Every language has untranslatable words that the whole world associates only with that language, with all the things that makes that language what it is. For Russian, one of those words is “troika.” Ask a foreigner about it and you will get a sheepish “Oh, yes!” as he vaguely imagines Russia’s wide open spaces and a kibitka bouncing over a rutted road, pulled by three horses harnessed abreast and driven by a coachman decked out in “a beard, mittens, and devil knows what he sits on; but when he stands up, waves, and strikes up a song—the steeds go like the wind, the spokes of the wheels blend to a smooth disc, the road simply shudders, and the passerby stops and cries out in fright – there she goes racing, racing, racing!...”1
In all fairness, though, the associations you would hear from our thoroughly motorized compatriots are not a whole lot broader. The first thing that a relative sophisticate will think of is the old folk song, “Here comes the mail troika, tearing along. . .” And there is plenty of truth in that, the truth of Rus, a troika, and a coachman, all flying off into the inscrutable distance. These are Russian national symbols, and they come as a package deal or not at all.
“A letter gets nowhere all by itself, but drop it in a box and it goes winging and running and swimming, over the hills and far away.” Well, yes and no, Samuil Marshak. Behind the outward simplicity of that poetic image lurks a long, long story, the story of the country’s most popular and accessible form of communication, which was horse-powered mail delivery. A Great Divide lies between someone defying all odds by entrusting a packet in the care of a dashing ne’er-do-well riding at breakneck speed behind a three-horse team and a contemporary calmly marking an envelope “Air Mail” and dropping it in a post box. In a record for the year 885, Nestor’s Tale of Bygone Years (also known as the Primary Chronicle), the scribe tells us that “Oleg sent to the Radimichians, to inquire. . .” And after that, for many centuries, horse couriers galloped over the highways and byways of Russia, until the volume of correspondence became so unwieldy that a special service was needed to handle it. And thereby hangs our tale.
It is rather difficult to pin down exactly when the Russian postal service was born. We know, for a start, that official missives were being sent over long distances by horse courier in the ninth century. From the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, there was the povoz, a special duty imposed on the peasantry that involved keeping the roads up and supplying government messengers with horse-drawn carts, provisions, and guides.
The first reference in an official document to the post roads and the coachmen – which were then the fastest way for all the corners of this land to communicate – comes to us from Ivan III, Grand Prince of Moscow. In his testament, Ivan bade his son Vasily “to maintain in the grand princedom post houses and carts at such places on the road where post houses and carts were also on that road during my reign...”
Earlier, under Mongol rule, the Turkic word dzam (literally, “road”) was the name given to the special stations located at thirty- to forty-verst2 intervals on the main roads, where couriers of the Golden Horde fed and exchanged their mounts. In the mid-sixteenth century, under Ivan the Terrible, arrangements for official travelers along Russia’s roads came under the jurisdiction of the Yamskaya izba, or Office of Post Houses. And so it remained until 1665, when Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (“the Quiescent”) commanded the establishment of regular international mail links with Riga, Courland, and Sweden, which was achieved thanks in no small part to the efforts of the estimable Dmitry Pozharsky.
Organization of the postal service then fell to a boyar named Afanasy Ordyn-Nashchekin, who worked on improving the network of post houses. The Office of Post Houses became a prikaz, or department. The post roads were ridden only by hand-picked post riders, well-to-do people of fine character who were promised good pay and every privilege imaginable. They were given uniforms and the official title of Postal Messenger. A post horn slung over the left shoulder was part of the standard equipment, but it saw very little use. No one had the slightest intention of blowing into a copper horn at 30 degrees below zero, no matter what the government said, so the mail carriers preferred to announce their approach with a whistle and a whoop. Among other oddities, one of them “drank himself to death with strong vodka” in protest against that foreign doohickey. But somehow the official documents and letters began leaving the Consular Office in Moscow once a week and reaching Riga in 11 days... on horseback!3 Across the rest of Mother Russia, though, mail delivery was still sporadic.
Those wild and woolly days ended in 1693, when Peter the Great issued a edict instituting mail service from Moscow to Arkhangelsk along a highway that ran from Kholmogory to Arkhangelsk and had been used by mail couriers since the late fifteenth century. The edict ordered that “mail be delivered from Moscow through the towns on the post roads to the city of Arkhangelsk and back to Moscow, and with that mail be dispatched select postal messengers from Moscow and also coachmen of that city, carrying the documents of their sovereign and all such documents as shall be sent by foreigners and the merchantry.”
The first mail to travel this route left Arkhangelsk on Saturday, July 1, 1693. The mail carriers passed through the community surrounding the Trinity Monastery and the towns of Pereyaslavl-Zalessky, Rostov the Great, Yaroslavl, Danilov, and Vologda before striking out along the River Vaga and the Northern Dvina and through the towns of Velsk, Shenkursk, and Kholmogory. On February 12, 1700, six months before launching his war against Sweden, Peter issued a edict ordering that a postal route be opened from Moscow to Voronezh, “to dispatch mail from town to town, from district to district, on the indicated dates and at the indicated times, with no delay whatsoever.” The great reformer was also the first to map out the routes for horse-carried mail. General and subsidiary post offices sprang up, and a field postal service was established for use by the military and the administration. Thrice-weekly mail delivery between Moscow and St. Petersburg began in 1717.
At some point after 1750, the post stations (no longer a mere yam, or post house, now) were placed in charge of a postmaster. To enable each to service its own portion of the highway, they were assigned several coachmen, the simple covered carriages on wheels or runners called kibitkas, and horses to transport “the sovereign’s own men,” their baggage, and official freight. Stone pillars were erected along the highways to indicate the distance to the next town, and the mail service itself was fine-tuned by categorization. The highest category was a kind of express delivery for edicts issued by the tsar and high-ranking dignitaries. The officials accompanying those deliveries were permitted to stop only long enough to change horses, with fresh teams of three horses standing ready around the clock. The average speed was eight to 12 versts per hour, depending on the time of year and road conditions. The next category down was an ordinary “light” mail service, which traveled at half the speed. And finally, the lowest category was a “heavy” mail service that also served long-distance travelers and got along as best it could.
By 1741, the postal service was operating in all the empire’s provinces. The first hostelries were opened in post stations, and one record-breaking postal highway stretched all the way to Yakutsk. The heaviest traffic plied the Moscow and Narva highways, where special arrangements allowed individuals to hire post coaches, but at double the price paid by those traveling on official business. The normal fee was about 10 silver kopeks per horse per verst.
In 1783, a single rate was introduced for letters, which was calculated and collected by postal officials based on weight and distance. And at about the same time, someone had the bright idea of hanging a bell from the shaft bow to signal the arrival of a mail coach. That musical accompaniment was an answer to the prayers of postal personnel, who had been yearning for a simple and reliable way to announce the arrival of mail troikas, so that they would have a change of horses ready. In dry, clear weather, the sound of those bells could be heard from five versts away. Those who have researched these things claim that an experienced coachman could gauge his speed and the state of the road from the bell’s rhythmic ringing. Despite this, the disdained copper horn stayed on as a symbol of the Russian mail service, along with a copper badge bearing the two-headed eagle emblem.
Especially mellow-toned troika bells were all the rage for a while, which caused all kinds of havoc. Everybody and his brother began hanging the nearly two-pound bells, surrounded by a dozen or so jingle bells, from their shaft bow, which left no way to tell if what was coming down the road was a mail troika or not. The upshot of the numerous complaints lodged by the postal authorities against those bell aficionados was that, in 1836, the Senate issued a stringent prohibition on private individuals festooning their horses with bells. Said individuals scratched their heads... and replaced the big bells with jingle bells, those hollow little metal balls with a jinglet inside, because those menacing circulars had said not a word about jingle bells.
Another symbol of Russia’s national postal service was its three-horse teams and their very special harnessing, which first appeared some time before 1750. Why three horses, though? Up until that point, horses in Rus had been harnessed any old way, singly or in pairs, “goosewise” (tandem, with one running behind the other) or abreast, following strict and ancient social traditions. On ceremonial occasions, the tsar might be pulled by a 12-horse team; dignitaries could use a pair or a four-in-hand; and simple folk would, by established custom, use a single horse. But the wild Yaroslavl peasant’s three-horse team was the fastest and most maneuverable: three horses were better able than two to pull a postal service baggage cart, and were far easier to harness than four. The three-horse kibitka was mounted on wheels in summer and on sledge runners in winter, and… away we go!
In the mid-sixteenth century, post riders were relocated as a body into special settlements called yamsky colonies, which were found in almost all the major towns on busy highways. Those locales have long outlived their earliest inhabitants, yet they still flaunt their telling names: Moscow’s Tverskaya-Yamskaya street, Nizhny Novgorod’s Yamskaya Mostovaya and Yam-Bromnitsy, St. Petersburg’s Yam-Izhora, Yam-Zimogorye... Almost the entire population of Klin, an ancient border fortress northwest of Moscow that dates to at least 1234, was enlisted to drive the mail, since the town lay on the road between Moscow and the new northern capital.
In addition to land on which to build a home, a coachman received an annual salary of up to 30 rubles and a dole of rye and oats. Further, he was exempted from all taxes and levies. He had to keep three horses and maintain records of all travelers, the number of carts, the traveling papers presented, and the sums paid for passage.
The first head of the Coachman’s Department was Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Pozharsky, who presided over a staff of “coachmen’s clerks” appointed from boyar families, who administered the irregular mail service mentioned above, the “coachmen’s royal households,” and, naturally enough, the coachmen’s settlements. The mail service was one of Russia’s most important official institutions, and the government had no intention of ever letting it go. Even the houses in the coachmen’s settlements had to be precisely spaced, in a layout that resembled an army barracks. But the most eye-catching symbol of government control was the “striped way-markers,” the black and white pillars placed at intervals on all the main roads by order of the Postmaster General in 1807, after which Russia’s main highways became known as “pillar roads” (столбовые дорога).
The postal station of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a lowly sort of place located alongside the highway in an ordinary peasant hut that had been divided into two. The “coachmen’s quarters,” which contained a big Russian stove and sleeping benches, was where the drivers rested from the road, dried their clothes, and ate. The horse tack was stored there too. And the “clean quarters” were home to the stationmaster, an individual whose official standing put him at the very bottom of the all-important Table of Ranks for civilians.
The central postal stations of the time were, as a rule, built to a standard design. They were one- or two-story stucco buildings divided into two sections, which faced north and south, and were painted brightly enough to be seen from far away. To either side of the main building were small, single-story wings for the postal couriers and the coachmen.
The first order of business for the builders would be to dig a well, so that the horses could be watered between stages. The buildings were erected facing the road and were surrounded by a fence with large gates. Conveyances of all shapes, sizes, and purposes would drive through those gates into a large, paved courtyard. The eastern and western sides of the yard were crammed with barns, tack sheds, smithies, and stables that had to be large, because by the early nineteenth century every central post station was keeping between 40 and 50 post horses.
By the stationmaster’s front door, rules and edicts were posted on matters such as “The Number of Horses to Be Issued by Rank” and “Traveling Papers and the Fees Therefor.” There was also a “Timetable for the Mail, Both Common and Express.” Here too, as a rule, was a portable mailbox marked as “outgoing” or “incoming” and an ironclad strong-box where money to cover travel expenses was kept. The clerk who accepted items for the mail used a special set of scales, which weighed the letters not by the gram but by the lot (12.8 grams) or the zolotnik (4.26 grams). The décor of the room where the passengers were temporarily housed was perfunctory at best: a table, benches along the wall, or, on a good day, iron cots. And there, when many of the horses were already spoken for, people traveling for reasons of their own languished as they waited for fresh horses, since express and government couriers, government mail, and the high and mighty traveling on official business had priority. Matters got completely out of hand in the 1830s and 1840s, when private parties were allowed to take over the post stations, which put the passengers entirely at their mercy. The private stationmasters forced those unfortunates to hire “unengaged” coachmen at ungodly rates or to wait days for their horses. Even with all this, though, for Pushkin’s contemporaries a journey along a postal highway was always a trip to remember.
Coachmen needed a strong constitution, plenty of stamina, and nerves of steel. In addition to being able to handle a high-spirited team harnessed in any of the various styles – a duo or a quartet of pole horses, or a trio with one shaft horse and two tracers – the coachman’s duties also included keeping his horses fed and acting as an on-call farrier and veterinarian. He could be on the road at any time, day or night, and in any weather, and sometimes for as long as a month. His head would roll if anything happened to the letters in his charge, and he was under constant time pressure. It was not unknown for a coachman to receive one stroke of the whip for every hour’s delay, while his reward for an on-time delivery was a stoup of vodka. Local tin-pot potentates who got in the way of the mail were punished just as fiercely: Peter the Great is known to have ordered a flogging with sticks for a military governor who delayed a postal messenger for half a day.
Nights spent under an open sky were not a rarity. On bitterly cold days, the coachman was issued a small samovar for the road, which he carried in a special wicker pouch. It was a sort of proto-vacuum flask and it contained a diabolical mixture of hot, strong tea and vodka. Even in a hard freeze, though, visits to taverns were strictly forbidden, because the roads were too dangerous for one to be tipsy on the job. “When accompanying a regular or express mail delivery, the coachman should be careful and vigilant by both day and night; and, lest he encounter ruffians, should have about his person a saber, a loaded pistol, and a blunderbuss with twelve loads,” declared an 1842 set of postmaster regulations.
But highwaymen who attacked the mail did so at their own risk, because the tales of fearless coachmen had more than a modicum of truth in them. Anyone who could manage a team of three or four horses would have to be uncommonly strong. The fists holding the reins had to withstand a strain of five to 15 kilograms for hours without a break, and sometimes the horses were especially balky and mean, which called for an even firmer hand. One sharp tug from the reins and the coachman could find himself being trampled by an infuriated animal. And that is why training for the difficult job of coachman began in early childhood.
Originally, no one particular breed of horse was used to pull a troika. The horses were selected by color from various breeds, usually local, but Kyrgyz, Bashkir, Transbaikal, and Don troika horses had a great reputation. A breed native to Vyatka, which was not much to look at but very sturdy, was considered invaluable as a troika horse, while richer people would import horses from abroad to use on ceremonial occasions. In the beginning, a pleasing gait was of secondary importance for a mail troika. All three horses went at a full gallop or trotted, or the shaft horse moved at a sweeping trot while the lighter tracers galloped steadily, leading with either leg (which later came to be seen as the standard style). But all post horses absolutely had to have stamina. Often enough, they were driven 100 versts or more in a day and the next day driven back again. One trio of Tavda horses is known to have covered 1700 kilometers in 25 days.
By the mid-nineteenth century trotters bred by the renowned Count Orlov were being used in troika teams. As readers of the Moscow News in 1847 learned, “the trotter fully satisfies the demands of a real troika ride, which must be taken at a trot if it is to be even, continuous, steady, and not deadly to the horses.” Increasingly, the “root horse,” the one between the shafts, would be a well-grown trotter that stepped out light and lively, because, when all was said and done, his trot had to keep pace with the tracers’ gallop.
But, after successfully resolving the problem of rapidly transporting mail and passengers from place to place, our birdlike troika unexpectedly created another, no less complex, quandary. The troika was now too fast for Russia’s roads, and the mail service was claiming human victims in unprecedented numbers.
As the then current rules read, on hearing a mail coach or government courier’s bell, all pedestrians and commoners’ coaches were to promptly yield the right of way, but that was not how things were working out. It was the height of fashion to own a trio of horses that could beat the express mail, and in order to prove that, owners of private troikas even egged their coachmen on to some truly extreme feats of driverly prowess. The number of collisions with pedestrians and other troikas skyrocketed, and accidents involved some of the empire’s biggest names. And this embroiled even members of the royal family in the ensuing investigations.
Finally, the imperial patience gave out, and in 1731, a special edict from Empress Anna Ioannovna established a prototype for today’s State Automobile Inspectorate that consisted of flying squads of dragoons to catch those who were “traveling indecorously and... trampling people with their horses.” But 50 years would have to pass before, under the new empress, Catherine II, a semblance of order was imposed. With Germanic punctilio, Catherine ordered the speed demons’ horses impounded and the wildest coachmen impressed into the army. She also forbade troikas on city streets: all townsfolk had to travel behind pairs with a narrower draft, and any “extras” were, once again, seized by the government. Even the mail had to be carried in more cumbersome vehicles. “Coachmen for life” were sent packing and replaced by free agents. “How can we not be strict with these Russians? They never know where to draw the line!” the incensed empress declared.
By the late seventeenth century, Russia had seven general post offices, in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Malorossiisk, Lithuania, Kazan, Siberia, and Tambov. On September 8, 1802, the post office passed from the purview of the Senate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and in the century that followed served several masters, being transferred to the Chief Directorate of Posts in 1830 and the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs in 1865. Finally, in 1868, it found itself back under the Interior Ministry’s roof. Reforms abolished the position of provincial postmaster, divided the country into 13 postal districts, and extended the postal highways to some 50,000 versts. There were over 2,000 post stations, which employed 28,290 coachmen driving 59,657 horses. The troikas covered the distance between stations in two to two-and-a-half hours, and could travel between 250 and 300 versts a day.
But the empire was large, and these numbers belie the fact that Russia’s postal network was rather feeble and hampered the country’s development. The first to send up a red flag were the industrialists, who wrote letters lecturing the government on the compelling need to expand the postal service. When the service added the telegraph and mail delivery by rail to its arsenal, it was the end of the road for the yam and those wild mail troikas, which were gradually hustled from the postal highways and into rural areas, where they stayed on as a popular feature of weddings and local festivals. One of the last references to a mail troika dates to the twentieth century: in 1930, a post station in Zagorsk, just outside of Moscow, was still delivering the mail by horse, complete with a bell on the shaft bow and a saber-wielding coachman. RL
1. Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Alfred A. Knopf / Everyman’s Library, 2004), p. 284.
2. A verst was roughly 1.067 kilometers or .663 of a mile.
3. A distance of 916 kilometers.
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