WHEN I last visited Archangel, six years ago, it was a dreamy,
lifeless, melancholy port. One felt that, like its sister city,
Kholmagora, it had once been great, but its greatness had finally set.
You could feel the melancholy of Russia there, the sadness of material
failure so characteristic of the Russian soul. But to-day! To-day the
vision has fled, the _tempo_ has changed. All the ships of the world
find anchorage in her harbour, and motley crowds throng her streets.
That the war has brought about. A year before the war fifty vessels
entered Archangel port. During the last twelve months something like
5000 have entered. Great liners and transports and weather-beaten
tramps and three-deck river boats stand in majestic pride. Their smoke
and steam make a dome over the city of Archangel when you approach it
from the north.
There are Norwegians and Yankees, with their colours flamboyantly
painted on their bows to warn the submarine off; Russians and French,
with their tricolours streaming; but most of all English ships, with
their proud rain-washed Union Jacks lolling in the wind. I was taken
through the whole harbour in a little, arrow-like steam launch--from
the Thames! How often it had shot under the arches of our little
bridges, and now it was puffing and panting on the vast brown Dvina,
be-dwarfed by huge ships, driven by a Lett from Riga, and constantly
going short of steam and getting becalmed far from either shore.[1]
Besides troops, the French are taking great quantities of alcohol used
in the manufacture of high explosives, and I saw many barges heaped
up with barrels of spirit and wondered if there were many leaks. The
Russian manufacture of alcohol has probably not diminished as a result
of the prohibition of the sale of intoxicating liquors in Russia,
but has proved to be a valuable war export. This fact is especially
important to take into consideration with regard to Russian temperance
reform. When the war is over and the market for this alcohol is
partially lost, will there not be another movement of resistance on the
part of the manufacturers?
[1] Thirteen lines excluded by British Censor. Not to be published.
I saw all manner of crates with machinery, parts of aeroplanes, and the
like, and British vessels discharging these things, and I saw grain and
flax and timber going on for us from Russia.
Go into the chief restaurant of Archangel, and as like as not all
the customers are English captains, and they are reading back numbers
of the _Daily Mail_ and talking “ship.” At the Café Paris there is a
“skippers’ table,” where they are also captains all, and the waitresses
quarrel as to who shall serve there, though none of them knows two
words of English. In the Alexandrovsky Gardens you see English sailors
with Russian girls, and neither can say a word to the other. Their only
language is that of looks. One of our men showed me a card with poetry
written and violets painted and asked me to translate the words for him
and write an answer. It ran something like this--
What need for words when without them you are so eloquent? Why should
the lips move When the eyes speak so well?
Sailors tell wonderful stories of feminine conquests, and it is
evident the Russian girls are partial to them. Even at the theatre,
in front of you are sitting such unlikely persons as a fireman and a
stoker, and one says to the other with disgust, “I can’t understand
a blooming word. Can you?” Some Englishmen have exercise books with
Russian words and phrases laboriously copied out--an impossible
language!
All is going well in Archangel. The Russians, in spite of their
inexperience, are handling the immense quantities of materials well,
and the “stuff” is all steadily proceeding to the places where it is
most needed. New quays have been built, and loops of railway run along
them, and some ships, carrying nothing weighing less than three tons,
yet discharge all their immense articles of cargo in considerably less
time than it took to put them on at Liverpool or Dundee or Newcastle
as the case may be.
The Russians earn unheard-of wages in the docks, and the rumour
attracts thousands of workers from all parts of Russia. A journalist
writing in the _Russkoe Slovo_ in July called it the Russian Klondike.
All Russians who go there are pleased with it. The port in its
present grandeur is a sort of promise for Russia, and it flatters her
commercial future.
I was warned I should not find a room anywhere in the city, and that
people paid five roubles a night for the privilege of sleeping in
a passage. But I obtained a clean room at the Troitsky Hotel for 2
roubles 75 copecks, which was not dear. Notices in the room were
printed both in English and Russian, indicating how many English
visitors they have now.
I called on my friend Alexander Alexandrovitch Beekof, the hunter and
draper whom I described in “Undiscovered Russia.” He had now opened
a boot shop and was rich, selling his wares at three or four pounds
the pair. He was proud of his business success and rejoiced in the
independence which it gave him. He is now a member of the Gorodskaya
Duma, and when a representative of the city was wanted to carry an
emblem to the Archangel troops at the front, Beekof was thought to be
the best.[2] He shared the hardships of the common soldiers, and was
fain to stay at the front, but was mixed up in the great retreat from
Austria and felt very sick of everything before he got back to his
native city and the boot shop.
[2] Four lines excluded by Censor.
Since I was in Archangel last the young revolutionary exile Alexey
Sergeitch, now pardoned and married and teaching history in Moscow, has
brought out a little book on the Monastery of Ci. I saw him later when
I got to Moscow.
I was invited by the town council to partake of a glass of tea on the
occasion of the opening of the electric tramway. All the notables
of the town were accommodated on board a special steamer, and went
slowly along the Cathedral pier a mile or so to the new electric power
station. Here priests met us with banners and ikons and holy water. A
service was held in the power station, and the smell of burning incense
mingled strangely with the smell of new paint and oil and machinery.
Holy water was flung in all corners and over our heads, and then the
dynamos were set in motion and the whole place buzzed and groaned.
I think Repin, the engineer, proud of having constructed the most
northern tramway in the world, was a little anxious lest the holy water
should spoil his engines.
But all went well, and we took our seats in the virgin trams to
make the first journey, all the notables of the town and with them
every beggar and labourer and tatterdemalion dock-hand that could
get a footing. In Germany I can imagine how swiftly these gentlemen
would have been dealt with. But in Russia “all is permitted” and we
had a joy-ride. We went cheerfully along on our parade journey. The
conductresses in brand new uniforms and shining metal clips and punches
stood with their money bags and their full rolls of tickets. Directly
following our trip to the Town Hall the cars were open to the public,
and fares would be collected. Car after car drew up and we stepped out
and walked up the stone stairs to the long tables and the glasses of
tea and the proud speeches of the great men of Archangel.
Now the trams are in full operation, and bring in about £1,000 a week.
Archangel is united, and friends within the city have become nearer.
All day the trams carry passengers, and all night they carry goods, so
I am told.
As I write of this now in the winter after I have come back to London,
I imagine that probably now all is frozen over again. The brown river
became white, and within twenty-four hours you could drive a horse and
cart over it. It did not melt again till the spring. Captains and their
crews thinking of leaving in a few days and grumbling because of small
delays as they always do grumble, were suddenly condemned to remain
idle for months; their ships, dotted here, there, and everywhere in
the ice, had a processional aspect, and looked as if they were sailing
out and yet never getting forward. The men cut pine branches and made
avenues from their ships to the shores, well-trodden roads with names.
There was “Broadway” leading to a big American ship, and K---- Avenue
leading to the _K_----, and _R_---- Avenue leading to the _R_----. I
may not mention the name of any British ship, but the detail has a
picturesqueness which is worth noting. The Russian Government paid the
owners of these boats hundreds of thousands of roubles damages for
this unexpected incursion of Jack Frost. It was highly unprofitable to
Russia, but every one made the best of it and no one grumbled.
The happy co-operation of the Russians and the English shows to
advantage in Archangel. Russians and English like one another and get
on well together there, though the souls of the common people are so
different and Russian ways so different from our own.