MUSCOVY RU.S.S/I THROUGH FOREIGT{EYES 1553- r9oo

FRANCESCAWILSON

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Printed in Great Britain PREFACE

Is your journey really necessary,as they used ) to ask us rn the Second World !/ar? Not the journeys of the foreign visitors to Russia-they had their reasonsfor them-but our journey into the past to accompany I : them? I think it is. Many of the earlier travellers impart the excitement I they felt in their discovery of an unknown country and their narratives can be read with the sort of pleasure that RobinsonCrusoe and Gulliver's Traoelsstill give. They saw l\{.uscory with the eyesof children to whom everything new and surprising is equally significant: black or white, repulsive or attractive. Every detail is concrete and sharp. We have chosento begin with, not the pioneer Herberstein, but the adventurous and lovable English sailor, Richard Chancellor who, thwarted in his searchfor Cathay stumbled, instead, into the court of Ivan the Terrible, all gold and jewels and barbaric pomp. (The Tudors, with English arrogance,claimed that Chancellorhad discoveredMuscovy as Columbus had discoveredAmerica.) Even a century later, the Dutch sailor Struys, penetrating to the Caspian,had no less a senseof wonder and discovery. His account of his imbroglios with Cossackbrigands and fierce Tartars reads like a picaresquenovel. The visitors whose records are most valuable are those who lived longest in Russia, learned the language,made friends with the people: men like Captain John Perry, engineer to Peter the Great; Dr Cook, physician to Prince Galitzin; Martha Wilmot, the Irish girl who helped Princess Dashkov to write her memoirs; the Quaker Daniel Wheeler whom the Tsar Alexander I invited to drain the St Petersburgmarshes; Herr Kohl who studied Russian life for six years. (Yet admittedly the French, whose visits were usually briefer, were amongst the most acute observers,as for instance Madame de Sta6l, whose whirlwind tottrnde lasted only two months.) Here we must apologizefor a gap; we have no Italians (except for Casanova).The Italians contributed more than any other nation to the arts and visual glories of Russia. It was Italians who from the fifteenth to the seventeenthcenturies were building churches in Kiev and the walls, towers and churches of the Kremlin. In the eighteenth century it was to architects like Trezzini, Rastrelli and Quarenghi that St Petersburg owed its superb layout and many of its most splendid buildings. What did they think of the Muscory to which they were giving so much? Unfortunately we havebeen unable to traceany personal account of their impressions and experiences.Yet it matters linle, for their record in marble, sfucco, in stone and gorgeous ornament are ro Muscooy more lasting than the records of foreigners who have left us only words. Again it was Italians who, in the r73os, brought opera to St Petersburg; it was Italians who, along with the French, taught Russiansthe ballet. On Scythian soil they sowedseed which bore strangefruit -something different and magical which the West still enjoys. Each of our many travellers tells something about Russia which can be discovered in no other way. With their foreign eyes rhey saw, in staftling colours, things that to the natives were so familiar that they never noticed them. Unforn:nately, as all these travellers, except Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch, were lTesterners they were convinced that they belonged to a superior culture, an attitude which scarcely changeduntil the myth of the Slav soul was propagatedtowards the end of the nineteenth century. In consequencemost of them failed to seethe virtues of a primitive peopleor valuesin institutions that were not on the Western pattern. There is a tiresome note of condescensionin their rvritings. There is another reasonwhy the earlier foreign impressionsof Russia are especiallyvaluable. For various geographicaland historical reasons, education in Russia developed so late that few Russianswrote about their country. When Karamzin wrote his History of Russiaat the end of the eighteenth century, he made considerableuse of foreign accounts ofhis country. The present collection, however,is not concernedexcept incidentally with Russian history. The documents chosen describe the Russian scene and the Russian people: how they lived in their cities andtheir villages, what theyate and drank, how they built their houses, tilled their fields, worshipped at home and in their churches, bore the tymnny under which they lived, celebratedbirth, marriage and death- day-to-day things, not high politics or international relationships. For this reason,few ambassadors'repofts are included. Only foreign impressions of European Russia are given. Fitzroy Maclean, in A Personfrom Englan4 has told the exciting stories of travellers in Asiatic Russia. George Kennan's great human document Siberia and the Exile Slstem is no exception to this rule. His book deals ri'ith European Russians,not with Kalmucks, Kirghiz or Yakuts. The abbd ChappeD'Auteroche'sJourney into Siberiais alsoonly incidentally aL'out Siberia. His rendezvous in Tobolsk was with Venus; his story about the Russianshe met on his journey. The richest period for foreign accounts, the nineteenth century, is the hardestfrom which to selectand, after r86o, the leastnecessary. We csrl read the Russians on themselves. For one of the strangest phenomena in European literary history had occurred. The Preface rr

Muscovites, with a pentecostalsuddenness, realized the potency of the written word. In the words of a Russian writer: 'Little more than a century was allotted to our literature to epitomize-in a violent foreshortening-the rnillenia of European tradition, and to add a new domain to theoldspiritualuniverseofthe West. . . . This was something strikingly different from the long, slow, organic formation of other literatures. Russianliterature did not arise as a tree-slow to grow, hard to decay,organic. No, it exploded like a rocket, displaying a short, sharp, transient radiance on the darkening horizon of Western civilization.'l For the first time, we in the West could read the Russianview of the monotoniesand beautiesof their landscape,the joys and sorrowsof their people, their passions, aspirations, superstitions and beliefs, their oppressions, follies and sufferings, in Gogol, Turgenev, Herzen, Tolstoy, Dostoievsky and Chekhov; evenif great poetslike Pushkin and Tyrtchev were sealedfrom us by a languagewe had not mastered. Readers will come to the narratives in this book with their own prejudices. Some will be most impressed by the contrast between the Soviet Russia of today and the Tsarist Russia of yesterday; they will point to the staggering feats of the cosmonautsand scientists whose forebearswere serfs; to the women effective in every walk of life, whose granddamswere tied to the soil, old hags at thirty, or doomed to cards, cosmeticsand idleness. Others will find in thesedescriptions of Tsarist times certain perennial 'Plus features. They will mutter, ga change. . .'They will talk of the unchanging effect of climate on Russian character, that inexorable climate: autumn with its bitter rains that turn roads into swamps; winter that, for months, buries thewhole world under snow,andbreeds inertia; spring which, however lyrical with sudden blossom and Easter's joys, isolatesvillages and farms for weeksby disastrousfloods; summer with its intolerable heat, dust, flies and drought. The Soviet with all its technological skill cannot changethe climate. They will point, also, to the constanteffect ofhistory and geographyon the Russiancharacter: the influence of the Orient ('Scratch a Russian and you find a Tartar'), of the steppes,vast and lonely as the ocean,breeding melancholy and a fatalistic capacity for endurance.There will be among them many who maintain that absolutism is inherent in Russia, that Siberia has a more ominous sound now, in the days of Solzhenitsyn's Ivan Denniswitch

I N. Bachtin,Lectures and Essags(Birmingham 1963). 12 Muscoay

and The First Circle, than it had in the days of Dostoievsky's From the House of the Dead. It is perhaps inevitable that many in the West see Russia in these sombre terms (Siberian prisons, Dostoievskian gloom) but this is to ignore the immense forward drive of the Russian people, the long hopes that characterizetheir attirude to the universe (Gogol's dashing troika, horses with the whirlwind on their manes). It is on the foundation of this long view that, again and again, Russia has, with superhumaneffort, pulled itself out of swampsthat would have engulfed another nation. In early encounters our travellers were amazed to see Russiansworking not for themselvesbut for their grandchildren. Were they guided by a star they saw in the East? The star might be, as in our day, a sputnik heralding the dawn of technologicalachievement) or the birth of a new hope for man. Have we in the West, in our present pessimistic mood, lost this long view? Russia is a country of violent contrasts. This book will be useful if the reader, startled as our travellers were by the juxtaposition ofthese contrasts, seesRussia as a whole: on the one hand, Ivan the Terrible, on the other, Ivan the beggar saint; on the one hand, oppression and cruelty, Turgenev's despair, Dostoievsky's suffering; on the other, colour, life, triumph-the Cossack choir, the Easter ritual, Borodin,s Prince Igor, Diaghilev's ballet. Side by side there is the darknessand- the suddenglory. I

CONTENTS

Acknolvledgements 7 I Sourcesof Illustrations I 8 I Preface 9 PART I: 1553-16oo.TUDOR DISCOVERERS OF MUSCOVY Introduction r9 RichardChancellor 23 Antony Jenkinson 35 StephenBurrough 45 JeromeHorsey 48 GilesFletcher 54 Postscriptto the Tudor Discoverersof Muscovy 6o PART II: 16oo-1698. SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY EXPLORERSOF MUSCOVY Introduction 65 Adam Olearius 68 SamuelCollins 77 JeanStruys 84 PART III: 1698-18or.THE WINDO\fl INTO EUROPE Introduction >/ JolrnPerry roo Mrs Vigor I14 John Cook I2I Abb6 Chappe d'Auteroche r34 William Richardson r45 PART IV: r8or-r825. THE REIGN OF ALEXANDER I Introduction r55 John Carr r58 Martha and Catherine Wilmot r63 Robert Ker Porter 179 Madame de Sta€l r85 Robert Lyall r90 Daniel \Vheeler r97 PART V: r8z5-r9oo. THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY Introduction 213 Marquis de Custine 2r7 J. G. Kohl 229 14 Muscoay

August von Haxthausen -1-) a) An English Lady (M. A. P. Smith) 252 -- AlexandreDumas z6z Donald Mackenzie Wallace -/) \rictor Tissot (Russiansand Germans) 279 Victor Tissot (Russiaand the Russians) 286 George Kennan 29r George Hume 307 List of Tsars and Tsarinas r553-r9oo 315 Bibliography 3r6 General Index 319 Index of Persons 322 PLATES

I Tartars exercising lacitg page 64 A Russian funeral II The Samoyeds 65 'The princess deserveda better fate' 'Another band of Tartars'

III Fire, the scourgeof town and village 96 'purge' The of the Streltsi Voronezh

Iv Ice slides 97 v Through the ice rz8 'Judge of their condition' 'Only vI a man I am having whipped' r2g 'A violently emotional people' vII The blessi'g of the waters 16o The Admiralty Bridge in St Petersburg vIII At the mouth of the Neva 16r 'The poor wolves must be very hungry'

il Transporting iceblocks rg2 'The most fervent prayer of the beggar' x It meant a great deal to the people r93 'The view of Moscow is truly grandiose' xr Doukhobor men 224 Doukhobor women xII The weekly bath was a sacred duty 225 'On horsebackand under arms' XIII Molokani women zs6 The drab monotony of the villages xlv Horses with the whirlwind in their manes zs-l 'Wolves howling round the troika' xv Pious fervour 288 Nijni Novgorod 'The xvl last sounds I heard' 289 Even the police are tolerant ofthem 16 Muscozty

ILLUSTRATIONSIN THE TEXT

r A:rtony Jenkinson's Muscovy, 156z page37 z Revering the ikons r05 3 A great slaughter of beards ro8 'No 4 bei:rg surpasseshim in gaiety of heart' r59 'A 5 soldier is considered as dead to the family' 172 6 St Petersburg under flood 204 7 When high and low mix together 23r 'With 8 no other tools than the axe and the chisel' 244 'Flowers 9 and plants are an expensiveitem' 254 ro A brace of budochniks 257 'This I I was the Caucasus' 264 'A 12 precipice of seventhousand feet' 267 13 Hawking on the steppes 268 'The 14 greybeard ofthe group' 274 INTRODUCTION

When Hakluyt attributed to the English seaman, Sir Richard 'the Chancellor, strange and wonderful discovery of Russia', he was characteristically insular and ignorant. Sigismund von Herbersteinhad visited Russiaas Imperial embassadorin r5r7 and 1526,had publisheda book on it in 1549,and becomeknown on the Continent as the discovererof Russia.He had given Wes- terners the first extensivedescription of Russianhistory, geo- graphy, government and customs,but it could not be fairly said of him, any more than of Chancellor, that he had discovered Russia. Kievan Russia had had close links, both dynastic and commercial, with the rest of Christendom. A daughter of King Harold had married the son of the Grand Prince of Kiev and there were English mercenaries there in the eleventh century. This so-called Kievan period in Russian history started when Vladimir acceptedChristianity (c. 988), not in the Latin but in the Greek Orthodox form. It witnessedthe rise of a brilliant civili- zation, revealednot only in architecnrre,literature and the applied arts but also in the spirit of freedom, so alien to the Muscovite principle of the subject's completesubjection to the state.l The Kievan period came to an end when, in rzz4, the Tartars invaded Russia. 'Few catastrophesso greator so enduringin their effectshave over- whelmeda young and struggling country. The Tatars were no un- disciplinedhorde of fecklessbarbarians, but a force of somehalf a million trained light horsemen,representing an empire which in the lifetime of Jinghis Khan, its creator, had been extended from Manchuria to the Caucasusat a cost of more than eighteenmillion lives. . . . Every important Russiantown, Novgorod excepted,was burnedor put to the sack.'2 For nearly two hundred years Russian principalities and city republics survived only by utter and humiliating subservience to their Asiatic masters.All contactswith the West were severed. Russia virnrally disappearedfrom the map of Europe. Only in the fifteenth cenfluy did she begin to re-emerge. By this time the power of the Golden Horde had been broken. The yoke of the Tartars had been shakenoff but they had left a legacy; the Muscovite Grand Dukes had learned from the Great Khans the 1 G. Vernadsky, Kieaan Rzssia (London, 1948). ' H. A. L, Fisher, History of Europe (London, 1936), p. 179. I 20 Muscooy *t t : art of absoluterule, an art never forgotten in Russiaand, in Tsar- ist times, reinforced by the Church, with its emphasison submis- x sion and its doctrine of the divine right of the ruler. I Ivan III (1462-15o) received ambassadorsfrom the Holy + Roman Empire, but none came from England. So it cameabout that, rvhen Herberstein's book was published in 1549, no one in England took note of it. In the forty years afrer it was published it went into eighteeneditions in many different languages,but no Engtsh edition cameout until 1576.For us it was Richard Chan- cellor who had discoveredMuscovy (asunknown to us as America when Columbus accidentallybumped into it)-and not the Ger- man Herberstein. For readersof English this is an advantage.We get a senseof discoveryfrom our Tudor sailorsand merchants,who noted down everything they saw with a freshnessof vision and an excirement rvhich we do not find in the sober and scholarly Herberstein. Iloreover, we have it in their sonoroussixteenth-century prose. Herberstein knew some Russian and went about his studies of .Nluscovy conscientiously, even consulting Russian archives. From him the Continent took its stock notions of Russia, which lasted for hundreds of years: the excessivecold in winter so that the spit from your mouth freezesbefore it reachesthe ground and y'ou lose your nose unless you rub it with snow; the intolerable heat in summer, which burns up whole corn-fields and forests; the black wolves and white bears; and, above all, the tyranny of the Grand Duke of Muscovy, who makesall his people, even the t greatest of his princes, slaves-and these Russians,Herberstein adds, seem prefer { to slavery to freedom. As for women, they are j: kept in Oriental seclusionand beg their husbandsto bear them, t elsethey think they do nor love them. As a good Catholic, Herber- 3 stein rvasshocked by many things: that communion was in both : kinds and given to small children, that priests married, and so on. * good part t A ofhis account concernsthe indignities he suffered at a the hands of the Grand Duke's messengers,who seemedto think : that their lord wasmore important than the Holy Roman Emperor whom Herberstein represented.His outrage at these 'misunder- standings' is the most entertaining part of his book and make + Herberstein seemquite human. He describeshow he managednot to be the first to dismount from his horse, nor the first to uncover his head, evenhow he did not get up and bow to all the princes at each fresh dish presentedto him at the Grand Duke's banquet, Introduction 2r and how displeasedthe barbarous Muscovites were at his show of spirit and conscioussuperiority. He even allows himself a little joke in discoveringin the loaf of bread the Grand Duke handed to him'an emblem of the hard yoke and perpetual servitudeof those who eat it', since it was shapedlike a horse's collar. The Continent had other writers on Muscovy beside Herber- stein, the ltalian Paulus Jovius, for instance,but for the Tudor English it wastheir own men who discoveredfor them that strange, half-barbarous country. Hakluyt introduces them. When he was in Paris, as chaplain to our ambassadorthere, he was outragedto hear that 'in voyaging, exploration and adventure'his countrymen were despisedfor their 'sluggish security'. To refute this he collected, with tremendous industry, The Principal Naoigations, Voiagesand Discoveriesof the EnglishNation, by seaor ooerland,to the mostremote and distant quarters of the earth, at an! time ztsithinthe compassof thesetr5oo J)ears,a work he publishedin 1589. He wants, he says,to preservecertain English exploits from 'the greedy and devouring jaws of oblivion'. True, the Portuguese had found a new rvay to India, the Spaniardshad discoveredlands westwardof the Pillars of Hercules,but their way wasnever barrec by ice, mist and darkness.Our sailors 'exposed themselvesunto the rigour of the stern and uncouth Northern seas,made trial of the srvellingwaves and boisterous winds,which there commonly do surgeand blow, sailed by the raggec and perilous coastof Norway, the unhaunted[i.e. unfrequented] shoresof Finmark,the dreadfuland misty North Cape.'

Hakluyt cites a letter to Henry VIII from Robert Thorne, a London merchant living in Seville. Thorne was envious of the achievementsof the Spaniardsand Portugueselthe English com- 'without pared to them, seemedto be activity or courage'.There was a route to the fabulous East still undiscovered,a way 'shorter to us than to Spain or Portugal', namely by the norrh-east.By this 'ships passage may havethe clearnessof the day without any dark- nessof the night', and from thence proceedto Cathay and all the Indies. Thorne was not the only one to belie.rein this norrh-east passage.Among others there were the mathematician and astro- loger, John Dee and, most important of all, the veteran explorer, SebastianCabot, governor of the Company of Merchant Adven- 'perils turers. He knew the and travails' of the expedition from :: MuscozsY his own experience.He had searchedfor a passageto Cathay, not by the north-east but by the north-west and, instead of the magicalCathay, had discoveredoniy the barren Newfoundland. 'of It was on Cabot's advice that, in 1553,h the seventh year our most dreadsovereigu lord Edward VI . . . certaingrave citizens of London, men of great wisdom and careful for the good of their country', raisedbetween them (eachgiving f,z) the sum of {6,ooo, and fitted three ships for the exploration ofthe north-eastpassage 'for the discovery of Cathay and divers other regions'. The three ships were the Bona Espnanza of r2o tons, the Edtpard Bonaventureof r4o tons and the Conf'dcnza.Sir Hugh Willoughby, 'a most valiant gentleman and well-born' was appointed captain 'both of the Bona Esperanzaand admiral of the little fleet, by rea- son of his goodly personage(for he was of a tall stature) as also for his singular skill in the servicesof war' (he had fought under Henry VIII againstthe Scots).Richard Chancellorwas appointed captain of the Bonaventure.l 'discovered' The moment when Chancellor accidentally Mus- covy was singularly auspiciousfor both countries. England was badly in need of new markets. Ivan the Terrible, surrounded by enemies both at home and abroad, was desperatelyanxious for new friends and allies-and also to import instruments of war. The Tudor adventurersdid not know this, and the joy with which they were at first welcomed and the honours and favours heaped on them may have causedthem somemild surprise, but they took them in their matter-of-fact way-and as the rightful due of their great nation and their great sovereigns-and were not deterred from writing critically of what they saw' It is time, now, for them to tell their own stories. 1 Hakluyt gives us the tale of Chancellor's adventures partly in his own words but mostly in those of Clement Adams, Chancellor's friend. Adams was a learned man, who had studied at King's College, Cambridge, and then became tutor to the king's henchmen in Greenwich' Chancellor recounted his adven- tures to him. Adams wrote them in elegant Latin, afterwards translated. The two accounts corroborate each otler, but as Adams tells us more about Chancellor than modesty allowed him to tell of himself, in the following account Adams' words are generally preferred. eqh ws6

ANTONY JENKINSOT{

fils! journey to RussiarSSZ; second journey r56z; third journey r 566; lastjourney as ambassadorl5ir

A NTONY JENKINSON was chosento be captain of the A Primrose(to which the precious Osip Napea was enrrusred I I for safe conduct back to his own country) becausehe was a seasonedtraveller, merchant and seaman.The Company also appointed him agent for three years. The list he gives us of his journeys includes Spaio, Pornrgal, Greece, Turkey, Asia Minor, Syria and most of North Africa. In t546, as a young man, he had been sent into the Levant as training for a mercantile career. In 1553he was at Aleppo and wrote an account of the entrv into that city of Solyman the Great, whose permission he reieived to trade in Turkish ports, free of customs' duties. He was alwavs eager to explore new countries and carried with him dispatchls from QueenMary to Ivan IV, requestingthe Tsar to help him on his way to Persia and even to Cathay. Sumptuous presentswere sent to the Tsar, slainly of velvet and satin but also a lion and lioness,and Osip Napea was also given a number of valuables,for which one hopes he was grateful. Three other ships sailed with the Pimrose. The Muscow Merchants gave insuuctions to the masters and mariners of thl fleet similar to those given before, except that there was an added ugency in their admonition to keep within sight of each other; in dark or misty weatherthey should make a grearnoise with trum- pets, drum, horn and gun. They seut an important lerter to their agents in Russia Sving a list of rhe cargoesin the four ships: meinly cloth (kersiesand cotton) but also ning garlsls of pewter. The most useful merchandiseto be obtained in Russia,th-y said, was still wax, tallow, flax and train oil (from seals).As for hemp, it was best to make ropes of it in Russia. Of furs they desired no great plenty becausethey were dead waresl sablesand rich furs 36 Muscoay 'every were not man's money' though they could do well with mink. Searchmust be made for herbs and earth that made good dyes such as Turks and Tartars use. They were sending a young man with knowledge of wood to get samples of yew, near the PechoraRiver, and coopersto make casks,also ten young appren- tices to be treined either to keep accountsor to buy and sell and 'some to be sent abroad to the notable cities of the country for understanding and knowledge'. They wanted samples of steel and copper from Tartary. They affirmed that they had been given by Philip and Mary the monopoly of trade with Russia. In his first letter Jenkinson related how, on May rz, t557, he embarked at Gravesend,and arrived safely in the bay of St Nicholas on July r3th. The Russianambassador and his company, 'with he tells us with obvious relief, great ioy got to shore'. They were welcomed home with splendid presents, 'not only I rye bread and pancakesbut also swans,geese and ducks and all I manner of victuals both fish and flesh, in the best manner that the nrde people could devise'. l Jenkinson himself went on to Colnagro, a hundred versts away,and sailedin a small boat up the swift River Dwina (noticing 'tar' fl that the nativesmade from the trees which grew by its sides) : until he came to Vologda, a great city where the houseswere all t built of firwood, as also the churches, two for every parish-one t for summer, the other to be heated in winter. All the way, he never , I entered into a house but lodged in the wilderness by the river's a 'And side. he that would travel that way must carry with him a hatchet,a tinder box and a kettle to makefire and seethehim meat, i: aa rvhen he hath it, for there is small succour in these parts.' On la December rst, he left Vologda in a sledge,as the manner is in winter, with posthorses. He changedfourteen times before Moscow. On Christmas Day the Tsar invited him to a banquet at his palace in the Kremlin. Six hundred were present, heathen as ts rvell as Christians. Two placesfrom the Tsar sat a boy of twelve, the heir to the emperor of Kazan whose country Ivan had con- quered eight years earlier. In another hall were fgssting zrooo H Tartars who had recently surrendered to the Tsar. It was all immensely grand and festive. The Tsar kept handing ]enkinson dishesof meat and gobletsof wine and mead. Every time the Tsar dra::k or tasteda dish of meat, he crossedhimself and all the com- pany stood up. (Where Herberstein had been irritated, Jenkinson onll' marvelled.) I

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il 6 \.it , & ;!9 | it .rra c t5 d i'c a '{r 'tt 1 :- tt- rtL 4i a \-r: r :l i 38 Muscovyt On Twelfth Night, Jenkinsonwitnessed the gorgeousceremony of the blessingof the waters. First camethe long processionfrom the church with lighted tapers,followed by men carrying the cross and ikons of Our Lady and St Nicholas; then a hundred priests and the Metropolitan himself. Last of all came the Tsar with a crown on his head and all his nobles richly apparelledwith gold, jewels and furs. This immense crowd gathered bareheaded, in spite of the fearful cold, round a hole that had already been hacked out of the thick ice on the river. The priests sang, the Metropolitan blessedthe water, then cast it on the Tsar, his son and his nobles. 'That done,the peoplewith greatthronging filled potsof the water to carry homeand diverschildren were thrown in, and sick people, and plucked out quickly again and divers Tartars christened.All which the Emperorbeheld. Also there werebrought the Emperor's best horsesto &ink the hallowedwater.' Jenkinson was surprised by the prestige of the Metropolitan and gready impressedby the authority of the Tsar ('No prince in Christendomis more fearedof his own nor yet better beloved'). He did not admire the Russiansin general. 'They are greattalkers and liars, flatterersand dissemblers.The womenbe very obedientto their husbandsand go not oftenabroad. I heardof men and womenthat drankaway their childrenand all their goodsat the Emperor'staverns.' He noted, as innumerable visitors hereafter were to note, that rn Russia it was accountedno shameto be drunk. There follows a long account, given by one of Jenkinson's companions,of religion in Russia.This is, on the whole, objective, rvithout the contempt shown by Chancellor and later foreign r-isitors. On Palm Sunday there is a very solemn procession,the Tsar ieadingthe horseon which the Metropolitan sits, young men spreading garments in front of it. For, after Our Lady and St Nicholas, the Metropolitan is next to God and of higher dignity rhan the Tsar himself. In matters of religion he gives sentenceas 'whether himself lists, it be to whip, hang or burn'. There are a 'They great manv rich monasteries. keep great hsopitality and re- lieve much poor people day by day.' At Easter, after the fasting and mourning of Holy week, they have the resurrection 'u'hcreofthey rejoice.For whentwo friendsmeet during the Easter hol1'days, the oneofthem says)the Lord ofChrist is risen'the other I

Antony Jenhinson 39 nnSWets:it is so of a truth and then they kiss and exchangetheir eggs,both menand women continuing in kissingfour daystogether., I At christenings the godfathers and mothers all spit to exorcize I the devil. The godfather hangs a cross round th! baby's neck. 'else This he wears all his life he is no Christian,. The thing that rouses real indignation in honest English breastsis the way marriage is selsrnnized.This is in most poi.rt, abominable.First the man sendsthe woman a small box in which there is a whip, needles,cotton, scissors,etc., and perhaps some 'giving raisinsor figs, her to understandthat if sheoffend ,h" -.rst be beggl with a whip; by the needles,erc., rhat she must apply hglsslf diligenrly to sew; by the fruits, that if she do well, oo gooi thing shall be withdrawn from her.' When the marriage day is appointed, the bride makes a great show of resistance,shutiing herselfup, sobbingand weeping,until sheis draggedto the churcf, by two women. The marriage ceremonyis much as ours. After_ rvards there is drinking, singing and dancing that lasts for three days. However poor they are the bridegroom is called a duke, the bride a duchess. 'One commonrule is amongstthem, if the womanbe not beaten with the whip oncea weekshe will not be good,and the womensay if their husbandsdid not beatthem they would not love them., When a man or woman dies, they suetch him out and Dut a new pair ofshoeson his feet becausehe hasa greatjourney to go, then they wind him in a sheetas we do and put a resrimonyin his right hand which the priest gives him to tesrify to St Nicholas that he dies a christian man or woman. Their friends follorv the corpse, ahvayslaid in an open wooden coffin, to the church carrying wax candles,weeping and howling. When a man is hangedtre is glven 'how no testimony; they are receivedinto heaven,it is a woider, : without their passport.' 'Th9re are a greatnumber of poor peopleamong them which d.ie daily for lack of sustenance,which is a pitiful caseio behold.. . . A greatmany are forced in the winterto dry strawand stamp it to make breadthereof. In the summerthey makegood shift with grass,herbs and roots;barks oftrees are good meat with them at all times.There is no peoplein the world, asI suppose,that live somiserablv and the mosr part of them that have sufficientfor themselv., *. .o ,rrr_ mercifulthat they c.lrenor how many they seedie of faminein the streets.' 40 Muscoay They believe that in a country full of diseasesthe best thing is to go to their hot baths twice a week and sweat the evil out. In 1558,Antony Jenkinsongot permissionfrom the Tsar to explore the Volga, down to Asuakhan on the CaspianSea, which he had recently conquered. From him we get the first English account of the Tartars. Unlike Captain John Perry and many Englishmen after him, he does not admire them but considers them a wicked people. He is shockedthat they have no towns or housesbut move from place to place with their wives, children and cattle. (They say to their children who do not want to move, 'Will you smell your own dung, like the Russians?')They eat no bread, which they say is made from the top of a weed and makes the Christians weak, but only meat, especiallyhorse. For drink they have blood from their horses and fermented mare's milk. They delight in no art or scienceexcept wars. When Jenkinson cameto Astrakhan he found it a desert,for famine and pestilence had followed the long wars and Ioo,ooo had died. The surviving Tartars were so miserablethey might easily have been converted 'if to the Christian faith the Russiansthemselves had been good Christians,but how should they show compassionto other nations when they are not merciful unto their own?' Jenkinsoncould have bought many goodly Tartar children for the price of a loaf of 'had bread but he more need of victuals than of any such mer- chandise'. Jenkinson crossed the Caspian Sea, penetrating to Bactria and Bokhara, where we cannot follow him except to note that even in these countries, outside his jurisdiction, the Tsar's fame was such that his letters savedJenkinson on many occasionsfrom being killed or made a slave. He could not get to Persia because it was too unsettled, but he did some trade with the Tartars and rescuedsix Tartar ambassadorsand rwenty-five Russiansfrom the prospectof slaveryto the king of Samar.On his return to Moscow he kissed the Tsar's hand, gave him the men he had salvaged,a white cow's [yak's] tail from Cathay (which he hadn't reached) and a Tartary drum. Having got the Tsar's leave to depart he arrived safely at Colmagro in May 156o' and from thence sailed to England. Jenkinson'ssecond iourney to Russia,in 156r, is of little interest for the purpose of this enquiry as he was only crossingto Persia and his account tells mainly of his experiencesthere. His third journey,started in r566,was of greatimportance because he gained I

Antony Jenkinson 4r great privilegesfrom the Tsar for English merchants.Calling upon God, the only strengthener of all things and the helper of ail 'sisrer' Christian believers,the Tsar promisedhis eueen Elizabeth to grant certai'' valuable privileges to the Muscovy Company. Not only did he permit them to buy and sell in all part of his king- dom without paying any custom duties,but he gavethem complete monopolyof trade in Russia.If any other merchants,out of what countries soeverthey might be, came in with their ships or wag- gons, their goods would be confiscated.Moreover the Companv was permitted to buy housesin Vologda and Colmagro o, olhrt- ever other places they liked and set up trading cenrres there. Jenkinson was triumphant. The Company had obtained all that their hearts desired. Moreover, the Tsar again sent an embassv to London. They presentedElizabeth with somefine sablesani other rich furs, which in our climate, her courtiers felt, ,were rvholesome,delicate, grave and comely, more dignified and com- forting to agethan the new silks,shags and rags'on n.hichlatterly rve had been wasting our money. Unfortunately the new friendship did not fulfil its promise. The first coolnesscame in t567.Ivan, feelingmenaced by enemies at home and abroad askedElizaberh both for asvlum in England, if he were forced to flee, and for alliance rvith him in his wars. Elizabethreadily promised him asylum (he would do the sameby her, he said, if she neededit-she thanked him but said she dii not) but she had no wish to get involved in his quarrels with his neighbours.fvan was furious. He threatenedthe Muscovy Com- pany to open trade with English merchantswho did nor b;lons to them. Elizabeth immediately sent another embassy,headed by Thomas Randolph but, though he succeededin getting all the Company's privileges confirmed, the truce was only te-porary. Ivan was still hoping for an alliance. In r57o he wrote ,r, letter to the Queen: ".rgiy 'We thought that you lord it over your domain and rule bv 1'ourself. . . but now we seethat there are men who do rule besid! vou, and not men but trading boors,who do not think of the profit of our safety,honour and landsbut seektheir own merchantprofit. -\nd you remainin your maidenlyestate like a comrnonmaid., It rvas to soothe the angry Tsar and patch up trade reration again that ]enkinson was sent on his fourth and last journey to Russiain r57r-this time as ambassador. 42 Muscoojt As soonas he arrivedin Russia,he senthis interpreterto Mos- cow to tell the Tsar of his arrival. In the meantime the English agentsgave him most alarming reports; they had heard it said that if ever Jenkinson came back to Russia he would lose his head. For a moment fenkinson hesitated, wondering if he had better not return home again, but he was a brave man. Sure of his in- nocence,he was determined to face it out, to seek an interview with the Tsar, to hear of what he was accusedand have a chance to justify himself. For six painful months Jenkinsonwaited in Colmagro,with no bodyguard,no lodging appointedfor him and no victuals supplied, 'according to the fashion for ambassadors,which argued his [the Tsar's] grievousdispleasure towards our nation'. For four months he had no news of what had happenedto his interpreter. Later he discoveredthat, becausethe whole country was 'sore visited by the hand of God with the plague',no one was allowed to travel and his interpreter, after he hadgonehalf way,had beenheld in quarantine. ]enkinson sent another messenger,with a guide, by an unknown way through the wilderness,although he knew that it was strictly forbidden to travel by indirect ways.The two men were caughtby a watchman who might lawfully have burned them, with their horses,but was persuaded(presumably by bribes) not to do so. At last, on January 28, t572, the plague having abated, a mes- sagecame from the Tsar that AmbassadorJenkinson should be given post-horsesand await his pleasurein Pereslav.Here he re- mained under house arrest for seven weeks, not allowed to see anyone,not even his orvn people. At last, on March z3rd, he was summonedto the court. The Tsar receivedhim graciously,allow- ing him to kiss his hand. He then dismissedhis courtiers all except his chief secretaryand one other and told Jenkinsonto come near him with his interpreter. He then, in somewhatobscure language, explainedthe reasonfor his displeasure.In 1567he had senr fen- kinson back with a secretmessage to Elizabeth and had expected he would return with a favourable answer. Instead, the 'but Queen had sent Randolph, all his talk rvith us was about merchants' affairs and nothing touching ours'. (The secret message,as ex- piained above, was the request for an alliance and, if necessary, asylum.) Jenkinson replied that he had given the secret messagero the Queen and that she had sent an answerback with Randolph. He .:ouldnot come himself becausehe had beensent on another Antony Jenkinson 43 mission. He reminded the Tsar that the merchants of the Com- pany had now been trafficking in his dominions for nineteen years and had always been ready to serve him. It was grievous I I that His Majesty had withdrawn all privilegesfrom the Company's merchants (he asked that these should be restored) and that he had allowed, to trade on their own il his kingdom, rebellious agentswho had given England a bad name. Thev rvere traitors who should be handed over to Jenkinsonto take back home. The Tsar said he could not read the Queen's leners vet nor give an answer,because it wasthe weekbefore Easter rrhich must be spent in fasting and prayer. He then dismissedJenkinson to his lodging 'ready but sent hfuns dinnsr dressedwith great srore of drinks of divers sorts'. Jenkinsonreceived a reply from the Tsar onlv slr weeksafter he had presentedhim with a detailedlist, in u'riting, of complaints. These were mainly that English merchantscould not recovertheir debts, not even from the imperial treasury) and rvere not allon'ed to pass down the Volga to Astrakhan and over the Caspian Sea to fetch their fellow traders out of Persiawith their goods,and that English artificers had been kept in Russia againsrtheir will. The Tsar replied most reasonably,promising to redressnearll. all of the grievances.One thing he refusedand tlat $as ro com- pensatethe English for what they had lost in a Jloscow fi.re,'for that it was God's doing' and not his. Jenliinsonleft his interpreter behind to collect the debts and receive the leners of privilege. 'charged The Tsar sent him a gentleman to conducr him and provide boats, men, post horses and victuals all the rvar-to rhe seaside,an enormousdistance for such a provision'.At Colmagro he waited for a month. The Tsar had promisedto sendback for punishment the agent who had traded on his orvn and sos-n dis- sension,but he never turned up. On July z3rd, Jenkinsonsailed for home. He wrotel 'And thus,lsing wearyand growing old, I am coDtenrto takemy rest in mine own house,chiefly comforting mvself, in that my servicehath beenhonourably accepted and rewarded of Her llaiestv and the rest by whom I havebeen employed.' That Jenkinsonfelt old and weary after his last exhaustingex- periencein Russia,where his very life wasin danger(as it had been many times on his travels),is scarcelysurprising, although he n'as destinedto live anotherforty years.(In t572, u'hen he re- 44 MuscoztY tired from his travels,he wasprobably still under fift5'.) One hopes that he enjoyedtaking his rest in his own house.He had, in 1568 married Judith Mersh, a relative of Sir Thomas Gresham, by whom he had five daughtersand a son, all of whom married. Jenkinson was the first of our merchant seamento cross the dangerousand unknown Caspian Sea and penetrate into central Asia, even to the legendary Bokhara, which in the nineteenth century was to become part of the Russian Empire. He was an acute and accurateobserver and added considerably to geogra- phical knowledge. England had already had, from Chancellor, a picture of manners and customsin Muscovy but he added many significant details. He wrote of his experiencesin such a matter of fact style, avoiding all grandiloquenceand exaggeration,that one is apt to forget how extraordioary they were, and what courage and tenacity were neededto face them. His country madesome acknowledgement of the debt they owed him. In t568 |enkinson received a grant of arms. The preamble described him as 'one who for the service of his prince, weal ofhis counuy and for knowledgesake, hath not feared to adven* ture his life and to wear his body with long and painful travel into divers and sundry countries'. INTRODUCTION

In the first yearsof the seventeenthcentury, not many Westerners braved the dangersof uavel in Muscov-v.This rvas the Time of Troubles,following on the deathof Boris Goudunovin r6o5.Boris had beena strong ruler, but the belief that he had gainedthe throne through ordering the murder of the righdul heir to it, the Tsarevitch Dimitri, haunted his subjects(to rvhom, becauseof his title, he was sacred) and made them only too willing to believe that the conspiracyhad miscarriedand that Dimitri had turned up in Poland. I7hen he entered Moscow at the head of an army of Poles,he was welcomed with wild enthusiasmbut later suffered from his sponsors.The Poles were Catholics and the perennisl enemiesof the Orthodox Russians.They outragedthe Muscovites. Becauseof them the hapless Dimitri, an engaging figure, was murdered. For years Russia was in chaos. In 1613 the pious Muscovites, who believed so profoundly in the divine right of emperors,had at last an accredited tsar. The boyars elected to the throne a lad of sixteen, Michael, the first of the Romanovs. This did not end the confusion.There was a secondFalse Dimiui. The Polesfought on. The peasantsand peaceablecitizens were a prey to marauders. It is a reliefto know that, by 1618,enough law and order had 'brother', been restored for James I to send an embassyto his the new Romanov tsar. This embassyis chiefly notable for the ambassador'schaplain, Richard James, and his companionTrades- cant. fames, a Fellow of Corpus Christi College,Oxford, compiled a Russian-Englishvocabularyand transcribedspecimens of Russian oral literature. (This early Cecil Sharp made his collection of songsa hundred yearsbefore the Russiansdid.) As for Tradescant, founder of the first Natural History Museum and the first Botanical Garden in England, he brought back with him Arctic berries and plants, a new kind of heiebore, a purple geranium 'marvellous and severalrose bushes (all single) whose scent was sweet'. One becameknown as the wild briar of Muscoly. It is encouraging and rather touching to think of these two mild, scholarly Englishmen collecting songs and plants in barbarous .\luscovy, so soon after the tribulations of the Time of Trouble.l r See ]. Hamel, England and Russia,trans. J. S. Leigh (London, 1854); S. Konovalov, Oxford and Russia,an Inaug;ural Lecrure (Oxford, 1947). (- J Mttscozty I 1 In 1636the Duke of Holsteinsent an embassyto Moscow.This * enterprising duke hoped to steal a march on the rest of Western g Europe and secure special trading privileges for his little T country. In this he failed, but his embassyis important because I with it went the learnedyoung German Olearius,charged with the duty of gathering information about the peoples, manners and customs of Muscovy. Olearius is the first of the seventeenth- century Westernersworth consideringat some length. The Tsar Michael is a shadowy figure; not so his son Alexis, who succeededto the throne on the death of his father in fi45. He earnedthe gratitude of the Royalistsin this country by sending money to the exiled Charles II and asking in tender terms after 'the disconsolatewidow of that glorious Martyr, King Charlesthe First'. When Charles II was safely on the throne, Alexis sent an embassyto congrafulatehim and (in 166z) London enjoyed the sight of the Tsar's tluee envoys driving in great pomp through their streets,their attendantswith hawks on their wrists,'in their habits and fox caps very handsome', according to Pepys, 'but Lord! to seethe absurd nature of Englishmen,that qurnot forbear laughing and jeering at everyrhing that looks strange'. Charles, 'mindful t of the'Isar's brotherly kindnessto him in the time of his ! affiiction', gave the Russiansa reception unmatchedin splendour * (asthe French t ambassadornoted rarher ruefully) and receivedwith : pleasure gifts of gold cloth, furs, hawks, and horses. In 1664 t he sent a return embassyto Moscow under the Earl of Carlisle, in ut the hopes of renewing the friendship broken in the time of Crom- well and regaining the lost trade privileges. Unfortunately, the I*:r Earl of Carlisle was a stupid, arrogant fellow who knew aething of diplomacy but had acceptedthe post in the hopesof somegood hunting in awild counrry. He behavedso insolently that the Tsar was stung into throwing back the King of England's gifts, although l! he must have especiallyregretted the watches and pistols. Even Andrew Marvell's beautifully composedLatin epistles-rhe poet was in the earl's tain-did nothing to smooth over the rift. The embassyserved only to embitter Anglo-Russianrelations. Its only good result was a lively account of Muscovy given by its secretary Guy Midge, a Swiss who had lived long in England. Lll The Tsar's court was almost gnnder than in the days of Ivan the .l Terrible. The Tsar was like a sparkling sun, his throne silver-gilt, his crown and sceptre covered with precious stones; the four tj T lords standing beside hinr were clothed in white ermine and lr Introduction 6l had great chains of gold; zoo boyars were clothed with vests of gold, silver or velvet set with jewels.2 But Alexis was less celebrated,in Russia,for his grandeur than for his extreme piety and his insistenceon rhe rigorous keeping of fastsand attendanceat divine service.Poor llacarius, Patriarchof Antioch and his son Paul of Aleppo experiencedthis in their bones and flesh. They had come to Holy .,\{uscory to beg for aLns and they did not enjoy its holiness.Macarius and his suite nearlv died of starvationduring the frequent fasts of the Church, when a little pulse,or a dried herring, waspur beforethem; rhey nearly dropped dead when forced to stand upright, for four hours in a cold dark church, listening to endlessfalsning. For them, used to the more relaxed,more festive holinessof their Syrian dioceses,Muscovite holinessseemed overdone. It is something of a shock to find the RussianOrthodox Church criticized, not by Protestantor Roman Catholic bigots but by those of its own hierarchy. Alexis was exuemely pious yet, by a well-meaning effort to purge the mistakeswhich, through ignorant copyists,had crept into the Bible and the Church ritual, he causedthe first great schismof the Russian Church. The Patriarch Nikon, by making these corrections,alarmed the conservatives. The result was that the Razkolniks, or Old Believers,formed their own church and, in spite of bitter persecution,became the first and largest group of Russian non-conformists. PerhapsAlexis' great gift to his country was the encouragemenr he gave to foreigners. In this respecthe was the precursor of his more famous son Peter. Not only did a number of Scotsmenfight in his wars (the most famousof them was GeneralPatrick Gordon) but his own personaldoctor was the Englishman, SamuelCollins. For us this is gain: Collins pss rrninhibitedin his commenrson hfe in Muscovy. Uninhibited too, wasthe Dutch sailor Jan Struys, bur more ex- citing ashis adventuresled him farther afield.From Struyswe have a fust-hand account of the Cossackbrigand, Stenka Razin, folk- bero of Russian song and legend, forerunner of .N1azeppaand Pugachev.Startled, we glimpseanother Muscoly, rvild, passionate, rull of colour, as improbable as the mosr fantastic work of art; but now we are in Russia and this is real life. ' G. l\{.iEge,A Relationof ThreeEmbassies . . , in t663-t66q (London, 1669). eqP€ wh.b

JEANSTRUYS

Traoels in Muscoztyt

FrenchEdition, Amsterdam r7r8

,rt LANIUS published the hench edition of this book in I - r7r8, because-he writes in his introduction-although \-l the author Jean Struys was distinguishedneither by birth nor education,he was a'natural genius', who had succeededin all he had undertakenand had written of his experiencesin an easy srylethatwouldplease thosewholook forwhat is'solid and authen- dc' in what they read. The descriptions of the placeshe visited are so exact and detailed that they would be useful to the reader rvhile his adventureswould amusethem. Suuys startedon his travelsin Decemberr 647,but did not arrive i-n Muscovy until Oaober 1668. Suuys tells us in his inuoduction that from his earliest years he rvas obsessedwith the desire to travel, but that his father in- sisted on his learning an honest trade and would not hear of his going to sea.He bore this until he was seventeen.Then, finding his father inflexible, he ran away from home and, at Amsterdam, as a common sailor, boarded a ship bound for Genoa. For ten vears he uavelled far and wide, to Sierra Leone, Madagascar, Siam, Japan and Turkey. In Troy he was seized by the Turks and for six weekswas in the galleys. It washere that Suuys met his first Russian,an old man who had been a galley slavefor twenty-foru yearsand had lost his earsand oose as a punishment for tying to escape.With the help of a file t'h:ch Struys had managedto conceal,they both got rid of their ;h:in5 and shortly before dawn, 'slipped softly into the sea'. The Turkish sentinelsshot their arrows after them, one of which

'i'-:,*', e,: .\{uscw-ie.The extractsare translatedby the Editor. Jean Struys 85 pierced the thigh of the old Russian,'to the bone'. In spite of this he swam with his comrade for two hours, till they reached the Venetian ship, the Sacrifice of Abraham, rvhich received them kindly. Here, by the goodnessof Heaven,the Russianwas soon healed of his dangerouswound, and both men took part in the ensuingbattle with the Turks in which the Venetiansrvon a glori- ous victory. From this experience Struys iearned, among other things, the phenomenal physical strength, power of endurance, courageand trustworthinessof the Russianpeasant, and one hopes that he rememberedhis old comradelater when he rvasia his most critical mood in barbaric Muscovy. The battle againstthe Turks wasfought in June 1656.The next year Struys returned to Holland, intending to stay there for a few daysbut, as he put it, 'fate decided' that he should marry and that for more than ten years he could not leave his family. After this, nothing could hold him and he left in another Sacifce of Abraham en route for Muscovy and Persia.At Riga their ship rvasunloaded and its cilgo put on thhty cartsto be taken overlandto the Caspian Sea,where they hoped to obtain silk from Persia.(Struys doesnot tell us what wareswere on the cafts to be given in exchange,only' that they were grosslyoverloaded.) He washorrified by the exueme poverty and nakednessof the peasantsround Riga, treated, he says,by their lords worse than the Turks treated their slaves.He was glad to get to Pitsiora, his first Russianvillage, where the in- habitantswere well fed and had a flourishing market. At Pletscow, the next town they arrived at, they sent back their Riga carts, as they had receivedthe Tsar's order that horsesand rvaggonsor sleighsshould be providedfor them for the rest of their journel'to the Caspian.It wasalready the end of October.On Novemberrzth the snow was so deepthat they had to proceedin sleighs.Strul's recountsmany detailsof his journeyto Moscow: the terrorsof the forestwhere he met a bear,packs of wolvesand bandsof robbers; the miserablewooden huts the peasantslived in. He rvasnot much impressedby Novgorod, in spite of its former glories and the Ilonastery of St Anthony. Here was preservedthe millsroneon which the saint had sailedfrom the Tiber, through the Baltic and down the Volga. This attractedthousands of worshippers,but not Struys although, as a Catholic, he should have believed in saints and their miracles. Struys had a guide who spoke Germanl he himself began to learn Russianof which he sayshe soon knew as much as was suit- 86 Muscooy able for a foreigner. He found his journey through gloomy forests and wretched villages extremely melancholy.The izbqs(cottages) where they sometimesstopped had neither food for them nor beds, so that they spent the night smoking their pipes. They were glad when at last they got to Moscow. Struys gives a careful description of this city, noting the horrors of its winter, in which many people are fiozen to death or, unlessthey rub themselveswith snow, lose their ears or nosesthrough frost-bite. The summer, he hears, is about as bad becauseof its extreme heat and the unwholesome bogs surrounding the city, which were a breeding place of fevers. He writes a chapter or two on the mannersand customsof the Muscovitesfor whom he conceiveda great contempt,finding them ignorant, brutal and vicious. Since 1634, tobacco had been for- bidden them because,through smoking, many families had been ruined and many housesburnt dorvn. Struys was scandalizedby their arranged marriages and maintained that they were often unhappy and led to divorce. If a woman was sterile or had only daughters,she could be forced by her husband to enter a convent and he was free to remarry after slx weeks.If one of the partners was accusedof adultery, he or she could be forced by a judge to becomemonk or nun. The Russiansare lascivousbut so supersti- tious that when they take a woman they remove the cross that, since their christening, has hung round their neck and hang a veil over the ikon. He notes that if a man takes a foreigner, it is a great sin, but not so bad in a woman, sinceif shehas a child shewill undoubtedly bring him up in the Orthodox faith. Struys even finds it superstitiousin Russiansthat they wash before going to church, as though water would take away their sins. At the baths men and women mix without scruple 'as naked as one's hand'. Struys left Moscow in May (He arrived in Astrakhanin Septem- ber). He met the officersand crew of his ship in a boat on the River Oka, and it wasby boat that most of the journey wasmade. He was impressedby the great apparent fertility of the land beside the Volga (which he said was like the Nile). 'Yet it is a desert,having neverbeen inhabited sincethe army of Tamerlaneput it to fire and srvord to punish the insolenceof the Muscovites who had plun- dered and burnt one of his frontier cities.' Asuakhan, Struys writes, is for its size and beauty, one of the most famous towns in Muscovy. Ivan the Terrible had conquered it after he had taken Kazan, and since then it had grown enorm- ouslv and brought great revenuesto the Tsar in customs'duties. Jean Struys 87 Not only Kalmucks and Tartars, but Armenians,Persians and even Indians uade here with the Russians.There was fruit of all sorts and sincethe Persianshad given vines to a German monk, grapes and wine. Stmys considersthe Tartars, whom he found in the rvinter camp around Astrakhan, less hideous than the Kalmucks, their sworn enemies,but apart from that, has linle good to sa1'of them. In return for a promise to fight for the Tsar, thev pa1'him no tribure. This suits them. Var gives them the chanceto loot. In Astrakhan, Struys was received by Stenka Razin. The cap- tain of his ship, hearing of his fame, decidedto visit him and asked Suuys to go with him. Struys tells the hero's srory as he learnt it from the Muscovites. Stenka Razin was a Don Cossack,a proud racewho fought for the Tsar on condition that they kept their free- dom to rule themselves.No slave who fled to them could be re- captured.In this way they had attractedto their ranks many brave and desperatepeople. StenkaRazin had revolted againstthe Tsar to avengehis brother, who had been hangedby the Russian Gen- eral Dolgoruki for withdrawing his regimenr, againstorders, after a successfulcampaign against the Poles. Stenka could make him- self feared.He could alsomake himself loved. He gatheredhordes of willing followers, seizedships laden with merchandiseon the Volga, sackedtowns and monasterieson its shoresand terrorized the whole country-side. When the governor of Astrakhan sent a tleet againsthim, Stenka,although he had only twenty-nvo boats to the governor's thirty-six, had the best of it, and Tsar Alexis offered to forgive him the pasr if he would return to his serlice. Stenka,who was at the end of his resources,accepted s'ith joy and campednear Astrakhan.From time to time his troops marched rnto the town all superblydressed, wearing crowns coveredrvith pearlsand preciousstones. Stenka was recognizedb1'the respect shown him; people approachinghim on rheir knees, calling him Batushkaor father.He wastail, his carriagenoble, his looksproud, his only flaw that his face was slightly pockmarked. At fust the peopleof Astrakhan were delighted with the ne\4comers, as they sold at ridiculously low prices the things which, during four years, they had stolen from Persians,Russians and Tartars. Stru.vshim- self bought from them a massivegold chain for forty roubles and silk for a song. Stenkareceived Struys and his captainkindly, and wasdelighted with a gift of wo bottles of brandy, since his had run out. He 88 Muscwy found by enquiry that they were Dutch sailors and merchants, under the protection of the Tsar. This wasall right at the moment but later when Stenka,tired of inactivity, retired from Asuakhan and again furned rebel, it proved disastrous. Before that hap- penedthey visited him in his ship on the Volga wherehe wasdrink- ing and making merry with his officers. 'Near him was a Persianprincess rvhom he had seizedwith her brotheron oneof his lastraids. He madea presentof the youngman to the governorofAstrakhan but kept the princess,whom he loved. . . . At the endofthe day,he becamevery drunk and leaning over the ship'sside and lookingwith a dreamyair at the waterof the Volga, hecried after a moment's silence, "No river canbe compared with thee. What do I not owethee who havegiven me so manytriumphs and suchtreasures? I owethee all that I possessand all that I am. Thou hast made my fortune and crownedme with benefitsbut I have showningratitude. . . . I seemto hearthy reproaches,that I havenever given thee anything.Pardon me kind river; I confessthat I have offendedand ifthis confessionis not enoughto appeasethy iust anger, I offer thee with all my heart what is dearestto me in the world.', At whichhe ran to the princessand threw her into the river,all dressed asshe was in gold cloth andadorned with pearlsand preciousstones. The poor princessdeserved a better fate and there wasno one who did not pity her in his heart.And, althoughshe was of sucha high rank,and suffered at findingherselfin the powerof a cnreland brutal man, yet she had felt an infinite indulgencefor him and had never shownresentment at her captivity.However brutal Razin was,one must believethat if drink had not maddenedhim he would not have donethis cruel deed,for until then he had seemedrather iust than inhuman.' Struys, whosegreat merir asa travel writer washis inexhaustible curiosity, tells us that he sought out Razin's followers and got them to tell him how they had gained such power. It was from them presumablythat he had heard the story of the Persianprin- cess,or did he insert it later on when it had becomethe famous Russianfolk-tale and song?Qgllainly it embellisheshis memoirs. When Stenka withdrew from Astrakhan to raise revolt again among his people, he took wirh him a large number of officers and men, whom he had won over to his side. The governor sent an emissaryto him demanding their return. He replied that they would soonbe returning-in a different manner. 'Tell your gover- 'that nor', he said, I am a prince, born free and independent,and that perhapshis power is not so great as mine.' Soonthe people Jean Struys 89 of Astrakhan were horrified to seea fleet of eighty sail, eachboat 'all armed and filled with soldiers eager for loot' and, although the Tsar sent a larger fleet againstthe rebeis,it did him no good, for the Muscoviteswho had joined Stenkapeneuated his ships, inducing the sailors to mutiny and throrv their officers into the river. Others peneuatedthe army; the common soidierscut the *uoats of their offficersand ioined Stenka. rvho made them an impassionedspeech: 'At last,my friendsyou are free; what you have just doneliberates you from the yokeof your tyrants.This yokeis so hearr and cruel that it is amazingthat you haveborne it so long. Heaven,touched by yourtears, has sent you a liberatorwho, afterfreeing you from rhe oppressionunder which you have beengroaning, will love vou as his own children and will have for you the heart of a father. In gratitudefor this, he asksonly sincereaffection, inviolable fideliry and a steadfastnessproof againstthe wiles of your enemies.It is to destroythem that Heavenhas put you undermy protection.Help me and we will finish what we havebegun.' After this speech,the Muscovites whom his gifts had alread-v suborned,swore that they were ready to follow Stenka wherever he might lead, that their zeal was unquenchable,that he would soon seethe sort of people he had won to his side. These words rvere followed by the applauseof the whole army and a generai cry of 'Long live the prince. Long live the father of his soldiers and may Heaven destroy all tyrants.' Suuys continues: 'Whilst Stenkawas triumphing, there was sorrow in Astrakhan rvherethe governor,surprised at the treacheryof his fleet,thought vainlyof winningit back.To crownhis angerhe discoveredthat the peopledespised him; they had praiseonly for Stenka;the soldiers saidout loud that they weregoing to quit the sert'ice,that they did not receivetheir pay because it wasput to otheruses, that it wasnot fair that they shouldrisk the lives of which so little carewas taken.' Stenka Razin's successalarmed our Dutch sailors .".gsdingly. It ivasclear that Astrakhan would soonfall into his handsand that they, being under the Tsar's protection,would ail be massacred. They noted that the governor had so little confidencein his own peoplethat he promoted the foreigners-Germans, Dutch, and an English captain, Robert Heut (sic). He put Germans in charge of the city's artillery. The captain of Struys' ship confided in him 90 Muscooy his plan to cross the Caspian Sea, stealing away secredy in the dead of night. He was a harsh man and forbade him to warn the two sailors, Cornelius Brak and JacopTrappen, becausethey had their wives and children with them, and they might be an encum- brance. 'However I thought that this command was contrary to Christian charity and that it was cruel to abandon our compa- triots to the rage of a people who would give them no quarter, so I warned them and saw to it that Brak cameon board with his wife and child.' Trappen, who hadn't enough money for the journey, was forced to stay. 'W'e recommendedhim to divine Providence.' They set off through the arms of the Volga and, although in their small sloop they were in great dangerfrom storms as well as of losing their way, Struys noted everything that they passedand was especiallyinterested in how the fishermenat the mouth of the Volga, caught stugeon. They planted stakesin triangles to uap the fish. They killed them with javelins and made caviar from their roe, 'whichis the only part whichthey value; as to the fish,they carelittle for it and salt only someof it, asthe lowerorders in Moscowbuy it. The saleof caviarhere is asgreat as the saleof butterin Holland.The Muscovitesdo not eat butter during their fasts,using caviar instead for all their sauces,so that they consumevast quantitiesof it.' They sailed into the Caspian Sea,whose water, Struys noted, wassweet and excellentto drink. They landedfor a while at Terki, which had beenwell fortified by a Dutch engineerin 1636and was now being strengthenedby an English colonel. They next landed in Circassia,where Struys was dazzledby the beauty of the women and their lack of false shame. The breasts which the lower orders exposeare 'two globes,well placed,well shapedand of an incrediblefirmness, andI cansay without exaggeration that nothingis so whiteor soclean. Their eyesare large, sweet and full of fue,their nosewell-shaped, their lips vermilion,the mouthsmall and smiling; . . . their hair of the most beautiful black, sometimesfloating and sometimestied up, and framestheir facesmost agreeably.They havelovely figures, tall and easyand their wholebeing seems free and relaxed.In spite of these exquisitegifts they are not really cruel and are not afraid of the approachof men, no matterfrom what country.' Their husbandsare good-naturedand not jealousbut it is hard Jean Struys gr to understand how such beautiful women can love men so ugly. Although they are easy-going,one must not go too far with them. Struys has seen some of his comrades,taken in at first, lose all confidenceby their rebuffs.These people appeared to be r\lohem- medans,but had neither mosquesnor mullahs. He sarvthem cele- brate the feast of Eliiah. When Struys and his companionswere near Derbent, they'de- cided to abandontheir sloopand go on to Persiaby land. At fust they walked through the bush by night, eating onll' dr1' bread rvithout water, but on the fourth day it was decided,sgainsl d1s adviceof Struys, to travel by day. Here again the poor Brak rvith his wife and child would have been abandoned, being asleep rvhen the decision was taken. Struys told his comradesthat they' were worse than Tartars aod woke up the little famiil'. Soon thev rvereall seizedby Tartars and taken to their Sultan, Osmin, rrho after stripping them of most of their belongings ieaving Struys, however,his gold chain and bag of monev) let them go on their rvay.They had not gonefar when the,vfell into the handsof another band of Tartars, crueller than the first lot. One after the other they raped Brak's wife and stripped the partl' nalieC,e\cePt that they left Struys two pairs of drawers,rvhich he rvore one over the other. One pair he gaveBrak's wife to help to hide her nakedness. 'Later on Brak wassold as a slaveand his wife taken into a prince's harem.) A little farther on Struys and two of his comprnions \\'ere cap- rured by anotherband, who believedthat they rveresome of Stenka Razin's men, whom they detested.They were tortured and put rnto chains and eventually brought before Sultan llahomet, the son of Osmin, who kept them as his slaves. Once Struys is out of Muscovy his story can be briefl1'told. Bi- this time we are accustomedto find him alwaysbehaling in an cxemplary manner; not only is he charitable, rvilLing to disobey orderswhen theseare unkind, but we also notice that s hen his adviceis not taken the consequencesare alwaysdisastrous. \\'hile be rvasa slaveto Osmin'sson, he was evenmore heroic-1s6rin- rns not only faithful to the wife he had not seenfor -vearsbut also :c his Christian faith. Osmin's son told him that if he g'ould em- :race the true faith and becomea Mohommedan,he rvould not oalv free him but also give him two beautiful rvivesand make him eead of his army. The two women, who were not bad looking, carnetwice to try to seducehim. He politely declined their kind 92 Muscooy offers, pointing out that his faith, which he refused to abjure, allowed him only one wife and she awaitedhim in Holland. This they thought exaggeratedand indeed ridiculous. Struys was fi.rrally sold in Derbent to a Persian, Hadii Biram. IIe was in tuck, for Persianswere kinder to their slavesthan Turks. Moreover he was lucky enough to save his master from drowning in the sea. After this his masrer treated him very humanely and promised, to take him to Isfahan,where he would find his fellow counuymen. In the meanwhile he had caught the eye of Aline, the principal wife of his master, a Dutch caprain,sdaughter who had teen aU- ducted at the age of twelve. She had plenty of money and told Struys that they could escapeand together make the journey to Holland where, if his wife happenedto be dead, she would ,rrirry him. The plan tempted him extremely.Not only was Aline charm- ing and a Christian, shehad alsoa vast quantity of jewelsand bags full of money which sheshowedhim. Heknew of boat they coJd, take and he knew the CaspianSea. But he was not" a Dutchman for nothing. He did not dare to go to Astrakhan as long as Stenka Razin was ruling it. His advenfurescontinued as various as ever and, as always, he noted the manners and customs of the people with whom, though a slave,he cameinto conract.The religion ofan Indian tribe struck him as most extraordinary. On one of their f6tes they went to a river, throwing into it rice and beansfor the fishes and then did the samefor the insects 'of whom they took a singularcare. For they would rather die than kill a singleanimal. They stir up the waterto savethe fishesfrom the netsand cry with all their might to makethe birds fly away.And this greatpity they havenot only for beasts,but alsofor their own kind. whom they refuseto fight. They will not evenlight candles,for fsai that flies will get burnedin them. (If anything makes one believe in Struys' experiencesand the accounts-of the people he mer, it is this description of a religion which, of all others must at the time have seemedthe mosi in- credibleto the Wesrernmind.)2 Struys, for his sins left his kind master for the polish ambassa- dor, rvhonearly starvedhim to death.In October fiT3heborrowed '9 Today we are used to these beliefs though we are sometimes biought up against them in a way that touches us. lchen the Tibetan chiidren .a*. to England they were acutely distressedby our brutal ways with flies and would respectfully follow round the swatters, picking up their vi,ctims and trying to bring them back to life, Jean Struys 93 money,bought his mastera horseand u'asliberated. Hadji Biram, rememberinghow he had savedhis li[e, gavehim presentsand so did his sad wife Aline, lamenting as she handed him a well-filled pruse that she was destined to spend rhe rest of her life among infidels. Although StruS'shad by this time heard that StenkaRazin had been capruredand taken prisoner to .\loscorv, and that Astrakhan was liberated, he was no longer tempted b1' Aline's plot. As a free man he could return home in a lessadven- turous and dangerousmanner and in the meantime could r-isit Isfahan.And it is here that we take our leaveof Struvs, srill en- quiring, still wondering, still trusting to a kind Providencet'hich did, indeed, bring him back safely to his home in Holland.

posrscRlpr ro J. srRUys' Trarselsin Muscmt Volume III of J. Struys' Voyageen Muscovietakes us arvav from Russia.It starts with a description of Isfahan, tells us how Struvs tookship and cameto Batavia;how, at lastrlonging for hishome, he embarks for Holland, is taken prisoner by the cruel English i.n St Helena and is eventually put ashoreby them in Ireland. This, comparedto Muscovy and Batavia,is next door to home. Srruvs, only interested in his picaresqueadvenfures in all quarrers of the rvorld, wastesno time in describing his reunion with his uife and children, nor on what it felt like to settle down to a respectabie, quiet life in one of those neat, bright, housesrvith their polished dle floors and the sun coming through the windorvs which we know so well from Vermeer'spictures. The wholesomeloaves and cheesesdepicted by Pieter Hooch and Ter Borch must havebeen especiallyacceptable to Struys whose most sensarionaichapter in this third volume describeshis shipwreck on the Indian coasr and the torments of hunger which he suffered there with his comrades.He sparesus nothing; not eventhe diggingup and de- vouring of corpses.Accustomed as we are to find Strul-s ahvavs siding with virtue and reinforcing it with reason,it is no surprise to find him dissuadinga comrade from cannibalism,first on the grounds that God had given formal insrruction agrin5s kiiling, secondlythat the proposedvictim, a woman,tvas only a skeleton coveredwith skin and would not make a juicy morsel and thirdly that, once human flesh was tasted, the appetite for it increased and none of the ship-wrecked party would feel safe. When the temptation cameagain to the famishedmen, it wasscotched by the 94 Muscooy reasonablesuggestion that they should draw lots amongst them- selvesfor their victim. No one felt willing to let Providencedecide his fate in this haphazardmanner. After innumerable adventures, including fighting for the Great Mogul, building shipsfor him and sailing down the Ganges, Struys managed to get out of India; he neglectsto tell us how. It doesnot much matter. We know that he always escapesfrom his tight corners. What we should have liked to hear is what he doeswhen he is at home and no longer in one. About this he is silent. INTRODUCTION

In the eighteenth centruy, after Peter the Great's opening of his 'window', Westernvisitors to Russiaincreased enormously. They werevery articulateand many of their memoils,letters and books have come down to us. We are faced b1' the difficultl' of choice. The secret dispatchesof ambassadorsare a valuabiesource of information for students of international relations and court rntrigues. Often they seem no more than the gossip columns of history. These are discardedas in the main, irrelevant to the ob- ject of this book which, as pointed out in the Preface,is to shorv how the Russian people lived and how they faced the problems set them by their inexorable climate, the geographyof their vast country and the arbitrary rule of their masters. Many eighteenth-century ambassadorsthrow incidental light on thesesubjects. Sir George Macartney is an instance.He was a pleasure-loving,witty, handsomeyoung man, who (if Casanova is to be believedr) was recalled by our Foreign Office at the re- questof Catherinethe Great, becausehe had had the impertinence to fall in love with one of her maids of honour. Macartney has apt things to say,not only about the courtierswith whom he mixed but about the common people, whom he describedas extremely docile when properly handled and as 'having a greater share of honestythan we have any right to expect'. He is said to havebeen {6,ooo in debt when he left Russia. Sir James Harris, ambassadorat the dificult and humiliating time when we were losing our American colonies (1778-83) is mostly concernedwith diplomatic relations, the rise and fall of court favourites, and whom (and how much) to bribe. In a letter to a friend he summarizesthe miseriesof an ambassadorto Cathe- rine II. Now for a word on this country; you know its extent,its high reputation-nothing but great deedsare done in it. The monarch is an arrant wonan-a vain spoilt woman.. . . the men in high life, monkeysgrafted on bears. . . Religion,virnre and moralitynowhere to be found; honourcannot be expressedin this language.There is no rewardfor goodactions, no punishmentfor any crimes.The face

I Casanovawas leading his adventures in St Petersburg while Macartney czs English ambassadorthere (1765): Mdmoiresde Casanoaa,YII. D 98 Muscooy of the countryin this neighbourhoodis a desert,the climatenever to be lived in. . . . You will naturally supposeliving here not very comfortable.' 'We can put asidethe ambassadorsto make room for peopleless exalted. Most interesting of these are Captain John Perry, the hydraulic engineeremployed by Peter the Great to build a canal and scrapehis warships, and John Cook, a Scottish doctor who came to Russia, he tells us, for a changeof air. Both these men stayedfor fourteen years and wrote graphic accountsof their ex- periencesand the people they worked with. Dr John Bell is another Scottish physician who worked for severalyears in Russia,accompanying Peter the Great's embassies to Peking, Persiaand Istanbul. He wrote good descriptionsof the regions through which he passed. But, with apologies to Dr Johnson who warmly recommendedhis Traaels to Boswell, we have preferred Dr John Cook's experiencesto Dr Bell's, as more personal, fuller of incident and odd characters. JonasHanway is another visitor whose travels through Russia are omitted. Hanway is an endearing figure, best known as the inventor of the umbrella and for his couragein carrying it through hooting crowds in London (lessremembered for his efforts to re- claim fallen women and improve the condition of chimney sweeps and foundlings). From this generous,eccentric Englishman one might expecta picturesquebook on Russia,but the book we have is disappointing. He was sent, in y43rby the Russia Company, to improve our trade relations with that counffy and with Persia. He wasa good choicefrom their point of view, for he had an almost religious feeling about the value of commerce,and the supremacy of England as a mercantile nation as well as in all other ways. He travelled, he writes,'about four thousandmiles, through a variety of adventures and accidents', and the journal which he wrote should have been a thrilling story. But he wrote it to convince the public of the all-importance of Anglo-Russiantrade relations, to remind English merchantsof the happy employment they were 'few in, for callings are so free and independent', and to remind them, too, that the Almighty had chosentheir island not only to 'to be the granary of Europe and America but also befriend man- kind in clothing them in every quarter of the globe'. Ilrs Vigor's letters to a friend are included becausethey are entertaining and shrewd. Like her admired Lady Mary Wortley Introduction 99 Montagu, she lost none of her advantagesas an intimate of court circles. The distinguishedastronorner and sciendst,the abb6 Chappe d'Auteroche, urging his izzsoztchrAsacross muddy steppes,along frozen rivers and through gloomy forests in carriagesand sleCges that were always breaking down, takes us rvith hirn all the rvay. We sharehis panic lest he miss his rendezvousu'irh \renus, on June 6, tT6rrin Tobolsk. He carriesthe culture and gallanuy of eighteenth-centuryFrance into the wilds of Muscory and through him we seemany Russian things wit}t new eyes. Another Frenchman, Masson-rvho with his brother sen ed Catherine the Great in her armies for ten years, only to be ex- pelled by her son the Tsar Paul-wrote amusing secretmemoirs on his experiencesand observations,but his portraits of Cathe- rine's favouritesand his court gossipare more relevantto historians than to the purpose of this book. We end with the scholar, $7illiam Richardson,who spent four yearsin St Petersburgas tutor to the sons of Lord Cathcarr, the English ambassador.He wrote a shocking account of the slavery of the serfs as well as some entertaining anecdotes.This yields better extracts than the weighty book of William Coxe, another tutor, accompanyinghis pupils on the grand tour. This was fam- ous in its day and necessaryreading for ambassadorsand other visitors to Russia.But it is a pedestrianwork and we leaveit re- spectfully behind. INTRODUCTION

For many peoplein Russia,the last yearsof the eighteenthcentury had been a nightmare. No one had knorvn rvhai the mad Tsai Paul might do next. Edmund Clarke, who travelled tfuoueh rhe country in ry9g, wrote that honesrywas found onlv in ttre victims of tyranny, condemned for their love of uuth to the mines of Siberia or some dungeon of the empire. Norv paul was dead, and liberalsbelieved that Alexander,educated by his enlightened Swiss tutor La Harpe, would bring reforms into the countrv. Later, when he playeda great paft in the defeatof Napoleon,he wasrepresented as the new St Georgewho had freed Europe from its dragon and who, by his Holy Alliance, wasgoing to freeir from all future strife. Travellers came and went foi some years before they realized how illusory these hopes had been. Ker Porter's TraztellingSketches clearly show the new artifude to the Scythian Bear. Hired originally to paint vast, romantic pictures of the New Russia, he quickly came ro believe in the myth and fell in love not only with the princess whom he later married, but with almost everything in her exoric country. John Carr was another artist who travelled in Russia at this time. H9 is worth quoting becausehe noticed things that had es- caped the observationof other \Vestern visitors. The most entertaining accountsof this time are in the journals of the two Irish girls, Martha and Catherine Wilmot, wiro lived in the family of PrincessDashkov. It is to Martha rhat we owe the Memoirs of the most remarkableRussian woman of her time. She made Princess Dashkov write rhem, smuggled them out of Russia and published them, Both girls wote, oft.n scarhingly, 'higher about the orders' whom they met. Unique are Martia-,i storiesof the serfs with whom she lived and of tlie day-to-day life in PrincessDashkov's household. catherine, more brilliani and causticthan her sister,has amusing commentsto make, Although-as there were thousandsof foreigners living in Russian families tutors, nruses or guests, throughout the nineteenth_century, none haverecorded their impressionsas simply and as vividly as these two girls have done. Madamede Stadl,although shespent only two monrhsin Russia, wrote a perceptiveanalysis of Russiancharacter. She showed more insight than other foreigners.True she was nor altogetherobjec- ry6 Muscoay tive, for, as she saw Russiansin their finest hour, when they were preparing to fight her arch-enemy,Napoleon, she was naturally prejudiced in their favour. The memoirs of the romantic and flamboyantBrigadier-General Sir Robert $filson, who fought side by side with Russiansin r8rz, r8r3 and r8r4, give vivid accountsof these terrible campaigns' but they are omitted as more particularly interes :tg to historians than the general reader. Xavier de Maistre is another foreigner who fought in the Tsar's army againstNapoleon and writes, like Wilson, a harrowing account of the retreat of the Grande Armde. Xavier and his brother Joseph were the most brilliant writers among the numerous French 6migr6s who took refuge in Russia from the Revolution and from Napoleon.Xavier, who fived on and off in Russiafrom r8oz till his death in 1852,wrote many letters from St Petersburgto a friend in France, but they tell us litde of day-to-day life there. In r8rz, when he married one of the Tsarina's maids of honour, he adapted himself completely to Russian life, but he gives far more brilliant pictures of this in his fiction than in his letters. The most famous of these stories' 14 Jeune Sibirienne, used to be obligatory reading inFrenchpension- nats. The Histoire d'un Pisonnier Frangaisdescribes how an en- lightened noblewomanran her estate,and her attitude to her serfs, and it can be read with interest to this day. Xavier's brother loseph will always be remembered,if only for his famous cofirment on 'Every Russia(in a letter of August r8rr), nation has the Govern- ment it deserves'. Dr Lyall, who practised medicine for some years in Russia after r8rz, although an unattractive figure, made some unusual commentson customsand mannersthat are worth quoting, often for their unconscioushumour. The section ends with the letters and journals of two Quakers, Daniel Wheelerand StephenGrellet. Wheeler,a Yorkshire farmer, spent many years draining the marshes near St Petersburg (Alexander I, who had visited a Friends' Meeting in London, had insisted on having a Quaker for this task). Grellet toured ali 'as over Russia,preaching the Spirit moved him'. Although their 'their rvritings are tainted with the repetitive pietiesusual in Society at that time, they are free from the scorn and condescensionof other Protestants.The Quaker apologist Barclay had taught that even the Turk, the Jew and the pagan,by the holy light in their souls, might be united to God. They were eagerto find spiritual Introduction rS7 depth in the Russianswhom rhey met, not only in tl:e mi'stical Tsar himselfand many of the nobles,but evenin the paid clergy, so much disapprovedof by the Societyof Friends.Russia had to wait for the visit of Liddon, Canon of St Paul's, in 1867,for a judgmentas sympathetic.l Apart from the pieties,rvhich rve gladly omit, Wheeler, a practical man, wrore graphic descriptionsof farming problems, floods, epidemicsand his talks with the Tsar.

1 'The sense of God's presence-of the supernatural-seems to me to penetrate Russian life more completely than that of any of the Vestern nations.' (H. P. Liddon, Canon of St Paul's, after a visit to Russia in 1862.) qqPr wnr

ROBERTLYALL

The Characterof the Russiansand a Detailed History of Moscoat

Londonr8z3

R LYALL spent several years in Russia after r8rz. He married a Russianwoman who bore him, he says,numer- ous offspring. He becamea member of the Agricultural and Physico-Medical Societiesof Moscow. He dedicatedhis book to the Tsar Alexander I, whom at first he much admired. This admiration was tempered with criticism by the time he had fini- shed his book, which took him eight years to wrire, for he dis- liked the part Alexander was playing in the Holy Alliance, rhe chief instrument in suppressing liberty in Europe. IIe also thought it dangerousthat Russia had gained so much territory 'It by the Congressof Vienna. is not by conquest,and extending dominions already too great, that the rapid civilizatior. of Russia is to be accomplished'hehad admonishedthe Tsar in his original dedication,afterwards suppressed. 'I Lyall declaresthat his object was truth: have sought to un- shacklemyself from prejudice, and to keep clear of malevolence.' Even rvhile living in Russiahe recorded facts and expressedopi- nions rvith perfect freedom, he says.His book is agreeablyillus- uared by the coloured drawings of a Russian artist, Mr. Lavrov. A great part of Lyall's section on the characterof the Russians is raken up with quotationsfrom the books of other travellers and his criricisms of them. Some, he says,have given an account of Russia s'hich is too favourable. Noblemen and tided gendemen arriving i-n Russia, introduced to the first families in Petersburg and .Nloscow, RobenLyall r9r 'everywhere find opentables, cheerful and pleasantsocietyr all kinds of amusements,evening parties, conz;er saziones, balls, misquerades. The sameround of pleasuresmeets them whereverthey sojourn.' They have no idea of the general state of society in Russia.l 'Other travellers,without rank or introductions,fiad everl,thing gloomyand are startledwith riiffculties and disagreeables.i.u.ry step.At lengh they get introducedto the secondarycircles of thl nobility and are disgustedwith their customsand manners.' ,have Maoy compareRussia with European countrieswhich been civilized and polished for cenruries'.This is unfair. Russiashould .oDened be comparedwith what it was before peter the Great the flood-gatesof civilization', and later inthe cenrury,when-Catherine II encouraged arts and sciencesand foreign commerce. ,The just discrimination of national character,,writes Mr Jamesin his Joumal of a Tour in Germany,etc. (;.8:16)r.isdenied to the native from prejudice, to the resident from too great familiarity, to the visitor from too little means of observation., Lyall begins with an attempt to characterizethe nobles. They are too often servile to superiors and haughty to inferiors but, in his experience,they were not generally cruel to their slavesj i:: fact there was a familiarity betweenlord and vassalwhich no other state of society would admit. The Russiansare insinuatingand cunning . . . fond of novelty and improvident;when cash abounds they aregenerous, ostentatious and improvident. . . they aredisposed to indolence,to a sedentarymode of life, and to much sleep. . . yet when urged by affairs or nicessity they_areexcessively active and withstandexffaordinary hardships and fatigues.What noble but a Russiancould exchangehis comfort_ able carriagefor a telegaand travel by night and by day thousands of versrsin that dreadfirlly jolting, uncoveredequipage and with a celeritywhich is astonishing.' Lyall quotes Jameson the nobles' love of display. 'They are as yet a youngnation and better pleasedby showthan by reality.Generally they areaccused oftoo greatfondness for osten- I 'The foreigner and above all the Frenchman, after having passedtfuoush the inhospitable wastes of Prussia and the savagefields of Livonia, is amazld and enchanted to find, in the middle of a vast desert, a city [St iretersburgj immense and glorious and societies, amusements, arts and tastes which h-i thought only existed in Paris.' Masson, Memoires secretssur la Russie(Amster- darn, r8oo aod rSor). rg2 MuscooY tation,but wemust confess that it is alwaysthe splendourof an hospi- table and liberal mind which they exhibit. The pride of displayis regulatedin eachbranch with tasteand elegance.' About religion, Lyall makesthe commentsusual to Protestants. Although he admits that the ritual of their church captivatesthe imagination, it has little influence on moral conduct. Later in his book he describeswith enthusiasmthe work of the Bible Society in Russiaand the Tsat's support of its activities. Lyall hss,1s hing 'charity but praise for the religious toleranceof the Russians;the in religious belief prevalent among all ranks of society'. He quotes Clarke on the superstition of their Church. 'The wild, untutored savageof South America,who prostrates himselfbefore the sun,exercises more natural devotion than the Rus- sian who is all day crossinghimself before his Hat, and sticking i farthing candlesbefore a picture of St AlexanderNevski.'z J Discussing morals, Lyall notes with disfavour marriages of convenience,arranged by the parents, the frequent separationof husbandsand wives and the tolerance of each othet's infidelities by married couples.He wastitillated by the accountby two French- men of a highly select Physical Club, which was a nobleman's brothel, but as this was suppressedby Catherine II (who might I have been expectedto sympathize with it), the detailed account rl he gives of it seemsirrelevant. Noting the primitive habits of the aristocracy, Lyall remarks on the absenceof bedrooms.He waspresent at a f6te, given by one of the genffy in central Russia. 'Throughout Saturday,carriages filled with noblescontinued to arrive,some of them with largebags filled with beds;others followed in telegasloaded with beds and pillows. Conversationand cards were the eveningamusements and at rr o'clockan elegantsupper wasserved up and at its conclusiona sceneofbustle and confusion followed. The dining-room, drawing-room,hall and the whole suiteof apartmentsin which we hadpassed the eveningwere conver- ted into bedrooms.Scores of servantswere now srnning backwards and forwards,with bedsand mattresses,shubas and baggage;beds werearranged on the floor,some upon chairs, others upon the stoves.' Servants,he notes, lie about anywhere in their lord's housel he even stumbled against them on the stairs, when he rose early. 2 E. D. Clarke, Travels in Various Countries in Europe and Africa (london, r8rr), Vol. I. RobertLyall r93 This, he thinks, partly accountsfor the vermin found in the best housesand on rhe most exaltedpeople. But at least they get rid of a good deal by their weekly visits to the baths. He quotes unsa- voury stories of Potemkin taking lice (which Lyall is too prudish to name) from his head and killing rhem on the bonom of his plate at dinner, and he laments the habit of spining. About the famous hospitality of the Russians, Lyall did not agreewith the Deux Frangais(who, incidelrqlly, belonged to the leasthospitable country in Europe)that it wassoalgthing they have in common with savagesand was a relic of barbarism. Some foreigners thought it due to their love of display, bur even rhe critical Clarke had to acknowledgethat during the reign of paul, when it was dangerousto be kind to Englishmen,the noblesenter- 'notwi1fi316ding tained them the risk incurred'. Sir Robert Wil- son noted the disinteresred,generous help given by high and low to prisoners on their trek to Siberia. When in the Russianarmy, he experiencedthe fiberal hospitaiity of the offi.cers.,Whatever one of them possessesis alike the property of friend or stranger; and the banquet or the solitary loaf is equally partakenby thein- vited or rrninvitedguest.,3 'The openness[he writes] with which even unmarried females speakof pregnanchof confinement,of the diseasesof child-birth, and evenofthose changeswhich arepeculiar to the sex,in the pre- senceof males,has often astonishedand disgustedme. As a medical man, I soonfound that delicacyof expression,and of allusion,used in Britain when examining patients, altogether unnecessaryin Russia.. . . They talk of diseasesand their symptomswith thegreatest indifference.This practiceis peculiarlydisgusting during meals.' Lyall was outraged that, in a lake famous for curing'the curse of barrenness',only eight or nine miles from Moscow, you could, 4,ft91sttgading church on Sunday, watch men and women bath- ing'as in the daysof primevalinnocence'. (This had alsoshocked the more indulgent artist Ker Porter.a) He admits that Russians and other continentals often talk of 'the cautious, cold, prim and even repulsive manners of the English ladies' but he prefers 8 R. T. Vilson, Pritate Diary of Travels,etc., in the Campaignsof r8t z, tBt3, rBr4 (London, 186o). n The Ausrian Korb, Secretaryto the Imperial Envoy in 1698, was shocked by the sight of men and women bathing naked togettrer, not only in Russia but also in Poland. Count MacDonnell, translating his book into English in 1863, leavesthis passagein the decent obscuriry of Latin. See J. G. Kotb, Diary of an Austian Secretary(London, 1863). G rg4 Muscwg 'their charming modesty, the result of moral and religious prin- ciples, to licentious frankness'. Lyall was also incensedby the curiosity of the Russians. 'With as much easeas they say, "How do you do?", the nobles askthe mostimpertinent questions, with respectto your connections and family, your propefty and revenues,and your secretaffairs andprivate opinions. An evasiveaoswer only promptstheir curiosity. But they do not content themselvesmerely in making enquiriesof yourself; they will apply to your servant-womenor servant-men, to your lackeyor your coachman.If you are living in their families, the master or mistressis generallyacquainted with everything you do, through enquiriesmade of your servants.'

Lyall was hurt by the way his cures were laughed at when he was physician in Count Orlov's family. As treatment of inter- 'that mittent fever, beside Peruvian bark, he used renowned remedy the arsenicalsolution' and advisedthe shavingof the head, unaware that, becauserecruits' heads were shaved, it was con- sidered degrading. Dinner-parry guests were told that he used 'killing cures'. Lyall was on firm ground when he refused to sign a certificate of illness for a stewardwhose mistress, a general'swife, wanted to keephim although his passporthad run out and officialsdemanded his presencein St Petersburg.'Vous ne risquezrien du tout,' she said. 'Such things are done every day! It would be a Chris- tian action.' When Lyall said that physiciansin England did not 'In do such things, the lady replied, Russia, you shoulJ do as Russiansdo.' The lady, he adds, soon after becamea nun. Lyall foyfully recordsthat, in r8r8, Alexander gaveto the Bible Society the building which formerly had housed the office of Se- cret Affafus, called by foreigners the Inquisition. This had been founded in 1658. He quotes Levesque on the Secret Chancery, a kind of State Inquisition by which the most respectable citizen could be arrested when accusedbv the most miserable wretch. 'What a contrast [writes Lyall] from being an Inquisition to be- come,in a mild reign, the depositoryof thousandsof Bibles,New Testamentsand Gospels,in abouttwenty languages;a centraldepot of Christianity,in which secretinquisition is unknown;a focusfrom which the divine doctrines of the wan the truth and the life, are scatteredover the RussianEmpire.' RobertLyall 195 Lyall does not tell us in what building the Tsar re-established his Secret Police. Probably, good man, he thought it was aboli- shed. He was convinced (for he did not foreseethe terrible fate of the Decembrists)that the Russianofficers who had lived in the west after the defeat of Napoleon, would bring back to rheir counffy the gospelof liberty, which they had learnedthere, and in- troduce into their country gradual reforms, in6luding the freeing of the serfs. On these notes of piety and hope, we may leave Dr Lyall and his pompous, long-winded but informative book. posrscRlPT To R. LvALL's Characterof tfu Russians More than half of Lyall's book is dedicatedto a detaileddescrip- tion of Moscow. He describes,often with drawings, manv of its innumerable churches (Jonas Hanway says there were l,8oo when he visited it in t736), its monasteries,foundling homesand many of its palacesand great houses.He recountsits history from the Middle Ages until r8zo when he last visited it. He quotes foreignerswho had visited it before the fue of r8rz had destroyed it.

Coxeon Moscmtsin r7B4 'I was all astonishmenton the immensity and variety of Moscow. Wretchedhovels are blendedwith large palaces;cottages of one storey stand next to the most superb and statelymansions. Churchespresented themselves, some with domesof copper,others of tin, gilt or paintedgreen and many roofedwith wood. Moscow may be considereda town built on the Asiaticmodel, but gradually becomingmore and more European.' E. D. Clarkeon Moscowin rBoo 'Moscow is in everyhing extraordinary.. . . when [enteringthe gateinto the city] you ask "How far is it to Moscow?"they will tell you, "This is Moscow",and you beholdnothing but a wide and scafteredsuburb: huts, gardens,walls, pig-sties,brick walls, chur- ches,dung-hills, palaces, timber-yards, warehouses and a refuseof materialssufficient to stockan empirewith miserabletowns and miser- ablevillages. One might expectthat all the statesof Europeand Asia hadsent a building.. . . mosquesfrom Constantinople;Tartartemples from Bucharia;pagodas, pavilions and verandas from China;cabarets from Spain; dungeons,prisons and public officesfrom France; architecturalruins from Rome; terracesand trellisesfrom Naples and warehousesfrom Wapping.Having heard accountsof its im- 196 Muscoay mense population, you wander through deserted smeets. Passing suddenly to the quarter where shops are situated [you firrd] Greeks, Turks, Cossacks,Chinese, Muscovites, English, French, Italians, Poles, Germans all parading in the habits of their respective coun- tries.'

Mr James, who saw Moscow soon after the fire of r8rz which 'the destroyed nearly three-quarters of the city, describes univer- sal scene of desolation', but Lyall describes its miraculously quick rebuilding. 'In the sunmer of r8r5, in every suburb, in every street, in every lane, crowds of workmen were employed. In 1816 on the return of the spring, thousands of artisans and labourers were seen in every quarter of the city, and it being known that the Emperor would visit the ancient capital, the nobles and merchants vied with each other in building and repairing. The Emperor on his first visit after the destruction of Moscow was highly pleasedto seeher, likethe phoenix, rapidly rising from her ashes. . . . By the burning of innumerable small sombre wooden houses and hovels, and by the superior and tasteful manner in which most of the city is rebuilt, Moscow has g1eatly changed its appearance. . . She is daily losing her Asiatic appearance.From this observation the Kremlin must be exemptedl its ancient singularity and grandeur are preserved completely. It ought to be held sacredto posterity. To the honour of the Emperor, of the government and of the Russianssuch sentimentshave had due influence on their conduct. The renovation of the Kremlin is the most splendid monument of the present reign.' INTRODUCTION

In this period a great many foreigners wrote their impressionsof Russia.As early as 1839 Robert Bremner gave as an excusefor publishing his book, Excursionsin the Interior of Russia, the 'overwhelming interest' which existed in regard to Russia. But, exceptfor Mrs Smith, who wrote vividly, if naively, of day-to-day life in St Petersburg, English accounts writren before the last quarter of the century have been excluded. They are too preju- diced. This is true not only of George Sala,whose cheapjournal- ism had once a considerablevogue, but of the more seriousLau- rence Oliphant and Charles Henry Scott. These Englishmen, travelling on the eve of the Crimean War, wanted only to whip up hatred of Russia.They laid stresson her dangerousambitions and gloried in her weaknesses.Ifthese are discarded,why choose the equally prejudiced Marquis de Custine? He opens rhis sec- tion in an atmosphereof unrelieved gloom. But his book is in a different categoryfrom theirs; though repetitive and diffuse it is better written and of all the works on Russia this book had the greatestinfluence on Western opinion in the nineteenth cenrury. It is still read. It hasbeen recently republished. Although Custine was so prejudiced that even Russianhospitality seemedto him to have sinister motives, yet he saw, with startling clarity, the effects of a police state on a whole people. It is a relief to turn from the gloomy Marquis to two Germans writing of Russiaat the sameperiod. The genial Kohl, who lived for six years in Russiaand learned its language,responded to the warmth of its people.Haxthausen, a lover of the primitive, studied the life and social organizationof the peasantry.He was the first to describetbe mir to Western readers; the first evangelistof that 'wisdom' mystique of the of the illiterate Russianpeasant, which was, in part, the origin of the later cult of the 'Slav soul'. It is a relief, too, to turn to two of the Marquis, compatriots, who boastedthat, in spite of the Crimean War, the French had alwaysbeen friends of the Russians:the flamboyant Dumas, seek- ing colour and copy in the Caucasus:the poet Gautier, looking for beautyin landscapesand cities; the journalist Tissot, finding, in the Ukraine, song, dance, colour and a yearning for the freedom to expresstheir own culture. Tissot stressedthe growing hatred 2r4 Muscmty and fear of the Germans who, for so long, had been the most numerous and-because they pervaded every walk of life-the most influential of all foreigners in Russia, and who were consi- dered the embodiment of efficiency and culture. That very superior person, George Nathaniel Curzon, noticed the samein 1888,en route for Samarkand.He commented. 'overwhelming on the antithesisbetween the German and Russian char- acter, the one vigilant, uncompromising, stiff, precise; the other sleepy, nonchalant,wasteful and lax'. He was pleasedwith Alex- ander III's anti-German policy; German languageforbidden in the schoolsof the Baltic provinces, German fashions proscribed at court. He found much in common between the Russian 'qualities and Briton, that make for greatness;self-reliance, pride, a desperateresolve, adventurousnessand a genius for discipline'. .their The Russiansadmired the English, he said, for silent fury and aristocraticimpassivity'. They despisedFrance 'for its music- hall -statemanship and epicene civilization'. Altogether fairly satisfactory;though Curzon was taking no chancesana was going to seewhat Russiawas up to in Asia and what designsstre trio on India. In the last quarter 6f thg ningfgenthcentury, the English writers redeemedtheir sorry performance of the r85os. ThJ intelligent, sensitiveScottish journalist E. D. Noble lived a long time in Rus- sia and knew its languageand literature. The great Russiannovels were beginning to be known in the West; Turgenev,sgreatest work Fatlwrs and Sons,was translated into English in rg67, Tolstoy's Childhoodin 1862.The celebratedDanish criric, Georg Brandis, wrote at length and with enthusiasm about the new Russian literature inhis Impressionsof Russia(rS88); but in England and America, Noble's writings were more influential. At a time when there was generalhorror at the assassinationof the Tsar Libera- tor, Alexander II, Noble insisted that there were only a few hun- dred terrorists among the revolutionariesof Russia; the majority were peace-loving, dedicated young men and women, like the Narodniks who were trying to educatethe peasants.He tried to dispel the myrh thar absolutism was inherent in Russia; on the contrary, revolt was a recurring theme in her history. Their old heroic lays sang of their love of freedom. The millions of dis- senters showed their rebellion against authority. The great Razkolnik revolt in the seventeenthcenturv had not been over a trifling guestion of how to make the sign of tfr. cross; it was a Introduction 2t5 protest againstauthority, a refusal to obey the dictatesof the all- powerful hierarchy. In the r88os, Mackenzie Wallace, a distinguished writer and Times correspondent,published his monumental srudy of Russia. This is too vast and seriousa work to representby brief extracts. But we do include his account of a meeting of a mir. His record of the discussionshe overheardgives a befter uo6.t51sadingof how this peasantcommune managed its affairs than any abstract accountsof its constitution. llis conversationswith a member of the Molokani give an insight into the beliefs and way of life of this interesting Russian sect. Noble, Brandes and Mackenzie Wallace certainlv improved understanding of Russia in the West but, as soon as Constance Garnett and other translators had introduced Russia'sorvn voice in her great writers, their importance diminished. Herzen makes us realize,in human terms, what the tyranny of Nicholas I meant to his people. Bazarov,in Turgenev's Fq.thersand Sons,embodies allNihilists; Marianna, in his Virgin Soil, all Narodniks; Yelena, in his On the Ezte, all pan-Slavs. Dostoievsky's Deails leads us into the revolutionary cells of the seventies.Why read of these phenomenain Mackenzie Wallace?Tolstoy takes us to the Cau- casus in his Cossacftsand Hadji Murad, and shows us daily life, dramatic, complex and warm, in his great novels. It might be objected,too, that becauseof Dostoievsky'spersonal accountof penal servitudein Siberia, inhis Frorn the Houseof the Dead(translatedin r88r) we needno accountof it by a stranger. But this is not so. No native could have been given the chanceof visiting the prisons, hospitals, transport columns and bargesthat George Kennan was given, nor of holding conversationswith political prisoners, even with police and governors.Only Kennan could give the overall picture we have in his magnificent Siberia and the Exile System.Perhaps no-one at that time but an American would have combined such scrupulousnessin fact-finding and such a passion for accurate figures with such humanity and understanding. Kennan is the only American to appear in this book, although there were severalin the nineteenth century who wrote of Russia. Of theseperhaps the most important was Isabel Hapgood,who lived in Russia towards the close of the r88os, translating the epic songs and Gogol and Turgenev. She told her countrymen that Russianswere not as complicated as they thought, and that 2r6 Muscwy 'all classesfrom the peasantup possessa narurally simple, sym- pathetic disposition and manner. . . . for the rest, charactersvary quite as much as they do elsewhere'. Her articles in the Atlantic Monthly, for instance, 'Count 'A Tolstoy at Home' and Journey on the Volga', were eagerly read, and she induced literary conferencesin America to discuss Russian history and literature. In 1867, Mark Twain and his 'fnnocents' had visited Yalta, where they were charmingly enter- 'a tained by Alexander II, determined-lookingman, though a very pleasant-lookingone. . . . It is easyto seethat he is kind and affec- tionate. There is somethingvery noble in his expressionwhen his cap is otr There is none of that cunning in his eye that we noticed in Louis Napoleon's.' (After the publication of Kennan's book on Siberia, Mark Twain's attitude to Russian tsars changedand he wondered loudly why nobody assassinatedthe monsters.) Henry Adams, visiting Russiain 1897and 1899,spoke of Russia and America as'the two future centresof power; and, of the two, America must get there first! Some day, perhapsa century hence, Russia may swallow even her.' He suggested,too, that Siberia could, with advantage,be funs1i6anizgd. Finally we leave airy theories and propheciesand reflrrn to the direct experienceof the ScotsmanHume, who inuoduced reaping- machines onto the steppesof the Ukraine. He shared the life of the peasants,often toiling and sleepingwith them and he writes of them with understanding and sympathy. He ended with a hope which history has made pathetically comic, that the country would liberalize itself and become a United States of Russia, Iike America. wssqpf

ALEXANDREDUMAS

Adventures in the Caucasusl

Paris 1859

F1-lO travel through the Caucasusin the middle of a fierce war I suited Dumas' romantic, exuberant nature more than any I other of his journeys. Everything came as grist to his mill: the fearful discomforts,the physical difficulties, aboveall the dan- 'At ger. first one fears it; then facesit; then longs for it.' He had the same advantagesthat he had had in the rest of his travels in Russia. Everyone, especiallywomen, wanted to meet the author of so many best-sellingnovels. He was advised to wear an order, before starting on the Caucasus,as this won greatrespect in Russia. He put on the order of Charles III of Spain, given him in 1846, and was, with thesetrappings and the loyal Kalino's affirmations, 'treated everywhere as a general'.2Above all he wanted not only to write adventure stories but to live them himself and prove himself as brave and as hardy as one of his own musketeers.Later on in Paris, at the PrincesseMathilde's weekly dinners, he often recounted his Russian adventures. This is how the Goncourts described him: 'A giant figure, with hair turned pepper and salt and the tiny, clear, sly eyes of a hippopotamus)ever observanteven when lowered.. . . With Dumasthere is an indefinablesomething of both a side-showman'shawking wonders, and a travellingsalesman from the ArabianNights.' 'Shamyl Dumas hoped to visit Shamyl: the Titan, who struggles from his lair againstthe Tsar of all the Russias.Will he know our I Intpressions deVoyage. Le Caucase. The extracs are translated by the Editor. '? Kalino *'as a student of Moscow University and was Dumas' guide and interpreter. AlexandreDumas 263 name?Will he allow us to sleepa night in his tents?'But the Titan did not invite him. Dumas knew something of Lermontov who, for attacking the Tsar's tyranny and writing of lost liberties in his poems, was exiled to the Army of the South and becamethe poet of the Cau- casus.He lived, fought and died there, losing his life, like Pushkin before him, in an infamous duel in which, though he shot into the air, his opponent shot to kill. Dumas probably did not knorv that Count Leo Tolstoy, disgustedwith the inanities of Moscow life, had gone there in r85r and was changedfor ever by the impact of the mountains,of the rugged mountain people,of life and death in the Caucasiancampaigns. In the Cossackshe is writing of him- self when he describeshis hero Olyenin's first sight of the moun- tains: 'From that moment, all that he had seenor thought or felt assumedfor him the new, sternly majestic characterof the moun- tains. All his recollectionsof Moscow, his shameand repentance.. . all disappearedand never returned again.' (Turgenev considered Tolstoy's Cossacksthe most perfect writing in the Russian lan- guage.) To understand the impact of the Caucasiancampaigns on the Russian gentry who took pafi in them, one must remember the emptinessand frivolity of their lives under the tyranny of Nicho- las I-frivolity which rightly shocked the Marquis de Custine. The Caucasuswas an escapefrom futility: gave them activity, danger, comradeship,contact with nature of an extraordinarily exhilarating kind. To some of these gentry the war was, as to so many of the more primitive Cossacks,a crusade,the Crossagainst the Crescent,a Holy War, as it was to Shamyl and his puritanic Muslim adherents.(It is illuminating to comparethese campaigns with thoseof our men in India, fighting the Pathanson the North- West Frontier or conqueringthe Sikhs in Scinde: campaignsthat inspired a few tales and songs by Kipling, but no great lyrical poetry. Far away from our bustling, self-absorbedisland, the Indian sagahad far less effect on our lives and minds than the Caucasiancampaigns-fought on what they consideredtheir own soil-had on the Russians.) Although Dumas could not know all that the Caucasiandrama meant to Russia, he sensed something of its romance and its savageryand he givesa racy accountofhis Caucasianexperiences. His writing, indeed, is what one wants in a book of travel-full of excitingadventures, of exactdetail of sights,sounds and tastes, 264 Muscorsy with vignettesof the peoplehe meetsand recordsof the conversa- tions he had with them. It compues favourably with our other travellers' accounts.Gautier gives exquisite descriptionsof cities and landscapebut does not introduce us to a single Russian,nor record a single conversation.As for our Englishmen, they too 'All often feel hostility and contempt. Frenchmen,,wrore Dumas, 'have an innate sympathywith the Russians.'A good way to begin contact with a new country. To follow the whole of Dumas' adventurousjourney would be to quote the whole book. A few extractsmay give its flavour. Nothing excited Dumas more than his fiisi sight of the whole Caucasianrange from the Shalbuz to the Elbruz, with the snow- covered peak of the Kasbek towering up in the midst of it. 'For a moment we stood silent beforethis splendidpanorama. This wasnot the Alps nor the Pyrenees;this wasnothing rhat we had everseen nor evenimagined. This wasthe Caucasus,the stage chosenby the first tragedianofthe ancientworld for his first drami,

rr "fhis wasthe Caucasus.' I AlexandreDumas 265 a dramawhose hero wasa Titan and whoseactors were gods ! Alas! I I hadnot broughtmyAeschyluswith me.Had I doneso,I shouldhave sat down and rereadPrometheus from the first line to the last. It I is easyto understandwhy the Greeksmade these magnificent peaks into the cradleof the world.' I 'To In Dumas' time, the Elbruz had not yet been climbed. do I that, the mountaineerssay, one would need a specialdispensation I from God Himself. It was on the crest of this mountain, according to tradition, that Noah's dove rested when it flew out of the ark.' l Everywhere he went, Dumas found the imprint of the ancient world and, with his classicaleducation, it enhancedhis delight. Later, sailing home on the Black Sea,he thought of ]ason seeking 'a the Golden Fleecein the Argo, ship such as no man in Colchis had ever seen'. Dumas' journey involved much discomfort but he welcomedit.

'Whena manspends the night on a plankwith his cloakas his only mattressand blanket,getting up in the morninggives little trouble. I jumped up at dawn, washedmy face and handsin the copper bowl which I hadbought in Kazan(to makesure of havingone, for it is one of the rarestobjects in Russia)and awokemy companicns.'

French gourmet that he was, he was prepared to cook his own dishesand, having discovered,in an Armenian family, the succu- lent quality of shashlik,he cookedbits of marinaded mutton on a metal skewer, which he held over the hot embers of the fires, alwaysmade for him wherever he dosseddown;'the nicest thing I had to eat during all my time in Russia'.Dumas was an excellent shot and supplementedhis larder with game on all his travels. Dumas started his journey at Kizlyara, a few miles west of the Caspian Sea,a thriving market town, where Armenians, Tartars, Kalmucks, Nogais and Jews,all in their own picturesquecostumes, gathered to trade. His first descriptions are of these people.

'Commerce,apart from the Tartars' enterprisingbusiness of kid- nappingmen) womenand childrenand selling them back to their families,consists mainly of Armenianwine and brandy,silks woven locally, and rice, sesame)saffron and madder grown on near-by farms.. . . As a rule the Armenianhas no specialitv.Every other race has;the Persiansells silks; the Lesghian)woven cloth; the Tartar, weapons.The Armeniansells everythiag that is saleableand even the unsaleable,There is a sayinghere: "If a Tartar givesyou a nod, you 266 Muscoog

ciul count on him; if a Persian gives you his hand, count on him; but, if you are dealing with an Armenian, make him sign a paper in the presenceof two wifitesses." '

Dumas' admiration of the Tartars was equal to Captain John Perry's, for whom they worked in the time of Peter the Great. '!7hat a difference there is between these fierce Tartars and the humble serfs whom we met between Petersburg and Astrakhan! Their self-respec, their rugged, independent pride appealedto us., He had an equal admiration of the Cossacks of the Line who, because of his importance and the danger of his journey, were always assigned to him as escort. 'A Cossackof the Li:re, born within sight of the enemy he has to fight, familiar from infanry with danger, is a soldier from the age of twelve. He spends only three months of the year in lis stanitza (village). All the rest of his life, until he is fifty, he spendson horseback and under arms. He is a splendid soldier. !?ar to him is an arr, dangeris a joy. . . . The Cossacksof the Don, on the other hand, are ofagricultural stock, spending their childhood on peacefulplains and unhappy when facing their enemyambushed in the ravinesand woods of the mountains.'

Dumas was entertained by the Nijni Novgorod dragoons, who had served for forty-six years in the Caucasus. 'It was here that I was struck by the diference betweenthe Russian soldier in Russia and the same soldier in the Caucasus.In Russia, a soldier is deeply depressedand ashamedof his servitude,humiliated by the gulf betweenhim and his officers.A Russianin the Caucasusis gan lively, happy and high-spirited, proud of his uniform. He has hopes of promotion, of distinguishing himself, of danger. Danger ennobleshim;itbrings him near to his officers. Danger keeps him cheerful, for it makeshim realize the value of life. The French would be amazedby what a Russiansoldier has to endure in this mountain warfare, living on sodden black bread, sleepingin the snow, dragging himself and his equipment over trackless wastes of granite rocks, where no hunter has set foot, over which only the eagle has soared. And for what a war! A war without quarter or prisoners; where a wounded man is left for dead, where his mildest enemies collect their victims' hands, his fiercest, human heads.'

Dumas rvas often in danger himself. He was several times attacked by the mountaineers but he was always defended by his escort. He w'astreated by the governors of the various districts he 'A 12 precipice of seven thousand feet.' passedthrough and by the chiefs of police, as someoneextremely preciousand important. Lavish aswas the hospitality he wasevery- where shown, it was outdone by Prince Bagration, a Georgian and one of the finest officers in the Russian army. Five hundred men from his regiment accompaniedDumas and his companions to the crest of the Karanai from whence, looking over a preci- pice ofseven thousand feet, they saw the birthplace ofthe legen- dary hero, the still unconquered Shamyl, and the convolutions, crestsand chasms,the chaotic devastationof the Caucasianrange. 'No placein the world has been more torffied by volcanicup- heavalsthan Daghestan,where the mountains,like the peoplewho live in them, seemracked and torn in a fierce,never-ending battle.' When Dumas came down from the terrifying height he found that he had been made an honorary member of the Regiment of 'After Native Mountaineers. dinner the band played during the entire evening to celebratemy initiation.' Thereafter, Dumas stayed with Bagration on the Caspian Sea, at Derbent. 7

268 Muscwy

€a&.- k

13 Hawking on the steppes.

'For four days we had not been separatedfrom Bagration for one hour. He had been our guide, interpreter, our host, our everything. He knew the value of everything and the name of everything. If he saw a dagger he could judge the temper of its steel; if we glanced at a falcon, he at once knew its breeding; if we expresseda desire, he said, "I'11 see to it for you", so that we no longer dared to wish for anything in his presence. He was a typical Georgian prince; brave, hospitable, extravagant,ronrantic and handsome., Bagration's care for his guests did not end at Derbent. Dumas discovered that he had arranged for escort, horses and hospitality all the way from the Caspian to Tiflis, where he knew that the French consul would look after him. After leaving Derbent, Dumas camped on the steppes with a party of Tartars, who were sitting round a bonfire making them- selves griddle-cakes from the flour they were carrying from Baku to army headquarters in the Caucasus. 'There was something peculiarly romantic about eating supper on the steppesbeside the Caspian Seawith the descendantsof Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. On the one side lay the mountains of AlexandreDumas 269 Daghestan,whence at any momenta troop of brigandsmight sweep downupon us andforce us to fight for our lives;on the otherthis great lake,almost as unknowntoday, in spite of Klaproth, as it was in Greecein spiteof Herodotus.All aroundus we couldhear the bellsof fifty camelsas they croppedthe witheredgrass, or seethem with their necksstretched out on the sand'. Dumas' next host was Prince Tarkanov, or rather his son, a boy of twelve, who knew French and did the honours. He shocked Dumas, who liked hunting gamebut not human beings,by regret- ting that brigands were getting scarce,as so many had surrendered to the Tsar. At the same time, he was sure that he would kill at least three. They were expectingan attack that night and Dumas askedthe boy if they would kill him. ' "Oh nor" he laughed,"they wouldn't be suchfools as to cut off my head.They'd prefer a high ransomand they know that, if they take me, my father would sell everything,even to the last button of his uniform, to get me back.He lovesme so much." ' This kidnapping racket interested Dumas immensely. Women in one area, he discovered,were not often carried away, as so many had perished when dragged through the icy Terek. The brigands preferred tougher game who would survive.s (Later on, on his journey, Dumas was to hear the sensationalstory of the abduction of two Georgian princesses,their children and their French governess,Madame Drancy. They were kidnapped in 1854and exchangedfor Shamyl'sson i:r 1856.Madame Drancy published their experienceswhen she returned to Paris and they have been brilliantly retold by Lesley Blanch n The SabresoJ Paradise. Dumas met one of the princessesin Tiflis. He was struck by her look ofprofound sorrowwhich he understoodwhen she told him that her two youngestchildren had been torn from 3 Captain Richard Wilbraham, travelling in Transcaucasia in 1837 heard harrowing tales, wherever he went, of people carried off by brigands and held for ransom. Often large sums were demanded, which the relatives had great difrculty in raising. The government refused to contribute, for fear of encourag- ing the traffic. Wilbraham talked to a German who, with several others, had been carried off by Circassiansand kept for months near the foot of Elburz. They had suffered from hunger but were not iil-treated, their duty being to tend the flocks. See Capt. Richard \7ilbraham, Traoels in the Caucasus,Georgia and Persia (John Murray, London, 1839). George Ditson, who claimed that he was the first American to travel in the Caucasus,also writes of the traffic. See G. L. Ditson, Circassiaor a Tour in the Caucasus(New York, r85o). 27o Muscozty her arms, when they were passing through the raging Alezan, then in flood.) Dumas' most moving experiencewas at Tchervelone, a village famous for its gaiety and beautiful women, descendantsof oui- lawed Muscovite aristocrats, but when they arrived at its gates they saw that it was anything but gay-it was now completely deserted,except for the sentinelon guard. He told them thai ail iti inhabitants had gatheredon the far side of the village to wirness the executionof a traitor. Two yearsbefore, a Cossackof Tcher- velone, a married man with two children, had been taken prisoner by the Chechensand held for ransom. While in the mountains, he had fallen in love with the brigand chief,s daughter who had returned his affection. He threw in his lot with the Chechens, becamea Muslim and married his lovely mistress,as he was now able to have two wives. Soonhe was the mosr daring fighter in the uibe. The Chechensdecided to take Tchervelone with his help. He crept in, intending to unbar the gate for them but, on passing his home, he saw through the window his wife and chil&en on their knees,praying before the ikon. The sight so moved him that he went in and embraced them and then gave himself up to the hetman (chief) of the stanitzo (village), warning him of the immi- nent attack of the enemy. This was beaten off but the renegade Cossackwas, in spite of his repentance,condemned to death. The execution was to take place at noon. 'We cameat last to the placeof execution,a patchof levelground, nearthe cemetery.The condemnedman, who wasbetween thirty and forty yearsof age,was kneeling beside a newly dug grave,his eyes unbandagedand his handsunbound. A prieststood by him, hearing his confession.A platoonof nine men with loadedrifles wasdrawn up in line a few yards off. When the priest had given absolution, the hetmanwent up to the condemnedman and said: ,,Gregor Gregorovitch,you havelived as a traitor and a brigand.Die like a Christianand a braveman and God will forgiveyour sinsand your brothers your treachery." The renegadelistened humbly, then, raisinghis head,he said: "My brothers,I havealready asked God's forgivenessand He hasforgiven me; now I askyours. Do in your turn forgiveme." Then thosewho had sufferedat Gregor'shands came up to him, eachin his turn. (lle knelt beforethem as he had knelt beforeGod.) First camean old man, saying:,,Gregor Gregorovitch, youkilled my onlyson, the support of my old agebut God hasforgiven you andnow I forgiveyou. Die in peace.',Sayrng this he kissedhim. Next camea youngwoman, "Gregor Gregorovitch',,she said, ,,you AlexanderDumas 27r killed my husband,made me a widow, my childrenorphans, but as God hasforgiven you, I must alsoforgive you. Die in peace."She kissedhim andgave place to others,who wentup to him in turn with their reproaches.One said that he had kilied his brother, another that he had killed his horse or had burned his house.All said: "You areforgiven. Die in peace."Last of all camehis wife andchildren to bid their farewell.But the youngerof the two, attractedby the pebblesmixed with the earththrown up from the newly dug grave, went off to play with them. Finally the hetmancame forward again. "GregorGregorovitch, your time has come." I confessthat this wasall I sawof the terrible scene.I wheeledmy horseround and rodeback into the stanitza. Ten minutes later I heard shots. Gregor Gregorovitchhad ceasedto exist.The crowdre-entered their village in silence.' $7hen Dumas got to Tiflis, the capital of Gecrgia, he found that his fame had precededhim. The ladieswere in great excitement. They all knew his The ThreeMusketeers and his Count of Monte Cristo. (His barber who cut his hair so short that he looked like a seal, told him that he had sold his clippings for women to put in their pin-cushions.)They pesteredDumas to tell them of the latest Paris fasions-especially the addressof the Paris shop that sold the corset which Princess G. had just brought back anci which made waists smaller than wasps'.Beautiful as he found the ladies and gay as he found their city in contrast to Russia,he could not bear to leave Georgia without visiting Vladikavkaz and the Passof Dariel. He took the route that, so tradition said, Pompey had followed in his campaign against Mithridates. The weather grew worse. In the valley of the Aragva, snow beganto fall. Soon it was waist-deep.As they wound up the mountain, severaitimes ther tarantas stuck fast. They bartered it for a sleigh with five horses and later exchanged the horses for a dozen bullocks 'that ploughedbreast-high through the soft snow and draggedus painfully upwards,a yard or two at a time. . . . The countryround had a melancholygrandeur, a white, lifelessbrilliance. Sky and earthwere one, limitless and silent as death. . . . Far belowrve could seethe Aragva,no longera gleamingsilver ribbon asin summerbut an ashen-greyband almost black against the snow.' Warned by the driver of the mail-coach from Russia, rvhich they met on their way, that there wasdanger of avalanches,Dumas sadly turned back. He found Tiflis in blazing sunshine,although it was already winter. 272 Muscoay At the end of January 1859,Dumas, with thirteen cratesof the souvenirs he had collected, took ship at poti on the Black Sea 'I and caught a French ship at Trebizond. cannot tell you what it meant to me to hear againthe accentsof Brittany and Marseilles. I felt as if I were at home again,the Caucasusa dream.' He found, however,that he wasnot quite done with Caucasians. There were in the steerage,three hundred of them, mostly women and children, all destined to be sold as slavesin Istanbul. rq?* Irl\+ rd5)

GEORGEKENNAN

Siberia and the Exile System

London and New York r89r

F1.1HE publication of George Kennan's description of the life I of exiles in Siberia did more than anything else to bring I to an end the century-long love affair between the United Statesand Russia.It had beena strangefriendship. That the Tsars of All the Russias,the most powerful and tyrannous autocratsof Europe, should have flirted with a republic founded on all the democratic principles which they so studiously flouted-Habeas Corpus, equality before the law, free speech,religious toleration, and all the other rights of man-is one of the curiosities of the modern world. Little is said about it in English history books. Perhapswe havechosen to ignoreit becauseit u'asbased so largely on hatred of our own country. Not even love unites people so strongly as an intense, well-directed hate. A few words must be saidabout this Russo-Americanfriendship, beforethe impact of Kennan's revelationscan be properly assessed. France, in American mphology, is her oldest friend. The nine- teen-year old Lafayette, fighting (entirely on his own initiative) on the side of the oppressedAmerican colonists,has never been forgotten. 'Our next oldest traditional friend [writes Thomas Bailey] is Russia.She was on our side,or appearedto be, not only during the war of Independencebut alsoduring the hardlyless critical years of the War of r8rz [with England] and the great Civil War. Little wonderthat the legendof the Tsaristafection for the new republic took sucha deephold.' When Catherine the Great refused,politely but firmly, George III's requestfor zoroooofher fierceCossacks to subduehis rebel- 292 Muscozty Iious colonists,it wasassumed that the Tsarina wassympathizing rvith a valiant people suuggling for their freedom. Did she not correspondwith Voltaire and dabble with liberal ideas?The rea- sons she ga.r'e-exhaustingwar with the Turks and so on-could not havebeen the real ones.The outcome,at any rate,was on the rvhole a happy one. Instead of Cossacks,highly skilled in rapid warfare as well as in rape, loot and murder, America receivedthe somewhat less practised Germans and their gratitude to the Tsarinawas undying. (As lateas r92o,voices were raised in Ameri- ca protesting against the sending of her doughboys to fight the Bolsheviksin their civil war, on the grounds that Catherine had refused to intervene with her Cossacksin the War of Indepen- dence.) An even more tangible bond between Russia and America was their fury at the British interferencewith the freedom of the seasand the rights of neutrals to trade with her enemies.Cathe- rine's image was darkenedwhen she seizeda large slice of poor, little Poland, but there was nothing that besmirched Alexander I's reputation for Americans-not even Tilsit, for to many of them (although not to the New Englanders)it seemedright that he should side with their oldest friend, the French, against the hatedEnglish in the NapoleonicWar. In r8o9, the United States sent their first ambassadorto St Petersburg,John Quincy Adams. He found a warm welcome.The Tsar hoped that the new republic over the oceanwould becomethe commercial rival of Great Bri- tain, rvhich was so arrogantly seizing neutral ships and crippling trade. Adams, a Puritan from New England who read the Bible from cover to cover every year and felt guilty at the time he had to waste attending banquets and balls in St Petersburg, salved his conscienceby cementing the friendship betweenhis country and Russia, so passionatelyat one about the freedom of the seasand the wickednessof the British intereferencewith it. America needed a friend, especiallyin r8rz, when anger about the seizure of her ships had led her into war with England. As scant notice of this little war is takenin our schooltextbooks (because, perhaps ofthe ignominious part in it played by our glorious navy, and the valiant featsof the American 'fir-built frigates'), it is not generallyknown, over here, that Alexander offered to mediate betweenus and our rebellious ex-colonists and, although nothing came of the offer and oeacewas concluded without his intervention. America felt GeorgeKennan 293 grateful for his kind intentions and chalkedup another good mark for Russia.They were pleased,too, that that great country had noticedtheir exploits.'You are constantlybeating at seathe Eng- lish, who beat all the rest of the worldr' the RussianChancellor remarked to Quincy Adams. Betweenthis time and their Civil Silar,there rvereups and downs in the friendship between Russia and the United States.During the Crimean War, American sympathy was with Russia, and a number of American doctors worked for their wounded. On the other hand, American sympathies u'ere with the Poles in their savagelyrepressed risings of r83o and 1863, and with the Hungarians in 1848, whose revolution Nicholas I helped his brother-Emperorof Austriato put down.This wasnot only because of the black accountstheir ambassadorsin St Petersburggave of Tsarist tyranny and obscurantism,but alsobecause of the flood of Polish and Hungarian refugees who sought freedom in their country. All these things were forgotten when, at the darkest moment for the North in their fight to preservetheir Union against the South, a Russianfleet arrived in New York. At a time when the British and French were favouring the South and it seemedas though they might intervenein its favour, this friendly gesturewas receivedwith a tremendousburst of enthusiasm.Everywhere, from Boston to Washington, the Russian sailors were banqr.retedand f€ted, and toasts were drunk to Lincoln the Emancipator (of slaves)and Alexander the Liberator (of serfs). That the Russians wanted to remove their fleet from the Baltic, in casethe British and French intervened over Poland, was noted only by a few very astute Americans and had no impact on the public mind. When, in 1867,Russia sold Alaskato the United Statesfor the ridiculous sum of $7rzoo,ooo,it was hailed as another friendly gestureon the part of the Tsar Alexander II. It would have been ungracious to stressthat, as the Russianswere vastly extending their Empire acrossAsia, Alaska seemednot worth the expense and uouble of exploitation. Not even the Russianextension of its power in the Balkansin the late r87os alarmedAmerica, for were they not fighting to free their Christian brethren from the 'un- speakableTurk'? In r88r AlexanderII wasassassinated by Nihi- lists. He had been America's one true friend in the Civil War and had sold them Alaska (which was proving very profitable). American grief at his death was widespread and sincere. After the disappearanceof the Tsar Liberator, things were never the 291 Muscoay same benveen the two countries. The long love-affair began to shorvsigns of wear. Moreover, American engineersand technicians employed in the building of Russian railways and its expanding industry were maddenedby the inefficiency and corruption that hampered their activities and their consuls were burdened by their complaintsand claims.Alexander III had noneof the liberal impulses of his father. He was cruel and despotic. Scapegoats were neededfor the murder of Alexander and for the growth of Nihilism, and the Jewsfilled the bill. The shockingpogroms of the r88os resulted in the flight of Russian and Polish Jews into the eastern statesof America. Unlike the quarter of a million Jews, mostly of German origin, already in the States,these were not a prosperous, hardworking people but a ragged, terror-stricken horde. America saw her land becoming a dumping ground for the victims of Tsarist tyranny and it displeasedher.1 Then, in r89r, when pogromswere easing off, anotherbombshell exploded: the publication by George Kennan of his two-volumed book, Siberia and the Exile Sgstem.No book since (Jncle Tom's Cabin had had such an impact on public opinion. In 1885, George Kennan was commissionedby the Century Magazine to write a seriesof articles on the prisons of Siberia. He had alreadyspent two yearsthere. When only twenty yearsof age he had been part of an expedition organizedby the Western Union Telegraph Company ro survey a possible telegraph route acrossSiberia to Alaska. This came to an end when, in 1866, a cable was laid acrossrhe Atlantic, but it had given Kennan first-hand experienceof a region almost unknown to the lVest.

1 Isabel Hapgood, rvho spent two years in Russia at the close of the r88os and learned the language, tried to combat the growing hostility to Russia of her countrSnnen.In her book Rrssloz Rambles(1895) she writes, .I am told that I must abuseRussia if I rvish to be popular in America ! . . . I am sure that the Russiaof Ivan the Terrible's time would precisely meet its views. . . . In spite of all that has been wriften about Russia,the common incidents of everydaylife are not known. . . . Russiansof all classes,from the peasantup, possessa naturally simple, sympathetic disposition and manner, as a rule, tinged with a friendly warmth whose influence is felt as soon as one crossesthe frontier, Shall I be believed if I say that I found it in custom-house ofrces and gendarmes?For the rest, characters vary quite as much as they do elsewhere.'She lvrote many articles for the Atlantic Monthly. She gave an interesting account of a visit to Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana, in which she quoted the Countess's 'small, opinion of her husband's disciples: all blond, sickly and homely, as like to one another as a pair of old boots'. Isabel Hapgood helped in the know- ledge of Russian literature in America by her Suroey of RussianLiterature, with Selections(r9oz). GeorgeKennan 295 He had become fluent in Russian and interested in the Russian people, but he had had no opportunity to visit prisons and was convincedthat the reports on them by political exilesin England, notably Stepniak and Prince Kropotkin, were exaggerated. On the whole he sympathized with the Russian government in its efforts to get rid of its terrorists and revolutionaries.As his atti- tude was well known, he was given official help by the Russians to make his investigations.Actually the conditions in which he found the exileswere horrible beyond belief and he did not spare his readersin describing them. At the same time, he wrote in a factual way, giving (as far as was possiblewithout bringing his in- formants into danger) chapter and verse for his findings so that their authenticity could not be doubted. Kennan's first articles were dramatically illustrated by George A. Frost, who had accompaniedhim. These illustrations spoke even more forcibly than Kennan's narrative: endless lines of convicts with chains between their legs, trudging through the snow, guarded by soldiers armed with guns and whips; the for- warding prisons, filled to the roof with men and women; men shot asthey broke from the line in a bid for freedom. In r89r these articles and pictures were published in book form. Kennan beginspeaceably enough with a short descriptionof his journey through Russia. He was arnazedin Niini Novgorod at what seemedto him a vast city, with 'churches,mosques, theatres, markets, banks, hotels' entirely empty of life, with grassgrowing in its streets.This was 'the caravanserai'for half a million traders and only occupied during the period of the fair for two or three months every year. He was surprised too that the great extension of the railways hadn't as yet killed the most famous fair of Russia. Kennan and Frost sailed up the Kama to Perm, rz5 miles from Ekaterinburg to which they travelled by the new railway. This town had become prosperous becauseof the recently exploited minerals, fabulous in variety and value, of the Ural Mountains. The most important of thesewere iron, copper and coal but there were also gold and precious stones. Ekaterinburg was similar to other Russian towns: 'The samewide, unpaved streets, the samesquare log houseswith ornamentedwindow casings and flatly pyramidal,tin roofs,the same high boardfences between the scattereddwellings. the samewhite- walledchurches with colouredor gilded domes,the samegostinoi dvor or city bazaar.' 296 Muscoay where one could find everything that the Empire produced and many things it didn't. Kennan was especially delighted to find American peanuts and instructed the shop-keeperhow to roast them and make them eatable.He was impressedthat Ekaterinburg 'self-culture' had some pretensions to with a Ural Society of Friends of Natural Science,two newspapers(unfortunately heavily censoredin Moscow) and an occasionalopera season. Kennan and Frost were entertainedin the lavish Russianman- ner by the superintendent of the Berozeu gold-mines and im- mensely impressed by his tasteful home and exquisite garden, with its flowers, fountains, cherry-trees and conservatoryfilled with oranges,lemons and pineapples.After supper they played croquet on the lawn. It all seemedvery civilized. They were lessimpressed, however, at seeingwomen in the gold-mineswork- ing elevenhours a day for a dollar two cents a week and felt that it was worse than penal servitude. As yet they little knew what this was like. They were soon to see. From Ekaterinburg to the Siberian border, a distance of two hundred miles, Kennan and Frost went by'horse expressservice' along the great Siberianroad which stretched3,ooo miles from the Urals to the head-watersof the Amur River. They passeda cara- van of freight waggons-the careful Kennan counted rr45o of them on the first day-and commented on the riches of Siberia, which daily sent so many tons of its products to Russia. When they passedthe post at the entranceto Siberia, Kennan thought of the heartrending scenesthe pillar had witnessedin past cen- turies, for it was here that the convicts had said good-bye to their beloved country, many of them kissing the ground and taking a little Russian earth to accompanythem in their exile. Siberia was not the entire icy waste which the Americans had imagined. 'To the travellerwho crossesthe Urals for the fust time in June, nothingis more suprisi:rgthan the ferventheat of Siberiansunshine and the extraordinarybeauty and profusion of Siberian flowers. 'fhere were long stretchesof wheatand rye and greatexpanses of prairie. The roadsidewas bright with wild-roses,violets, honey- suckle,iris and the goldentrollius andthere wereseas of forget-me- not.' But Kennan was surprised that there were no scattered farm- houses.The peasants,nearly all on Crown land, did not own their property, and lived in villages which looked poor and neglected, GeorgeKennan 2g7 their wide streetsoften a seaof liquid mud where a few pigs wan- dered. There were no trees or gardensbut the izba windows were brightened with fuchsias, oleanders,pinks, geraniums, tea-roses and cactus. Tiumen was the first Siberian town they cameto. They arrived exhaustedafter forty hours without sleep,jolted almost to pieces in their cramped turant&s (carriage). The next day they pre- sented their letters of introduction to the chief police officer and at oncegot permissionto visit the forwarding prison through which all exiies had to pass. Transportation to Siberia, Kennan expleins, had begun soon after its conquestin the seventeenthcentury, but at first it wasdis- abled criminals, mutilated by the barbarouspunishments rhen in vogue,who had beensent there. At the end of the century, mutila- tion as a punishment had been forbidden and banishment to Si- beria substituted.As well asfor crimesof violence,men were exiled for minor offences such as fornrne-telling, prize-fighting, snuff- taking, driving with reins (considered a Western innovation: Russian peasantswere supposedto ride the horse or run by its side), beggingr and setting fire ro property accidentally. In the eighteenth century, when the mineral and agricultural resources of Siberia were discovered,the government realized that convicts could be useful and many were condemnedto hard labour in the silver mines of Daurski and the mines of Transbaikal. When in 1753, the Tsarina Elizabeth abolished capital punishment (and it should be rememberedthat Russia was the first country to do this), murderers were condemned to hard labour and perpetual exile in Siberia, but at least had their lives. In the reign of Cathe- rine II, when the demand for labour increasedbecause of the ex- ploitation of the mines, the list of offences,punishable by exile trebled. Jews were exiled for non-payment of taxes, serfs for cutting down trees without leave, non-commissionedofficers for variousmisdeeds, and the number of political offendersand nobles who had fallen from favour increasedgreatly. Up to the close of the eighteenth century it was an unorgeni2gdsystem. Exiles were driven like cattle, often begging their way, becausethere was no provision for feeding them, but in the early nineteenth century this was remedied. They were given identity cards showing who they were and where they were bound for and exile station-houses were erected along the most important routes. The first of these was at Tiumen. L 298 Muscooy It was at Tiumen that records were kept of all exiles to Siberia and the categoriesto which they belonged.The records started in r8z3 and Kennan wasallowed to copy them. Exiles, he found, were divided into four categories:hard-labour convicts,penal colonists, persons simply banished', and dobroaolni,women and children who voluntarily accompaniedtheir relatives. The first two lots, supposed to be criminals, were deprived of all civil rights and condemnedto spend their lives in Siberia. Their headswere half 'simply shavenand they wore leg-fetters.As those banished' were not necessarilycriminals, they wore no fetters and might hope to return home when the term of their banishment had expired. Analysing the figures for 1885, Kennan found that the largest singleclass (5,516 out of 15,766)was composed of the womenand children who went voluntarily, and that more than half of the 'simply supposed criminals and the banished' had had no trial but were sent by a mere order from the Minister of the Interior or of some official. These cool facts showed Kennan's careful avoidance of sen- sationalismand made his descriptionof the terrible conditionsin the prison the more convincing to his readers.But it was the prison hospital that roused the greatesthorror and compassion. 'The mostcommon disorders seemed to be scurvy,typhus, typhoid fever,acute bronchitis, rheumatism and syphilis. . . . Neverbefore in my life had I seenfaces so white, haggardand ghastlyas thosethat lay on the graypillows in thosehospital cells. As I breathedthat heavy stiflingatmosphere, poisoned with the breathsof slphilitic andfever- strickenpatients, loaded and saturatedwith the odourofexcrement, diseasegerms, exhalations from uncleanhuman bodies and foulness inconceivable,it seemedto me that overthe hospitaldoors should be written "All hopeabandon, ye who enter here".' (Florence Nightingale had thought the same when she enrered the hospital at Scutari, but that was thirty years earlier.) It was not surprising that the annual death rate in the Tiumen prison ranged from z3 per cent to 44 per cent-a death rate, Kennan thought, exceedingthat of any pestilencein Europe in the Middle Ages. He noted that the prison wardens and the colonel- inspectorof transportationwere themselvesincensed at conditions. The colonel had often reported them to Petersburg, but his complaints were unanswered. The day after visiting the prison, Kennan witnessed the de- parture of one of the marching parties. George Kennan 2gg 'There was a jingling of chains €rssome of the prisoners who had beenlying on the ground sprangto their feet; the soldiersofthe guard shoulderedtheir rifles; the exilescrossed themselves devoutly, bowing in the direction of the prison chapel; and at the word "March.,, the whole colurnn was instantly in motion. Three or four Cossacksin dark-green uniforms and with rifles over their shoulders, took the lead; a dense but disorderly throng of men and women followed, marching between thin, broken lines of soldien; next came the telegas(waggons) with the old, the sick and the small children; then a rearguard ofhalfa dozen Cossacks;and finally four or five wagons piled high with gray bags. The last sounds I heard were the jingling of chains, and the shouts of the Cossacksto the children to keeo within the lines.' The next day Kennan witnessed the embarkation of 7oo exiles on convict barges taking rhem to Tomsk-a voyage that lasted at least seven days. Here the overcrowding was as shocking as in the Tiumen prison.2 Kennan was struck by the diversity of types 2 Robert Ker Porter visited a prison in Moscow,where conditions were as 'dragged horribleas in Siberia.Here the prisoners on a dying life, or rathera torturedone; miserablefare, miserable sleep, and an atmospherefraught with everycalamity which foulnesscan inflict'. But this wasin 18o6and at that date prisonsin Englandwere not exactlyconvalescent homes, as we knowfrom John Howard,The interestingdiscovery Ker Portermade on his visit wasof seven men in a lessgloomy room. They wereofficers guiity of forgery,and soonto be transportedfor life to the minesof Siberia. Here Ker Porterdraws a comparisonbetween the Russianand English penal systems,much to our disadvantage,Here, he says,we hanga man not only for treason,murder and forgerybut for stealinghalf-a-crown. A shon while agoa woman,left destitutewith two childrenbecause her husbandhad beenpressed into the Na',y, had stolensome coarse linen from a shop. She washanged at Tyburn, to the joy of shopkeepers,though there wasa baby still suckingat her breast.Being a practicalfellow for an artist,Ker Porterconsidered death a wastefulpunishment, These seven forgers working for tle rest of their livesin the minesof Siberiawould be doingsomething useful for the State,the govern- mentwould benefit from their labourand at the sameti:ne their fatewould be a salutarywarning to other would-be-forgers.But, althoughhe gavehis cold approvalto the condemnatioaof the sevenpoor Russians,Ker porter 'a did add whathe called few pleadings'for the miserableinmates of our own dungeons, stressingthat the Mosaiclaw had not requireddeath for theft but only restiru- tion-this wasall that God required.Although he approvedRussia's abolition of capital punishnent he did not fail to note that the condemnation of a man to two hundred lashes with the knout meanr executing him in a particularly terrible way. \?as it something sadistic in his nature that made him insist on witnessing this punishment and describing it in horrifying detail? (There are tro statistics to show how often the Russians circumvented the Tsarina Eliza- beth's humane larv in this manner, but Tolstoy, it Hadji fuIurad, describes Nicholas I hypocritically praising the abolirion of capital punishment in his enlightened country and conderrning refractory students and heretics to what would be certain death after running the gauntlet of soldiers.) SeeRobertKerPorter, Trav ellingS hetches in Rusia and Sweden(London, r gr3). 3oo Muscwy among the prisoners, more than three-quarters of whom were wearing leg-fetters:

'There were fierce wild-looking mountaineersfrom Daghestan and Circassia,condemned to penal servitudefor murdersof blood revenge;there were Tartars from the lower Volga,Turks from the Crimea, whosescarlet fezzes contrasted strangely with their gray convictovercoats; crafty-looking Jews from Podolia,goinB into exile for srnuggling;and finally commonpeasants in greatnumbers from all parts of Europeand Russia.The facesof the prisonersgenerally were not as hard, viciousand depravedas the facesof criminalsin America.Many of them werepleasant and good-humoured.'

Frost made sketchesof the different convict types. This caused them extremeamusement. They laughedand joked like schoolboys off for a picnic. In Tiumen, Kennan bought a tarantas(a covered,four-wheeled carriage)and he and Frost started on their iourney acrossSiberia to the mines of the Transbaikal. With thetr podmozhnaya(order for horses) they were able to hire, at a small price, either post- horsesor 'free horses' all along the route. Whenever they stopped at an 6tape(halting station for convicts) or at an assemblyplace like Semipalatinsk, Omsk, or Tomsk, Kennan visited the chief officials and receivedpermission to seeall he wanted. Afterwards, when he lectured in America, he was always askedhow this was possibleand why he was never arrested.He admitted that he was fearing arrest the whole time. This had never happened,he sup- posed, becausehe had always presentedhimself to the highest authorities with his letter from the Minister of the Interior and re- ceivedtheir permission. We cannot accompanyKennan to all the stations of the cross which he visited on his self-imposedpilgrimage. At Omsk he founc they had demolishedthe prison where Dostoievky had spent four yearsof penal servitude.(His From thz Houseof the Dead had been translatedinto English in r88r and to Kennan it was a bible.) The forwarding prison at Tomsk affectedhim even more actuely than the Tiumen prison, becausethe exiles, after so much more of their iourney, were in a much worse condition. There were 3rooo in huts designedfor r,4oo. The shedsfor family parties,packed to 'weary-eyed the ceiling with men, haggard women and wailing children' harrowed him most. uThy should women and children guilty of nothing but devotion to husbands or fathers have to GeorgeKennan 3or undergo such intolerable suffering? Sfhy should so many babies have to die? It was little wonder that typhus epidemicsbroke our, In the hospital Kennan found young nurseswith suong, intelligent faces,obviously medical students, banished for'untrusivorthiniss.' It wasnot the statisticsthat Kennan collectedso conscientiously that affected Americans so deeply; it was his human stories. Before his investigations they had thought that the political prisoners sent to siberia were all Nihilists who cared foineither God nor man and went about throwing bombs and plotting the overthrow of the State.They had believedthat thesewretchei had been condemnedin a court of justice to a deservedpunishment. Kennan revealed to them that from the beginning of the exile system' hundreds of thousandshad been sent to siberia 'administrative bv whar was called process',that is, without trial, ani often without reasongiven. That the Minister of the Interior or one of twenty different classesof Russianofficials could, by the scrawl of a pen, condemn innocent people to the intolerable sufferings of banishment, blackenedrhe name of Russia, for so long-and hailJd as America's friend and ally. In the reigns of Nicholas 'liberal' I of the Alexander II, thousandsof men and women were exiled to siberia, not only by order of the Tsar but alsoby order of mere officials, even of the elders of the village communes and private landowners.was not everyhuman being entitled to a trial, to ktro* of what he was accused,to call witnessesin his defencel Kennan mentioned the case of two brothers exiled becauseof mistaken identity and of a woman exiled becauseshe dared to write to Alexander III, telling him of rhe caseand asking for redress.A doctor wasbanished for coachingrwo medical studints exiled from 'untrustworthiness,. st Petersburgto central Russiabecause of He was sent to the Arctic regions of Siberia. His young wife, after the birth of their baby, tried to folow him. she left the baby with friends and started the 6,ooo mile journey, joining a band of .orr_ victs as she could then travel at government expense.when she reached Irkutsk, she was still nearly 3rooo milei away from her husband. 'had She endured without complaint the iolting, the suffocating dust, the scorching heat and cold aurumnal rai"nson the road,the bad food, the plank sleeping-benches,the vermin and the pestilential air of the titapes,,but at Irkutsk, her health gave way. Shediscovered that shewould havero travel for weeks,oriaog or reindeer sledges,through the Arctic solitudes of .torth-easi Asia. Shedied insanein the Irkutsk prisonhospital. Kennan heard 3o2 Muscwy her story from exiles who had travelled with her, one of them a well-known member of a provincial zemstao. In the courseof his travels Kennan met more than 5oo political exiles,the first onesin Western Siberia, where they were living in comparativefreedom. They were introduced to him by the official in charge,who told him that many of them were young men and women of high attainments.(One thinks of Lenin and Krupskaya translatingthe Webbs' History of TradeUnionism and doing a little quiet fishingin the rivers.) One of them wasmaking anthropological researchesamong the Kirghiz. A woman impressedhim because she told her experienceswithout bitternessor exaggeration.After a year's solitary confinementin Moscow, shehad beenbanished to a dreary setdementin Siberiaand only recentlybeen brought tothe comparativecivilization of Semipalatinsk.They talked cheerfullyof literature, art and American politics. In his country they would have been thought of as the mildest liberals. In Tomsk, Kennan had long talks with Prince Alexander Kropotkin. He was not a revolutionary, like his famous brother Peterrbuthadbeentoooutspoken in his criticisms of the corruption and spying in the government office where he worked. He was exiled, without uial, to a town on the Yenesei River in Eastern Siberia. (As a student he had been imprisoned for having a copy of Emerson'sSeIf Relianceand refusing to say who had given it to him.) Here he had lived with his wife for four years, making botanical and geologicalcollections and founding a museum. He was an accomplishedastronomer but had not had the instruments necessaryto carry on his researches.When he was transferred to Tomsk he had had more books,but was constantlyharried by the police, who suspectedhim of communicating with his brother. (A year after this meeting with Kennan, Kropotkin, on the eveof his release and return to Russia, committed suicide.) The writer Felix Volkhovski was an exile with whom Kennan struck up a warm friendship. His health and been shatteredby long imprisonment in the Fortress of Peter and Paul. He knew American history ano literature and Kennan managedby secretmeans to correspondwith him after he had left Russia,hearing in this way of the suicide of his wife and the death of his little daughter. The sequel to this friendshipwas sensational. In t 889Volkhovski knocked at Kennan's door in Albany. Assumingthe characterof a retired army officer he had travelled z,8oo miles from Irkutsk to Vladivostok where he ri'as hidden on a British coal steamer,and taken to Japan. From GeorgeKennan 3o3 there, on another British ship, he sailed to Vancouver, the passengerspaying his fare,so that he should not haveto go steerage. This adventureis worth recording for escapeswere extremelyrare from Siberia.a Attempts were often made. Escaperswere known as brodjtags. Kennan talked to severalbrodyags,marching in fetters from Tomsk to Irkutsk. Someof them had escapedhalf a dozentimes from the mines. They had always been caprured or had given themselves 'I up from hunger and despair. know brodyags',the captain told 'who Kennan, havebeen over this road sixteentimes in leg-fetters. God only knows how they live through it.'When they broke from the marching line, they were of courseshot at by the guards but thesewere not alwaysgood marksmen. About brodgags,such a featureof the Siberianlandscape,Kennan heard many tales when he reachedthe gold mines of Kara. Here 'free half the hard-labour conyicts lived in commands,outside the prison walls. 'Every year when the weatherbecomes warm, the free command beginsto over-flow into the forestsI and for two or three months a narrow but almostcontinuous stream of escapingconvicts runs from the Kara penalsettlements in the directionof LakeBaikal. The signal for this annualmovement is givenby the cuckoo.The cry of the bird is taken as evidencethat an escapedconvict can oncemore live in the forests,and to run away,in convict slang,it to go to General Kukushkafor orders.In Siberia,as a whole,the numberof runaway exilesand convictswho takethe field in responseto the summots of this popularofficer exceeds 3o,ooo. Most of the Kara convictswho "go to GeneralKukushka for orders"in the earlysummer come back to the minesunder new namesand in leg-fettersnext winter; but they have had their outing, and have breathedfor three whole monthsthe fresh,free air of the woods,the mountainsand the steppes. . . . They do not expectto escapealtogether; they knew that they must live for monthsthe lives of huntedfugitives, subsisting upon berriesand roots, sleeping on the coldand often water-soaked ground and facingdeath at almostevery step. But, in spite of all this, they cannothear in earlysummer the first soft notesof the cuckoowith- out feelinga passionatelonging for the adventuresand excitements that attendthe life of a brodyag. A prison official told Kennan of a convict servanr who begged a Nabokov in a spirited defenceof the old r6gime of Russia asserts 'St that escapeswere easy and cites Leo Trotsky, pulled merrily through the snow by reindeers, bringing like a new Santa Klaus, his gifts to the West'. See his autobiography, Speak Memory. 30.4 Muscovjt 'I him to lock him up in the summer for, he said: am old and grey- headednow, I can't stand life in the woods as I could once, but if I hear General Kukushka (cuckoo) calling me, I must go., Many prison officials winked at escapesbecause they could continue to draw the rations and clothes of the runawaysand sell them on the black market, but to the peaceableburghers of Siberia the brodyagswere a great menace. In order to survive they had perforce to steal and in Siberia there were many times the number of crimes of violence recorded in European Russia. In fact, the strong protests against the whole exile system that came out of Siberia was less out of sympathy for the politicals than out of outrage that their country was a dumping ground for common criminals, half of whom were nor tidily locked up in prisons but living in coloniesin remote areasor in free commandsfrom which it was not hard to escape,even though only temporarily. Incidentally, the oddest exile Kennan met in Siberia, also the oldest, was not a brodyagnor a convict-it was the bell of Uglich, banished to Tobolsk, in 1593, by order of Boris Goudunov for having rung the signal for insurrection at the time of the murder of the TsarevitchDimitri. The bell had beenconsecrated and purged of its sins. Uglich was demandingit back, sayingthat it had been punishedenough by three centuriesof exile,but Tobolsk would not let it go. Kennan discoveredsomething profoundly illustrative of Russian psychology: the convicts orgeni2sdthemselves into secret unions calledartels, and asin their village mirsrthey chosetheir own head- man or starosta,made their own rules, had their own standardsof honour and their own penal code.The artelbribedexecurionersto flog lightly, soldiersto smugglevodka, tobaccoand playing cards. They levied taxes, distributed privileges,and the punishment for disloyalty was always death. To Kennan the most physically exhaustingpart of his journey was from Tomsk to the Transbaikal, through Eastern Siberia. The autumn had begun and con:nual rain had turned the roads into seasof mud. 'The jolting of our heavytarantas through deep ruts gaveus violent headachesand preventedsleep;. . . we sufferedfrom cold and were tormented by predatory insectsfrom the road-sideprisons and 6tapes!To be forcedto live for weeksat a time in clothinginfested with fleas,lice or bedbugsgave me a humiliatingsense of physical defilement.' GeorgeKennan 3o5 But even greater than the physical exhaustionwas the nervous strain. Kennan was a warm-hearted, imaginative man. Day after day he witnessed suffering that he thought unparalleled in the civilized world and he could do nothing to alleviate it. In the secondvolume of his book Kennan gives a picturesque sketch of 'Grandmother Catherine Breshkovsky, rhe of the Russian Revolution'. An aristocratwho spokeFrench, German and English fluently and was a gifted musician, she had twice served out penal terms in the mines of Kara. 'The unshakencourage with which this unfortunate wornancon- templatedher drearyfuture and the faith that shemanifested in the ultimate triumph of liberty in her native country, were as touching as they were heroic.Almost the last words which she said to mi were: "Mr Kennan,we may die in exile,and our childrenmav die in exile,and our children'schildren may die in exile,but someihing will comeof it at last.". . . . I cannotrecall her lastwords to me withl out feelingconscious that all my standardsof courage,of fortitude, and of heroicself-sacrifice have been raised for all time, and raised by the hand of a woman.Interviews with suchpolitical exiles-and I met many in the Transbaikal-wereto me a more bracingtonic than medicine.'

When Kennan reachedTransbaikal, his health broke down and he made haste to reflrn to his country. He was, in any case,anxious to tell his story. With the oprimism characteristic of good Americans, he hoped that his revelarionsmight induce the tsar to reform the whole system. A petition was drawn up in Philadelphia,after one of Kennan's lectures,asking Alexander III to do somethingabout his prisons.It cited the Civil War friendship when his father had senthis fleetto New York; it receivedthousandi of signatures.Alexander turned a blind eye. Copiesof the Cennry Magazinethat reachedRussia were severelycensored, whole pages being blacked out. Yet many read it in secret and Kennan,s admirers credited him with inflaming the Russianmasses against their master and thus inciting them to revolt in r9r7. Kennan was no revolutionary, nor was he a prophet. He had someinkling of the hidden riches of Siberia, but nothins told him that a city of scientistsdedicated to explore them rvould sprout up there sixty yearsafter he had seenits exilestrudging through the mud nor that, in the r96os,the Albert Hall in London *o,rld be listening to a choir of young men and maidens from Omsk. 306 Muscooy 'House Dostoievsky's of the Dead', and watching their mild yet disciplined dancing, triumphant with health and high spirits. Kennan had not done what he had set out to do. He had sym- pathized with the Russian governmenr's treatment of what he thought of as Nihilists; he had gone to Siberia to vindicate it. An honest man, when he saw what the truth was he told it. Not- withstanding all Russiandenials, America and England now knew for certain what Tsarist wrannv was and what Siberia stood for. GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

BAeEv, Anne. Americons in Russia r77Ftgt7, New York, 1938. BArrry, T, A. America Faces Rwsia, Cornell Universiry Press, r95o. BLANCH, Lesley. Sabres of Paradise, London, 196o. BRrwstnR, Dorothy. East lYest Passage, London, 1954. Cox, E. G, A Referencc Guide to the Literature of Traoel, Seattle, 1949. CnANrsu,tw, E. Russia and Britain, London, 1944. KoNovAtov, S, Oxford and Russia. An Inaugural Lecture, Oxford, 1947. KoNov,uov, S, Oxford Slaztonic Papers, Vol. I, Oxford, r95o. KoNovetov, S. Oxford Slaoonic Papers, Vol. X, Oxford, 1962. LesnnsoN, M. M, Amqrican Impact on Rtnsia, New York, r95o. PurNalt, P. Seaen Britons in Imperial Russia, 169B-rBrz, Princeton University Press, 1952. VnRuansxy, G, Kievan Russia, Oxford, 1948.

Part I -"Hextuyt, Richard. The principal naztigations, voiages and discoveries of the English nation. rst edition, London, 1589. Enlarged to 3 vols., r598-16oo. Modernized text, Everyman Library, London, r9o7-9. (Hakluyt contains Chancellor, Jenkinson, Burrough and some Fletcher and Horsey.) Fr,etcHnn, Giles, The English lYmks of Giles Fletcher the Elder (ed. L. A. Berry), rWisconsin, 1964. Frnrcmn, Giles. O/ the RusseCotnmanwealtl (ed. R. Pipes and J.V. A. Fine), Harvard, 1966. (This edition includes documents such as the protest of the Muscovy Company.) HrnnrnstrrN, Sigismund von. Rerum Muscoviticarum Commentaii, 3 vols, Viennat 1549. HrnnrnsrnlN, Sigismund von. Notes upon Russia (uans R. A. Major), Hakluyt Soc. London, r85r. HonsEy, Jerome. In Samuel Purchas: Purchas his Pilgrimage, 4th edition, London, 16z6; Modern edition, Hakluytus Posthwnus or Purchas his Pilgrimes, zo vols, Glasgow, r9o5-T7.

Part I I CorrrNs, Samuel. The Presmt State of Russia in a Letter to a Friend in London, London, 167r. GonDoN, Patrick, Passagesfrom the Diary of General Patick Gordon of Auchleuchrees,(Spalding Club), Aberdeen, r859. MrBcn, Gtry. A Relation of Three Embassies. . . in r663 and r664t London, r669. Bibliographjt 3r7 Ol,rAntus, Adam. Voyagesand Travels of the Ambassadorsfrom the Duke of Holsteinto the Great Duke of Muscoay,elc. (trans, J. Davies, London, r662. Modern Edition, Traaelsof Oleariusin Seaenteenth CenturyRassia (uans. S, H. Baron),Stanford Universiry Press, 1967. Paw orAuppo. The Travelsof Macarius(ed. L. Ridding),London, 1936. StRLrvs, Iean, Voyagien door Moscoaim, etc. (Voyages in Muscovy), Dutch edition,Amsterdam, 1677; French edition, Amsterdam, r7r8.

Part III CasaNova,Jacques, Histohe de maoie, S7iesabden,ry6o-62. ClreppsD'AUTERocHE, L'Abb6. AJourney into Siberia(trans. from French) London, r77o, Coor, John. Voyagesand Trapelsthrough the RussianEmpire, Tartary, etc., z vols, Edinburgh, r77o. Cox, William. Travelsinto Poland, Russiaand Sweden,London, 1794. HeNwev, Jonas.Travels from Englandthrough Russia into Persia,London, 1753. Her,uc, G. A. \7. RussischeGilnsttinge, Tiibingen, r8o9. Konn, J. G, Diary of an Austrian Secretaryof Legation at the Court of Peter (trans, from Latin by Count MacDonnel, z vols), London, r863. Macantxry, George. An Account of Russia in 1767, London, 1768. a/sorn Bannow, John: SomeAccount of the Public Life of the Earl of Macartney,Vol. II, London, r8o7, MAssoN,C. F. P. MdmoiresSeaets sur la Russie,z vols, Paris, r8oo, and Paris, r8o4. Prnny, Jobn. The State of Russiaunder the Presmt Zsar, London, 1716, RlcnAnosoN,Villiam. Anecdotesof the RussianEmpire, London, r784. Dr sfcnn, Comte. Mdmoires,Paris, 1827. SwIuroN, A. Traaels into Norway, Dmmark and Russiain t7BB, t79g, t7go, and r79r, London, 1792, VIGon, Mts, Lettersfrom a Lady in Russia,London, 1775.

Part IV AoAras,John Quincy. Memoirs(ed. C. F. Adams), tz vols., Philadelphia, r874-77, Vol. II. ArxrNsoN, J, A. and w'al-xrn, !, A PicturesqueRepresentation of the Manners,Customs and Amusementsof the Russians,London, r8o3-o4. Cann,John. A N orth ern Summ er or Tr azsel s r ound t heB alti c, London, r 8o5. CtAnxr, E,D, Traaelsin VariousComties of Europeand Africa, London, r8rr, Vol. L Je,vrs,J. T, Journal of a Tour in Russia,London, 1816. JouNsroNr,R. Travelsthrough Part of the RussianEntpire, London, r8r5. Ponrrn, R, Ker. Tra"^ellingSketches in Russiaand Sueden,London, r813. KLAnnotH, Iules, Vqtage au Mont Cattcaseet en Gdorgie,z vois., Paris. r833. 3I8 Muscooy Lxlrt, Robert. The Characterof the Russiansand a Detailed Historjt of Moscow,London, r825. or Merstnr, Joseph.Les Soirdesde St. Petersburg(ed, de Saint-Victor.) Paris, 1888. oe M.aIsrRr, Xavier. Oeuwesr3 vols. Paris, 1877. or SreEr, Madame. Dix Annedsd'Exil, Paris, r8zr. 'WHEELER, Daniel, Memoirs,London, 1842. Wrruor, Martha and Catherine. Rusian Journals (ed. Marchioness of Londonderry and H. M. Hyde), London, 1934. \tr7tr,soN,Robert. Piztate Diary of Travelsin the Campaignsof r9re-r4, London, 186o. Also ed. A Brett-James,Londot, 1964

Part V BneNoes,Georg. Impressions of Russia,Copenhagen, r 888, English Version, London, 1889. Bn.nnrNrR,Robert. Excursionsin the Interior of Russia,London, 1839. CunzoN, G. N. Rzsslain Central Aia in tBBg, etc., London, 1889. CusrrNE,Marquis de. La Russiaen 1839,Paris, 1843. . DutvIas, Alexandre. Impressionsde Voyage, Le Caucase,Paris, 1859; reprinted, Paris, r9oo. Geurrs& Thdophile. Voyageen Rus$e,Paris, 1866. flAecoou, Isabel. RasseanRambles, London, and Cambridge (U.S.A.), r895. HaxrueusrN, Augustus von. The RussianEmpire, its People,Institutions and Resources,3 vols., Hanover, t847-52. HomuerRr DEHELL, Addle et Xavier, Traaelsin the Steppesof the Caspian Sea, the Crimea,Caucasus, erc., 3 vols, Paris, 1844. lluuE, George. Thirty-fizte Years in Russia,London, r9r4. KTNNAN,George, Siberia and the Exile System,London, r89r. Kon, J. G. Rwsia,London, 1842. LAnnNsrv, F. K. I RussianReply to the Marquis de Custine(trans. from French and ed. by H. J. Bradfield, London), 1844. MoRtny, Henry. Sketchesof RussianLife, London, 1866. Noatr, Edward. The RussianRetsoh, London, 1866. - OrrpneNT,Laurence. The RussianShores of the Black Sea,London, 1854, Sar,a,G, A.Journey due North, London, 1858. Scott, C. H. The Baltic, the Black Sea and the Crimea, London, 1854. [Srr.rrur,M. A. P.] Six Year's Traaelsin Russia,London, 1859. Ttssor, Victor. Russiansand Gennans,Paris, r88r; English translation, London, 1882, Tlssor, Victor. Russiansand the Russians,Paris, r88{. Vernm, Juan. ObrasCompletas, znd edition, Madrid, 1942,Vol. I. \TrtaRaual*, R. Traaelsbt the TranscaucasianProvinces of RussiarLondon, r839. GENERAL INDEX

Alaska 293-4 dancing r4o, r59, t67, r75, t88, America: war with Britain 97, 242 r89 n., z9r-2i friendship with Derbent 92,267-8 Russia258, z9r-4,3o5; interest drunkenness 69, 8o, r04, 232, in Russian rnatters zt5-r6; 25O-r,3IO Russiamight imitate z1613r4 Dutchmen 5r Armada, Spanish54, 59 afmaments50 Edinburgh r79 Armenians rz7, r3o, 2654 education ro, r47, T.62,r74, 238) Astrakhan 4ot43 : 75, 86-9, 92, rz1, 28e2 tzB Ekaterinburg t4orz954 Axe, Russianmastery of zz5,245 Elbruz, Mt 264-5 Azov, district rz3-5 England contrastedwith Russia55, r47,299n. baths 4o, 74: r@s r43, t6z, r93, English residents in Russia 16o-r 255 English women, Russian view of Bible Society r94 r15, rg3 Bokhara 44 famine 2ro,3ro Btazil {7 Finland, English bombardment of Buddhism 92, ro3, r27 Buzuluk area2ro, 287n.,289 n. 2IO fues 43, ro9-ro Flemings cannibalism 46, 83, g3-4 3r capital punishment 297,299 n, floodszo3-5 foodrRussian29r39: ro2, ro9, rro, CaspianSea 4o, 43, 44, 9c, 226, 267+ 166,226, 256-8, 265,266, 268 foreign servantsin Russia235-6 Cathayz2-3, 4c, 45, 47,83 Catholics,Roman 65, zz6-7 French, influenceof ry4, zr4, zt8, Caucasus263-72 237 caviar 9o gardensand gardening 146, r89, z8rr 47,65,7r, censorship 3o5 ro9, r3z, t6o, r84,297 character,Russian 58j, 7t-2r 74, Germans, influence of tr6, rr9, 8r-2, 85, r59, 186-7, 9or 97-8, 2r4, zz9,236-7,z4o, z4z r88, r9r-2, r94, zo8, 22rr 232, gifts 237,294n. 32, 34,35, 4r,46, 52, 54,66 gold-rushin Siberia245,295-6 children, rearing of (seealso educa- tion) t42, 162 hospitalityz7-8, 3r-2, 36, 5t,62, cholera zo5-6 r39-4o, 169,r86, r93, zz6, z6o climaterrrzo, 46,55,86, r09, r ro- houses: appearancer17, r8r-2, rr, r35, r37, t83-4,2O2,203-5, zz4, 2534; domestic life 167, 2261 23O r9z-3,234-5,z56a Colmagro261 36,4c,4r, Q, 43,46 Huguenotsin Russiar28, r4o Cossacks87a, rz4, r87t 263, 266, 270-1,29I-2 ice-slidesrr5, r77, z3r costume 72, 82, t6g, 23r, 286 ikonsro3, ro5, r49,29o Crimean W'ar zto, zt3t z5z, z8t, Islam9r-2, 263 308 Italiansin Russia9-ro 320 Muscoay Izvoztchiks r35, 224, zz9, z3o, t88, 239-4o,259,z6t n. ;,monas- 232-3,245 teries 38, z89foi reforms of Nikon 67; 'Western self-criticism 6Z; Japan47 criticism2c,,3c,,33, ro4, Jews 168-7o, 246, 294, 297, 3oo, tt8, zz6-7,285 313 Orthodox Church sects: Bezpo- powzi 277; Chlisti 246, 3r3i kidnapping 269-7o Doukhobors zo7, zogt, 247-9, Kiev r9, 289-9o 3r3; Molokani zo7, zog,247, 'Kievan Period' rg,2rg n. 277-8, 3r3; Razkolniks67, zt5, 246-7, 277, 2851,Sabbatarians land reclamationrggrzoo, zoz, zogt 3r3 language,Russian: written 28, 48, r88; spoken6er, r88 perfumes 79 laws,Russian 29r 72-3, 8o-r, 146, Persia4o, 43,9r-2 297 pilgrims z89no,289 n,r 3o7 literature of Russia to-tz, zt4-t6, plague 4z zrB Poland r35, t68-7o locusts3 ro-r r Poles 65, g3r 2o2, zo5, zz6, 293, London 24, 33-4: 45, 47,6r, 66, 313-r4 305 poverty,Russian z9-3o,39r 85 Presbyterianism,Scotch 277 products of Russia-sae trade manners of Russians 49-5o, 6o, prophecies about Russia r44t 73' 82 33, manufacturers,lack of zor-z 223 protocol of Russian court 2o-r, medicine72) rzr-3, t3z, 16r, r93, r94,283,298 z7-8,36, 5r, 54 Mennonites zo9, 249-5o, 3o8+ middle class,absence of, in Russia Quakersro6, 156-7, rg7-zro r87 Mir zt5, z4z-3,2734 rebellions87-9,93, to7, zr4,238 Moscow 27, rrz, 168, r73, r83, reforms of Peter the Great ro6-9r, 195-6,224-5t 243-5 r84, zzo Muscovy Company zz-3, 28, 3t-2, reindeerro2, ro9r 3o3 n. 34,35,4r, 48,5r, 52 n. Riga 85, r3z-3 rivers: Don roo, rr2; Dwina 49, Nihilists z8r-3, z89jo, 3or 54; Neva 203-5, z2o, 22o n., Nijni Novgorod r36, 226,295 z3o, 255i Ob 45, 46, 471'Oka Novaya Zenlya 45-6 t354; Pechora45,46 jYolgazT, Novgorod r9r 243 43r86-7,roo, rr2, tz7rt36rz45

Ochta-see land reclamation sailors:English, corrage of zx, 46; Omsk 3oo English, instructions for 24, 3t, Onhodox Church: clergy zo, 3o, 69; Russianzr9 45, 7g, r4g, 225,238-4O;death Saint Petersburg12r-3, rz8, t35, and burial 39,80, r19; feastsand r58, r8er, rg7,2034, 2rg-2T, observances30, 38-9, 43, 7r> 2221 23b3r 252-3 74-5, 77-8, ro5, r5o-r, 172-3, Samoyeds45,46,83 Indcx 32r serfs rrr-t2, r32, r43, r47-g, Tobolsk 1364, r4t n. r5r-z) 166,T7o-r ) 176) r80, r82, Tomsk 298 r86 trade28, 3r-2,35-6,4rr 42-3147, sexual behaviour of Russians53, 7r,76,98j 73, 74, 86, 9o, ro4, r23, 136, travel,overland in Russiaz6-7,36, r39, r92 42, 54, 70, 854, rrr, 135-7, sheepro3, ro9 r68j, t75, r8z, r87, zo6, z7t Sheffieldr9g,2oo, 206 Troitskoe 165-7, r7o-2, 176-8 shipwrecks25, 3z Tsar, absoluterule of zo, 29, 33, Siberia rr-r2, 75, 78) rr7, rr9, 48-9,5 5, 56-7, 6 r-2, 77 -8, zzz-3 r4r-2, r5r-2, 223-4, 226-7, Turks 85, r25, r4g-5o, 284, 3oo, 2454, 2gr, 295-306,3r3-r4 312 singing65,67r 8o-r, 82, r5g, t67, r88, 222, zz4, 226, 242, 3oS Ukraine z86jo slavery (seealso serfs) 4o, 56, 69, 92-3 Venus,Transit smoking of r34, l3'8, r44 73-4,86 Vienna,Congress of r9o soldiers,British in Russia 19, 50, Vladikavkaz 67, 89; Russian28-9, rog, 313 7o, Vologda r23, 142-3,17 r-2, r8r, r86, r95, 3r,36,4r,49 Voronezhror, 234,266,284 rrr Streltsitoz \flhite Seaz6 superstition4g-5o,6g, r38, 288 wine, introduction oi 75-6 wolves rog, zo3 Tartarsrg gr, ro2-4, r 36,4c, 5c,56 r women, place of in Russia rz5, tz7-8, r2g, 249-5e,265-6, rr,20, 268,3oo 39t 74t 79, 8t, ro7, rr8, r39, 147-8,t77, r83, 186, Taverhof rz4 226, 244, 26r n,,283 Tchinoanik278) 3rr Tiflis z7r Tilsit, Treaty of t77, r79-8o, r89 Yaroslavl3r,226 'Time of Troubles' 65 Tiumen 297-9r Zemstao278, 3rr INDEX OF PERS ON S

Adams, Clement zz, 28, 33, 69 Bender, Emir of r4y5o Adams, Henry z16 Berkeley,George (1685-rZ8l). His Adams, John Quincy (tl6l-t848) Essay towards a new theory of r89, z9z-3, 3t7 oision(t7o9) t75 Aeschylus265 Biram, Hadji gz Aksakov, Serge (r79r-r859), Biron, actually Biihren, Johann writer. IJis Years of Childhood (r69o-t772), later Duke of (1858)cited 16r n. Courlandr16, r19 Alexander I, T sar(t7 77-r\z 5) r 52' Bismarck, Prince von (l8tS-g8) r55, r56, t59, 164,165, 173, r78, 237,279-8o r7g, rgo) rg2, 194-8 passim, Blanch,Lesley 269,316 2oo-zo3 passim,205-8 passim, Boehme,Jacob (r575-t624) 248 zzzr 2261237n.r2481256 n., 292 Bomelius, Eleazar(d. rSl4 qg AlexanderII, Tsar (r8r8-8r) zr4, Boswell, James98 zt6, z6t fl,, 282, 285, 287, 293, Bowes,Jerome (d. 1616)6r-2,82 3orr 3O8r3O9, 3rO, 3rr Bradfield,H. I. S. zz7 AlexanderIII, Tsar (t845+4)zr4' Bradford, William (r75e-r856) 294,3Or) 3o5, 3r3 t77-8 Alexis, Tsar (t629-76) 661, 77-9 Brak, Cornelius, companion of Alexis, Crown Prince (169o-1718) Struys 9o-r TIZ Brandes,Georg (1842-1927)zr4, Algarotti, Francesco.Reference to zt5r 3r8 Lettqs containingthe state of the Bremner,Robert 2r3, 3r8 trade, marine, reuenue\forces of Breshkovsky,Catherine 3o5 rhe RussianEmpire r42 Brown, Lancelot (Capability) Aline, wife of Hadji Biram 9z-3 (r7r5-83)r6o Allen, William (r77w843) r98, Bruce, Peter (r692-t757) 7o 206-812o9 Brunswick - Volfenbiittel - Bevern, Ambrosius, Metropolitan of Anton lllrich, Duke of rr8-r9 Moscow r48 Buchan, Villiam. Author of Anne, Tsarina (1693-174o) rr5, DomesticMedicine (1769) t6r n. r23, r25, r28 Buonaparte,Mathilde z6z Anne, Princess of Mecklenburg- Buonaparte,Napoleon (t769-t9zt) Schwerinrr8-r9 55,r55, r56, r65, t74rr84r188-9, Aretino, Pietro (1492-1556)79 r95, r98, 22On,, ZZ5,243,Z8O Burleigh, seeCecil, William Bachtin,Nicholas (r896-195o) rr Burrough, Stephen45-7 Bacon, Francis (156r-1626) tz9 Bagration, Petet (1767-18rz) t8z Bagration,Peter (r818-76) z6l-8 Cabot, Sebastian(t476-r557) zz, Bailey,Thomas z9rr 316 24,25,45,69 Bakunin, Michael (t8r4-76) 283' Carlisle, Charles Howard, rst Earl 284 of (1629-85)66 Banks, Sir Joseph(t743-r8zo) r44 Carr, John (r772-t832) r55, r58- Barclay,Robert (t648-9o).Author 62, 3r7 of rhe Apologg (1678) r57' r97 Casanova(de Seingalt), Giacomo Bell,Dr John(169r-rZ8o) g8 $725n8) 95: r5r n,:3r7 Index 323 Cathcart, Charles, qth Baron Dee,John (r527-16o8).Author of (17zr-76) 99t r45 Nau-igatimis ad Cathaytam,etc. Cathcart, $7illiam, roth baronj rst (t58o)zz Earl (r755-r843) r45, r89 n. Defoe,Daniel (:166r-173t).Author 'The Catherine II Gteat' (1729- of RobinsonCrusoe (r7r9) rrz, 96) r 44-8, t 5 t-2, t6ez, 164, 173, 14r n. r9r-2, r97,288 n., 2gr-2,297 Dickens,Mr Ambassadorr33 Cecil, \fiiliam, Lord Burleigh Diderot,Denis (r7r3-84) r44, t64, (r5zoa8)49,55, 59 236 Chancellor,Richard (d. 1556) 19, Dimitri of Uglich (r58zjr) 52,55, zo,22, z3-34: 45,69 65, r3z, 3o4 Chappe d'Auteroche, Abb6 99, Dimitri, False,The fitst 65,74 r34-44 Dimitri, False,The second65 Charles I, King of England Dimsdale, Thomas (r7rz-r8oo) (r6oo-4fi 66 r97 Charles II, King of England Ditson, G. L. 269 n. (r63e-85)66, 83 Dolgoruki family r17 Chekhov,Anton (186o-1904)rr5) Dolgoruki, General (fl. mid ryth r87, 3rr century) 87 Clarke, E. D. (rZ6g-t\zz) r55, Dostoievsky, Feodor (r8r8-8r) r92 n., r93, r95,3r7 2O7r2r5,3OOr3O6 Collins, Samuel Q6r9-7o) 67, Drancy, Madame 269 77-83,316 Drummond, William, rst Viscount Cook, James, Captain (rZz8-Zg) (r6r7?-r688)7o r44 Dufferin and Ava, Frederick, rst Cook, Dr John 98, r2r-33,3r7 Marquess (t826-r9oz) z8z Courland, Duke of-sae Biron Dumas, Alexandre (r8oz-7o) Cowper, \7illiam (t73t-t8oo) zoz zr3-r4, z6z-72, 3t8 Coxe,Villiam Q7 47-r8z9) 99: r95: Dyer, John r4r n. 317 Craven, Elizabeth, Lady (r75o- Edmondson,George rgg, 2oo-2o3 r8z8)r6o Edward VI, King of England Cromwell,Oliver (1599-16S8)66 (rSZl-Si 22,24,27,3r Curzon, GeorgeNathaniel (r8Sg- Elizabeth I, Queen of England r9z5)zr4,3t8 (r533-16o3)4r, 47,48-52, S4-5, Custine, Astolphe, Marquis de 6o-z (r79o-t857) zt3, zr7-28, zzg, Elizabeth,Tsarina (r7o94z) rt5, 243,3r3,3r8 rt9, rz9,r3r, r35, t4t, 168,297 Czerkaskoi(:Cherkassky) r 16 Elphinstone,lohn (t7zv7) :'6r Enghien,Duc d'zr8 Dashkov, Anastasia. Daughter of Erskine, Robert (fl. early r8ttr PrincessD. r66 century)tzz, t6t Dashkov, Princess Catherine, n6e Essex, Robert Devereux, Earl of Vorontzov (r743-18ro) r55, (r567-t6or) 6z 163-78 passim Dashkov, Michael (tlZ64q,). Feodor,Tsar 5r Husbandof above165 Filiber, Mrs 248 Dashkov,Paul (r763-18o7). Son of Fletcher, Giles (r546-16rr) 52, above164 54-9'75' 316 324 Muscuty Fox, C. I. Gl+g-r8o6), a bust of Hakluyt, Richard (c. 1553-1616) 16o rg, zt, roo, 'The 33, 48, 49, 55,60, Frederick II Great', King 316 of Prussia164, r89,249 Hamel, J. 49 n., 66 n. Frost, G. A. z95,3oo Hamilton, Catherine163, 165 Fuller, Thomas (16o8-61).Author Hamilton (Malcolm, d. 1699, and of The lVorthies of England Hugh, d. r7z4) 7o (t662) Sg Hanwan Jonas (17rz-86) 98, r29 n,, r45, rg5,3r7 Hapgood,Isabel (r85er9z8) z16, Gabriel, a friendly Russian45-6 294,3r8 Gagarin, Princess(?)r74 Harold, King of England 19 Galitzin, Alexander(r7r8-83) r73 Harris, Sir James (r746-t9zt), Galitzin, Boris (164r-17ro) ror later Earl of Malmesbury97 Galitzin, Michael (1685-1764) Hasrings,Lady Mary 4g-So,60 t234, tz8, r29, r3r;his family Haxthausen, Augustus von 2r3, r25 2p-5t:288 n., 3o8,3r8 Galdtzin,Princess(?) r7z Hegel, G. W. F. (r77o-r83r) 236 Garnett,Constance(r86r-r946)215 Helbig, G. von r5z, 3r7 Gautier, Theophile (r8tr-72) zt4, Henry VIII, King of England 263,3tB Q49r-t547) zr George III, King of England fferberstein, Sigismund von (t738-r8zr) z9r (1486-1556)19, zo, 28, 36, 68, Goethe,J. V. von (t749-t832) 46 69,74, 316 Gogol, Nicolas (r8o9-52) r87, Herbert, Sidney (r8re6r) 284 n, z16, zz8 Herzen, Alexander (t8rz-7o) r5z, GoncourtBrothers z6z r78, zt5, z6o,28tr 283,284,2gS Gordon, Patrick (16:S-gS) 67, Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945)55, z8o 70 a,, ro7 n., 316 Holstein, Frederick, Duke of 66, Gordon, Patrick (:Alexander, 68, 69, 76 d. r75z?),Admiral (.f.early r8th Hommaire de Hell, Adelaide and century)rzz Xavier 287-8n,r 289 n., 3rg Goudunov, Boris (c. 155r-16o5) de Hooch,Pieter (r629-c. t6gg gZ Sr-2,65, 3o4 Horsey,Jerome (d.r6z) 48-53,59, Gould, Mr, a gardener16o 316 Gregor Gregorovich, a Cossack Howard, John (1726?3o) zo8 z7o-r Hume, George z16, 278, 3o7-r4, Graham,Stephen 289 n. 3r8 Grellet, Stephen| 56,rg7-8, zo6-8, 209 Innocent, John ll Gresham, Sir Thomas 44 Ivan, a serf r{8 n, 'The Guagninus,Alexander 69 Ivan III Great', Tsar (r44o- Guthrie, Matthew, court physician r5o5) zo, zt 'The I6I Ivan IV Terrible', Tsar (r53o-84) zz, z5-8, 3r-3, 35: 36, 38, 40, 4r-3,48-5r, 55, 58, Haase,Dr 246 6o, 6t-zr 8z, 83, 86, tz5, t3z, Hadderling,Miss rz3, rz8 r89 Hadderlingfamily rz3 Ivan VI, Tsar (174o64) rr9 Index 325 Jackman,Charles 47 Lenin (Ulianov, Viadimir Ilitch) JamesIII, King of England(VII of (t87o-t924) 3oz Scotland)rz5 Lermontov,M. (r814-4r)r5orz6z James,Henry (1843-1916)z8z-3 Leskov,Nicolas (r83r35) zoz n. James,J. T. r9r, 196,3r7 Leslie, a mercenary70 James,Richard (c. 1594-1638)65 Lestocq, Johann Hermann Q69z- JenghisKhan (r16z-rzz7) 19,268 t767) t4r Jenkinson,Antony (d. 16rr) 34, Leuchtemberg, Maxim, Duke of 35-M: r5o (r8r7-52) zzz Johnson,Samuel 98 Levesque, Pierre Charles (1736- Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor t9rz) tg4 (t74rjo) 16r, 164 Lincoln, Abraham (18og-6S) zg: Jyagosenki,Count r16, r17 Locke, John (1632-17o4)ro2, r2g Loehr, Franz von z8o Katno, guide to Dumas z6z Louis XV, King of France (r7ro- Kant, Immanuel (r7 z4- r8o4) 46 74 r34 Karamzin, N. M. (1766-1826)ro, Louis XVIII, King of France zz8,259 (1755-1824)zzo n. Katinka, a serf 166 Lyall, Robert(d. r83r) r56,190-6, Kennan, Georgez 15,z16, z9t-3o6, 3r8 3r8 Keril, an unfriendly Russian 45-6 Macarius, of Antioch 67178 n, Ker Porter, Robert Q777-t842) Macarius,a sturetz2o7 r55, 160 n.t r77: t79r84, t93, Macartney, George (t737-r8o6) 299 rr.r 3T7 95, r64t r74 rt,, 3r7 Killingworth 3r Mackenzie Vallace, Sir Donald Kipling, Rudyard (r865-1936)263 2r5, z5r,273-8 Klaproth, Julesr48 n.,269,3t7 Maistre, Josephde 156, 22tr rr., de Kock, Paul (r794-r87t) zzr 3r8 Kohl, J. G. zr3, zz9-4rr 3t8 Maistre, Xavier de 156,zzo n.r 3tB Konovalov,S. 66, 316 Mawell, Andrew (t6zt-78) 66 Korb, J. G. ro7 n., rro n.r r38 n., Mary I, Queenof England(r516- r93n.,3r7 58)28, 32,34t35,36 Kornies, Johann 249 Massoo, C. F. P. 99, t47-8 n., Kropotkin, Alexander 3oz r5r, r9r D.t 3r7 Kropotkin, Peter (t842-t9zr) fytxthilds,princess-see Buonaparte r7r n,r 295,3O2 Maynard, Sir Jotrn. His The RussionPeasant (1942) z5r Labensky,F. K. zz7,3r8 Mazeppa, lvan (1644-17o9)67 Lacy, Peter (r618-tZSt)'Count' Menshikov, family r17, rrg, r23 t25, t3I, r32 Mersh, Judith ++ Lafayette, Marquis de (IZSZ- Michael, Tsar (r597-r645) 62, 66, 1834) z9r 68,69,75,76 La Harpe, F. C. de (1754-1838) Michiel, Venetian Legate z5 n. r55 Midge, Guy 66, 3r7 Lavrov, an illustrator r9o Mikulin 6r-z Lawrence, Sir Thomas r79 Mithridates z7r Lefort, Franz (1656-99) ro7 n. Mogul, Great 94 Leibniz, G. u7. (r646-r7t6) tzg Momonov, Count 186 326 Muscwy Montgomery, James (tllt-r854) 160, 16r, 16z, t73, r78, r93; 20r n. his widow r84, r89 More, Sir Thomas (r478-rg). Paul of Aleppo 67, 78 n., 3r7 }Iis Utopia(rS16) SS Paulus Jovius 69 Morley, Henry 8o n,, 3r8 Penn, l7illiam Q644-t7r8) t97 Miinnich, Burkhard Christoph Pepys,Samuel 611 66 (t683-r767) rz5 Perry, Captain John (167*1732) Murpha, a serf r47 n. 4or 98, roo-rr3, t45, t6o,266, z78r 3r7 priocess Nabokov, Nicolas 3o3 n. Persia,a of 88 Peter I 'The (1672- Napea(or Nepea),Osip 32, 34: 35; Great', Tsar 36 r7z5)67, 70 i., 74,76, 8t, 97,98, Napoleon-see Buonaparte IOO-I, IO5-I3, I15: T22, I25, Naryshkin, family r89 r32, r35, r38 n., t47 n,, t58, Nelson,Horatio (r758-r8o5) r74 r89, r9r, rg7, 22o, 2zr, 225, Newton, Isaac (r642-t727) toz, 228,233,237,278 r29 PeterIII, Tsar (1728-62)rr9, t4r, NicholasI, Tsar (t796-r855) zo9, r44, r6t-2, 164, t89 zto, zt8, 222-4,z2g, 233,237 n., Pett, Anhur 47 238, 252, z6o, z6z, 28o, z8t, Philip II, King of Spain (1527- 299n.,3Or, 3o8 98). Consortof Mary I28,34 36 Nicholas II, Tsar (r868-19r8) Pisemski49,6o 249 fi. Pompeyz7r Nightingale, Florence (r 8zo-r9ro) Popov, General 3ro 284 n,r z98 Posset,M. rz8 Nikon, Patriarch(16o5-8r) 67,7r, Possevinus69 285 Potemkin, Gregory @. ry3yt79r) Noble,E. D. zr4,2r5,3r8 r5r, r6er, r89 Praniaschnikov, an illustator 286 Pugachev,Yemelka 67 Ogilvy, a mercenary 97261) 70 Purchas,Samuel Adam (c. r6oer67r) 48 Olearius, 66, Pushkin, Alexander (t799-tg7) 68-76, too,3r7 r5o, r88, zo3, zt8 Oliphant,Laurence (r829-88) zr3, 3r8 Giacomo Orlov,Alexis (r737-r8o8) 16r, 16z, Quarenghi, Q7 44-r8t7) 9 173 Radishschev, Alexaoder (tZ+g- 186 Orlov, Anna rSoz) r5r-z Orlov, Gregoty(t777-t826) t94 Randolph,Thomas n. Duke of Brac- 4r,42r 58 Orsino, Virginio, Rastrelli,B. F. (r7oo-7r) ciano 6z 9 Razin, Stepan ('Stenka') (d. 167r) Osmin, a Tartar chief, and his son 67,87j,9r,93 9r Razumovski,Alexis (r7o9-7r) Ostrowman (:Ostermann), Hans ryr Repnin, Nicholas (r734-r8or) zz3 (r725-r8rr) t73 Richardson, William Q743-x8r4) 99, 145-52,3r7 Pallas,Sirnon (r74r-r8rt) r44 Rondeau,Claudius rr4, rr7 Pashinka,a serf r7o-r Rostopchin, Feodor (r7g-t826) Pau1,Tsar (r754-t8ot) rS2, r5S, r85 Index 327 Rouss.'au,Jean-Jacques (.t7 rz-78 ; Trappen, Jacob, companion of r44,r_s2,236 Strul's 'lrezziti, 9o-r Russell,\\'. H. (rE2r-t9o7) 284n. Domenico (167o-1734) 9 Trotsky, Leo (r877-194r) zr9 n., Saia,G. A. zr3, 318 303 n. Scherbatov,Princess t77, t8o, r84 Trubetskoi, Prince, A Decembrist Schiller,Friedrich von (r 759-18o5) 223-4,226 236 Trueta, Spanish doctor rzr Scott,C. H. zt3r 3t8 Turberville, George (r 54o?-r6ro?) Scott, Richenda. Her Quakers in 58 Russia(1964) zo9 Turgenev, Ivan (r8r8-83) rr5, S6gur,Count de t74r:,r 3r7 17r n,, t8o, zt4, zt5, zt6, 237, Shakespeare,lTilliam 6o-r z60, z6z, z8t, z8z, 285 Shamylz6z-3,267,269 Twain, Mark z16 Sharp, Cecil 65 Shevchenko,Taras (r814-6r) 288 U, Mr z8r Sidney, }Jenry 23,33 Sidney, Philip z3 & n. Valera, Juan (r824-r9o5) z6t n., Sidney, \Tilliam z3 & n., 33 3r8 Singleton,Agnes zoz-3 Vermeer, Jart (rgz-7) 93 Smith,M. A. P. 2r3, z5z4r,3rB Vigor, Mrs gg, rr4-2o,3r7 Solyman 35 Vigor, \filliam rr9 Solzhenitsyn,Alexander rr, rz Madimir, Saint r9 Sophia,a serf 166 Volkhovski, Felix 3o3-4 Stiel, Germaine de (1766-1817) Voltaire, Frangois-MarieArouet de r56,r85j, 3r8 (t694-r778) t64, 236,z9z Stein,Baron von r89 Vorontzov, Alexander Q7 4t-r8o 5) Stepniak (:Dragomanov, Serge) r52 (r84r+S) 25r,2gS Vorontzov, Catherine-see Dash- Struys, Jean67, 84j4, 3r7 kov Sturge,Joseph (r793-1859) 2og-ro Vorontzov,.\tichael Q7 r44) 45 Suvarov, Alexander (r729-t8oo) Vorontzov,Simon (r744-t832) r78 t6z, t89 Vorontzov,?, GovernorofEkateri- Swinton,A. r74 n,, 3r7 noslav,t84t,248

Tamerlane(1336-1405) 86, 268 !7alpole, Horace 164 \Walsingham, Tatishev (:Tatishchev) V. N, Francis 48 (1686-175o)rzgr-3r Ward, Thomas r14 Tchernychevski(or Chernyshevsky) !7ebb, Sidney and Beatrice.Their N. G. (1828-8) z$-4 History of Trade [Jnionisnt 3oz Ter Borch, Gerard (1617-8r) 93 Vest, Benjamin r79 Thorne, Robert zr I7heeler, Daniel (r77r-t84o) 156, Tissot,Victor zr4, 279-9o,3r8 'Wheeler,t97-2o9,3t8 Tolstoy, Leo (r828-r9ro) 174, family r99, zo9 r8o, 2ro, 214-16, 237, 248-, Wheeler, William zoo z6or26zr z94 n.,299 Vhitworth, Charles ror Tonce,M, t75 \Tilbraham,Richard 269n.,3tB Totleben, General 3o9 lfilloughby, Hugh (d. t553)zz,z3, Tradescant,John (d. r$) 65 25, IO2 Muscuty Wilmot, Captain Edward t63, 166 Wilson, Sir Robert r55, 186 n., !7ilmot, Catherine(d. r8z4) r55, r93,318 163-78,3tB STortley-Montague,Lady Mary gg !7ilmot, Martha (t775-r8p) r55, 163-78,3r8 Young, Arthur, jrrnior r73