Russian Life To-day

by Bp. Herbert Bury

The Gate of the Redeemer, Moscow.

It is no use attempting to describe it; but Moscow is the Kremlin, and to feel the Kremlin is to know Moscow.

Upon entering the Spassky Gate, or Gate of the Redeemer, every hat has to be removed in honour of the ikon of the Saviour which is placed above it. The picture was placed there, by the Tsar Alexis, in 1647, to be regarded as the “palladium of the Kremlin,” and the order was given then that hats should be removed when passing through. The law is rigorously enforced still, and though it is sometimes a trial—I had frostbite in consequence when I last went through a year ago—yet the act is almost an instinctive one when entering or leaving the Kremlin.

Warsaw, again—for no one in this generation can dissociate it from Russia and call it Polish only—with its glorious position on the Vistula in the midst of its great plain, though not so ancient and inspiring as Cracow, in Galicia, is full of moving appeal to the national and historic sense for those who visit it for the first time, and especially, as in my own case, when entering the empire by that route. I have seen Warsaw in spring, summer, and winter, and always felt its charm; and I have not felt more deeply moved for a long time than by the Emperor’s proclamation that he intended the Poles once more to be a nation and—there can be but little doubt about it—with Warsaw as its capital.

Riga also, the great shipping-port on the Baltic, which I have entered by sea and by land, and when coming in by sea have had the pleasure of seeing our beautiful English church on the shore with its graceful spire standing out conspicuously, yet blending in with other towers and pinnacles. How very characteristic of the Baltic and attractive the city is, with its blending of the Teuton and Slav populations! But how essentially Russian it is in all its leading features, while different from all other Russian cities! It is so wherever one goes both on this and on the other side of the Urals. There always seems to be something specially characteristic in these great centres of population; and they all seem as if, unlike other towns, they had each their own interesting story to tell for those who have ears to hear.

Town or city life in Russia is not very representative of the true life of the country and its people, though it undoubtedly exerts a widespread influence upon their general social life; for Russia’s vast population is not gathered together in either towns or cities, but in hamlets and villages. Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace tells us that when he wrote his first book on Russia, in 1877, there were only eleven towns with a population of over 50,000 in European Russia, and that, in 1905, they had only increased to thirty-four. The increase of the future will no doubt be more rapid when the war is over.

The great cities will probably, as practically all the cities of Europe have done of late years, follow the lead of Paris under Baron Hausmann in the character of their imposing blocks of houses and wide boulevards, and one capital will be much the same as any other in Europe in its general appearance and social life.

Russian cities, however, even the capital, though ever becoming more cosmopolitan, still possess their many distinctive and interesting features, costumes, and customs, and are most picturesque and interesting, of course, during the long winter. It gives one a shock almost to go for the first time to Warsaw or Petrograd—at Moscow there is always the Kremlin—in the middle of the summer. There is little to distinguish them then, apart from the ever-glorious beauty of the churches, from Buda-Pest or Vienna.

But in the winter! Then it is everywhere still characteristic Russia. The sledges, for instance, with their troikas! They are the same carriages or droschkes as in summer, but with runners instead of wheels. Horses are harnessed in the same way in both seasons, and even the coachmen seem to wear exactly the same dress all the year round, edged with fur like their caps, though the padding inside the coat must be less in summer, one would think. The sledges of nobles and other wealthy people, used in the winter only, are painted and decorated most attractively. To drive out on a winter night, under a sky brilliant with stars, the air extraordinarily keen, bracing, and stimulating, the bells tinkling from the high and graceful yoke which rises from the central horse of the three, wrapped in furs, and with no sounds but the bells and the crack of whips and the subdued crunching of the snow, is to taste one of the joys of life, and feel to the full, with happiness in the feeling, “This is Russia!”