Transcriber's Note.
Apparent typographical errors have been corrected. The inconsistent
use of hyphens has been retained.
Italics are indicated by _underscores_. Small capitals have been
replaced by full capitals.
[Illustration: CONVENT OF SOLOVETSK IN THE FROZEN SEA.]
[Illustration: RUSSIAN INFANTRY ON EASTERN STEPPE ESCORTED BY KOZAKS
AND KIRGHIZ.]
FREE RUSSIA.
BY
WILLIAM HEPWORTH DIXON.
AUTHOR OF
"FREE AMERICA." "HER MAJESTY'S TOWER." &c.
[Illustration]
_NEW YORK_:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS.
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1870.
PREFACE.
_Svobodnaya_ Rossia--_Free_ Russia--is a word on every lip in that
great country; at once the Name and Hope of the new empire born of the
Crimean war. In past times Russia was free, even as Germany and France
were free. She fell before Asiatic hordes; and the Tartar system
lasted, in spirit, if not in form, until the war; but since that
conflict ended, the old Russia has been born again. This new
country--hoping to be pacific, meaning to be Free--is what I have
tried to paint.
My journeys, just completed, carried me from the Polar Sea to the Ural
Mountains, from the mouth of the Vistula to the Straits of Yeni Kale,
including visits to the four holy shrines of Solovetsk, Pechersk, St.
George, and Troitsa. My object being to paint the Living People, I
have much to say about pilgrims, monks, and parish priests; about
village justice, and patriarchal life; about beggars, tramps, and
sectaries; about Kozaks, Kalmuks, and Kirghiz; about workmen's artels,
burgher rights, and the division of land; about students' revolts and
soldiers' grievances; in short, about the Human Forces which underlie
and shape the external politics of our time.
Two journeys made in previous years have helped me to judge the
reforms which are opening out the Japan-like empire of Nicolas into
the Free Russia of the reigning prince.
_February, 1870._
_6 St. James's Terrace._
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I.--UP NORTH 11
II.--THE FROZEN SEA 16
III.--THE DVINA 20
IV.--ARCHANGEL 24
V.--RELIGIOUS LIFE 29
VI.--PILGRIMS 34
VII.--FATHER JOHN 40
VIII.--THE VLADIKA 46
IX.--A PILGRIM-BOAT 51
X.--THE HOLY ISLES 57
XI.--THE LOCAL SAINTS 62
XII.--A MONASTIC HOUSEHOLD 68
XIII.--A PILGRIM'S DAY 73
XIV.--PRAYER AND LABOR 78
XV.--BLACK CLERGY 84
XVI.--SACRIFICE 91
XVII.--MIRACLES 96
XVIII.--THE GREAT MIRACLE 103
XIX.--A CONVENT SPECTRE 110
XX.--STORY OF A GRAND DUKE 114
XXI.--DUNGEONS 118
XXII.--NICOLAS ILYIN 124
XXIII.--ADRIAN PUSHKIN 130
XXIV.--DISSENT 135
XXV.--NEW SECTS 142
XXVI.--MORE NEW SECTS 146
XXVII.--THE POPULAR CHURCH 151
XXVIII.--OLD BELIEVERS 158
XXIX.--A FAMILY OF OLD BELIEVERS 161
XXX.--CEMETERY OF THE TRANSFIGURATION 167
XXXI.--RAGOSKI 173
XXXII.--DISSENTING POLITICS 179
XXXIII.--CONCILIATION 183
XXXIV.--ROADS 187
XXXV.--A PEASANT POET 192
XXXVI.--FOREST SCENES 197
XXXVII.--PATRIARCHAL LIFE 202
XXXVIII.--VILLAGE REPUBLICS 208
XXXIX.--COMMUNISM 213
XL.--TOWNS 218
XLI.--KIEF 222
XLII.--PANSLAVONIA 225
XLIII.--EXILE 229
XLIV.--THE SIBERIANS 235
XLV.--ST. GEORGE 241
XLVI.--NOVGOROD THE GREAT 246
XLVII.--SERFAGE 250
XLVIII.--A TARTAR COURT 254
XLIX.--ST. PHILIP 257
L.--SERFS 262
LI.--EMANCIPATION 267
LII.--FREEDOM 272
LIII.--TSEK AND ARTEL 278
LIV.--MASTERS AND MEN 284
LV.--THE BIBLE 289
LVI.--PARISH PRIESTS 294
LVII.--A CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION 299
LVIII.--SECRET POLICE 306
LIX.--PROVINCIAL RULERS 312
LX.--OPEN COURTS 318
LXI.--ISLAM 324
LXII.--THE VOLGA 330
LXIII.--EASTERN STEPPE 336
LXIV.--DON KOZAKS 341
LXV.--UNDER ARMS 346
LXVI.--ALEXANDER 351
FREE RUSSIA.
CHAPTER I.
UP NORTH.
"White Sea!" laughs the Danish skipper, curling his thin red lip; "it
is the color of English stout. The bed may be white, being bleached
with the bones of wrecked and sunken men; but the waves are never
white, except when they are ribbed into ice and furred with snow. A
better name is that which the sailors and seal-fishers give it--the
Frozen Sea!"
Rounding the North Cape, a weird and hoary mass of rock, projecting
far into the Arctic foam, we drive in a south-east course, lashed by
the wind and beaten by hail and rain, for two long days, during which
the sun never sets and never rises, and in which, if there is dawn at
the hour of midnight, there is also dusk at the time of noon.
Leaving the picturesque lines of fiord and alp behind, we run along a
dim, unbroken coast, not often to be seen through the pall of mist,
until, at the end of some fifty hours, we feel, as it were, the land
in our front; a stretch of low-lying shore in the vague and far-off
distance, trending away towards the south, like the trail of an
evening cloud. We bend in a southern course, between Holy Point
(Sviatoi Noss, called on our charts, in rough salt slang, Sweet Nose)
and Kanin Cape, towards the Corridor; a strait some thirty miles wide,
leading down from the Polar Ocean into that vast irregular dent in the
northern shore of Great Russia known as the Frozen Sea.
The land now lying on our right, as we run through the Corridor, is
that of the Lapps; a country of barren downs and deep black lakes;
over which a few trappers and fishermen roam; subjects of the Tsar and
followers of the Orthodox rite; but speaking a language of their own,
not understood in the Winter Palace, and following a custom of their
fathers, not yet recognized in St. Isaac's Church. Lapland is a tangle
of rocks and pools; the rocks very big and broken, the pools very deep
and black; with here and there a valley winding through them, on the
slopes of which grows a little reindeer moss. Now and then you come
upon a patch of birch and pine. No grain will grow in these Arctic
zones, and the food of the natives is game and fish. Rye-bread, their
only luxury, must be fetched in boats from the towns of Onega and
Archangel, standing on the shores of the Frozen Sea, and fed from the
warmer provinces in the south. These Lapps are still nomadic; cowering
through the winter months in shanties; sprawling through the summer
months in tents. Their shanty is a log pyramid thatched with moss to
keep out wind and sleet; their tent is of the Comanche type; a roll of
reindeer skins drawn slackly round a pole, and opened at the top to
let out smoke.
A Lapp removes his dwelling from place to place, as the seasons come
and go; now herding game on the hill-sides, now whipping the rivers
and creeks for fish; in the warm months, roving inland in search of
moss and grass; in the frozen months, drawing nearer to the shore in
search of seal and cod. The men are equally expert with the bow, their
ancient weapon of defense, and with the birding-piece, the arm of
settlers in their midst. The women, looking any thing but lovely in
their seal-skin tights and reindeer smocks, are infamous for magic and
second sight. In every district of the North, a female Lapp is feared
as a witch--an enchantress--who keeps a devil at her side, bound by
the powers of darkness to obey her will. She can see into the coming
day. She can bring a man ill-luck. She can throw herself out into
space, and work upon ships that are sailing past her on the sea. Far
out in the Polar brine, in waters where her countrymen fish for cod,
stands a lump of rock, which the crews regard as a Woman and her
Child. Such fantasies are common in these Arctic seas, where the waves
wash in and out through the cliffs, and rend and carve them into
wondrous shapes. A rock on the North Cape is called the Friar; a group
of islets near that cape is known as the Mother and her Daughters.
Seen through the veil of Polar mist, a block of stone may take a
mysterious form; and that lump of rock in the Polar waste, which the
cod-fishers say is like a woman with her child, has long been known to
them as the Golden Hag. She is rarely seen; for the clouds in summer,
and the snows in winter, hide her charms from the fishermen's eyes;
but when she deigns to show her face in the clear bright sun, her
children hail her with a song of joy, for on seeing her face they know
that their voyage will be blessed by a plentiful harvest of skins and
fish.
Woe to the mariner tossed upon their coast!
The land on our left is the Kanin peninsula; part of that region of
heath and sand over which the Samoyed roams; a desert of ice and snow,
still wilder than the countries hunted by the Lapp. A land without a
village, without a road, without a field, without a name; for the
Russians who own it have no name for it save that of the Samoyeds'
Land; this province of the great empire trends away north and east
from the walls of Archangel and the waters of Kanin Cape to the
summits of the Ural chain and the Iron Gates of the Kara Sea. In her
clefts and ridges snow never melts; and her shore-lines, stretching
towards the sunrise upwards of two thousand miles, are bound in icy
chains for eight months in the twelve. In June, when the winter goes
away, suddenly the slopes of a few favored valleys grow green with
reindeer moss; slight specks of verdure in a landscape which is even
then dark with rock and gray with rime. On this green moss the
reindeer feed, and on these camels of the Polar zone the wild men of
the country live.
Samoyed means cannibal--man-eater; but whether the men who roam over
these sands and bogs deserve their evil fame is one of the questions
open to new lights. They use no fire in cooking food; and perhaps it
is because they eat the reindeer raw that they have come to be accused
of fondness for human flesh. In chasing the game on which they feed,
the Samoyeds crept over the Ural Mountains from their far-off home in
the north of Asia, running it down in a tract too cold and bare for
any other race of men to dwell on. Here the Zarayny found them,
thrashed them, set them to work.
These Zarayny, a clever and hardy people, seem connected in type and
speech with the Finns; and they are thought to be the remnant of an
ancient colony of trappers. Fairer than the Samoyeds, they live in log
huts like other Russians, and are rich in herds of reindeer, which
they compel the Samoyeds to tend like slaves. This service to the
higher race is slowly changing the savage Samoyed into a civilized
man; since it gives him a sense of property and a respect for life. A
red man kills the beast he hunts; kills it beyond his need, in the
animal wantonness of strength. A Samoyed would do the same; but the
Zarayny have taught him to rear and tend, as well as to hunt and
snare, his food. A savage, only one degree above the Pawnee and the
Ute, a Samoyed builds no shed; plants no field; and owns no property
in the soil. He dwells, like the Lapp, in a tent--a roll of skins,
sewn on to each other with gut, and twisted round a shaft, left open
at the top, and furnished with skins to lie on like an Indian lodge.
No art is lavished on this roll of skin; not so much as the totem
which a Cheyenne daubs on his prairie tent. Yet the Samoyed has
notions of village life, and even of government. A collection of tents
he calls a Choom; his choom is ruled by a medicine-man; the official
name of whom in Russian society is a pope.
The reigning Emperor has sent some priests to live among these tribes,
just as in olden times Marfa of Novgorod sent her popes and monks into
Lapland and Karelia; hoping to divert the natives from their Pagan
habits and bring them over to the church of Christ. Some good, it may
be hoped, is done by these Christian priests; but a Russ who knows the
country and the people smiles when you ask him about their doings in
the Gulf of Obi and around the Kara Sea. One of these missionaries
whom I chanced to meet had pretty well ceased to be a civilized man.
In name, he was a pope; but he lived and dressed like a medicine-man;
and he was growing into the likeness of a Mongol in look and gait.
Folk said he had taken to his bosom a native witch.
Through the gateway held by these tribes we enter into Russia--Great
Russia; that country of the old Russians, whose plains and forests the
Tartar horsemen never swept.
Why enter Russia by these northern gates? If the Great Mogul had
conquered England in the seventeenth century; if Asiatic manners had
been paramount in London for two hundred years; if Britain had
recovered her ancient freedom and civil life, where would a foreign
observer, anxious to see the English as they are, begin his studies?
Would he not begin them in Massachusetts rather than in Middlesex,
even though he should have to complete his observations on the Mersey
and the Thames?
A student of the Free Russia born of the Crimean War, must open his
work of observation in the northern zones; since it is only within
this region of lake and forest that he can find a Slavonic race which
has never been tainted by foreign influence, never been broken by
foreign yoke. The zone from Onega to Perm--a country seven times
larger than France--was colonized from Novgorod the Great, while
Novgorod was yet a free city, rich in trade, in piety, in art; a rival
of Frankfort and Florence; and, like London and Bruges, a station of
the Hanseatic League. Her colonies kept the charter of their freedom
safe. They never bent to the Tartar yoke, nor learned to walk in the
German ways. They knew no masters, and they held no serfs. "We never
had amongst us," said to me an Archangel farmer, "either a noble or a
slave." They clung, for good and evil, to their ancient life; and when
the Patriarch Nikon reformed the Church in a Byzantine sense (1667),
as the Tsar Godunof had transformed the village in a Tartar sense
(1601), they disowned their patriarch just as they had denied their
Tsar. In spite of every force that could be brought against them by a
line of autocrats, these free colonists have not been driven into
accepting the reformed official liturgies in preference to their
ancient rites. They kept their native speech, when it was ceasing to
be spoken in the capital; and when the time was ripe, they sent out
into the world a boy of genius, peasant-born and reared (the poet,
Michael Lomonosof), to impose that popular language on the college, on
the senate, on the court.