The dawn in Russia

by Henry Woodd Nevinson

St. Nicholas’ Day of December 19th had long been awaited with expectation, both of triumph and fear. It was the Tsar’s christening day—one of the four festivals which were given to St. Nicholas every year, because, on his way to see Christ, he stopped to help a peasant’s cart out of the mud and made his clothes all dirty. It had been rumoured with confidence that the work of the great Manifesto would then be completed—that the Tsar himself would come to Moscow, and from the very shrine of the Empire issue the charter of a free Constitution, and, like a generous father, distribute the Crown lands among the peasants. It was a splendid opportunity for heroic concession—such concession as would have gathered nearly the whole mass of the people round its author in enthusiastic devotion. But there was nothing heroic about the poor little Tsar—“Homunculus,” as the satirists called him—and the mood of concession had passed away. It was a time for reaction now, the imprisonment of labour leaders, the arrest of editors, the closure of meetings, the incitement to murder.

For a week past the day had been looked forward to with terror by most Progressives, and especially by the Jews. Christians had been preparing for themselves large crosses of wood, iron, or even cardboard, which they hung round their necks, so that when the religious mob attacked them, they might fling open their furs and reveal their Christianity visible upon their waistcoats.

But the children of darkness were a-tiptoe for the slaughter. Only the day before the festival, the patriotic organization of the Black Hundred, called the Hooligans or the Order of the Men of Russia according to sympathy, had issued a manifesto inciting to the final extermination of all Jews and foreigners in the city. Their common duty to God and the Tsar commanded all true men to unite in clearing Holy Russia of the accursed stranger. At the same time, the more moderate of the priesthood, mindful of an accepted distinction between religion and murder, wrote a letter to the papers, appealing to the faithful to act like Christians and not to kill the Jews. But such advice was a mere bewilderment to the simple man. To kill Jews is to act like Christians. Why complicate matters by raising the doubt? Ages of history had proved it.

So the Jews and many of the foreigners fortified their houses and hid themselves. All Moscow, indeed, was fortified in a manner, for new shutters and hoardings now protected doors and windows of all shops and many houses which were left open before. In the evening I went through the streets, and all was gloom and silence and fear. In one place on the Boulevard a slightly drunken soldier, who had been boasting of his revolutionary convictions, was surrounded by a little knot of loyalists, beguiled down a side court, and quietly slaughtered. At the door of a little restaurant in my own street I found a shouting mob. They had set upon a student and beaten him senseless. The restaurant people had dragged his body, almost naked, into the house and laid it across two chairs in a cellar. Through holes in the shutter you could see it lying there, in a shirt that oozed blood, while a girl student, who had been with him, knelt with her arms round his neck and cried aloud. At the sound of her crying, the mob yelled with exultation, and fought for a place at the shutter.

Morning came, intensely cold, but clear and bright. Before nine o’clock large crowds had begun to gather on the Kremlin—that triangular citadel of old cathedrals and palaces in the centre of Moscow, surrounded by an ancient crenellated wall, looking steeply down over the river on the south side. The priesthood had asked leave for a special ceremony of prayer on account of Russia’s troubles, and the new Governor-General, Admiral Dubásoff, who had arrived only two days before, could not decently refuse a prayer meeting to the patriotic ministers of peace, especially at a time when the Government was only longing for disturbances as an excuse for military assassination.

The prayer meeting was fixed for the great open space called the Red or Splendid Square (Krasnaya) lying between the Kremlin proper and the Old Town, which is surrounded by a similar wall. But the church services for the saint’s day had first to be held in the cathedrals, and by ten o’clock the sacred banners from all the great shrines of Moscow began to assemble on the height where the three cathedrals, the bell tower, and the great palace stand. A sacred banner is a metal plate, generally about three feet square, hanging out sideways from a pool like a flag, except that it is quite stiff. The people like to think of it as gold, but that would not prevent it being brass. The plate itself is fretted in various designs, and at the centre is an icon, a representation of some saint or religious scene—St. George with his dragon, the Resurrection, or the Ascension—sometimes painted on board, sometimes worked in silver and other metals. The banner is further adorned with rich enamels, and rattles a fringe of metal tassels. I counted nearly a hundred of them glittering in the frosty sun, as they entered the Kremlin gates in groups and passed the piled-up lines of guns which Napoleon left behind him, and the new white palings round the little shrine where the Grand Duke Sergius met his end.

It was impossible to estimate the number of people who swarmed on every open space and crowded the steps of all the churches. There were many thousands, and all were bowing and crossing themselves or kneeling in the snow with adoration before every shrine and at every saint that passed. All classes were there, and sometimes a lady, deep in furs, would signal to her servant to put down a cushion or piece of mackintosh on the particular spot where she wished to worship. But, as is natural in a religious ceremony, on the whole it was a crowd of the poor. Many peasants had come in from the country, conspicuous for their wild hair and leather coats. But the greater part were simply the poor of Moscow—the pious, the patriotic, the criminal poor—all who are the natural enemies of change. They went from shrine to shrine, they crowded round the Great Bell, they climbed the brass-domed tower for the view, they filled the cathedrals till it was impossible to stir inside, and from the outside we could only listen to the deep chantings that boomed through the open doors. And all the time the crossings and bowings and prostrations in the snow never ceased.

The Governor-General and other great officials and soldiers had a specially short service, in accordance with their dignity, in some chapel up the Lion staircase, where no unhallowed or ununiformed foot is fit to tread. But by eleven all the services were over, and with infinite effort the holy banners were drawn up in two lines beside the Great Bell. Their main poles being supported by four smaller poles, they began to move slowly and with difficulty towards the gate into the Red Square. It is the Holy Gate of the Saviour, under which every Russian takes off his cap, so sacred for centuries has been the picture above the arch.

Small bodies of Cossacks, and of infantry with fixed bayonets, were stationed along the route or accompanied the procession, to protect the heavenly powers. When at last the glittering banners had staggered by, there came a group of priests in robes stiff with gold and many-coloured embroideries, thrown over their ordinary fur coats, and helping to make them warm as well as beautiful. And behind them came a party of earthly saints in apparel still more marvellous. I think they were bishops, but they may have been archimandrites. They wore hats of brass or gold, shaped like Byzantine domes, and sprinkled with gleaming glass or precious stones. Some of the saints had hair hanging far down their chests and backs; others were less devout in shagginess.

Last of all, supported by an extra strong detachment of Cossacks, came the banners of the most sacred shrine in Moscow, accompanying the picture of the Iberian Virgin herself, which had been brought out for the occasion in its wooden case from its own rich chapel at the Iberian gate. As she passed—this famous virgin, copied from the Virgin of Mount Athos centuries ago—the crowds on each side bowed before her like corn when the wind blows.