Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky

“ He resides in Petropavlovsk, and owing to the extent of country over which he has jurisdiction, and the imperfect facilities which it affords for getting about, he is seldom seen outside of the village where he has his headquarters. The only means of transportation between the widely separated settlements of the Kamchadals are packhorses, canoes, and dog-sledges, and there is not such a thing as a road in the whole peninsula. ”

“ In April Sergy went on a tour through Siberia; he visited Kamtchatka and the island of Saghalien, to which the Russian government transports convicts. He will be away a month at least, and I shall miss him terribly. A month is such a long time to wait. In his absence I remained in complete seclusion, refusing myself to callers.
On the 6th May, the Emperor’s namesday, Sergy landed at Petropavlovsk, the capital of Kamtchatka, with only 400 inhabitants in it. There was still snow on the ground in this polar region, and the breaking of ice had not yet commenced. ”

“ Dead horses marked the trail across two continents. The Cossack soldiers deserted and joined the banditti that scoured the Tartar plains; and for three winters the travellers were storm-bound in the mountains of Siberia. But at length they reached Avacha Bay on the eastern shore of Kamchatka, and the waters of the Pacific gladdened the eyes of the weary travellers. At Petropavlovsk on the bay they built a fort, houses, barracks, a chapel, and two vessels, named the St Peter and the St Paul. ”

“ The population of Kamchatka is roughly estimated at four thousand souls, about five hundred of whom reside at the capital, Petropaulosk, on the eastern coast, which is said to possess the finest harbour in the world, and where the allied French and English fleets were repulsed by the Russians during the Crimean war. The aboriginal tribes, however, are seldom met with in or near the capital, where society consists almost entirely of Government officers and Cossacks, stationed here to preserve law and order among these remote subjects of the Czar, who, however, give them little or no trouble. ”

“ The Petrograd Soviet feels that at last the moment has arrived when the power must fall into the hands of the Soviets. This transfer of government will be accomplished by the All-Russian Congress. Whether an armed demonstration is necessary will depend on... those who wish to interfere with the All-Russian Congress...
“We feel that our Government, entrusted to the personnel of the Provisional Cabinet, is a pitiful and helpless Government, which only awaits the sweep of the broom of History to give way to a really popular Government. ”

“ While Wilhelm’s troops are threatening Petrograd, the Government of Kerensky and Kornilov is preparing to run away from Petrograd and turn Moscow into a base of counter-revolution!
“We warn the Moscow workers and soldiers to be on their guard. Leaving this Council, we appeal to the manhood and wisdom of the workers, peasants and soldiers of all Russia. Petrograd is in danger! The Revolution is in danger! The Government has increased the danger—the ruling classes intensify it. Only the people themselves can save themselves and the country. ”

“ Petrograd was therefore completely cut off, not only from the Western world but even from the rest of Russia. An old revolutionist once said to me: " We not only don't know what is going on in the world or in Moscow; we are not even aware of what is happening in the next street." However, the human mind will not be bottled up all the time. It must have and generally finds an outlet. Rumours of attempted raids on Petrograd, stories that Zinoviev had been ducked in "Sovietsky soup" by some factory workers and that Moscow was captured by the Whites were afloat. ”

“ The Petrograd garrison numbered about sixty thousand men, who had taken a prominent part in the Revolution. It was they who had turned the tide in the great days of March, created the Soviets of Soldiers’ Deputies, and hurled back Kornilov from the gates of Petrograd.
Now a large part of them were Bolsheviki. When the Provisional Government talked of evacuating the city, it was the Petrograd garrison which answered, “If you are not capable of defending the capital, conclude peace; if you cannot conclude peace, go away and make room for a People’s Government which can do both...” ”

“ Petrograd is not the only city where the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates has assumed control of the destinies of the Russian people. Every town has its council, and there is no question, civil or military, which they do not feel capable of settling. ”

“ Citizens! Counter-revolution has raised its criminal head. The Kornilovtsi are mobilising their forces in order to crush the All-Russian Congress of Soviets and break the Constituent Assembly. At the same time the pogromists may attempt to call upon the people of Petrograd for trouble and bloodshed. The Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies takes upon itself the guarding of revolutionary order in the city against counter-revolutionary and pogrom attempts. ”

“ Officers who do not frankly and openly declare for the Revolution should be immediately arrested as enemies.
“The Petrograd Soviet interprets the programme of the new Government as: immediate proposals of a general democratic peace, the immediate transfer of great landed estates to the peasants, and the honest convocation of the Constituent Assembly. The people’s revolutionary Army must not permit troops of doubtful morale to be sent to Petrograd. Act by means of arguments, by means of moral suasion—but if that fails, halt the movement of troops by implacable force. ”

“ With the removal of the capital to Moscow, the sending of thousands of workers to the army, the voluntary emigration to the villages of thousands of others, and the exodus of the bourgeoisie to Scandinavia, France, England and even America, Petrograd has probably one half the population it had under the Czar. ”

“ More than any other man, he did evil that good may come of it. He compelled his people, as he thought, to civilisation, though, in seeking to cross the stream, hundreds of thousands perished in the waves. "Peter the Great," says Mackintosh, "did not civilize Russia: that undertaking was beyond his genius, great as it was; he only gave the Russians the art of civilized war." The truth was, he attempted what was altogether impracticable. No one man can at once civilize a nation: he can only put it in the way of civilisation. ”

“ Peterburg and Moscow, has not yet found its centre of gravity, as long as the “City of the Czar” (Constantinople, called in Russian Tzarigrad, the Czar’s city) , considered by every Russian peasant as the true metropolis of his religion and his nation, is not actually the residence of its Emperor; that empire which, for the last one hundred and fifty years, has never lost, but always gained territory by every war it has commenced. ”

“ The commercial value of Kamchatka is entirely in its fur trade. The peninsula has no agricultural, manufacturing, or mining interest, and were it not for the animals that lend their skins to keep us warm, the merchant would find no charms in that region. The fur coming from Kamchatka was the cause of the Russian discovery and conquest. For many years the trade was conducted by individual merchants from Siberia. The Russian American Company attempted to control it early in the present century, and drove many competitors from the fields. ”

“ Petersburg with an army to punish his wife Catherine and to place his son Paul upon the throne. As a pretender he was not dangerous, but as a rallying point for unhappy serfs and for an exasperated and suffering people looking for a leader, he did become a very formidable menace, which finally developed into a Peasants' War. The insurrection was at last quelled, and ended with the execution of the false Peter at Moscow. ”

“ A people subjected to the treatment which Russians have had during the last 200 years can not in one generation be expected to change very greatly, but personally I feel the present government has made a vast improvement on the government of the Czar as I knew it in 1916-17. Without doubt the majority of the people in Petrograd are opposed to allied intervention or revolution and wish the present government to be given a fair chance to work out the salvation of Russia. ”

“ The artificiality of St Petersburg, founded in 1703, is quite different in kind from the artificiality of—shall we say, Karlsruhe, founded in 1715—quite apart from the impossibility of drawing comparisons in point of size between the Duchy of Baden and the Empire of Russia. Petrograd, considered both historically and economically, is a town colony on a gigantic scale, deliberately set down "on the banks of the desolate waters"—so run the words of Pushkin, the greatest of Russian poets, who sang the praises of the mighty founder of the Empire. ”

“ Petersburg was left without Akakiy Akakievitch, as though he had never lived there. A being disappeared who was protected by none, dear to none, interesting to none, and who never even attracted to himself the attention of those students of human nature who omit no opportunity of thrusting a pin through a common fly, and examining it under the microscope. ”

“ Peter was at least choosing better models than his predecessors. If it was an apparent mistake to build a modern, centralized state in the eighteenth century upon a social organization belonging to the eleventh century, it may be that in so doing, an inspired despot builded wiser than he knew. May it not be that the final regeneration of that land is to come some day, from the leaven of native instincts in her peasantry, which have never been invaded by foreign influences and which have survived all the vicissitudes of a thousand years in Russia? ”

“ The same qualities of high culture and exquisite skill are possessed by several other young Petrograd artists. Therein lies the essential difference between Petrograd and Moscow art. It is also characteristic that all these artists: Somov, Bakst, Lanceray, Dobuzhinsky, Bilibin,—of Petrograd, and Zamiraylo and Yaremich, of Kiev are almost exclusively book-decorators. They have brought a quickening stream of talent into the musty atmosphere of our book industry, and owing to them we are witnessing now a sort of rebirth, or rather birth, of the Russian book. ”

“ The state visit of their Majesties to Petrograd soon after the declaration really seemed to justify the Emperor’s belief that the war would arouse the national spirit, so long latent, in the Russian people. Never again do I expect to behold such a sight as the streets of Petrograd presented on that day. To say that the streets were crowded, thronged, massed, does not half express it. I do not believe that one single able-bodied person in the whole city remained at home during the hours spent in the capital by the Sovereigns. ”

“ The black and white posts, said to have been a pet fancy of that miserable pedant, Paul Petrovitch, that offend the eye everywhere in Russia; the elegant houses with white-washed walls and red or green roofs; the gorgeous churches with tall tapering spires; and the wide streets, with nobody in them, are all taken in at the first glance through the gateway, and establish it beyond doubt that we are really in the territory of the Czars.
With little trouble we found out Mr. Pfaffius, Commissary of the Frontier, an office established in lieu of the governorship which had been abolished. ”

“ At this point Peter came in, followed by some members of the investigation committee. All were happy. It was a wonderful moment. How an act of humanity transforms men’s countenances! Peter and his comrades congratulated me, and I was too overcome to express all the gratefulness that I felt toward these men.
Petrukhin then narrated how he had dealt with the infuriated soldiers, who had clamoured for my life. He told them that I was being led away to Moscow in the hope that I would there deliver up several counter-revolutionary Generals, associated with Kornilov. ”

“ The Kremlin is in the hands of the yunkers, and the workers have only a few arms. The result depends upon Petrograd.
"At the front, the decrees on Peace and Land are provoking great enthusiasm. Kerensky is flooding the trenches with tales of Petrograd burning and bloody, of women and children massacred by the Bolsheviki. ”

“ This village is scarcely [24] more populous than that of St. Peter and St. Paul. The small pox has, in this place particularly, made dreadful ravages. The number of balagans and isbas seemed to be very nearly the same as at Petropavlofska [18] .
The Kamtschadales lodge in the first during summer, and retreat to the last in winter. As it is thought desirable that [25] they should be brought gradually to resemble the Russian peasants, they are prohibited, in this southern part of Kamtschatka, from constructing any more yourts, or subterraneous habitations ”

“ I dined that evening at the French Embassy and, as I drove through the streets, Petrograd seemed to be a changed city: troops bivouacking everywhere, rifles piled together, the soldiers and horses keeping warm beside huge beacon fires, the flames from which cast a lurid light over all the vast stretch of frozen snow. ”

“ Peter the Great hated Moscow. It was to him the embodiment of that old Russia which he was seeking to reform out of existence. Had he been able to work his own will in all things, he would never have set foot within its walls; but circumstances are stronger than men, even though the latter be Russian czars. In one respect Peter set himself against circumstance, and built Russia a capital in a locality seemingly lacking in all natural adaptation for a city.
In the early days of the eighteenth century his armies captured a small Swedish fort on Lake Ladoga near the river Neva. ”