Russia, as Seen and Described by Famous Writers

by Unknown

We notice the hold which religion, in its vast variety of forms, has over the popular mind of Russia. No one who has visited, however casually, a Russian city can doubt this; the icon hangs in the station office, and men bow to it, the cabman crosses himself ere he drives over a bridge; shrines are interposed between shops, many of which latter are devoted to the sale of crucifixes, swinging lamps and sacred pictures; green cupolas and golden crosses gleam against the sky, look which way you will. So it is in the village, the white wooden church stands out in front of the black wooden houses, crosses are placed in the cattle pastures to ward off evil spirits, the folk cross themselves if they yawn, lest "chort," the devil jump in at their mouth, and the drunkard, at the tavern door, kneels and uncovers as the procession passes on its way, may be to bless the waters but now released from the winter grip of ice, or may be to leave some neighbour in the communal graveyard. We notice, too, the stern logic with which the peasant theologian follows up the ideas of his sect, how he works out his own salvation along lines which he himself lays down, and in so doing invents some new creed almost daily; for a Russian newspaper can hardly ever be taken up without seeing the discovery of such in one corner or other of the vast Empire. That he has the full courage of his opinions, that he will suffer for conscience' sake—Russian officials only know how bitterly—that he will lay down his life, or—almost equal sacrifice for him—forsake his land and "izba," and face the future among the wild native races which bound European Tsarland on its north and east—not so very long ago—he suffered the knout and the stake rather than recant one iota of what he thinks to be the only true rendering of the Biblical text, all this must in common fairness be allowed to the poor Russian.

[ST. PETERSBURG]

J. BEAVINGTON ATKINSON

Cronstadt, the strong fortress which stopped the advance of the English squadron in the last Russian war, is as the water-gate of St. Petersburg. A bright July sun made no unpleasing picture of the huge hulks of the men-of-war, and of the many-masted merchant ships which lay within the harbour, or behind the fortifications. Passing Cronstadt the capital soon comes in sight; the water is so smooth and shallow, and the banks are so low, that I was actually reminded of the lagoons of Venice. Far away in the distance glittered in the sunlight cupola beyond cupola, covered with burnished gold or sparkling with bright stars on a blue ground. The river, stretching wide as an estuary, was thronged with merchandise as the Tagus or the Thames: yachts were flying before the wind and steam-tugs laboured slowly against the stream, dragging behind the heavily-laden lighter. Warehouses and wharfs and timber-yards now begin to line either bank; yet the materials for a sketch-book are scanty and uninviting: an artist who, like Mr. Whistler, has etched at Battersea and Blackwell, would find by comparison on the Neva the forms without character, the surface without texture, the masses without light, shade, or colour. As the boat advances the imperial city grows in scale and pomp. The river view becomes imposing, the banks are lined on either side by granite quays, which for solidity, strength, and area, have no parallel in Europe. Beneath the bridges the unruly river rushes, bearing along rafts and merchandise, and in the broad-laid streets people hurry to and fro, as if the day were too short for the press of business: only in great commercial capitals, the centres of large populations, is life thus rapid and overburdened. Throughout Russia generally time hangs heavily, but here at the seat of empire, the focus of commerce, life under high pressure moves at full speed. I know of no European capital, excepting perhaps London and Vienna, which leaves on the mind so strong an impression of power, wealth, and ostentation, as the city of St. Petersburg.

Possibly the first idea which may strike the stranger on driving from the steamer to the hotel, is the large scale on which the city has been planned; the area of squares and streets seems proportioned to the vast dimensions of the Russian empire: indeed the silent solitudes of the city may be said to symbolize the desert tracks of central Russia and Siberia. Only on the continent of America is so much land at command, so large a sweep of territory brought within the circuit of city life. In the old world, Munich offers the closest analogy to St. Petersburg, and that not only by wide and half-occupied areas, but by a certain pretentious and pseudo-classic architecture, common to the two cities alike: the design of the Hermitage in fact came from Munich. St. Petersburg, like Munich too, has been forced into rapid growth; indeed while looking at the works raised by successive Tsars, I was reminded of the boast of Augustus that he found Rome of brick and left her of marble.

St. Petersburg, though sometimes decried as a city of shams, is certainly not surpassed in the way of show by any capital in Europe. As to natural situation she may be said to be at once fortunate and infelicitous: the flatness of the land is not redeemed by fertility, the monotony of the panorama is not broken by mountains; the city rides as a raft upon the waters, so heavily freighted as to run the risk of sinking. And yet I know of no capital more imposing when taken from the strong points of view. Almost beyond parallel is the array of palaces and public buildings which meets the traveller's eye in a walk or sail from the English quay up to the Gardens of the Summer Palace. The structures it is true tend a little too much of what may be termed buckram and fustian styles; indeed there is scarcely a form or a detail which an architect would care to jot down in his note-book. And yet the general effect is grand: a big river rushing with large volume of water through the arches of bridges, along granite quays and before marble palaces, is a noble and living presence in the midst of city life. The waters of "the great Neva" and of "the little Neva" appear as an omnipresence; the rivers are in the streets, and great buildings, such as the Admiralty, the Fortress, and the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, ride as at anchor on a swelling flood. The views from the three chief bridges—Nicholas Bridge, Palace Bridge, and Troitska Bridge—are eminently palatial and imperial. The Academy of Arts, the Academy of Sciences, St. Isaac's Cathedral, the Admiralty, the Winter Palace, the Hermitage, and the fortress and cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, give to the stranger an overpowering impression of the wealth and the strength of the empire. The Englishman, while standing on these bridges, will naturally recall analogous positions on the river Thames; such comparison is not wholly to the disadvantage of the northern capital, yet on the banks of the Neva rise no structures which in architectural design equal St. Paul's Cathedral, Somerset House, Westminster Abbey, and the Houses of Parliament. Indeed, with the exception of the spire of the Admiralty, I did not find in St. Petersburg a single new idea.

ST. PETERSBURG.

Of the famous Nevski-Prospekt, the chief street in St. Petersburg, it may be said as of our London Regent Street, that it can stand neither weather nor criticism. As to style of architecture, strictly speaking the Nevski-Prospekt has none: the buildings, consisting of shops, interspersed with a few churches and public edifices, so much partake of the modern and mongrel Italian manner, that the traveller might easily fancy himself in Paris, Brussels, or Turin. Few cities are so pretentious in outside appearances as St. Petersburg, and yet the show she makes is that of the whited sepulchre: false construction and rottenness of material, façades of empty parade, and plaster which feigns to be stone, constitute an accumulative dishonesty which has few parallels in the history of architecture. Classic pillars and porticos, which have been thrust in everywhere on slightest pretext, are often built up of brick covered with cement and coloured yellow. Columns, here the common and constant expedient, are mostly mismanaged; they are as it were gratuitous intrusions, they seem to be stuck on, they fail to compose with the rest of the building. Neither do the architects of St. Petersburg understand mouldings or the value of shadow, there is scarcely a moulding in the city which casts a deep, broad or delicate shadow: hence the façades look flat and thin as if built of cards. In the same way the details are poor and treated without knowledge; it thus happens that conceptions bold and grand are carried out incompletely. The great mistake is that the architects have made no attempt to gather together the scattered elements of a national style. With the noteworthy exception of the use of fine, fanciful and fantastic domes, often gilt or brightly coloured, the architecture of Russian capitals is either Classic or Renaissance of the most commonplace description.

I shall not think it worth while to dwell on the very many churches which adorn the northern capital, because, with few exceptions, there is nothing in point of art which merits to be recorded. Yet I can scarcely refrain from again referring to the fine fantasy played by many-coloured domes against the blue sky. The forms are beautiful, the colours decorative. The city in its sky outline presents a succession of strange pictures, at one point the eye might seem to range across a garden of gourds, at other positions peer above house-tops groups which might be mistaken for turbaned Turks; and when the sun shines vividly, and throws glittering light on the "patens of bright gold," over these many-domed churches, a stranger might almost fancy that above the city floated fire balloons or bright-coloured lanterns. The large cupola of St. Isaac, covered with copper overlaid with gold, has been said to burn on a bright day like the sun when rising on a mountain top. I can never forget the sight when I returned to St. Petersburg from the most brilliant civic and military spectacle I ever witnessed, the fête of the Empress at Tsarskoé Sélo. It was still dark, but before I reached my hotel for the short repose of a night which already brightened into morning, every cupola on the way was awakening into daylight; the sun, hesitating for a moment on the horizon, announced his coming as by electric light on the golden stars which shone on domes more blue than the grey sky of morning. In Moscow church cupolas playa part in the city panorama still more conspicuous than in St. Petersburg.