Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

by Astolphe De Custine

  Among this people bereft of time and of will, we see only bodies without souls, and tremble to think that, for so vast a multitude of arms and legs, there is only one head. Despotism is a union of impatience and of indolence ; with a little more forbearance on the part of the governing power, and of activity on the part of the people, equal results might be obtained at a far cheaper cost; but what then would become of tyranny ?

  If I am reproached for confounding despotism with tyranny, I answer that I do so with design. They are such near relatives, that they never fail to unite in secret to the misfortune of mankind. Under a despotism, tyranny may maintain itself the longer, because it preserves the mask.

  `YYlien Peter the Great established what is here called the tchìn, that is to say, when he applied the military system to the general administration of the empire, he changed his nation into a regiment of mutes, of which he declared himself and his successors the hereditary colonels.

  Let the reader imagine the ambition, the rivalry,

  and all the other passions of war in operation during

  a state of peace ; let his mind conceive an absence

  of all that constitutes social and domestic happiness

  H 2

  148Л RUSSIAN HOTEL.

  and, in place of these, let him picture to himself the universal agitation of an ever-restless though secret intrigue, — secret, because the mask is essential to success; finally, let him realise the idea of the almost complete apparent triumph of the will of one man over the will of God, and he will understand Russia.

  As the morning advances, the city becomes more noisy, without however appearing more gay; one sees only carriages, little distinguished for elegance, carrying at the full speed of their two, four, or six horses, people always in haste, because their life is passed in thus making their way. Pleasure without any ulterior aim—pleasure for its own sake, is here a thing unknown.

  Thus, almost all the great artistes who visit Russia to reap the fruit of the fame they have acquired elsewhere, never remain beyond a very brief period ; if ever they prolong their stay, they wrong their talents. The air of this country is unfavourable to the finer arts. Productions that spring spontaneously elsewhere, will only here grow in the hot house. Russian art will never be a hardy plant.

  At the Hotel de Coulon, I found a degenerated French innkeeper. His house is at present nearly full, on account of the marriage of the Grand Duchess Marie; and he appeared almost annoyed at being obliged to receive another guest, and consequently gave himself little trouble to accommodate me. After several parleys, I was at length established on the second floor, in suffocating apartments, consisting of an entree;, a salon, and a bed-chamber, the whole without curtains or window blinds, though there is a sun for twenty-two hours daily above the horizon,

  '

  A RUSSIAN HOTEL.149

  the oblique rays of which penetrate more fully into the houses than the sun of Africa, which falls direct upon the roofs. The air of this lodging resembles that of a limekiln choked with dust, and charged with exhalations of insects mingled with musk, forming altogether an atmosphere that is insupportable.

  Scarcely was I installed in this abode than (the fatigue of the night having got the better of my curiosity, which usually impels me to sally forth and lose myself in a large unknown city) I lay down, wrapped in a cloak, on an immense leather sofa, and slept profoundly during — three minutes.

  At the end of this time I woke in a fever, and on casting my eyes upon the cloak, what a sight awaited them! — A brown but living mass: things must be called by their proper name—I was covered, I was devoured with bugs. Russia is, in this respect, not a whit inferior to Spain: but in the south we can both console and secure ourselves in the open air; here we remain imprisoned with the enemy, and the war is consequently more sanguine. I began throwing off my clothes, and calling for help. What a prospect for the night ! This thought made me cry out more lustily. A Russian waiter appeared. I made him understand that I wished to see his master. The master kept me waiting a long time, and when he at length did come, and was informed of the nature of my trouble, he began to laugh, and soon left the room, telling me that I should become accustomed to it, for that it was the same every where in Petersburg. He first advised me however never to seat myself on a Russian sofa, because the domestics, who always и 3

  150THE MICHAEL PALACES.

  cany about with them legions of insects, sleep on these articles of furniture. To tranquillise me he further stated, that the vermin would not follow me if I kept at a proper distance from the furniture in which they had fixed their abode.

  The inns of Petersburg resemble caravanserais, where the traveller is simply housed, but not waited upon, unless by his own servants. Mine, not understanding the Eussian language, is not only useless to me but troublesome, for I have to take care of him as well as myself!

  However, his Italian quickness soon discovered in one of the dark corridors of this walled desert, called L'Hôíel Coulon, a footman, out of place, who speaks German, and whom the keeper of the hotel recommended. I engaged him, and told him of my distress. He immediately procured me a light iron bedstead, the mattrass for which, I had stuffed with the freshest straw that could be obtained, and caused the four feet to be placed in as many jars of water, in the middle of the elamber, the furniture of which I also had removed. Thus intrenched for the night, I dressed, and attended by the footman, whom I had desired to forbear directing me, I issued from this magnificent hotel — a palace without, and an ornamented stable within.

  The hotel Coulon opens on a kind of " square^' which is tolerably lively for this city. On one side of the square stands the new Michael Palace, the stately abode of the Grand Duke Michael, brother of the emperor. It was built for the Emperor Alexander, who never inhabited it. The other sides of the square are inclosed by fine ranges of buildings with noble

  THE MICHAEL PALACE?.151

  streets opening between. Scarcely had I passed the new Michael Palace than I found myself before the old. It is a vast, square, and gloomy fabric, differing in all respects from the elegant modern edifice of the same name.

  If the men are silent in Russia, the stones speak with a lamentable voice. I am not surprised that the Russians neglect their ancient architectural monuments ; these are witnesses of their history, which, for the most part, they are glad to forget. When I observed the black steps, the deep canals, the massive bridges, and the deserted porticos of this ill-omened palace, I asked its name ; and the answer called to my mind the catastrophe which placed Alexander on the throne, while all the circumstances of the dark scene which terminated the reign of Paul I. presented themselves to my imagination.

  Xor was this all: by a kind of savage irony there had been placed before the principal gate of the sinister edifice, before the death, and by the order of the Emperor Paul, the equestrian statue of his brother Peter III., another victim whose memory the emperor delighted to honour in order to dishonour that of his mother. What tragedies are played in cold blood in this land, where ambition and even hate are calm in appearance! With the people of the south, their passion reconciles me, in some measure, to their cruelty; but the calculating reserve, and the coldness of the men of the north, adds to crime the varnish of hypocrisy. Snow is a mask. Here man appears gentle because he is impassible; but murder without hate inspires me with more horror than vindictive assassination. The more nearly I can recognise an и 4

  152DEATH OF PAUL I.

  involuntary impulse in the commission of evil, the more I feel consoled. Unfortunately, it was the calculation of interest and prudence, and not the impulses of anger, which presided over the murder of Paul. Good Russians pretend that the conspirators had only intended to plaee him in prison. I have seen the secret door opening into the garden, which led to the apartment of the emperor by a private staircase, up which Pahlen caused the assassins to ascend. His communication with them on the evening before was to this effect: — " You will either have killed t
he emperor by five o'clock to-morrow morning, or you will be denounced by me to the emperor, at half past five, as conspirators." The result of this eloquent and laconic harangue need not be questioned.

  At five o'clock on the following morning, Alexander was an emperor, and also an imputed parricide, although he had only consented (tin's is true, I believe) to the confinement of his father, in order to save his mother from prison and perhaps death, to protect himself from a similar fate, and to preserve his eomitry from the rage and caprice of an insane autocrat.

  At the present day, the Russians pass the old Michael Palace without daring to look at it. In the schools, and elsewhere, the death of the Emperor Paul is forbidden to be mentioned or even believed.

  I am astonished that this palace of inconvenient recollections has not been pulled down. The traveller congratulates himself at the sight of a monument whose antique appearance is remarkable in a land where despotism renders every thing uniform and

  THE SPY BAFFLED.

  153

  new; where the reigning notion effaces daily the traces of the past. Its square and solid form, its deep moats, tragic associations, and secret gates and staircases favourable to crime, impart to it an imposing air, which is a rare advantage in Petersburg. At each step I take I am amazed to observe the confusion that has been every where made in this city between two arts so very different as those of architecture and decoration. Peter the Great and his successors seem to have taken their capital for a theatre.

  I was struck with the startled air of my guide, when I questioned him, in the most easy and natural manner that I could assume, on the events that had taken place in the old palace. The physiognomy of this man replied, " it is easy to see you are a new comer." Surprise, fear, mistrust, affected innocence, pretended ignorance, the experience of an old soldier who would not easily be duped, took possession, by turns, of his countenance, and made it a book equally instructing and amusing to peruse. When your spy is at fault by reason of your apparent security, the expression of his face is truly grotesque, for he believes himself compromised by you so soon as he sees that you do not fear being compromised by him. The spy thinks only of his vocation; and if you escape his nets, he begins at once to imagine that he is going to fall into yours.

  A promenade through the streets of Petersburg, under the charge of a domestique de place, is not without interest, and little resembles a progress through the capitals of other civilised lands. One thing is singularly connected with and dependent on another ii 5

  15-1 THE NEVA— f'JL¾ qUAYS AND BKÍDGES.

  in a state governed with so close a logic as that which presides over the policy of Russia.

  After leaving the old and tragical Michael Palace, I crossed a large square resembling the Champ de Mars at Paris, so spacious is it and so empty. On one side is a public garden, on the other a few houses ; there is sand instead of pavement in the middle of the area, and dust in every part of. This immense square, the form of which is vague and undefined, extends to the Neva, near which termination is a bronze statue of Suwaroff.

  The Neva, its bridges and quays, form the real glory of Petersburg. The scene here is so vast, that all the rest seems little in comparison. The Neva is like a vessel, so full that its brim disappears under the water, which is ready to flow over on every side. Venice and Amsterdam appear to me better protected against the sea than St. Petersburg.

  The vicinity of a river, large as a lake, and which flows on a level with the land through a marshy plain, lost in the mists of the atmosphere and the vapours of the sea, was assuredly of all the sites in the world the least favourable for the foundation of a capital. The water will here, sooner or later, teach a lesson to human pride. The granite itself is no security against the work of winters in this humid ice-house, where the foundations of rock and the ramparts of the famous citadel, built by Peter the Great, have already twice given way. They have been repaired, and will be yet again, in order to preserve this chef-cCœuvre of human pride and human will.

  I wished at once to cross the bridge in order to examine it more nearly ; but my servant first con-

  CABIN OF ГЕТЕР. THE GREAT. 155

  ducted me, in face of the fortress, to the house of Peter the Great, which is separated from it by a road and an open piece of ground.

  It is a cabin, preserved, as is said, in the same state as that in which the emperor left it. In the citadel the emperors are now buried, and the prisoners of state detained — singular manner of honouring the dead! In thinking of all the tears shed there, under the tombs of the sovereigns of Russia, one is reminded of the funerals of some Asian kings. A tomb bedewed with blood would, in my eyes, be less impious: tears flow for a longer period, and are perhaps accompanied with deeper pangs.

  During the time that the imperial artisan inhabited the cabin, his future capital was built beneath his eye. It should be admitted in his praise, that, at that period, he thought much less of the palace than of the city.

  One of the chambers of this illustrious cottage, that, namely, which was the workshop of the princely carpenter, is полу transformed into a chapel. It is entered with as much reverence as are the most sacred churches in the empire. The Russians are ever ready to make saints of their heroes. They delight in confounding the dreadful virtues of their masters with the benevolent power of their patrons, and endeavour to view the cruelties of history through the veil of faith.

  Another Russian hero, in my opinion little deserving of admiration, has been sanctified by the Greek priests; I mean Alexander Newski—a model of prudence, but a martyr neither to piety nor to generosity. The national church has canonised this wise rather и 6

  15GRUSSIAN VETERANS.

  than heroic prince—this Ulysses among the saints. An enormous convent, has been built around hit reliques.

  The tomb, enclosed within the church of Saint Alexander, is in itself an edifice. It consists of an altar of massive silver, surmounted with a species of pyramid of the same metal, which rises to the vault of a vast church. The convent, the church, and the cenotaph form one of the wonders of Russia. I contemplated them with more astonishment than admiration ; for though the costliness of this pious work is immense, the rules of taste and of art have been little heeded in its construction.

  In the cabin of the Czar, I was shown a boat of Ins own building, and several other objects religiously preserved, and placed under the guard of a veteran soldier. In Russia, churches, palaces, public places, and many private houses, are entrusted to the keeping of military pensioners. These unfortunate beings would be left without means of subsistence in their old age, unless they were, on leaving the barracks, converted into porters. In such posts they retain their long military capotes, which are made of coarse wool, and are generally much worn and dirty. At each visit that you make, men, thus clad, receive you at the gates of the public buildings and at the doors of the houses. They are spectres in uniform that serve to remind one of the discipline which here rules over every thing. Petersburg is a camp metamorphosed into a city. The veteran who kept guard in the imperial cottage, after having lighted several wax-tapers in the chapel, led me to the sleeping apartment of Peter the Great, emperor of all the Russias, A

  AUSTERITY OF PETER THE GREAT.157

  carpenter of our days would not lodge his apprentice in such a place.

  This glorious austerity illustrates the epoch and the country as much as the man. In Russia, at that time, every thing was sacrificed to the future; every one was employed in building the palaces of their yet unborn masters; and the original founders of the magnificent edifices, not experiencing themselves the wants of luxury, were content to be the purveyors of the future civilisation, and took pride in preparing fitting abodes for the unknown potentates who were to follow them. There is certainly a greatness of mind evidenced in this care which a chieftain and his people take for the power, and even the vanity, of the generations that are yet to come. The reliance which the living have thus placed in the glory of their dis
tant posterity has something about it which is noble and original. It is a disinterested and poetical sentiment, far loftier than the respect which men and nations are accustomed to entertain for their ancestors.

  Elsewhere, great cities abound with monuments raised in memory of the past. St. Petersl)urg, in all its magnificence and immensity, is a trophy raised by the Russians to the greatness of the future. The hope which produces such efforts appears to me sublime. Never, since the construction of the Jewish temple, has the faith of a people in its own destinies raised up from the earth a greater wonder than St. Petersburg. And what renders more truly admirable this legacy, left by one man to his ambitious country, is/"that it has been accepted by history.

  The prophecy of Peter the Giant, sculptured upon

  158 MUNICH AND PETERSBURG COMPARED,

  blocks of granite reared in the sea, has been fulfilled before the eyes of the universe. This is the first instance in which pride has appeared to me really worthy of admiration.

  The history of Russia does not, however, date, as the ignorant and superficial in Europe seem to suppose, from the reign of Peter I.; it is Moscow which explains St. Petersburg.

  The deliveranee of Museovy, after long ages of invasion, and afterwards the siege and capture of Kasan by Ivan the Terrible, the determined struggles with Sweden, and many other brilliant as well as patient deeds of arms, justified the proud attitude of Peter the Great, and the humble confidence of his people. Faith in the unknown is always imposing. This man of iron had a right to put his trust in the future : characters like his produce those results which others only hope. I can see him, in all the simplicity of greatness, seated in the threshold of this cabin, planning and preparing against Europe, a city, a nation, and a history. The grandeur of Petersburg is not unmeaning. This mighty metropolis, ruling over its icy marshes, in order from thence to rule the world, is superb — more superb to the mind than to the eye ! Yet it may not be forgotten, that one hundred thousand men, victims of obedience, were lost in converting the pestilential swamps into a capital.