ARRIVAL AT OMSK.
From Kurgan to Omsk the railroad track passes over a wilderness of
snow--a dead level, absolutely devoid of interest. It was a relief
even to see at long intervals a group of wooden huts, huddling close
together, as if for warmth, in that biting cold; the thin blue smoke
curling from their several apologies for chimneys, and the glint
of the sunlight on the double windows. Melancholy these villages
looked, cut off from the entire world as they must have been before
the locomotive came snorting its way along. One pleasing feature,
or picturesque feature, I might say, was the inevitable round domed
church which reared its height above the ramshackle shingle roofs.
Green and white these churches were, with a golden cross perched on the
highest dome, and which shines and glitters for miles after the huddle
beneath has merged with the snow and disappeared from vision. No matter
how small and miserable the village, no matter how poverty-stricken
its inhabitants, the church was ever there, ever resplendent, and
apparently opulent.
One fact always strikes the traveller in Russia, and that is the
overpowering influence of the Church. Densely ignorant as he is, the
average moujik’s religious devotion is little better than slavish. One
wonders whence comes the money to build and to keep up such magnificent
ecclesiastical edifices which predominate everywhere throughout the
Russian Empire, and only close inquiry and persistent observation can
reveal the truth. From high class to low the first duty of the Russian
is to his religion. In every house, from the finest mansion to the
humblest hut, the gilded ikon hangs in the corner, before which the
devout Catholic prostrates himself twenty, and perhaps thirty, times a
day. Before every piece of bread he eats, before every glass of vodki
he drinks, he will cross himself and murmur his prayers. I do not fear
contradiction when I say that every believer in the Russo-Græco faith
wears underneath his shirt, attached to a string or chain, around his
neck, a metal cross, put on when he was a child and worn till death,
and even until his body has crumbled to the earth in which it lies. On
the large stations of the Russian railways there is always a chapel
with its glittering altar, its ikons and its burning candles, where
services are held daily.
The Church seems to stand even before the Czar, though it must be
said the Czar comes in a very good second. Great as is the State aid,
the help of the people is undoubtedly the mainspring of the Church’s
revenue. Time after time I have had it brought to my notice that
however improvident the moujik may be in his domestic life, his death
will furnish the pretext for lifting the slab of the stove to see how
much money he has been able to accumulate in his lifetime for his
beloved faith. His blind devotion to the Church is nearly equalled by
his discipline as a soldier, and without wishing to detract from his
character as a man, I must say that, so far as my observation goes,
these very qualities, if qualities they can be called, shows how
little removed from a mere animal he is. As a Russian, body and soul
he belongs to the Church. As soon as he dons the brown jacket of the
soldier, body and soul he belongs to the Czar. It is inconceivable
to the Westerner that men could withstand the hardships and yet
retain such cheerfulness and such patriotism as do the Russians. Iron
discipline, which would make the educated and better civilized soldier
mutiny or desert in a week, he submits to with equanimity. Kind words
he knows not; ill fed, ill clothed, wretchedly housed, and with seldom
or never a kopeck in his pouch, yet he maintains even gaiety in his
desolate life. This utter abasement of the man is very difficult to
realize, it is so essentially Russian that none but one who has seen it
can fully comprehend its significance.
An officer of cavalry once told me a little story concerning the
discipline and devotion to duty of the Russian peasant. The scene
was at Cronstadt, the island fortress off St. Petersburg, where
three officers, respectively English, German, and Russian, were
discussing the merits of their men. Each maintained his was the better
disciplined, and on the argument growing hot the Russian proposed a
test. They repaired to one of the batteries, and there the English and
German officers each ordered up one of their men, as the Russian did
one of his common soldiers. These men drew up in line before their
captains.
The English officer pointed to the port, below which the rocks lay some
hundreds of feet.
“Attention! Walk out of that port!” he cried in a voice of command.
The man stepped forward, white as a sheet, but hesitated.
“What good am I doing my country by this?” he asked huskily.
“Stand back,” said the officer.
The German officer motioned to his man.
“Walk out of that port!” he commanded.
The German stepped forward, he too hesitated, and glanced appealingly
at his commander.
“Will you keep my mother and father, sir, if I do it?”
“Stand back,” said the officer.
The Russian officer motioned to his man.
“Walk out of that port!”
The man was livid, but he stepped forward briskly; as he did so he
raised his eyes and made the sign of the cross, the next second he
would have precipitated himself on the rocks below, had not the
officer’s iron grip restrained him.
This tale was told me with great unction, as illustrative of the
superior discipline of the Russian soldier; but I did not care to
offend my friend by giving voice to my opinion that the demeanour of
the English and the German soldiers illustrated that fact which has so
often been emphasized in warfare, that an intelligent preservation of
one’s life is far better for the cause than blindly throwing that life
away.
Bump, bump, bump; rattle, rattle, rattle; on hurtled the train, morning
merged into afternoon, and the grey shadows which heralded night
came stealing over the steppe. Darkness black and heavy enveloped
us. Once more we made up our crude beds, and settled for the night.
Peterpavlovsk we reached in the middle of the night, and where we
sleepily alighted for something to eat, and participated for the
hundredth time in the rude scramble which ever accompanied that
procedure. Back to bed again, and sometimes sleep, helped thereto by a
concert of gurgling snores, tobacco smoke, and odours of vodki. Morning
broke, and for all the difference in our surroundings we might as well
have been where we were the day before. Grubby, weary, and profoundly
sick of each other’s company, since we had told every story we knew,
and had long since comfortably settled the affairs of the world in
long-continued argument, waiting patiently, till afternoon, when we
should reach our first Siberian city, Omsk.
Our literature was long since exhausted. It was useless to play cards,
as one man had constituted himself treasurer, possessed all the money,
and it seemed a hollow mockery to borrow under such circumstances;
everybody voted chess a bore, dominoes childish, while our only
musical instrument--a Jew’s harp--had long since lost its soothing
influence. We could only glare at each other and grumble, find fault
with everything, and say what ought to be done and what we would do if
only----
“Omsk!” The silver-embroidered conductor punched another little hole in
our much-perforated ticket, pocketed his tip, and left us to scramble
our baggage together. And even this was a delight. We were to stay
over two days in Omsk, and those two days were to be a welcome relief
from the seemingly never-ending train journey. Soon we came in sight
of the Irtish, one of those magnificent rivers which Siberia abounds
in, but now silent and still under its thick coating of ice. The train
rattled over the high iron bridge which spanned this noble waterway,
and ten minutes later drew up at Omsk station.
I mention the word “station” advisedly, because, as in duty bound,
the Russian engineers had put it as far away from the town as they
conveniently could--this time they had managed it by exactly three
versts, and no doubt considered they had achieved a triumph. What the
idea is in calling a station Omsk, when Omsk is two miles away, yet
remains to be explained. Nobody that I have asked has been able to
give me a satisfactory answer. Whether they expect the town to grow
out towards the station, or whether it is out of sheer and simple
cussedness, I do not know; I fancy it is the latter.
On the station steps we held a levee with half a hundred isvostchiks,
who wanted to drive us to town. Honour there may be amongst thieves,
but there is certainly very little amongst Siberian isvostchiks. The
manner in which they fought and scrambled with each other in order to
get hold of our baggage was highly diverting. They implored us singly
and wholly to follow them. Each man held out such inducements that the
brain fairly reeled.
“Come with my little horse, dear barins; it is the fastest trotter in
Siberia, it is a beautiful dove, and goes like the wind.”
[Illustration: OMSK.]
“Bah! Do not believe him, barins; he is a liar. His horse is covered
with ulcers, and may drop down dead before you go a verst. Come with
me, barins. Here you are, a lovely sledge, just painted, but quite
dry, and splendid cushions. Think how much money I have spent on that
sledge.”
“No, barins, none of these children know the way to Omsk. I am the
only one who knows the nearest and the best road. Take any of them you
will, and they will go the longest way and over a miserable road, which
will bump you to pieces, perhaps throw you out and break your neck, and
then what will you do?”
And amid all this flood of eloquence, smothered in furs and loaded
down with baggage, we were jostled and pinched and pulled until a
white-aproned porter rescued us and took us to the sledge he had
selected. Then all the voices died away in a long-drawn sigh; envious
looks were bestowed upon the favoured one, who gathered up his reins,
gave vent to a sort of war-whoop, fell rather than got upon the sledge,
and away we went at a mad gallop down the narrow roadway, scattering
the snow right and left, and swinging from side to side in the most
perilous manner imaginable.
It took us all our time to hang on, the while that the fierce rush
through the bitterly cold air made breathing difficult; tears forced
from the eyes by the cold instantly congealed; nostrils, too, became
closed with ice; moustaches and beards hard lumps of hoar frost. With
a cold which it is impossible to register on a Fahrenheit glass we
didn’t, I am sorry to say, appreciate the novelty of this breakneck
ride as we ought to have done. In less than a quarter of an hour we
passed through the gates of the city and stampeded like fury down
several wide streets, bordered on either side by one-story frame
houses, and ultimately pulled up with a jerk, which flung us in a heap
at the bottom of the sledge, before a low, mean-looking wooden house
which a dilapidated signboard announced to be the “Grand Hotel Moscow.”