Siberia (Price)/Chapter 1

by Morgan Philips Price

SIBERIA

CHAPTER I

ON THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY

IT was early in the month of April 1910, when I arrived at Moscow, which was to be the starting-place of my journey of 4000 miles along Russia's eastern frontier. Till recently few travellers from our shores seemed to be aware that there was any other way of visiting the Middle and Far East except by the usual sea route via India. Thus, following the beaten tracks of many thousands who have gone before him, the European traveller leaves his home and suddenly plunges, after the sea-voyage is done, into the old, yet to him new, world of the East, where he finds the ideas and institutions of the West veneered wholesale upon the Oriental framework. But there is another medium through which a traveller can approach the East, and perhaps learn to understand it a little by the way. Already in Moscow the Slavonic atmosphere is about him; and as he passes farther Eastward he becomes insensibly orientalized. The Anglo-Saxon power which overthrew the Moguls and thereby destroyed the relics of the Central Asiatic Mongol Empire in those regions, now dominates India and Southern Asia. But another power which, unlike the former, bore all the terrible brunt of the Tartar onslaughts during the formation of the Mongol Empire and which thereby was thrown back along the path of civilization for many centuries, has since that time gradually grown and by peaceful penetration Eastwards conquered the Mongol and Tartar power of Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. Gifted with powers of assimilation and adaptability to their natural surroundings, the Russian Slavs have shown themselves to be the great political European power which dominates Northern and Western Central Asia. Their civilization is not veneered on an Eastern framework; East and West are blended in them as wine of two different growths is blended by the wine merchant. And then there is the third political power of Asia, an Eastern power, which stands like a solitary figure amid the surrounding races. Recent events have demonstrated the mutability of things least susceptible of change; the Dragon Throne of China has been overturned; and what the future may hold we cannot tell. This third power, also—the most mysterious and ancient of them all—the wanderer on Russia's eastern frontiers encounters. In the fertile plains and barren tablelands beyond the Siberian and Turkestan frontiers, that power, once held by the Dragon Throne, now usurped by the five-coloured Republic, is still seen maintaining its feeble political influence over the ruins of the once glorious Turko-Mongol Empire.

Is not this then a new way of approaching the East?—a way which seems to have appealed little so far to my countrymen. The difficulties of language and lack of travelling facilities seem to bar the way, for once the great Siberian or the Central Asiatic railways have been left behind, the traveller must traverse many hundreds of miles of steppe in open carts or crawl wearily with pack horses over the barren plateaus.

Moscow is indeed a fitting starting-place for a wanderer on Russia's eastern frontiers. The old walls of the Kremlin, which witnessed the growth of the principalities of Moscovy and the birth of Russian nationality, the power of Ivan the Terrible, and the victory of 1812, remind one that this is the ancient kernel from which this peculiar, semi-Oriental Slavonic Empire sprung. Looking eastward from the walls of the Kremlin, the eye meets naught but a boundless plain of pine forest. The kite soars above the old city, as above every Eastern town, while beyond the horizon lie the steppes across which the door lies open to Asia. What was there to stop the Slavs from penetrating eastward? What other means had they to keep themselves secure at home? From the eastern steppes they received the Tartar yoke, and the Tartar influence; back to the eastern steppes they have imparted, in the course of five centuries, their Slavonic civilization with just something of that Western culture which they have, I will not say assimilated, but acquired since the days of their leader, Peter the Great.

And yet one sees around one in the modern town the factories, workshops and offices of a European industrial system, with an industrial proletariat emerging from the old semi-feudal Slavonic Society. The Western influence which Peter let in through his window on the Finnish Gulf is being felt at last, and, through the Slavs, we here have it in process of transmission to the East. As we arrive at the station of the Great Siberian Railway, which girds two continents, we see the magnificent terminal buildings rising as if by magic at the word of the imperial ukase, "Buit Darog Zalojen" (let the railway be built). What would Russia have been, what could she have done, without her autocrats, without her centralized administration, and without that gigantic machinery which secures a rough and ready law and order from the Gulf of Finland to the Pacific, and from the Arctic Ocean to the Afghan frontier, all dominated by an imperial will? Without these Russia would be now, as she once was, a mass of disunited intriguing principalities, which would never have thrown off the Tartar yoke, or, even if they had accomplished this, would have been absorbed by the Teutonic political power on the west. And that thought remained in my mind as on that April evening the Siberian express glided out of the great station at Moscow, and plunged into the darkness eastwards.

For two nights and a day the train crosses the southern agricultural zone of European Russia. Immense expanses of open plain gently undulate in wide sweeps up which the train crawls and down which it imperceptibly runs. The black friable soil is farmed on the "three-field" system, and from horizon to horizon one sees nothing but patchy agriculture and the cultivated fields alternating with areas of waste fallow. Little villages are crowded together under the shadow of the Greek church with its five-cupola bell tower and a couple of windmills, and the straw-thatched houses of wattle and mud, picturesquely scattered, remind the traveller of parts of East Anglia. The peculiar social and economic conitions of the Russian peasant commune, once so powerful among the peasants of European Russia, developed to its fullest in these parts, and is now beginning gradually to die out, before the steady growth of peasant proprietorship. All over this land a peaceful social revolution is going on, and from it the Slavs will doubtless emerge as triumphantly as they did from the Tartar yoke.

Now the Volga is crossed, and after Samara a gradual change comes over the face of the country. The land is more steppe-like; although it is spring it is quite dry, and layers of slimy black mud no longer cover the ground where the wheels of peasant carts have plied. The atmosphere also is clear and dry, and there is an Asiatic colour in the view from the railway carriage. Undulating hills and little sharp escarpments of red sandstone break the almost level plain, and under the lea of these hills the Russian villages are settled, collections of four or five hundred houses together. The land, however, seems less cultivated than farther west, and large areas are under steppe grass. The villages here retain large common grazing areas for their flocks, and the land allotted to the plough is more and more restricted. Soon we see an Eastern figure. A Tartar on horseback is trotting by the railway-side and whips up his horse to race the train. A little farther and we see a village with straw-thatched houses of mud and wattle, but rising above are no longer the cupolas of the Greek church, but a little pointed pinnacle on which rests the star and crescent—a Tartar village—the relics of that power that once ruled Russia. But for the sign of their religion who would know that they were not Russians? Thus the Tartar and Slav colonies lie side by side and indeed in the same village are often intermingled. A mixed village always has its Greek church and its Tartar mosque, one at each end, as if both were indispensable institutions in the life of the little community. Russian and Tartar have settled down together, but the relics of the old tribal distinction, based upon religion, remain. Religion, however, is not a barrier in everyday life between the Tartar and the Russian. Politically these mixed Tartar-Slav communes of East European Russia are one, and the village elects Tartar or Russian elders according to their personal merits without any religious bias; for bigotry there is none. There are no "Orange lodges," no memories of a battle of the Boyne among these peaceful peasants of Eastern Russia.

Now the train begins to head north-east to Ufa and the steppe-like country continues all the way, showing less and less cultivation and more unoccupied spaces, as we go along. Ufa, a Russian provincial town, is the last to the west of the Ural Mountains. The passage of the Urals, which begins some five or six hours after leaving Ufa, has little romance about it. This geographical dividing-line is in its extremity, where the railway crosses it, a range of low rocky downs. It is the natural division between the low plains of Perm and Ufa on the west and those black earth steppes on its east, which stretch uninterruptedly across Western Siberia for nearly 1200 miles to the mountains and plateaus comprising the Altai uplift.

Siberia does not begin till the Government of Perm has been traversed, and this territory stretches across the Ural mountains, including a considerable tract of country to the east of that range in the watershed of the Tobol River. My impressions of the Urals at five o'clock in the morning from the observation car of the train were the same as those which I experienced when I travelled through the forest country of Northern Sweden, where the ground is rocky and undulating and covered with forest of medium growth. It is as if a strip of this country from North-Western Europe was planted down across the steppes of Eastern Russia.

Soon after the hills are left behind, the railway plunges into the steppes bordering Western Siberia and reaches the town of Chelyabinsk, which is geographically in Siberia, but administratively still in old Russia. Chelyabinsk is becoming an immigrant centre for the eastern part of the Perm Government, and the bonded warehouses of the Russian Imperial Customs give it importance as a distributing centre for commerce from the Far East and from European Russia.

For the next hundred miles eastwards little cultivation is seen. The country is an endless steppe with vegetation indicative of dry conditions, and the only cultivation or sign of human life is seen in patches near the stations. It looks as if the whole country, which is now only a grazing ranch, might be supporting an immense agricultural population. One hundred and eighty miles from Chelyabinsk we reach the town of Kurgan, the first town of importance in Siberia. Here we see greater signs of Russian colonization. Villages of recently arrived immigrants with clean new log-houses, covered with sheet-iron, painted red, appear as a striking contrast to the old picturesque mud-walled and straw-thatched cottages of East European Russia. This is some of the richest land of all Western Siberia, being covered with black earth well adapted for cereal and dairy produce and capable of infinite development. It was not difficult to see that this would be some day the Canada of Russia, even if it was not so already.

The steppes in the neighbourhood of Kurgan were our first sight of Siberia. There was nothing to indicate the fact except the railway time-table, from which we learnt that we were now in the administrative area of the Tobolsk Government. Entering the western prairies of Canada from the eastern provinces one has just the same experience as here. In both cases, as one proceeds, one observes that the country becomes gradually less and less developed and the population more and more scanty.

The Urals are a purely geographical and political boundary between European Russia and Siberia, and the same physical and climatical conditions prevail on either side. Even the human element, although less in quantity on the eastern side of the hills, is much the same in quality, judging by what one sees on the railway stations. Hairy Russian peasants clad in fur caps and sheepskins hang listlessly about the wayside stations, waiting perhaps a whole day for a train, for time is never of importance in the East. Bands of immigrants from an eastward-bound train, waiting perhaps for hours at one place, squat about in groups all over the station drinking cups of tea and smoking. A freight train lumbers casually back towards Europe, with live stock, wool and hides on board; and judging by its rate of progress it might take a fortnight to arrive there.

THE SIBERIAN EXPRESS

IMMIGRANTS ARRIVING IN SIBERIA FROM EUROPEAN RUSSIA

But everything is just the same as on the west of the Urals. Life is even quieter here, and nobody worries about time; the only difference is that everything seems a bit newer, especially the clean log-houses, and the whole country is less populated and less developed.

It was nightfall before the train reached the Ishim-Irtish steppes bordering the province of Akmolinsk. Dry vegetation began here, and gradually the signs of cultivation began to diminish. Looking south from a place called Petropavlovsk on the Ishim River, where the train halts, one sees an immense expanse stretching southwards to the Kirghiz steppes of the Semiretchensk bordering Russian Turkestan. How Asiatic it all seemed! Dry and open steppe, a clear atmosphere, a feeling of freedom which is so characteristic of the Asiatic steppes and so uncharacteristic of what one imagines of Siberia. Looking from the railway one sees a Kirghiz Tartar, surrounded by his flocks grazing on the undulating steppes, and here and there are marshy hollows and saline lakes surrounded by dense banks of rushes and reeds, the haunt of wild fowl. One imagines how away there towards the south is the great unending plain, and no break between here and the sandy deserts, where the Oxus and Sir Darya are swallowed up in the Aral Sea, where the Kirghiz and the Turcomans roam with their flocks, and around whose oasis the Turkish Usbegs and Persian Tadjics have for centuries made their flowery, leafy gardens. All are now under the care and protection of the great white Tsar. I wondered as the train sped eastward whether after my journeys in Siberia and Western China I should be allowed to see the civilization of these romantic parts of the earth, or whether the stern passport regulations of the Governor General of Turkestan would shut the gates against so peaceful an invader.

In the second class of the Siberian express, which runs twice a week from Moscow to the Far East and has every conceivable comfort on board, including a restaurant and a library, the traveller can always find interesting company, if he is that way inclined. Russian officers returning to their regiments in Eastern Siberia are frequently met with. These gentlemen are generally very proud of themselves, nor do they let that pride suffer from lack of advertisement; but they are always most polite and courteous, like all Russians, and if you treat them like ordinary individuals they will show that under their uniform is a humanity which differs very little from your own. They are sure to tell you all about themselves, and their bravery and their personal contributions to the glory of Russian arms. But they are particularly fond of getting together in the corner of the library on the train in little coteries to enjoy a glass of cognac and a cigar. The place is soon filled with clouds of tobacco smoke and a perfect babel of voices is heard. Language pours forth in such torrents that not only does one fail to understand one word, but one marvels how any human being can manufacture at such a rate even reasonably grammatical sentences. Under such circumstances the Slav is a most communicative creature and bears strong resemblance to other races of the Continent, more particularly to those of Southern Europe. A stolid Englishman, unless he is accustomed to such social gatherings, is out of it. But he can soon become accustomed to them, if he is willing, after he has been in Russia for a short time.

European commercial travellers are generally to be found on the train, usually German, but sometimes a few English business men. The German shows considerably more adaptability to his Russian surroundings than the Englishman, who gives one the impression that he is wishing to be back in England again. But the German is much more at home. He rarely is seen in Russia unless he knows the Russian language more or less thoroughly: he never stands aloof in discussions with Russian fellow-travellers, or dines at a lonely table as if half in fear of contact with them. The Englishman seems to keep himself in the background as much as possible, a failing which is reflected in his order-book.

The Russian commercial men are generally of a free and easy character, altogether more talkative, and, I should think, rather less shrewd than the German type. They are usually the representatives of Moscow or St Petersburg business houses dealing in tea, cotton, goods, wool, hides, etc., visiting their Siberian branch offices or agents at the different trading centres along the railway. I remember talking to one who was travelling for a firm at Irkutsk. He was over middle age and told me that he had done the journey from Irkutsk to Moscow twenty times in his youth, travelling by sledge in winter and cart in summer. In those days the great post road along which everyone travelled followed the line of the present railway. All eastward-bound traffic except the mails went by the river system from Tiumen and Tobol to Tomsk and even up to the Altai by water route alone.

"Siberia," he said, "was an even more isolated region in those days than it is to-day. It was more truly Siberian, and the bureaucratic influence of St Petersburg was less, though," he added, "it must be confessed, we suffered more in those days under irresponsible Government officials who enjoyed almost arbitrary powers. Now, however, the dead hand of St Petersburg is on Siberia. It is becoming Russified and absorbed into the bureaucratic vortex; but how can St Petersburg officials know our wants here? Siberia is for the Siberians." As I listened I seemed to hear echoes of similar denunciations by Canadian patriots at Ottawa concerning the actions of Downing Street politicians in London.

He seemed despondent about Russia's future, feared the corrupting influence of bureaucratic government, and only smiled when I suggested that possibly they were merely passing through the intermediate phase which might bring better conditions in the end. "If it has done nothing else," I suggested, "autocracy has surely held Russia together, while its evils are diminishing with the march of progress and reform." But he did not reply. Mankind, it seems, is ever ready to see the dark side of a change, and I have often noticed amongst Russians generally, something more than an innate conservatism. A passive apathetic fatalism, characteristic of Eastern minds, dominates them, and, as it were, overshadows their public spirit. And small wonder, when one thinks of the monotony of the country, with its endless plains and melancholy groves of stunted birch, and of the heavy hand of bureaucracy which so effectually stultifies individual effort. Hour after hour, mile after mile, each as the last, the train rolled over the Baraba steppe, melancholy and monotonous. It is just the sort of country which would produce an apathetic and fatalistic trait in the human mind.

After Omsk the railway had plunged into this Baraba steppe between the River Irtish and Obi. Through this the train passed for the space of a night and a day. It is a vast fiat plain with a comparatively dry climate and, although an immense distance from the Arctic Ocean, is only a few feet above its level, and has evidently once been an estuary of it. The soil is a deep black earth, and the moisture from the water table is not far below the surface. Considerable areas of lake and swamp stud the country on all sides, while the ubiquitous birch extends for miles and miles along the line. At present the steppe is but very little settled, and the possibilities of development are even greater than farther west. Most of the land is used for grazing, and considerable quantities of horned cattle are raised, especially in the neighbourhood of Kainsk, which lies half-way between the two rivers, Obi and Irtish. The area of the Baraba steppe is 50,000 square miles, and the country has an average density of eight persons per square mile. Towards nightfall the train reached Novo-nikolaevsk on the Obi River, one of the many Siberian mushroom towns, which in the last ten years, from a collection of little log-huts, have attained a population of over 30,000 inhabitants. The point where the railway crosses the Obi has naturally become a transport centre for the waterborne traffic from the Altai district along the Obi River, and from here the railway communication goes direct to Europe.

After the Obi has been crossed a change comes over the country. The land rises in rolling downs, varying from 500 to 600 feet above sea-level, and it is no exaggeration to say that this is the first break in the level plain which stretches from the Ural Mountains across the Ishim-Irtish and Baraba steppes for over 1000 miles. These foothills are the first step or north-western escarpment of the Siberian Altai uplift, and this uplift itself is the north-western edge of the great Central Asiatic plateau, which protrudes into Western Siberia at this point, and is skirted by the railway in its eastern course. We now see low rolling foothills of sandy loam and friable rock, covered with open forests of Scotch pine, spruce, and Siberian pine. Although the latitude here is the same as that of the steppes to the west, the higher altitude is favourable to forest growth. At intervals in the forests are areas of open, grassy country on which peasant colonies both old and new are scattered, but nowhere in such profusion as in the western steppes. The climate is more rigorous, and, although it was April, the snow, which did not lie on the western steppes, was lying here, the drifts in the forest being several feet deep. The peasants and immigrant colonists grow chiefly rye and wheat when the season permits, but autumn frosts sometimes intervene and spoil the latter. For the next twenty-four hours after leaving the Obi River the train passes at a leisurely speed of about twenty miles an hour through this undulating forest with its open patches here and there, studded with groves of birch. I have never seen a country more like Canada, and I particularly called to mind the forest country of North Ontario and Quebec as we passed along.

At a place called Taiga a branch line goes north to Tomsk. From here after 130 miles through forest country, with scarcely anything to break the featureless monotony of the land, the railway enters the Yenisei Government near the town of Achinsk. Another 100 miles of exactly the same undulating forest as before, with fewer and fewer signs of colonization and habitation, brings us to the great Yenisei River sluggishly crawling through the open fiat beyond the forest and threading its way from the Mongolian frontier northwards across the centre of this great continent to the Arctic Ocean. Straggling along its banks for some two or three miles is the city of Krasnoyarsk, the chief commercial and administrative centre of this most central province of Siberia, the Yenisei Government.

Krasnoyarsk was the starting-point of our southward journey to the Mongolian frontier, and here, after travelling 4000 miles, half of which was in Siberia, from Moscow, we left the railway. The romance of such a journey is soon swallowed up in the tedious monotony of the scenery and the immensity of the country, which makes even Canada seem small in comparison with it. From the railway we could form some rough idea of the general progress which is being made in this part of the world; but the really instructive part of our sojourn in Siberia was yet to come.