There are remedies for primitive bai`barism, there are none for the mania of appearing what one is not.
A kind of Russian savant, a grammarian, a translator of various German works, and a professor of I know not which college, has made as many advances towards me as he could during this passage. He has been travelling through Europe, and returns to Russia full of zeal, he says, to propagate there all that is valuable in the modern opinions of western Europe. The freedom of his discourse appeared to me suspicious: it was not that luxury of independence observable in
Prince К; it was a studied liberalism, calculated
to draw out the views of others.
112
A SPY.
If I am not mistaken, there may be always found some savant of this kind, on the ordinary lines of route to Russia, in the hotels of Lubeek, the steamboats, and even at Havre, which, thanks to the navigation of the German and Baltic seas, has become the Muscovite frontier.
This man extracted from me very little. He was specially desirous of learning whether I should write my travels, and obligingly offered me the lights of his experience. He left me at last thoroughly persuaded that I travelled only to divert myself, and without any intention of publisliing the relation of a tour which would be performed very rapidly. This appeared to satisfy him ; but his inquietude which was thus allayed, awoke my own. If I write this journey I must expect to give umbrage to a government more artful and better served with spies than any other in the world. This is an unpleasant idea. I must conceal my letters, I must be guarded in my language ; but I will affect nothing : the most consummate deception is that which assumes no mask,
THE RUSSIAN MARINE.113
CHAP. VII.
THE RUSSIAN MARINE. REMARK OF LORD DURHAM'S. — GREAT
EFFORTS FOR SMALL RESULTS. — THE AMUSEMENTS OF DESPOTISM.
KRONSTADT. RUSSIAN CUSTOM-HOUSE. GLOOMY ASPECT
OF NATURE. RECOLLECTIONS OF ROME. ENGLISH POETICAL
NAME FOR SHIPS OF WAR. OBJECT OF PETER THE GREAT. —
THE FINNS. BATTERIES OF KRONSTADT. ABJECT CHARACTER
OF THE LOAYER CLASSES OF RUSSIAN EMPLOYES.INQUISITIONS
OF THE POLICE, AND THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. SUDDEN CHANGE
IN THE MANNERS OF FELLOAV-TRAVELLERS, FICKLENESS OF
NORTHERN PEOPLE.
As we approached Kronstadt, — a sub-marine fortress of which the Russians are justly proud,—the Gulf of Finland suddenly assumed an animated appearance. The imperial fleet was in motion and surrounded us on all sides. It remains in port, ice-locked during more than six months of the year; but during the three months of summer the marine cadets are exercised in nautical manoeuvres, between St. Petersburg and the Baltic. After passing the fleet we again sailed on an almost desert sea; now and then, only, enlivened by the distant apparition of some merchant vessel, or the yet more infrequent smoke of a pi/roscaph, as steam-boats are learnedly called in the nautical language of some parts of Europe.
The Baltic sea, by the dull hues of its unfrecµiented waters, proclaims the vicinity of a continent depopulated under the rigours of the climate. The barren
114THE RUSSIAN MARINE —
shores harmonise with the cold aspect of the sky and water, and chill the heart of the traveller.
No sooner does he arrive on this unattractive coast than he longs to leave it; he calls to mind, with a sigh, the remark of one of Catherine's favourites, who, when the Empress complained of the effects of the climate of Petersburg upon her health, observed, " It is not God who should be blamed, Madame, because men have persisted in building the capital of a great empire in a territory destined by nature to be the patrimony of wolves and bears."
My travelling companions have been explaining to me, with much self-satisfaction, the recent progress of the Russian marine. I admire this prodigy without magnifying it as they do. It is a creation, or rather a re-creation of the present emperor's. This prince amuses himself by endeavouring to reahse the favourite object of Peter I., but however powerful a man may be, he is forced sooner or later to acknowledge that nature is more powerful still. So long as Russia shall keep within her natural limits, the Russian палу will continue the hobby of the emperors and nothing more !
During the season of naval exercises, I am informed that the younger pupils remain performing their evolutions in the neighbourhood of Kronstadt, while the more advanced extend their voyages of discovery as far as Riga, and sometimes even to Copenhagen.
As soon as I found that the sole object of all this display of naval power which passed before my eyes, was the instruction of pupils, a secret feeling of ennui extinguished my curiosity.
lord Durham's opinion of it. 115
All this unnecessary preparation which is neither the result of commerce nor of Avar, appears to me a mere parade. Now, God knows, and the Russians know, whether there is any pleasure in a parade ! The taste for reviews in Russia is carried beyond all bounds, and here, before even landing in this empire of military evolutions, I must be present at a review pn the water. But I must not laugh at this. Puerility on a grand scale appears to me a monstrous thing, impossible except under a tyranny, of which it is, perhaps, the most terrible result! Everywhere, except under an absolute despotism, men, when they make great efforts, have in view great ends; it is only among a blindly abject people that the monarch may command immense sacrifices for the sake of trifling results.
The view of the naval power of Russia, gathered together for the amusement of the Czar, at the gate of his capital, has thus caused me only a painful impression. The vessels which will be inevitably lost in a few winters, without having rendered any service, suggest to my mind images — not of the power of a great country, but of the useless toils to which the poor unfortunate seamen are condemned. The ice is a more terrible enemy to this navy than foreign war. Every autumn after the three months' exei·cise, the pupil returns to his prison, the plaything to its box, and the frost begins to wage its more serious Avar upon the imperial finances. Lord Durham onee remarked to the Emperor himself, with a freedom of speech which wounded him in the most sensitive part, that the Russian ships of war were but the playthings of the Russian sovereign.
116KRONSTADT.
As regards myself, this childish Colossus by no means predisposes me to admire what I may expect to see in the interior of the empire. To admire Russia in approaching it by water, it is necessary to forget the approach to England by the Thames. The first is the image of death ; the last, of life,
On dropping anchor before Kronstadt, we learned that one of the noble vessels we had seen manœuvering around us had just been lost on a sand bank. This shipwreck was dangerous only to the captain, who expected to be cashiered, and, perhaps, punished yet more
severely. Prince К said to me privately, that
he would have done better to have perished with Ins
vessel. Our fellow-traveller the Princess Lhad a
son attached to the unlucky ship. She was placed in a situation of painful suspense, until news of his safety was brought to her by the governor of Kronstadt,
The Russians are incessantly repeating to me that it is requisite to spend at least two years in their country before passing a judgment upon it; so difficult is it to understand.
But though patience and prudence may be necessary virtues in those learned travellers who aspire to the glory of producing erudite works, I, who have been hitherto writing only for my friend and myself, have no intention of making my journal a work of labour. I have some fear of the Russian customhouse, but they assure me that my écrìtoire will be respected.
Nothing can be more melancholy than the aspect of nature in the approach to St. Petersburg. As one advances up the Gulf, the flat marshes of Ingria
KRONSTADT.
117
terminate in a little wavering line drawn between the sky and the sea; this line is Russia. It presents the appearance of a wet lowland, with here and there a few birch trees thinly scattered. The landscape is vo
id of objects, and colours ; has no bounds, and yet no sublimity. It has just light enough to be visible; the grey mossy earth well accords with the pale sun which illumines it, not from overhead, but from near the horizon, or almost indeed from below, — so acute is the angle which the oblique rays form with the surface of this unfavoured soil. In Russia the finest days have a blueish dimness. If the nights are marked by a clearness which surprises, the days are clothed with an obscurity which saddens.
Kronstadt, with its forest of masts, its substructures, and its ramparts of granite, finely breaks the monotonous reverie of the pilgrim, who is, like me, seeking for imagery in this dreary land. I have never seen, in the approaches to any other great city, a landscape so melancholy as the banks of the Neva. The campagna of Rome is a desert, but what picturesque objects, what past associations, what light, what fire, what poetry, if I might be allowed the expression, I would say, what passion animates this religious land. To reach St. Petersburg, you must pass a desert of water framed in a desert of peat earth ; sea, shore, and sky, are all blended into one mirror, but so dull, so tarnished, that it reflects nothing.
The thought of the noble vessels of the Russian navy, destined to perish without having ever been in action, pursues me like a dream.
The English, in their idiom, which is so poetical when it relates to maritime subjects, call a vessel of
118 APPEOACII TO ST. PETEESBURGH.
the royal navy, a man of tear. Never will the Russians be thus able to denominate their ships of parade. These men of court, or wooden courtiers, are nothing more than the hospital of the imperial service. If the sight of so useless a marine inspired me with any fear, it was not the fear of war but of tyranny. It recalled to mind the inhumanities of Peter I., that type of all Russian monarchs, ancient and modern.
Some miserable boats, maimed by fishermen as dirty as Esquimaux, a few vessels employed in towing timber for the construction of the imperial navy, and a few steam-boats, mostly of foreign build, were the only objects that enlivened the scene. Such is the approach to St. Petersburgh: all that could have influenced against the choice of this site, so contrary to the views of nature or to the real wants of a great people, must have passed before the mind of Peter the Great without striking him. The sea, at any cost; — such was his sentiment. Whimsical idea in a Russian to found the capital of the empire of the Slavonians among the Finns, and in the vicinity of the Swedes ! Peter the Great might say that his only object was to give a port to Russia; but if he had the genius which is ascribed to him, he ought to have foreseen the scope of his work; and in my opinion he did foresee it. Policy, and, I fear, the revenge of imperial self-love, wounded by the independence of the old Muscovites, have created the destinies of modern Russia.
Russia is like a vigorous person suffocating for want of external air. Peter I. promised it an outlet, but without perceiving that a sea necessarily closed
CHARACTER OF THE INHABITANTS.119
during eight months in the year, is not like other seas. Names, however, are everything in Russia. The efforts of Peter, his subjects, and successors, extraordinary as they are, have only served to create a city which it is difficult to inhabit; with which the Neva disputes the soil whenever the wind blows from the Gulf, and from which the people think of flying altogether, at each step that this war of elements compels them to take towards the south. For a bivouac, quays of granite are superfluous.
The Finns, among whom the Russians fixed their new capital, are of Scythian origin, they are still almost Pagans — suitable inhabitants of the soil of Petersburg. It was only in 1836 that an ukase appeared, commanding their priests to add a family name to the saint's name given to the children in baptism.
This race is almost without physiognomy. The middle of the face is flattened to a degree that renders it deformed. The men, though ugly and dirty, are said to be strong, which, however, does not prevent their being poor. Although the natives, they are seldom seen in Petersburg except upon market days. They inhabit the swamps, and slightly elevated granite hills of the environs.
Kronstadt is a very flat island in the middle of the Gulf of Finland : this aquatic fortress is raised above the sea only just sufficiently to defend the navigation to St. Petersburg. Its foundations and many of its works are under water. Its guns are disposed, according to the Russians, with great skill, and by virtue of the shower of ball that an order of the emperor could here pour upon an enemy, the place passes for
120BATTEEIES OF KRONSTADT.
impregnable. I am not aware whether these guns command both the passages of the Gulf; the Russians who could have informed me, would not. My experience, although of recent date, has already taught me to distrust the rodomontades and exasperations in which the subjects of the Czar, inspired by an excess of zeal in the service of their master, indulge. National pride appears to me to be tolerable only among a free people.
We arrived at Kronstadt about the dawning of one of those days without real beginning or end, which I am tired of describing though not of admiring.
After casting anchor before the silent fortress, we had to wait a long time for the arrival of a host of official personages, who boarded us one after the other; commissaries of police, directors and sub-directors of the customs, and finally the Comptroller himself. This important personage considered himself obliged to pay us a visit on account of the illustrious Russian passengers on board. He conversed for a long time with the returned princes and princesses. They talked in Russian, probably because the politics of the West were the subject of their discourse ; but when the conversation fell on the troubles of landing and the necessity of leaving our carriages at Kronstadt, French was freely spoken.
The Travemünde packet draws too much water to ascend the Neva, the passengers, therefore, have to proceed by a smaller steamer, which is dirty and ill-constructed. We are allowed to carry with us our lighter baggage, after it has been examined by the officers. When this formality is concluded we leave for Petersburg, with the hope that our carriages left
ABJECT CHARACTER OF RUSSIAN EMPLOYES. 121
in the charge of these people, may arrive safely on the morrow.
The Russian princes were obliged, like myself, to submit to the laws of the custom-house, but on arriving at Petersburg I had the mortification of seeing them released in three minutes, whilst I had to struggle with every species of trickery for the space of three hours.
A multitude of little superfluous precautions engender here a population of deputies and sub-officials, each of whom acquits himself with an air of importance and a rigorous precision, which seemed to say, rhough everything is done with much silence, " Make way, I am one of the members of the grand machine of state."
Such members, acting under an influence which is not in themselves, in a manner resembling the wheel-work of a clock, are called men in Russia! The sight of these voluntary automata inspires me with a kind of fear: there is something supernatural in an individual reduced to the state of a mere machine. If, in lands where the mechanical arts flourish, wood and metal seem endowed with human powers, under despotisms, human beings seem to become as instruments of wood. TVe ask ourselves, what can become of their superfluity of thought ? and we feel ill at ease at the thought of the influence that must have been exerted on intelligent creatures before they could have been reduced to mere tilings. In Russia I pity the human beings, as in England I feared the machines : in the latter country, the creations of man lack nothing but the gift of speech; here, the gift of speech is a thing unnecessary to the creatures of the state.
VOL. I.G
122INQUISITIONS OF THE POLICE,
These machines, clogged with the inconvenience of a soul, are, however, marvellously polite; it is easy to see they have been trained to civility, as to the management of arms, from their cradle. But of what value are the forms of urbanity when their origin savours of compulsion ? The free-will of man is the consecration that can alone impart a worth or a meaning to human actions; the power of choo
sing a master can alone give a value to fidelity; and since, in Russia, an inferior chooses nothing, all that he says and does is worthless and unmeaning.
The numerous questions I had to meet, and the precautionary forms that it was necessary to pass through, warned me that I was entering the Empire of Fear, and depressed my spirits.
I was obliged to appear before an Areopagus of deputies who had assembled to interrogate the passengers. The members of this formidable rather than imposing tribunal Avere seated before a large table; some of them were turning over the leaves of the register with an attention which had a sinister appearance, for their ostensible employ was not sufficient to account for so much gravity.
Some, with pen in hand, listened to the replies of the passengers, or rather the accused, for every stranger is [treated as culpable on arriving at the Russian frontier. All the answers were carefully written down, and the passports minutely examined, and detained, under the promise that they would be returned at Petersburg.
These formalities being satisfied, we proceeded on board the new steam-boat. Hour after hour elapsed, and still there was no talk of starting. Every mo-
AJSTD OF THE CUSTOM-HOUSE.123
ment fresh boats proceeded from the city, and rowed towards us. Although we were moored close to the walls, the silence was profound. No voice issued from this tomb. The shadows that were gliding in their boats around were equally silent. They were clad in coarse capotes of grey wool, their faces lacked expression, their eyes possessed no fire, their complexion was of a green or yellow hue ; I was told that they were sailors attached to the garrison, but they more resembled soldiers. Sometimes the boats passed round us in silence, sometimes six or a dozen ragged boatmen, half covered with sheep-skins, the wool turned within, and the filthy skin appearing without, brought us some new police agent, or tardy custom-house officer. These arrivals and departures, though they did not accelerate our matters, at least gave me leisure to reflect on the species of filthiness peculiar to the people of the North. Those of the South pass their life in the open air half naked, or in the water; those of the North, for the most part shut up within doors, have a greasy dirtiness, which appears to me far more offensive than the neglect of a people destined to live beneath the open heaven, and born to bask in the sun.
Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia Page 13
