Our Arrival at Moscow--Splendor and Squalor--Enlightenment and
Superstition--Russia Asiatic Rather Than European.
MOSCOW, RUSSIA, _September 20, 1902_.
It was toward ten o'clock when we drew near the suburbs of Moscow, a
city of more than a million inhabitants. We saw straggling wooden
houses, mostly unpainted, rarely ever more than one story high, and
unpaved streets filled with country wagons, not the great two-wheeled
carts of France, but long, low, four-wheeled wagons with horses
pulling singly, or hitched three and four abreast; and I noted that
the thills and traces of these wagons were fastened to the projecting
axles of the fore wheels, the pull being thus directly on the axle, so
as to lift the wheel out of the ever present mud holes. So universal
has become this method of hitching up a wagon that I observed it even
used on the vehicles in the cities where the streets are paved. Men in
high boots and sheepskin coats and felt caps were walking beside the
wagons, cracking long whips. The roads appeared to be frightful
sloughs of bottomless mire.
Our train drew into a long, low, brick station, the Nicholas Depot.
The door of the car was unlocked, porters came in and seized our
bags, and we followed them. Our military escort did not even deign to
say good-bye. He was writing up his note book and seemingly
preoccupied. The instant we emerged from the station portal we were
surrounded by a mob of roaring_izvostchiks_; a pandemonium. We picked
out two of the cleaner-looking _droschkies_; the porters who had taken
our checks came with the trunks on their shoulders, and we started off
for our hotel. Although a dozen _izvostchiks_ will wrangle and war for
your custom, until you fear for your very life, yet the instant you
pick your man, the others retire and peace reigns. There is no attempt
to make you change your mind.
The sky was overcast, drops of rain were falling, and there had been
more rain earlier in the day. The cobble-paved streets were thickly
overlaid with mud. Surely, they had never been cleaned in a century!
Moscow is a city of low, one and two story buildings, generally of
stone or stucco, but there are many of wood. It is a city full of reek
and accumulated filth, and is apparently without sewers, or with
sewers badly laid and long ago choked up. It is a city of narrow
streets with many turns, and narrow sidewalks or none at all. It is an
old city, the ways and alleys and streets of which have grown up as
they would. The people we met were ill-clad, unwashed, unkempt,
wild-eyed, shock-polled, dull-faced. They were a meaner multitude of
men and women than I had ever before set eyes upon.
"Hotel Berlin" we said to our _izvostchiks_. The word "Berlin" they
seemed to comprehend, and they brought us safely to our destination.
It is a comfortable inn, on the Rojdestvensky way, kept by a Jew, and
recommended to us by the Swiss Concierge of the St. Petersburg hotel.
"It is the hotel where the drummers go," he said. We had learned long
ago that "where the drummers go," is where the best table will be
found, for the world over, the drummer loves a knowing cook. So we
went to the Hotel Berlin. We were there received by a little
weazen-faced, black-eyed, dried-up man, who spoke in voluble German
and broken English. "The police had notified him that we would come!"
he said. He told us that "He had once lived in London!"--and declared
that his rooms were exactly what we wanted, and his table "the best in
Moscow." He also confided to us that he was "fortunate in having at
hand, immediately at hand, and now at our service, the most skilled
and intelligent guide in Moscow, who would be delighted to serve us,
who was altogether at our disposal and whose charge would be 'only ten
_rubles_ a day,' and the guide 'talked English.'" We thanked our host,
took the rooms and accepted the guide. We have now been in Moscow
several days, and the guide has been faithful. He vows he has been
twice in Chicago. He says he is from Hungary and he talks excellent
German, but Mr. C, who himself hails from Chicago, is quite unable to
comprehend the English of his speech. Only my knowledge of German has
saved the guide his _rubles_. Moreover, his remembrance of Chicago is
indistinct, as well as of New York. Indeed, his knowledge of America
we are fain to believe is altogether hearsay. The nighest he has been
to Chicago, we surmise, was when a few years ago he "bought Astrakhan
lamb skins at Nijni Novo Gorod for Marshall Field & Company," whose
agent we believe he may really then have been. He is now married to a
Russian, and it is many years since he has been back to Hungary, nor
does he have much occasion to talk German or English, except when he
is acting as guide to Americans. Mr. C now and then forgets and
attempts to use American speech in conversation with him, when there
is entanglement. I am appealed to in German, the difficulty is cleared
up, and so we get on.
To-day, we have taken a _landau_ and have driven all about the city.
Just how shall I describe this strange commingling of past and
present; of sumptuous splendor and squalor profounder than any seen in
St. Petersburg; of modern intelligence and mediaeval superstition;
this city which contains a Gostinnoi Dvor, a magnificent building of
white stone, extending over many blocks, a bazaar of six thousand
shops, with a single steel and glass vaulted roof covering the entire
immense series of structures as well as all included streets; this
city of beautiful stores, displaying the costliest products of London,
of Paris and New York; which is lit with electric lights equal to
Berlin, and provided with a telephone service superior to that of
London; this city where right alongside this modern bazaar, the
handiwork of Chicago builders, stand the towers and ramparts of the
ancient Kremlin; a city where at every corner of every street, swarm
bowing multitudes worshiping before the innumerable Eikons.
[Illustration: BEGGING PILGRIMS, ST. BASIL.]
[Illustration: THE RED SQUARE, MOSCOW.]
A strange and curious sight it is to see a street packed with people
all bowing to a little picture stuck up in the wall. The Eikon to the
Russian is even more important than the Czar. He wears a miniature
Eikon hung about his neck as a sort of amulet. He puts an Eikon in his
house, in his shop, along his streets, and builds cathedrals and
lavishes fortunes to house and adorn them. Indeed, Russia might be
fitly termed the land of the Eikon, for there, as nowhere else in all
the world, has a simple picture been exalted to become an object of
worship. The Greek church allows no images. One of the serious causes
of the great schism with Rome in the eleventh and twelfth centuries
was the strict interpretation by the Eastern Church of the injunction
of the II Commandment, "Thou shalt make no graven images," wherefore
they declared the Roman practice rank idolatry, but to the sacred
pictures they gave their sanction. These Eikons are mostly painted in
the monasteries by monks of recognized holy lives. They are paintings
of the Christ, or of a Saint, sometimes the Virgin Mary and the Christ
Child together, and are often so overlaid with gold and jewels--tens
of thousands of dollars worth of jewels--that only the eyes and the
face may be seen, the draperies of the person being scrupulously
imitated and concealed by the overlaid plates of gold.
This afternoon we saw a big, black, hearse-like carriage drawn by six
black horses, harnessed three abreast, accompanied by priests, to
which all the people took off their hats and bowed and crossed
themselves as it passed along. It was an Eikon being carried to the
death-bed of some penitent, who would be permitted to kiss it before
death. Sometimes these Eikons work miracles and the dying sinner
begins to recover so soon as it enters the room. All Russians keep
Eikons in their homes, and generally have one in every room, before
which a little candle is kept perpetually burning. And when a Russian
enters a house, he at once goes to the family Eikon and bows and
crosses himself before he greets his host. To ignore the Eikon would
be an unpardonable offense. In St. Petersburg we procured a copy of
the famous Eikon which reposes in the little chapel of the house of
Peter the Great, the portrait of St. Alexander Nevsky, which Peter
always carried with him into battle, and to the power of which he
attributed the victory of Pultova. The beautiful cathedral dedicated
to "Our Lady of Kazan," upon the Nevsky Prospekt, in St. Petersburg,
was erected in honor of victories brought to Russian arms by the
miraculous influence of her Eikon. The Russian lives in an atmosphere
of Eikons, and it takes a quick eye and an agile hand to doff your
hat and properly bow, as the Russian always does, whenever you pass by
one.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF ST. BASIL THE BLESSED, MOSCOW.]
In this city of contrasts, in sight of the modern Gostinnoi Dvor, I
must take off my hat in going through a "Holy Gate," and every man,
woman and child I here meet are crossing themselves and bowing as they
pass along! In Mexico you do not feel so surprised at the superstition
of the Indian! But these are white men with blue eyes and yellow hair!
This is a city which contains so splendid an edifice as the monster
cathedral of Saint Savior, a pile of wonderful beauty, built of white
granite, and domed with five gigantic onion-shaped, cross-topped
cupolas, all sheathed in plates of solid gold; it is a city which
contains four hundred and fifty churches, five hundred chapels, and
convents and monasteries, how many I dare not say, all of them
begolded and bejeweled inside and out with barbaric emblazonry. And
yet it is a city, the streets of which are as ill-paved and as
stinking as were London's five hundred years ago; a city where trade
and enterprise are throttled by arbitrary and excessive taxation,
while the common people have no schools, even as they have no votes.
We had just left the Imperial palace of the Kremlin, the most gorgeous
edifice my eyes have ever looked upon, where I had beheld such
chambers of gold and precious jewels and priceless tapestry, as one
only reads about in the Tales of the Arabian Nights; where the vast
Hall of St. George in the Czar's new palace is plated with gold from
floor to ceiling, and the ceiling is altogether of gold; where is gold
along the walls, panels of alabaster showing in between, ivory finish
and gold, gold and lapis lazuli, gold and emerald malachite, gold in
leaf, gold in heavy plate--gold everywhere. We were but the moment
come out from this stupendous display of riches. We had just passed
through the Holy Savior Gate. Our senses were still dazzled with this
excess of reckless magnificence, when we found ourselves upon the Red
Square--"Red" because of the human blood spilled there in the
countless massacres of Moscow's citizens by past Czars,--amidst the
swarming throngs of the abjectly poor; men and women, pinched-faced
and hollow-eyed; men and women who toil with patient, dull, dumb
hopelessness, and who are thankful to eat black bread through all
their lives, who are become mere human brutes! We saw many groups of
these, gnawing chunks of the black bread for their dinner with all the
zest of famished wolves, while they bowed and crossed themselves
incessantly, thanking God that they were indeed alive!
The wanton luxury of the rich, the pinching poverty of the poor, so
widespread, so universal in Russia, appal and shock me upon every
hand. What are the political and social conditions which let these
things be possible is the query which constantly hammers on my brain!
Until to-day, I have never understood the light and shadow of Roman
history, nor what manner of men made up the hosts and hordes of Alaric
and of Attila. Here, you see the whole story right upon these
streets.
We have not only visited the Kremlin, its cathedrals and its palaces,
its museums and its buildings of note, but we have also stood before
and gazed upon that wonder of all churches, the cathedral of St.
Basil, the weird and gorgeous creation of Vassili Blagenoi, and
lasting monument to the artistic sense of that monster-tyrant, Ivan
the IV, called the "Terrible."
In the cathedral of the Archangel Michael, within the sacred precincts
of the Kremlin, lie now their coffins side by side, costly coverings
of gold-bespangled velvet enshrouding each; a strange example of the
equality of death. The story runs: so delighted was Ivan with the
extraordinary and curious beauty of Vassili's creation, that he gave a
sumptuous banquet in his honor within the Imperial palace and there,
lavishly bepraising him before the assembled company, declared that it
were impossible for human mind to create another building so wonderful
in all the world. Whereupon turning to Vassili, he inquired of the
flattered and delighted architect whether this declaration were not
the truth. The gratified creator of the wonderful cathedral is said to
have replied, "Ah, Sire, give me the money and I will build you
another a thousand times more beautiful than the poor work I have
already done." Hearing this, the Terrible Ivan turned to his headsman
who stood ever handy at his elbow, and ordered Vassili's eyes to be
immediately burnt out with red-hot irons, in order, as he declared,
that there should never be again created so splendid an edifice; then,
Vassili dying as a result of the operation, Ivan ordered a magnificent
funeral and directed that the body be laid within the consecrated
chamber of the cathedral, among the princes of the blood, where even
to-day it yet remains.
Our Hungarian guide vowed that this tale was the literal truth,
pointing to the coffin which lay at our feet, among the relics of the
house of Rurik, as evidence incontrovertible. Nor did we presume to
doubt this instance of Ivan's cruelty, so thick spotted are the pages
of history with a thousand other instances of his devilish acts.
Ivan loved the sight and smell of blood. As a boy he delighted to
torture domestic animals, and to ride down old women when he caught
them on the streets. As a man, he had the Archbishop of Novogorod sewn
up in the skins of wild beasts and thrown to savage dogs; frequently
he dispatched his enemies with his own sword, and he publicly murdered
his eldest son, the Czarevitch. No malevolent scheme of the human mind
was too cruel for his enjoyment. By him entire cities were devoted to
destruction on the most trifling pretext. For one instance, the
inhabitants of the commercial towns of Novogorod (sixty thousand in
Novogorod alone) and of Tver and of Klin were massacred in cold blood
under his personal supervision. He was more cruel than Nero or
Caligula, and compared with the appalling atrocities of his reign,
Louis XI and Ferdinand VII were gentle kings.
[Illustration: ANCIENT PAVEMENTS, MOSCOW.]
[Illustration: BREAD VENDORS, MOSCOW.]
His presumption was equal to his cruelty, and he did not hesitate to
send his Ambassador to Queen Elizabeth to offer her the privilege of
becoming his eighth bride. History knows no such other monster as Ivan
the Terrible, who was undoubtedly mad; and yet he built beautiful
churches and palaces, and did more to encourage art and culture within
the confines of the empire than any other of the Russian Czars.
We have also driven about the city and viewed the public buildings,
the shops and the markets, and this afternoon have come out across the
river Moskva, and climbed the hills of Vorobievy Gory, the "Sparrow
Hills,"--from the heights of which Napoleon, on that memorable
fourteenth day of September, 1812, fresh from the victory of Borodino,
first viewed the city. In superb panorama, Holy Moscow lay stretched
before us, its towers, its spires, its red and green and blue and
yellow walls and roofs, its golden domes, presenting a most sumptuous
harmony of color to the delighted eye.
While St. Petersburg is the political capital, yet Moscow is the real
center of Russia. Here is the focus of Russia's industrial,
commercial, financial and religious life. Her "Chinese Bank" cashes
notes on Kashgar and Pekin, and sells bills of exchange upon their
banks in return. The street-life of this most Russian city, the coming
and going of its people, the commingling of these divers tribes and
races, strikingly illustrates the heterogeneous character of the
cumbrous empire. Here pass me by the blue-eyed, tow-polled _mujiks_
from the provinces; here I meet, face to face, the swarthy skins which
tell of Tiflis and of Teheran; here I touch elbows with kaftan-gowned
traders from Merv and Samarkand, and silk-clad Chinese merchants from
the distant East.
As I stroll along the Nickols-Skaia, the Iliinka-Skaia, or the
Rojdestvensky Boulevard, and catch the glances of these faces which
stare upon me with constant grave suspicion, doubtful, perchance,
whether I am a foreign spy in bureaucratic employ, or a stranger
friendly to the held-down people, I am musing upon the curious
interweaving of science and superstition, of modern and mediaeval
custom, which I here behold, and I ponder how work the hearts and
minds behind these masks which alone I see. Profound suspicion and
discontent is the impression I receive. Nowhere do I note a single
instance of that joyous hopefulness which marks men's faces in
America. The eye which here looks into mine has about it a gaze not
frank and sunny, but furtive and melancholy as that of a chained-up
wolf. Gradually I am beginning to comprehend that the men I look upon,
although clothed in the veneer of twentieth century civilization, are
nevertheless in mind and heart barbarians,--barbarians chafing beneath
the bitter burden of the hateful auto-bureaucratic rule; they are
Asiatic rather than European; even in discontent they lack the
open-mindedness of the West; they belong to the mysterious and
inscrutable peoples of the East. Napoleon's saying, "Scratch a Russian
and you will find a Tartar," now comes to me with redoubled force.
[Illustration: THE KREMLIN BEYOND THE MOSKVA.]
Despite the French telephones and the Chicago-built Bazaar, despite
the splendid churches and the gorgeous Kremlin, I perceive that these
Russians are yet the same as when Byzantium sent St. Cyril and his
monks to Christianize their savage ancestors thirteen centuries ago.