Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/891

MOSCOW 859 still these are insufficient for the population, and the municipal schools every year refuse admission to about 1500 boys and girls. The scientific societies are specially distinguished for their services in the exploration of the country. The following deserve parti cular mention : the society of naturalists (founded in 1805) ; the society of Russian history and antiquities, which has published many remarkable works ; the society of amateurs of Russian litera ture ; the physical and medical society ; the mathematical society ; the society for the diffusion of useful books ; the very active archaeo logical society, founded in 1864 ; a society of gardening and of agriculture ; several technical, artistic, and musical societies ; and the very active young society of the friends of natural science, which already has published many useful volumes. Among the museums of Moscow, the museum, formerly Runian- tselfs, now connected with the so-called "public museum," occupies the first rank. It contains a library of 150,000 volumes and 2300 MSS., remarkable collections of old pictures, sculptures, and prints, as well as a rich mineralogical collection, and an ethnographical collection representing very accurately the various inhabitants of Russia. The historical museum has already been mentioned. The private museum of Prince Golitxyn contains a good collection of paintings and MSS. ; and great treasures of archaeology are amassed in various private collections in Moscow and its suburbs. The periodical press does not on the whole exercise great influ ence ; twenty-live periodicals are published, besides those of scientific societies. But Moscow publishes a far larger number of books for primary instruction and of the humblest kind of literature and prints for the use of peasants than any other Russian city. The philanthropic institutions are numerous, the first rank being occupied by the immense Foundlings Hospital, erected in 1764. The hospitals, municipal, military, and private, are very large, but much below the standard of other capitals. The number of private philanthropic institutions is very considerable. Though the drama was introduced into Russia at Kieff, Moscow was the place of its development. The earliest stage representations were made at Moscow in 1340, and the first comedy a translation of Moliere s Medccin Malgr6Lu i was played in the palace be fore Sophie, the sister of Peter I. It was only in 1759 that a theatre was erected. A large stone theatre was erected in 1776, and rebuilt in 1856 after a fire. It is for the Moscow stage that the best Russian dramas have been written, and it was in the " small theatre " that the best Russian actors Schepkin, Sadovsky, Shumsky, and Madame Vasi- lieff exhibited the comedies of Gogol, Griboyedoff, and Ostrovsky. Moscow, where the Great-Russian language is spoken in its .greatest purity, was the birthplace of the two chief Russian poets, Pushkin and Lermontoff, as well as of Griboyedoff, Ostrovsky, and Herzen. A monument to Pushkin was erected in 1880, on the Tverskoy boulevard. Griboyedoff, in his remarkable comedy Gore <it urna, has given a lively picture of the higher Moscow society of the beginning of this century, which continued to hold good until within the last few years. His remark as to the unmistakable individuality of the Moscow type also maintains its truth ; although the physiognomy of Moscow has much changed since his day, it still has its special features that distinguish it from every other capital. The division of classes is much more felt at Moscow than elsewhere. The tendency towards originality, the love of grandiose undertakings, a kind of brag, together with little feeling of inde pendence, a good deal of laziness, and much cordiality, still charac terize the educated classes. The merchants live quite aloof from any political or even intellectual movement, under a rude patri archal system, well described in the dramas of Ostrovsky. A large proportion of them are nonconformists. Their sons, the well- known kupecheskiye synki, "merchants sons," when they leave this kind of life, astonish the capital with their extravagances and absurd display of wealth. But Moscow takes its present physiog nomy chiefly from its busy lower classes. The streets are full of merchants and peasants, who continue to wear the old Russian garb, go on foot in the streets, drink tea in modest restaurants, and trans act large business. From being a town of the aristocracy, Moscow is coming to be more and more a town of the wealthy middle classes, who persist in keeping the low educational level of the peasants in the villages, and have but one aspiration, to become in their turn " merchants of the type described by Ostrovsky. Suburbs. Moscow is surrounded by beautiful parks and pictur esque suburbs. Of theformerone of the most frequented isthePetrov- sky Park, to the north-west. A little farther out is the Petrovskoye Razumovskoye estate, with an agricultural academy and its de pendencies (botanical garden, experimental farm, &c.). Another large park and wood surround an imperial palace in the village of Ostankino. The private estates of Kuzminki, Kuskovo, and Kuntzevo are also surrounded by parks ; the last has remains of a very old graveyard, supposed to belong to the pagan period. Twenty-eight miles westward from the city is the Savvin-Storojevsky monastery, situated, like so many other Russian monasteries, in a very fertile country, amidst beautiful forests ; it has a pretty cathedral, a rich treasury, and library. Farther westward still is the New Jerusalem monastery erected by the patriarch Nikon. In the south-west, on the right bank of the Moskva, which hero makes a great bend to the south, are the Vorobiovy hills, which are accessible by steamer from Moscow, and afford one of the best views of the capital. In the bend of the Moskva is situated the Novo-Dyevitchiy convent, erected in 1525, and connected with many events of Russian history. It is now the burial-place of the Moscow aristocracy, and one of the richest nunneries in Russia. The village Arkhangelskoye has also a good park and a palace built by Rastrelli. Iliynskoye, formerly a private estate, was purchased by the imperial family in 1864. In the south, on the road to Serpukhoff, is the village of Kolomenskoye, the residence of Alexis Mikhailovitch, with a church built in 1531 (a striking monument of Russian architecture, restored in 1880). Diakovo has also a church built in the 16th and 17th centuries a pure example of the architecture of Moscow, recalling the temple of Vasili Blajennyi. One of the best sites in the neighbourhood of Moscow is occupied by the park of Tsaritzyno (11 miles from the Kursk railway station), purchased by Catherine II., with an unfinished palace and a beautiful park. The monastery Nikolo-Ugryeshskiy, 12 miles from the city, between the Kursk and Ryazan railways, also occupies a beautiful site, and is much visited by Moscow merchants, to venerate a holy picture by which Dmitry Donskoy is said to have been blessed before going to fight the Mongols. In the north, the forest of Sokolniki, covering 4J square miles, with its radial alleys and numerous summer residences, is the part of Moscow most frequented by the middle classes. Close by, towards the east, is situated the Preobrajenskoye suburb, the centre of the nonconformists, and farther south the village of Izmailovo, with a home for invalids and a model farm for apiculture. To the west of Sokolniki is situated the wood of Mariina, the favourite resort of the merchants and " merchants sons," who there spend fabulous sums of money on choirs of Gipsy singers. History. The Russian annals first mention Moscow in 1147 as a place where Yuri Dolgoruki met with Svyatoslav of Syeversk and his allies. The site was inhabited from a very remote antiquity by the Merya and Mordvinians, whose remains are numerous in the neighbourhood, and it was well peopled by Great-Russians in the 12th century. To the end of the 13th century Moscow re mained a dependency of the princes of Vladimir, and had to suffer from the raids of the Mongols, who burned and plundered it in 1237 and 1293. It is only under the rule of Daniil, son of Alex ander Nevsky (1261-1302), that the prince of Moscow acquired some importance for the part he took in the wars against the Lithuanians. He annexed to his principality Kolomna, situated at the confluence of the Moskva with the Oka. His son in 1302 annexed Pereyaslavl Zalessky, and next year Mojaisk (taking thus possession of the Moskva from its head to its mouth), and so inaugurated a policy which lasted for centuries, and consisted in the annexation by purchase and other means of the neighbouring towns and villages. In 1300 the Kremlin, or fort, was enclosed by a strong wall of earth and wood, offering a protection to nu merous emigrants from the Tver and Ryazan principalities who went to settle around the new city. Under John Kalita (1325- 1341) the principality of Vladimir where the princes of Kieff and the metropolitan of Russia had taken refuge after the wars that desolated south-western Russia became united with Moscow ; and in 1325 the metropolitan Peter established his seat at Moscow, giving thus a new importance and a powerful support to the young principality. In 1367 the Kremlin was enclosed by stone walls, which soon proved strong enough to. resist the Lithuanians under Olgerd (1368 and 1371). The son and grandson of Kalita steadily pursued the same policy. The latter (Dmitry Donskoy) annexed the dominions of Starodub and Rostoff, and took part in the re nowned battle of Kulikovo (1380), where the Russians ventured for the first time to oppose the Mongols in a great pitched battle. The church, which strongly supported the princes of Moscow, ascribed the presumed victor} to him and to the holy pictures of the Moscow monasteries. At this time Moscow occupied a wide area covered with villages. The Kremlin had three cathedrals old, small, and dark buildings, having narrow windows filled with mica-plates which were sur rounded by the plain wooden houses of the prince and his boyars. 1 To the east of the Kremlin was the posad, or city, also enclosed by a wall, and even then an important centre for trade. Different parts of the town belonged to different princes. In 1366 Moscow suf fered from pestilence. Two years after the battle of Kulikovo it was taken and plundered (for the last time) by the khan (Toktamish). The gradual increase of the principality continued during the first half of the 15th century, and at the death of Vasili II. the Blind, in 1462, it included not only the whole of what is now the government of Moscow, but also large parts of the present govern ments of Kaluga, Tula, Vladimir, Nijni - Novgorod, Kostroma, Vyatka, Vologda, Yaroslav, and Tver. Still the prince, although assuming, like several others, the title of Great Prince, had simply 1 The name of boyars, or Mars, was en-en to the descendants of the former

military bands of the princes, who had become counsellors and landowners.