travelling along the lines which it is proposed to construct through the deserts of Siberia, where the number of signal-men engaged would, comparatively speaking, be of course very small.

Chapter II. Fhom Moscow To St

PETERSBURG, AND FROM ST. PETERS- BURG TO THE PRUSSIAN FRONTIER. Approaching Moscow from St. Petersburg in summer, one finds the temperature getting gradually higher and higher ; and when at the end of winter one travels to St. Petersburg from Moscow, a hard frost and clear sunlit atmosphere is left for a half-thaw, a mist, and a perpetual drizzle of sleet and snow. It has often been said that Moscow is more thoroughly Russian than St. Petersburg; and, independently of atmospheric diffe rences, there are many points in which the old and the new capital are unlike one another. In several respects St. Petersburg resembles Berlin far more than Moscow ; only it is Berlin on a larger scale, and with a magnificent river flowing through it. There are also a good many more palaces, and grander ones, in the Russian city, to say nothing of its unrivalled quays.

But one of the first things that strikes the traveller in the capital of the north is the rigid, mibtary aspect of the streets, with all the houses drawn up in line, or in columns of companies, or — seen from an eminence — in squares of battalions ; and this is just what every one notices in Berlin. In addition, moreover, to the architectural resemblance between Berlin and St. Petersburg, the latter derives a certain Teutonic look from the large number of Germans included in its official and mercan tile population, which is increased by the presence of an inevitable portion of Germans in distress ; whereas in Moscow, when you " take your walks abroad," the only poor you see are pilgrim-like beggars in caftan and girdle, with the traditional staff, with shoes of bark and with beards a foot long.

In St. Petersburg the ordinary winter costume (except among the moujiks) is very much like that of Berlin, and nearly all the men wear hats ; in Moscow, a general wearing of hats is a phenomenon which manifests itself simultaneously with a display of full-dress uniforms, and which may be accepted as a sign of a /eYe-day requiring visits to be paid. St. Petersburg is built on a plain which was once a marsh ; Moscow stands on hills. There is nothing characteristically Russian in the fact of a city being erected on uneven ground ; but in all the old Russian towns of importance there is a stronghold, or " kremlin," built on a commanding point, and one cannot say that this is replaced in St. Petersburg by the fortress. Then, in St. Petersburg, numbers of the principal churches and cathedrals are not constructed on the old Russo-Byzantine model, but exhibit a com promise between the native or naturalised style and that of Italy since the Renaissance : of the small square churches with gilt, painted, or spangled domes — one principal dome in the centre, with a satellite at each of the four corners — there are but few specimens in the new capital.

In Moscow, again, every family in good circumstances has a separate house, which is almost always detached, and surrounded by a garden; whereas, in St. Petersburg, those who do not live in palaces generally content themselves with a " flat," in the French style. In both cities the old Russian custom still prevails of calling houses after the names of their proprietors ; so that on your letters you are addressed in the Oriental style, as " So-and-so, at the house of So-and-so." But the numbering system is being gradually introduced into St. Petersburg. Finally, the two capitals present a striking contrast in the matter of colour. St. Petersburg is composed of long regular lines of grey; the fantastic Moscow is white or pale yellow, with roofs of dark-red or light green, varied with cupolas of gold or of bright ultrama rine with golden stars.

Magnificent as St. Petersburg had appeared to me seeing it for the first time, it disappointed me the second time, arriving there from Moscow. However, there was the Italian Opera to see, which had not been open in the summer of the previous year, and which is a magnificent house, though inferior to the unrivalled Moscow Opera House — constructed by the same architect, the late Signor Cavos. I of course made a series of visits to the Gallery of the Hermitage, which possesses Bruloff's " Destruction of Pompeii," and a few other works of merit by Rus sian artists, together with a marvellous collection of Italian, Flemish, and Dutch paintings — of which the Titians and Rembrandts are especially remarkable, both for their number and for their rare excellence. Here, too, is the wonderful comic series of pictures by Paul Potter (in a style with which, of late years, the name of Grandville has been especially associated), the '•' Animals sitting in Judgment on Man."

Without at tempting to give an account of the treasures of the Her mitage Gallery, I may* call attention to two seemingly imimportant restorations made during the present reign, which have their significance all the same. Houdon's fine marble bust of Voltaire, of which the bust at the Theatre Francais is a repetition, had been consigned by Nicholas, the great and-" ideologue " (who must have had peculiar horror of the many-ideaed author of the " Philosophical Dictionary"), to some lumber-room in the palace ; and, from the same motives of propriety which induce the Russian Ministers of Fine Art to discountenance the utter nudity of Academy models, Rembrandt's " Danai; " remarkable for the forcible drawing of the principal figure, had been removed from the public gaze, and could not be seen unless the visitor went through the tedious form of procuring a special permission to view it.

Among the first acts of the new reign were the liberation of Voltaire and of Danae from the dungeons to which they had been consigned. The Imperial library, with its admirably-arranged catalogue (on the plan of Adelung), is another of the things that must be seen at St. Petersburg. In one of the rooms, enclosed in glass cases, are a variety of manuscript curiosities, the most remarkable of which is the astonishing apophthegm given to Louis XIV. as a boy to write " copies " from — " Les rois font ce qui leur plait ; " a notion which he certainly carried out to the best of his ability in after-life. " J 'attends le iiioman de revoire mes chairs soldats " is a fine speci men of the young Prince's orthography. Besides many volumes of manuscript by Voltaire, which have never been published, the Hermitage contains the whole of his private library.

It was after a careful examination of it that Count de Maistre wrote his remarks concerning Voltaire's characteristic indifference to truth as shown in the numerous incorrect editions of important works studied by him, and annotated in his own hand. Some of the Imperial manufactories, the School of Mines — in fact, any or all of the Government institu tions in or near St Petersburg — ought also to be visited, if only to see the magnificence of the buildings, and the neatness and order of all the internal arrangements. The State, in Russia, is, as regards some matters, so far ahead of the mass of the people that these establish ments have an effect they could not have in aDy other country ; and it is a fact that the Russian Government not only employs but creates the best high-class work men in the empire.

Some of the " fabrics " are bke palaces, and so are other public buildings of a less dignified character. Thus, one day happening to drive past an edifice with an imposing facade, guarded by beadles of magnificent aspect in the imperial livery, I asked my isvostchik the name of the place. " The Government pawn-office," he replied. " You must make a mistake," I said, flattering myself that I knew the difference between a palace and a pawn-broker's. " I ought to know," returned the man, with a smile, "for I am pledged there myself, with all my family." The pawned isvostchik was a serf attached to an estate whose proprietor had borrowed money on mort gage from the Government. Before leaving St. Petersburg I made an expedition along the frozen river to Cronstadt. The thaw was not expected for at least a fortnight, and the ice was about a yard and a half thick — thicker than which it seldom if ever becomes.

On the right — looking upon the river from the palatial side of the stream — the Neva was crossed by the race-course, where renowned trotters, drawing the lightest of sledges, contend. On the other side the ice was in several places broken up, and men were waiting with sledges to carry away enormous transparent lumps, which were arranged in Druidical circles, and which, when the sun illuminated them and brought out their prismatic colours, made the most fantastic Stonehenge imaginable. M. Proudhon, in the celebrated peroration of his celebrated pamphlet, addresses those who have taken exclusive possession of the soil, and calls upon them, with indignant sarcasm, to parti tion the sea and the light of heaven as they have already partitioned the land. In Russia the frozen waters have actually been made into " property " but it is only the taking possession of it without due authorization that is regarded as "theft."

A contractor holds from Govern ment, or from the municipality of St. Petersburg, the right of selling the ice of the Neva. Once, when the Wen ham Lake supply had failed, a whole cargo was shipped from the nearest open port to London ; but, as a general rule, the sale is confined to St. Petersburg, where almost everyone has an ice-house. The contractors mark off a certain portion of ice, and, with a sharp instrument made for the purpose, cut it into long slices, and divide it again transversely into squares, like a Yorkshire pudding. The blocks, after being lifted out of the water, are arranged in the manner I have described, and are afterwards sent off one by one to the purcha sers, each block being a sufficient load for a sledge drawn by a single horse. There is a regular ice-market on the Neva ; and no more thoroughly winter picture can be seen than the sledges returning from it, — the frost-bearded drivers sitting each on his block like statues on pedestals.

There is something truly Arctic in the aspect of the gradually-widening Neva, between St. Petersburg and Cronstadt. After a few miles nothing but ice, with here and there a snowdrift, and at every verst a signal post, is to be seen. At certain intervals there are stations where the sentinels from time to time, and almost continuously after dusk, ring bells for the guidance of travellers who may have wandered from the proper course ; which, after a snow-storm and when the weather is misty, often happens, even in the day-time. The hyperborean character of the scene was added to in one place by an effective " detail " — the skeleton of an un fortunate horse, completely bleached, and as bare as if the flesh had been gnawed from the bones by wolves. However, there is no sort of danger about a sledge journey from St. Petersburg to Cronstadt.

Almost the only accidents possible are those which might arise from occasional fissures in the ice, caused, probably, by strong currents, but which, when they are at all wide, are always carefully bridged over. Halfway between St. Petersburg and Cronstadt is a refreshment-house and tavern, built of wood, and fastened into the ice by means of beams. The foundation is secure enough ; but towards the end of winter the hostelry has rather an unsteady appearance, owing, probably, to the flux and reflux of the tide, which in some places quite destroy the level of the ice. Indeed, at Cronstadt I found every ship in the harbour sepa rated from the ice which surrounded it, and which had to be cut through every morning, to avoid the strain its rise and fall would otherwise have caused to the timbers.

Owing to the early ancl unexpected appearance of winter, a large number of vessels, of which by far the greater part were English, had been frozen in ; so that Cronstadt, until the thaw, had in many respects the appearance of an English seaport. The names of the hotels and taverns were all painted up in English, more or less correct. The streets were full of English sailors who walked about without fur, without great-coats, without even gloves or goloshes, and with their breasts exposed; and a large pleasure-garden — the Cronstadt Cremorne — with all its tenements, had been hfred by a certain number of them as a place of habitation. In the frozen harbour the long lanes of ships had had Lon don titles given to them ; and I walked down " Long Acre," " High Street," the " Commercial Road," and other icy thoroughfares, bearing names which recalled 2 * to the home-sick seamen the " arva beata" of the British metropolis.

But what chiefly interested me was, to find that the English sailors, many and up roarous as their jollifications and sprees had been during their half-year's sojourn at Cronstadt, had, at the same time, established schools in the Russian military port both for the ships' boys and for them selves. Of course they were aided in this by the English residents, foremost among whom were the clergymen of the English churches at Cronstadt and at St. Petersburg ; but whatever instruction was offered the sailors thankfully accepted ; and the Russian Govern ment placed at the disposal of the committee one of its public buildings, in acknowledgment of which the English residents afterwards presented a sum of money to one of the Russian charities. A great deal has been written as to the possibility of taking Cronstadt ; but I believe the above to be the only account pub bshed of its peaceful occupation by the English during the winter of 185G-57.