The Icon and the Axe

Conflicting thoughts rise up in the soul when looking on a new route like this. What is it going to bring us? . . . Will it not be in part the expediter of that would-be civilization, which under the guise of a false all-humanity and a common brotherhood of all . . . destroys . . . true humanity, true brotherhood?27

Not only tradi^naMsts but Westernizing reformers found themselves

brooding over these baibingersjof a.new hraTa^eT^lth^^

fesscd admiration for railroads""and loved to watch them~being~built, the

"reality" from which he rebelled assumed the shape of a steam^egg

"iron"Tnonster with'

that belched forth "smoke and tongues

of fire." The more moderate Westernizer, Prince^iazemsky, haTwritten in. 1847 in his "Review of Our Literature in the Decade since Pushkin":

Railroads have already annihilated, and in time shall ^eornjletely^

anruhuateTairpTeylou^mother

steaffisTfave already long ago put out the fire of the winged horse, whose weighted hoof has cut off the life-giving flow that has quenched the thirst of so many gracious and poetic generations.28

In the novels of the age of Alexander II, the earth-bound Pegasus of Russian realism found itself repeatedly crossing railroad tracks. It is in a railroad coach that Dostoevsky's„CluisJb.figureJ Prince Myshkin, returns to Russia at the beginning of the Idiot and first meets the dark and venal figure with whom his fajsJjgcomes so sjjar^ely^iatomi amp;gd. Just as the peasants likened the railroads to the spinning of a giant spider web over the Russian land, so Dostoevsky's Idiot sees in them the fallen star Wormwood spoken of in the Book of Revelation (8:11). Turgenev's Smoke sees in the billows of the steam engines transporting Russians back and forth to the West an image of their confused state of mind and the obscurity surrounding Russia's future. The early leader and guiding force in the movement toward programmatic realism in music, Mily Balakirev, worked as a porter in a railroad station in St. Petersburg in the 1870's as his form of penitential "movement to the people." Tolstoy died in an obscure railroad station, and his great novel Anna Karenina beginsanO ends Willi a Iranian being~crushed_ under_a train? ine ????????????? coinecTthe tenrT^King Hunger" (Jsar Gpjgrf)Jn^a poem he wrote in 1865, "The Railroad."

ATthesame time, railroads became a symbol"ol light and nope to those who drejimSnmmariry of drjimlSLmatexial transformations. The "Tidingl of Zioi?sect of the 1840's had seen the millennium in terms of a new civilization to be built along a vast Eurasian railway whose stations were to serve as giant distribution centers of material benefits. Il'in, the founder of the sect, died in Solovetsk in 1890, just a year before his vision began to be realized through jhe building of the Trans-SiberiarTnulway, which was to become and remaJrrtEeTon"gest in me world, Lenin's arrival at toe Finland stationj2£J5t. Petersburg_in_a sealed train in""Xpruot''?9jy"was a key

moment of charisma in the development of BoishevJaSTTroj sione^forensic forays into the countryside in his famed armored

"FaTrymg" amieSrsupportfor the

?1???"???? importanTand dramatic roli

Revolution, and the vast and pretentiously adorned stations of the Moscow subway became symbols of the new civicreligion of the Stalin era.

's impas- Hm

V. ON TO NEW SHORES

The first Russian railroad had been a short line from St. Petersburg to

Tsarskoe Selo in 1835. Sixteenjears later. Moscow was joined by rail with

St. Petersburg, thanks largely to the American engineer^ George Washfogton _

Whistler (the nusbandof James Whistler's famous mother), who helped

standardizein R"ussia.a" track gauge broader_jhau-the accepted European _

norm By 185b, tKe"fTrst year of Alexander's reign, construction was under

way on two new stations in St. Petersburg for lines leading to the west and

east; construction accelerated rapidly under the new tsar. French Saint-

Simonians, who financed much of this program, were fascinated by the

parallel extension of railroads across America and Russia ("these two

Hercules in their cradles"), considering the Russian expansion less impres-

sive technically, but far more important TnstoricaJryinits linking of Europe

wth^iZ^T^ie~RTbsiarrprog7anrwas "arTopeTaBonwithout ????11????"???"

continent," destined to '^Iace~^poTn1caldTvmoni~wTEK" a" new jwonomic

community^Jhjit will unite Eastern and WestarrTEurope, and become "like

Russia itself . . . ???????????????????'29™"*~~"~~~-

Tot Russia, the newTajEoaaTrJroBglit the first massive intrusion of

mechanical force into thetoieIess,l^egeTatttg^vwl(^gi ruralJRussia, anda

greaTincrease in ?????????? class mobility throughout the empire. The '

firsFtxiiffini^J?!^momgnl.1^

of departure from native surroundings-probably for a lifetime in the army

or'the urban work force.. The ride was long and cold; and he was demed~the"*~ use of toilet facilities during brief station stops and then beaten for "offensive conduct" if caught relieving himself on or near the tracks.