Roundabout to Moscow: An Epicurean Journey

by John Bell Bouton

A Russian winter may be all that Gautier paints it; but, if that brilliant Frenchman had been thin instead of stout, with less inside room for the storage of solids and liquids as a sure defense against Arctic rigors; and, if he had been obliged to look after anybody besides Gautier, he might have hesitated to take the journey whose record gives so much pleasure to readers. And, remember, his point of departure was Paris, not New York. A trip from America to St. Petersburg, merely to verify Gautier’s impressions there, would hardly pay for the cost, time, and trouble. Americans prefer to pass the cold months in Italy or Egypt or the Holy Land, or some other sunny clime, and leave to more adventurous souls the pleasures—such as they are—of a Russian winter. Everything that the ordinary tourist cares to see can be seen in July as well as in January. The Winter Palace in St. Petersburg is closed in summer, it is true, but the Hermitage, with its glut of pictures and bric-à-brac, is open. So is Tsarskoé Selo, a little distance outside of the city. There are many other palaces in or about the capital, mostly accessible in summer. Private, if not public, admittance can be had to every museum and library. The Tsar may be absent during the warmer months, but the visitor would probably not get a look at him or any of the imperial family in winter. If the nobility are also missing, the innocent American does not know it, as he has no means of telling a prince from a plebeian. If the entire court and all the fashionable element are away, St. Petersburg has not been carried off with them. And that city, and, still more, Moscow, are at all times so full of interest on a hundred accounts that one does not pause to think whether their attractions would or would not be greatly heightened by the presence of snow six feet deep on a level, or by the return of the Tsar from Peterhof or Gatschina.

Russia is fortunate in the possession of two great capitals. St. Petersburg is the civil and Moscow the religious center of a double administration. Paris is the only city of France that most Americans desire to visit. That city is, indeed, France in the sense that Parisians claim for her; and the rest of the republic is but a matter of detail. Similarly, St. Petersburg and Moscow are Russia. By sojourning a few days in each city, one can gather sufficient, if superficial, knowledge of the Russian people, their religious and secular institutions, their amusements, their business ways, their modes of living, to correct a host of errors into which prejudiced authors have led him. If he is a student of natural history, an ethnologist, a profound investigator of social problems—if he desires to see with his own eyes how the exiles fare in Siberia, or whether the petroleum-wells of Baku are running dry, or how the railway to Merv is getting along—he may spend many months in Russia acquiring interesting information. But, if he wants a good time, with the minimum of discomfort, while he is packing away in the odd corners of his brain the things most truly worth knowing about Russia, let him stick to St. Petersburg and Moscow. There he will find hotels first class in all respects, easy carriages, and French (if not English) newspapers. Unless he is a critical analyst of race peculiarities, he will be satisfied with the many varieties of Russia’s population which he sees in Moscow alone. And, as to souvenirs of the country, he will, perhaps, be more fortunate in picking them up at bargains in the Gostinnoi Dvors of the two capitals than if he hunted and chaffered for them at the crowded and noisy fair of Nijni-Novgorod.

In the restaurants and reading-rooms one often notices little groups of Russians earnestly scanning the columns of a newspaper in their own language. It is a large, four-page sheet, usually accompanied by a supplement. Perhaps one will read, and the others will listen. At times they seem deeply interested, hanging upon the words that are uttered as if they were revelations of the greatest moment. The expression of their faces is unbroken by any trace of levity. They lay the paper down, and seem to be discussing what has been read. Sometimes one observes marked signs of dissent from some member of the group, but more commonly there is an apparent agreement with those sentiments of the journal which have provoked the debate. Seeing the same scene enacted with trifling variations a number of times, I became anxious to learn the occasion of it, and then I ceased to be surprised.

The paper is the “Moscow Gazette” (“Moskovskeeya Vedomostee”), edited by M. Katkoff, the man who wields an influence in Russia second to no subject of the Tsar. We are told that the Russian press is fettered and crushed, and here is an editor more powerful, for good or ill, than any statesman of the empire. Holding no office, reaching the mind of the Tsar only through his printed columns, he disputes with M. de Giers (Minister of Foreign Affairs) for the confidence and support of their common master. And, hardly less important, he makes himself felt, through the widely distributed “Gazette,” among the most thoughtful circles of Russia. In all the foreign offices of Europe his opinions are carefully studied, being regarded as the earliest and best indications of the drift of Russian sentiment. For M. Katkoff is, above all things, a Russian. He is the champion Panslavist. He advocates the federation of all branches of the great Slavic race. It is his policy that keeps alive the national jealousy of Germany and Austria. His eyes are fastened on Bulgaria, Roumania, and Servia, where the Slavic population is a strong element. Galicia and Bohemia in Austria, Posen in Prussia, and independent little Montenegro, are among the regions embraced within the wide sweep of his Slavic sympathies. A union of the Slavs for any purpose, and on any scheme of protection extended by the great Empire of the North to the federated provinces, would end in their consolidation with Russia under the government of the Tsar.

Italy and Germany have each been substantially unified on the same principle. If it is admissible in those two cases, why not in that of Russia? Panslavism, ably upheld in the “Moscow Gazette,” can never be unpalatable to the Tsar or the people, for it strongly appeals to patriotism and national pride. Therefore, M. Katkoff is permitted to display zeal in this direction even to the point of excess. It is only when his feelings betray him into undue hostility to some power—Germany or Austria, for example—with which the Tsar desires to keep on good terms, that the Panslavist leader is called to order. But the rebuke takes only the form of a summons to St. Petersburg, where he has an audience, and is readily restored to the favor which he had only nominally lost. The existence of such a paper, which is not a government organ, and yet passes as such among most of its readers—which can be approved or repudiated at pleasure, just as circumstances may require—is a great convenience. It must be understood that no editor would enjoy the license given to M. Katkoff if he were in the least degree politically unsound or disloyal. The strength of his position lies in his intense, unselfish devotion to Russian interests, his passionate adherence to the autocratic system, and his burning hatred of all those revolutionary elements that would precipitate changes for which Russia is not prepared.

A foreigner thrown among Russians, who can not speak his language, is worse off than a visitor to a deaf and dumb asylum, the inmates of which can make their opinions known by writing or by signs. One may travel all over Russia, and learn nothing more of the political ideas of the common people than when he entered it, if he depends on them for enlightenment. His only sources of information are educated Russians, who can converse in his own tongue, or English, French, or German residents who have lived in the country long enough to understand the people and have outgrown their native prejudices. It is from such persons that I gathered a few impressions, which went far to modify views formed upon the strength of unfriendly English publications.

It may sometimes be true, as the proverb says, that “to hear the news, you must go away from home.” But this can hardly hold good in the case of reports relating to the Tsar’s personal character and habits. It is much more likely that the assertions about his intemperance, insanity, and brutality, which appear in the London “Times,” are fictions, than that such alleged facts should be totally unknown among intelligent people in St. Petersburg, where he lives. I sought in vain for any corroboration of the reports that the Tsar ever has the delirium tremens, or is under the influence of liquor, or exhibits signs of madness, or has a violent temper and is abusive to his ministers and courtiers. Nobody with whom I conversed had ever heard any rumors of this kind, except as they originated from known reports in the foreign papers. These were invariably denounced to me as malicious inventions. Old English dwellers in Russia expressed themselves warmly on the subject. They felt ashamed at the wholly unfounded and outrageous libels heaped by the press of London on one who, so far as they know, is truly temperate, free from any taint of lunacy, mild and reasonable in his intercourse with all. They spoke of him as a “family man,” having a German fondness for wife and children and the simple pleasures of domestic life. They regretted that he observed so strict a seclusion; but admitted that he was forced to be very circumspect in his movements in order to escape the fangs of the Nihilists. All my informants pitied the Tsar and still more pitied his subjects, who are, in large measure, deprived of that direct personal cognizance of their needs and wishes which might prove so beneficial to them if the Nihilists would permit it to be freely exercised. It also follows, from this comparative isolation of the Tsar, that the powers which he delegates are undoubtedly in many cases abused, and the facts are never brought to his paternal knowledge.

For the Tsar is not only the executive and the law-making power of the state, head of the Church, fountain of justice, commander-in-chief of the army and navy, but, more than all these, he is father to his people. His subjects owe him, in theory, a filial respect and obedience; and, with the exception of the Nihilists, they are dutiful children. The relation is an Oriental one, which we of the West can not understand. But it is powerfully operative in Russia. It has not been really weakened by anything that the Nihilists have done, but, on the contrary, strengthened. This would be proved any day by the spontaneous and almost universal response of the Russian people to any call for sacrifice which their father should make upon them.

Some foreign writers profess to fear that the Tsar will plunge his country into a causeless war, in order to find an outlet for national discontent. But the only discontent which troubles Russia at present is that of the Nihilists, who are irreconcilable. No war in behalf of some Slavic race, or to extend the boundaries of Russia, or to possess the Holy Places, would have their sympathy. They would still plot against the life of the one man whose murder, according to their shallow view, might bring about that chaos which is the desire of their hearts. The assassination of Alexander II did not promote the cause of Nihilism in the least; but, on the other hand, led to the adoption of severer though unsuccessful measures for its repression; and there is no reason to think that the removal of the present sovereign would be of any advantage to the cause of anarchy. The Tsars live in their successors. The mighty empire which has weathered the storms of a thousand years is not now at the mercy of a dynamite bomb.

The undoubted tendency of Russia is now toward what is commonly spoken of as a “constitutional government.” This is not following a general demand of the people. They seem to be, as a rule, quite indifferent to it; but it is believed to be favored by the Tsar. His life, aside from the dreadful menaces of Nihilism, is made a burden to him by the enormous and steadily increasing responsibilities of his position. As a conscientious man, these must press upon him heavily, no matter how much he seeks to distribute them among the ministers who are but his creatures. If he could be assisted in his great work by a national body, in some sense representing the people, and if his ministers were made responsible in fact instead of being purely clerical functionaries as at present, the diabolical aims of the Nihilists would be frustrated more surely than they could be in any other way. The blind hate which now seeks the life of one man only would then lose its concentration. It would then be necessary to kill or terrorize a whole ministry, or a majority of delegates—a task, the difficulty of which would probably impress the most unimaginative of Nihilists. One might almost predict the disappearance of Nihilism as an organized danger in Russia, if constitutionalism could somehow be grafted on the old trunk. (See [Appendix].)