A.B. Court: 1907
Perhaps no scheme that the far-sighted policy of Russia ever devised was more happy in its results than the building of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Its military importance was demonstrated to the world during the recent war between Russia and Japan [1905], for during that sharp struggle the very pulse of the Russian Army of Manchuria throbbed along this single pair of steel rails that reach from the shores of the Yellow Sea across the desert, mountain, steppe and river to the palace in St. Petersburg. But its usefulness did not cease when peace was declared. The great artery is still throbbing away without the feverishness of war, but with a strong tide of new blood that is changing Siberia from a lonely waste into a land of hamlets and fields, herds and the homes of a contented people.
The original intention of the Russian government in projecting this railroad was t make Moscow the western terminus and Vladivostok the east, but when the advantages of Port Arthur as an open port became recognized, and when the Russians began to think that it would never be necessary for them to evacuate Manchuria as they had agreed to do, the branch dropping southward from Kharbine to Port Arthur became more important than the main line to Vladivostok. As a result of the war, however, that branch was turned over to the Japanese, whose equipment and management of it are so miserable that it is scarcely to be considered by the ordinary traveler. The original main line to Vladivostok is as it was planned to be, the most important.
One needs only to glance at a recent map of Russia in Asia to see the effect of the Trans-Siberian Railroad on the settlement of Siberia. There are a few towns on the banks of the navigable rivers, widely separated and almost isolated from the rest of the world, while along the railroad there are numerous towns, large and small, all in constant touch with the government of Russia and the outside world. The towns are practically all either entirely, or to a considerable extent, the result of the railroad. The Russian government is constantly moving trainloads of immigrants from the overcrowded districts of its European provinces to the vast rich fields of Asia.
The result is of importance from several standpoints—political, social, economical and military. It removes great numbers from the overcrowded district where sedition and anarchy are bred to a country where they only have room to live comfortably, raise enough bread and meat to feed not only themselves but many others. This raises the standard of living among the lower classes (who in European Russia appear to be in the scale of development but slightly above their own beasts) and builds up east of the Urals near to the frontier of China, where Russia well knows she has only just begun to fight, a population available for military service, and a constantly producing and self-sustaining depot of supplies.
The Trans-Siberian Railway has brought the Far East within comparatively easy distance of Northern Europe. It takes but 17 days to go from London to Yokohama by the route and nineteen days to Shanghai. From Moscow to Vladivostok the journey is eleven days, nine hours; from St. Petersburg eight hours longer. By the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal it takes at least twenty-five days, while by way of Vancouver and New York it takes twenty-eight days to go from London to Yokohama. This advantage, however, applies to passenger traffic only. The freight rates on through freight by the railroad are absolutely prohibitive.
Vladivostok (meaning Star of the East) does not seem like the terminus of such a railroad as the Trans-Siberian. It is a muddy, squalid town, trailing its ill-paved streets around the harbor, never presuming to climb the hills which surround it on all sides. When the recent war broke out it was poorly defended, and on three occasions was shelled by the Japanese fleet which fired over the hills to the eastward of the town and harbor. Since then, however, the Russian government has greatly augmented its fortifications. There are 142 batteries now to defend it and more than 60,000 troops are constantly stationed there as a garrison. It is the last outpost and only seaport Russia has in the Far East, and she does not intend to lose it.
Vladivostok is a free port. Tobacco, opium, fire-arms and Russian literature are prohibited articles.
The commercial activities consist of subsisting the garrison and carrying on some trade in cloth and manufacturers articles with Japan and northern Chinese ports. There are two banking concerns represented—the Russo-Chinese and a German firm. The population is even more mixed than the rest of the Oriental seaports. One can see over its garish, frontier streets, representative not only of all the numerous kinds of Russians, but also of every civilized nation, with a large percentage of Japs, Chinese, Sikhs and Koreans. Thousands of Chinese coolies have been recently brought there for employment in the public works.
There are three express trains a week each way between Vladivostok and Moscow. Two of these are Russian, that is, like all the other local trains, they are operated and manned by employees of the government and composed of coaches owned by the Russian government. The third is composed of coaches and a restaurant car owned by the Companie Internationale des Wagon Lits et De Trains Express, a Belgian company well known to all European travelers. The trainmen on this train are employees of the Wagon Lits Company. Both Russian and Wagon Lits trains carry first and second-class passengers. The coaches are built on the same plan, compartment corridor cars with entirely separated transverse compartments and a corridor running the full length of the cars, along one side. In the first-class compartments there are two bunks while in the second-class compartments there are four placed at right angles to the length of the car so constructed as to be cushioned seats in the day time and beds at night.
In the first-class coaches of the Wagon-Lits Co. there is a separate wash room for each pair of adjoining compartments, completely enclosed and provided with a door leading into each compartment. In the second-class coaches and in the first-class Russian coaches, there is a wash room at each end of the car.
The restaurant cars serve a table-de-hote luncheon and inner as well as a la cart orders at any time up to 10 pm. By either plan the traveler can live fairly well on 5 rubles ($2.55) a day. On the Russian trains only the Russian language is spoken, but on the International (Wagon Lits) German and French are also used.
The cost of the journey from Vladivostok and Moscow, exclusive of meals en route is $198 first-class and $100 second-class by the Wagon Lits train, while by the Russian train the cost is about one quarter less. The cost of the tickets themselves is by no means as great as the above amounts, but in addition one must pay for speed tickets, platz cards, et cetera, until he above mentioned total is reached.
The cosmopolitan make-ups of the passenger list is interesting: On one train which recently made the journey there were twenty-eight through passengers from Vladivostok to Moscow, six Americans, two naval officers coming home from China, two ladies (a mother and her daughter) touring the world, a Harvard graduate who had been practicing law in Hong Kong on his way home and a young New Yorker killing time; seven Germans, four of whom were connected with commercial enterprises in the Far East, another a sea captain ordered by his company back to Hamburg, and two ladies, relatives of German Army officers in China; two French people, a man and wife returning from Japan; one Austrian in commerce; one Chinaman, a student and interpreter; two Spaniards in the Japanese trade; one Englishman in the China trade; and the rest Russians of whom some were merchants, some capitalists, some scientists; one Imperial attorney, one a general in the Russian army, and two ladies evidently well-known in army and official circles. Besides these there were many traveling between points in the interior, particularly in the region between Irkutsk and Chelyabinsk and some who did not come all the way to Moscow. Before the journey was completed nearly all the through passengers, so far as their linguistic abilities permitted, were on terms on conversational acquaintances.
One cannot enter or leave the Russian territory nor travel in it, with a passport. Whenever one stops at a hotel one's passport is taken and sent to police headquarters where it is stamped and restamped with date and destination when one departs. All the Russian officials with whom one comes in contact are courteous and considerate if one conforms to the letter of the regulations in regard to passports, et cetera. The neglect or disregard of the iron-clad regulations entails no end of trouble.
The journey across the Russian empire may be divided into three stages: Vladivostok to Irkutsk, Irkutsk to the Russian frontier, and the Asiatic frontier to the German frontier. The first of these occupies four days and five nights. Soon after leaving Vladivostok the line passes into Manchuria. The country is rolling and treeless. The eastern part of this is considerably cultivated, generally in grain by Chinese. Block houses and stockades have been built to support the soldiers stationed there at short intervals along the track for the protection of the precious railroad against marauding bands of Manchus, who tear up the rails whenever they can. The cultivation soon disappears, however, and small herds of cattle and camels appear. These, in turn, are left behind and the only evidence of mankind one sees is the Russian soldier standing beside the track with his rifle guarding away off there among the bald tan hills of Manchuria the steel bands thus bind together the East and the West. There are few villages along this part of the line. Kharbine is the only town of importance. The roadbed and track are very good but the train scarcely makes twenty miles an hour, due to the fact that the engines burn and the train is climbing steadily up grade. And then we have not yet left the East, where everything is pervaded with the idea that time is no object.
The tracks throughout Russia are six inches wider than our standard gauge. This allows the coaches to be wider than ours and coupled with the effect of the slow speed, makes the coaches very steady.
Thirty-six hours before we reach Irkutsk we pass again into Siberia. Our baggage is inspected on two consecutive nights but the examination of foreigners baggage is not very strict.
Near the Baikal region the country grows mountainous, thickly wooded and very beautiful. The largest city east of Irkutsk, Chita, nestles here among the hills, nearly 4000 feet above the sea and there are many smaller places thereabout. Below Chita on the Ingoda River there was in the summer of 1907 a camp of soldiers so long that the train was an hour in passing it. Here within thirty-six hours of the disputed Manchuria frontier the Russian advisers are concentrating the main strength of the Army of Siberia—who can say for what? Perhaps the position of the Japanese in Manchuria is not so secure as most people suppose.
During the afternoon before coming to Irkutsk the train reached the shores of Lake Baikal, the southern edge of which it skirts all night. This part of the road has been built since the war. At that time trains were ferried across as long as the ice could be broken and when the lake froze over at last a track was laid on the ice. All this part of the line along the Lake shore is considered a great engineering feat. It is nearly all blasted out of solid rock, and is plentifully varied by tunnels and excellent steel bridges.
Mountains whose tops are perennially capped with snow rise to the southward of the lake. To the northward and westward the sky seems to touch the water, but to the northwest the other shore is plainly discernible. Very few vessels are seen upon the lake. Its waters are very deep and very cold. The climate in this region is said to be very severe in the winter but in the summer it is delightful. Indeed, on the whole journey which I made in the middle of July, only one day was unpleasant and that was in the Volga Valley.
The population, though thicker in the Baikal region, is as yet rather sparse. The people one sees are tall, strong and healthy looking, and apparently quite contented. They are cultivating the open ground and the clearings in the forests in grain, using the plentiful forests to build themselves comfortable houses.
At Irkutsk it is necessary to change cars, the only change between Vladivostok and Moscow. This city has a population of 100,000 greatly increased since the advent of the railroad, but for the domes of its church, the droshkes and the Russian signs one might easily mistake it for one of the overgrown villages in our newly settled West. It is said to be a lawless place so that it is scarcely safe to venture out on its streets at night.
Leaving Lake Baikal and Irkutsk behind, the train passes coal mines first, then a farming and cattle country, alternately prairie and forest. The country becomes more and more thickly settled. Thousands of immigrant families have been sent into this country in the last ten years. In this stage of the journey, in fact, we passed through long trains of such settlers on their way over from Europe. The difference in appearance between them and the settlers already there is remarkable, but in a few years these immigrants too will be prosperous, well-fed and contented like the others we see living amid their fields and herds. Before long the newcomer will have forgotten that people are starving back in Europe, that the great landholders are crushing the poor, and the soldiers are shooting people who protest; and these very men will be the first to fill the vacant files in the Czar's army when the yellow men attack the while. Thus they became a strength rather than a menace to the house of Romanov.
We passed another train which did not induce such pleasant speculations: eight or ten coaches of human beings, men, women and children chained to their rude wooden bunks, guarded by soldiers. They were convicts, these wretched people. Some were thieves and some murderers, some forgers, but most of them convicted of political offenses, rioting, sedition and mutiny. They seemed to present the middle and lower classes of society. Their general gearing was resigned; whatever resistance they were capable of making against the trend of human events had already been made. They were making calmly, almost stolidly this last long journey from the wild unrest of European Russia to the solitude of the Siberian prison camp.
Between Irkutsk and the steppes of Barabinksa which the westbound express traversed during the day, before it reaches the Ural region, there are several large rivers, among them the Yenesei and the Obi, which flow northward into the Arctic Ocean, along these rivers which afford opportunities for communication and transportation, the only towns, besides those on the railroad, are situated. There are large operations in lumbering, agriculture and cattle raising carried on throughout this region. The whole country, at least that through which the railroad passes, bears a striking resemblance to our own northwest. The temperature everywhere east of the Urals was pleasant in summer varying from slight chill in the Baikal region to the summer temperature of southern Canada further west.
The steppe of Barabinksa, along whose upper edge the railroad passes,. is a vast uneven plain covered throughout the long winter with trackless snow, but in the summer overgrown with short grass and dotted with clumps of dwarfed trees. No streams flow through the steppe. The only water is in ponds scattered here and there in the depressions and is said to be salt. Tartars, nomads, Kirgese and others wander about over it raising horses. These wanderers live in curious collapsible tents which look from a distance like haystacks. The steppe is, however, a lonely waste and one is glad that the train spends only one day in traversing it.
On the western edge of the steppe is the large town of Tcheliskbinsk. From this place westward the country becomes more and more hilly until at length we see the Urals rising grandly in the distance. The mountains at the point where the railroad crosses them are neither as steep nor as rugged as our Alleghenies. Notwithstanding this, little of the ground is cultivated. The hillsides are thickly wooded, grasses and flowers grow to the very foot of the pines and larches.
The forestry division of the Russian government do not allow the young trees to be felled, nor the forests to be too much thinned. There appears, consequently long lanes, alternately wooded strips and strips where the trees have all been felled, extending from the tops of the mountains to the valleys below. The effect of this upon the landscape is very striking—the dark green of the forests, the lighter green of the grasses on the open lanes, and the streams and houses in the valleys, making the effect of a mammoth Japanese garden. The most picturesque spot in all this region is just east of Tzlataonst, just as the westbound train passes the small stone pyramid which marks the boundary between Europe and Asia. This is the highest point in the range crossed by the railroad.
West of the Urals to the east the increased density of the population is at once noticeable. The land is practically all cultivated. Vast fields of wheat, oats, barley and sunflowers, the seeds of which are eaten, stretch away on both sides of the tracks, as far as the eye can reach over the level country. The track is being doubled on the western slope of the Urals from Tzlataonst westward. The towns increase in number and size along the road, but the people do not seem to be in as good condition as they are in Siberia. Men, women and children work in the fields for the cultivation and harvesting of the crops is all done by hand. Windmills for grinding the grain were the only kind of labor-saving devices in evidence.
Descending into the Volga Valley the road passes through part of the greatest wheat-producing country in the world. One is sensible too of a rise in the temperature and an increase in the humidity.
At Samara, which is situated at a great bend in the Volga River, the traveler gets some idea of the large shipping industry carried on that great river. Not far west of Samara the railroad crosses a bridge, thirteen lattice girder spans, resting upon fourteen massive stone piers. This bridge is one a quarter versts long and is about 100 feet above mean low water. It is built for single track, but the bureau in St. Petersburg has recently set aside $2,500,000 to double track it.
Enormous quantities of grains are shipped and handled here by means of steamers and barges plying upon the river. The land along the Volga is low and subject to undulation, and is therefore rich in productive power.
The population continues to increase in density between the Volga and Moscow. The people looks less and less prosperous. I, however, encountered no signs of destitution or mutiny along here. The famine districts are to the southward and along the Caspian Sea.
At Pensa someone playfully cast a stone through the car window but no one was hurt by it. The road, which heretofore had been good, becomes excellent as it approaches Moscow. From Toula to the ancient capital the double track lies straight and level, with a rock ballasted roadbed as good as any in the world. The speed of the train, which was 15-20 miles an hour, east of Irkutsk had gradually increased until this last stretch was 40-50 miles per hour. The locomotives which draw the train burn oil, and those which pulled us over the Urals were huge four-cylinder single expansion engines with twelve 66 inch driving wheels. All these engines bear the name plates of Russian shops.
Finally the roofs and turrets of the ancient city of Moscow appear to the left and ahead. The railroad enters the city from the south through a maze of tracks and railroad shops coming at last to a spacious station which is the final destination of the train which has carried its passengers without interruption 5,000 miles.
There is something half-barbaric about Moscow in the splendor of the numberless churches, in the richness of its palaces, in the wildness of the region and the history which clusters about its walls and streets and palaces. For all that, it is as modern as any place in Russia and the traveler can well spend a week or two in looking about. The hotels are good and the prices reasonable. One is struck particularly with the exactness of the devotion in religious matters exhibited by the masses of the people. It seems to be the policy of the government of Russia to surround its people constantly with repressive influences. Church, military and civil authority unite to keep the masses awed and mystified.
From Moscow to the German frontier one passes through many cities and a thickly populated agricultural country, flat and uninteresting. The last part of this stage of the journey is through Poland—poor, dismembered, disheartened, writhing Poland. The people and the country they live in are the saddest one sees on the whole journey. Broken down fences, hovels, shabby towns and beggars are seen on all sides. In Warsaw, which is a beautiful city, I saw a gang of prisoners of all ages from the babe in arms to the gray-haired grandmother being loaded into a prison train. They had been surrounded in a street disturbance that day and were being sent away surrounded by soldiers, a cordon of sharp steel, probably to die in the mines of Siberia.
The Russian trains in this region are vile. One must change cars at Warsaw at midnight and again at 4 am in Aleksandrova, the last town on the Russian German frontier. Here the traveler must change his money, reregister his luggage, buy his tickets for Berlin and have his passport examined and stamped for the last time. Then he climbs into a German train and speeds away to Berlin.
The rest of the journey through Germany, Belgium and France is well known. And now we hear the Atlantic booming away the same deep tone we heard from the Pacific three weeks ago upon the rocks of the fog-shrouded island of Askold.
© 1993-2008 Helen Glenn Court | All rights reserved