Siberia To-Day

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

My cipher messages were transmitted as numbers, and when Russian operators received them, they always left out thirty or forty numerals in the middle of the message so that when it was being deciphered, the last half of it did not decipher at all, but when transformed into letters looked like an alphabet that had run amok. I generally asked for it to be repeated to my own signal corps operator over our private wire, but that wire was open for us but an hour in the forenoon and an hour in the afternoon. So if I got a defective message over the Russian wire five minutes after my wire was closed in the morning, I had to wait until afternoon before I could with any surety of getting the message through tell Vladivostok to repeat. And the repeated message would not reach me till the next morning.

I suspect that there was a system of sabotage being practiced on us. There was every evidence that Semenoff’s officers in charge of the commercial telegraph office had held up our cipher messages until they had made an effort to decipher them. Or knowing that they had done something which they did not want reported or contemplated doing something, they held up the message as long as possible. For instance, if Semenoff had his armored train in the station and the engines with steam up ready to move up the line for some purpose, any message I sent through at that time was suspected to contain the information that his armored train was about to move in a certain direction. So the message was not put on the wire till the movement was completed.

Yet what appeared to be sabotage, or a blockade system on information, might well be the result of stupidity induced by late hours and too much vodka. It was noon before the population appeared to have a lucid interval in their existence, and having acquired a clear head again, the chief ambition in life immediately was to become befuddled with all possible speed.

I discovered the old “Imperial” vodka being sold on the streets, the vendors setting up in business with an old box and a dozen bottles of the liquor. I refer to it as Imperial because it was vodka made under the old régime as revealed by the paper seals over the corks, and the payment of imperial taxes, vodka having been a government monopoly. A pint bottle could be purchased for about twelve rubles on the streets, the same costing forty rubles in the restaurants.

It was said that there were millions of rubles worth of this vodka in storage in Chita, which had been taken over by Semenoff, and which aided his finances to an appreciable extent. No doubt somebody collected a fee to allow it to be sold, and no doubt it was sold to the dealers by the agents of Semenoff, who had acquired it by simply taking it. Siberians using the whole of the wide street below my windows in order to walk past, could be seen any minute of daylight.

The Russian calendar is full of holidays. One holiday in a week, ruins the week—and the Russian for a week. He generally starts celebrating the day before the holiday, and uses the day after the holiday to extend the merriment. And most weeks while I was in Chita contained two holidays.

I subscribed for the local newspapers on arrival. There were three dailies. I got about one of each every week. Out of curiosity I made inquiries, but there was always a good excuse—the printers had been drunk, there had been a holiday, there was going to be a holiday, the press was broken, or Semenoff had confiscated the whole edition and arrested the editor. I would not care to be a publisher or journalist in Siberia.

Whether a paper came out on a certain day or not, however, the newsboys every night cried the “Nash Put” (Our Way), or the “Za Baikalsky” (Trans-Baikalist) every night. The date of the paper might be three days old. Nitchyvo. The buyer could not stop in the excessive cold to hunt for a mere date, but bought his paper while going ahead at a jog-trot. I never saw a native protest. Either he had not read the paper of that date, or he did not care. Perhaps he could not read. A Siberian acquires a certain social standing by being seen purchasing a paper. Anyhow, he is probably on his way somewhere to drink vodka and will forget all about the paper when he reaches his destination. There was something about the Siberian buyer of newspapers which reminded me of the young police reporter in San Francisco who wore mauve gloves, had a gold-headed cane and carried with him everywhere a copy of the Atlantic Monthly. He never read it. When he wore out one copy carrying it, he bought another. It gave him a reputation with the public and the staff of the newspaper for being a bright young man with considerable erudition.

These general statements on private and public entertainment may make it appear that amusement is, after all, rather haphazard in Siberia, and breaks out in sporadic sprees. It would be misleading to convey this idea. For amusement and entertainment is systematized by the Siberian, in what they call a sobrania. As near as I can define it, this institution is a sort of “circle,” or club, and the idea might well be copied with some modifications in cities, or more especially, small towns in the United States.

There was a first sobrania and a second sobrania in Chita. I knew only the second. Probably the numerical designation came from precedence in organization. I suspect that the first one had degenerated somewhat in its clientele or membership or whatever they call it, but that may be only snobbishness on my part—all the best people went to the second sobrania, even including the chief of police who was a comfortable person for the Siberians to have present early in the morning drinking wine or vodka after the hour when the sale of liquors was supposed to cease. At least, my friends assured me that so long as the chief was present, they felt perfectly safe from police interference on the score of making merry.