Riding Russian rail: the 12.56 to Sergiev Posad

By: Lawrence Sherwin Deputy Director of Communications

Students of Russian and Soviet history quickly learn the pivotal role that the railroads have played in the country’s economic development. In czarist times, it was the construction of the mammoth Trans-Siberian Railroad which opened up the Russian Far East, much as the completion of the transcontinental railroad had opened up the American West a few decades before.

In Soviet times, it was the rails that facilitated breakneck industrialisation, military victory and the proverbial “over-fulfilment” of five-year plans – not to mention the ideological frenzy under Brezhnev which accompanied construction of the BAM, a second, parallel spur of the Trans-Siberian Railroad*.

And today, in a transformed, market-driven Russia, rail transport binds and services the world’s largest country as no other national system does – an indispensable colossus with over a million employees hauling 1.3 billion tonnes of freight and transporting the same number of passengers annually.

That said, there is a romantic image in the west of Russia and it too is inevitably tied to rail travel. It is an image born in popular literature and films like Dr. Zhivago, images of Lenin’s return to Finland Station to spearhead Bolshevik revolution, of Trotsky’s crisscrossing the country in a battle for the hearts and minds of the masses, indelible images of the romance of rail travel across an endless steppe, of trains making their way through snowy birch forests and across the Urals, of vast expanses conquerable only by rail.

In 1975, as a college student of Russian, I took my first trip on a Russian train from Yaroslavl Station to Zagorsk, site of a mediaeval Russian orthodox monastery which would later revert to its former name of Sergiev Posad. It is a short, two-hour trip I would make three more times, in 1978, 1991 and 2009. If taken in the dead of winter, it is a trip which inevitably incorporates the romantic images I have nurtured of this fascinating country. At the same time, it is a trip which encapsulates the massive social and economic change as the Soviet Union ended and Russia emerged.

Thirty years ago, unless organised by the Soviet travel agency Intourist, it was technically illegal for foreigners to make this short journey, for it lay outside the 25 kilometre zone in which westerners were permitted to travel freely. The trip then was in an unheated train car which had seen better days, a faded elegance which included dark wooden interiors and unpadded wooden benches. Though it was far warmer inside the carriage than outside, the cold seeped through the windows and doors, mixing with the heat and moisture emanating from passengers in overcoats and fur hats to form a thin layer of frost on the inside of the windows.

The Soviet city of Zagorsk was a primitive affair – its back streets of sad, run-down wooden houses and joyless apartment blocks unpaved, frozen in winter, muddy in the thaw, dusty in the summer. Its pride and joy, the magnificent Trinity Monastery, founded in 1337, was also run down, some of it in ruins, with Soviet tour groups and guides milling about unkempt grounds. Outside of foreign tourists, there were few people about, and only the elderly were at worship in what must be some of Russia’s most magnificent churches. In what was the final indignity for this hauntingly beautiful place, surrounding streets seemed to exhibit an oversupply of red banners extolling the seminal role of the Communist Party as the ultimate conscience and moral authority of the land.

Fast forward from the unravelling of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s to today’s Russian Federation. The rail network remains key to industrial growth but has assumed an additional, no less vital role. Still arteries of supply and trade, passenger trains are now promoters of small business of every description, facilitating economic activity and individual enterprise across the country from the ground up – literally.

Russia’s train stations have become veritable beehives of small business, offering an amazing array of goods and services – as have the trains themselves. In days past, I might have ensured that I had adequate food and water for my recent trip, departing Moscow’s Yaroslavl Station punctually at 12.56 on a Wednesday for Sergiev Posad. No need any longer! A minute or two out of the station, and what was to become a parade of small vendors began. First came the refreshments (ice cream, drinks, snacks) and then came a salesman (or woman) of (in order): magazines and newspapers; detective novels; plastic reading glasses; self-sharpening knives; household goods; plastic raincoats; potato peelers; ladies wallets; shopping bags; sponges; classical and historical novels (including Maria Stuart); maps and tourist guides; brooms; oriental fans; kids stickers; and, finally, butterfly collections. Each salesman had a practiced speech and sales were surprisingly brisk. (As an added treat, the return trip included the day’s single entertainer: a talented female violinist with her rendition of the Beatles’ “Yesterday” on a pink, electric violin.

The on-time arrival in Sergiev Posad brought other surprises. The sleepy train station that was a dull, dirty and depressing Soviet backwater has been transformed into a series of kiosks, shops and restaurants. It has also served as a catalyst for economic development bringing numerous stores, a modern shopping mall and supermarket to the streets surrounding the station. An orderly, attractive complex of souvenir stands and craft stores is now across the street from the monastery.

There are at least two good reasons to make the short train journey to Sergiev Posad. The first is a toy museum exhibiting traditional handicrafts from across Russia – with a magnificent collection of toys from noble families, as well as from the family of Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II. The most moving reason to make the journey though is the monastery complex which has been lovingly and meticulously restored to its past grandeur. The defensive walls of the complex have been freshly painted, the gold-leaf stars on blue cupolas now glisten in the sun, the magnificent frescoes on its chapels and buildings have been fully restored. It is a place rich in history, now filled with worship, the sound of bells and choral song – with orthodox priests serving the spiritual needs of people of all ages.

They say that “one picture is worth a thousand words”. There should be a saying about travelling by train in Russia – something along the lines of “one short journey begets a myriad of stories”. Falling into conversation with people comes easily in Russia and especially on the train. Arriving and departing punctually from 27 suburban stations on a modern commuter train between Moscow and Sergiev Posad, mine ranged from Marshall Zhukov to contemporary politics, from rubbish collection to the state of Russia’s forests, and from the state of the economy (east and west) to the effects of the current financial crisis. Each of them is a story in and of itself.

* The train was so etched upon the national psyche in the U.S.S.R. that it often played a leading role in the true chronicler of Soviet reality, the joke. Here is one of the most telling: Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev are all travelling together in a train compartment. Unexpectedly the train stops. Lenin suggests: ‘Let’s call a subbotnik [a voluntary, extra workday], so that workers and peasants can fix the problem.’ Stalin puts his head out of the window and shouts, ‘If this train does not start moving, the driver and a third of all passengers will be executed while another third will have to push the train!’ But the train doesn’t start moving. Khrushchev then shouts, ‘Let’s take the rails behind the train and use them to construct the tracks in the front.’ But it still doesn’t move. Brezhnev then says, ‘Comrades, comrades, let’s draw the curtains, rock back and forth and pretend we’re moving!’

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