Volsci

“ But I've seen more of Northern Europe and Siberia in the last twelve months than all the expeditions of the czars and Muscovite Bolsheviks explored in their thousand years. The debris of their two cultures lies scattered across the top of this vast Eurasian land mass, with immense glassy pockets where their cities once stood, the scars of the Third World War. And through the air that we are flying that first cloud of rockets came from the continent of North America, leveling all Russia down to the latitude of Moscow before the ultimatum and the surrender. ”

“ The joy of the Russians was almost delirious; and no one thought even of pursuing a foe, who without arriving within sight of the banners of the grand prince, or without hearing the sound of his war trumpets, had fled as in a panic.
The whole of the remaining reign of Vassali was a scene of tumult and strife. Civil war agitated the principalities. The Lithuanians, united with Poland, were incessant in their endeavors to extend the triumph of their arms over the Russian provinces; and the Tartar hordes again swept Russia with the most horrible devastation. ”

“ In 1431 Yuri attempted to revert to the ancient custom of succession of the eldest, and claimed the throne from Vasili II., the son of Vasili I. To avoid war it was agreed to refer the matter to the Horde for settlement. Vsevoloshski, a boyard of Moscow, advanced the most potent argument on behalf of Vasili. “My Lord Tsar,” he said to Ulu Mahomet, “let me speak, me, the slave of the Grand Prince. My master prays for the throne, which is thy property, having no other title but thy protection, thy investiture and thy iarlikh. Thou art master and can dispose of it at thy pleasure. ”

“ The barbarian horde at Kezan still continued to annoy Russia with very many incursions. Some were mere petty forays, others were extended invasions, but all were alike merciless and bloody. In February, 1550, Ivan IV., then but twenty two years of age, placed himself at the head of a large army to descend the Volga and punish the horde. The monarch was young and totally inexperienced in war. A series of terrible disasters from storms and floods thinned his ranks, and the monarch in great dejection returned to Moscow to replenish his forces. ”

“ It is not the war that I object to, it is the form it takes; and our great, grim, ghostly Russia should evolve out of her soul of ice something much more in consonance with her. Beside the burning of Moscow, the little tin cans and the burrowing like moles underground are commonplace and a little vulgar. Russia is so awful in herself. ”

“ Wells—leave Russia alone. You have done a lot of harm and you have earned the just resentment of every true friend of Russia. If you must dabble with poison, write another “Ann Veronica.” The Russian problem is one which will be solved by men, not by literary acrobats.
In conclusion, I would like to remind the great American people that they fought in the great war to make the world safe for democracy. You helped to destroy German militarism, but remember that German militarism was nothing as compared with that of Soviet power. ”

“ We also learned that the Soviet was enlisting as many men as it could from the port to strengthen its garrison, and was in communication with the Bolsheviks and the armed prisoners in the interior, who were then in open war with our echelons. Our National Assembly, which had transferred its seat to the east, decided that the Bolsheviks had to be disarmed, and that Vladivostok should be in our undisputed possession with all its depôts. ”

“ The unenlightened States which surrounded her, were ever provoking hostilities, invasion, and becoming absorbed. In the year 1558, the Tartars of Tauride, having assembled an army of one hundred thousand horsemen, a combination of Tartars and Turks, suddenly entered Russia, and sweeping resistlessly on, a war tempest of utter desolation, reached within two hundred miles of Moscow. There they learned that Ivan himself, with an army more numerous than their own, was on the march to meet them. Turning, they retreated more rapidly than they advanced. ”

“ First, then, Russia, which was a modern 172civilisation of the Western type, least disciplined and most ramshackle of all the Great Powers, is now a modern civilisation in extremis. The direct cause of its downfall has been modern war leading to physical exhaustion. Only through that could the Bolsheviki have secured power. Nothing like this Russian downfall has ever happened before. If it goes on for a year or so more the process of collapse will be complete. Nothing will be left of Russia but a country of peasants ”

“ It is obvious that in a country so destitute of seaboard, its rivers must assume an immense importance. The history, the very life of Russia clusters about its three great rivers. These have been the arteries which have nourished, and indeed created, this strange empire. The Volga, with its seventy-five mouths emptying into the Caspian Sea, like a lazy leviathan brought back currents from the Orient; then the Dnieper, flowing into the Black Sea, opened up that communication with Byzantium which more than anything else has influenced the character of Russian development ”

“ At the beginning of his reign, in 1551, Ivan was preparing an expedition to Kazan, and in June of the following year he descended the Volga and laid siege to that city. It was captured after a brave defense, when a number of the people were massacred and the rest sold as slaves. This conquest was followed by that of Astrakhan in 1554; the Volga from its source to its mouth was thereafter a Russian river. The Cossacks of the Don also submitted to him.
The European countries bordering on Russia dreaded that country's growing power. ”

“ In the haze of those distant times and remote realms, we catch dim glimpses of locust legions, emerging from the plains and the ravines between the Black Sea and the Caspian, and sweeping like a storm cloud over nearly all of what is now called Russia. These people, to whom the name of Alains was given, had no fixed habitations; they conveyed their women and children in rude carts. Their devastations were alike extended over Europe and Asia, and in the ferocity of their assaults they were as insensible to death as wild beasts could be. ”

“ He therefore noted in his book this perfectly correct observation, "My fellow-travelers extremely anxious. Nothing is talked of but war, and they speak of it, with a freedom which is astonishing, as having broken out between the Volga and the Vistula." ”

“ The elder brothers marched promptly against Pronsk, besieged the place, and ravaged the country around it. Roman and his brothers, in making this war, appeared to censure their younger brothers for good will toward the Prince of Vladimir, and also to declare that they themselves cared not a whit for that Vladimir principality. Thus their action was a challenge to Vsevolod, and he gave answer very quickly. Without mingling in the quarrel between the brothers, he sent two boyars to Ryazan with this message, which was really a warning: “It is not a wonder to me that pagans ravage your country. ”

“ Two hundred thousand workmen flock from all parts of Russia to its banks. Fifteen thousand ships and 500 steamboats plough its waters. Kostroma, Nijni-Novgorod, Kazan, Simbirsk, Samara, Saratof, Astrakhan, are filled with noise and movement. The whole life of Russia seems concentrated on the Volga. ”

“ From the foot of the column dedicated to Sviataslof Vsevolovitch, on the spot where he vanquished the Swedes and Poles, that rises on one of the highest summits of the great hill on which Novgorod is built, the stranger may50 contemplate a prospect that might serve as a type of a Russian landscape in winter. In the plain below sleeps the Volga, silent and still to the senses in its winter dress; for the frost, one of nature’s forces, the most imposing from its effects, has already congealed the surface of its running stream into the solidity and quiescence of the plain. ”

“ Rostopchin, nevertheless, affecting to persevere in the plan, is said to have caused a great quantity of rockets and other combustibles to be prepared. Moscow itself was destined to be the great infernal machine, the sudden nocturnal explosion of which was to destroy the emperor and his army. Should the enemy escape this danger, he would at least no longer have an asylum or resources; and the horror of this tremendous calamity, charged to his account, as had been the disasters of Smolensk, Viazma, and other towns, would not fail to rouse the whole of Russia. ”

“ Here assemble merchants from all parts of Siberia, Tartars, Georgians, Persians, and Armenians, to meet Russians and Germans, and even English and French, from Saint Petersburg and Moscow, who come to buy their produce or exchange them for manufactures from the West. Nishni stands on a high promontory, whose base is washed on one side by the Volga, on the other by its tributary the Okka. The Kremlin, or Citadel, with its low, embattled walls, stands on the highest point, and overlooks a vast plain, through which, at the base of the hill, the Volga flows proudly past. ”

“ Would the Londoners have the heart and courage to make a greater Moscow of their mighty province of houses?
Then, after an interminable time, as it seemed to us, crouching and peering through the hedge, came a sound like the distant concussion of a gun. Another nearer, and then another. And then the Martian beside us raised his tube on high and discharged it, gunwise, with a heavy report that made the ground heave. The one towards Staines answered him. There was no flash, no smoke, simply that loaded detonation. ”

“ In these mountains one had at once the feeling of being altogether away from Russia; and the new Russian army notices blending with the earlier Polish and Hungarian inscriptions suggested the atmosphere of a big adventure. All along the beautiful slopes there was the look of a huge Russian picnic, soldiers sitting at rest in great [Pg 179] boyish crowds very much as in peace time the peasants do on the sloping banks of the Volga. The bright dresses of the Ruthenian women and the almost theatrical picturesqueness of their men-folk touched the whole with novelty. ”

“ Your English life is so cosy. You have tea before the fire and everything is comfortable. We don't know what comfort is in Russia."
A machine gun "rat-tat-tat-tated" close to us, and three rockets, like a flight of startled birds, rose suddenly together on the far horizon.
"No, we have no comfort in Russia," repeated Nikitin. "Now I fancy that an English country-house...."
We had reached the further wood; the moonlight fell away from us and the shadows shifted and trembled under the reflection of rockets and a projector that swung lazily and unsteadily, like something nodding in its sleep. ”

“ Sudislav, however, bought his freedom. “He turned himself into gold,” as is said by the chronicler. Volodislav was sent to Hungary in fetters, but he had two brothers in freedom, who were precisely such wily heroes as Volodislav himself. These men appeared now before Mystislav, whose brother, Ingvar, had [175] not been in Galitch without a purpose. All Volynia rose in revolt quickly, and made war on Andrei. Volynia was managed at this time by Leshko of Poland. This guardian of Vassilko had taken Bailz from his ward and given it back to Bailski, his father-in-law. ”

“ On all sides Russia now suffered from its enemies. Moscow, with several hundred thousand Muscovites, was burned by the Tartars in 1571. Disaster followed disaster, which Ivan was too cowardly and weak to avert. Trusting to incompetent generals abroad, he surrounded himself at home with a guard of six thousand chosen men, who were hired to play the part of spies and assassins. They carried as emblems of office a dog's head and a broom, the first to indicate that they worried the enemies of the czar, the second that they swept them from the face of the earth. ”

“ The country of the Polovtsi was then abandoned to the Tartars. Having ravaged the central valleys of the Don and the Volga, these demoniac warriors turned their steps again into southern Russia. The inhabitants, frantic with terror, fled from their line of march as lambs fly from wolves. The blasts of their trumpets and the clatter of their horses' hoofs were speedily resounding in the valley of the Dnieper. Soon from the steeples of Kief the banners of the terrible army were seen approaching from the east. ”

“ Over these broad spaces the invaders swept like an avalanche, finding cultivated fields before them, leaving a desert behind. They swam the Don, the Volga, and the other great rivers [Pg 51] on their horses, or crossed them on the ice. Leathern boats brought over their wagons and artillery. They spread from Livonia to the Black Sea, poured into the kingdoms of the West, and would have overrun all Europe but for the vigorous resistance of the knighthood of Germany.
The cities of Russia made an obstinate defence, but one after another they fell. Some saved themselves by surrender. ”

“ And again, when he was at Kiev with his body-guard of good comrades, Volgá the Chief said:
“My good brave comrades, why should we not send to the country of the Tartars to find out what the Cham is thinking of? For the Cham may be thinking of something. And what if he were thinking of riding [5] into Holy Russia? Now, whom shall we send? If we send an old man he will go slowly, and we shall have long to wait. If we send a middle-aged man he will tarry and drink by the way; and if we send a boy he will stop and play. It seems as if Volgá will have to go himself!” ”