1936 On the Continent

Russia assumes the proportions of a national pastime. The visitor can bathe (and find thousands bathing with him) in the Neva in Leningrad; in the Moscow River in Moscow; in the Volga during his boat-trip, if he gets as far; and in the blue Mediterranean-like waters of the Black Sea if he gets farther still to Sevastopol and Yalta.
    There are many advantages in going in the summer. The long, light evenings, the charming freedom in which one can sit about basking everywhere; the decks of Volga river-steamers; the almost tropical luxuriance of such southern Russian towns as Rostov-on-Don, with cactus plants and palm-trees growing in their public gardens.The visitor can get the sensations of the Riviera without going to the Riviera.
    But there is also the charm of mid-winter in Russia. I had often heard this talked about and described, but I did not know it until I tried it for myself recently. To begin with, so many people—or rather, so many thousands of people—now know Russia in the middle of the summer. By going in the middle of the winter, one is automatically undertaking something of an adventure—something that thousands of people have
not
already done. It is possible to stay in Moscow in the middle of the winter and feel that the nearest English visitor may not be within a few hundred miles of one. For some, this is a blessing; for some it is a curse. There are those who like to take their holidays gregariously; there are some who like to take them in the utmost solitude. Both sorts are catered for in modern Russia.
The Climate
    The cold in the middle of winter does not turn out to be anything so intense in its effects as one had been told by one’s friends to expect. I had been warned, before going in January last, to take thick sets of woollen underclothes, such as I would never dream of wearing in London in winter. My Russian friends laughed at that. They explained that in winter in Russia the houses, theatres, shops and so forth were double-windowed and overheated; and that if one wore thick woollen underclothes one would be stifled.
    The advice of the Russian friends turned out to be perfectly correct in every detail. The clothes that I wore all the time indoors were the same that I would have worn in February in London—or even a little lighter. Russian houses in winter are as much overheated (to an English taste) as are Parisian or German ones. One does not need any scrap of extra clothing for them. In the streets it is a different matter. One needs a thicker overcoat and hat than one would ever need in London in the middle of winter, for the temperature can be 30 degrees below freezing on the Réaumur thermometer.
    But even here there were no disconcerting surprises in store for me. The temperature is cold—but it is a “dry”cold such as is unknown in London. It is bright and exhilarating. The snow is frozen so hard underfoot that it is dry and crisp, and not once did I need to wear even rubber galoshes. What I actually wore was a heavy English travelling overcoat (
not
a fur overcoat) and a fur cap that I bought in Finland for 5s. With these—the only additions to my ordinary winter London wear—I survived in Moscow without ever once letting the cold penetrate to me. (It is true that one morning I woke up with a chill, for I had been foolish enough to leave my window open at night, as no Russian would, and in the morning the thermometer registered 30 degrees of frost, and the very ink in the ink-well in the desk in my bedroom was frozen solid. But this was my fault, and not the fault of the Moscow climate.)
    On the whole I found that the gaiety of Moscow during that winter season; the brilliance of the air and the sun and the snow; the skating and the ski-ing; the glimpse of every child being pulled along on a little sledge, wrapped in a bundle of furs, instead of being pushed in a perambulator—the general sense of Moscow “rejoicing” in the season instead of being depressed by it—was so inspiriting that I count the winter visit as one of my most successful visits. The intending traveller might do worse than go to Moscow in winter on his first visit. The beauty of such places as the Kremlin under their winter blanket of snow is one of the few things in the world that is entirely indescribable. Or, if he has been in Russia in the summer already, he need not think that his education in Russia is half begun until he has seen it in the full tide of the winter season.
Places to See
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