Russia
V >> Various >> Russia[Illustration: MOSCOW.]
RUSSIA
As _Seen_ and _Described_ by Famous Writers
_Edited and Translated by_
ESTHER SINGLETON
_Author of_ "Turrets, Towers and Temples," "Great Pictures," and
"A Guide to the Opera," and _translator of_ "The Music Dramas of
Richard Wagner."
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
New York
Dodd, Mead and Company
1909
_PREFACE_
This is intended to be a companion volume to _Japan_, and therefore
follows the same general plan and arrangement. It aims to present in
small compass a somewhat comprehensive view of the great Muscovite
power. After a short description of the country and race, we pass
to a brief review of the history and religion including ritual and
ceremonial observances of the Greek Church. Next come descriptions
of regions, cities and architectural marvels; and then follow articles
on the various manners and customs of rural and town life. The
arts of the nation are treated comprehensively; and a chapter of
the latest statistics concludes the rapid survey. The material is
all selected from the writings of those who speak with authority
on the subjects with which they deal.
The Russian Empire is so vast that it would be impossible to give
detailed descriptions of all its parts in a work of this size:
therefore I have been forced to be content with more general
descriptions of provinces with an occasional addition of a typical
city.
E. S.
_New York, April 21, 1904._
_CONTENTS_
PART I
THE COUNTRY AND RACE
The Russian Empire
_Prince Kropotkine._
Siberia
_Jean Jacques Elisee Reclus._
The Russian Races
_W. R. Morfill._
PART II
HISTORY AND RELIGION
The History of Russia
_W. R. Morfill._
Church Service
_Alfred Maskell._
The Creeds of Russia
_Ernest W. Lowry._
PART III
DESCRIPTIONS
St. Petersburg
_J. Beavington Atkinson._
Finland
_Harry De Windt._
Lapland
_Alexander Platonovich Engelhardt._
Moscow (The Kremlin and its treasuries--The Ancient Regalia--The
Romanoff House)
_Alfred Maskell._
Vassili-Blagennoi (St. Basil the Blessed)
_Theophile Gautier._
Poland
_Thomas Michell._
Kief, the City of Pilgrimage
_J. Beavington Atkinson._
Nijni-Novgorod
_Antonio Gallenga._
The Volga Basin. (The Great River--Kasan--Tsaritzin--Astrakhan)
_Antonio Gallenga._
Odessa
_Antonio Gallenga._
The Don Cossacks
_Thomas Michell._
In the Caucasus
_J. Buchan Teller._
Khiva
_Fred Burnaby._
The Trans-Siberian Railway
_William Durban._
PART IV
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
High Life in Russia
_The Countess of Galloway._
Rural Life in Russia
_Lady Verney_
Food and Drink
_H. Sutherland Edwards._
Carnival-Time and Easter
_A. Nicol Simpson._
Russian Tea and Tea-Houses
_H. Sutherland Edwards._
How Russia Amuses Itself
_Fred Whishaw._
The Kirghiz and their Horses
_Fred Burnaby._
Winter in Moscow
_H. Sutherland Edwards._
A Journey by Sleigh
_Fred Burnaby._
PART V
ART AND LITERATURE
Russian Architecture
_Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc._
Sculpture and Painting
_Philippe Berthelot._
Russian Music
_A. E. Keeton._
Russian Literature
_W. R. Morfill._
PART VI
STATISTICS
Present Conditions
_E. S._
ILLUSTRATIONS
MOSCOW
ARCHANGEL
REVEL
SIBERIAN NATIVES
SAMOJEDES OF NOVA ZEMBLA
ROOM OF THE TSAR MICHAILOWITCH, MOSCOW
CHURCH OF THE ASSUMPTION
A RELIGIOUS PROCESSION, KOLA
SHRINE IN THE CONVENT SOLOVETSKII, KOLA
ST. PETERSBURG
THE HERMITAGE, ST. PETERSBURG
HELSINGFORS, FINLAND
REINDEER TRAVELLING
MOSCOW
THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW
VASSILI--BLAGENNOI (ST. BASIL THE BLESSED), MOSCOW
NOWO ZJAZD STREET, WARSAW
HOTEL DEVILLE, WARSAW
THE DNIEPER AT KIEF
LA LAVRA, KIEF
NIJNI--NOVGOROD (BRIDGE OF THE FAIR)
FROM THE RAMPARTS OF THE KREMLIN, NIJNI--NOVGOROD
PLACE TUREMNAJA, ODESSA
SEBASTOPOL
KHARKOFF
TIFLIS
THE WINTER PALACE, ST. PETERSBURG
RUSSIAN FARM SCENE
THE TSAR'S DINING-ROOM, MOSCOW
ST. ISAAC'S CATHEDRAL, ST. PETERSBURG
ST. ANNE RESTAURANT, WIBORG
THE RED SQUARE, MOSCOW
CHURCH OF THE REDEEMER, MOSCOW
STATUE OF PETER THE GREAT AND THE ADMIRALTY PALACE, ST. PETERSBURG
THE THEATRE, ODESSA
THE LIBRARY, ODESSA
THE TSAR NICHOLAS
THE TSARINA
KALKSTRASSE AND PROMENADE, RIGA
_THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE_
_PRINCE KROPOTKINE_
The Russian Empire is a very extensive territory in eastern Europe
and northern Asia, with an area exceeding 8,500,000 square miles,
or one-sixth of the land surface of the globe (one twenty-third
of its whole superficies). It is, however, but thinly peopled on
the average, including only one-fourteenth of the inhabitants of
the earth. It is almost entirely confined to the cold and temperate
zones. In Nova Zembla (Novaya Zemlya) and the Taimir peninsula, it
projects within the Arctic Circle as far as 77 deg. 2' and 77 deg. 40' N.
latitude; while its southern extremities reach 38 deg. 50' in Armenia,
about 35 deg. on the Afghan frontier, and 42 deg. 30' on the coasts of the
Pacific. To the West it advances as far as 20 deg. 40' E. longitude
in Lapland, 18 deg. 32' in Poland, and 29 deg. 42' on the Black Sea; and
its eastern limit--East Cape in the Bering Strait--extends to 191 deg.
E. longitude.
The Arctic Ocean--comprising the White, Barents, and Kara Seas--and
the northern Pacific, that is the Seas of Bering, Okhotsk, and
Japan, bound it on the north and east. The Baltic, with its two
deep indentations, the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland, limits it
on the north-west; and two sinuous lines of frontier separate it
respectively from Sweden and Norway on the north-west, and from
Prussia, Austria and Roumania on the west. The southern frontier is
still unsettled. In Asia beyond the Caspian, the southern boundary
of the empire remains vague; the advance into the Turcoman Steppes
and Afghan Turkestan, and on the Pamir plateau is still in progress.
Bokhara and Khiva, though represented as vassal khanates, are in
reality mere dependencies of Russia. An approximately settled
frontier-line begins only farther east, where the Russian and Chinese
empires meet on the borders of eastern Turkestan, Mongolia and
Manchuria.
Russia has no oceanic possessions, and has abandoned those she
owned in the last century; her islands are mere appendages of the
mainland to which they belong. Such are the Aland archipelago,
Hochland, Tuetters, Dagoe and Osel in the Baltic Sea; Nova Zembla,
with Kolgueff and Vaigatch, in the Barents Sea; the Solovetsky
Islands in the White Sea; the New Siberian archipelago and the
small group of the Medvyezhii Islands off the Siberian coast; the
Commandor Islands off Kamchatka; the Shantar Islands and Saghalin
in the Sea of Okhotsk. The Aleutian archipelago was sold to the
United States in 1867, together with Alaska, and in 1874 the Kurile
Islands were ceded to Japan.
[ILLUSTRATION: ARCHANGEL.]
A vast variety of physical features is obviously to be expected in
a territory like this, which comprises on the one side the cotton
and silk regions of Turkestan and Trans-caucasia, and on the other
the moss and lichen-clothed Arctic _tundras_ and the Verkhoyansk
Siberian pole of cold--the dry Transcaspian deserts and the regions
watered by the monsoons on the coasts of the Sea of Japan. Still,
if the border regions, that is, two narrow belts in the north and
south, be left out of account, a striking uniformity of physical
feature prevails. High plateaus, like those of Pamir (the "Roof
of the World") or of Armenia, and high mountain chains like the
snow-clad summits of the Caucasus, the Alay, the Thian-Shan, the
Sayan, are met with only on the outskirts of the empire.
Viewed broadly by the physical geographer, it appears as occupying
the territories to the north-west of that great plateau-belt of the
old continent--the backbone of Asia--which spreads with decreasing
height and width from the high table-land of Tibet and Pamir to the
lower plateaus of Mongolia, and thence north-eastwards through the
Vitim region to the furthest extremity of Asia. It may be said to
consist of the immense plains and flat-lands which extend between
the plateau-belt and the Arctic Ocean, including all the series of
parallel chains and hilly spurs which skirt the plateau-belt on
the north-west. It extends over the plateau itself, and crosses
it beyond Lake Baikal only.
A broad belt of hilly tracts--in every respect Alpine in character,
and displaying the same variety of climate and organic life as
Alpine tracts usually do--skirts the plateau-belt throughout its
length on the north and north-west, forming an intermediate region
between the plateaus and the plains. The Caucasus, the Elburz, the
Kopetdagh, and Paropamisus, the intricate and imperfectly known
network of mountains west of the Pamir, the Thian-Shan and Ala-tau
mountain regions, and farther north-east the Altai, the still unnamed
complex of Minusinsk mountains, the intricate mountain-chains of
Sayan, with those of the Olekma, Vitim, and Aldan, all of which
are ranged _en echelon_,--the former from north-west to south-east,
and the others from south-west to north-east--all these belong
to one immense Alpine belt bordering that of the plateaus. These
have long been known to Russian colonists, who, seeking to escape
religious persecutions and exactions by the state, early penetrated
into and rapidly pushed their small settlements up the better valleys
of these tracts, and continued to spread everywhere as long as
they found no obstacles in the shape of a former population or in
unfavourable climatic conditions.
As for the flat-lands which extend from the Alpine hill-foots to
the shores of the Arctic Ocean, and assume the character either of
dry deserts in the Aral-Caspian depression, or of low table-lands
in central Russia and eastern Siberia, of lake-regions in north-west
Russia and Finland, or of marshy prairies in western Siberia, and of
_tundras_ in the north,--their monotonous surfaces are diversified
by only a few, and these for the most part low, hilly tracts.
As to the picturesque Bureya mountains on the Amur, the forest-clothed
Sikhota-alin on the Pacific, and the volcanic chains of Kamchatka,
they belong to quite another orographical world; they are the
border-ridges of the terraces by which the great plateau-belt descends
to the depths of the Pacific Ocean. It is owing to these leading
orographical features--divined by Carl Ritter, but only within
the present day revealed by geographical research--that so many
of the great rivers of the old continent are comprised within the
limits of the Russian empire. Taking rise on the plateau-belt, or
in its Alpine outskirts, they flow first, like the upper Rhone
and Rhine, along high longitudinal valleys formerly filled up with
great lakes; next they find their way through the rocky walls;
and finally they enter the lowlands, where they become navigable,
and, describing great curves to avoid here and there the minor
plateaus and hilly tracts, they bring into water-communication
with one another places thousands of miles apart. The double
river-systems of the Volga and Kama, the Obi and Irtish, the Angara
and Yenisei, the Lena and Vitim on the Arctic slope, the Amur and
Sungari on the Pacific slope, are instances. They were the true
channels of Russian colonization.
A broad depression--the Aral-Caspian desert--has arisen where the
plateau-belt has reached its greatest height and suddenly changes
its direction from a north-western into a north-eastern one; this
desert is now filled only to a small extent by the salt waters of
the Caspian, Aral and Balkash inland seas; but it bears unmistakable
traces of having been during Post-Pliocene times an immense inland
basin. There the Volga, the Ural, the Sir Daria, and the Oxus discharge
their waters without reaching the ocean, but continue to bring
life to the rapidly drying Transcaspian Steppes, or connect by
their river network, as the Volga does, the most remote parts of
European Russia.
The above-described features of the physical geography of the empire
explain the relative uniformity of this wide territory, in conjunction
with the variety of physical features on the outskirts. They explain
also the rapidity of the expansion of Sclavonic colonization over
these thinly-peopled regions; and they also throw light upon the
internal cohesion of the empire, which cannot fail to strike the
traveller as he crosses this immense territory, and finds everywhere
the same dominating race, the same features of life. In fact, as
their advance from the basins of the Volkhoff and Dnieper to the foot
of the Altai and Sayan mountains, that is, along nearly a quarter
of the earth's circumference, the Russian colonizers could always
find the same physical conditions, the same forest and prairies as
they had left at home, the same facilities for agriculture, only
modified somewhat by minor topographical features. New conditions of
climate and soil, and consequently new cultures and civilizations,
the Russians met with, in their expansion towards the south and
east, only beyond the Caucasus in the Aral-Caspian region, and
in the basin of the Usuri on the Pacific coast. Favoured by these
conditions, the Russians not only conquered northern Asia--they
colonized it.
The Russian Empire falls into two great subdivisions, the European
and the Asiatic, the latter of which, representing an aggregate of
nearly 6,500,000 square miles, with a population of only sixteen
million inhabitants may be considered as held by colonies. The
European dominions comprise European Russia, Finland, which is, in
fact, a separate nationality treated to some extent as an allied
state, and Poland, whose very name has been erased from official
documents, but which nevertheless continues to pursue its own
development. The Asiatic dominions comprise the following great
subdivisions:--Caucasia, under a separate governor-general; the
Transcaspian region, which is under the governor-general of Caucasus;
the Kirghiz Steppes; Turkestan under separate governors-general,
Western Siberia and Eastern Siberia; and the Amur region, which
last comprises also the Pacific coast region and Kamchatka.
_Climate of Russia in Europe_.--Notwithstanding the fact that Russia
extends from north to south through twenty-six degrees of latitude,
the climate of its different portions, apart from the Crimea and the
Caucasus, presents a striking uniformity. The aerial currents--cyclones,
anti-cyclones and dry south-east winds--extend over wide surfaces
and cross the flat plains freely. Everywhere we find a cold winter
and a hot summer, both varying in their duration, but differing
little in the extremes of temperature recorded.
Throughout Russia the winter is of long continuance. The last days
of frost are experienced for the most part in April, but also in
May to the north of fifty-five degrees. The spring is exceptionally
beautiful in central Russia; late as it usually is, it sets in with
vigour and develops with a rapidity which gives to this season in
Russia a special charm, unknown in warmer climates; and the rapid
melting of snow at the same time raises the rivers, and renders
a great many minor streams navigable for a few weeks. But a return
of cold weather, injurious to vegetation, is observed throughout
central and eastern Russia between May 18 and 24, so that it is only
in June that warm weather sets in definitely, reaching its maximum
in the first half of July (or of August on the Black Sea coast). The
summer is much warmer than might be supposed; in south-eastern
Russia it is much warmer than in the corresponding latitudes of
France, and really hot weather is experienced everywhere. It does
not, however, prevail for long, and in the first half of September
the first frosts begin to be experienced on the middle Urals; they
reach western and southern Russia in the first days of October,
and are felt on the Caucasus about the middle of November. The
temperature descends so rapidly that a month later, about October 10
on the middle Urals and November 15 throughout Russia the thermometer
ceases to rise above the freezing-point. The rivers rapidly freeze;
towards November 20 all the streams of the White Sea basin are
covered with ice, and so remain for an average of 167 days; those
of the Baltic, Black Sea, and Caspian basins freeze later, but
about December 20 nearly all the rivers of the country are highways
for sledges. The Volga remains frozen for a period varying between
150 days in the north and 90 days at Astrakhan, the Don for 100
to 110 days, and the Dneiper for 83 to 122 days. On the Dwina ice
prevents navigation for 125 days and even the Vistula at Warsaw
remains frozen for 77 days. The lowest temperatures are experienced
in January, in which month the average is as low as 20 deg. to 5 deg. Fahr.
throughout Russia; in the west only does it rise above 22 deg..
_The flora and fauna of Russia_.--The flora of Russia, which represents
an intermediate link between those of Germany and Siberia, is strikingly
uniform over a very large area. Though not poor at any given place,
it appears so if the space occupied by Russia be taken into account,
only 3,300 species of phanerogams and ferns being known. Four great
regions may be distinguished:--the Arctic, the Forest, the Steppe,
and the Circum-Mediterranean.
The _Arctic Region_ comprises the _tundras_ of the Arctic littoral
beyond the northern limit of forests, which last closely follows
the coast-line with bends towards the north in the river valleys
(70 deg. N. lat. in Finland, on the Arctic Circle about Archangel, 68 deg.
N. on the Urals, 71 deg. on West Siberia). The shortness of summer,
the deficiency of drainage and the thickness of the layer of soil
which is frozen through in winter are the elements which go to
the making of the characteristic features of the _tundras_. Their
flora is far nearer those of northern Siberia and North America
than that of central Europe. Mosses and lichens cover them, as
also the birch, the dwarf willow, and a variety of shrubs; but
where the soil is drier, and humus has been able to accumulate, a
variety of herbaceous flowering plants, some of which are familiar
also in western Europe, make their appearance.
The _Forest Region_ of the Russian botanists occupies the greater
part of the country, from the Arctic _tundras_ to the Steppes, and
it maintains over this immense surface a remarkable uniformity
of character. Viewed as a whole, the flora of the forest region
must be regarded as European-Siberian; and though certain species
disappear towards the east, while new ones make their appearance,
it maintains, on the whole, the same characters throughout from
Poland to Kamchatka. Thus the beech, a characteristic tree of western
Europe, is unable to face the continental climate of Russia, and
does not penetrate beyond Poland and the south-western provinces,
reappearing again in the Crimea. The silver fir does not extend
over Russia, and the oak does not cross the Urals. On the other
hand, several Asiatic species (Siberian pine, larch, cedar) grow
freely in the north-east, while several shrubs and herbaceous plants,
originally from the Asiatic Steppes, have spread into the south-east.
But all these do not greatly alter the general character of the
vegetation.
The _Region of the Steppes_, which covers all Southern Russia,
may be subdivided into two zones--an intermediate zone and that
of the Steppes proper. The Ante-Steppe of the preceding region and
the intermediate zone of the Steppes include those tracts where
the West-European climate struggles with the Asiatic, and where a
struggle is being carried on between the forest and the Steppe.
The Steppes proper are very fertile elevated plains, slightly undulated,
and intersected by numerous ravines which are dry in summer. The
undulations are scarcely apparent to the eye as it takes in a wide
prospect under a blazing sun and with a deep-blue sky overhead.
Not a tree is to be seen, the few woods and thickets being hidden
in the depressions and deep valleys of the rivers. On the thick
sheet of black earth by which the Steppe is covered a luxuriant
vegetation develops in spring; after the old grass has been burned
a bright green covers immense stretches, but this rapidly disappears
under the burning rays of the sun and the hot easterly winds. The
colouring of the Steppe changes as if by magic, and only the silvery
plumes of the _kovyl_ (_Stipa pennata_) wave under the wind, giving
the Steppe the aspect of a bright, yellow sea. For days together the
traveller sees no other vegetation; even this, however, disappears
as he nears the regions recently left dry from the Caspian, where
salted clays covered with a few _Salsolaceoe_, or mere sands, take
the place of the black earth. Here begins the Aral-Caspian desert.
The Steppe, however, is not so devoid of trees as at first sight
appears. Innumerable clusters of wild cherries, wild apricots, and
other deep-rooted shrubs grow in the depressions of the surface,
and on the slopes of the ravines, giving the Steppe that charm which
manifests itself in popular poetry. Unfortunately, the spread of
cultivation is fatal to these oases (they are often called "islands"
by the inhabitants); the axe and the plough ruthlessly destroy
them. The vegetation of the _poimy_ and _zaimischas_ in the marshy
bottoms of the ravines, and in the valleys of streams and rivers,
is totally different. The moist soil gives free development to
thickets of various willows, bordered with dense walls of worm-wood
and needle-bearing _Composita_, and interspersed with rich but
not extensive prairies harbouring a great variety of herbaceous
plants; while in the deltas of the Black Sea rivers impenetrable
masses of rush shelter a forest fauna. But cultivation rapidly
changes the physiognomy of the Steppe. The prairies are superseded
by wheat-fields, and flocks of sheep destroy the true steppe-grass
(_Stipa-pennata_), which retires farther east.
The _Circum-Mediterranean Region_ is represented by a narrow strip
of land on the south coast of the Crimea, where a climate similar
to that of the Mediterranean coast has permitted the development
of a flora closely resembling that of the valley of the Arno.
[Illustration: REVEL]
The fauna of European Russia does not very materially differ from
that of western Europe. In the forests not many animals which have
disappeared from western Europe have held their ground; while in
the Urals only a few--now Siberian, but formerly also European--are
met with. On the whole, Russia belongs to the same zoo-geographical
region as central Europe and northern Asia, the same fauna extending
in Siberia as far as the Yenisei and Lena. In south-eastern Russia,
however, towards the Caspian, we find a notable admixture of Asiatic
species, the deserts of that part of Russia belonging in reality
rather to the Aral-Caspian depression than to Europe.
For the zoo-geographer only three separate sub-regions appear on the
East-European plains--the _tundras_, including the Arctic islands,
the forest region, especially the coniferous part of it, and the
Ante-Steppe and Steppes of the black-earth region. The Ural mountains
might be distinguished as a fourth sub-region, while the south-coast
of the Crimea and Caucasus, as well as the Caspian deserts, have
their own individuality.
As for the adjoining seas, the fauna of the Arctic Ocean off the
Norwegian coast corresponds, in its western parts at least, to that
of the North Atlantic Gulf Stream. The White Sea and the Arctic
Ocean to the east of Svyatoi Nos belong to a separate zoological
region connected with, and hardly separable from, that part of
the Arctic Ocean which extends along the Siberian coast as far as
to about the Lena. The Black Sea, of which the fauna was formerly
little known but now appears to be very rich, belongs to the
Mediterranean region, slightly modified, while the Caspian partakes
of the characteristic fauna inhabiting the lakes and seas of the
Aral-Caspian depression.
In the region of the _tundras_ life has to contend with such
unfavourable conditions that it cannot be abundant. Still the reindeer
frequents it for its lichens, and on the drier slopes of the moraine
deposits four species of lemming, hunted by the _Canis lagopus_,
find quarters. Two species of the white partridge, the lark, one
_Plectrophanes_, two or three species of _Sylvia_, one _Phylloscopus_,
and the _Motacilla_ must be added. Numberless aquatic birds, however,
visit it for breeding purposes. Ducks, divers, geese, gulls, all the
Russian species of snipes and sandpipers, etc., cover the marshes
of the _tundras_, or the crags of the Lapland coast.
The forest region, and especially its coniferous portion, though
it has lost some of its representatives within historic times, is
still rich. The reindeer, rapidly disappearing, is now met with only
in Olonetz and Vologda; the _Cervus pygargus_ is found everywhere, and
reaches Novgorod. The weasel, the fox and the hare are exceedingly
common, as also the wolf and the bear in the north; but the glutton,
the lynx, and even the elk are rapidly disappearing. The wild boar
is confined to the basin of the Dwina, and the _Bison eropea_ to
the Bielovyezha forests. The sable has quite disappeared, being
found only on the Urals; the beaver is found at a few places in
Minsk, and the otter is very rare. On the other hand, the hare and
also the grey partridge, the hedgehog, the quail, the lark, the
rook, and the stork find their way into the coniferous region as
the forests are cleared. The avifauna is very rich; it includes all
the forest and garden birds which are known in western Europe, as
well as a very great variety of aquatic birds. Hunting and shooting
give occupation to a great number of persons. The reptiles are
few. As for fishes, all those of western Europe, except the carp,
are met with in the lakes and rivers in immense quantities, the
characteristic feature of the region being its wealth in _Coregoni_
and in _Salmonidoe_ generally.