the express-train is nearing the frontier at dawn. we are greeted by the sleeping-car conductor with the significant announcement, "we shall soon be in russia"—an announcement which, it must be confessed, produces a slight palpitation of the heart. we are now at the gate of a mysterious country, with passport and baggage in the best of order. a russian consulate had found us worthy to set foot upon the soil of holy russia, and had explicitly stated that fact in our passport. travellers may journey without this certificate through the five continents, but if unprovided with it may not set foot on russian soil. we have no weapons save our five fingers, and, above all, not a single printed book or newspaper that might cause trouble at the frontier, excepting the invaluable baedeker, for the importation of books, as we already knew at home, is put under severe ban in the domain of the holy synod. none the less, a slight palpitation of the heart, a slight anxiety, are felt at the sight of a narrow bridge leading between two sentry-boxes over a small stream separating two countries—nay, two[pg 9] civilizations. shall we find favor in the eyes of the almighty gendarme who enters our coupé with a polite bow, as we approach the station, and asks for our passport? may it not be that a secret police prohibition has preceded us, notwithstanding the regularity of our passport, and that it now precludes our entrance? has not your pen sinned many a time against the knout and autocracy, and are you not, after all, if carefully examined, with all your scribbling, a thoroughly objectionable person in the eyes of the police—at least, when seen with russian eyes?
but, thank heaven, the world is great and i am insignificant; russian censorship has not yet taken notice of all the sins of my pen; hence the same officer returns to me with the same bow my passport after the customs inspection. the holy russian empire, from warsaw to vladivostok, is now exposed to my curious eyes.
the customs inspection was in itself a peculiar experience. the porter, a pole with a good-natured, handsome face, takes our baggage and baggage-certificate, and invites us with a friendly gesture to follow him to the great inspection hall. the hall is scrupulously clean and no loud talking is heard there. the passengers take their places on one side of the inspection-table, the porters on the other, the latter in orderly file with their caps in their hands. they communicate with one another only with their eyes. silence has begun. i do not[pg 10] know whether it is purposely so, or whether it is merely incidental to the particularly strict local régime, that the implicit obedience, the silent subjection, and the irresistible power of despotism are here brought home so effectively to the stranger. but this impression remains with the traveller throughout the entire journey:
"be silent, restrain yourselves,
we are watched in word and look."
an empire of one hundred and thirty millions of prisoners and of one million jailers—such is russia; and these jailers understand no joke. it is a terrible machinery, this despotism, with all its wheels working one within the other. it is relentless and keen in all its mechanism, henceforth no loud word shall be spoken. the official organs alone have a voice; private persons may speak only in low tones.
but how orderly, politely, and neatly do the officials and porters execute the examination and forwarding of our baggage when despotism wishes to reconcile people to its threatening silence. only ten kopeks, turned into the common treasury, are asked for the handling of our large amount of baggage, and we are then led, together with the other travellers, to the russian exit of the customs inspection hall. after a short wait there the gate is opened, and at a given signal we are marched out of the hall in single file to refresh ourselves, before the departure of the train, with a little breakfast.
[pg 11]
scrupulous cleanliness reigns in the large, airy restaurant also. we are in the land of caviar. caviar sandwiches, appetizingly prepared, lie on the buffet-table. "caviar" may also be found in one or another of the foreign papers offered for sale by the newsboys. when the censorship finds it inconvenient to eliminate entire pages whose contents are objectionable, it generously spreads printer's ink on the condemned passages, scatters sand over them, and puts the whole in the press. the result is a lattice-like pattern, not unlike in appearance to pressed caviar, to which the russian, with good-natured self-derision, applies the term "press-caviar," an expression which has a two-fold meaning. caviar is admittedly regarded as an easily digestible food. the russian censor considers his caviar more useful and less harmful than that which ill-advised men in foreign countries allow themselves to print.
a few glasses of tea drawn from a samovar drive away the last traces of the morning frost, and, wrapped in fur coats, and with a feeling like that succeeding an adventure crowned with victory, we for the first time stroll along a russian railway platform.
we again enter the coupé, now in charge of russian attendants.
a long, monotonous ride through level, swampy country, over which there slowly floats the gray vapor of the locomotive, finally brings us at dusk to warsaw.
[pg 12]
nothing oppresses the spirit more deeply than such a ten-hour monotony of leaden-gray skies, dirty-gray snow, and a thick, gray, smoky mist. the gendarmes in gray coats at the infrequent stations; the greasy jews with their long coats of uncertain color; the secret police with their questionable gentility, never absent—all these are not calculated to relieve the painful feeling of sadness and dreariness. we were out of humor when we reached warsaw. we believed that we had the right to expect crisp winter weather in russia and were disappointed to find only mud and humidity. but perhaps warsaw is not really russia? or are we still in central europe? the evening at the hotel and the following days conclusively proved to us that warsaw, indeed all poland, with its climate, its civilization, its religion, and—its ideas, does not belong, in the real sense of the term, to russia; that the isotherm which connects russia proper with other regions of the same mean temperature runs considerably north of poland. a buckle would be puzzled by this fact alone. the dwellers could not be of the same race here nor the same system be possible. when, nevertheless, only one power rules here, it does so by violence and in spite of natural laws; it must give rise to resentment and can give no promise of permanence.
on my return journey from the heart of russia i purposely suppressed the first impression gained by me in warsaw, but when i was there again[pg 13] this impression reasserted itself even more strongly. warsaw is no more russia than lemberg or dresden, in spite of the overpowering russian churches, in spite of the innumerable russian officers and soldiers, in spite of the obligatory russian signs on the stores, which, with some experience, may be deciphered as "chajim berlinerblau," or something similar.
aside from its jargon-speaking jews, warsaw is pre-eminently a catholic city, and its entire civilization is roman catholic. its very situation is striking. approaching it from the vistula, one may see where the city had built its defences—towards the east! thence came the enemy, the mongol, the russian. from the east there came barbarism and oppression, therefore the fortifications and walls were built on the river-bank commanding the valley of the vistula, through which alone an enemy could come. from the west came only the blessings of civilization and religion, with its messengers that once were harbingers of civilization, and which, perhaps, still remain such in this region.
warsaw is a beautiful and fashionable city when considered apart from the sections where the jews are crowded together. the members of its elegant society know how to live in spite of national misery and oppression. hotel bristol, the finest hotel in the city, is their rendezvous. here they meet one another at breakfast, at dinner, in the splendid english dining-room; men and women, guests from[pg 14] prussian-poland and galicia, noble families of the partitioned kingdom. they are of one race, one class, one caste; they know one another, like members of the same club, and all approximately the same type—somewhat overslender forms, long, nervous hands, finely sculptured noses, sharply chiselled temples, angular foreheads, the women supple and lissome, each motion accompanied by a touch of polished affectation. when compared with this polish aristocracy, the russian officers, who eat at separate tables, leave the impression, with their german scholar-faces or cossack physiognomies, of provincial backwardness. they are merely bourgeois in uniform even though they be real princes, while the pole who has graduated from that high-school of refinement, the jesuit boarding-school, is an aristocrat, a cavalier, from head to foot. they remain separate like oil and water. the russian, even though he is the master, is of no consequence here. it is only necessary to observe for the space of an hour from some corner of the elegant dining-room of hotel bristol the behavior of the polish society and the complete isolation of the russian officers or officials; it is only necessary to be able to distinguish the groups from one another—the baltic nobility with their almost bourgeois families, merchants from all the principal countries, russian functionaries, and polish society—and it will at once become clear who is at home here, firmly rooted to the soil, so that all others become strangers[pg 15] and intruders; it is the poles and the poles alone.
there is some talk of a change of relations that has been attempted with the aid of the french ally through the vatican, so as to array poland against protestant prussia and to reconcile it to orthodox russia. indeed, the russian government has found it necessary to allow religious instructions in secondary schools to be given in the polish mother-tongue, just at the time when the german government had on its hands the wreschen trials. in fact, the more prussian narrowness insults and provokes the poles the greater are the russian efforts to win them over. this, however, is only a political move, an attempt at bribery that the poles let pass because it suits them, though one, perhaps, that the real go-betweens, the jesuits, take in earnest, but the success of which, after all, would be contrary to all known facts of history and civilization, for it would be opposed to the national sentiment. in russia dwells the marrow of the polish nation; in russia dwell the polish aristocracy and that industrial middle class which has become rich and polish in spirit in so far as it was of foreign origin; and yet in this homogeneous land of poland the polish language is interdicted, so to speak, and tolerated everywhere only as a local dialect. university, gymnasiums, courts, and administration are all russian—a gessler hat, placed in the russian sign of every store, on which the latin-polish [pg 16]inscription may appear only in a secondary position—a proceeding to which no self-respecting people will submit, and need not submit, especially from a master whose so-called civilization is of far more recent origin than its own. the german in america becomes americanized voluntarily and irresistibly, because the english language is recognized as a more useful medium than his own, as the world-language. the pole will never become russianized as long as he remains on polish soil; and no matter how significantly the "ausgleichspolen" (polish compromise party) flirt with the russian régime, such an attitude hides a sense of annoyance and is not caused by real fellow-feeling. for the pole, germanization is an ill-fitting garment that only binds; russianization is a thorn in the flesh, producing pus and throwing the entire system into a fever.
