THE REAL SIBERIA
John Foster Fraser
"Chechas!" - The Importance of Sealing-Wax - Tomsk - Why the Railway gives Tomsk a Wide Berth - A Rollicking City - Millionaires and Ex-Convicts - The Goldfields - a Granary for Siberia - The Hermit of Tomsk - Was he the Czar? - An Exiled Prince
FROM Omsk to Tomsk is some six hundred miles, and the post train by which I journeyed took just under two days. The mail arrives at Omsk at half-past eleven at night, allows two hours for carousal in the buffet, and then at half-past one snorts on its eastward way.
I was assured, by all the saints to whom the Russians do reverence, there wasn't a spare carriage in the entire train. But bribery is the one thing that opens doors in Russia, and when I whispered to the conductor that I would provide him with the means of having many cups of tea - the Muscovite save-your-face style of intimating you are prepared to offer an insult in hard cash - he muttered "Cechas," and I knew all would be well. Also, I knew just as well as he did that he had one or two coupés unoccupied, but with locked doors, and that he would swear there was a sick lady inside, or two Jews, or a family of children with the small-pox, until tea-money was suggested.
"Cechas!" the conductor had said. Literally "cechas" means "within the hour"; idiomatically it means "at the earliest moment"; actually, as everybody who has travelled in Russia knows, it means now, to-morrow, next week, possibly not at all. If waiters at Russian hotels ever babble in their sleep they cry, "Cechas! cechas!" The last words of a Russian railway porter, when he must leave the pale glimpses of the moon and hie him to sublime or sulphurous realms, will be "Cechas!" It is a word that rings in your ears from the instant you set foot in the Empire of the Great White Czar till you leave it.
So I sat on the corner of my leather bag and smoked an English briar charged with English tobacco, and watched the bustling scene; looked in at the buffet, where everyone seemed to be feverishly guzzling; occasionally I walked to the far end of the platform, and gazed at the clear star-sprinkled sky, and recalled it was just about time for afternoon tea in far-away sunny England - though I couldn't tell it was sunny, but hoped it was so for the love of home.
I explored the first corridor section of the cars, hoping to find a compartment. I was growled at - probably sworn at, for my acquaintance with Slavonic anathema is happily that of a child - by drowsy Russians, or I found the doors locked. Then I went on the chase for my conductor, and finally ran him down in the third-class refreshment room, where he was drinking Samara ale, with a trade mark on the label of a red pyramid, which showed that the brewers at Samara, on the banks of the Volga, have some acquaintance with the mainstay of Burton, on the banks of the Trent. I remonstrated in halting Russian, and asked about that carriage.
"Cechas! cechas!" said he.
"Cechas be something," said I. He was probably wanting me to increase the insult, But I wasn't disposed.
Then I produced a little weapon I was carrying in my pocket. No, it was not a revolver. It was simply an open letter from Prince Hilkoff, the chief of the railway, informing all officials on the line that I was a journalist travelling through Siberia with the special permission of the Czar, and that I was to be given assistance and shown courtesy.
There is nothing that impresses a Russian so much as a big name and a big seal. I've an idea the more sealing wax used the more important is the document regarded.
"Cechas!" exclaimed my big, slothful, bribe-seeking conductor, and he cechased into the train, gave me a compartment, insisted on helping to put my baggage straight, and saluted me as though I were a decorated field-marshal, instead of a meek-eyed young man in a slouch hat, smoking, a common briar-wood pipe, bought at the Stores for tenpence.
So I was comfortable - for a time. In the compartment on one side of me was a gentleman who snored. I saw him in the morning. He was very corpulent, but with weedy legs, no neck, and a face that was porcine. His snore was three-parts grunt. Every now and then it would seem something stuck somewhere. There was a momentary pause. Then came a gruff blast that, without exaggeration, shook the train. I could sleep through the rowdyism of the four card-playing, vodki-drinking young officers on the other side of me, but the snore of that fat Russian as we crawled eastwards through Siberia irritated. It was necessary to plug my ears and wrap my head in a rug before endeavouring to snatch sleep.
Morning brought drenching rain, and anything that might have been pleasing was soaked out of the landscape. The rain fell in torrents. The clouds trailed their skirts across the land. When they lifted we were beyond the plain, and in a gentle undulating region, with frequent lakes, some of them miles in length.
The stations at which we made such long halts were now drab painted, and with green roofs. There was generally a bedraggled gang of peasant women, waiting to sell milk and cooked fowls and eggs and bread.
It was a very chilly two days that I do not recall distinctly. When I was hungry I dived into the little buffets, and ate uninquiringly of the strange dishes provided. Then I dived back to my carriage, wrapped myself in coat and rug, and read and dozed the two days away. There was nothing exciting. The only thing to record was that on the second morning we were running through a forest of pine and larch. If you look at a recent map of Siberia you may see the railway line marked in red. If the line runs through Tomsk it is inaccurate. If, however, a tiny little eighth-of-an-inch long branch line points north-wards to Tomsk it is correct.
Tomsk, the capital of Siberia, is eighty-two versts from the junction station of Taiga, which means "in the woods."
And why doesn't the Great Trans-Siberian Railway run through the capital? It is an old story I was always hearing with regard to this line. It was laid in corruption.
"How much will you give us if we bring the line past Tomsk? " asked the surveyors and engineers who mapped the route.
"Nothing!" replied Tomsk. "We are the capital of Siberia, and you can't avoid coming here."
"Oh, can't we?" replied the route-finders. "If you don't produce so many thousand roubles there will be insurmountable engineering difficulties that will prevent us coming within a long way of Tomsk."
These engineering difficulties were discovered, and so the Trans-Siberian Railway sweeps along fifty miles to the south of Tomsk. And Tomsk, to put it baldly, is very sick. Its population is progressing, but as a snail progresses to a hare. Irkutsk, further east, is already ahead of it by ten thousand. So the glory of the capital is on the wane.
Of course, the Tomsk people became indignant - for Tomsk was a flourishing place, the very hub of Siberian trade long before railways were thought of. A branch line has been constructed from Taiga. Taiga, therefore, which was little more than a signalling hut in the forest, has these last six years become a busy junction. I counted eleven tracks side by side in the goods yard. There were rows of red-painted freight vans waiting to go this way or that, and a huge engine-shed, with gangs of grimy mechanics attending the engines.
The first-class fare from Taiga to Tomsk is three roubles (about 6s.), 2 roubles 95 kopecks as a matter of fact, but there is a tax of 5 kopecks towards paying for "the war in China." Everything must have a Government stamp in Russia. You can't buy a theatre ticket without paying a tax. Still, three roubles is not so much for a fifty-mile journey first-class, especially as it takes four hours to cover the distance.
The clouds lifted in the moist eventide, making a divine sunset, as we ran through nicely wooded country that might have been a bit of homeland, if only there had been hedges and farmsteads.
Most of the passengers got off at what seemed a tiny wayside station.
"How far are we from Tomsk?" I asked.
"Tomsk Station?"
"Yes, Tomsk Station," I replied.
"About half-an-hour."
When we got to Tomsk it seemed as though I was the only passenger. I marvelled, but the next day discovered. Still the old story. Dispute between the railway builders and the town folk. The line might quite easily run to the centre of the town. It doesn't. After it gets within two miles of the place - the wayside station at which everybody got off save myself - the line makes a great half-moon bend round one side of the town, never getting nearer than the two miles, and pulls up two miles on the other side of Tomsk. That is one of the ways they do things in Siberia.
I had a jolting, bone-cracking, droshki ride through a vile sea of mud until the city was reached -another unpaved, miry, over-grown village, but with electric light everywhere.
The largest hotel is the "Europe." I went there. It had only been opened a fortnight, and it reeked with paint. The paint on the floor of my room came off like the tar on a freshly asphalted sidewalk. Everything was blue, red, and gold. At one end of the dining hall was a huge, up-to-date barrel organ, for all the world like the organs that accompany roundabouts at English fairs, only bigger. There were the harsh brass and rattling drums, clanging cymbals, and in front was a toy figure of a man with right arm jerking up and down, beating time wrong. At present this organ is the sensation of Tomsk. It makes such a row that one's appetite disappears.
But Tomsk is a rollicking wealthy city, and its evenings are given to dissipation. Between eleven at night and four in the morning that accursed organ roared airs, while high revelry held sway.
I hunted up the one Britisher in Tomsk, a Scot representing the American Trading Company, and we roamed the place together. I shall never complain again of dirty streets in England or America - after Tomsk. Two days' rain had made them canals of mud. We drove about - the filth was up to the axle-tree. Where there was any slope it was bumpy and hillocky, and it was necessary to hold on tight or be pitched ignominiously out of the droshki. One finished a droshki ride sore all over.
The town is on low land, but within a mile is a pleasant rise until a high bank is reached overlooking the River Tom, scouring north till it joins the Obi - a most picturesque situation, the very place for villas. The wealthy of Tomsk, however, have small appreciation of the beautiful, and prefer the fetid town. It is here that the main road from the Far East to Moscow fords the river.
There is a gigantic ferry that took across in one load fourteen carts and horses and forty or fifty people. The boat was curious. At one end were three horses trotting round and round, turning a cogged shaft, which turned a pair of paddles, and these carried the ferry from side to side, while a man steered with a fish tail of an oar.
Last year the population of Tomsk was over 52,000, with 9,000 houses, 33 churches, and 25 schools. It is the educational centre of Siberia - indeed, it takes third place in the Russian Empire. In 1888 the Government contributed a million roubles to found a university, and the rich residents contributed another million. The University buildings are handsome, and about a thousand students are in attendance. The professors are mostly Germans, or of German extraction. Close by a technical college is being erected, where it is proposed to teach everything that will aid in the development of Siberia. A department has already been started for special instruction in geographical and scientific research. The public library given to the town by Count Strogoneff would do credit to an English town twice the size of Tomsk.
For three-quarters of a century now Tomsk has been close to valuable gold-fields. There is gold everywhere. It can be got out of the sand on the banks of the river Tom. The richest workings, however, are two or three days' journey away.
Siberian gold exploitation is not very popular just now in England. The reason is not the scarcity of gold, but the restrictions put by Russia upon it being worked by foreigners. I believe the Government - which is much in need of money - would make things easier, so that foreign capital might come in, if a percentage of the gold wore given in return, But there is a strong anti-foreign party in Russia constantly crying out against the country getting into the financial grip of outsiders. I heard, however, of two young fellows, a Scot and an American representing Glasgow and New York syndicates, who had for the last couple of years been putting down between thirty and forty thousand pounds'worth of quartz-crushing machinery.
The town is half full of millionaires and ex-convicts. Most of the millionaires are themselves convict descended - uncouth, illiterate men, unable to write their own name, and absolutely ignorant of the outer world. They know no place but Tomsk, and they think there is no place like it. London and Paris are but vague names to them. If you begin talking to them about these cities they grunt, and regard you as a liar.
Tomsk is a sort of granary for Siberia. There is a great market place, and here is brought tea from China - only 400 miles away - furs from the north, bullock and horse skins from all the country around. It is a quaint sight to see all the carts gathered in the market place, dirty, wheezy, hooded things, in the care of shaggy men in clattering top-boots, violent-hued shirts, and great sheepskin hats, haggling, quarrelling and bartering. Their hair is towsled and unkempt. The men, indeed, do hair-cutting for each other. They smooth it out straight over the forehead, as well as at the back of the neck. They clap on the head an earthenware bowl, that fits fairly tight, and then with shears clip away every bit of protruding hair.
At the street corners are vermin-covered deformities, willing to give you blessings in return for kopecks, or curses if you give nothing at all. Cringing, black-hooded women, carrying, like a plate, a velvet-hooded board on which is a cross, meet you everywhere - in the streets, in the shops, and even on the trains-inviting alms. They tire licensed beggars on behalf of the local churches.
Churches are everywhere. The Cathedral is a giant place with white-washed walls and big blue bulbous domes. The inside is a blaze of gilded icons. The door leading to the "Holy of Holies" is of gold. The Russian Greek Church is fond of gilt bedizenment. The priests wear the most gorgeous vestments, and the moudjik gives his last kopeck to save his soul.
Some of the churches, however, struck me as pretty. They were low, with long shelving roofs, painted green, and very long tapering spires, also painted green.
On the shoulder of the hill adjoining the town is the Alexis Monastery, and in the grounds werewalking long black-robed, lono, black-haired, and long black-whiskered priests - all rather dirty and greasy.
I went to see the small and crumbling old hut - protected by a special roof - where lived the old man, Theodore Kuzmilch, the bond-servant of God. Tomsk people, however, call the place "Alexandero House." The one dimly lighted room is made into a sort of chapel. There are sacred pictures on the wall, and lights ever burning before them.
Kuzmilch, it is said, had been exiled from Russia or vagrancy, and coming to Tomsk a merchant gave him this hut, and here he lived for eleven years as a hermit on bread and water, and never went out except to church or to do some kindly act. He died in 1864. There is a picture of him in the hut, a gaunt, hollow-cheeked, eagle-eyed old man with long white hair. Close by, however, is a painting of Czar Alexander I. When he first came to the throne, and also a picture of Alexander in middle life.
It is believed in Tomsk that this hermit, who now lies buried in the monastery grounds, was no Theedore Kuzniileh, but Alexander I. himself. Alexander abdicated the throne of Russia because all his plans for the good of his people had failed. He was tired and weary of his position. So while on a journey to the Crimea for the benefit of his health it was given out that he died at Taganrog. Public opinion declared that, with the consent of his successor, Nicholas I, another corpse was taken to St. Petersburg and buried in state. Alexander disappeared. Nothing was heard of him till he turned up as a wanderer in Tomsk. He was recognised but by one person, a merchant. The secret was well kept, and it was not till long after his death that it leaked out that old Theodore was the Czar. Such, at any rate, is the story told in Tomsk.
Like all cities to which wealth comes easily, Tomsk is licentious, extravagant, and life is not counted of much value.
I saw a dirty old man slithering in the mud. "The richest man in Tomsk, a rouble millionaire four times over," I was told.
A couple of ladies, fashionably dressed, splashed by in a carriage drawn by a pair of horses. "One is the daughter of a convict, and the other is enoaged to be married to a conviet's son."
Another man trailed past. "That man is a prince; he belongs to an older family than the reigning house of Romanoff. He is nephew of the Governor of Moscow. He's a bad lot, and was the head of a gang of swindlers. He got hold of a rich Englishman anxious to settle in Moscow. In the Governor's absence he took the Englishman to the Governor's house, pretending it was his own, and sold it for 30,000 roubles. It was the Englishman who was sold. That is why the prince is exiled to Tomsk. He's a solicitor here."
Some dark-eyed, keen-featured women went past. "Jews!" said my companion. "Jews are the curse of Siberia, as they are of Russia. The Russians and Siberians are not good business men. The Jews are. The Government is hard on them, but the Jew here gets baptised a Christian, and so he can cheat, outwit, grow enormously rich. But he is a Jew at heart all the same. If you were a Russian and had business to do in Russia you would understand why the Jew is hated."
A group of intelligent young fellows strolled by. Students - many of them ardent young men who read all the Western literature they can get hold of. In 1900 a lot of them had a procession through the streets, singing student songs out of sympathy with the Moscow and Petersburg students, who were rioting for reform. Next day two hundred of them were taken by the authorities out of the town. These lads of twenty had been exiled!
The Russian Government, I will say, is much traduced. But it does often show a childish fear. Fancy exiling those boys! Fancy exiling Glasgow students because they had a procession in the streets!
There being plenty of money in Tomsk, pleasure is the one pursuit. Not to be immoral is to be suspected of revolutionary ideas. Laxity of conduct is the best sign of good fellowship. Nowhere, I confess, did I see signs of refinement. The houses are glorified huts with red paint and plush. To squandor money in drunken carousal, and to load his womankind with pearls and sables, is the ambition of the average Tomsk man. There is a flavour of the Californian gold-digging days about Tomsk, but with the romance left out.
On the whole, I was not favourably impressed with the capital of Siberia. It is a caravanserai for orgies.
Chapter VII: Vagrant Notes By the Way
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