1905: The New Year's Blizzard

“Whiteness, whiteness across the land, to the furthest corners...”

This famous Boris Pasternak line immediately comes to mind when one thinks of the last days of 1904. At that time, all across Russia it was cold and snowing heavily. On the 20th of December, all the trains arriving at Moscow’s Kursk Station (trains from the South) and Kiev Station (from the Southwest) arrived a full day late; trains coming from the West, into Brest Station, were 15 hours late. At some places in the steppes of Belorussia, the trains simply stood still, unable to get through the snowdrifts.

The city of Zhitomir – far from the northernmost point in the Russian Empire – was completely cut off from the outside world by drifting snow. And then there was Vladivostok: it was not enough that the city was located on the edge of the theater of military operations in the Russo-Japanese War; it was also miserably cold. “It is not the Japanese who are killing us,” wrote a journalist from the Far East, “but the prices and the cold.”

Cold... snow... the white blizzards blew... the snowstorms howled...  and the citizens of the huge Russian Empire were muffled in luxurious fur coats or in pitiful “fish fur” frocks, trying to stoke their furnaces still hotter, warming themselves with a cup of tea or a tumbler of vodka.

In St. Petersburg, they lit special bonfires so that homeless tramps, cabbies awaiting passengers or benumbed passersby could warm up a bit. Local homeowners provided some wood... delivery men bringing fuel to the area were ordered by policemen protecting the fire to toss a few logs into the fire from their carts... soon huge flames blazed in the street, protecting some Petersburgers (for a short time at least) from the cruel frost.

Special teams roamed the city, gathering up people who were lying in the streets, no matter whether they were passersby who had fainted from the cold, or tramps who had drunk until their back teeth were floating. Anyone left on a snow-covered street was in mortal danger.

Yardmen everywhere worked ceaselessly. Every morning they shoveled the snow into massive piles. Toward the city’s outskirts, these drifts sometimes lasted until spring; nearer the center, however, the snow was pushed into pits or into specially-constructed, heated boxes for melting the snow, through which flowed hot water exiting from banyas. Here, the snow melted quickly, shrouding everything in pearls of steam.

Horse-drawn trams were somehow dragged along their snow-clogged and ice-encrusted rails. Cabbies did not sit up on their seats, but stood on the sledges, in order that it would be easier to drive. People were even transported on special sleds across the Neva.

The snow-blanketed Empire was huge and surprisingly diverse. Somewhere, troops marched. Soon they would travel the long path across the empire to battle with the Japanese. Relatives cried from the knowledge of how many soldiers were not returning from this war being fought God knows where for God knows what. Soon, Russia would echo with the strains of a new waltz, “In the Hills of Manchuria.” It would become one of the most popular Russian songs of its day: “The fields sleep, not a single Russian word is heard... A dear mother weeps, a young widow weeps, all of Russia weeps, cursing its fate and fortune...”

Somewhere, poets, artists and musicians were enjoying themselves. Like creative people everywhere, they foresaw the arrival of something terrible – perhaps even horrific. But, because of their typical carelessness, they preferred not to think about this. Or perhaps this foresight brought a certain poignancy and fatalism to life. It was good to spend time in fine restaurants or in the halls of the latest literary and artistic journals, talking endlessly about the fate of Russia, about one’s amorous adventures.

Many of the great Russian poets of the 20th century were already born. Anna Akhmatova was 15, Alexander Blok was 24, Osip Mandelshtam 13, Boris Pasternak 14. Sergei Diaghilev had already organized the “World of Art” exhibitions and was thinking about his future Russian Seasons performance in Paris. The architect Roman Klein was creating a beautiful new building for Moscow, at the request of Moscow University Professor Ivan Vladimirovich Tsvetayev – the Alexander III Museum of Fine Arts [the future Pushkin Museum]. In fact, in December 1904, the papers wrote about the completion of the seventh section of the museum. At that time, Ivan Vladimirovich was tirelessly traveling to all of the great European museums, gathering an incredible collection of reproductions, in order that young people interested in the history of art, but who did not have the means to travel, could receive a proper education in Moscow.

It was a time of melodic verses, wonderful paintings, unusual music and fantastic theatrical productions. Against this backdrop, none were especially afraid of the arrival of something new. “Let the storm rage sooner!” cried this energetic generation, mimicking the popular young writer Maxim Gorky, who had so successfully described the lives of society’s rejects.

In the snow-covered forests of Siberia, workers mined coal and gold, or drilled for oil. Peasants worried what the coming summer might be like, and how to make their stocks last until the new crop came in. Rich merchants accumulated their millions and frittered them away – some on the expansion of their businesses, some on the acquisition of strange, indecipherable paintings by unknown artists. When the children of the industrialist Shchukin were found to suffer from psychiatric maladies, Muscovites as one diagnosed the cause: this is what happens when you live alone and hang on your walls a painting called “Dance,” by some crazy French artist named Henri Matisse.

In the Winter Palace, the close and unlucky imperial family prepared for the New Year. Nicholas and Alexandra – loving and extremely interdependent – already had several daughters. And, in August of 1904, they finally gave birth to the long-awaited heir: Alexei, who turned out to suffer from a strange, incurable disease: hemophilia. Their domestic unhappiness was aggravated by the fact that, across the country, an increasing number of troublemakers were being uncovered. Yet, despite the best efforts of the police, they were not being captured. Of course, the tsar’s family did not hear anything about the little-known socialist named Vladimir Ulyanov, who was writing malicious tracts under the pseudonym of Lenin. But he, of course, heard plenty about them and, preparing to bring in the New Year in the company of other political emigrants, dreamed of the day when he would be able to deal with his hated Romanovs.

No one in this huge and strange empire – not the intellectuals or the gendarmes, not the peasants or the gold barons, not the soldiers or the university professors – could have foreseen the abyss which would soon swallow them up and corrode their lives. For now, they more or less unsuspectingly readied for the coming holidays, hoping that 1905 would bring a change for the better. At the end of December, certainly, no particular improvements were apparent.

Russia had been fighting with Japan for nearly a year. Just recently, in December, the main base for Russian troops in Manchuria – the fortress at Port Arthur, which for many months had heroically fought off the Japanese – was surrendered to the enemy. Thousands of Russian and Japanese lives were lost at Port Arthur, and not just simple soldiers, but commanders as well. Vice Admiral Stepan Makarov died in March, when his ship hit a mine just as it was leaving the harbor. The main architect of the defense of Port Arthur, General Roman Kondratenko, was also felled, as was the superb artist Vasily Vereshchagin, who had ventured to the war in order to recreate it on his canvases. It turned out that all these deaths were in vain. Port Arthur was lost, and the war continued.

The papers transmitted colorful reports from the front. While there were no large battles during the winter, reports of losses arrived almost daily. What is more, in the final days of December, the Japanese began transferring arms and munitions to Port Arthur. Needless to say, this news did not fuel optimism for the coming year. One Japanese city did allocate several thousand yen for the upkeep of Russian prisoners, but this report, of course, did not evoke happiness. General Anatoly Stoessel, the commandant of Port Arthur, was still known in the papers as “the hero of Port Arthur, the soul of its defense, the leader of the brilliantly courageous troops, a man, whom, for these eight months, amazed an applauding world.” For the public, however, it was increasingly unclear why this hero, despite the presence of “brilliantly courageous troops,” and huge reserves, nonetheless lost the fortress. In just a short while, it turned out, Stoessel would be brought up on charges of state treason. But for now, despite rumors and gossip, there were no official statements.

The flotilla under the command of Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky had left Kronshtadt a few months previous and slowly but surely was making its way around Europe and Africa, hoping to reach Japan by the spring and strike a crippling blow. This particular military plan was criticized on many fronts, but the decision was nonetheless taken to send the ships, in order, with this unexpected maneuver, to bring about a swift end to the war. Meanwhile, the sailors prepared for the New Year’s holidays.

It was not an easy journey and there had already been a diplomatic scandal, when Russian ships fired on some foreign fishing vessels, having concluded that they were about to attack. But now they were far from snow-laden Russia and heading into warmer waters. Little could they expect that a horrific defeat and almost complete annihilation awaited them in May at the Straits of Tsushima. Few of those who greeted the New Year aboard the flotilla, including Rozhestvensky, would ever see their homeland again.

Everywhere in Russia they were selling maps of military operations, in order that everyone could understand where this strange Manchuria was. Those who wanted to help the families of soldiers could purchase “artistic postcards of the Red Cross,” what today we might call congratulatory cards. In the capital, there was an endless chain of humanitarian activities. Grand Duchess Yelizaveta Fyodorovna, who was tireless in her charity work, was the patron of one of the many blood donation depots for soldiers – located in none other than the Great Kremlin Palace itself. Blood donations flowed like a river.

For his part, Sergei Alexandrovich, the Grand Duke and Governor General of Moscow, and Yelizaveta Fyodorovna’s spouse, was more interested in the struggle against political troublemakers and in other diversions not in keeping with his marital status. However, he of course could not but encourage his wife’s humanitarian efforts. The relative success of this less than happy marriage would not continue much longer. Just a little more than a month into the New Year, Sergei Alexandrovich would perish from a bomb thrown by the terrorist Ivan Kalyayev. Yet Sergei Alexandrovich’s widow was somehow strong enough to forgive the murderer, and even to visit him in prison prior to his execution. Yelizaveta, a future saint of the Orthodox Church, would die her martyr’s death in 1918. Together with other members of the imperial family, she was shot and thrown into a Siberian mine where, apparently, she survived for a few days, trying to ease the suffering of the other wounded souls.

But at this time, of course, neither husband or wife knew of their future fate. But then who could have known what was ahead? The aridly severe Sergei Alexandrovich knew that revolutionaries were hunting him, and Yelizaveta Fyodorovna was, with each passing year, becoming increasingly occupied in prayer and mysticism, exceeding even her sister – the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna – in this regard.

The pre-holiday period is an especially favorable time for charity work, since it can be combined with entertainment. On January 1, 2005, a benefit concert for Yelizaveta Fyodorovna’s blood bank was held in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. Petersburg was not left behind, however, holding a “patriotic exhibition, connected with military events in the Far East.” On December 22-23, just before Christmas, there was to be a “grandiose, popular bazaar in the halls of the Noble Assembly.” Some 50 benefit organizations took part, offering goods from Paris and London, Christmas toys, games and lotteries and, of course, buffets and kiosks with champagne – with music provided by military orchestras.

In Moscow, the Arbat Theater on Povarskaya ulitsa held benefit events, putting on plays with superbly appropriate names: “The Happy Month of May,” “Criminal Mother,” and “Kiss Me Dear.” These were followed by dances until 3 am. All the monies from tickets were donated to help wounded soldiers.

The war was going on and on, and gradually became more or less “normal.” And yet, Christmas and New Year’s always give the impression of a holiday, of joy. At the end of 1904, just as now, regardless of everything, people wanted to be happy and celebrate. Streets in the big cities were brightly illuminated – gaslights were decorated with illuminati configured like stars or crowns, or simply with candles. The dark of winter was illuminated by a multitude of large and small fires.

Winter’s parade of troikas began. For aficionados, there were whirlwind rides down city streets, preferably with a rosy-cheeked beauty beside you, seductively muffled in furs – for this, it is never too cold. The place you rented a troika in St. Petersburg was the Ciniselli Circus. Here, lovers of lively entertainment were engulfed in a fantastic Russian fairy tale. Coachmen waited alongside the circus building, dressed in Russian caftans and wearing shapkas with peacock feathers. Sleds were decorated and painted “in the Russian style”; horse harnesses were covered with decorative silver and, of course, their dashing about was accompanied by the sound of little bells. So that passengers did not freeze, the insides of the sleds were lined with carpets. These wonderful contraptions rushed about the city streets, voicing songs and the tinkling of bells, heading to some suburban restaurant or other where gypsies entertained.

Of course, far from all Russians were able to partake of such amusements. Simpler folk had their own way of preparing for the holidays. For one, trade increased. Hostesses began to prepare for the holiday table which, according to tradition, should overflow with abundance, in order to guarantee prosperity throughout the coming year. In Petersburg, crowds packed the largest dockside warehouses, which, for some reason, were called “brawls” (buyany). The Herring Brawl and Butter Brawl were both especially popular. Herring was unloaded from huge barrels into the boxes of peddlers, who then launched themselves into the city to ply their goods. At the Butter Brawl, despite the warehouse’s name, a brisk trade was done in barrels of cognac. However, not all of the contents of the barrels made it to holiday tables – there were clever craftsmen who would drill holes in the barrels such that barrels sometimes lost as much as half their contents between the warehouse and the storefront.

At this time of year, there was energetic trade in every city center. The New Year’s feast traditionally included pork. Pigs are an animal associated with fertility and growth, so they provided not only a tasty meal, but also one that portended of future riches. The feast included pies (pirogi) as well. In fact, in those families where village customs still held sway, the host gave the appearance of hiding behind the pies, then asked his wife if she could see him. She answered that she could not, because the “ears” were too high. This obviously superstitious exchange was intended to guarantee a good crop in the coming year.

Of course, Christmas was, at that time, a much more important holiday than New Year’s, and people prepared much more for it. In Moscow, on the morning of December 25, festive services were accompanied by a cannon salvo, but on January 1 there were no cannons. Yet New Year’s was nonetheless a holiday, and all civil servants were required to wear their holiday dress uniforms.

And then there were the presents associated with Christmas and New Year’s and offered by merchants everywhere, for every taste. You could purchase musical instruments for your wife or children – guitars, Viennese accordions or simfonions. You could bring your beloved “Snow Lilies” perfume in order to correspond with the season. Or, on the other hand, you could purchase “Breath of Semiramid’s Garden.” And, of course, you could buy Christmas tree decorations anywhere – winged angels, gilded nuts and apples, candles... In short, everything that turned the holidays into a fairy tale, then as now.

Obviously, holidays were a time of vacation for students, and rest for their parents. The doors of theater, concert and exhibition halls were thrown open. The pre-New Year’s schedule in 1904 was very familiar:  Traviata, Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty played at the Bolshoi Theater. At the Maly, as always, was Ostrovsky’s Sheep and Wolves. In St. Petersburg, at the Mariinsky, Traviata was also on the schedule. Then, on the 2nd of January, after the artists had had time to rest from the holidays, they performed Wagner’s Tannhäuser. Apparently, at that time, the Mariinsky was less conservative than the Bolshoi.

There were also simpler diversions. In Moscow, just before the holidays, a new aquarium was opened, consisting of 27 smaller aquaria. The scope of this enterprise was possible due to the patronage of Count Orlov-Davydov, who devoted eight thousand rubles to the project – a huge sum at that time. Twelve of the aquaria housed exotic fish and 15 others, placed closer to windows, where it was colder, were home for Russian fish, who were more accustomed to the local climate.

For those not interested in the calmer, more educational amusements, there were always public gatherings at the Manezh. They took place twice daily during the holidays: from noon until 5 pm, and from 7 pm until 2 am. Apparently, there were plenty of people interested in celebrating. Consider the painfully alluring program: the opera Askold’s Grave, performances of Gypsy, Russian, Ukrainian and international choirs, presentation of living bas-reliefs, performances of dancers, jugglers and acrobats, the couplet-poets Mr. and Mrs. Shukhman, African plays, Chinese magicians, the musical clowns Bim and Bom, balalaika virtuosos, an American carousel (whether this was the same as the advertised  “American slides,” we don’t know), lotteries and feasts.

Serious people could skip going to see Bim and Bom or hearing the couplets of Shukhmans. They could instead take part, for example, in the activities of the Imperial Moscow Society of Nature Lovers. Their agenda had an important item: constructing tubers of saffron.

One can imagine how the public thronged to such a fascinating session. On the other hand, who knows? But at least nature lovers gathered a few days prior to the holidays. The Fifth All-Russian Congress of Surgeons, on the other hand, met in Moscow on the 31st of December and wound up their meeting only at midnight that day. Apparently, the surgeons were not in a hurry to get home to ring in the New Year.

So that is how December was – cold and snowy, full of news from the front and announcements of new and still newer events and amusements, a time when great works of culture were being created alongside the commission of great acts of villainy. And to everyone it seemed that this is how time would rush forward, mining coal and gold, harvesting grain, building homes... Someday, the war would end and life would take a turn for the better; the emperor would hand down some reforms, or perhaps even a constitution; everything would be fine.

Someone put an announcement in the newspaper, seeking “an intelligent woman with 8-10 thousand rubles in capital,” to become the publisher of a respectable journal, which promises a good income. Why a woman, in particular? Perhaps the author of the ad thought that it would be easier to deceive a woman? In neighboring ads, a gardener with 17 years experience and excellent recommendations seeks work, while someone else offers subscriptions to the children’s journal Igrushechka (“Little Toy”). And a Mr. Velitsyn is thinking, thinking hard in fact, about how to make life more just. He has published “The Triumph of Socialism,” dedicated to all Russian socialists and offers it for sale for one ruble.

All of them – the schemer looking for “an intelligent woman,” the experienced gardener, the publisher of Igrushechka, and Mr. Velitsyn – were seeking a long and happy life. If someone was not certain of the possibility for a quiet life in this snow-filled country, then he could turn to the Russia Insurance Company, which would insure “a trousseau for girls and a stipend for boys, capital for old age and, in the event of death, stipends and pensions for spouses.” In 1904, some 81,142 persons insured their futures with this famous insurance company, and, in the coming year, RIC hoped to further increase the number of persons who felt more secure about their futures.

Yet the future was already closing in. It was less than a month before demonstrators in St. Petersburg would attempt to petition the tsar, only to be met by troops, gunfire and streams of blood. All of Russia would be covered with barricades. The revolution would begin. The bomb thrown by the Socialist Revolutionary Kalyayev would tear Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich to pieces; the Battleship Potemkin would revolt for God only knows what reason; factories and railways would go on strike; there would be shooting in Moscow’s streets. General Rozhestvensky’s flotilla would reach the Japanese island of Tsushima in May, heading from there directly to the bottom of the sea. The poets would continue to write their fine verses. Painters would create their canvases, on which masquerades at Versailles would alternate with mysterious Russian landscapes or tall ships from the time of Peter the Great.

And the blizzards and storms would gather greater and greater force, and, before we knew it, a shot would ring out at Sarayevo and the First World War would begin. The Russian tsar would thrice sign a decree on general mobilization, only to twice rescind it, unable to decide whether to begin the war...

The blizzard, in the end, would become bloody, sweeping away the tsar, along with his hemophilic heir, his wife and daughters, as well as, surely, the publisher of Igrushechka, Mr. Velitsyn, who dreamed of the triumph of socialism, the experienced gardener with 17 years’ experience, the coupletists Shukhman, and the Grand Duchess Yelizaveta Fyodorovna. And, in a few years at the Lubyanka, in the building of the Russia Insurance Company, which had sought to guarantee everyone a peaceful and secure old age, they would install the NKVD. In the basements of this horrific prison, they would torture and kill countless souls. Those with a dark sense of humor would say that once this building had housed “RosInsure,” before “RosHorror” took over.

But for now no one knew what was to come. In the courtyard, it was December 1904. The New Year would be here soon, and it was time to buy presents.  RL