A benevolent society, of which the duke of Orenburg, a brother-in-law of the czar, is president, is doing a great deal of good in supplying substitutes for saloons—temperance resorts and loafing places, where the peasants can spend the long winter evenings amusing themselves, without getting drunk. Non-alcoholic drinks are sold at these places, with a sufficient profit to maintain them, and they are now found in almost every village.
The greatest drawback among the peasant class in southern Russia is the lack of schools. If the church would spend less money for gilded domes and resplendent decorations in its houses of worship, and more for school-houses, it would be a great benefit to the people. But whenever you criticise the absence of school-houses, the loyal Russian always attributes it to the lack of teachers. If you discuss the subject with school boards and other educational authorities, they will tell you that it is impossible to obtain competent teachers. The chief reason is the low wages offered by the government. The peasants have been making money for several years. They are saving it, and many of them are using every means within their reach, except education, to improve their condition. They have better homes and furniture than they ever had before; they are breeding up their horses, sheep and cattle; they are buying labour-saving machinery and the best seed in the market, and still have money in the bank.
CHAPTER XIII
THE CRIMEA
The Crimea, the loveliest gem in the crown of the czar, is a trophy captured by Catherine the Great in one of the numerous wars of conquest that have been brought by the Russians against Turkey. These wars have been going on at intervals for centuries, and will continue to occur until the patriarch of the Greek orthodox church presides again at St. Sophia, the most famous of all Mohammedan mosques—once a Christian temple. The Turks let the sign of the cross remain upon the pediment over the entrance that faces toward Mecca as a reminder and a taunt to the Christian world.
After Catherine captured the Crimea she attempted to realize the dream of Peter the Great by chasing the Turks from Europe. She proclaimed her supremacy over all the northern shore of the Black Sea and made preparations to erect her throne in Constantinople. It was a magnificent scheme of conquest, and it might have been carried out but for the outbreak of the French Revolution and a national uprising under Kosciusko in Poland. Her attention was thus diverted from the south, and it was left for Nicholas, the “iron czar,” to subdue the Caucasus and extend the limits of Russia to the Caspian Sea.
In 1787 Catherine made a triumphal journey to visit her new possessions. She rode in a chariot covered with gold leaf and bearing her monogram in diamonds upon the doors. The axles of the wheels were studded with costly gems and never was such a splendid equipage used by mortal. It outshone the chariots of the fairies, and you may see it, if you wish, preserved with other relics of the most luxurious of all queens, in the Kremlin at Moscow.
The empress was received everywhere with great enthusiasm by the communities her soldiers had conquered. Festivals and illuminations were prepared to impress her with the loyalty of her new subjects and Prince Potemkin, her viceroy, built a road 200 miles long through the wilderness in order that her journey might be more comfortable. She was convinced of the glory and prosperity of her dominions and over the gate through which she passed into the city of Kherson, thirty miles north of Odessa, was this inscription:
“This is the way to Byzantium”—the Russian name for Constantinople.
By the same war Russia got Odessa and the north shore of the Black Sea. Alexander I renewed the struggle in 1855, for the purpose of taking the south coast and the northern provinces of Asia Minor from the sultan, when the intervention of England, France, and Sardinia provoked the Crimean war. It was not until 1877 that the conquest was resumed by Alexander II, and Russia then gained Batoum, and the eastern shore of the Black Sea, and a portion of Armenia; deprived the Great Turk of Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, and established the independence of Montenegro under the protection of the Powers. And the end is not yet. The advance of the Russian boundaries toward the Mediterranean and the winning of a port upon the Pacific as an outlet for the products of Siberia are the fixed policy of the Romanoffs and they will fight until they get it. The late war with Japan set back the pointer upon the dial of Russian conquest, and the results which had been accomplished by diplomacy in Manchuria were lost. That will all have to be done over again, and the task will be ten-fold more difficult, but it will nevertheless be attempted, sooner or later.