Moscow
From Peeps at Many Lands: Russia by L. Edna Walter, 1910.
From: 1900 C.E. To: 1910 C.E.
Location: Moscow, Russia
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Peeps at Many Lands: Russia by L. Edna Walter, 1910.
The three words "Our old capital" have a magic influence over the heart of every Russian, who regards Moscow as the sacred centre of the Empire; and, indeed, it is often called the "Holy City." To its churches and relics flock thousands daily, and those who, in other towns, speed departing friends to Moscow, often commission them to "burn a taper of forty kopecks' value at the shrine of the martyr St. Philip in the Cathedral of the Assumption" or at that of "the little St. Dmitri in St. Michael's."
Moscow is a city of irregularities, a bewildering mixture of old and new. In the centre is the fortified hill the famous Kremlin and outside this, the streets wind hither and thither, up hill and down dale, with quaint mixtures of houses, courts and gardens. In one place it is empty as a desert, in another crowded as a town; in one it resembles a wretched village, in another a mighty capital.
If you go into one of the little quiet, deserted streets in the early morning you may be startled at the sight of a cow coming out of a garden gate belonging to one of the red or yellow wooden houses. She takes her way calmly and thoughtfully along the street, and greets an acquaintance with a whisk of the tail. At one of the city gates she will find a number of friends waiting, and when all the herd are gathered, a sheepskin-coated peasant leads them to some pasture outside the town.
At eventide he brings them back to the gate, whence they disperse, each to her own garden and little painted house. No one ever interferes with these cows; they are allowed to go their ways unmolested through the streets. The Chitai Gorod still shows that it was the part occupied by the Tartars when they pushed the Russians outside, and is surrounded by a wall and gate. Outside the wall all is deserted, inside the gate all is bustle and confusion and traffic, crowds of droskies in the roads and walkers on the pavements, separated by rows of shouting street vendors selling grapes, cucumbers and what not.
A regular market of booths lines the inside of the wall, and higher up is all that remains of the old Gostinnoi Dvor—the Great Bazaar of all Russian towns. The new “Rows," with their stone arcades of shops, replace the more picturesque bazaar. Here everything is more Asiatic than in St. Petersburg, the shops or stalls of gold and silver brocade telling of the East. Whether in. the "Rows" or in the outside markets the merchant and his boy use every art to persuade you to buy, and the method of purchase is Eastern you offer the merchant at most half what he asks; the more Asiatic he is the less you offer him. He brings his price down, but not to yours; you continue the bargain for a little, but never show that you want the article. Walk away and he will follow you; the thing is yours. But watch carefully to see that the article you take away is really the one you bid for, for these Russian merchants are the most plausible cheats in the world.
There is a recognized thieves' market in Moscow, where many curious things are to be found, but it is well to venture there unadorned with jewellery, as a man has sometimes lost a finger to provide some rascal with a coveted ring.
One quaint memento of Peter the Great can sometimes be picked up in these markets. It is a Beard Token, Peter objected to beards, and ordered all his subjects to cut them off, but Peter had not quite appreciated the regard of the Orthodox for their beards. They refused to cut them off, and said it was sacrilege. Peter compromised. They should wear their beards on payment of a tax of fifty-two kopecks, and to enable the bearded to show that they had paid the money they wore a copper token. This had on one side in relief a nose, lip and long beard, on the other was the inscription, "Beard money paid."
From the market we cross the dust-covered Red Square with its stunted thirsty trees to the walls of the Kremlin, outside which is the Church of the Protection of the Virgin, better known as Vassili Blagennoi, the Church of the Holy St. William. This is the strangest, most incongruous, fascinating and repellent church in Europe. A labyrinth of chapels capped by cupola-crowned turrets, all of different shape and different sizes, rears its jagged confusion above the Kremlin wall. Every stone is painted, and so brilliant are the colours that the whole suggests that serpents' skins and dragons' heads, or the wonderful plumage of tropical birds, have been stretched over a bed of giant thistles, and the whole transformed into stone. The church was erected by Ivan the Terrible to commemorate the victory over the Tartars at Kazan, which made him the first real Czar of Russia. Its very weirdness seems to reflect the fiendish cruelty of its author, who watched its growth from a seat on the Kremlin wall.
In front of the church is the Red Square, where in times of old the Czars of Moscow published their edicts, and where Ivan the Terrible carried out so many of the vile massacres and executions which have made him infamous among all nations and through all time. The tortures he inflicted have never been, could never be, surpassed.
Such a Czar could hardly hold the allegiance of his distant towns, and so he frequently made sudden descents upon them and punished them for treason, whether they had committed it or not Novgorod, the great northern town, more important commercially than Moscow, supplied him with a thousand victims a day. The great Bell of Novgorod, which had so often called upon its citizens to defend their town, was taken too, that it might call no more. But the tyrant might have spared himself this small act of spite. Had he left the bell to ring, its call would have been unheeded, for in that fallen city he had left none to hear.
He placed it near the Redeemer Gate in the Kremlin wall, where it served to ring the alarm in Moscow till its metal was used in making the last great bell for the tower "Ivan Veliki."
The Metropolitan, or Archbishop, Philip dared to reprove Ivan for his terrible cruelties; he was removed and strangled. The world can show no martyr who perished for devotion to a nobler cause the divine cause of justice and mercy.
For a time Ivan played at being religious, made himself the Abbot of a monastery, and his familiars monks: he amused himself by committing murders by day and singing psalms by night.
Ivan, having no consideration for the bodies of his subjects, occasionally remembered their souls, and so put up the little chapel of St. Cyril for their repose. There is a letter still existing wherein he requests that prayers be said for the souls of three thousand four hundred and seventy a mere fraction of his victims of whom nine hundred and eighty-six are mentioned by name some are mentioned as "with wife and children," "Kazarin Dubrovski and his two sons and the ten men who came to their defence."
There were two men of whom Ivan was afraid. One, we are proud to think, was the English ambassador, and the other a religious fanatic. Sir Jeremy Taylor came before him with his hat on, and Ivan who had a few days before nailed the French ambassador's hat to his head wrathfully asked him how he dared to do it. "I am the ambassador," answered Sir Jeremy, "of the invincible Queen of England, who does not veil her bonnet, nor bare her head to any prince living. If any of her ministers receive any affront abroad, she is able to avenge her own quarrel."
Ivan was throughout his reign anxious to remain on good terms with England. He allowed English traders to reside in Moscow; he stole their goods, of course, but he left their persons unmolested. He went so far at one time as to offer to cast away his seventh wife if Elizabeth would send him an English lady of high rank, and Lady Mary Hastings narrowly escaped the honour.
Like most assassins, Ivan was superstitious, and when the begging monk, "Blessed Willie," upbraided the Czar for his wickedness, and with uplifted finger prophesied evil to come, Ivan was frightened. The monk would drop Ivan's present of gold, saying that it burnt his fingers, and that it came from hell. Frequently he put his own person between Ivan and his victim, and the rattling of his iron chain and collar as he pointed to Ivan's forehead, and cried out that he saw horns growing there, struck such terror to the heart of the Czar that for the moment he stayed his hand.
Enraged as he often was, he never dared to hurt the naked body of the brave old beggar, who was at last laid to rest in the church which Ivan built. Now, in this weird mockery of a church, the only spot recalling a thought which is pure or lofty is the tomb of the beggar monk, and the church is called after him, the Church of the Holy St. William, its real name being never used.
The atrocities of Ivan had stripped the country of all the great and powerful among its nobles, and cut down its fighting power by thousands, so that it fell an easy prey to the Poles, till in the far-off town of Nijni, on the Volga, arose a man whose patriotism saved his country. From a common butcher and cattle-dealer came the call. "Sacrifice your goods, and sell your possessions," he cried, flinging his own gold to the ground. "Yes! let us even sacrifice our wives and children, if needed, to find a faithful commander to lead us to victory and recover the sainted remains of the miracle-workers of Moscow." The people threw their gold at his feet; women tore their bracelets from their arms, and jewels from their necks, to swell the heap. They stinted nothing, and with this wealth they provided an army for their chosen leader, Pojarsky.
Other towns began to join in the movement; money and soldiers were soon pouring in. Some, like the Cossacks, were jealous, and remained hostile, but gradually the enthusiasm for Pojarsky and his brave helper grew, until at last the Poles were driven back, the treasures of Moscow recovered, the Cossacks won over, and a descendant of the old Romanoff house, who was proclaimed as Czar Michael, was received by the whole of Russia, and founded the dynasty which still reigns.
In the Red Square, not far from Ivan's stone excrescence, stands a sculptured group, representing Minim the Butcher, urging Prince Pojarsky to free his country. Near this group is the famous Gate of the Redeemer, through which Pojarsky made his entry to the Kremlin on his return, from victory.
Every man who passes through this beautiful gate must uncover his head. If a stranger omits this, his neighbours call out, "Your hat, your hat, little father."
For high up in the tower above is a picture of the Redeemer, which, though faded, is an object of reverence to all Russians. A keeper sits beneath the tower, keeping the lamp always alight before it, and upon a little stall by his side are wax tapers, which he sells to those who wish to burn them before the picture. Many are the wonder tales that the old man will tell you how the picture caused clouds to arise, so that marauding Tartars could not find their way into the Kremlin; how Napoleon's invading French tried to reach the picture, but their ladders always broke in the middle; how they brought cannon to fire at the picture, but the powder always became damp; how, to keep the powder dry, they put a fire over the touch-hole, and made the cannon explode, but it exploded the wrong way, killed the gunners, and left the picture and the gate untouched.
Most cities are content with one cathedral; Moscow has nine, of which three are inside the Kremlin.
The Czars are crowned in the Cathedral of the Assumption, married in the Cathedral of the Annunciation, and buried in that of the Archangel Michael at least, they were buried there till Peter the Great changed the burial-place to St. Petersburg.
In the Cathedral of the Assumption, blazing with colour and shining with gold, but no larger than the nave of an English Cathedral, are buried the bodies of many saints. The verger points out to you, with horror, the spot where Napoleon slept after he entered Moscow in 1812, and tells you how he gazed doubtingly into the tomb of St. Jonah but the saint raised his finger, and the Master of Europe fled in terror.
Before leaving the Kremlin give one look at the great cannon, by the side of Ivan Veliki, which is for the people of Moscow what Mons Meg is to the Scotsmen of Edinburgh, and then note those silent witnesses of Napoleon's defeat the hundreds of cannon which fill the square in front of the Arsenal. All are labelled, there they stand so many Dutch cannon, so many Prussian, and an iron army of Frenchmen, but, let us be thankful! not one British.
Leave the Kremlin for the Red Place, and then turn your steps down the hill towards the Sunday Gate. There you will see a great multitude of people turning into a little chapel in fact, none will pass, Czar or peasant, without stopping there. This is the last resting-place of the “Iberian Mother” who enjoyed such a reputation for miracles in her abode on Mount Athos, that the Czar Alexis invited her to Moscow, in the seventeenth century, and there she has remained ever since.
She is dark brown, like most Russian saints, has a net of real pearls round her head, and wonderful jewels about her person. The hands of herself and the child are covered with a thick crust of dirt, from the kissing they have received through the centuries, for to her come pilgrims of all nations, Armenians, Bulgarians, Greeks or Russians. "Here come the peasants early in the morning, before going to market. Hither comes the merchant, on the eve of a new speculation. Hither come the healthy and the sick, the wealthy and those who would become so ; the arriving and departing traveller, the fortunate and the unfortunate, the noble and the beggar."
The picture is, if desired, carried to the home of sick persons and others, and she travels there in a carriage and four, driven by a bareheaded coachman. While she is out, a copy takes her place in the chapel. Sometimes, when she is in too much request, the answer is given, "The Mother is too tired to-day, and cannot come."
Walter, L. Edna. Peeps at Many Lands: Russia. Adam & Charles Black, 1910.
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