produced almost at their doors, the inhabitants of Ekaterínburg have naturally taken their share; and they have used it to secure for themselves all the luxuries and opportunities for self-culture that are within their reach. They have organized, for example, the "Urál Society of Friends of Natural Science," which holds regular meetings and publishes its proceedings and the papers read by its members; they have established a museum of anatomy in connection with the Nevyánsk hospital, and a small but promising museum of natural history under the patronage of the scientific society; they sustain two newspapers[1] they boast of having occasionally a season of opera; and they recently carried to a successful conclusion a scientific, agricultural, and industrial exhibition that attracted public attention throughout Russia and brought visitors to Ekaterínburg from almost all parts of the empire. These evidences of culture and enterprise, judged by an American standard, may seem trifling and insignificant; but they are not so
- ↑ About the time that we passed through Ekaterínburg, the censorship of one of these papers—the "Week"—was transferred to Moscow. This compelled the editor to send to Moscow,in advance, a proof of every item or article that he desired to use; and as the distance from the place of publication to the place of censorial supervision and back was about 1500 miles, the "Week's" news was sometimes three weeks old before it ceased to be dangerous. By this time, of course, it had ceased to be interesting. Whether the paper survived this blow or not, I am unable to say. The two numbers of it that appeared while we were in that part of the empire contained nothing but advertisements. The editor, I presume, was waiting for the expurgated proofs of his local and telegraphic news to get back from Moscow; and it probably did not occur to him to fill up his reading columns with a few of the titles of the Autocrat of all the Russias, or a chapter or two of genealogies from the Old Testament.
The other newspaper in Ekaterínburg is called "The Active Correspondent," but how any "correspondent" ventures to be "active" in a country where mental activity is officially regarded as more dangerous to the state than moral depravity, I do not know. I invite the attention of the reader to the list of periodicals that have been punished or suppressed on account of their "pernicious activity" since the accession to the throne of Alexander III. It includes every newspaper published in Siberia. See Appendix B.
The number of zavods or "works" in the province, including blast-furnaces, pre-rolling-mills, and manufactories, exceeds one hundred; and in the production of wrought iron, chrome iron, platinum, and copper Perm takes first rank among the provinces of the empire.
