PROVINCIAL
RUSSIA
T
PAINTED
BY-F-DEHAENEN
DESCRIBED
BY-HUGH -STEWART
t
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
I hunMuJX {, CiXKiA}
PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
MOSCOW
PAINTED BY F. DE HAENEN
DESCRIBED BY HENRY M. GROVE
CONTAINING 32 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS (OF WHICH
16 ARE IN colour) AND A PLAN
ST. PETERSBURG
PAINTED BY F. DE HAENEN
DESCRIBED BY G. DOBSON
CONTAINING 32 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS (OF WHICH
16 ARE IN COLOUR) AND A SKETCH-MAP
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK, 4, 5 AND 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.
AUEBICA . . .
AU8TRAT.ABIA . .
CANADA .....
INDIA
AGENTS
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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A TURCOMAN AND HIS WIFE
PROVINCIAL
RUSSIA
PAINTED BY
F. DE HAENEN
DESCRIBED BY
HUGH STEWART
LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1913
VK
3.7
Contents
PAGE
I. Central Russia 1
II. The North ^^
III. The Urals ^^
IV. The Volga ^^
V. An Eastern Government .... TO
VI. Provinclal Towns ^'^
VII. White Russia 105
VIII. Little Russia 1^1
IX. The Steppe 1^6
X. The Crimea 15*
Index
169
1 RC75S0
List of Illustrations
IN COLOUR
1. A Turcoman and His Wife . . Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
2. Peasants 16
3. Siberian Convict 20
4. The Trans-Siberian Railway .... 24
5. A Bear Trap 32
6. A Northern Fur Merchant .... 40
7. A Summer's Day in the Country ... 48
8. Rafts on the Volga 56
9. A Carpet Fair at Astrakhan .... 64
10. Rich Tartars 72
11. A Country Mayor of the Toula District . 96
12. A Polish Jew 104
13. Tea-Sellers at a Country Railway Station . 112
14. A Dance in Little Russia . . . .120
15. A Kirghiz Wooing 152
16. Royal Palace, Livadia, Crimea . . .160
vii
Vlll
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN BLACK AND WHITE
FACING PAGE
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32,
New Yeah's Custom : Choosing a Bride
A Convent in Novgorod: Nuns Making Hay
Selling the Sacred Fire: Pilgrim Returning
from Jerusalem
Convoy of Prisoners on Foot .
Samoyedes .....
A Wolf-Hunt ....
Getting Caviare at Astrakhan
Blessing the Water in the Country
Stage for Post-Horses in the Urals
Summer Caravans . . . ,
Blessing the Ground before Sowing — Little
Russia ......
A Circassian .....
Circassians Drilling ....
Returning from a Hunt in the Caucasus
The Hunt for a Prisoner
Interior of a Siberian Prisoners' Wagon
11
14
27
30
43
46
59
62
81
88
129
136
139
142
147
150
Sketch-Map at end of Volume
PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
CENTRAL RUSSIA
It was in the south-west, in the basin of the
Dnieppr, the great waterway between Scandinavia
and Constantinople, that the Russian State had its
first beginnings. KiefF, and not Moscow, is the
real ' mother-city.' But from the fourteenth
century Russian history has centred round the
' white-stoned ' town on the Moskva, and the
principal part in the national development has
been played by the Muscovites, or Great Russians.
In numbers and importance these by far exceed
the other two families of the Russian race, the
White and the Little Russians. It was the
Muscovite Princes that emancipated Russia from
the Tartar yoke. It was the Great Russian stock
that, possessing a remarkable instinct and aptitude
for colonization, sent forth successive swarms of
emigrants to the northern forests and the fertile
1
2 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
steppes in the south, and that alone of all Slavonic
peoples have built up a powerful empire in face of
very considerable difficulties. Their religion, their
form of government, and their language, they have
stamped on the whole nation. In the course
of expansion they have absorbed a considerable
number of Finnish peoples. While it would be a
mistake to infer that the predominant characteris-
tics of the Great Russians are anything but
Slavonic, it seems probable that to this infusion
of Finnish blood, and not altogether to the more
rigorous Northern climate, are due certain modi-
fications of the Slavonic type which are peculiar
to them. They have lost in liveliness and gained
in strength. They have more endurance and
energy, more perseverance and patience, than the
Little or White Russians. In physique they are
less graceful, but more rigorous.
This prolific stock, endowed with inexhaustible
reserves of strength and recuperative powers, has
spread in every direction of the empire, adapting
itself with peculiar readiness and success to new
conditions, but at the same time preserving all the
customs that could possibly be retained. Thus,
the traveller in Russia will notice a certain same-
ness in peasant life from Archangel to Astrakhan,
CENTRAL RUSSIA 3
the same village plan, the same type of houses, of
clothes and manners, a sameness which is accen-
tuated by the similarity of the scenery. But
variations do arise under the influence of a novel
environment, and Russian writers are careful to
distinguish between the character of the central
peasants and that of the people in the north and
in the Urals. The original type is best seen in the
central governments in the basin of the River Oka,
which for long was a political and ethnological
frontier.
This river, one of the great rivers of Europe, has
its source in the Government of Oryol, and meets
the Volga at Nijni. Its basin is intimately con-
nected with Russian history, and comprises to-day
the most populous and most highly developed
district in the whole empire. Nowhere is the web
of railways closer, nowhere are more people
engaged in manufacturing industries. Yet even
here the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants
are peasant agriculturists. First, then, a word as
to the appearance of the country, and this, the
reader will remember, applies to rural scenery in
Russia generally.
Sluggish rivers, with steep red banks, wind
through broad plains. In the distance are dark
4 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
woods of pines or birches, which in the evenings
resound witli the notes of nightingales. The un-
fenced communal fields slope gently towards the
horizon, and through them, also unfenced, runs the
broad stoneless road with deep ruts. There is no
strongly marked feature in the landscape. The
predominant colour is in summer grey or brown.
In spring it is bright, almost dazzling, green, and in
winter practically unrelieved white. The feeling
of space, of distance, which the people call their
great enemy, impresses itself strongly on the
mind ; all round for a thousand miles is Russia.
There are generally no separate homesteads — a
feature that must, however, alter largely in no
long time, owing to the agricultural reforms in-
augurated by JNl. Stolypin's Government, that aim
at establishing the individual and independent
farmer, and hence project a revolution of a peace-
ful but most momentous nature. With the
exception of bee-keepers, charcoal-burners, and
foresters, whose occupations oblige them to dwell
in the woods, the peasants all live in villages. Those
whose strips of corn lie at the outskirts of the 77iir
land, often ten or fifteen versts from their homes,
will spend in harvest-time the nights in the open,
and their little fires will twinkle over the fields.
CENTRAL RUSSIA 5
Great Russian villages vary little from each
other, except in size. Occasionally there are rows
of trees relieving the monotony of the straight,
regularly-built streets, and close by, surrounded by
pleasant grounds, there may be a landowner's
long one-storied wooden house, with the men's
apartments at one end, the women's at the other,
and the public rooms in the centre. But most
villages are treeless, and, apart from the church, a
merchant's stores, the Zemstvo or Local Govern-
ment Board school, and sometimes a hospital,
consist exclusively of the wooden izbas of the
peasants. They are surrounded by a wattled
fence, which lies far enough off to leave a pasture-
ground for the cattle. Where the road meets this
fence there is a rough wooden gate, with a small
hut to shelter the old man who looks after its
fastening. A little farther on there is a signpost
giving the name of the village and the number of
its ' souls,' or male inhabitants. High over the
izbas rises the white church, with its cross and
green cupolas. On the orthodox cross the slanting
position of the lowest transverse bar is determined
by the old Eastern tradition that Christ was lame.
In the Greek religion Zeus took to himself the
attributes of mental suffering, and identified him-
6 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
self, for example, with the suppUant. But the
Russians in their broad humanitarianism have
gone farther. They have not shrunk from making
their God physically deformed, alone of Christian
peoples] following literally the words of Isaiah :
' For He hath neither form nor comeliness.' So at
least a Slavophil might urge, but the notion
would be present, if at all, only very dimly in the
average Russian mind. Close by the church
stands the high belfry. The bells are rung from a
little platform near its sunnnit, and generally have
a pleasant note. On still summer evenings their
pealing tones echo musically far over the fields and
woods.
The broad street is merely a continuation of the
road, and is equally full of ruts and pits and un-
expected chasms. There may be the framework
of an izba made of round logs caulked with moss
and resin set there for seasoning ; and there are
sure to be some sturdy little black pigs scampering
about in search of garbage, crowds of fair-haired
children playing on grass patches before the houses,
and women gossiping at the wells. These are
marked by a succession of long poles, which the
Russians call ' cranes.' There are two poles to each
well. One of them stands upright, and the middle
CENTRAL RUSSIA 7
of the other is let into a catch at its top. To one
end of this movable pole is attached the rope with
the bucket, and to obtain water the other end is
pulled down with a second rope. There are long
troughs by the wells for watering horses. The
peasants do not scruple, however, to use the muddy
river water even for culinary or drinking purposes.
In general the Great Russian villages are not
picturesque. But when they are tree-shaded, and
one looks at them in soft evening light from over
a wide river or pond, they are steeped in a quiet
melancholy beauty of their own. Under the high
white church, glowing like silver, cluster the huts,
with their roofs of thatch or green iron. Cattle,
sheep, and geese, string out over the meadows, of
their own accord returning home from pasture.
Choir songs, sung by young peasants, float over
the water. Then later the stillness is broken only
by the sharp rattle of the small wooden clacker
with which an old man goes round during the
night alarming ne'er-do-wells by his presence.
The huts are generally built end on to the street,
and the projecting beams and overhanging gables
are often carved with intricate ornamentation.
Through the roof, usually in the middle of the
side, projects a brick chimney. In winter the huts
8 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
are banked with earth and straw halfway up the
small windows. The house stands at one of the
corners of a rectangle occupied by the homestead.
Somewhere on the street line is a double gate of
wood, a large one for carts and a small one for
people. The rest of this line is a high wooden
fence. Round the other lines range the outhouses,
byres, and sheds, and in the middle is the open
dvor, or court. In it stands a long pole, with a
little box at the top for starlings. From this court,
and not from the street, the house is generally
entered. You go up one or two steps to a porch
or small veranda where in summer many of the
richer peasants spend their spare time drinking tea.
Then you enter a small vestibule called the deni,
which is the theme of a famous song. A door
from this, again, leads into the dwelling-room, fre-
quently the only room of the izba, though above
there may be a garret for storing grain and various
odds and ends. Generally this room is about
fifteen feet by thirteen feet. In the corner is a
great stove of clay or whitewashed brick, which is
about five feet in length and four feet in breadth,
and thus occupies a large proportion of the space.
Its door is about a foot above the wooden floor,
and in winter, when the wood inside has been
CENTRAL RUSSIA 9
reduced to red embers, it is shut tight, and the
chimney closed so that nothing of the heat may
be lost. In winter, too, the snuggest sleeping-
place is on its flat top. From it to the corner,
diagonally opposite the door, stretches a broad
bench which in cold weather is also used as sleeping-
quarters. In summer most of the peasants sleep
in the outhouses. There are windows on two sides
of the room, looking towards the street and into
the court. The furniture consists of at least a
wooden table and chairs, and a cupboard or two.
In the most prominent corner, on a small triangular
shelf nearer the ceiling than the floor, are set one
or more ikons, pictorial half-lengths of Christ, the
Mother, and the Saints. The little lamp in front
of them is lit on festival days. To them the
peasant bows, crossing himself and taking off his
cap when he enters the room and after meals or
on any solemn occasion. When he yawns, too, he
crosses himself to prevent the Evil Spirit from
entering his body. On the papered walls are
highly coloured lithographs of the late war, of
the rewards and punishments in the next world,
and photographs of the family, especially soldier
sons, the Tsar and his children, and absolutely
unknown generals, across whom, heedless of human
2
10 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
dignity, crawl long files of harmless red taracans.
In the richer houses one will find clocks in glass
cases, superior furniture, and a collection of books,
which will include ' Lives of the Saints,' cheap
editions of Pushkin, Gogol, and Tolstoy, with very
probably a translation of ' The Pilgrim's Progress.'
The izbas of the present day show little improve-
ment over those of the time of Peter the Great.
They are as a rule draughty, insanitary, and insect-
ridden, and it is not an unmixed evil that every six
or seven years they are burnt down accidentally in
a village fire or through private enmity, for the
satisfaction of which ' letting loose the red cock '
is not an uncommon expedient.
Within recent years the fine physical type of the
Great Russian has somewhat deteriorated through
insufficient nourishment. He is a tall, well-built
man with a singularly dignified face, broad brow
and nose, small eyes, white teeth, and flowing beard.
His movements are grave, and yet capable of
extreme vivacity. In speaking he uses lively
gesticulations. The mass of light brown hair is
parted in the middle, and shaved off behind at the
nape of the neck, so that at the back it falls like a
dense curtain, cut evenly above the tanned,
wrinkled skin. The splendid white teeth, per-
NEW YEAR S CUSTOM : CHOOSING A BRIDE
CENTRAL RUSSIA 11
petually polished by the black rye bread, which
is the staple food, are not so characteristic of
the younger generation. The usual headgear is a
peaked blue yachting cap, but many wear their old
soldier's cap or a round felt hat. A gaily-coloured,
generally red, shirt fastened at the side of the neck
falls over darkish print trousers, and is girdled by
a belt at the waist. On the feet are worn thick
coarse socks, which, Avith the ends of the breeks,
are hidden by strips of cloth wound round the legs
like puttees. These are held in position by cords
attached to the lapti, or bast shoes. But in summer
the peasants in the fields go barefoot, and put on
their footgear only before entering a village. On
holidays the lapti are replaced by top-boots of
leather. There is nothing distinctive about the
dress of the women, who are not so good-looking
as the men. Young girls either go bareheaded or
wear a kerchief over the tresses that fall down the
back. But for matrons the kerchief is indispensable.
The fashion of tying it varies in different districts,
and the colours are as the colours of the rainbow.
In winter both sexes wear sheepskins, or tulups, and
great felt boots which reach over the knee, and are
kept on at night as well as during the day.
Driving in winter, the peasant wears above the
12 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
tulup a heavy loose-fitting greatcoat with a collar
of fur or sheepskin. Then, to tie the belt tightly
over this multitudinous mass of garments, a friend
rests his foot on the other's waist, and tugs both
ends of the belt with all his might. Clothes and
hair are not free from insects, but the universal
custom of taking a vapour bath every Saturday
is conducive alike to bodily cleanliness and to
longevity.
Like much of the country itself, the Russian
peasants are still undeveloped, but infinitely rich in
possibilities. Sentimental and sensational writers
have been so successful in blurring the real outlines
that in England the term moujik too often seems
to connote at once the darkest and deepest degrada-
tion and the victim of a crushing tyranny. The
facts are otherwise. On the one hand, the Russian
authorities are not so black as they are often
painted, and the taxes are comparatively light.
The land belongs to the peasants themselves, and
in village matters their mirs, or councils, enjoy
almost unique powers of local government of an
extremely democratic type. Secondly, as to the
peasant character, the defects have been so
accentuated as to overshadow the whole picture.
So far from the peasants being, as some writers
CENTRAL RUSSIA 13
seem to imagine, in a continual beatific condition
of intoxication — like Stevenson's gipsies, 'always
drunk, simply and truthfully always' — only very
rarely in rural districts does one meet those con-
stant topers whom the Russian calls 'bitter
drunkards.' The average spent on drink per head
is considerably less than in England or Scot-
land, even allowing for the fact that Russia is a
poorer country, and also, despite those conditions
of climate, strangely ignored by temperance
reformers, which make for heavier drinking in
Northern than in warmer climes. Equally undis-
criminating is the charge of idleness. When the
peasants are idle, it is almost entirely through force
of these same climatic conditions, during the long
winter when wood has once been carted and the
homestead repaired, and when the fields lie feet
deep under the snow. But in spring and harvesting
they work all day, and a large part of the night as
well, with an energy and vigour that remind one of
the moujik Gerasim in Turguenieff's powerful and
pathetic story ' Mumu,' who, ' when he laid his
enormous hands on the plough handle, seemed by
his own strength without the help of his horse to
cut into the stubborn breast of the earth ; and in
mowing wielded his sickle so mightily that a young
14 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
birch grove itself, one might fancy, he could at one
stroke shear clean from its roots.' They do not, it
is true, assign a high value to time, nor, like most
other people, do they do more than they are obliged
to do, but to level on these grounds a sweeping
charge of idleness is less than fair. Perhaps the
most telling indictment is on the score of dishonesty.
' Everybody steals,' says one of their own proverbs,
with a delightful mixture of candour and blasphemy,
* except Christ — and He would if His hands were
not nailed to the Cross.' But it is essential to note
a contrast between the peasant's relations on this
point towards his fellows on the one hand, and the
State and neighbouring landowner on the other.
While in the latter case he finds it difficult to dis-
tinguish between what is his and not his, and will
appropriate, not merely wood from the forests, but
even mugs and clothing from the hospital to which
he owes restored health or life itself, he will be
much less ready to ' convey ' from those whom he
calls ' our brother.' This difference may be con-
nected with a disguised but indisputable and deep-
rooted hostility towards the upper classes, which is,
indeed, the inevitable result of historical causes,
and which meets well-intentioned measures of the
present day with undue suspicion. With regard to
A CONVENT IN NOVGOROD : NUNS MAKING HAY
CENTRAL RUSSIA 15
other defects, though it is notoriously difficult to
make with certainty generalizations on national
character, few would dispute that the peasants are
as a rule improvident, untruthful, and obstinate in
persevering in error ; that they lack resolution,
independence, and initiative ; that they possess an
insatiate capacity for receiving, while their gratitude
is not commensurate.
Against these failings must be set unquestioned
virtues : sober-mindedness, endurance, practical
shrewdness, and a broad tolerance that forms the
opposite pole to the spirit which makes Spanish
peasants of neighbouring villages stone one another's
Madonnas. They are hospitable and kindly, though
not to animals. As for human beings, a proverb
inculcates, indeed, the precept, ' Beat your wife
like your fur ' ; but the principle is not carried
beyond the reasonable limits of corrective castiga-
tion permitted to or usurped by the male the whole
world over, and in the very same aphorism it is
followed by the saving clause, ' and love her like
your soul.' Nowhere have children a better time
than in Russia. The peasant temperament is
pacific, though liable when worked upon to fall
into sudden short bursts of blind, elemental passion.
Finally, this people is highly gifted intellectually,
16 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
and in this respect resembles far more nearly active-
minded Scottish crofters than the heavy- witted
agricultural labourers of the Midland shires.
Russia possesses an admirable educational system,
and though compulsory instruction is not yet
established, and girls' education still too much
neglected, the mihtary statistics alone show an
ever-widening area of intellectual enlightenment.
In political matters they manifest as yet little
interest except in the land question.
In a famous letter to Gogol, the great literary
critic and 'intelligent,' Bielinski wrote: 'Look
more carefully, and you will see that the peasants
are by nature profoundly atheistic. They have still
much superstition, but not a trace of religious feel-
ing. . . . Mystical exaltation is foreign to their
nature ; for that their minds are too clear and
positive, too well endowed with common-sense, and
it is this point, perhaps, that decides the enormous
historical role that they will play in the future.'
This opinion, however, was biassed by a priori pre-
judices, and the Slavophil writers, such as the poet
TutchefF, the novelist Dostoyevski, and the philoso-
pher SoloviofF, are on the whole nearer the truth.
They have insisted on the all but unique spiritual
qualities of the people, on the measure of their faith.
PEASANTS
^■■
Vf -J A ^, * * * ' ,
a\
-''i^«e,i.
A
JSH^
CENTRAL RUSSIA 17
resignation, and charity, and on this basis, indeed,
have written eloquently on Russia's Messianic
mission to Western Europe. Thus, for example,
AksakofF gives what is, perhaps, the finest picture of
childhood in the world's literature, when he describes
a famine- stricken village through which he and his
father passed. 'A sullen-looking peasant said in a
rough voice to my father : " It is no joy to work,
Aleksai Stepanitch. I would not look at such a
field : but weeds and thistles ! A whole day you
go over three acres and gather a fistful !" My
father answered : *' What can be done ? It is the
will of God ; " and the sullen-looking reaper replied
friendlily : " Of course it is, little father." ' AksakofF
makes one of his rare digressions to comment :
' Later I understood the lofty meaning of these
simple words that calm all agitation and silence all
human protesting murmur, and by whose nourishing
strength Orthodox Russia lives till this day.' And
one cannot talk long with peasants before being
struck by this religious note. With their gift for
terse, vigorous, and picturesque language, they con-
stantly startle one by those winged phrases, so rare
in English conversation, which vibrate with pene-
trating insight, truth, and simplicity. But how far
these indisputable spiritual qualities are due to the
3
18 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
Christian religion, and how far to Oriental fatalism
and mere native character moulded by past history,
it is difficult to say. It is easier to note that they
have contributed to retarding material progress, and
that in the more advanced districts they are less
obvious. There can be no doubt, however, that if
faith, resignation, and charity, constitute religion, the
Russian peasants as a whole are profoundly religious.
It is absurd to limit their religion to idolatrous
worship of the ikon. It is generally admitted to
be largely tinged with mysticism. Mr. Baring, it
should be noted, writing with his usual brilliance,
but with somewhat less, perhaps, than his usual
insight, finds its principal feature in a 'glorious
sensibleness.' This is certainly characteristic of the
peasants' attitude towards the priest, but the part
played by the priest in the religious life — in the
broader sense as distinguished from State or Church
ordinances — is so small that it is questionable
whether terms true of this relation may be appUed
with propriety to the relation towards God and the
ikons. It may be observed, finally, that when a
peasant is both religious and thoughtful he is inclined
to become dissatisfied with the Orthodox Church,
and join an evangelical or mystical sect.
Turguenieff, in one of his poems in prose, pictures
CENTRAL RUSSIA 19
the Sphinx broodmg over sandy deserts, with a mys-
terious gaze, the riddle of which (Edipus alone could
solve. Then, as he scans those features and that
glance, it flashes across him that they are things
which he knows. ' The white low forehead, the
prominent cheek-bones, the short straight nose,
the finely-chiselled mouth with its white teeth, the
soft moustache and curly beard, the small eyes set
wide apart, and the shock of parted hair on the
head — why, that is you, Carp, Sidor, Simyon,
peasant of Yaroslavl, of Ryazan, my fellow country-
man, little bone of Russia ! Pray, when did you
become a Sphinx V And he concludes by saying
that hardly will an ffidipus be found for the Russian
Sphinx. It is indeed certain that the peasantry pre-
sent extraordinary and all but bewildering contrasts,
but to ponder (Edipus-like over the meaning of the
glance in their ' colourless but deep eyes ' is, in the
case of a profoundly tender-hearted poet, little likely
to yield results of practical value. This passage of
TurguenieiF is as poignant but as unreal as Ruskin's
description of the Swiss mountain-dwellers. Of the
good and bad points in the peasant character, both
of which have been profoundly influenced by his-
torical conditions, the latter are largely the tem-
porary result of ignorance and isolation, and will be
20 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
obliterated, or at least largely modified, by amelio-
rated surroundings ; while the former appear to lie
deeper and be less liable to suffer by the change.
Since the emancipation the peasants have made im-
mense progress. And now the rate of improvement
can only accelerate with the influence of education,
the breaking up of the commune, which was a heavy
drag on rural enterprise, the political franchise, and
the increased facilities offered by the spread of rail-
ways for disposing of surplus crops and developing
the internal resources of the country. A great future
assuredly lies before this remarkable people, with its
physical and mental powers, its vigour, elasticity,
and youth. This may be a question of time, but it
can scarcely be a matter for doubt.
SIBERIAN CONVICT
II
THE NORTH
The North of Russia, the sparsely-inhabited
Governments of Archangel and Olonets, is a land
of illimitable forests, wastes of moor and tundra,
mighty lakes and broad rivers, some deep, reedy,
and sluggish, others rushing clear and cascade-
broken. To get to Archangel, one travels from
Moscow by rail or by ship down the Dvina, or one
can sail from Petersburg up the Neva, through the
stupendous inland seas of Ladoga and Onega, and
then by boats down the Vyg to the Gulf of
Onega, where, again, larger vessels ply round the
coast towns. Finally, it may be reached by the
Arctic Ocean and Barents Sea. By this last route,
on August 24, 1553, came the English sailor
Richard Chancellor, on his mission to find a
Northern maritime route to China and India.
With a letter from Edward VI. he went to Ivan
the Terrible, who received him with the utmost
kindness, and granted valuable concessions and
21
22 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
commercial privileges. To exploit these an
English colony was founded fifty miles up the
Dvina, at a village Kholmogory. Archangel was
built thirty-one years later, and in the seventeenth
century all the Russian trade with England left its
wharves. But its brief period of prosperity passed
with the^foundation of Petersburg. There remain
still, however, an English consulate and church,
and a considerable colony, employed chiefly in
great saw-mills in the neighbourhood, where the
men employ an Anglo-Russian jargon. The town
stretches for four miles along the right bank of the
Dvina, over thirty miles from its mouth. The
harbour is free from ice from the first days of May
to the first days of October. Owing to the Gulf
Stream the ice here melts sooner than in the more
southerly Onega Gulf. So, too, when there is a
northerly breeze sea-bathing is appreciably warmer
than when the wind is from the south. From
May to October the port is full of ships engaged
in corn and timber traffic, for the Dvina, which is
connected by a portage with the Petchora, is a
commercial outlet for an enormous tract of
country. The level of education in the town is
high, but the place itself is dull. It has a museum,
a cathedral, and an unworthy statue of the great
THE NORTH 23
writer and scientist LomonossofF, who was born in
1711, in a fisherman's cottage near Kholmogory,
and who set out on his first momentous visit to
Moscow on foot with three borrowed roubles and
a load of fish.
There are no other towns of any size in Northern
Russia, but at a distance of fourteen hours' saiHng
from Archangel is the famous and enormously
wealthy Solovetski monastery. It is situated on a
fairly large wooded island in the Gulf of Onega,
dotted with natural and artificial lakes. One of
the latter lies under the high turreted wall to the
east, while the western wall is washed by the sea.
The place is full of the cries of sea-birds and the
sound of waves. Every summer fifteen thousand
pilgrims visit it, and often as many as a thousand
are fed together in the refectory. Founded in
1429, the monastery was greatly enlarged during
the years of commercial activity in the north. It
has twice been bombarded, once successfully by
the English fleet during the Crimean campaign.
The other occasion was much earlier, when the
monks, passionately devoted to the ancient usages,
rejected Nikon's ecclesiastical reforms, and defied
for eight years the forces of the Tsar.
These same reforms filled the northern forests
24 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
and the Vyg Valley with Raskolnik, or sectarian,
fugitives, to whom the very errors of Holy Writ
were sacred and inviolable. Their numbers in-
creased when Peter the Great trampled con-
temptuously and deliberately on the old Muscovite
customs, forbidding long beards and long robes,
surrounding himself with foreigners, and toiling
with his own imperial hands at the boatman's oar
and the executioner's axe. The conviction spread
that Peter was Antichrist. Harassed and per-
secuted by the Tsar's soldiery, the malcontents
plunged ever deeper into these impenetrable
marshes and forests. The more reasonable settled
in peace by the shores of the White Sea, and the
wilder orgiastic sects burned themselves in thou-
sands. Of these wild martyrdoms, INIerejhovski
has painted a remarkable picture in his 'Peter
and Alexis,' admirably translated by Mr. Trench.
Religious fanaticism is not yet dead in Russia, but
it will rarely be seen by a foreigner. Pilgrims,
however, he will see everywhere, and near Arch-
angel in the summer the roads are full of them,
bound for Solovetski, some of them sensible and
sane peasants or from higher classes fulfiUing a
vow, many of them rascals and vagabonds, many
homeless, half-crazed wanderers that journey rest-
THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY
THE NORTH 25
lessly from one great shrine to another. Toward
these unbalanced naturals that are known as
' God's people,' the peasantry show extreme kind-
ness and not a little reverence. TurgueniefF's
little sketch of their ravings is thoroughly typical.
A traveller takes refuge in a wayside inn from
heavy rain, and suddenly hears through the
partition a voice say : ' " God bless all in this
house ! God bless ! God bless ! Amen ! Amen !"
the voice repeated, prolonging the last syllable of
each word in a wild, unnatural fashion. I heard a
loud sigh and the sound of a heavy body sinking
down on a bench.'
' " Akulina " ' — this was a female with the pil-
grim— '"handmaiden of God, come here," the
voice began again. " See, for as much as I am
naked, for as much as I am blessed . . . Ha-ha-
ha ! T-phew ! Lord, my God, Lord, my God,
Lord, my God," the voice began to boom like a
deacon's before the altar, " Lord, my God, Master
of my belly, look on my affliction ! Oho-ho ! Ha-
ha ! . . . T-phew ! And blessed be this house till
the seventh hour !" '
' " Who is that ?" I asked my hostess, who
entered my room with a samovar.'
' " And that, my little father," she said in a
4
%• PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
liurried whisper, " is a holy man, a man of God.
He is not long come to our country, and there, he
is pleased to visit us. In such weather ! It just
runs from him, the little pigeon, in floods ! And
you should see the chains on him, what like they
be — terrible !" '
' " God bless ! God bless !" the voice started
again. " A', Akulina, Akulinushka, friend ! And
where is our paradise — our beautiful paradise ! . . .
In the desert is our paradise . . . our paradise. . . .
And this house at the beginning of the world —
great happiness — oh-oh-oh !" The voice muttered
something indistinctly ; then after a long yawn
there was another burst of hoarse laughter. This
laughter broke out every time as if involuntarily,
and every time was followed by angry expectora-
tion.'
' " Ech ma ! The master's not here ! There is
our grief, then," the woman of the house sighed.
" He'll say some saving word, and me a woman, it
will not stay in my head !" '
Several causes have contributed to make the
northern peasant more energetic and independent
— not for any bavin will he doff his hat ! — than
the moujik of the centre. A large proportion of
the population are sectarians, descendants of the
7^->
SELLING THE SACRED FIRE : PILGRIM RETURNING FROM JERUSALEM
THE NORTH 27
old Raskolniks, who are invariably more in-
dustrious, self-reliant, and provident, than the
adherents of the Orthodox Church. They have,
too, in their veins much of the dour, determined
P'innish blood that gave rise to the proverb : ' Burn
a Karelian, and after three years he's not in ashes !'
Being on Government land, they escaped the de-
moralizing conditions that accompanied private
serf-ownership. Something is also due here, as in
Siberia, to the influence and propaganda of political
exiles. Lastly, a great number of them are not
so much agriculturists as trappers, hunters, and
fishermen, a stalwart race inured to privations and
dangers on flood and in forest. Several authorities
see hi these northern peasants the strongest branch
of the Russian race. In manners they are simple,
unsophisticated, and hospitable. In education
they are backward, and this explains why there
still linger with them dresses, customs, and songs,
that have long vanished from Southern Muscovy.
Some of the customs breathe an air of a sterner
age. Thus, often in the marriage ceremonies the
bride's hair is pulled, and a song sung : ' Under
the mattress of the marriage bed is a stick of oak,
to which is joined a whip of silk : the whip of silk
has three ends, and when it scourges the blood
28 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
squirts.' Less savage in colour, but really as
primitive, are the words of the bride when about
to forfeit her ' divine freedom.' She kneels three
times before the ikons, saying : ' I make the first
bow for the most pious Tsar, I make the second
bow for the most pious Tsaritsa, and the third I
make for myself, young girl, that the Saviour may
have pity on me in the strange house.' Among
their neighbours the Lapps, however, ' the bride
must shriek and struggle, and be hauled to her
new home like a reindeer.' Here there were col-
lected priceless old bwilinis that told of the heroes,
the peasants' sons, Mikoula and Illya of Murom ;
and even now, while over great districts of Central
Russia industrial life has introduced cheap
costumes, cheap tunes, and trivial words, and to
some degree justified the factory song, ' O works!
O you works ! You've demoralized the people,'
in the northern villages linger marvellously
beautiful home-worked dresses, and a wealth of
old refrains, some of which in slow maestuoso
touch with almost unendurable pathos the lowest
deeps of human sadness ; while others, again, treat of
rural customs with allegro motifs that reveal a
strange new world of melody to Western ears.
Typical of this latter kind is the haunting air of
THE NORTH
' A moui prosy sayali ' (* We have sown the millet-
seed '), instinct with the very breath of spring and
the smell of country fields :
l^iil^il^l^
S^^^;
•-— 0 i # J— #— # — ^-# — ^^-0 — • A— 2^ U
S
All the rivers teem with fish, and the woods are
infinitely more full of game than in Central Russia,
or even the Urals. The coverts abound in wood-
cock, capercailzie, and tree-partridge, and blackcock
perch boldly on village trees. In winter they line
in long rows the rime-fringed branches of the
birches, and from these as evening falls they fly some
hundred yards and plunge headlong into the snow.
The force of their impetus carries them deep down,
and here they remain till next morning. In spring,
before dawn they hold their toes, when the male
30 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
birds vie with each other in flaunting and swagger-
ing before the female. At such moments they
are insensible to danger, and it must be confessed
that too many Russians take an unsportsmanlike
advantage of this opportunity. The forests are
full, also, of foxes, wolves, and 'rugged Russian
bears.' A berlog, or winter home of a bear, is
easily marked after the first snowfall, for round it,
before he settles for his long slumber, the bear
makes a perfect labyrinth of tracks, qua signa
sequendi falleret indeprensus error. Then later
in the season the peasants sell it to a town sports-
man, and if a bear is found at home they receive
from £4 to £6. On being disturbed, the bear often
shoots up like a cork out of a soda-water bottle,
scattering a shower of powdery snow, and is shot
while his eyes are still blinded by the light. Some
keen sportsmen and peasants go bear -hunting
armed with nothing but knives.
Wolves are hunted in several ways. One
amusing way, a trifle more exciting than a similar
ruse described by Herodotus for killing the hippo-
potamus, is to attract them at night by taking a
pig in a sledge through the forest, and by pulling
its tail and making it squeak. In summer or
autumn they are hunted on horseback in the
THE NORTH 31
manner so graphically described in ' War and
Peace,' with hounds trained to spring simul-
taneously one to the right and a second to the left
of the animal's throat. Then a huntsman gallops
up, springs from his horse on to the wolf's back,
and plunges his knife in its heart. If the wolf
manages to turn his head, the huntsman must
expect a mauling. 1 have seen a heavy knife with
a large piece of good Sheffield steel snapped off in
just such a case by a wolf's powerful jaws. But
the more common though less exhilarating method
of hunting is followed in winter. When a pack
settles in any place, the carcass of an old horse is
left from time to time to keep them from straymg
elsewhere. Then one fine morning, having made
sure that the wolves are there, the hunters sally
out for their destruction. The beaters ring them
in with fluttering red flags on ropes hung lightly
on shrubs, or, if the ground be open, wound
round poles set in the snow. These fines of red
flags converge at one end, and here the guns
stand dressed in white. They must not smoke
or move or make a noise of any kind. In quiet,
windless weather it is glorious to stand amid
the perfect silence and watch the deficate tracery
of the frost on the trees or the scintillating
32 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
snow. But all at once a storm of shouts, yells, and
execrations, falls on one's ears from a distance.
That is made by the beaters who have finished
setting up the flags, and are starting to drive the
wolves from the other end of the ring. It rouses
one to a tense watch for a greyish-brown body
moving heavily but rapidly through the snow, with
head turned toward the terrifying red flags. In
such a case, if a fox appears first, you let it pass ;
on the other hand, if a ring is made for a fox, and
a wolf appears, you shoot. It is sometimes useful
to know that a skilled beater can drive a wolf
towards whatever gun he pleases.
Clear, calm days come often in the course of
a Kussian winter. It would be difficult to name
a preference for any one of the Russian seasons —
the winter ; or the spring ; or the summer, with its
white nights in this northern country, and its dusty
roads ; or the autumn, with its shooting and fishing,
with the forests turning gorgeously yellow, when
first the nightingale, then the quail, and then the
corncrake, cease crying. Many would declare for
the spring, when the woods sound afresh with the
long-silenced notes of birds ; when the rivers are
transformed from stagnant pools to brown masses
of swirling water ; when grass and bushes and trees
A BEAR-TRAP
L^.
THE NORTH 33
grow and bud with a rapidity, especially in the
north, almost visible to the human eye, and adorn
themselves in ever more and more brilliant greenery ;
when there is a never-ceasing movement on the
water, in the fields, the forest, and the sky, until
at last, as AksakofF says, ' Nature attains her full
magnificence, and, as it were, of herself grows calm.'
But for country dwellers in Russia, though they
are spared ' the changing agony of the doubtful
spring' familiar to inhabitants of these isles, this
season has one great drawback. It is the time of
j^asputitsa, when through melting snow the roads
are impossible for either wheels or sledge, and
many villages can be approached only by boat.
I am half disposed to decide for the winter. It
is true that Russia is rightly termed the Land of
the North, for by climatic conditions it is virtually
shifted several degrees nearer the pole than its
actual geographical position. The Lapps have
reason for including in their vocabulary twenty
words for ice, eleven for cold, forty-one for snow,
and twenty-six for the processes of freezing and
thawing. But once the snow has made smooth
winter roads, and the whole country lies under a
sparkling sheet of white, there are constantly days
when the peasant children in short sheepskins
5
34 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
toboggan down sloping fields, and when for any-
healthy person it is a crying shame to remain
indoors. You join the tobogganers, or on the
indispensable ski go hunting in the woods or
sweeping over the snow-covered fields with long
ropes tied to racing sledges. Before turning home-
wards from skiing, while the driver rests his horses,
you may ask him to call for wolves, and if he can —
for it requires some knack, as well as lungs like
bellows — he will howl in a peculiar drawn-out wail
to which, amid the stillness and gathering darkness,
may come from far away the sudden answer of
a mother-wolf. If the call be repeated, she will
come nearer and nearer till the horses shiver with
fright. Then ' vperyott !' (Forward !) shouts the
driver, and they gallop for home.
On such days mere driving itself is rich in
impressions. The runners creak loudly in the
frosty air. The narrow track is marked on either
side by bundles of straw in Central Russia, but by
branches in this northern land where wood is
abundant. The driver stands in the front of the
sledge wrapped in his warm sheepskin with its tall
collar, and his long knout trails behind like a ser-
pent over the snow. When it is somewhat colder,
three or five suns burn dully like tarnished copper
THE NORTH 35
in the sky, and in the evening you watch, entranced,
the roll and play of the Northern Lights. The
three horses of the troika move swiftly in a line —
in goose-file, as the Russians say — now over shining
expanses of unbroken white, now down avenues
of magnificent birches. Over the front horse the
driver can exercise httle power, and it is trained
to become thoroughly familiar with the roads ; for
it bears a heavy responsibility in stormy days when
a metyel rages, and the sledge is beyond sight of the
village lights and beyond sound of the church bells,
rung to guide people home in the drifting snow or
darkness. Driving is terrible then. The horses'
nostrils become choked with frozen moisture, and
every now and again the driver stops to pull out
from them great chunks of ice. Korolenko well
describes how the jingle of the bells sounds thick
and heavy like the sound of a spoon struck against
a full tumbler. ' Your breath catches,' he con-
tinues in the same passage, ' you blink your eyes —
between the eyelashes are icicles. The cold gets
in under the clothes, then into the muscles, the
bones, to the brain of the bones as is said — and
it's not said for nothing. Impressions gradually
become dimmer ; people seem more disagreeable.
... In the end you muffle up as close as you can.
36 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
settle a bit more comfortably, and try for one end,
as little movement as possible, as little thought as
possible. You sit, you gradually freeze, and you
wait with a kind of terror till that awful forty to
fifty versts' driving be ended.'
In Russian country life, with its enormous dis-
tances, horses and driving play a great part. On
every highroad are post-stations about twenty miles
from each other, where horses must be supplied to all
applicants equipped with the necessary papers. The
station book shows the number of horses kept and
the hours of their departure. Most characteristic of
all Russian conveyances is the tarantass harnessed to
a troika (team of three) of roan horses. It is a kind
of strong springless phaeton set on four wheels, with
a seat for the driver in front and a hood behind.
There is a rough low seat for the passengers, which
is covered with straw and cushions. On summer
roads the three horses are yoked abreast. The
centre one, the leader in winter, trots, while the two
side-horses gallop with their heads turned sharply
outwards. Over the korienik (the middle horse) is
the high-arched duga, or yoke, with its bells. The
bearing-line is attached to the top of the duga.
With tarantass and troika the Russian gentry do
all their travelling when out of railway districts.
THE xNORTH '61
In the fast movement, the harmonious action of the
horses, and the fine symmetry of the harness, there
is something at once barbaric and splendid, the
spirit of which Gogol has attempted to seize in the
passage that closes the first book of his novel
*Dead Souls':
' It is as if a mysterious power had caught you
upon its wing, as if you yourself were flying and
everything were flying ; the verst-posts fly, the
merchants on the boxes of their kihitkas fly to meet
you, the wood flies on either side, with its dark bands
of firs and pines, with its sound of axe-blows and
cawing of rooks ; all the road flies you know not
whither, and is lost in the distance. There is some-
thing terrible involved in this rushing past you of
things, where you see everything hazily and cannot
mark anything for sure, where only the sky above
your head, and the light clouds, and the moon
piercing them, seem motionless. Ah ! troika, bird-
t?'oika, who invented thee ? Of a truth, only a bold
race could have given thee birth, only that land
where men love not to jest, but which has spread
itself steadily and smoothly over half the earth, and
where you may count the verst-posts till your eyes
swim.'
Ill
THE URALS
The long chain of hills that stretch from the Arctic
Ocean to the Kirghiz steppes forms a convenient
though not a real boundary between Europe and
Asia. If we include the continuation of the chain in
the islands of Vaigatch and Novaya Zemlya in the
north, and in the south the Mugodjai Hills, which
terminate between the Caspian and the Aral Seas,
the total length of the barrier is considerably over
two thousand miles. The name, which is Tartar,
means ' the girdle,' or possibly ' the watershed.'
As the Rfiipcei monies the Urals were associated in
the minds of Roman poets with snow, frost, and
extreme cold. The chain is geologically continuous,
but there are several gaps, seven in all, on the con-
tinent, as well as the Kara and Yegor Straits in the
north. It extends through twenty-eight degrees of
latitude, through the four zones of ice tundra forest,
and steppe.
On the mainland the northernmost ridge, the
88
THE URALS 39
Kara or Pai Khoi Hills, runs in a south-easterly
direction, almost at right angles with the principal
chain, but in a straight line with the islands. The
bluffs of low height rise from the marshy plain only
in patches. There is no continuous ridge, and hence
the water-line is irregular. By the end of summer
all the Ural heights are bare of snow, which lingers
only in great masses of nev^ in sheltered gullies or
corries. There are no glaciers. But along the prom-
ontories of the Pai Khoi the black cliffs that plunge
steeply into the sea are fringed with a perpetual
ring of ice, broken only by tempestuous surges or
crashing floe. In this dreary, empty country there
is one famous peak, Bolvano-Is, or the Hill of Idols.
It takes its name from the great rock pinnacles that
rise along its serrated crest, and are worshipped by
the nomad inhabitants. Seen in the soft Northern
nights, these black, human-shaped rocks do indeed
suggest sinister powers brooding over the tundras.
God knows what is in their thoughts ! Do they
mourn the desolation of these wet lands, and the
silence broken only by the hum of mosquitoes, or
are they on tireless watch for some foe lurking under
the distant horizon ? . . .
The tundras are dotted everywhere with lakes and
marshes, and often, even when the gi'ound appears
40 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
solid, the water that fills every depression is betrayed
by ' little windows ' — that is to say, open wells sur-
rounded by mosses. On their inhospitable plains
the only shelter from the north wind is offered by
lichen-covered rocks or stream-beds. On the few
slopes exposed to the sun grow rowans, the sacred
trees of the ancient Finns, alders, and dwarf birches,
and sometimes the ground is carpeted with blue
aconite and scarlet peonies, glorified by a Russian
traveller as ' the last smile of Nature. ' But generally
the only vegetation is mosses of pale white or red
ochre, under whose tufts here and there shelter the
leaves of a few crawling shrubs. There are no regular
inhabitants : only Samoyede reindeer-hunters from
time to time pitch their black tchoums, or huts, in
that empty land. The word Samoyede means
' cannibal,' literally ' self-eater ' or presumably
' eater of that which is like oneself.' The same
formation is seen in the word 'samovar,' literally
' self-boiler,' applied to the water-urn heated with
charcoal, which is an essential article of Russian
furnishing. But the Samoyedes call themselves
Netza or Khassova — that is to say, males. They
were once a powerful tribe that roamed from the
White Sea to the foothills of the Altai. The place-
names of the middle Urals are of Samoyede origin.
A NORTHERN FUR MERCHANT
THE URALS 41
Pushed north by MongoHan invaders, they drove
westwards the KareHan inhabitants of the tundras,
who were more closely connected than themselves
with the Finnish stock. This latter people were
the Tchonds, known to early Russian writers, the
folk ' beyond the portages ' who possessed ' enor-
mous territories of the chase, with multitudes of
mammoths, foxes, and beavers.' But in his turn
the Samoyede came in contact with the stream of
Russian colonization northwards. There has been
preserved a children's rhyme of the early settlers :
' Come and hunt the Samoyede !
Come and track the Samoyede !
When we find the Samoyede,
We'll cut the Samoyede in two.'
Whether the lines represent actual historical rela-
tions is questionable — Russian methods of expan-
sion were as a rule totally different — but at any
rate the nomads fell under Russian suzerainty.
Politically the bonds were, and have been, always of
the lightest, but in other respects civilization left
the baneful influence that it so often exercised over
primitive peoples. No further additions of note
were made to the remarkable Samoyede poetry,
which is infused with the proud spirit of the Kale-
vala. The trade in skins and furs fell into Russian
6
42 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
hands. Formerly the hunter used to leave his spoil
unguarded in his tchouvi or at a known point in the
tundra, secure in the honesty of the native trader,
who deposited a notched bit of wood as a receipt.
But the Russian appropriated the skins and furs and
left nothing. The monstrous stone idols of Vaigatch,
where bears and reindeer were sacrificed to Noum
and Vesako, were overturned by missionary zeal.
A law of 1885 prohibiting encroachment on Samo-
yede territory was too late to prevent their losing
the most valuable tracts to Russians, and especially
to the enterprising and astute Ziranes. This people
inhabit the Governments of Archangel, ^^ologda, and
A^iatka, and, like the Perms and A^otiaks farther to
the south, belong also to the Finnish race. In the
solitudes of the Ural forests they are an unspoilt
race of hunters, but where they have come in con-
tact with the weaker Samoyedes their custom of
commercial exploitation has made them crafty,
treacherous, and tyrannical. Theoretically all these
people are Christian, but polygamy is not infre-
quent, and pagan ideas linger very near the surface.
Thus, the Votiak crossing a stream throws a tuft
of grass to the current, and cries to the Water Spirit,
'Do not hold me !' The Permian recruit, when he
sets out for the barracks and kisses his parents,
THE URALS 43
pays obeisance to the Fire Spirit by bowing to the
stove.
The Urals proper begin about 68° lat. within the
Arctic Circle, and their northern division extends
as far south as the Deneshkin Rock, in the sixtieth
parallel. From the principal chain a number of sub-
sidiary ridges run out westwards, the most interest-
ing of which culminates in the gaunt precipices
of Sablya. Farther south, near the pyramid of
Tell-Pos-Is or Nepubi Nior, silver pines, birches,
and larches, begin to clothe the lower slopes On
the Asiatic side the water drains to the Ob ; on
the west the hill streams hurry through romantic
glens to the Petchora. In one of these, in the
upper valley of the Schtchongor, are the famous
cascades called the Three Iron Gates, where the
cliffs overhanging the dark water are cut into
enormous columns by vertical fissures, and are of
dazzling whiteness. Along these rivers are the rare
villages of the Finnish or Russian settlers, lying
at vast distances from each other in the woods.
Even within recent years surveyors have found,
occasionally, hamlets living in Tolstoyan felicity,
ignorant of the nature of a Central Government
and the burdens it imposes. Life in these forests
has been admirably portrayed by RyeshnetnikofF, a
44 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
writer of last century, who has described his own
youth in a Permian village without much striving
after artistic composition, but in straightforward,
vigorous prose that flows with freshness and truth.
The northern Urals contain the finest peaks of the
whole chain. The bold isolated heights with their
richly sculptured corries and serrated ridges are real
mountains.
This cannot be said of the central and southern
Urals, which are for the most part thickly-forested,
low, hummocky ridges. Only near the mines as a
general rule are the woods cleared. All the central
hills are enormously rich in minerals, and com-
paratively large finds are made also of precious
stones, such as sapphires, agates, amethysts, and
jasper. Here, too, are obtained the beautiful
alexandrite and malachite used so effectively for
ornamentation in the Russian churches. The
whole country is a treasure-store, still little drawn
on and incalculably rich ; only coal is absent, and
its place is at present easily supplied by the
practically boundless forests. Most of the mines
in operation — of recent years many have closed —
are on the Asiatic side. Here and there are
primitive galleries called ' Tchond mines,' in which
numerous copper, but no bronze, instruments have
THE URALS 45
been found. Their workers may have died out or
moved elsewhere before the discovery of bronze.
Some of the most productive of these ancient
mines, it is said, remain unknown ; the few natives
who found them in the heart of the hills kept
silence through fear of forced labour, and the secret
died with them. But this may be only an interest-
ing tradition. The centre of the mining district is
the flourishing town of Yekaterinburg, in the
Government of Perm, founded in 1721, where
there are a mining school and the head-office of
the Government Board of Administration of Mines.
It lies in the division between the central and
southern Urals, and is only nine hundred feet above
sea-level. In this ^-icinity in 1575 TimoseyefF
Yermak with his Cossacks, fleeing from JNluscovite
troops, made a momentous crossing into Asia.
Taking service with the merchants StroganofF, the
ancestors of the noble and wealthy family whose
palace is one of the ornaments of the Nevski
Prospect, he gi*adually pushed eastwards, and in
1581 stormed Isker or Sibir, the capital of the
Tartan Tsar of the land. Its ruiiis may still be
traced on the right bank of the Irtytch, some fifteen
miles beyond Tobolsk. Yermak won pardon for
his former depredations by presenting Ivan the
46 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
Terrible with his vast acquisitions. This was the
beginning of the long-neglected but inexhaustibly
rich empire of Siberia.
The southern Urals begin south of the Yekaterin-
burg gap, near the sources of the Ufa. Like the
central, they abound in mineral wealth. A little
to the north of Zlatousk the chain breaks into
three separate branches, which open towards the
south like a fan. Of these, the most easterly is
prolonged in the Mugodjai hills that terminate in
the steep plateau of Usturt, between the Caspian
and the Aral. The low declivities of the central
range sink gradually to the Kirghiz steppes. The
western is the most important of the three, and com-
prises the highest point in the whole Ural system.
That is Yaman Tau, a dull, bald hill to the east of
the town of Ufa. From this western range a long
low band called the Obshtchi Syrt runs north ot
Orenburg towards the Volga.
Only rarely does the scenery of the southern
Urals recall the majestic outlines and savage
desolation of the north. There are, indeed, several
rocky heights to the north of Ufa that rise not
unimpressively over a wilderness of boulder-strewn
screes, but they lack the conditions that we
associate with real mountain scenery. Of bold con-
THE URALS 47
tour, individuality, and splendid or even apparent
inaccessibility, the southern Urals have nothing.
They have nothing, either, of the intricate sculp-
ture and rich colouring that characterize Skye
or Lofoten. For the most part they are steep,
densely- forested ridges, of uniform height and
featureless monotony. Where a bare summit
affords a view-point, the prospect generally is of
undistinguishable deep valleys with silver ribbons
of water amid the dark gi-een of sharply-rising
forests. But where the hill hnes end, especially if
they run at right angles to a river, the scene is full
of a quiet charm. There will be, probably, clumps
of trees by the bank, behind that a small meadow
with haystacks, where the peasants' shackled horses
hobble over the grass to the jangling of the bells
tied round their necks. Beyond the ground rises,
covered with maples or oaks or birches. Some-
times the slopes may be treeless, and the simple
yet subtle moulding of the hollows in the hill face
show brown with scorched grass where the marmots
call to each other, or dark green with wild-straw-
berry plants ; or, again, there may be a clump of
trees on the summit only, the resting-place of the
great bald-headed eagles called hehrkuts. The
forests, unless of birch, are oppressive in their dense
48 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
luxuriance, and, above all, in their want of life.
Only the behrkuts and astonishing numbers of
hawks of different kinds sweep heavily over the
trees. There are countless varieties of jewelled
insects, but practically no small birds, and hence
none of that atmosphere of constant twittering and
hopping from bough to bough that animate the
EngHsh woods with 'all the Hve murmur of a
summer's day.' The features of southern Ural
scenery that stamp themselves most strongly on
the memory are not the hills themselves, but these
illimitable silent forests and the lonely rivers.
In the agricultural villages in the Urals there
are few obvious contrasts with peasant life in
Central Russia. Here also are the long streets
of wooden huts, the starhng-posts, the wells with
suspended poles, the courtyards with the brownish
wattled fences. Generally speaking, the Ural
peasants, however, are better off. Their soil is
nearer a condition of virgin fertility. They have
themselves more land, and in Bashkir districts
can lease large areas on reasonable terms. Wood,
too, is abundant and cheap. This comparatively
secure position, and the fact that here, on the
outskirts of the Muscovite empire, serfdom did
not press so heavily on the life of the people, have
A SUMMER'S DAY IN THE COUNTRY
lX^M^-
THE URALS 49
given them certain psychological characteristics of
their own. They are probably the most practical,
matter-of-fact, hard-headed part of the Russian
race. Though not so sturdily independent as
the northern peasantry, they are much more so
than the central, and would be astonished at the
servility common in rural England. This is
especially true of the mining districts, where the
people have been brought in touch with Jews,
administrative exiles, and master workmen from
towns or Western Europe. The Duma represen-
tatives from this country are exclusively Left.
But the enlightenment in the mines and works is
often but a half-education that produces violent
prejudices, an intolerant class pride, and a coarse-
ness of mind entirely foreign to the real peasant.
The material prosperity, too, has inevitably affected
rural simplicity, and morality is as little a strong
point in such villages as temperance. There are
many English managers throughout the Urals,
and their general testimony agrees that in his
duties the Russian workman is industrious, intelli-
gent, and reliable.
In addition to the mines, there are several large
industrial works in this country. One of these is
the glassworks at Bohoyavlenski (the Place of
7
50 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
the Appearance of God), situated on the River
Usolka, which takes its name from a salt spring
near the village. The medical properties of this
spring are ascribed locally, not to the action of the
salt, but to the special providence of Heaven
indicated by the discovery of a holy ikon in the
water. This was found by the priests of a
neighbouring village, and is borne far and wide
throughout the district, bringing large revenues
to their church. Every autumn a great procession
of peasants goes to the spring, taking their sick
with them to drink of the sacred water and bathe
in the river. My first stay here happened to
coincide with this pilgrimage. The pilgrims on
that occasion cut down the hay and the trees on
the landowner's ground near the well, and when
foresters were sent to prevent them, they thrashed
these, saying : ' Can't we even worship God as we
please V The extensive red brick works with the
great chimney and clouds of smoke lie by the river.
Beyond rises a slight eminence, on which is a
workmen's club. This contains a library and
an excellent hall for concerts or dramatic per-
formances, and from here in the evenings a
gramophone blares the somewhat risque words
of a modern factory song. The bridge across the
THE URALS 51
river is lit with electric light. On this side of it
is the village proper, with a hospital, two schools
— one a Zemstvo school for boys, the other for girls,
financed, like the hospital, by the proprietors of
the works — and the substantial houses with their
green or red iron roofs, which have an air of
comparative affluence. The Belgian glass-blowers
who came here to instruct the first workmen were
accompanied by their wives, and from these the
peasant women acquired a taste for European
dress. Hats, however, have not yet ousted the
shawl. There are several picturesque spots in
the village — the white church amid its green trees,
the river-banks, the rising ground behind tho
landowner's house, from which you see a long
stretch of the Usolka Valley and the wooded
hill ridges. Especially fine is the great artificial
dam, which in its upper part is reedy and haunted
by wild-duck. On the embankment, at its lower
end by the works, are piled vast stacks of wood
for use as fuel. When I was last here the sluices
were being repaired, and the scaffoldings were full
of workmen, who, as they strained together at ropes
or logs, sang the chanty ' Yestchoa rasik ' (Once
more — a little once more).
All over Russia in the country the summer
52 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
evenings are full of music and singing. In every
village the balalaika and melodeon are played
by peasant lads, who sit on benches outside the
huts or stroll in threes and fours down the street,
exchanging rustic compliments with similar groups
of peasant girls. Elsewhere isolated choruses of
male and female voices rise by the banks of pond
or river. The women's notes are too shrill and
nasal to be agreeable except from a distance, but
nowhere else in the world are men's untrained
voices so rich, powerful, and harmonious, as in
Russia. Everyone knows about the organ-like
depth and volume of the bass voices in the
monastery choirs, but it is impossible to have
an adequate idea of the country without imagining,
together with all its poverty and greyness, these
bands of soldiers singing at the front of marching
regiments, the songs of the peasant women re-
turning home from field work, the Volga chanties,
the leader's solo and the answering chorus of work-
men's artels, when bearded, red-shirted peasants
haul at beams or at ships' ropes, and the sound
of their deep voices vibrates in powerful waves
through the sultry summer air.
IV
THE VOLGA
Russian history is inextricably woven with its
rivers. The Dnieppr, says M. Kambaud with
perfect justice, brought it in contact with Byzan-
tium, the Volga with Asia, and the Neva with
Western Europe. But in the national life neither
the Neva nor even ' Dnipro batko ' of the Ukraine
has played such a part as 'little mother Volga,'
the great flood known to classical writers as the
Rha, and to Armenians as the Tamar, whose
Finnish name means ' Great Water.' Its basin
formed almost exclusively the stage on which was
played the history of the old sixteenth-century
Russia, and as early as the eighth century a busy
traffic went up and down its course between Central
Asia and Eastern Europe right up to the Baltic.
The Volga traverses eight governments, and
waters a country three times as great as France
Its course of 3,458 versts makes it the longest as
well as the largest river in Europe. It rises in
53
54 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
the north-west district of the Government of Tver
close on the Novgorod border, one of the most
marshy districts in Western Russia. From the
low wooded heights of the Valdai Hills you can
see the upper valley of the Western Dvina, which
falls into the Gulf of Riga, and a whole network
of lakes and bogs. Through these the first feeble
current of the Volga flows so sluggishly that its
tributary the Jonkona sometimes forces it back
into the long Lake Peno, from which it has just
emerged. But a stream from a sister lake almost
doubles its waters, and already it is navigable for
small boats. It is only at Rjeff, however, once
a stronghold of the Old Believers, that it takes
to its breast a crowd of barges loaded with country
produce. Soon after RjefF it turns north-east.
Passenger traffic begins at Tver, which lies on
the railway between Petersburg and Moscow.
An old seat of Northern Princes, it passed into
the power of Moscow at the end of the fifteenth
century. Ivan the Terrible made fearful havoc
here when he passed on his way to subdue
Novgorod. Now it is engrossed in commerce,
especially in cotton and leather embroidery, the
patterns of which may have been handed down
by the Mongols. From the promenade on the
THE VOLGA 65
V^olga right bank the visitor receives an excellent
idea of the growth of industry in modern Russia.
He sees a perfect forest of masts ranging along
the river-side, and his ears are deafened by the
hooting of factory whistles. But beyond Tver
the scenery down the river is almost entirely of
a rural type. One passes a monastery or two,
with their white walls standing out among the
trees, some small uninteresting towns, and one,
Yaroslavl, of extreme interest from its ancient
history and picturesque appearance. But for the
most part one sees only fields, forests, and peasant
villages. The picture is steeped in a profoundly
Russian atmosphere of breadth, greyness, and a
certain melancholy. One is most conscious of
this just before sunrise, when a faint streak of
light hangs above the dark forest tops, and the
early morning sounds float across the water from
the village on the bank, and when there comes
into one's mind the charming folk- verse :
' Over Holy Russia the cocks are crowing ;
Soon will the dawn be over Holy Russia.'
As one approaches Nijni Novgorod, the red earth
wall on the right bank, in which are innumerable
small deep holes where swallows nest, becomes
appreciably higher than the left. The height varies
56 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
from about fifty to a hundred feet. This feature, due
to the rotation of the earth, is characteristic of all
southern Russian rivers, and continues to be true
of the Volga till the flat, lifeless steppes below
Tsaritsin. Extraordinarily beautiful is the view of
Nijni as one draws near it on a summer evening,
with the gi'een domes of the churches, the white
houses half hid in trees mottling the steep slope,
the grey walls of the Kreml creeping up the hill,
and its towers silhouetted against the soft twilight
sky, or when, later, one by one the stars shine forth
in heaven and the town lights twinkle on the river,
when the sonorous voices of boatmen, or burlaks
send swelling over the dark current in slow chorus
that most glorious and unforgettable of all the
Volga songs : ' Down our little-mother Volga, On
the broad stretch of water {Rasigrdlasya pogoda,
Pogodushka verkhovdya, Verkhovdya volnovdya).
Nowhere in our own songs, not even in the Jacobite
laments, does there throb just such a majestic note
of heart-sickness ; perhaps the nearest approach to
it is in the refrain of the Highland emigrants in
Canada :
* Listen to me as when ye heard our father
Sing long ago the song of other sho res ;
Listen to me, and then in chorus gather
All your deep voices as ye pull your oars.'
RAFTS ON THE VOLGA
%
• 4' -^ """^^
THE VOLGA 57
Before the introduction of steam, the numbers of
the burlaks, peasants who tow the Volga boats,
amounted to three hundred thousand. The work
was hghtly paid and extremely heavy, and laid a
severe strain on eyes, legs, and lungs. The journey
from Astrakhan to Nijni took only seventy days,
and many hard experiences went to fashion their
saying, ' Now the V^olga's a mother, now a step-
mother,' curiously reminiscent of a famous phrase
of iEschylus.
At Nijni one changes into larger and in every way
more comfortable boats for the voyage to Astrakhan.
The scenery itself is perhaps scarcely so pleasing as
above the confluence of the Oka, or it may be that
by this time one feels its monotonous sameness.
Save that the river is broader, its main features
remain unchanged. As before, the right bank is
high, the left flat, and the background shut in with
forests ; as before, there are villages and churches,
and windmills waving their great arms. The popu-
lation, however, on the banks is no longer purely
Russian. In Kazan, indeed, the Russians number
only forty-one per cent, of the inhabitants. AVe are
now in the country of Finnish or Mongolian tribes,
and representatives of these, veiled Tartar ladies,
swarthy pedlars, or Lapp-like peasants, add a
8
58 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
touch of colour to the Russian tourists and mer-
chants, and the landowners with their families
returning from Petersburg to their country estates.
From Nijni to Kazan the river flows generally in
an easterly direction, from Kazan to Tsaritsin in a
south-westerly direction, but much more south than
west, and from Tsaritsin to Astrakhan it runs south-
east.
Kazan, which lies three hundred and eighty
versts below Nijni, on several hills on the left
bank of the Kazanka, was the capital of a
Tartar empire that arose after the dissolution
of the Golden Horde. It was stormed by
Ivan the Terrible on October 2, 1552, after an
obstinate resistance. Sentimental historians love
to record how the carnage within its walls drew
tears from the eyes of the pitiless Tsar himself,
who said : ' They are not Christians, but yet they
are men.' During his stay he began the work
of surrounding the old wooden Kreml, built in the
fifteenth century by Qulau-Mahmet-Khan, with a
stone wall fortified by towers. The bulk of these
were destroyed by Pugatchoff"s Cossacks in the
rising of 1774, and, to judge by the three which
remain to-day, their loss is not a profound calamity.
Only one building survives from ante- Russian
GETTING CAVIARE AT ASTRAKHAN
THE VOLGA 59
times, the tower of Souioumbeka, from which a
Tartar Princess of this name flung herself to escape,
hke another Cleopatra, gracing the conqueror's
triumph. It is said to be held in veneration by the
Tartars. From the top of its seven stories, more than
two hundred feet high, is a remarkable view, — espe-
cially in spring, when the Volga and Kazanka flood
an enormous expanse of country, — of the bulbous
Christian cupolas and substantial Russian houses
in the centre of the town, and its Mohammedan
suburbs with their tapering minarets. Situated at the
meeting-place of the Siberian, Caspian, and Baltic
trade routes, Kazan would seem to be particularly
favoured for commercial activity. It suffers, how-
ever, from one overwhelming disadvantage, for the
Volga gradually recedes westward pursued by the
suburbs, and the town proper is now left behind
three miles from the bank. The University is
important chiefly for the instruction given in
Oriental languages. The museum contains interest-
ing antiquities from the ruins of Bulgary discovered
in the time of Peter the Great.
These lie a hundred versts down the river. The
Bulgars were a Finno-Turkish people whose origin
is unknown, but who probably settled on the
Volga about the beginning of our era. Their
60 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
empire was overthrown by the INIongols, passed
under the Khans of the Golden Horde, and was
destroyed afresh when Timurlain flung his masses
of men across Eastern Russia. It was possibly
then that the Bulgarians started on the journey
which was eventually to preserve, if not perpetuate,
their name in Southern Europe. The ruins lie near
the modern village, which was built of part of their
stones.
The mighty River Kama, which joins the Volga
below Kazan, is the southern boundary of a wild
territory known as 'the land of woods.' Between
it, indeed, and the River Unsha, which flows into
the Volga above Nijni, most of the country is still
covered with dense forests. These formed an
admirable refuge for sectarians fleeing from perse-
cution. Up to the present day there linger here
the beliefs and customs so sympathetically portrayed
by Melnikoff in his ' In the Forests ' and ' In the
Hills.' There are hermitages and villages in the
Vetluga basin full of the most valuable ethno-
graphical records. The source of the Kama lies
in marshy country to the east of Viatka. It first
describes a circuitous course to the north, and then
flows south past Perm. Traversing the Governments
of Perm, Ufa, Viatka, and Kazan, a basin at least as
THE VOLGA 61
great as France, it is by far the principal tributary
of the Volga, and in May the meeting of the two
rivers is like a boundless sea. Just as the Oka
seemed the larger stream at Nijni, so here, too, the
Kama appears the true river, and the Volga only
its feeder. Its course, rather than that of the other,
is followed by the joint stream, and for a long way
its clear, bright waters flow distinct from the muddy,
turbid waves of the Volga.
Below Kazan the yellow cornfields on the banks
give place to dark forests of oaks, pines, and firs,
and the bosom of the river is studded with small
picturesque wooded islands. By common consent,
the finest bit of scenery in the whole journey is that
which refreshes the eye after passing the town of
Simbirsk, and before the ship drops anchor by the
Samara wharves. Here the left bank is hilly, and
the right rises into cragged wooded heights with
fantastic outlines known in order as the .Tegonlevski,
Gretchonlevski, and Mordvashanski Hills. Through
them the Volga, vainly seeks a passage, and is
forced eastwards. Oak and lime trees cover the
steep slopes, which are rent by deep sinister gorges
and ravines. These, tradition says, were the refuge
of the Volga brigands, and their shadow lies so dark
on the water that the fanciful tourist may easily
62 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
conjure up a picture of the black craft moored to
the sandy shore, and the buccaneers sprawling round
enormous fires. In his story ' Visions,' Turgueniefi
has given in a few bold, sweeping colours a fine
description of these pirates and their most famous
and formidable leader, the Don Cossack Stenka
Razine, who for three years terrorized the Lower
V^olga and the Caspian. The sketch tells of a man
whom an unearthly lover bears wherever he pleases,
to distant countries or into the distant past. On
this occasion they stand by the Volga at night, and,
though he sees nothing save the dark water, he is
conscious suddenly of the 'noise of screams and
cries, furious cursing and laughter, the laughter
worst of all, the strokes of oars and blows of axes,
slamming as of doors and sea-chests, the scrape of
digging and wheels, the neighing of horses, the
sound of alarums, the clang of chains, drunken
songs and the grinding of teeth, unconsolable weep-
ing, pitiful despairing silence, exclamations of com-
mand, death-rattles and bravado whistling.' With
masterly art Turguenieff pictures the approach of
Stenka Razine. The man still sees nothing, but
feels all at once as if an enormous body were moving
straight towards him. ' Stepan Timofeyitch,' the
corsairs shout, ' here comes Stepan Timofeyitch,
BLESSING THE WATER IN THE COUNTRY
THE VOLGA 63
our little father, our ataman, our feeder ' ; and then
a terrible voice booms a death-sentence to their
prisoners : ' Frolka ' — this was his brother and
lieutenant — ' where are you, dog ? Kindle up on
all sides ! Take the axes to the cursed white-
hands !' The man feels the heat of flames, the
biting smoke, and at the same moment something
warm like blood splashes on his hands and face.
The brigands burst into inhuman guffaws, and he
faints away. Right up to the nineteenth century,
the mouth of the Usa, which breaks through the
hills here, was a nest of pirates. Here from an out-
look on the cliffs they kept a watch for merchant
vessels, and as soon as one was spied the banks re-
echoed with the ominous rallying-cry, 'Sarin na
kitchku /' Captain, crew, and burlaks, fell on their
faces, and the freebooters took what they pleased.
At length, at the narrow Samara Gates, the river
breaks impatiently through its barrier, and turns
first sharply south, and then as sharply westward.
Samara, like Simbrisk and Sysran, was founded to
guard the Russian frontier against the Kalmucks,
the Bashkirs, and the Crimean Tartars. From here
in the first half of the eighteenth century a line of
fortresses was built to Orenburg, and under their
protection into the Bashkir country swept that wave
64 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
of Russian colonists which AksakofF in a famous
work half genuinely deplores. The river here is
bordered by woods and high chalk clifFs, and for
thirty-five versts below Samara the Serpent Hills
stretch in gentle slopes above the right bank. At
SaratofF, the largest town on the Volga, the river
is two miles broad and already at sea-level. The
volume of water is probably as great here as at its
mouth, for in its lower course there are few
tributaries, little rain, and continual evaporation.
On the left bank is a whole succession of flourish-
ing German colonies, where the descendants of the
settlers placed here by Catharine the Great are
still distinguished from their Russian neighbours by
religion, dress, language, cleanliness, and prosperity.
SaratofF— a Tartar name meaning 'yellow hill' —
has a new University, but otherwise the place is
uninteresting.
Much less dull are the streets of Tsaritsin, with
their motley crowd of Tartars, Kalmucks, Cossacks
from the Don and Kirghi z, with long flowing
chapans, fastened with silk or leathern girdles, and
round, pointed white felt hats. This town has
been connected by popular etymology with the
death of a King's daughter, but the word means
properly 'yellow water.' With its extremely
A CARPET FAIR AT ASTRAKHAN
THE VOLGA 65
favourable position for commerce, at the point of
junction with the Don, it has grown with American
rapidity, and is one of the busiest and most thri-
ving of the Volga towns. Some way to the east
lies the district town of TsarefF, in the neighbour-
hood of which was Sarai, the capital of the Khan
of the Golden Horde. It was here that the
Russian Princes paid obeisance to the Tartars.
After Tsaritsin the appearance of the Volga
changes.
* Then sands begin
To hem his watery course, and dam his streams,
And split his currents."'
But this archipelago of small islands is at length
passed, and once more its giant flood, which in
spring has no end to it, stretches itself out in un-
broken expanse on either hand. The right bank
is no longer hilly, and from midstream it is often
difficult to say where the water ends and the land
begins. Now and again a tug pulls long caravans
of barges upstream from Astrakhan, and white or
brown-sailed fishing-boats make for tree-sheltered
villages on the banks ; but save for these and the
swallows skimming low over the surface there is
nothing to relieve the desolation, nothmg to
confine the illimitable spaces of river, steppe, and
9
66 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
sky. Unimaginable is the play of light at sunrise
and sunset on that majestic sheet of water, with its
broad, ever-changing streaks of gold, orange, lilac,
mauve, and blue. The great steppes are the dried-
up bed of an ancient sea, of which the Caspian is a
remainder. They end abruptly on the Caspian,
which is itself gradually shrinking, and when
strong north winds blow the sea is driven far back.
They are mostly unsuitable for agriculture, and are
given up to Kirghiz and Kalmuck nomads, who
wander over them with their black kibitkas, rearing
cattle.
This latter people appeared first in Europe in
1630, under the leadership of their Khan Ho-
Yurluk, and soon moved west of the Caspian.
They vowed ' perpetual subservience ' to the
Muscovite Tsar, but in practice this relation was
purely fictitious, and their predatory bands swept as
far north as Penza and TambofF. Wearying at
last of the constant conflict with Russian forces, the
whole nation in 1771 set back for the slopes of the
Altai. De Quincey has drawn a powerful picture
of their flight, and of what befell those settled west
of the Volga who came to the river after the ice
had broken. The nearness of the East is sug-
gested in their felt tents which dot the steppe,
THE VOLGA 67
their pagodas, the hum of praying- wheels, and the
eternal Buddhist formula, which half Asia repeats
countless times a day, ' Om Maneh Padmeh Hum I'
(O Jewel of the Lotus Flower!) They are of
middle stature and squat figure. They have large
heads, black straight hair, thin beards, slits of eyes,
and a darkish yellow complexion. Naturally
kindly, straightforward, and honest, they have
become towards strangers secretive, cunning, and
vindictive ; when in a position of power they are
tyrannical, when powerless abjectly servile. They
love drink, cards, and idleness, and everyone, above
all the women, smokes heavily. They wear the
loose Caucasian beshmets, of one piece, with a roomy
cut-out breast. The fashion of their four-cornered
hats has been followed by Russian coachmen.
Though in the steppe there are a few khotons, or
groups of huts, and near Astrakhan some villages
clustering round a khurul, or temple, they are still
mostly nomad. The early attempts at making
them adopt a settled mode of life merely led to the
introduction of Russian colonies. Thus, in 1846, to
settle the roads between Astrakhan and Stavropol,
forty-four stations, each with fifty Russian and
fifty Kalmuck ' courts,' were laid out in the steppe.
The Kalmucks were offered eighty acres of land
68 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
apiece, the buildings and fifteen roubles, but not a
single one agreed to settle ; whereupon the empty
homesteads were occupied by fresh Russian
peasants. Only their princes and lamas are burnt
after the Indian custom. The common dead are
wrapped in a piece of old felt and thrown into dis-
used wells or deep holes, or in winter simply into a
snow-drift.
Astrakhan from ancient times was a settlement
of Asiatic hordes. From the third century of our
era it formed the capital of the powerful Khasar
Empire that stretched over nearly all South Russia.
The old town lay some eight miles farther to the
north than the present city, which was founded in
the fourteenth century, and which, till its capture
by the Russians in 1556, was the seat of a Tartar
Khanate. Thanks to its position for trade with the
Caucasus, Persia, and Eastern Russia, Astrakhan
has developed into a flourishing port, second only
in the south littoral to Odessa. The chief industry
is connected with the catching and curing of fish,
and for this purpose every spring there pours into
the town an army of Kalmucks, Persians, Kirghiz,
and peasants from the neighbouring villages.
The Volga delta begins about thirty miles above
Astrakhan. The number of the various channels
THE VOLGA 69
amounts to more than eighty. They are exposed
to constant changes, and especially to the change
caused by the rotation of the earth. Thus th e
main channel, which in the sixteenth century was
the most easterly, and in the reign of Peter about
midway, is now the Baktemir, the most westerly.
These streams, with their branches, flow through an
archipelago of islands of various shapes and sizes,
along which stretch dismal dunes of clay and sand
about thirty feet high, either destitute of vegetation
or covered here and there with rank steppe-grasses.
A few fishing settlements are scattered along
their banks. Thus ' shorn and parcelled,' winding
between ' beds of sand and matted rushy isles,'
the Volga at length quietly and imperceptibly —
for no definite border-line may be marked — pours
its waters into the Caspian Sea.
AN EASTERN GOVERNMENT
There are few districts in Russia, ' the land of
forty races,' where there have not lived alongside
with the Russian peasants peoples who differed
from them in customs, language, physical type,
and religion. West of the Volga the people were
mostly of Finnish stock, and have largely died out,
or migrated, or been absorbed into the great Russian
race. The third process was facilitated by their
conversion to Christianity. The word 'pravos-
lavniy,' or 'orthodox,' is almost equivalent to the
word * Russian.' Thus whole villages of purely
Finnish peoples have gradually shed their old
tongue, customs, and pagan faith, and adopted
those of the Russians. But even where inter-
marriage has blended the two stocks nearly, it is
not difficult to detect physical and social character-
istics due to Finnish influence. The actual process
of absorption can still be seen. While staying in
the Government of Tamboff in the summer of
70
AN EASTERN GOVERNMENT 71
1908, I saw a group of women thinning vegetables
in a garden, whose Lapp-like features and curiously
white costumes were entirely non-Slavonic. A tall,
lean Russian peasant with a hatchet-shaped face
stood by superintending, and as we approached he
kept urging the women, ' Work ! work !' They
spoke a broken Russian, but had forgotten their
own tongue. These people were INIestcheraki, but
call themselves Russians. The Tartars alone call
them by their proper name, while the Russian
peasant calls them Tchuvash and the Tchuvash
call them Tartars.
East of the Volga fusion has not taken place on
so extensive a scale. With regard to the Finnish
non-Mohammedan tribes, the Russian settlements
have been formed here only comparatively recently,
and in the case of the more numerous Mohammedan
peoples Islamism has proved an insurmountable
obstacle. Thus the various racial peculiarities are
still well preserved. Over great tracts of country,
especially in the hills, only one people may be
found ; while in others, within the radius of a few
miles, there is a perfect ethnological museum.
First among the non-Slavonic peoples for in-
dustry, prosperity, and education, must be placed
the Tartars, who appeared in Russia in 1240, and
72 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
whose dominion so profoundly influenced the course
of Russian history. Politically now they are of no
moment, but they still leave the impression of a
fine virile race. In the Caucasian districts and
round the Caspian they show an open preference
for Turkey, whither many of the Crimean horde
emigrated after the annexation of the peninsula.
But in Russia proper they are perfectly content.
The Russians have been careful never by over-
zealous missionary activity to fan the slumbering
flames of fanaticism. Indeed, the student of Russian
ecclesiastical history must note a remarkable con-
trast between the treatment of the Tsar's non-
Slavonic subjects and the measures adopted towards
dissent from the Orthodox Church. In appearance
the Tartar is broad-shouldered, with oval face,
projecting skull-bones, narrow, black, expressive,
eyes, and a thin wedge-shaped beard. The women
run to flesh, and spoil their complexions by over-
application of paint and rouge. Though their
villages are strikingly superior to the Russian,
they are not good agriculturists. Scarcely a
year passes but they apply for help to the local
Zemstvo, confident that ' the Russian Tsar is rich,
he will feed us.' But in other than rural pursuits
they show a high degree of industry, perseverance.
RICH TARTARS
AN EASTERN GOVERNMENT 78
and practical ability. These qualities are reinforced
by the sobriety which makes them invaluable as
coachmen or waiters. They recruit largely the
ranks of the lower servants in the Imperial house-
hold and great caravanserais of Petersburg and
Moscow. Nearer the railways many of them tour
the country as pedlars, with khalats and cloth goods
flung over their arm. They are well educated. A
school is attached to nearly every mctchet, and the
mullahs and their assistants teach the boys while
their wives instruct the girls. The children stay at
school from the age of seven to twelve. The
educational course is chiefly religious. Higher in-
struction is provided in a great Mohammedan
college at Ufa, the town magnificently situated
above the River Bielaya, and to complete their
training the future mullahs go to Bukhara or some
other city in Central Asia, or even to Egypt. The
mullahs stand on a very different footing in respect
to influence and authority than the Christian yoy
in Russian villages. In the Duma elections, as
they direct, their people vote to a man, and this
discipline almost invariably secures the return of
the Mohammedan candidate, even against numerical
odds. Comparatively few Tartars are polygamous.
Their women for the most part are kept in rigid
10
74 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
seclusion, and only in the very poorest families do
they work in the fields.
In this respect they differ from their interesting
co-religionists, the Bashkirs, whose women do more
than their share of outdoor labour, and are not
particularly observ^ant of the rules that enjoin
veiling. The precise meaning of the word Bashkir
is uncertain ; it may be ' dirty head,' or perhaps
' red head ' in allusion to the not uncommon red-
dish hair, which among Russians is rare. Of mixed
Finnish and Mongolian blood, they are probably
the earliest inhabitants of great tracts in south-
eastern Russia. In appearance they are a good-
looking, finely-proportioned race, especially the
younger woman, whose delicately moulded oval
faces and slender figures contrast with the grosser
charms of the Tartar beauties. When the Ural
Cossacks saw the Maygars in the Hungarian
campaign of 1849, they cried out ' Bashkiri !'
The man's head is shaved from early childhood,
and he never takes off the scull cap, which in
summer is covered by a white felt wideawake, and
in winter by a thick hat. Their dress is a long
white shirt of coarse linen open at the front —
whereas the Russian shirt is divided at the side
of the neck — and ungirdled, with a pair of trousers
AN EASTERN GOVERNMENT 75
tucked into cloth puttees. Over the shirt the
humble Bashkir wears a sleeveless coat, and the
mullahs and rich men a coat with sleeves whose
length is proportionate to the wearer's dignity
While the common people wear lapti, their betters
have heel-less top-boots of white felt or fine
leather, profusely decorated with coloured silk.
The Bashkir woman is clad in bright-coloured
shirt and trousers, and loves to deck herself with
beads and trinketry. Some of the old filigree
work, the secret of which they have lost, was
remarkably beautiful. They are good-tempered,
friendly, hospitable, and lazy, a race of hand-to-
mouth fatalists. The Bashkir himself does nothing
beyond a little sowing or haymaking, and his
favourite occupations when possible are finding
and robbing wild-bees' nests, hunting, and fishing.
But changed conditions have sadly affected the
old dolce far niente existence. In the hills, in-
deed, where they roam over enormous districts
breeding horses, the easy, patriarchal life is still
more or less maintained. In the plains, where
their land is more curtailed and yet offers the only
means for subsistence, they are perforce placed
in the transitional stage between nomad and
settled life. Even here in summer they generally
76 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
migrate to a second village in wilder country, or,
at the least, on their own land set up rough bush
shelters. In prosperous districts these summer
quarters behind the village huts are white tents
of thin felt, furnished with pillows and carpets.
To their new conditions the Bashkirs have not
adapted themselves. They are miserable farmers.
In their wretched villages and tumble-down hovels
they are dying out fast. Only in summer does
life flow easily, with abundance of horse-flesh and
kroot, which are flat cakes made of cow's milk, and
koumiss, which is fermented mare's milk, not boiled,
but set for hours in a place moderately exposed to
the sun. Only then do the notes of the flute-like
tchebizga ring out high and clear among the woods,
and the Bashkirs sing their monotonous songs.
Among the Tartar group is often included the
Tchuvash race, chiefly on linguistic grounds, which
are notoriously unreliable, but it seems probable
that this people has just as many Finnish affinities
as Tartar. Their appearance and costumes, the
prevailing colour of which is blue for men and
red for women, point to northern origin. Through
the influence of the schools they are becoming
rapidly Russianized and Christian. St. Nicholas
the Wonder - Worker, however, they consider
AN EASTERN GOVERNMENT 77
more important than Christ, and many of them
still carry in the bosom of their dress little roughly-
hewn deities of wood, on whom they visit punish-
ment in times of agricultural depression. Their
pagan rehgion was dualistic. Tora was the good
spirit, and Shaitan the bad ; but there were also
a number of subsidiary beings, either good, such
as light, or bad, such as famine. The women's
costumes and head-dresses are covered with coins
and brass soldier -buttons, and their legs are
swathed in such thick coverings that they look
Hke pillars, for they consider it immodest that
these should be seen, and that to go barefooted,
as the Russian women do, exceeds all bounds of
propriety and shame. The Tchuvash are quiet,
industrious agriculturists, but also great drunkards
and horse-stealers. They are of small stature and
feeble physique, with a heavy trailing walk, a pale
face, and apathetic look. Something is wrong with
their eyes, as with those of the Tcheremisses.
Both peoples are decreasing in numbers. The
Tcheremiss religion is a mixture of Orthodoxy,
Mohammedanism, and Shamanism. Fire dances
and sacrifices of white horses continue up to the
present day. Their divorce custom is at once
simple and dramatic. The couple lie down back
78 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
to back bound tightly by a strong cord. Then
the village elder draws his knife and cuts the
knot, and the two are free to set off in opposite
directions. The women's red garments with breast-
plate of silver coins, beads, and corals, and the high-
pointed hat which falls behind Hke a hood and is
stiffened with ornaments, are even more picturesque
than those of the Tchuvash. But first of all in
its elegant simplicity is the dress of the Mordva
girl — white puttees, trousers, and jacket with a
border of blue. This white garb, with the black
footgear, has given rise to a Russian pleasantry
that greets and irritates the maid whenever she
steps abroad : ' Whither, swan, swimmest thou V
The ISlordva played an important part in early
Russian history. They occupied all the middle
basin of the Volga, from the Urals to the source
of the Oka, and more than once assaulted the
Nijni fortress which was built to check their
raids. They are a fine people to look upon,
massively built, with fair hair and complexion, and
grey eyes. They are excellent farmers, and are
increasing in numbers. The Russian peasantry
in backward districts say: 'The Mordva know
how to pray better than we ; their gods fulfil their
prayers better.' They are already, to a great
AN EASTERN GOVERNMENT 79
extent, Russianized, but retain many traces of
their pagan religion, especially with regard to
ancestor worship. In the beginning of the nine-
teenth century a Mordva dreamer tried to restore
this old faith. 'After you turn again,' he said,
* the whole world will adopt the laws, manners,
and dresses, of the Mordva, and in everything will
follow Mordva customs, and the Mordva will be
free, will not belong to landowners nor pay rent,
but will be the first people on the earth.' But
this very appeal to the old religion bears indica-
tions of the influence of the new. Among them
women occupy a comparatively high position.
There is very free sexual comiection before
marriage, but divorce is almost unknown. ' Mar-
riage,' says one of their own proverbs, ' is a bond.'
In all questions the husband consults the wife.
'The husband speaks,' another of their sayings
declares, 'the wife thinks.' They have some
interesting aphorisms illustrative of ideal matri-
monial relations, such as : ' With your neighbour
deal in roubles, with your wife in caresses ;' or
again, ' Where love can't, the cudgel can't ;' and
there is quite an advanced one about the bringing
up of children : ' Train a dog with a stick, a child
with love.'
80 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
With all these various peoples the Russian
peasants are oh the friendliest terms. The epithet
'Asiatic,' which the angry Russian hurls at the
head of his fellow, amid a host of others, such as
' cholera,' ' Anti-Christ,' ' Herod,' or ' Mazeppa,'
does imply a certain colour pride, but this amounts
to very little. It is an exaggeration to say that
Russia is half Asiatic. But she is a vast outlying
province of Europe, more in touch with and
understanding more of Asia than any other
western country. The Russians fraternize with
Orientals to a degree intolerable for the arrogance
of colour and haughty instincts of the English.
On the other hand, they have not our energy and
tireless enthusiasm for thrusting reforms on un-
civilized races. Hence it comes about that, as an
observant English traveller has remarked : ' English
administration does a great deal for the native in
Asia in a singularly unsympathetic manner, while
the Russian does much less, but in a manner the
native understands and appreciates.' In the history
of European dealings with the East, for which
many thoughtful minds believe that Europe will
eventually have to pay a heavy retribution, few
pages stand out so unsullied by prejudice and
cruelty as the Russian annexation and government
STAGE FOR POST-HORSES IN THE URALS
AN EASTERN GOVERNMENT 81
of Central Asia. In the Far East the stains on tlie
Russian record are largely the direct result of
sending to these distant provinces where control
over representatives was impossible the most
worthless civil officials and the scum of the army.
It is of profound importance that the two gi-eat
European powers in Asia should be in sympathy,
as far, at least, as concerns Asiatic affairs. There
is a statesmanlike passage in Vladimir SoloviofF's
* Three Conversations ' — the last work that great
thinker published — which is full of interest in this
connection. ' If in Turkey,' he writes, ' we are for
the moment powerless, we can already play a first-
class role as civilizers in Central Asia, and especially
in the Far East, whither it appears history is
shifting its centre of gravity. By geographical
position, and for other reasons, Russia can do in
Central Asia and the Far East more than all other
nations, with the exception, of course, of England.
Hence the problem of our policy in this direction
is a lasting, genuine understanding with England,
so that our common work as civilizers may never
be perverted into senseless hostility and unworthy
rivalry.'
In these Eastern governments in the hot and
lazy atmosphere of summer, it is often difficult to
11
82 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
believe that one is in Europe. The mullah's voice
intoning solemnly, ' La illaha el Allah,' the Bashkir
in his long khalat on horseback, the Kerghiz
caravan with a string of camels, their greeting,
' Salaam Aleikum,' that bears a meaning over half
Asia— all these things suggest the regions north of
Tibet. Life is full of the sounds, the colours, the
smells of the East. The scenery also is not
European, but precisely such as is familiar to
English readers through the photographs of Sven
Hedin. Over the conical grassy hills, the mfinite
billowy plains, the pine-fringed blue lakes, the
great marshes with their flocks of wild duck, geese,
cranes, and swans, there broods a spirit of wildness
and luxuriance which gradually comes to exercise
over one a vague but irresistible charm. Especially
refreshing is this unstinted, unspoiled wealth after
one comes from the monotonous colours .of Central
Russia, and nowhere is it felt more strongly than
on the banks of the rivers such as the Kama, the
Ufa, or the Bielaya. These have nothing of the
perpetual sameness that marks the sedge-bordered
lesser streams that sluggishly drive their lifeless
waters through the tilled lands westward. They
themselves are full of interest; here narrow, swirUng,
and impetuous, like a mill race ; there lying asleep
AN EASTERN GOVERNMENT 83
in warm willow-shaded reaches ; there, again, broken
by cascades or stretching out in broad, shallow
rapids, in which are set the basket-shaped wattled
fish-traps of the Bashkirs. On the banks the
scenery unfolds itself in constantly changing but
ever-fascinating pictures of maple thickets, clay
huts, or wide levels of grassy plain or sand. Now
the hills overhang the current ; now, after a bend of
the river, they recede to the greyish-purple distance.
Tt was my good fortune to spend two long happy
summers on the banks of the Bielaya, and little
vignettes come crowding into the memory, a
Mordva boy lashing furiously at a yellow, wriggling
snake, night-fishing with braziers in drifting boats
and the hiss of burning sparks on the water, a
procession of Tchuvash women on a dusty road
with an ikon, long shaky Bashkir bridges with
wattled huts, hunting camps in lonely places under
whispering birches.
In the rich primeval fi'cshness of this country
are steeped the immortal pages of Aksakoff's
* Family Chronicle.' He deplores that much of
its former unspoilt, unsulUed loveliness is lost,
disfigured by the Russian plough and axe ; ' but
still,' he says, ' even now, glorious country, you are
beautiful! Clear and transparent, Uke enormous
84 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
deep bowls, are your lakes. Full of water, full
of all kinds of fish, are your rivers that now rush
swiftly through dells and gorges among the foot-
hills of the Urals, and now quietly and brightly,
like amethysts strung on a thread, glide with
imperceptible movement over your grassy steppes.
In your hurrying hill-streams, clear and cold as
ice in sultry summer heat, that run under the
shadow of trees and bushes, live all manner of
trout pleasant to the taste, and beautiful to the
eye, but soon disappearing when man begins to
touch with unclean hands the virgin currents of
their cool, transparent haunts. Wonderful is the
verdure that beautifies your rich black earth,
luxuriant fields, and meadows. In spring they
shine white with the milky blossom of strawberry
plants, and cherry and wild peach trees, and in
summer they are covered as with a red carpet with
fragrant strawberries and tiny cherries, that later
in autumn ripen and turn purple. With abundant
crops is rewarded the lazy, rude toil that but here
and there, and but somehow or other, turns up your
fertile soil with clumsy, primitive plough. Fresh,
green, and vigorous, stand your darkling forests, and
swarms of wild bees populate your natural hives,
storing them full of sweet - smelling lime-tree
AN EASTERN GOVERNMENT 85
honey. And the Ufa marten — prized above all
others — not yet has he migrated from the wooded
upper waters of the Ufa and the Bielaya ! Peaceful
and quiet are your patriarchal, primitive inhabitants
and ovniers — the nomad Bashkir tribes. Fewer
now, but still great and numerous, are their droves
of horses, their herds of cattle, and flocks of sheep.
Now, as in bygone years after the cruel stormy
winter, the Bashkirs, lean and emaciated as winter
flies, with the first spring warmth, with the first
pasture grass, drive out to the wilds their droves
and flocks half dead with starvation, and drag them-
selves after them with their wives and children. . . .
And in two or three weeks you will not know a
single one ! Instead of skeleton horses are seen
spirited untiring chargers, and now the steppe
stallion proudly and jealously guards the pasture-
ground of his mares, allowing neither beast nor
man approach. The thin winter herd of cattle has
become fat, and their dugs and udders are full
of nourishing juice. But what cares the Bashkir
for fragrant cow's milk ? By now the life-giving
koumiss is ready, fermented in bags of horse hide,
and that blessed draught of heroes, all that can
drink, from the babe at the breast to the tottering
old men, drink till they are drunk, and in a marvel-
86 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
lous fashion disappear all the hardships of winter,
and even of old age. The thin faces become round
and full ; the pale, drawn cheeks are covered with
the flush of health. . . . But what a terrible and
melancholy appearance have the deserted settle-
ments ! Sometimes a passing traveller who has
never seen aught of the kind will light upon them
and be astonished at the picture of desolation, as
if the whole place were dead. The windows of the
scattered huts, with the white frames gaping, and
the bladder-skin panes taken away, look at him
wildly and mournfully, like human faces with
gouged out eyes. . . . Here and there howls a
dog left on a chain to guard the houses, at long
intervals visited and fed by his master ; here and
there wails a half-wild cat, foraging for unpro-
vided food — and save for them no living thing, not
a single human soul. . . .'
VI
PROVINCIAL TOWNS
In a.d. 862, in answer to the Slav appeal, ' Our
land is great and fruitful, but order and justice in
it there are none : come and take possession and
rule over us,' the three brothers Rurik, Sineous,
and Truvor, princes of the Variags, whoever they
were, left their country, wherever that was, and
entered Russia. Twenty years later, Rurik's son
made his residence at KiefF, on the Dnieppr, and
from this base the immigrants, who soon became
merged with the Slavs, protected all the commerce
that passed up and down the Austrvegr or Eastern
way of the Sagas. KiefF had been founded some
time before by a Slavonic tribe. By its position it
was marked out for a great future. It lay at the
meeting-point of the zones of forest, black earth,
and steppe, and in the neighbourhood the Dnieppr
is joined by its most important upper tributaries.
It early became populous and prosperous, and
was the first capital of Russia. The historian
87
88 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
Kliuchevski affirms that ' the common people still
remember and know Old Kieff, with its princes and
heroes, with its St. Sophia and Pechersk Monas-
tery, unfeignedly love and revere it, as they have
neither loved nor revered any of the capitals that
succeeded it, Vladimir-on-Kliazma, Moscow, or
Petersburg. About Vladimir they have forgotten,
and, indeed, knew it but little in its own day.
Moscow pressed heavily on the people. They
respected her a little and feared her a little, but
did not love her sincerely. Petersburg they
neither love, nor respect, nor even fear.'
It was at KiefF in the tenth century that Prince
Vladimir, after his marriage with Anne, the sister
of the Greek Emperor, converted all the people to
Christianity by a wholesale baptism, and by
declaring all recalcitrants enemies of Jesus Christ
and the Grand Duke. Already in the twelfth
century it boasted four hundred churches, several
of which had gilded cupolas. But it was stormed
and sacked by Russian forces in 1169, by nomad
hordes in 1203, and by the Tartars under Batu
Khan in 1240. Shortly afterwards Piano Kirpin,
a Papal emissary to the Khan's Court, passed
through KiefF on his way from Poland. * When
we entered Russian soil,' he says, ' we saw a count-
SUMMER CARAVANS
PROVINCIAL TOWNS 89
less number of human skulls and bones on the
steppe. Before, Kieff was very great and populous,
but now there are scarcely two hundred houses in
it.' When the Lithuanians drove off the Tartars,
the liberty of the town was not restored. In the
fifteenth century Casimir of Poland forbade the
construction of Russian churches in Avhat was the
holy Mother City of all the towns in Russia.
Only in 1686 was it incorporated in the Muscovite
empire.
It is now the seventh city in the Tsar's
dominions, and a fortress of first rank. From
two to three miles broad, it stretches for ten
miles along the Dnieppr on the high right bank,
which in several places is broken up by wide, deep
ravines. So spacious are its boundaries that
within them it could contain at least three times
its present population. It is composed of four
distinct parts. Podol, the business quarter, lies to
the north-east, on low ground by the river. On
rising ground to the south-west is Lipti, ' the
place of lime-trees,' a delightful residential suburb
with white-walled, green-roofed villas and shady
gardens. North of Lipti is Old Kieff, the centre
of the town, with elegant streets and handsome
public buildings. Here are the theatre, the
1^
90 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
University, the Museum with a fine collection
of Scythian work, and the ruins of the Golden
Gate, which was in ancient times the principal
entrance. Here, too, is the St. Sophia Cathedral,
the most interesting building in Kieff. It was
erected at the beginning of the eleventh century
in memory of a victory won over the nomad
Petchenegues, but its real construction has been
disguised externally by later additions. It is of
quadrangular shape, with fifteen golden domes.
In the inside the walls are covered with mosaics on
a gold background, and old frescoes which call up
memories of St. Mark's at Venice. More interest-
ing, however, are the frescoes that adorn the
walls of the great stair, which was once outside the
building and led to the Grand Duke's castle, but
now mounts a tower to the gallery. These repre-
sent with a curious combination of subtlety and
primitive simpHcity mythical animals, hunting
scenes, and people dressed in rich Byzantine
costumes.
The fourth quarter lies to the south-east, and is
called Petchersk, or the town of the grottoes.
These are low, narrow galleries hollowed in the
clay soil, with little square places that have served
as monastic cells. Some of them have been used
PROVINCIAL TOWNS 91
as chapels. In the niches at the sides rest care-
fully swathed bodies of saints. It is interesting to
go round these tombs with a peasant crowd escorted
by a monk, and note the degree of reverence and
amount of kopecks paid to each holy man. Per-
haps the most favoured is John the Much Suffer-
ing, who lived, so the monk says, for thirty years
buried up to his neck. He has been left in this
uncomfortable position and his mitre-covered head
alone protrudes above the earth. This is the most
ancient and most venerated monastery in Russia.
Nearly two hundred thousand pilgrims visit it
every year, and its revenues exceed a million
roubles. Immediately opposite the Holy Gate
which leads into the great courtyard is the military
arsenal. From the hill on which these buildings
lie a long stair leads down to the river, and as one
descends there is a splendid view of the yellow
waters of the Dnieppr, spanned by a suspension
bridge, and the plains beyond. But perhaps the
best view-point is at the northern end of the
wooded terrace near the bronze statue of St.
Vladimir, the cross of which is illuminated at night
by electricity and seen from immense distances
over the steppe. From here a large part of the
town is visible. Of recent years Kieff has attracted
92 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
less pious, if wealthier, visitors than the peasant
pilgrims, by a hardly justified notoriety as a centre
of pleasure and refined vice. Less ambitious
grounds for comparison with Paris might be
adduced from the fact that KiefF, too, echoes with
country sounds in the early morning, when the
market-places, especially the Bessarabka, are full
of brightly clad little Russian peasants selling
country produce.
Set also on a river's hilly right bank is the town
proper of Nijni Novgorod, at the confluence of the
Oka with the V^olga. It must be distinguished
from the older and once mighty republic in the
marshes — Lord Novgorod the Great — the power of
which was indicated in the popular saying, ' Who
can stand against God and Novgorod ?' Nijni was
founded in 1212 to oppose the aggressions of the
ISIordva and the Bulgars. About 1250 it won
independence under its own princes, and was
strongly fortified, but before the century was out
not only were its walls and towers stormed, the
city burned, and the inhabitants enslaved by
Tartars, but it fell also under the suzerainty of
Moscow. In later years it repelled attacks from
Mordvas, from Cossacks, and from Stenka Razine's
formidable buccaneers. But the most glorious
PROVINCIAL TOWNS 93
chapter in its annals is the part its citizens played
in restoring national stability after ' the time of
troubles ' in the seventeenth century. Novgorod
the Great was held by Swedes, Moscow Kremlin
by Poles ; both Tsar and Patriarch were prisoners,
and the national leaders among the aristocracy were
bought by foreign gold. Pirates and brigands
pillaged town and country, sparing not even the
churches ; in more than one district famine drove
the miserable people to cannibalism. Then the
country was saved by a whole national movement
shared in by gentry, clergy, and, not least, the peas-
ants, and directed from Nijni. The monks of the
Troitsa INIonastery sent letters to the various towns
still independent, and when these were read at Nijni,
a butcher, Kouzma Minine, stepped forward and
said : ' If we wish to save the Empire of Moscow,
we must spare neither our lands nor goods ; let us
sell our houses and put in service our wives and
children ; let us look for a man who is willing to fight
for the Orthodox Faith, and to march at our head.'
Minine sought out Prince Pojharski and ' beat
the ground with his forehead ' before him, asking
him to take command. The religious note of the
expedition was emphasized by a three days' fast,
which was ordained even for children at the breast.
94 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
Then Pojharski and Minine set out on their trium-
phant march to Moscow. Another famous deed was
wrought at this time by a peasant, Ivan Soussanin.
When JNIichael Romanoff was appointed Tsar, the
Poles sent armed men to seize him, but these
Soussanin led astray in the woods, and they killed
him. His service is commemorated in Glinka's
opera, ' Life for the Tsar.' To the butcher Minine
and Prince Pojharski, a bronze monument was
erected in the Red Place in Moscow after another
great national movement, when in 1812, as in 1612,
the Russian people rose to drive out foreign
invaders from their land. It bears the foUowmg
inscription : ' To the citizen JNlinine and the Prince
Pojharski Russia with gratitude.' The Russians
have a genius for these simple manly epitaphs cal-
culated to make the patriot reader's heart throb
with glorious memories and pride of country.
Such is the phrase : ' Catharine the Second to Peter
the First ' on the equestrian statue by the Neva ; or,
' Lord, bless Russia and the Tsar, save the fleet
and Sebastopol,' KornilofTs dying words, engraved
on his monument near the MalakhofF Hill.
Equally terse and simple but less characteristically
Russian is the phrase of Nicholas I. on the monu-
ment to Admiral Nievelski in Vladivostok : 'Where
PROVINCIAL TOWNS 95
once the Russian flag is raised, it must never be
lowered,' but the original is crisper than the trans-
lation.
Nijni proper on the hill is divided into the
Upper and Lower Bazaars. Catharine the Great
was not impressed by the appearance of the town
in her age. She thought it ' situated magnificently
but built miserably.' But to-day, though not
imposing, Nijni is a clean, pleasant place, with
several good streets and many fine houses. From
the river the ascent to the Upper Bazaar is made
by steep zigzags. The top of the hill is occupied
by the Kremlin, which in point of situation, though
not otherwise, surpasses the fortress sanctuary in
Moscow. It is surrounded by a wall fi-om sixty to
a hundred feet high, flanked with eleven towers,
which winds down the green slope. From its
topmost projecting corner is one of the finest views
in Russia, whether in summer, when the Oka and
Volga are covered by countless noisy, busy tugs,
and long, slowly-moving barges, or on frosty winter
nights, when the great snow levels on fettered
rivers and on the plains lie obscure and silent
under the stars. At such a time, save for the long
temporary bridge, the fair-town on the low ground
between the rivers is mostly unlit and deserted.
^ PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
The fair lasts for only six weeks in July and
August. It is divided into Inner and Outer Fairs,
the former of which is little more than a mass of
offices rented by the agents of important com-
mercial firms. In the Outer Fair there is an
enormous assortment of almost every article that
the human mind can conceive, and separate blocks
of buildings are assigned to each category. The
fair will sadly disappoint those who expect to see
at every turn pagans from Northern Siberia,
Chinese, Buddhists, Tartars from Samarkand or
Bokhara. Now that the railways thread Asia,
though the actual turnover has not decreased,
much of the former colour is lost. That is seen
better in the fairs at places like Orenburg.
Odessa is the fourth city of the empire, the third
being Polish Warsaw. Its origin was due to the
fertile, if sometimes wayward, brain of Catharine II.
The foundation-stone was laid in August, 1794.
The town is built at the end of the Pontri steppes
where they fall in broken declivities to the Black
Sea. Near the site was an old Sarmatian colony
called Odesseus, which is mentioned by Arrion.
Odessa is one of the best built and imposing cities
in Russia. But unfortunately the sandstone most
available for building purposes decays rapidly, and
A COUNTRY MAYOR OF THE TOULA DISTRICT
/
PROVINCIAL TOWNS 97
substantial houses, if left alone, become ruinous in
a few years. For this reason, no doubt, only a
mass of debris is left of the once prosperous Greek
cities on the littoral. Stone for the pavements and
larger edifices is brought from the quarries of Italy
and Malta. After the bare steppes the eye is
gratified, in the parks and boulevards, by numerous
gardens and rows of trees, which are kept alive on
the unsuitable ground only with the most un-
ceasing care. The northern suburbs that border
the steppes are dull and dusty, especially in late
autumn, but towards the sea the wide straight
streets, the elegant shops and great churches, need
not fear comparison with the wealthiest and most
advanced cities of Western Europe. Especially
fine is the Boulevard Nikolayioski, lined on one
side by magnificent buildings, and on the other
by trees which are not close enough to prevent
glimpses of the sea. In the middle of this
promenade is a statue to the Due du Richelieu,
a French emigrant in Russian service who after-
wards was a minister under Louis XVI II. He
was Governor- General here from 1803-1814, and
worked assiduously and successfully for the pros-
perity of the town. From the sea-front a staircase
of massive masonry descends to the harbour. In
13
98 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
the fashionable and important quarters the pre-
vailing style of architecture is Italian. The Italian
colony, which dates from an early period, is
numerous and influential. Nearly a third of the
population, however, are Jews.
Russia is primarily an agricultural country, and
there are few great cities. The ordinary pro-
vincial town offers very little of interest either in
appearance or life. When the streets are paved,
the cobbles are large and uneven. The houses are
substantial, but have no architectural beauty. In
the centre of each town is a Gostini Door, or
Strangers' court, a building with long rows of low-
roofed stores, where, with Oriental bargaining, a
large proportion of the local business is transacted.
For reckoning calculations the merchants use the
stchoti, a wooden framework about a foot long, and
scarcely so broad, with rows of balls strung on
wires. Ragged and importunate beggars infest the
steps of the numerous churches. The Government
buildings are Hke the private houses, massive but
plain, and often the most imposing of all is the
railway-station. As builders, the Russians have
strong claims to be regarded as the heirs of Rome.
Not merely, nor, indeed, principally in Europe, but
in Transcaspian Asia and in Siberian valleys their
PROVINCIAL TOWNS 99
structures seem raised not for an age but for all
time. It is another question whether the millions
lavished on the quays at Dalny might not have
been more profitably expended at home. The
most striking figures in the streets are sellers of
kvass beverages, cloth and fruit, pit-marked nures
with diadem-like kokoshiks, on their heads, uni-
formed policemen — of all Russians most harshly
misjudged in this country — armed with sword and
revolver, and in the evenings dvorniks or janitors.
There is much dust and untidiness and general
symptoms of nostalgie de la boue. In the principal
thoroughfares stand lines of peasant cabmen or
izvostchiks clad in warm kaftans. Fares are extra-
ordinarily cheap, and one can drive a long distance
for threepence. They are laid down by the town
council and marked on the most obvious place in
the vehicle, but these fixed prices are invariably
disregarded, and the fare is bargained for before
starting. This, though a small point in itself, is in
full agreement with and may be used to illustrate
a prominent feature of Russian life. 'The
Russian,' said Hertzen with much truth, ' of what-
ever station he be, avoids or breaks the law con-
tinuously wherever he can do so with impunity.'
A devotee to orderly system and precision would
100 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
receive more shocks in a week's stay in Russia
than in a lifetime in Germany. Nor will the
practical, humdrum Occidental be much comforted
by the assurance that there are compensations in a
club-hke, genial spirit which pervades ; if the sceptic
would only believe it, the whole people accept the
confusion with imperturbable good-nature. The
Slavophils themselves cannot deny this trait of the
national character, but explain it more suo by
affirming that whereas Western Europe is ruled
by external, Russia moves along the path of
internal, order and justice.
Since the introduction of railways the country
gentry have gone for the winter season not to
their Government capital, but to Petersburg or
Moscow. The increased facilities, however, of
social and intellectual intercourse, and the exis-
tence and results of the revolution, have disturbed
to some degi'ee that ' eternal stillness ' which hung
over the provincial towns in days when we drove
from their gates for three weeks on end without
getting anywhere. But, on the whole, the standard
of culture and intellectual interests is lower than in
corresponding English cities, and in the smaller
district towns the few really educated people that
have drifted or been flung there by an unkindly
PROVINCIAL TOWNS 101
fortune are gradually drowned, as TchekhofF says
somewhere, like weeds, in the flood of littleness
and commonness round them. Life in the prosper-
ous commercial families is marked by extreme hos-
pitality and unsophisticated material comfort, but
by homeliness of manners and sterility of thought
and conversation. Their chief amusements are
card-playing, gossip and goulaniye — that is to say,
driving in the fashionable promenades. Few
survivors remain nowadays of the old type of
wealthy Russian merchant so admirably portrayed
by the dramatist Ostrovski, illiterate, hard-headed,
contemptuous of fashion, proud of his class,
autocratic in his family, with an almost supersti-
tious reverence of the ikon and the Tsar. Among
liis successors a not inconsiderable number have
acquired a superficial polish in Paris and London,
but have lost much in strength and energy.
Standing out from their drab surroundings are
the representatives of the intelligentia, the real
windows, as P. Struve remarks, which let in light
from Western Europe, the heirs of the Cossack
tradition of stimulating popular struggle against
the Government. This term is not applied to the
educated classes as such. These include priests,
officials, and the aristocracy, whereas the intelli-
102 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
gentia was middle-class, and distinguished by its
hostility alike to State and religion. They were
mostly professional people engaged in law, educa-
tion, and medicine. Alone, they and the students
who recruited their ranks never ceased to denounce
and make war against the evils of bureaucratic
government, and sacrifice unsparingly money and
life in the cause of popular reform. Themselves,
professedly non-religious, their mission with its long
roll of martyrs took on the note of a religious
crusade, and this was accentuated not only by
their terminology, often reminiscent of the works
of the Fathers, but to a greater extent by their
unworldliness, asceticism, fervour, and purity of
moral life. A critic was actually struck by the
echoes of Orthodox psychology in the wild speeches
of the] Second Duma Left. And for this unequal
struggle, and their services in wresting a constitu-
tion, the defects in the character of both students
and ' intelligents ' were overlooked or condoned.
Their culture and knowledge were of a limited
nature. By culture they understood not creative
art, but either such things as canals and bridges,
or the diffusion of knowledge among the un-
educated peasants. They produced practically no
literature. Their atheism was not the result of
PROVINCIAL TOWNS 103
mental and spiritual wrestling, but imposed by
traditions and lightly assumed. They had no
interest in philosophy, and despised metaphysics.
Abstract principles they denied altogether. They
held that life has no objective meaning, and that
evil being the result merely of social mistakes can
be reformed by purely external measures. Hence
the more consistent ' intelligents ' permitted the
use of all means, including hooliganism and
murder, leading to the desired end — the material
prosperity of the people. Their traditions choked
individuality, and yet neither as a class nor
personally were they disciplined. Deficient in
historical training, they formed their misty
schemes with grandiose visions of popular
aspirations and risings, and with a pathetic con-
fidence in the possibility of political miracles,
which the revolution rudely dispelled once for all.
In speaking of the work and character of the
intelligentia, I have used the past tense, though
the term survives, and will survive to active use,
for this reason. In both aims and nature, Russian
observers agree that vital changes have entirely
modified the old type, which can hardly be
regarded as longer existing. Profoundly dis-
appointed and disillusioned with the results of the
104 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
revolution, which they almost entirely directed,
they fell from their soaring heights to depths of
dejection, from which they have not yet risen.
At the same time their moral fibre was slackened.
The abolition of the censorship opened the sluice
gates to a veritable flood of pornographic and
sensational literature. PoUtically, again, the
October Manifesto cancelled all reason for the
peculiar nature of their activity. Public opinion
finds utterance in the Imperial Duma. But
among the advanced middle-class liberals, many
of the virtues and shortcomings of the intelli-
gentia will undoubtedly survive. And though
Russian Christian observers think otherwise, as
may be readily imagined, and though — which is a
rather more important matter — history warns us
that such volte-faces are far from impossible, it is
especially difficult to believe that they will change
their attitude towards a discredited and discarded
religion.
A POLISH JEW
>*.v .
^
VII
WHITE RUSSIA
White Russia is the name given to the upper
basin of the Dnieppr, bounded on the south by
the River Pripet, and on the north by the Eastern
Dvina. The name is said to allude to the colour
of the peasant dress. The four Governments of
Vitebsk, Smolensk, Mogilyeff, and Minsk, occupy
about a twentieth part of European Russia, and
the population numbers over seven millions, of
whom five are White Russians. The rest is made
up of Great Russians, Jews, Poles, and Lithu-
anians. Here the purest Slavonic type is pre-
served. They have not blended with other stocks,
as the Great Russians with the Finns and the
Little Russians with the Mongolians. The Tar-
tars came no farther west than Smolensk, and
from Poland and Lithuania the only immigrants
were noblemen, and these were few.
The earliest inhabitants of the country were
of Finnish race. These were ousted by Lithu-
105 14
106 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
aniaris, and they in their turn receded before three
Slavonic tribes that moved north from the foot-
hills of the Carpathians. Setthng in their new
homes, these fresh-comers occupied themselves
with agriculture, hunting, and trade. Excava-
tions of their kurgans, or barrows, have shown
that they had already mastered the rudiments
of civilization. In the KiefF hegemony they
maintained their own princes, and towns like
Smolensk and Potolsk were from an early period
wealthy and populous centres of commerce. In
the thirteenth century, however, the Tartars
swarmed into KiefF, and White Russia, rent by
internal dissension, could no longer withstand the
pressure of Lithuania, but became voluntary
subjects of their vigorous neighbours to the
west. The subjection was not looked upon as
a conquest, and the Lithuanians, still pagan and
uncivilized, took on the White Russian religion
and culture. But these happy relations were
broken off after the marriage of the Polish Princess,
Hedwig, and Vagailo of Lithuania in 1387. One
of the terms of this match insisted on the adoption
by Lithuanian King and people of the Catholic
faith. The introduction of Pohsh influence affected
adversely the position of the Russian peasantry.
WHITE RUSSIA 107
The \Vhite Russian language had no longer any-
official status. There followed all the ferocity
of religious persecution, and the Polish seigneurs
inaugurated a system of serfdom much more
oppressive than was ever felt in Central Russia.
Under these miserable conditions masses of the
peasants fled to the unoccupied steppe, and the
rest, as a Pohsh writer notes, 'prayed to God
that Moscow should come.' It was only in the
seventeenth century, however, that Moscow won
suzerainty over the northern districts, and only
at the end of the eighteenth was the whole of
AVhite Russia annexed to the Great Russian
empire. At the date of the emancipation, the
country had not recovered from the Polish regime.
Harrowing and well authenticated descriptions are
given of the prevailing poverty. As corn-laden
barges moved along the Dvina to Riga, it was
no uncommon sight to see hundreds of starving
half-naked creatures who knelt on the banks
praying for bread, and threw themselves on the
food flung to them, and tore at it like wild
beasts. To-day White Russia is one of the
poorest and most backward parts of the empire.
In the north the scenery is of the Great Russian
type, though the land occasionally rises into hilly
108 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
ground. But in the low flats of the south the
wet country known as Poliesk, or ' the forest
region,' the traveller, however unobservant, is
struck by certain peculiar features. It was once
apparently all one vast lake which drained into
the Dnieppr, but the outlet becoming choked,
the stagnant water formed the marshes character-
istic of this part of White Russia. Even now
when more than six million acres have been re-
claimed by drainage, some of them extend con-
tinuously for over two hundred miles. In the
upper Pripet basin the woods are everywhere
full of countless little channels which creep
through a wilderness of sedge. Alone the right
bank of the Pripet rises above the level, and is
fairly thickly populated. Elsewhere extends a
great intricate network of streams with endless
fields of water-plants and woods. For the most
part Poliesk is oppressively dreary. In the drier
spots the earth is carpeted with meadow saffron
and asphodel. But over the bogs vapours hang
for ever, and among these reeds in autumn there
is no fly, nor mosquito, nor living soul, nor sound,
save the rustle of their dry stalks. No scene is
more characteristic of the inhabited places than the
infinitely melancholy picture, often witnessed from
WHITE RUSSIA 109
the train itself, of a grey-headed peasant cutting
reeds, standing up to the waist in water.
The White Russian can be recognized without
much difficulty. He is sturdy of figure and of
middle height, not so broadshouldered or thick-
set as the Great Russian, nor so tall and graceful as
the Little Russian. He has not the dignity and
vivacity of the former, nor the calm debonair bear-
ing of the latter. On the whole, his thin face with
the lightish brown hair, the fine-cut features, and
the gentle glance of the grey or blue eyes leaves a
favourable impression. His most characteristic
garment is the white or light grey overcoat for
both sexes, called svitka, which is girdled by a
broad belt, and whose colour possibly gave the
country its name. The peasants don this on all
State occasions even in broiling summer days when
they receive guests or pay visits or go to church.
In winter it is worn over the sheepskin. Near the
towns, however, factory-made goods are ousting
home-spun cloths. In speech the White Russians
are nearer akin to the Little than to the Great
Russians. Where the latter use the letter / and b
in the middle of words before a consonant or at
the end of words they both use a short 2t sound.
Thus, where the Muscovite says volk (wolf), the
no PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
JNIogilyeff peasant says vouk. Unaccented o and e
become a. Thus the Hterary word for ' head '
golovd is in the White Russian dialect galavd.
Accented o, on the other hand, becomes often ou
or uo ; thus for dom (house), the White Russian
says duom. The letters t and d of the official
tongue are represented by sibilant sounds. Teecho
(quietly), for example, becomes tseecha. There is
no White Russian literature, and it is difficult to
see the cogency of the arguments advanced by
those who deplore that Great Russian alone is
taught in the schools. In Little Russia the case
is slightly different. There a literature has been
produced, small in bulk, but of fine quality. But
in both districts at the present day the speech of
the people can be considered little more than a
patois, and Imperial considerations must take
precedence of sentimental.
The huts of the White Russians are generally
isolated, and are as primitive and unornamented as
those in the forests by the White Sea. The
villages are small. One of more than a hundred
and fifty houses is very rare, and hamlets of ten, or
even five, are not infrequent. The dirty yellow
dilapidated roofs, the absence of gardens, the
wretchedly-built outhouses and hovels themselves.
WHITE RUSSIA HI
all suggest an atmosphere of poverty. The
peasants naturally seek higher pay elsewhere, and
White Russians especially are employed in the
hard, comparatively unremunerative, railway and
river work. Thus in more than one respect White
Russia is the empire's ' Ireland.' No one who has
ever read it can rid his mind of an infinitely sad
picture drawn by the poet NekrasofF of one of these
workmen bent over a shovel with sunken eyes,
bloodless lips, and feet swollen by long standing
in the water. The struggle for existence in this
country has made the inhabitants in money matters
careful and close-fisted to a degree far removed
from the free and easy generosity of the Great
Russian temperament. Intimately connected, too,
with their poverty is the besetting vice of drunken-
ness, perhaps more prevalent here than in any dis-
trict of the empire. This weakness is mercilessly
exploited by the Jews, who in many places hold in
their hands absolutely everything, and whose abuse
of their power causes one to understand, if not
sympathize with, the hostility that, together with
religious prejudice, finds expression in the pogroms.
The level of education is low. In White Russia
there are no intellectual classes. Everyone who
has passed the secondary schools seeks refuge else-
112 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
where. There are but few factories and works,
which profoundly accelerate the mental, if not
moral, development of Russian peasants, and those
that do exist are managed by Jews or Germans.
There is no single big administrative or cultural
centre, and in three Governments there is no
zemstvo. The great bulk of the landlords are
Poles, who are out of touch with, and despise, the
peasants. All these causes contribute to retard
intellectual progress.
In this backward state of the White Russians
it is natural that the economic and religious ideas
of a former age still obtain. Thus the ' big family '
system, nowhere surviving in Great Russia, is still
common here in spite of adverse conditions, such
as the impoverishment of the people and an ever-
increasing scarcity of land and difficulty in finding
work. A ' big family' sometimes comprises fifteen
adult males and thirty or even fifty members. The
head of the household, called batska by the grown-
up men and women, and dyadska by the children,
directs the common labour, controls the money,
and looks after the behaviour of the family
generally. He is the counterpart of the Servian
domachin and the Great Russian bolshak or 'big
one.' He is surrounded with marks of respect.
TEA-SELLERS AT A COUNTRY RAILWAY STATION
WHITE RUSSIA 113
At table he sits in the place of honour in the corner
under the Uwns. Before bread is broken he says
grace. At the other end of the table is the mis-
tress's place. On one side sit the women and on
the other the men, in places of seniority. The first
to eat is the master of the house, and the others
begin to eat in order after him. He plays the most
important part at festivals, especially at the times
when honour is paid to the dead. It is he who
summons their souls to the meeting, pours out wine
for them, and sets it on the window-sill for them to
quench their thirst by night. Nowadays, however,
his power is more limited than formerly. Unfair-
ness, inexperience, idleness or drunkenness, lead to
the dissolution of the family, or the transference of
the mastership to a younger member. When a
son complains of his father to the village council,
generally the father's side is taken. But often both
are punished, the son because he does not obey
orders, the father because he cannot enforce them.
To the family frequently belong the daughters'
husbands, in cases where these are poor. But this
position is not considered enviable ; a rhyming
proverb says that their portion is as the portion of
a dog. When there are sons, a daughter does not
theoretically receive land. In practice, however,
15
114 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
there is often a formal agreement, and an industrious
shrewd son-in-law comes to have as much influence
as any of the original members. Occasionally the
family adopts entire strangers through lack of work-
ing hands or capital. By bringing his property and
labour to the household, the new-comer and his
family acquire a right on its movable and im-
movable goods. In this way landless peasants
obtain land. The position of the White Russian
woman is good, unless she be a widow with young
children in an unbroken family. They have their
own private property apart from the common
wealth, the dowry, which, however, is seldom in
money, and is added to by poultry-keeping or per-
sonal work. As with the Great Russians, though
neither people is indifferent to the charms of female
beauty, marriages are settled less for romantic than
for economical reasons, less for a pretty face than
' golden hands.' They have, however, a proverb :
' Take not her who is covered with gold ; take her
who is clothed in wisdom.'
Amid all the dirt, squalor, and poverty, there is,
however, much that is attractive and even pictur-
esque. Such, for example, are the ceremonies at
the festival of Ivan Kupalo on the mysterious night
between the 23rd and 24th of June, with the pro-
WHITE RUSSIA 115
cessions, the wheels burning on high poles, and the
blazing bonfires. In many districts on the same
night honour is paid to the Rusalka, or female
Water Spirit. The young unmarried women choose
a Rusalka from their company, and also a little girl,
who is called the Rusalka's daughter. They crown
them with garlands. They also make a straw figure
in the likeness of a man. Then the Rusalka with
dishevelled hair casts off her clothes, or remains in
a shift only, and leads the band to a lonely place
singing, ' I will bring the Rusalka to the forest, but
I myself will return home. I will bring the Rusalka,
aye, to the dark forest, but I will return to my
father's court.' They gather the dry brushwood to
make a fire. Then they throw the straw figure
upon it, leap round and across the flames, and sing
the Kupalo songs. There are countless analo-
gies, such as Adonis and Astarte, to this mid-
summer pair of dieties, Kupalo and the Rusalka,
that stand for powers of vegetation and fertility
generally.
The marriage ceremonies are peculiarly intricate,
and bear distinct traces of the system of capture
as well as purchase. Thus when the matchmakers
approach the bride's parents, they inquire, after
preliminary conversation on general topics, whether
116 PROVLNCIAL RUSSIA
their hosts have a heifer to sell. If their suit is
considered favourably, they are told that there is
one for sale if there were merchants. Again, after
everything is settled, when the groom pays his
formal visit to the girl, he takes a company of his
friends and drives up noisily to her house. But
there they are at first refused entrance as if they
came on a hostile errand, and only after bargaining
and promises of ' fairing ' are the courtyard gates
opened. Of the many curious and instructive
burial customs, one or two may be mentioned here.
As the cart with the dead man's daughters sitting
weeping on the coffin passes a house, the master
of which was on bad terms with the deceased, he
comes outside, kneels on the ground, and takes up
a pinch of dust, which he shakes in direction of the
funeral, saying, ' You were a good man. This I
give to you.' That is to pacify his enemy's spirit
that he may not do him harm from his now
powerful position among the dead. In the grave
are often put tobacco, bread, and vodka, to cheer
the soul in its loneliness, and candles to light the
dark path in the other world. If the grave is
already occupied, money is put in it so that the
dead man may buy a place for himself, and not be
in danger of ejection. He takes with him also
WHITE RUSSIA 117
means for his sustenance, a carpenter his axe or a
musician his instrument.
In the Hfe of this uneducated and imaginative
people, ghosts, bogles, and spirits, naturally play an
important part. Their worst foes are the Wood-
One, with his enormous height, his loud voice, and
blazing eye, and the shaggy Water-One, with his
great beard and green hair. These, together with
all their male and female progeny, are manifesta-
tions of that Unclean Power which is ever about
the White Russian's path and about his bed, and
spieth out all his ways. In fact, to see the Devil
you have only to spit thrice in a strong wind and
say, ' Devil, Devil, show your tail !' Illnesses are
also signs of the Devil's forces. They are nearly all
personified. The fever that haunts the dwellers in
Poliesk is an ugly old woman who creeps up to the
sleeper and kisses him, and will not part from him.
But then, she may be tricked in various ways.
Once a sick man expecting her visit pretended to
be dead. He lay down under the ikons and bade
his relatives weep for him. When the fever came
and saw them weeping, she believed him dead, and
went away. You may also frighten her, for instance,
by firing a gun over the invalid, for she is a great
coward. Even after an illness has laid her hand
118 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
on a man, she may often be driven out if you adopt
bold enough measures. You may, for example,
place the sick man face downwards on the threshold,
and jump three times on his back. Death, the
other world, and transmigration of souls into stones,
animals, and so on, are regarded from a curiously
realistic standpoint. There is one White Russian
story which illustrates the folly of extravagant
lamentation over the dead. Once there died a
girl whom her mother loved dearly. The mother
wept long and bitterly, and desired much to see
her dead daughter. So the neighbours advised her
to go to church at night on the festival of All
Souls. She did so, and on the stroke of midnight
she saw her daughter hauUng after her with great
exertion a barrel full of tears. From that time
the mother wept no more.
In addition to the evil spirits there are others
who, if propitiated, show favour. First among
these are the House-spirits, to whom the peasants
pray : ' O Tsar Domovoi, O Tsaritsa Domovitsa,
with our little children we beg your favour to feast
with us.' Each of the outhouses is in the guardian-
ship of a kindly spirit. At every turn traces of the
worship of water, fire, and earth are evident. No
White Russian will spit into the fire, and few
WHITE RUSSIA 119
housewives will lend fire to their neighbour, lest
the luck of the home go with the embers. When
a family moves to a new house, they carry with
them ashes from the old. They take, too, a clod
of earth. As the Smolensk peasants say, ' Such
earth is useful for the health. You go to another
strange little country : there the climates are other,
there even the water for our brother can do great
harm. But strew your own little earth on the
water, and then no land can do aught.' The God-
head for the White Russian is of many persons.
St. Illya looks after the thunder, St. Eury wild
beasts and cattle, St. Froll horses, St. Nicholas
the corn-lands. A peasant was asked as to the
number of persons in the Godhead. He replied :
' God knows how many Gods there are. The chief,
we must suppose, is one, and Jesus Christ is his
son. But the Holy Spirit is not God, but God's
spirit.'
Wise men and women possess great power in
the lonely villages among the marshes and forests.
They are generally people who live in some
isolation, such as millers. They have given their
souls to the Devil. The peasants show them great
respect, forbearing even to mention their names
among themselves. One may know a wizard as
120 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
follows : Take a bit of the cheese which is eaten
before Easter, and carry it in a little bag under the
armpit all through the Fast. Then at the Easter
midnight service, when the priest proclaims,
' Christos voskress '—that is to say, ' Christ has
risen ' — you must whisper after the pope, ' 1 have
cheese,' whereupon all the wizards in the church
will come up and ask for it. Only it is not wise to
give it to them.
Conditions are changing fast in White Russia.
Year by year decreases the number of those old-
fashioned villages, where there is neither samovar
nor kerosine, and where no one can read or write.
The people are becoming conscious of the need
and benefits of education. And though there is
still much ignorance and wretchedness, one may feel
assured that as the draining of the marshes has
expelled those agues and fevers which made the
White Russian prematurely an old man, so the
constant multiplication of schools will effect, in
the not distant future, a steady progress in
material and intellectual development, and enable
this part of the Russian race to occupy a higher
place than it does at present in the national life.
A DANCE IN LITTLE RUSSIA
VIII
LITTLE RUSSIA
To the south and south-east of White Russia he
the three Governments of TchernigofF, Poltava,
and KharkoiF, which constitute the romantic and
fascinating country known as ' Little Russia,' a
country where, as Count Aleksai Tolstoy wrote
with glowing enthusiasm, ' everything breathes of
plenty, where the rivers flow brighter than silver,
where the gentle steppe wind rustles the grasses,
and the farm buildings are lost in cherry groves.'
The name originated in the fourteenth century to
distinguish the land round KiefF from the Great
Russia, whose centre was JNloscow. The other
title given to this district, the Ukraine, means
properly ' the border,' or ' the frontier,' a term one
might have expected to accompany the expansion
of Russian territory in every direction, but as-
sociated once for all with Little Russia, which was
for centuries the border with Poland. The popu-
lation of the three Governments numbers nearly
121 ]6
122 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
eight millions, and the density is considerably
greater than is the average rural district in the
rest of the empire. In the course of their history
the Little Russians have become blended with
Mongolian and Turkish stocks, not only through
the women seized in Cossack forays, but also by
the peaceful absorption, at an early date, of settlers,
left by the nomadic peoples on the steppe. But
here also, as in Great Russia, it is the Slav blood
that predominates.
In appearance and character the Little Russians
present many interesting points of contrast vdth
their Northern kinsfolk. They are less muscular
and massively built, but more finely proportioned
and taller. The average Little Russian has grey
or brown eyes and brown hair, which in old times
was shaved off, with only one long lock left on the
crown. This gave rise to the Great Russian nick-
name ' tufts,' to which the Little Russian retaliated
with the epithet ' goats,' in allusion to the flowing
Muscovite beard. But nowadays the tuft and the
long drooping moustaches are seldom seen except
in out-of-the-way villages. A holiday crowd in
Little Russia is marked by gay and harmonious
colours. The men are clad in flaming red trousers
and blue fhupan, or coat, the women in green
LITIXE RUSSIA 123
woollen jackets, which are sleeveless and orna-
mented with bright patterns of checkwork. The
width of the men's trousers still faintly recalls the
days when they were 'as broad as the Black
Sea.'
The Little Russian character is not marked by
the energy, the practical shrewdness, the enormous
vitality, of the North. There is something less
vigorous and softer in it which corresponds with
the milder southern skies. The very movements,
except in the dance, are slow, and even lazy. No
more typical Little Russian scene can be imagined
than a peasant pacing languidly and leisurely along
the steppe road by a hayladen cart drawn by musk-
coloured oxen and urging them sleepily on — ' Tsob-
Tsob-Tsobdy.' When he listens to a humorous story
that would send the Great Russian into fits of
hearty laughter, not even the tips of his moustaches
tremble. In the absence of real strength of will is
often met an unreasoning obstinacy. To family
bliss or misfortune the Little Russian is peculiarly
sensitive. He loves to sit with a neighbour over a
bottle of vodka and philosophize tearfully on the
mysteries and troubles of life. In grit and resolu-
tion the women are much superior to the men.
They figure abnormally high in the list of criminals.
124 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
They are frequently the heads of famihes. Formal
divorce is hardly known yet in Little Russia, but
in such cases the female is hardly ever the wronged
or downtrodden party. Anyone at all familiar
with this country must be struck by the force of
character in the women's faces. Their general
position is one of remarkable freedom. Over a
large part of the country the married women set
aside Mondays as a day for themselves, on which
they work for their own profit, have parties, or
sew a dowry for their daughters. In the choice of
marriage partners the young people enjoy an inde-
pendence unkno\Mi in Great Russia, and hence
there is room for a considerable degree of courtship
and romance. The parents confine themselves to
the sensible caution : * Choose a bride not with
your eyes, but with your ears.'
In religious belief nominally they are almost all
Orthodox, and this unanimity has been ascribed,
perhaps fancifully, to the persecutions suffered
under Polish rule. But as a matter of fact a
salient feature in the Little Russian character is
scepticism. House-spirits and water-nymphs inevit-
ably people the villages and shady ponds. Generally,
however, in spite of a comparatively low intellectual
standard, there is a striking absence of superstitious
LITTLE RUSSIA 125
fancies. The people attach no importance to
religious dogmatism of any kind. There are
practically no old believers and no sectarians — a
sure sign of religious indifference. For rationalistic
propaganda, however, they do not offer a fertile
field ; their nature is too dreamy and poetical.
Thus Bielinski's remarks, quoted above, while
admittedly questionable with regard to the over-
whelming majority of the Russian peasants, are
only partially true of the Little Russians.
Psychologically the most prominent feature, how-
ever, is their aesthetic taste, which stamps itself on
every aspect of Little Russian life. Its presence is
felt in their literature in a refined and restrained
imaginativeness which has no parallel in the Great
Russian works, careless as a whole of everythmg
but force and truth. It lies like a delicate bloom
over their songs. The old dumas as compared with
the northern bwilinas have less verve, less epic
dignity, less sweeping breadth. They are more
lyrical and romantic. They tell especially of the
Cossack's parting with mother or sweetheart, his
sufferings in Tartar captivity, and his longing for
home and children, and of that other hero of the
Steppe, the tchoimiak, or caravaner, who went for
salt and fish to the Black Sea and the Sea of Asofi
126 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
facing sand-storm and snow-storm, aroused every
morning by cockcrow from his first waggon, and
over whom if he died on the sohtary Steppe his
fellows reared a little kurgan. Among the thousands
of Little Russian songs, somebody has said there
are few that would make a young girl blush and
many that would make her weep. The naive
sentimentality of this remark — the critic was surely
a Russian or at least a Slav — contains a large
measure of truth. Most of these airs indeed are
melancholy, full of an unsatisfied indefinable craving
for something beyond mortal reach, and a tender
sorrow, whose expression, however, has in it more
of conscious art and less of the real human suffering
that chokes the songs of the Great Russians. The
dumas can be heard no longer. The race of old
blind kobzars — the kobza was like a guitar — have
passed away for ever, just as the singers of the
bwilina. In both cases, however, a large proportion
of their themes has been rescued by antiquarian re-
search. The place of the kobzars is now taken by
Urniki, who enliven the horse fairs with more recent
compositions or satirical ditties on the events of
the day.
But the aesthetic temperament of the Little
Russians is seen also in their material surroundings
LITTLE RUSSIA 127
and ordinary life. From this source springs their
pleasure in pacing up and down their gardens,
dreamily admiring the sunset or the cherry
blossom. These charming gardens, full of cherry,
apple, and pear trees, are frequent in every village,
and sometimes they enclose even apricot-trees and
vines. Amid their bright whites and reds stands
the hut with its trim straw roof and walls of plaited
wickerwork covered by a thick layer of light-
coloured clay. Some villages are composed of both
Great and Little Russian houses, and no more
glaring contrast can be imagined. Quite foreign
to the Little Russian taste are their neighbour's
untidiness, sameness, and dirt, and the whole spirit
reflected in the Scottish proverb, ' the clartier, the
cosier.' The interior of the izba is as clean as the
outside. The floor, walls, ceiling, and stove are of
evenly-moulded clay, and all shine spotlessly white.
There are lines of ikons, for, however indiff'erent to
their religious signification, the Little Russians love
the black and gold colours of these ' gods.' Gaily
patterned towels hang round the room, and the
shelves are bright with crockery. On the window-
sill are flower-pots. The table is invariably covered
with a white cloth, on which is a loaf, or at least a
crust of bread. Many houses have a ' but ' as well
128 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
as a ' ben.' Life is not so easy now as in the days
when Count Tolstoy was struck by its atmosphere
of plenty. Land is scarce. Masses of the people
have emigrated to settlements in Siberia. On the
whole, however, conditions are comfortable, and
rarely is the summer table set without the favourite
dishes of pork and fruit. Very different are the
salt steppes of the Kalmucks, where, as the saying
goes, even the bug is food.
Little Russia lies on a gentle slope which
descends towards the marshes of Poliesk in the west
and the steppes in the south. Like the Central
Black-earth districts, it comprises three divisions :
the wooded uplands of Tchernigoff to the Diesna,
thence forest-steppe to the Vorskla, and south of
that river the steppes proper. In the third region
the climate is continental, but in the northern
districts the winter, though long, is not severe, and
there are frequent thaws, while the summer, for all
its drought and heat, is yet neither leaden or burden-
some. The charm of its lazy fragrant sleepiness is
reflected with poetic sympathy, exquisite colour,
and unexaggerated fidelity, in the opening passage
of Gogol's first story ;
' How intoxicating, how luxurious is a summer
day in Little Russia ! How languishingly hot are
I
^ -^v.
BLESSING THE GROUND BEFORE SOWING : LITTLE RUSSIA
LITTLE RUSSIA 129
those hours when midday shimmers in quiet and sul-
triness, and the blue immeasurable ocean of the sky,
bent vault-like and voluptuously over the earth,
seems to be asleep ! All steeped in passion he
clasps his beautiful one in close aery embrace.
There is no cloud on him, no murmur on the
plain — everything is as it were dead. Only above
in the depths of heaven a lark trembles, and its
silvery song flies down aerial steps to the enchanted
earth, and from time to time the cry of a gull, and
the clear note of a quail is echoed over the steppe.
Lazy, with never a thought — like aimless revellers
— stand the cloud-piercing oaks, and the blinding
strokes of the sunbeams illumine whole marvellous
masses of leaves, while on others they fling a
shadow dark as night, so that only in strong gusts
of wind will they shiver with gold. Like emeralds,
topazes, and sapphires, ethereal insects float over
the many-coloured gardens shaded by the stately
sun -flowers. Grey ricks of hay, and golden
stooks of wheat, are set together as in camps
over the cornland, or wander like nomads over
its immensity. Broad boughs of cherry, plum,
apple, and pear trees, bent under the weight of
their fruits ; the sky and its bright mirror ; the
river, in green proudly-raised frame — how full of
17
]30 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
tenderness, of abandonment, is the Little Russian
summer !'
The country is poor in mineral wealth, which
is not found nearer than the basin of the Don.
But for agriculture, nothing could equal the de-
cayed vegetable matter, known as black earth,
which covers, with a thick layer of several feet,
a dangerous subsoil of loose sand. Clover and
lucerne attain astonishing heights, and single
stalks of hemp stretch up for twenty feet. The
peasants fear Httle save the visitations of locusts,
and the spring floods that sometimes wash away
wide tracts of plough-land and leave gaping
ravines in the fields. Isolated from the village
are the khutors, or farms, surrounded by thick
gardens with scores of hives, for in Little Russia
the bee is almost a household pet. Round about
range sheep-pens and cattle-sheds — the field work
is done almost entirely with oxen. And beyond
them, and as far as the eye can reach, is a waving
sea of yellow corn. The villages, on the other
hand, lie for the most part by winding silvery
rivers or long dreamy lakes, whose banks in spring
are covered with endless beds of crocuses and
hyacinths. In the glamour of still summer even-
ing the Ukraine is extraordinarily beautiful. It
LITTLE RUSSIA 131
pervades Pushkin's ' Poltava ' with a magic charm.
The straw roofs shine Uke gold, and the walls like
silver; the reaches of the river gleam under the
moonlight, and the air is balmy and steeped in
the scents of flowers and cornland. With the
passage which I have quoted above, describing a
sultry noon, may be compared another from the
same inexhaustible gallery, where the unerring
sureness of touch makes one vividly conscious of
the fragrance and freshness of late evenings ;
' Do you know the Ukraine night ? Oh, you do
not know the Ukraine night? Gaze upon it!
From the middle of the sky the moon looks
round her; the infinite dome of heaven spreads
out and stretches itself still more infinite; it
glows and draws breath. All the earth is in
silver light ; wonderful is the air, at once cool and
sultry and full of softness, and setting in move-
ment a tide of fragrance. O night divine ! En-
chanting night! The woods stand motionless and
fascinated, full of gloom and flinging far their
gigantic shadows. Quiet and calm are these
ponds ; the chill and darkness of their waters are
held grimly in the murky green walls of the
gardens. The virgin groves of hayberries and
wild cherry-trees stretch out their roots timidly
132 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
into the coolness of spring wells, and ever and
again their leaves lisp, as if angry and protesting
when that fair fickle courtier, the night breeze,
steals up in a flash and kisses them. All the land-
scape is asleep ! But above in the sky everything
is breathing ; everything is marvellous, everything
is sublime. And in one's soul, too, is illimitable
space and wonder, and crowds of graceful silver
visions rise up in its depths. O night divine !
Enchanting night! And suddenly everything
awakes, woods and ponds and steppe. The
Ukraine nightingale pours forth his swelling
music, and you fancy that the moon herself listens
entranced to him in mid-heaven. . . . Quiet, as if
bewitched, the village slumbers on the height.
Still whiter, still more beautiful in the moonlight,
shine the groups of huts ; still more blinding
do their low walls stand out of the gloom. Hushed
are all songs. Everything is at rest. Pious folks
are already asleep. Only here and there are
narrow little windows lit ; only here and there
on their thresholds is a belated family finishing
the evening meal.'
But there is one more feature of the country
about which I have said nothing. As one drives
through the cornfields on dusty, windless days in
LITTLE RUSSIA 133
autumn, when the air is laden with heavy odours,
one is conscious suddenly of a coolness in the
atmosphere. That comes from the Dnieppr.
Ere long its stream is revealed to the gaze,
stretching out as calm as the sky and as vast as
the sea, and in a moment one forgets dust and
heat and weariness. For six hundred miles this
historic and magnificent river forms the Eastern
boundary as it flows toward the Black Sea from
its marshy source in northern AVhite Russia.
In the parching steppes it would be hard to con-
ceive anything more impressive. One feels no
surprise that it has so powerfully affected the
Little Russian imagination, and inspired great
works of art — pictorial like those of Cuindji, or
literary like this sublime passage of Gogol, where
enthusiasm can scarcely contain itself :
' Wonderful is the Dnieppr in calm weather,
when his brimming flood moves freely and
smoothly through the woods and hills. He does
not ripple ; he does not roar. You look and you
do not know whether liis majestic breath is moving
or not ; and you fancy that he is all a sheet of
glass, or that it is a blue mirror-like road of im-
measurable breadth and endless length that flows
winding over the green world. Pleasant, then, is it
134 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
for the hot sun to gaze from the heights and
plunge his rays into the coohiess of the glassy
waters, and pleasant, too, for the woods on the
banks to be imaged brightly in the stream. The
woods with their green wavy branches ! They
crowd together, along with the field flowers, at the
edge of the water, and bending over gaze into it
and have never their fill of gazing, never their fill
of delight in their own bright reflection ; they
smile to it and greet it, nodding their boughs.
But in the midstream of the Dnieppr they dare
not look ; into that nothing peers save the sun and
the blue sky ; few are the birds that fly to the
midstream of the Dnieppr. Glorious river ! There
is no river like him in the world.
' Wonderful, too, is the Dnieppr on a warm
summer night, when everything is lulled to sleep,
man and beast and bird, and God alone majestically
surveys heaven and earth, and majestically makes
His raiment to shake. From it are the stars
poured, the stars that blaze and gleam over the
world, and that all are reflected in the Dnieppr,
every one together. Every one the Dnieppr holds
in his dark breast ; not one escapes him, save only
it be extinguished in heaven. The dark wood
strung with sleeping ravens, and the hoary
LITTLE RUSSIA 135
shattered hills that overhang him, strain every
effort to hide him if but by their long shadow — in
vain ! There is nothing in the world that could
cover the Dnieppr. Blue, blue he flows with
even flood through the night as through the
day, visible as far as human eye can see.
Shrinking delicately from the cold of night he
hugs the banks, and there gleams a silver stream
that flashes as the blade of a Damascus sword, and
then once more his blue waves fall asleep. Then
too wonderful is the Dnieppr, and there is no such
river in the world.'
IX
THE STEPPE
In the south of Little Russia commence the grassy-
treeless plains that stretch to the Black Sea and the
Caspian, and that from the dawn of history have
formed a pasture-ground for the flocks of nomad
peoples. Over their unbroken expanses have
wandered in succession Scythians, Sarmatians,
Goths, Hunns, Khasars, and at last, about the
sixth century of our era, came settlers, certain
Slavonic tribes that moved down the Western
rivers, some of whom burnt while others buried
their dead. But almost from the beginning these
were exposed to the constant raids of light-mounted
Turkish nomads, and later on a more formidable
race named Polovtsi. The old chronicles reflect
with a certain bald grimness the dangers and
difficulties that surrounded the colonist's life. ' In
spring the peasant will ride out to plough, and the
Polovtchin will come, strike the peasant with an
arrow, take his horse, then ride into the village,
136
A CIRCASSIAN
THE STEPPE 137
seize his wife and children and his goods, and set
fire to barn and all.' Under this endless and hope-
less struggle the steppes became gradually depopu-
lated. The settlers fled to the north behind
barriers of natural and artificial fortifications, and
only a few oases were left along the rivers of the
Donet's basin. The desolation was completed by
the Tartars. What remained of the population
sought refuge in Muscovite Russia and the banks
of the Vistula. The country became once more
empty save for JNIongoHan watch-fires.
The recolonization of the western steppes was
the immediate result of the social and religious
oppression inflicted on their Russian subjects by
Lithuania, and especially Poland. To escape from
serfdom, the peasants fled in masses toward the
uninhabited prairie, and in that rich but disturbed
country the peculiar conditions of Hfe bred a
race of soldier-settlers. To these was given the
Tartar name of ' Cossack,' which means, strictly,
mounted guerilla troops. At the same time down
the Don and the Volga, moved the discontented
elements of Great Russia. All these formed armed
bands that moved out into the steppe, and engaged
in fishing, cattle-breeding, and agi-iculture. Thanks
to them, the southern frontiers became more
18
138 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
secure. But in both districts the Governments
pressed hard in their track. From the sixteenth
century, Moscow began a systematic colonization
of the steppe ; and repressive measures had to be
adopted to prevent the peasants flocking south-
ward on their own accord, as the Cliinese at the
present day pour into Manchuria, threatening to
' celestiahze ' Vladivostock itself. Towards the
west, colonization was due only indirectly to the
Polish Government. Enormous tracts of the
recovered land were granted to great seigneurs,
who settled them with their serfs, promising these
twenty or thirty years of absolute freedom. But
the new inhabitants came into conflict with their
predecessors, and the result was to send the free
Cossack ever farther into the steppe, and to open
ever wider districts of its fertile plain to the
plough.
In the borderland between Slav and Turk, the
Cossacks succeeded in forming free and powerful
republics, in which the military features became
accentuated. Their ranks were constantly swelled
by peasants, debtors from higher classes, broken
men whose lives were forfeit, and lovers of fighting,
booty, and freedom. ' The Tsar,' said one of their
proverbs, ' rules at Moscow, and the Cossack on the
\
CIRCASSIANS DRILLING
THE STEPPE 139
Don.' But the more civilized the empire became,
the sharper was the contrast with the lawless
braves of the steppe. Not only did their raids on
Turk and Tartar cause bloody reprisals and
diplomatic difficulties with the Sultan, but also
they turned not infrequently against the Slavs
themselves. Moscow, while all the time expand-
ing through their service, now avowed them
allies and brothers, now, when convenient, swore
that they were subjects of the Turk. As the land
became ever more settled, the points of difference
became acuter, and at last the turbulence and
dissatisfaction of the Cossacks found vent on a
grand scale in the rising of Stenka Razine. To
this day his name is enshrined with a magical halo
in the songs of the Don that, together with
reminiscences of Turkish forays and the capture of
AzofF, tell of how he crossed the air on a carpet of
felt, and changed into a fish to swim the Volga.
Not till the time of Peter the Great were decisive
measures taken for the pacification of the Don.
Ten thousand Cossacks were then deported to the
Ural and the Caucasus. In the Ukraine, at an
early date, the Polish King endeavoured to
introduce an invidious system of registration. Six
thousand men were to receive pay, and be em-
140 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
ployed as irregular forces, while the rest were to
be made once more serfs. This measure roused a
storm of wrath among the Cossacks, and from that
time their bickerings and chequered warfare with
the kingdom to the west never ceased. When
defeated, Poland, agreed to enormous augmenta-
tions of the numbers of the free Cossacks ; but
occasionally she was victorious. Finally, in the
seventeenth century, the Cossack hetmen appealed
for protection to the Orthodox Tsar. Moscow
acceded readily. The Cossack army was to be
maintained at a strength of six hundred thousand
men. They were to elect their own hetmen, and
have full powers of local administration and
receive foreign ambassadors, except from Poland
and Turkey. But these new relations proved
no more satisfactory than the old ; and after
Mazeppa's defection to the Swedes, though the
mass of the Cossacks declared for the Tsar, Peter
took the opportunity of curtailing their dangerous
power. The Dnieppr Cossacks were banished to
the Crimea, as the Don to the Caucasus. Under
Anne they were allowed to return to their old
home, but they found the changed and settled
country sadly dull. It was not suited for them,
nor they for it. Catharine took their stronghold.
THE STEPPE 141
confiscated their lands, and once more expelled
them. The Ukraine became an integral part of
Russia. With the annexation of the Crimea, their
peculiar position in the European part of the
empire was an anachronism. Among the Cossack
communities in Southern Russia to-day, some of
the former features still obtain. They provide
horses and accoutrements for their military service
at their own expense, but are not liable to direct
taxation. JMuch of the old social equality is
retained to the present day in the villages down the
River Ural, where at the beginning of the fishing
season mounted pickets are stationed along the
banks to keep off not only poachers, but also
children whose cries might frighten the fish. But
it is especially on the southern frontier of Siberia,
and as far east as the Amoor, that the Cossack life
most nearly resembles the old conditions, and breeds
a rude, vigorous race, admirably adapted for out-
post duties and guerilla warfare.
Of all the Cossack bands none have equalled in
fame or exploits the Ukraine Zaporoztians, or
Cossacks ' beyond the rapids ' of the Dnieppr. In
that remote and secure position they entrenched
themselves on one of the islands scattered below
the shelving ridges of rock that break the smooth
142 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
surface of the river. This fortified place, or Setch
— the word is connected with zasieka, a forest
clearing for military purposes — they changed al-
together eight times. Men who cared for nothing
else in the world had a filial regard for their Setch.
When expelled by Peter and Catharine they took
a clod of her earth to their new home, and when-
ever they rode out on forays or set sail in their
pirate craft to swoop down on merchant vessels or
harry seaboard towns in the Black Sea, all the
Zaporoztians turned round before they were out
of sight of the Setch and said : ' Farewell, our
mother! May God keep you from all misfortune!'
In war-time their ataman had power of life and
death over his troops, but the Setch itself was hke
a great free repubhc or, as Gogol says, ' a close ring
of schoolboy friends.' ' The difference was only in
this, that instead of sitting under the rule and
rubbishy instructor of a schoolmaster, they made
raid after raid on five thousand horses ; instead of
the meadow where schoolboys play at ball, they
had infinite free expanses, where in the distance the
swift-moving Tartar would show his head and the
Turk glance stern and motionless in his green
tcha/m.' In the constant expeditions from this
island stronghold there is not lacking the religious
<?^. s^i
RETURNING FROM A HUNT IN THE CAUCASUS
THE STEPPE 143
note that runs like a coloured thread through all
Russian history. Against Catholic, Mohammedan,
and Jew, the Cossacks were a kind of Monastic
Order that fought as defenders of the Faith. In
election to the brotherhood the only questions
asked of the newcomer were whether he believed
in Christ and the Holy Trinity, and whether he
belonged to the Orthodox Church ; the only request
made was that he should sign himself with the Cross.
Life in the Setch was full of a rich barbaric colour ;
there were companies lodged apart and jealous as
houses in a public school, rough conceptions of
knightly honour, heroic drinking, sudden alarums
of Tartar raids, elections of atamans, anointed with
mud, terrible punishments for theft or murder,
where the living were buried together with the
dead ; there were horses and boats, dirt and rags
and breeches of gorgeous purple, smeared ostenta-
tiously with tar. But there was nothing more
interesting than the men themselves, none of whom
died a natural death, many cruel desperadoes,
many wild spirits that found pleasure only in fight-
ing, many that knew ' what Horace was, and Cicero
and the Roman repubUc. . . . Lovers of a life of
arms, of golden goblets, rich brocades, ducats and
reals could at all times find work here. Here only
144 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
worshippers of women could find nothing, for even in
the neighbourhood of the Setch not a single woman
dared appear.' There is a fine picture by Repin
of their composing a scurrilous message to the
Polish King, and an immortal story by Gogol, which
\\dth unflagging spirits and a freshness and large-
ness, a vibrating sympathy and splendour of lan-
guage hardly to be found outside Homer, describes
the festival life in the Setch and the prowess of
her stalwart sons abroad.
Not all the steppes — the Russian is pronounced
styaip — are rich lands of black earth. There are
wide expanses of sand, as at the mouth of the
Dnieppr, and salt, as in the country north of the
Crimea, and clay, as in the plains bordering the Cas-
pian. In the fertile steppes, too, where the villages
lie in ravines along the small rivers that are like
Syrian wadies, the soil is gradually drying up.
' When man comes,' there is a saying, ' water goes.'
It is this last type of steppe whose main features
will be baldly enumerated here. In appearance it
is practically the same as the veldt or the prairie,
but scenery is largely looked at with the mental as
well as the physical eye, and the steppe appeals to
one with a force which neither the prairie nor even
the veldt can exercise. It is indeed intimately con-
THE STEPPE 145
nected with the Russian history and literature.
For miles in certain parts the level is strewn with
bleached skulls that are the sole record of forgotten
battles. You can see them from the train to
Astrakhan lying in countless numbers like white
stones. And to its fascination are due some of the
finest word-pictures in the Russian language, like
those of Gogol, or LevitofF, or Koltsoff, the Russian
Burns, who, as a boy, herded cattle on the steppe.
Characteristic of his work is a poem where a mower-
lad sings of these boundless plains in their virgin
beauty, of the scythe swishing through the swaths
of grass, while the south wind blows cool in his face.
From their even floor from time to time rise kur-
gans, some old forts or watch-places, others the
barrows of nomad chieftains, such as ride through
VasnietsofF's canvases. Many of these have yielded
valuable finds of an art influenced by Greek culture,
and the steppe shepherds sometimes spend days on
them in search of buried treasure, while their flocks
dot the brown steppe white. And one will not drive
far before meeting one of those curious figures, which
the peasants call ' stone women,' made of stone not
found nearer than four hundred miles, with their
faces turned invariably to the east. Whoever left
them, they have grown accustomed, one fancies, to
19
146 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
the lonely steppe. Many of them have been taken
to adorn khutor gardens, but it needs ten strong
bulls to tear them away and bring them to the
farm, while a single yoke can convey them back.
Superstitious peasants carry their sick children to
them, kneel and embrace them, and offer wheat ears
and kopecks. They and the kurgans alone break
the expanse of the steppe. The roads are enor-
mously wide, often hundreds of feet, and from them
break off others that run mysteriously toward some
village or kJmtor, hidden under the horizon, or lose
themselves in the vastness.
At the present day little of the steppe remains
virgin. But in spring it is covered with a carpet as
wonderful as that which Marlowe saw spread under
the Eastern conqueror's chariot-wheels. Amid the
green growth are plants with bright flowers like
poppies that colour broad distances red, blue, or
yellow ; and then, except that the grasses are lower,
the steppe is for all the world like what it was when
Taras Bulba and his sons rode through it, with
their black Cossack hats alone seen above the
verdure on their way to the Setch :
' The farther they went, the more beautiful be-
came the steppe. At that time all the south, all that
expanse which is now New Russia, right up to the
THE HUNT FOR A PRISONER
THE STEPPE 147
Black Sea, was a green virgin wilderness. Never
had plough passed over the immeasurable waves of
wild growth ; only the horses, hidden in it as in a
wood, trampled it down. Nothing in Nature could
be finer. The whole surface of the earth was a
green-gold ocean splashed with millions of different
coloured flowers. Through the thin high stalks of
grass twinkled blue and lilac cornflowers, and the
yellow broom spread forth its spiry crest ; the pale
milfoil variegated the surface with its parasol-like
leaves ; an ear of wheat, carried Heaven knows
whence, was burgeoning amid the profusion of wild
plants. Partridges, protruding their necks, pecked
under the delicate roots. The air was full of a
thousand different bird-notes. In the sky poised
hawks, unmoving on outspread wings, and fixing
unmoving eyes on the grass. The cry of a cloud of
wild geese flying in the distance was echoed in
God knows what distant mere. From the grass a
gull rose with measured flight and bathed luxuri-
ously in the blue waves of the air. There, she has
soared up to the heights, and only twinkles like a
black spot. There, with a turn of her wings, she
flashes in the sun. . . . Deuce take you, steppes,
how fine you are !'
By the middle of June, however, moisture fails,
148 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
and the appearance of the steppe changes. The gay
colours disappear, the grass becomes brown or
blackish -grey. The brilliant poppies and cornflowers
are replaced by weeds or plants that need less water,
such as the sage and feather gi-ass. The earth dries
up and cracks, and the air is full of thin dust raised
by the burning wind. Only at the time of the
autumn rains does the steppe revive again, but then
there are not the rich hues of spring. Yet even in
the oppressive days of summer, when there is no
wind, nor cloud, nor noise, the steppe is never with-
out its melancholy beauty. Here lies a strip of
green sedge amid the scorched brown grass, there is
a solitary tree. One is absolutely alone : only rarely
is there a line of waggoners or a mounted Nogai
Tartar on a kirghiz aul with the circular, dome-
shaped yu7't of slender wooden rods covered with
thick felt. The distance is hazy and lilac-covered,
and if the sky is blue and cloudless it seems to
tremble. Or possibly — as the Russian writer loves
to depict — amid the stillness something may sud-
denly burst in the air, and a gust of wind whistle
in the steppe grass. The small scrub is torn from
the earth, and with straw and feathers caught
in a black, whirling column of dust that sweeps
ever larger and faster over the plain. Against the
THE STEPPE 149
winter winds not the strongest animal can stand.
Horses and cattle are seized by the whirlwind
and borne along, despite themselves, till their
strength is exhausted, and they fall panting to
the ground. They sometimes die in such storms
in thousands.
In summer nights the darkness falls quickly.
Toward the Black Sea the closed salt limcuis, or
river mouths, gleam with a phosphoric light.
Nights spent on the steppe, in whatever weather,
leave an unforgettable impression, whether in
winter, when one waits at a desolate post-station
till a storm abates, or in summer, when one drives
under the moon on such a night as TchekhofF
has pictured in his story, ' On the Steppe ' :
' In July evenings and nights the cries of quails
and corncrakes are no longer heard, the nightingales
no longer sing in the bushy hollows, there is no
longer the fragrance of flowers ; but none the less
the steppe is still beautiful and full of life. Scarce
does the sun set and darkness wrap the earth, ere
the day's weariness is forgotten and everything
forgiven and the broad-bosomed steppe draws easy
breath. As if because it does not see its age in
the gloom, the grass raises a gay, youthful rustling,
which you do not hear during the day ; rustling,
150 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
whistling, crackling, the basses, tenors, and trebles
of the steppe — all are blended in a continuous
monotonous sound which makes it good to re-
member and be melancholy. Its unvaried music
lulls you like a cradle-song ; you drive on and feel
yourself falling asleep, but then from somewhere
or other is borne to you the broken, alarmed cry
of a wakeful bird, or a vague sound like a human
voice : a kind of wondering ' ah-ah !' is wafted
abroad, and your doziness flies away for ever.
And sometimes you drive past a dell with shrubs,
and you hear the bird that the steppe people call
the 'sleeper' crying out to somebody or other,
' Sleep, sleep, sleep '; and another one laughs or
bursts into hysterical wailing — that is the owl.
God knows for whom they cry and who hears
them on that plain, but their cry is full of melan-
choly and complaint. There is the smell of hay
and scorched grass and faded flowers, and the
smell is heavy, luscious, and sweet.
' Through the mist you discern everything, but
it is difficult to define colour and outline. Every-
thing seems different from what it really is. As
you drive on, you spy all at once standing in front
by the side of the road a silhouette like a monk ; he
does not stir, he waits and holds something in his
INTERIOR OF A SIBERIAN PRISONERS* WAGGON
THE STEPPE 151
hands. Is that a robber ? The figure nears and
grows ; there, it is even with tlie carriage, and
you see that it is not a man at all, but a solitary-
bush or great stone. Such motionless expectant
figures stand erect on the ridges, or cower behind
the kurgans, or peep out of the steppe grass, and
they are all like people, and inspire suspicion.
' But when the moon rises, the night becomes
pale and dark. As for mist, it is as though it had
never been. I'he air freshens, and is transparent
and warm. You can see clearly in every direction.
You can even distinguish the separate stems of
grass by the road. For a long distance you can
mark white skulls and stones. Suspicious figures
like monks seem darker and look more threatening
in the light background of the night. Oftener and
oftener amid the monotonous rustling of the grass,
something's astonished ' Ah-ah !' startles the still air,
and you hear the cry of a wakeful or dreaming
bird. Broad shadows sweep over the steppe as
clouds over heaven, and if you look long at the
mysterious distance, misty, wonderful forms rise up
there, and are piled one on the other It is a little
eerie. But you glance at the pale green star-
spangled sky, on which is neither cloud nor blot,
and you understand why the warm air is still, why
152 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
Nature is on guard and fears to stir ; she grieves
and rues to lose but a moment of life. Only at
sea and on the moonlit-steppe is it possible to judge
of the infinite depth and immensity of the sky. It
looks down caressingly with a strange, tired,
beautiful glance, and beckons to itself, and that
caress makes your head giddy.
* You drive on an hour or two. . . You come
unexpectedly on a silent old man kurgan or a
stone woman, set up God knows by whom or
when ; a night-bird flies noiselessly over the earth,
and little by little the legends of the steppe, the
tales of chance-met travellers, the stories of your
steppe nurse, recur to the memory and all that you
yourself have seen or imagined in your soul. And
then in the hum of insects, in the suspicious figures
and kurgans, in the blue sky and the moonhght,
in the flight of a night-bird, in everything you see
and hear — you begin to feel the triumph of beauty,
to feel youth and the bloom of strength and a
passionate thirst for life ; the soul responds to that
beautiful sad country, and longs to fly over the
steppe with the night-bird. And in the triumph
of beauty, in the excess of happiness, you feel a
tension and a yearning, as if the steppe were
A KIRGHIZ WOOING
THE STEPPE 153
conscious that it was alone, that its richness and
inspiration perish to no purpose for the world,
sung by nobody, heeded by nobody, and through
the gay rustling you hear its anguished despairing
cry for a singer, a singer !'
20
X
THE CRIMEA
In form the Crimea is a rough parallelogram
attached to the mainland at the top right-hand
corner with a second smaller parallelogram pro-
jecting from the bottom of the same side. It is
divided by a wall of hills into two distinct parts.
Of these the northern is much the larger part, and
is closely connected with the steppes beyond the
Perekop Isthmus. The southern portion, on the
other hand, is a narrow stretch of seaboard, by
history, physical nature, and climate quite different
from the rest of European Russia. But since the
incorporation of the peninsula in the empire in
1783, this second division has played such a note-
worthy part in Russian life, and its scenery, like
that of the Caucasus, laid such a powerful hold on
Russian imagination, that while Lithuania and
Esthonia, Poland and Finland, must be in the
present work sacrificed to considerations of space,
it would seem unjustifiable to pass over the Crimea.
154
THE CRIMEA 155
Nearly the whole country is now Russianized, but
the bulk of the population is still Tartar. Great
numbers emigrated to Turkey immediately after
the annexation, and also during the Sebastopol
campaign, when in the Perekop district alone of
three hundred villages there remained only deserted
djurts.
The steppes in the north with their continental
climate, their rich spring colours, their clouds of
dust, and burnt, cheerless, appearance in summer,
have httle to distinguish them from the steppes in
Russia proper. They contain numerous salt lakes,
but few fresh-water wells or streams. Towards
the north and east the inhabitants of more than
fifty villages, mostly Tartar shepherds, collect the
spring rain-water in shallow pits called auts for use
throughout the rest of the year, when the rivulets
from the north slope of the hills become dry.
There are, however, numerous artesian wells in
the Eupatoria district and by the lagoon of the
Sivash, or Rotten Sea, across which on a string of
islands runs the railway from the mainland. Its
low foul-smelling shores are bare of vegetation, and
after stormy weather, when the east winds drive
the waters before them, form broad expanses of
slimy mud. A few swans, peHcans, and gulls,
156 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
breed on its islands, but in general it is dreary and
lifeless : both birds and fish are rare. Into it flows
the Salter, the only large stream in the Crimea,
which in winter is a foaming torrent but in summer
little more than a succession of pools. On the
seaward side the Sivash is enclosed by a narrow
strip of land about eighty miles long and varying
in breadth from four miles to a quarter of a mile.
This is called the Arabatsk Point. Along it,
passing a few scattered forms, is the road that leads
to Genichesk, where it joins the mainland, and
farther north to MeHtopol. This narrow level
between two seas is a well-known place for ob-
serving mirages.
In minerals, apart from iron in the Kertch
peninsula, the Crimea is not rich, but salt is
obtained in large quantities from the numerous
lakes that lie along its northern shores, separated by
long low sandbars from the Black Sea and the Sea
of AzofF. Where these lakes are fed by streams,
their beds are covered by layers of mud brought
down in the spring floods. The mud consists
largely of vegetable matter, whose peculiar chemical
qualities make it efficacious for the treatment of
such diseases as scrofula, gout, or tuberculosis.
This cure was employed by the Tartars, who dug
THE CRIMEA 157
a hole in the dried bottom of the lake into which
they put the invalid, covering him except for his
head with the freshly exposed mud. The method
followed at the present day is substantially the
same. The invalid is sunk into his mud bath and
left for about twenty minutes with an umbrella
sheltering his head from the hot sun. Then he is
washed with warm water and carried back to his
room, where he sweats in pools and will drink as
much as ten tumblers of thin lemon-flavoured tea.
The Crimean hills are of volcanic origin, and
a continuation of the Caucasus Mountains
interrupted at the narrow Strait of Kertch or
Yenikali. There are three ranges. The first of
these does not extend beyond the west part of the
peninsula, and does not rise above nine hundrea
feet. Near Simferopol it merges in the second
line, which in places attains the height of over
seventeen hundred feet above sea-level. In it
are some fine precipitous spurs, deep gorges, and
romantic wooded glens, but above all it is dis-
tinguished by isolated peaks, such as the pyramid
of Tepe-Kermen that rises abruptly from the
gardens three miles south of Baktchi-Sarai, or the
still more interesting cone of Mangoup-Kale that,
from the west on the Ai-Todor road, looks per-
158 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
fectly unclimbable. Its lower slope is wooded,
but above that a sheer bastion of rock stands out
precipitous against the blue sky. In medieval
times the fortress, surrounded on all sides with
walls and towers, whose ruins crown the top, must
have been wellnigh impregnable. The rock is
honeycombed with watch-posts and chambers.
This stronghold may have been constructed by
the Greeks, but more probably it was made about
the sixth century by the Goths, who retained their
hold on the Crimea more than a thousand years
after the rest of their vast empire slipped from
their grasp. As late as the seventeenth century
a Gothic people, living under the shadow of
INIangoup-Kale, was distinguished from its neigh-
bours by physical type and Germanic language.
The third division of the hills is much the highest
and finest of the three, especially on its steep
southern side. Towards the north, like the lesser
ranges, it falls in a gentle slope. From Feodosia
in the east it runs along the coast to the south-
western corner of the peninsula at Cape Fiolente,
where a monastery of St. George occupies the pro-
bable site of the Tauric temple, in which human
sacrifices were offered to the wild goddess identified
by early Greek travellers with Artemis. At their
THE CRIMEA 159
most westerly point the hills rise almost over-
hanging the seaboard, so that seen from a passing
steamer they are much foreshortened. Near the
Baidarski Gate they retreat two versts from the
sea, and this distance is gradually increased to
three versts at Kikenets, four at Limeni, six at
Yalta, and eight at Alushta. This narrow littoral,
sheltered by the hills from the north, is the
Russian Riviera.
In the third range there are no outstanding
solitary peaks as in the second. Throughout
nearly its whole extent stretch the so-called Yaila,
a fairly even summit plateau, broken only by a few
low rocky eminences. The Yaila begin above the
village of Kutchuk-Koi, and for some versts are
narrow. Over Limeni they widen to three or four
versts, and then contract again above the valley in
which Yalta lies. Beyond Nikita this plateau
reaches its greatest breadth, and extends almost to
the coast. Here it is called Babugan Yaila. Not
much farther eastwards is the highest point in the
Crimea, Roman-Kosh, which rises to about five
thousand feet above sea-level. But the finest hill
scenery lies north of Alushta. There the range
breaks into three separate branches — Karabi,
Demirdji, and Tchatyr Dagh. This last hill was
160 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
known to the Greeks as Trapezos, the Table
Mountain, and the name well suits its massive
quadrangular summit, from which precipices fall
away on every side. The Tartar name, the
Mountain of the Tent, represents with equal vivid-
ness the appearance from a distance of the white
regular walls. The fine valley between it and
Demirdji is one of the vital points in the peninsula,
and through it runs the excellent carriage road
between Simferopol and Alushta. Beyond the
little fishing village of Tuak the hills are much
lower, and split up into several chains and separate
groups. At Feodosia the main chain ceases
altogether. From that point to the middle of the
Kertch peninsula stretches level steppe, and there,
again, low hills run eastward, which geologically
belong still more closely to the Caucasus.
These ranges throughout their whole extent are
rich in admirable scenery, but much of it remains
unappreciated, for the fair weather Yalta tourists
are the last persons in the world to stray from the
bridle paths. There are countless narrow gorges
with festoons of water plants, cold, clear, hurrying
streams, waterfalls shrouded in spray, stalactite
caves and deep ravines, with precipitous walls
whiter than the snow which lingers in them late in
ROYAL PALACE, LIVADLA, CRIMEA
THE CRIMEA 161
summer. In the delightful valleys of the Alma,
Belbek, Tchornaya, and Salghir, yellow cornfields
alternate with dark green woods of beeches and
walnuts, and here and there frowning bluffs of cliff
jut out boldly from the grassy ridges. Their
romantic glens contain the finest gardens of the
Crimea, for there is no sharp break with the
steppes northward, and hence both northern and
southern floras are found in great variety and
abundance. For the most part the hills are
wooded. Oaks, pines, beeches, and cypresses grow
in profusion on the lower slopes, and the higher
are clothed with maples, ashes, elms, and pines.
The beech woods particularly are thick and close,
with frequent clumps of giants, each one of which
is more than fifteen feet in circumference. But
just as in the Urals, the Crimean forests, however
picturesque their great masses of colour appear
from a distance, oppress the traveller actually
passing through them with their silence and lifeless
monotony. Save for the jay and woodpecker, there
are no birds, and only rarely is the earth carpeted
with grasses or flowers. On the hills the climate is
more moderate than in the steppe. From half-way
through April to the end of October summer
weather prevails, balmy, without being oppressively
21
162 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
hot. Especially pleasant are the months of Sep-
tember and October, when one rainless day suc-
ceeds another, and only at midday a few rare
clouds obscure the sun. In such weather on one
of the narrow rock-autes — though these are
lamentably few — one is in an interspace of blue
world above and green world below, ' where never
creeps a cloud or moves a wind.' The winter
season is quite unlike the even thawless cold of
Russia. There are continual sudden changes from
mild days, when overcoats are a burden, to sharp
frosts with blustering gales. But in the passes,
which are called bogaz, these storms sometimes
stop communication for whole weeks on end.
On crossing the hills to the coast between Cape
Laspi and Alushta one passes immediately several
degrees farther south. It is this stretch of sea-
board that constitutes the Crimea for the average
Russian. In climate it is incomparably better than
any other place in the western half of the empire.
Its mild dryness is irresistibly suggestive of Nice
and Hyeres, and its vegetation of the country
districts round Pisa and Florence. Above seven
hundred feet the flora corresponds with that of the
Tuscan Apennines. The lower slopes are covered
with evergreens that are nowhere met with in
THE CRIMEA 16S
European Russia. But it is not so much these that
give its pecuHar colour to the south coast as the
innumerable varieties of trees in the parks and gar-
dens. Above all the dark green of the cypress strikes
the eye of the visitor from the north. But there are
also cedars, laurels, box-trees, palms, pomegranate
trees, magnolias, and olives. Every slope is full of
creeping plants, especially the wild rose and the
vine. Even in December or January but two or
three warm sunny days are needed, and fresh tender
grass appears, the buds open on the roses, and little
leaves uncurl on the oaks. In the depth of winter
at Yalta Tartar boys sell great bunches of snowdrops
and violets.
But in truth there is no winter on the south
coast of the Crimea. From time to time, indeed,
there are cold snaps with an east or west wind — the
latter is the more unpleasant, but the rarer— and at
night frosts may be registered up to twelve degrees.
Soon, however, the sun shines forth, the sky cl ears
and the snow that has lain for a day or two melts
away. As a rule, there are only nine days when
snow falls and seven when it covers the ground. No
wonder, then, that this district appeals so strongly
to Russians of delicate health, taking refuge here
from the searching cold of Petersburg or JNIoscow.
164 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
In fact, the summer weather continues with
scarcely a break the whole year through. There is
no real spring or autumn. The only distinction
between the seasons is that in the earlier part of the
year there are a few, not more than a dozen, fogs,
lasting only some minutes, and at most half an hour,
which rise from the sea to the hills, and that in the
latter part there are occasional raw days with wind
and rain. But from June to October every day is
serene and glorious, especially in the morning and
at nightfall. In the middle of the day the sun's
heat is roasting, but even in the hottest hours there
is not the sultry stifling dryness that oppresses
Russia proper, and at noon a cool sea-breeze and a
gentle shower of warm summer rain clear the air.
Perhaps the very finest time is the earlier part of
October, when everything is quiet and the sky
spotlessly blue, when there is no longer the summer
heat, and from the sea comes now not a cooling
wind, but a soft warmth. Thus for thirty weeks on
end one may count with certainty that to-morrow
will be just as delightful as to-day and yesterday.
Half the year basks in conditions which in the north
last at most only seven or eight weeks, and then not
every year.
The soil on the southern slope is mostly clayey,
THE CRIMEA 165
and hence where the cHfFs extend close to the shore
great masses of them frequently break ofF and
splash into the water. Generally the sea is very
deep, and but a little way off land the lead finds
bottom at only three himdred feet. Bathing begins
about the end of May ; for the greater part of the
coast, unfortunately, and markedly so at Yalta and
Alushta, the sea bottom is stony. The steep hill-
slopes are picturesque at every season, but especially
so in spring, with their masses of vines and straw-
berry trees, with the dark green of the moss and
fresh light green of the grasses, with the blossom of
cherries or laurels, through which ring the notes of
the birds of passage flying north. And admirable,
too, at a distance from a boat are the countless
silver threads of waterfalls leaping plumb to the
sea, spilling in the clear air their ' thousand wreaths
of dangling water-smoke.' It is this Crimean
south coast even more than the vales of Ida whose
fragrance and loveliness are mirrored in Tennyson's
' Oenone ' :
' The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen.
Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,
And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand
The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down
Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars
The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine
166 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
In cataract after cataract to the sea. . . .
And overhead the wandering ivy and vine,
This way and that, in many a wild festoon
Ran riot, garlanding the gnarled boughs
With branch and berry and flower thro"" and thro'.'
The most striking approach to this coast is by
the road from Sebastopol to Yalta, where on the
summit of the pass the grey rock-walls of the
Baidar Gate frame in a remarkable picture of
hills, slopes, woods, and sea. Through its extent
it is dotted with pretty villas shining white among
the vineyards. There are several watering-places,
in which, especially at Yalta, living is at all
times exorbitantly expensive. Quite near Yalta
is the Imperial Palace of Livadia, charming in its
gardens and unpretentious simplicity ; and also
near is the most beautiful spot in the Crimea,
the ruins of the burnt palace of Oreanda, a
fairyland of cool grottoes, marble colonnades,
wild crags, tropical vegetation, and streaming
waterfalls.
The modern capital of the Taurida Government
is Simferopol on the Salghir. Twenty miles to the
south-west in a picturesque valley lies Baktchi-
Sarai, the old residence of the Khans. It is still
quite an Eastern town, with dogs, dirt, and dancing
THE CRIMEA 167
Dervishes. The two-storied Tartar buildings,
perched above one another on the hillside, are
made of wood and wattle, smeared inside and
outside with clay. Towards the streets the walls
are blind. The noise and squalor of the town
are in startling contrast with the peaceful beauty
of the palace gardens. This is the Russian
Grenada, and especially in the moonlight the
tapering minarets and the gentle ripple of water,
whose spray falls on dark cypresses and vines,
hold the visitor in that magic fascination which
has not yet deserted Oriental cities like Bagdad,
or Bokhara, or Samarkand. The palace itself,
in spite of restorations, has retained much of its
original appearance. An air of melancholy broods
over the deserted Council Hall, the tomb marked
by simple columns and the famed Fountain of
T'ears that inspired the poignantly beautiful odes
of Mickiewicz and Pushkin.
Another interesting place is Kertch in the ex-
treme east, the ancient Panticap«um, the seat
of the Bosphoric Kings. The town is spread out
above the shore in the form of an amphitheatre.
Most of the houses are adorned with pillars and
balconies, and are built of stone. There is a
museum of considerable antiquarian importance.
168 PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
and an old church, part of which dates from the
first century. Behind the town rises tlie Mithri-
date hill, with terraces scored by excavations.
On its summit are a half-ruined tower and the
so-called ' chair of JNIithridates ' cut out roughly
in the rock, from which the Pontic King is said
to have watched the manoeuvres of his fleet.
From this point you get an admirable view of
the desolate ku7^gan-studded steppe, and the racing
firths of the Cimmerian Bosphorus.
'v^
INDEX
Ai-Toi)OR Road, 157
Aksakoff, 17, 33, 64, 83
Altai, the, 66
Alushta, 159
Amoor, 141
Anne, 140
Arabatsk Point, 156
Archangel, 21, 22
Asiatic hordes, 68
Astrakhan, 67, 68
Austrvegr, 87
Azoff, capture of, 139
Balalaika, 52
Baring, Mr., 18
Bashkirs, 63, 74, 75, 76, 82, 83, 85
Bear-hunting, 30
Belgian glass-blowers, 51
Bielaya River, 73
Bielinski, 16, 125
' Big Family ' system, 112
Bohoyavlenski, 4!)
Buddhist Formula, 67
Bulgars, 59, 60, 92
Bulgary, 59
Byzantium, 53
Cape Fiolente, 158
Casimir of Poland, 89
Caspian Sea, 69
Catharine the Great, 64, 95, 141,
142
Catharine II., 96
Chancellor, Richard, 21
Children, 15
Climate of Crimea, 163, 164, 165
Coachmen, 67
C'ossack forays, 122
republics, 13'>
Cossacks, 92, 125, 137
Crimean campaign, 23
horde, 72
Tartars, 63
de Quincey, (KJ
Unieppr, 1, 53, 91, 134, 135
Cossacks, 140
Don Cossacks, 64
Dostoyevski, 16
Driving, 34
Duma, 49, 78, 102, 104
Dvina, 21 22
Ecclesiastical history, 72
Eiducational system, 16
Emancipation, the, 107
English Colony, 22
Far East, 81
Festival of Ivan Kupalo, 114
Finnish influence, 70
' Fountain of Tears,' Simferopol,
167
Gentry, 36
German Colonies, 64
Germans, 112
' God's People,' 25
Gogol, 10, 16, 37, 128, 133, 142,
144, 145
Golden Horde, 58, (iO, 65
(iostini Door, 98
Goths, 158
169
170
PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
Government Board of Administra-
tion of Mines, 45
(ireat Russian villaj^es, 5, 7
Russians, 10, 105
Gretchonlevski Hills, Gl
Hedwig- of Poland, 106
Hertzen, 09
House-spirits, 118, 124
Ho-Yurluk, Khan, G6
Hungarian Campaign of 1849, 74
Ikons, 9, 18, 28, 50, 83, 101, 113
Imperial Household, 73
InteUigentia, 101, 102, 103, 104
Ivan the Terrible, 21, 45, 54, 58
Izbas, 5, 6, 8, 10
Jegonlevski Hills, 61
Jews, 49, 54, 91, 98, 105, 111,
112, 143
John, the much-suffering, 91
Jonkona, 54
Kalevala, 41
Kalmucks, 63,64, m, 67, 68, 128
Kara Hills, 39
Kazan, 5Q, 60
Kazanka, 58
Kertch, 167
peninsula, 160
Khans, 166
Khasar Empire, 68
Kholmogory, 22, 23
Kieff, 1, 106
Kirghiz, 66, 68, 82
Cossacks, 64
Steppes, 38, 46
Kliechevski, 88
Koltsoff, 145
KorniloiF, 94
Korolenko, 35
Kurgans, 145, 146, 152
Lapps, 28, 33
Levitoif, 145
Limenij 159
Lithuania, 137
Lithuanians, 105
Ijittle Russian songs, 126
Russians, 1, 2
Livadia, Imperial Palace of, 166
Lomonossoif Statue, 23
Lord Novgorod the Great, 92
Louis XVIII., 97
Marriage ceremonies, 27^ 115
Maygars, 74
Mazeppa, 140
Melnikoff, 60
Merejhovski, 24
Messianic Mission, 17
Mickiewicz, 167
Mines, 44, 45
Minine, Kouzma, 93, 94
Mirages, 156
Mithridate Hill, 168
Mohammedan College, Ufa, 73
Subur])S, 59
Mohammedanism, 71, 143
Monastery of St. George, 158
Mongolian invaders, 41
Mongols, 54, 57, 60, 74, 105, 122
Mordva, 78, 79, 83, 92
Mordvashanski Hills, 61
Moscow Kremlin, 93
Mud baths, 157
Muscovite Empire, 48. 89
Tsar, 66
Muscovites, or Great Russians, 1
Nekrasoff, 111
Neva, 21
Nicholas I., 94
Nievelski, Admiral, 94
Nijni Novgorod, 55, 78
Nikon, 23
Nogai Tartars, 148
Northern Lights, 35
Obshtchi Syrt, 46
October Manifesto, 104
Odessa, 96
Oka, 56
River, 3
Old Kieff, 88
INDEX
171
Olonets, 21
Oreauda, 10(5
Oriental fatalism, 18
Orientals, 80
Orthodox Church, 0, 18, 27, 72,
93, 124, 143
Russia, 17, 70
Oryol, Government of, 3
Ostrovski, 101
Pagan beliefs, 42, 77, 79
faith, 70
Pai Khoi Hills, 39
Peasant women, 11
Peasants, 12
Perm, (50
Perms, 42
Petchenegues, 90
Petchora, the, 43
Peter the Great, 10, 24, 59, 69,
139, 140, 142
Piano Kirpin, 88
Pojharski, Prince, 93, 94
Poles, 105, 112
Poliesk, 108
Polish Government, 124, 138
influence, 106
oppression, 137
Political franchise, 20
Polovtsi, 136
Pontri Steppes, 96
Pugatchoff's Cossacks, 58
Pushkin, 10, 130, 131, 167
Quiau-Mahmet-Khan, 58
Rambaud, M., 53
Raskolnik fugitives, 24
Repin, 144
Richelieu, Due de, 97
Rjeif, 54
Roman- Kosh, 159
Romanoff, Michael, 94
Ruskin, 19
Russian churches, 44
merchant, the, 101
Riviera, 159
State, first beginnings, 1
Russian winter, 32
women, 77
Ryeshuetnikoff, 43
Sagas, eastern way of, 87
St. Nicholas the Wonder-worker,
76
St. Sophia Cathedral, Kieff, 90
St. Vladimir Statue, 91
Samara Gates, 63
Samoyedes, 40, 42
Sebastopol campaign, 155
Setch, 142, 14.3, 144, 146
Sibir ruins, 45
Simferopol, 166
Sivash Sea, 155, 1.56
Slavonic types, 2
Smolensk, 105
Solovctski Monastery, 23
Soloviofl", Vladimir, 16, 81
Souioumbeka Tower, 59
Soussanin, Ivan, 94
Stenka Razine, Don Cossack, 62,
92, 139
Stolypin, 4
' Stone women/ 145, 152
Stroganoff, 45
Struve, P., 101
Superstitions, 117
Sven Heden, 82
Tamboff, Government of, 71
Taras Bulba, 146
Tartar buildings, 167
Empire, 58
Khanate, 68
raids, 143
Tartars, 57, 59, 64, 65, 71, 72, 73,
74, 76, 88, 89, 92, 96, 105, 125,
137, 142, 155, 156
Tauric Temple, 158
Tchekhoff, 101
Tcheremisses, 77
Tchuvash race, 76, 77, 78, 83
Tepe-Kermen peak, 157
Three Iron Gates cascades, 43
Timurlain, 60
Tolstoy, 10, 31, 121, 128
172
PROVINCIAL RUSSIA
Trapezos, 100
Troitsa Monastery, 93
Tsareff, 65
Tsaritsin, 55, 64
Tundras, 39
Turgueuieif, 13, 18, 19, 25, 62
Turkish nomads, 136
Turks, 142
Tutcheff, 16
Ti^er, 54
Government of, 54
Ufa, 46, 60
Ukraine, 53, 121, 130, 131, 132
139, 141
Zaporoztians, 141
Ural Cossacks, 74
Urals, 3, 38
Usolka River, 50
Vagailo of Lithuania, 106
Vaigatch, stone idols of, 42
Valdai Hills, 54
Variags, Princes of, 87
Vasnietsoff, 145
Vetluga basin, 60
Viatka, 60
Village Councils, 12
Vistula, 137
Vladimir-on-Kliazma, 88
Vladimir, Prince, 88
Volga, 3
brigands, 61
Vyg, 21
Warsaw, 96
White Russians, 1, 2, 105
Wolf-hunting, 30
Workmen, 41)
Yalta, 159, 160
Yaroslavl, 55
Yekaterinburg, 45
Yermak, Timoseyeff, 45
Ziranes, 42
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
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