On January 1, 1914, a St. Petersburg newspaper, congratulating its readers on the New Year, wrote:
Let boredom vanish, let storms and anxieties pass – The best will rise, the miracle will be born; Let all joy, bliss and wonder rule to your utter delight The even-numbered new year, welcome by all!
Let boredom vanish, let storms and anxieties pass –
The best will rise, the miracle will be born;
Let all joy, bliss and wonder rule to your utter delight
The even-numbered new year, welcome by all!
Seasonal greetings never really come true, but the author of that poem was right in one point at least – the year 1914 would not give Russians much chance to be bored, although nobody suspected it in the first days of January, which were filled with great hopes and expectation, of skiing and figure skating, of glittering lights, of sweets and golden nuts from the Christmas tree...
To begin the chronicle of that year (1914) from the beginning, we must start in Levashovo, where our family decamped for the fourth year in a row to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s at the well-appointed dacha and the spacious gardens of our in-laws, the Altukhovs. There, time was spent mostly sledding or taking long walks; the groundskeeper also took us on sleigh rides to the nearby snow-covered forests – mostly pine and decidedly Finnish-looking.[1] We returned to the city after the Feast of the Baptism [January 7, old style]; everyone naturally took up their usual occupations. Grandmother and mother worked at the gymnasium; father did his work in his study, and taught at the University and at the Bestuzhev Courses. Volodya, who was about to turn 11, was enrolled at the recently founded Shidlovskaya’s Gymnasium; my little sister Marusia and I went to the sixth floor of our building, where she attended kindergarten and I was in the middle prep-grade for school. As the old custom commanded, Sundays and holidays were spent as a family: we went to the Summer Garden, which was quite far from us and whose irresistible attraction to kids was the Krylov Monument surrounded by whimsical statuary of the animals that populated his tales. We took trips out of town as well – to the same Levashovo sometimes, or to Tsarkoye Selo... The adults of our family were devoted to theater, and especially favored the Mariinsky, where grandma held season tickets to the 19th loge in the first tier. Friends of the family often made use of the pass as well, up to the point where we’d have seven people packed into the box and father scouting for extra chairs in the parterre boxes. He favored Wagner’s operas that ruled the Mariinsky – as well as many other European stages – in the pre-war years... At the Hermitage Museum, the outstanding attraction of early 1914 was the just-acquired Madonna and Child with Flowers, by da Vinci, which was displayed with a typewritten interpretive note. When we went to see the painting, a lady who came with us spent a significant amount of time bemoaning the ignorance of the museum administration, who dared attribute this “village girl” to the great master’s brush… Boris Lossky, Our Family in the Stormy Years
To begin the chronicle of that year (1914) from the beginning, we must start in Levashovo, where our family decamped for the fourth year in a row to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s at the well-appointed dacha and the spacious gardens of our in-laws, the Altukhovs. There, time was spent mostly sledding or taking long walks; the groundskeeper also took us on sleigh rides to the nearby snow-covered forests – mostly pine and decidedly Finnish-looking.[1]
We returned to the city after the Feast of the Baptism [January 7, old style]; everyone naturally took up their usual occupations. Grandmother and mother worked at the gymnasium; father did his work in his study, and taught at the University and at the Bestuzhev Courses. Volodya, who was about to turn 11, was enrolled at the recently founded Shidlovskaya’s Gymnasium; my little sister Marusia and I went to the sixth floor of our building, where she attended kindergarten and I was in the middle prep-grade for school.
As the old custom commanded, Sundays and holidays were spent as a family: we went to the Summer Garden, which was quite far from us and whose irresistible attraction to kids was the Krylov Monument surrounded by whimsical statuary of the animals that populated his tales. We took trips out of town as well – to the same Levashovo sometimes, or to Tsarkoye Selo...
The adults of our family were devoted to theater, and especially favored the Mariinsky, where grandma held season tickets to the 19th loge in the first tier. Friends of the family often made use of the pass as well, up to the point where we’d have seven people packed into the box and father scouting for extra chairs in the parterre boxes. He favored Wagner’s operas that ruled the Mariinsky – as well as many other European stages – in the pre-war years...
At the Hermitage Museum, the outstanding attraction of early 1914 was the just-acquired Madonna and Child with Flowers, by da Vinci, which was displayed with a typewritten interpretive note. When we went to see the painting, a lady who came with us spent a significant amount of time bemoaning the ignorance of the museum administration, who dared attribute this “village girl” to the great master’s brush…
Boris Lossky, Our Family in the Stormy Years
The first of April in 1914 was April Fool’s Day in Russia as elsewhere. Confectionary shops sold special boxes of chocolates filled with salt, pepper, mustard, matches and coal, while newspapers were writing about signals received from Mars, and the idea of war was treated like a joke:
On the first of April, father, who enjoyed making us believe various false and sensational news he pretended to have read in his paper, announced over the morning coffee and the day’s edition of Speech, “The German fleet is closing in on Kronshtadt!”
The “most pressing questions of Lent” that filled newspapers in the spring of 1914 were: Where to find a dacha? Whether to go for vacations in Crimea or to save money and go abroad? How to get a season ticket to the opera?
Such peaceful questions in the final months before the war, so worldly for the season of Lent. Many Russians rigorously followed the strictures of Lent for the entire seven weeks; others just for the last week, in order that they might have reason to celebrate the end of Lent and indulge in the pleasures of Easter delicacies:
After Palm Sunday, people would pull out of storage the wooden paskha molds, used to bake the special Easter bread once a year, with the crosses and letters XB[2] carved out; bought little packets of dye for the eggs – purple, yellow, cornflower-blue, red, and “marble”; went shopping to the housewares stores of Mr. Mishin and Mr. Kuznetsov for the small pink, blue or white china lanterns they would use to carry the holy fire home from church on Thursday; they went to Vespers on Good Friday; on Saturday morning began bringing their paskhas on platters to church to be blessed, and at night – dressed in their new and best outfits, curled, perfumed, clean-shaven and festive – went to the midnight service and broke fast late at night at the Easter table that they had spent the week preparing. Those who didn’t bake their own curdled cheese paskha or kulich at home ordered them at Einem’s, Abrikosov’s, or Tramblé’s; chocolate ones could be had from Kraft’s. To order the Easter baked goods at Filipov’s would have been the same as if a lady of good taste suddenly chose to acquire a ready-made hat at Muir & Mirrielees’. Filipov’s was for “the simpler public,” and the wealthier folk only ordered babas there – tall breads, a foot or taller, with the Easter lamb ensconced in green sugar grass under a tiny pink or blue silk pennant on a gold flagstaff atop a glazed, marzipan-studded dome. Shop windows were adorned with garlands and mounds of Easter eggs – chocolate, sugar, cardboard and wooden, velvet and satin, glass, and jeweled ones of gold, silver, and precious stones. The country’s best goldsmiths spent months laboring on the elaborate egg destined to be the Tsar’s Easter present to the Tsarina. The year the war began, the Tsar’s egg was made of platinum and represented a cannon-ball placed on a platform adorned with suitably military accessories... After Easter, the season of weddings began – the happy springtime known as “Krasnaya Gorka” – when the Lenten prohibition on celebrations was lifted. It was a fashion to hire the white-and-pink, satin-padded carriage from Yechkin’s for the couple’s ride from church, and the usual black carriages for guests and for the ride to church. The groom would order a large, lace-trimmed bouquet of fresh white flowers for the bride. Wax orange blossoms were de rigeur for the couple, the best man and the maid of honor, as was a length of pink satin onto which the couple would step during the ceremony (it was believed that the one who put his foot down first on this piece of fabric spread before the altar would henceforth rule the family). The reception, if it was not held at home, would require the rental of a ballroom, with an orchestra for dancing, and dinner for about 100 guests at the cost of 10, 15, and sometimes even 25 rubles per person. It was common to throw a party at Count Volkonsky’s townhouse – the Count was impoverished and rented out the property readily. It was also the time for “bargain days”… Every haberdashery, perfumery, shoe store, office supply store, bookstore, houseware store and Moscow’s other various and sundry establishments launched their “bargains,” selling goods at (allegedly) significant discounts. Shelves were suddenly packed with all the rejects, spoilage and back-stock, everything that was mildewed, faded from being in the window too long, no-longer fashionable, defective or simply not sold during the fall and winter, mixed with new goods that were supposedly also sold at a bargain price. Ladies with a crazed look in their eyes, disoriented by this bounty, their hats knocked askew, their polished feminine presentations endangered, dashed from store to store snatching and buying absolute trash displayed under bright seductive labels: “Price 2 rubles 40 kopeks, regular – 11 rubles!” Ilya Shneider, Notes of an Old Muscovite
After Palm Sunday, people would pull out of storage the wooden paskha molds, used to bake the special Easter bread once a year, with the crosses and letters XB[2] carved out; bought little packets of dye for the eggs – purple, yellow, cornflower-blue, red, and “marble”; went shopping to the housewares stores of Mr. Mishin and Mr. Kuznetsov for the small pink, blue or white china lanterns they would use to carry the holy fire home from church on Thursday; they went to Vespers on Good Friday; on Saturday morning began bringing their paskhas on platters to church to be blessed, and at night – dressed in their new and best outfits, curled, perfumed, clean-shaven and festive – went to the midnight service and broke fast late at night at the Easter table that they had spent the week preparing.
Those who didn’t bake their own curdled cheese paskha or kulich at home ordered them at Einem’s, Abrikosov’s, or Tramblé’s; chocolate ones could be had from Kraft’s. To order the Easter baked goods at Filipov’s would have been the same as if a lady of good taste suddenly chose to acquire a ready-made hat at Muir & Mirrielees’. Filipov’s was for “the simpler public,” and the wealthier folk only ordered babas there – tall breads, a foot or taller, with the Easter lamb ensconced in green sugar grass under a tiny pink or blue silk pennant on a gold flagstaff atop a glazed, marzipan-studded dome.
Shop windows were adorned with garlands and mounds of Easter eggs – chocolate, sugar, cardboard and wooden, velvet and satin, glass, and jeweled ones of gold, silver, and precious stones. The country’s best goldsmiths spent months laboring on the elaborate egg destined to be the Tsar’s Easter present to the Tsarina. The year the war began, the Tsar’s egg was made of platinum and represented a cannon-ball placed on a platform adorned with suitably military accessories...
After Easter, the season of weddings began – the happy springtime known as “Krasnaya Gorka” – when the Lenten prohibition on celebrations was lifted. It was a fashion to hire the white-and-pink, satin-padded carriage from Yechkin’s for the couple’s ride from church, and the usual black carriages for guests and for the ride to church. The groom would order a large, lace-trimmed bouquet of fresh white flowers for the bride.
Wax orange blossoms were de rigeur for the couple, the best man and the maid of honor, as was a length of pink satin onto which the couple would step during the ceremony (it was believed that the one who put his foot down first on this piece of fabric spread before the altar would henceforth rule the family).
The reception, if it was not held at home, would require the rental of a ballroom, with an orchestra for dancing, and dinner for about 100 guests at the cost of 10, 15, and sometimes even 25 rubles per person. It was common to throw a party at Count Volkonsky’s townhouse – the Count was impoverished and rented out the property readily.
It was also the time for “bargain days”… Every haberdashery, perfumery, shoe store, office supply store, bookstore, houseware store and Moscow’s other various and sundry establishments launched their “bargains,” selling goods at (allegedly) significant discounts. Shelves were suddenly packed with all the rejects, spoilage and back-stock, everything that was mildewed, faded from being in the window too long, no-longer fashionable, defective or simply not sold during the fall and winter, mixed with new goods that were supposedly also sold at a bargain price. Ladies with a crazed look in their eyes, disoriented by this bounty, their hats knocked askew, their polished feminine presentations endangered, dashed from store to store snatching and buying absolute trash displayed under bright seductive labels: “Price 2 rubles 40 kopeks, regular – 11 rubles!”
Ilya Shneider, Notes of an Old Muscovite
The summer of 1914 was unusually hot. Even in St. Petersburg, always perceived as a wet, cold and gloomy city, the weather was surprisingly sunny and dry, and the thermometer reached almost 100º F, causing residents to wonder if they were living in St. Petersburg or Cairo. This heat and drought combined with forest fires to transform the air into smog; the public’s singular dream and concern seemed to be how to escape the incandescent cities:
Thoughts Penned During a Heat Wave Mosquitos in cahoots with flies eat us alive; blood barely drips. Old-timers fail to call to mind heat waves like these. There’s no more waiting for sun to peek between the blinds, no yearning, no – it’s over eighty if one hides in the shade, and hits a hundred in the sun. I’ve seen it all. What good is scandal? What’s an Albanian prince to me, Essad Pasha or Mallisories? Trust me, I couldn’t care less for Balkan peace when I am sweating! Cold soup is worth a lot to me – Half a kingdom’s lands for just a plate! The forests burn and so does peat, but yet again I do not care: the plagues and torments of this summer are many and beyond compare. The headlines bore me to tears, annoy, sometimes, but fail to rouse -- I’m stewed alive, in my own juice, as I pass hours in my hammock. St. Petersburg Leaflet, June 28, 1914[3]
Thoughts Penned During a Heat Wave
Mosquitos in cahoots with flies
eat us alive; blood barely drips.
Old-timers fail to call to mind
heat waves like these. There’s no more waiting
for sun to peek between the blinds,
no yearning, no – it’s over eighty
if one hides in the shade, and hits
a hundred in the sun.
I’ve seen it all. What good is scandal?
What’s an Albanian prince to me,
Essad Pasha or Mallisories?
Trust me, I couldn’t care less
for Balkan peace when I am sweating!
Cold soup is worth a lot to me –
Half a kingdom’s lands for just a plate!
The forests burn and so does peat,
but yet again I do not care:
the plagues and torments of this summer
are many and beyond compare.
The headlines bore me to tears,
annoy, sometimes, but fail to rouse --
I’m stewed alive, in my own juice,
as I pass hours in my hammock.
St. Petersburg Leaflet, June 28, 1914[3]
A religious procession, praying for rain, July 6, 1914.
In Moscow, the bright sunny days of June were shadowed by a bakery strike, when for many days bread was in short supply. But inventive housewives found a solution: they baked cakes! How luxurious this would seem in the years of hunger and devastation that were just around the corner...
In St. Petersburg the situation was more serious: more than 100 thousand workers were on strike. Despite this turn of events, which in hindsight seems so significant, in 1914 it was only socialists who seriously would have believed that similar strikes in three-years’ time would bring the 300-year-old edifice of Romanov rule crashing down.
Those who could fled the city heat and stuffiness to their country houses, berry baskets, summer parties, picnics, hikes and rivers. The two most popular sports that summer were tennis for the wealthy and football [soccer] for simpler folk:
That was the last summer I spent in Glubokoye with family. As always, we went there in May; the weather that year was magnificent. Also as usual, Glubokoye was packed with people. My grandmother finally received from the Department of Archaeology a permit to begin excavations at Stone Lake, and expected an archaeology expert to arrive from Pskov in June... We were still in Glubokoye when the news that Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand and his wife had been killed reached us. I remember everyone thought it was very sad, as one does when one hears of a murder... Nonetheless, no one could conceive back then that the event would ultimately lead to war... The crowd in Glubokoye had its own concerns, far removed from the events in Sarajevo: because of the drought, forests were burning. The sun was shrouded in a veil of smoke from morning till night, a red orb... You could smell the burning; the smell was blown in from the forest fires, about forty versts[4] from Glubokoye, and probably from the marshes as well. Fire was a relentless scourge in the summer of 1914. Above, a newspaper cover image titled “Red Roosters” illustrates the devastation of the fires in villages. Suddenly, the forests around the Veliye Lake caught fire, right across the highway, and, even closer, a farmer’s plot went up, not six versts from us. A caravan of wagons pulled out of Glubokoye—men stopped trying to put out the bog fires (the bog could burn for a year or longer, but it wouldn’t do much damage) and hurried to help save the forest. Whenever there was a fire, there was no shortage of manpower; everyone came together, men drove in from 15-20 versts away, no matter whose plot was in danger. With enough expertise, you could direct a fire to a lake or a river, plow a land-strip around it, or set a counter-flame in the undergrowth against it… My father’s birthday, July 15, was always celebrated with a ball at our Khmelita estate. Neighbors and friends would arrive the day before from far and wide. The house would be full, and if we ran out of rooms, guests were put up at the Lykoshins in Grigoryevskoye. Our immediate neighbors just came straight to the ball – these were families who lived within the 40-verst radius of Khmelita. This year, the house was packed full. July was the month when the military folks got leave from their stations, and that’s why we had plenty of military school students (junkers) and junior officers. Our local young ladies dressed in their best gowns with the aim of capturing the imaginations of potential husbands. But people also brought tennis rackets, white linen dresses, and soft-soled shoes. To us, at the time, the guests all seemed “old” – like the 52-year-old General Mezentsev and the 55-year-old fat lady Begicheva from the Dorogobuzh estate. We were astonished to see Mezentsev play tennis instead of hobbling around with a cane, as befitted (in our minds) a decorated general… The weather was wonderful, and it was strange to see the artillery officers in their dark-green uniforms. I have no idea if the adults talked about the possibility of war; I doubt it, judging from everyone’s gaiety. I was not allowed to attend the ball, of course, but I know it must have lasted until early morning. Only a few young people came to the early breakfast. My older sister came down with her hand bandaged. It appeared that she sustained a scrape from the spur of Imperial Guard Uhlan Drashusov when they danced the mazurka. By eleven, there were several tennis matches in progress. Usually, the celebrations lasted for two or three days, but soon after the breakfast the phone rang. I remember to this day how puzzled everyone was. Colonel Zayonchkovsky gathered his officers and took them into father’s study. They must have ordered their carriages right away, because they began lining up at the door almost instantly. No one expected them to be leaving already, but the phone kept ringing, and messengers from the post office brought telegrams for various people. By around one, not waiting to be served lunch, all the officers started to leave. My father departed as well. I heard someone say something about mobilization. Nikolai Volkov-Muromcev, My Youth from Vyazma to Feodosia (1902-1920)
That was the last summer I spent in Glubokoye with family. As always, we went there in May; the weather that year was magnificent. Also as usual, Glubokoye was packed with people. My grandmother finally received from the Department of Archaeology a permit to begin excavations at Stone Lake, and expected an archaeology expert to arrive from Pskov in June...
We were still in Glubokoye when the news that Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand and his wife had been killed reached us. I remember everyone thought it was very sad, as one does when one hears of a murder... Nonetheless, no one could conceive back then that the event would ultimately lead to war...
The crowd in Glubokoye had its own concerns, far removed from the events in Sarajevo: because of the drought, forests were burning. The sun was shrouded in a veil of smoke from morning till night, a red orb... You could smell the burning; the smell was blown in from the forest fires, about forty versts[4] from Glubokoye, and probably from the marshes as well.
Fire was a relentless scourge in the summer of 1914. Above, a newspaper cover image titled “Red Roosters” illustrates the devastation of the fires in villages.
Suddenly, the forests around the Veliye Lake caught fire, right across the highway, and, even closer, a farmer’s plot went up, not six versts from us. A caravan of wagons pulled out of Glubokoye—men stopped trying to put out the bog fires (the bog could burn for a year or longer, but it wouldn’t do much damage) and hurried to help save the forest. Whenever there was a fire, there was no shortage of manpower; everyone came together, men drove in from 15-20 versts away, no matter whose plot was in danger. With enough expertise, you could direct a fire to a lake or a river, plow a land-strip around it, or set a counter-flame in the undergrowth against it…
My father’s birthday, July 15, was always celebrated with a ball at our Khmelita estate. Neighbors and friends would arrive the day before from far and wide. The house would be full, and if we ran out of rooms, guests were put up at the Lykoshins in Grigoryevskoye. Our immediate neighbors just came straight to the ball – these were families who lived within the 40-verst radius of Khmelita. This year, the house was packed full. July was the month when the military folks got leave from their stations, and that’s why we had plenty of military school students (junkers) and junior officers. Our local young ladies dressed in their best gowns with the aim of capturing the imaginations of potential husbands. But people also brought tennis rackets, white linen dresses, and soft-soled shoes. To us, at the time, the guests all seemed “old” – like the 52-year-old General Mezentsev and the 55-year-old fat lady Begicheva from the Dorogobuzh estate. We were astonished to see Mezentsev play tennis instead of hobbling around with a cane, as befitted (in our minds) a decorated general…
The weather was wonderful, and it was strange to see the artillery officers in their dark-green uniforms. I have no idea if the adults talked about the possibility of war; I doubt it, judging from everyone’s gaiety. I was not allowed to attend the ball, of course, but I know it must have lasted until early morning. Only a few young people came to the early breakfast. My older sister came down with her hand bandaged. It appeared that she sustained a scrape from the spur of Imperial Guard Uhlan Drashusov when they danced the mazurka. By eleven, there were several tennis matches in progress.
Usually, the celebrations lasted for two or three days, but soon after the breakfast the phone rang. I remember to this day how puzzled everyone was. Colonel Zayonchkovsky gathered his officers and took them into father’s study. They must have ordered their carriages right away, because they began lining up at the door almost instantly. No one expected them to be leaving already, but the phone kept ringing, and messengers from the post office brought telegrams for various people. By around one, not waiting to be served lunch, all the officers started to leave. My father departed as well. I heard someone say something about mobilization.
Nikolai Volkov-Muromcev, My Youth from Vyazma to Feodosia (1902-1920)
A humorous take from a summer paper on the effects of the heat wave. Numbered illustrations: 1. All humble themselves before the botvinya (a cold kvas soup). 2. “Mama, does the horse also go into hysterics when it wants a new hat?” 3. All the cold drinks are sold out! 4. Fu! Even in the water, one risks boiling in one’s shell (v smyatku). 5. A large refuge from the heat... and from dacha guests.
Although the possibility of war was widely discussed in the press throughout the summer, no one seemed to think that it would come to pass. The emperor’s family was spending the summer peacefully in Crimea, the widowed empress Maria Fyodorovna was traveling in Britain, France, Germany and Denmark, and General Alexei Brusilov, the future leader of the Russia’s most successful offensive in the war, in June 1914 vacationed at the German resort in Bad Kissingen. Pompous celebrations surrounding the visits of French and British delegations to St. Petersburg were just a part of the urban performance; it was difficult to believe that the days of peace, abundance, and Empire were coming to an end.
On the morning of July 19, 1914, I left my home in Trubnikov Alley and walked to the Nikitsky Gate; at the corner, I bought the day’s newspapers. As soon as I unfolded The Russian Word, I saw at the top of the page two menacing black headlines stretching from edge to edge: Russia Declares War on Austro-Hungary Germany Declares War on Russia The streets were filled with untroubled calm. The general mobilization had been announced five days earlier, but everyone thought it a sufficiently impressive demarche to Austria… The sun was shining, the hot smell of freshly baked bread wafted from the bakeries; small, black-clad old ladies gingerly carried atop white handkerchiefs tiny prosphora[5] that they had received from the grated window of Nikitsky Monastery. The dirty windows of the tall grey building at the end of Tverskoy Boulevard seemed to stare dumbly at the clean windows of the pharmacy across the street; a purple-faced woman gazed sadly from the poster on the wall of the Union cinema, advertising the action film, The Wondrous Music of Sad Chords. Ilya Shneider, Notes of an Old Muscovite
On the morning of July 19, 1914, I left my home in Trubnikov Alley and walked to the Nikitsky Gate; at the corner, I bought the day’s newspapers. As soon as I unfolded The Russian Word, I saw at the top of the page two menacing black headlines stretching from edge to edge:
Russia Declares War on Austro-Hungary
Germany Declares War on Russia
The streets were filled with untroubled calm. The general mobilization had been announced five days earlier, but everyone thought it a sufficiently impressive demarche to Austria…
The sun was shining, the hot smell of freshly baked bread wafted from the bakeries; small, black-clad old ladies gingerly carried atop white handkerchiefs tiny prosphora[5] that they had received from the grated window of Nikitsky Monastery. The dirty windows of the tall grey building at the end of Tverskoy Boulevard seemed to stare dumbly at the clean windows of the pharmacy across the street; a purple-faced woman gazed sadly from the poster on the wall of the Union cinema, advertising the action film, The Wondrous Music of Sad Chords.
NOTES
1. Levashovo was then on the border with Finland.
2. Signifying “Christ is Risen” in Russian: Христос Воскрес.
3. Dates throughout this article use the Julian calendar, in effect in Russia until 1918. Western countries used the Gregorian calendar, resulting in a 12-day difference in dates. Thus, for the West, the war began July 28, for Russia it was July 16, with formal declarations of war a few days later.
4. Approximately 25 miles; 1 verst equals roughly 2/3 of a mile.
5. A prosphoron is a small loaf of leavened bread used in Orthodox Christian and Greek Catholic (Byzantine) liturgies.
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