Siberia To-Day

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

After midnight I felt the environment rather boring and got away unless my departure might be construed as a reflection on the habits of my Cossack friends who had invited me for the evening. In such cases, the evenings last till daylight, and in Siberia in winter, daylight is scarce.

The first night I went to the sobrania I was amazed. It was a large stone building of four stories and basement. The basement contained billiard and coat-rooms. On the floor above was a ball-room and a theater. The next upper floor held a splendid restaurant, decorated by the inevitable and luxurious rubber plants. A German war-prisoner orchestra served for balls, theater, and after-theater supper.

The plays were acted by a fairly good stock company, and it was said, written by the wife of a local general. If the latter were true she was an accomplished dramatist, though I doubt if the police would have allowed her plays to run on Broadway.

It is probable that the general’s wife did write some of them, but more likely that such as I saw she had adapted from French farces. They were grossly nasty, to such an extent that it was evident that they had been coarsened. Infidelity, of course, was the basis of each one, the wife always being the fool. And one case of infidelity was not enough for a single play—all the characters were involved in some way or another, to the uproarious delight of the audience. And incidentally, I saw high school children put on a play built around a button missing from the most vital part of a man’s trousers.

No further comment needs to be made upon the public morals of the Siberians. Yet curiously enough, in all the dancing I observed, there was not a hint of anything approaching the suggestive. In fact, the dances were most pretty, and most decorous. This might be explained by the fact that the officers of Semenoff’s little army were always armed, and are as quick with a pistol as the old-style Westerner of our own country. Discretion in such cases is not always a matter of morals.

And while I am discussing the morals of the Siberians, I wish to say that before sailing from San Francisco I went to a noted restaurant for dinner, where the prominent people of the city dine. There I saw a woman dance in a state so close to nudity that it was disgusting, and she did not dance upon a stage, but among the tables. She was on the program as a foreigner, a gipsy, I think. Thus as a nation we are willing to be Orientalized. And our best people go farther in permitting offense in dancing than do the Siberians, judging from what I saw in that country.

After the play in the sobrania, the dancing begins, the seats being taken up to make extra room. But between the acts a sort of promenade begins, in which the whole audience goes out and walks around in couples in the adjoining room. This promenade is characteristic of all public gatherings, and leads one to believe that the people are most gentle toward each other in all relations—the men link arms, and walk together, smoking and chatting; men and women walk together and talk animatedly; there is much bowing, and exchange of polite salutations between friends. And this promenade once begun, continues through all the time of dancing, so that but about half those present at any particular time are on the dancing floor.

While I was in Chita Cossack officers were there from the Don, the Urals, the Ussuri, the Crimea. There were handsome Georgians in flowing capes lined with red and thrown over the shoulders to expose the inner colorings. They wore rifle cartridges sewn into the breasts of their tunics in regulation Cossack style, and sabers and scimitars with jeweled hilts and scabbards of silver with exquisite filigree work.

When some of these men reached a point of exhilaration which prevented them from remaining quiet, they improvised dances of their native heaths as exhibitions, consisting of queer gesturings, much leaping and clicking of heels in air, and intricate dance steps, all being done with great skill to the accompaniment of barbaric cries in keeping with the performance. Such exhibitions were popular and frequent, and at times the general dancing stopped entirely in order that all hands might enjoy the spectacle.

And while this merry-making was going on inside, Semenoff’s men outside in the bitter cold were doing double guard to protect the building from Bolshevist raids or uprisings. Many a night going to the sobrania with British officers and Captain and Mrs. B——, we were challenged and halted by patrols, and on our way back to the hotel our drosky was frequently held up by a group of men about a bon-fire in the street and not permitted to go on till we had identified ourselves.