Coachman: a special caste among Russians

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Coachmen were a special caste among Russians - their skills were inherited, their families were ruled by women, they had their own especially revered saints.

Arriving in Russia in 1839, the French Marquis Astolphe de Custine was shocked by the extraordinary speed with which the Russian coachmen rushed along the Moscow-Petersburg highway, the first high-speed highway of the Russian Empire. “I try to learn how to say“quieter”in Russian, other travelers, on the contrary, urge the drivers on,” wrote de Custine.

“A Russian coachman, dressed in a thick cloth caftan, […] at first glance seems to be an inhabitant of the East; in the way he jumps on the irradiation, Asian agility is noticeable. […] Grace and lightness, speed and reliability with which he rules a picturesque team, the liveliness of his slightest movements, the dexterity with which he jumps to the ground, his flexible waist, his become, finally, his whole appearance evokes the most graceful by nature the peoples of the earth … "- wrote de Custine.

The charioteers who so impressed the French guest were indeed special people, a separate caste among the estates of Russian society. Their profession was one of the oldest in the Russian state - in fact, the system of Yam stations helped once to create this state.

Empire Pits

Courier. Painting by an unknown artist from fig. A. Orlovsky. - Public domain

“When I served as a coachman at the post office” - these words from an old Russian song are familiar to everyone. But do we think about why the coachman "served" at the post office?

"Coachman" - from the word "yam" - in the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan, this word meant a building on a high road, which kept horses. The pit system, created either under Genghis Khan, or under his descendants, was the know-how that allowed the Mongols to create the largest empire in history.

The pit system was used to connect the center of the Mongol Empire (and then its successor, the state of the Golden Horde) with the outskirts. In order for the emissaries of the ruler to overcome huge distances as quickly as possible, stations were installed on the roads at a certain distance from each other, at which the messenger could change tired horses for fresh ones, rest and continue the journey. When the dependence on the Golden Horde was overcome, this system was preserved in the Russian lands and was used for communication between Russian cities.

"The great sovereign, the prince of Moscow, has coachmen with a sufficient number of horses in different places of his principality, so that wherever the prince sends his messenger, there will be horses for him" - the Austrian diplomat Sigismund Herberstein wrote about the pit service of the 16th century.

Postal station at the mouth of the Ussuri and Sungachi rivers --- + link - MAMM / MDF / russiainphoto.ru

The Russian Yam stations were located at a distance of 40-60 kilometers from each other (about the same amount was the daily run of a horse). Their upkeep was provided by the surrounding population, who bore the "Yam duty" introduced by the Mongol-Tatars (at the beginning of the 18th century it was replaced by taxes).

The population was obliged to keep the roads and stations in order, to supply carts (carts), horses and feed for them, as well as to select from among themselves employees for duty at the stations and the drivers themselves - those who were involved in the transportation of government officials and cargo. A separate institution, the Yamskaya Prikaz, was in charge of the Yamskaya Gonboy.

There were many who wanted to become a coachman - coachmen and their families received exemption from state taxes, land for building a house and a salary. However, the work was not easy - the driver needed strength and endurance, he had to be sober and responsible.

When he entered the service, he promised “not to get drunk in a tavern, not to steal by any kind of theft, not to run away and not to leave the pit chase of his foots in the void”. It was required to transport travelers, dispatches, cargo, and each driver was required to maintain at least 3 horses and monitor their health.

Along Tverskaya-Yamskaya

"Troika". Artist Alexander Deineka - Alexander Deineka

In 1693, Peter the Great issued a personal decree on the organization of mail “from Moscow to Pereslavl-Zalessky, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Vologda, Vaga”. The decree imposed strict requirements on the work of the drivers - especially for the transportation of correspondence, which had to be carried “carefully, in bags, under the bosom, so as not to soak in the rain and not drop it on the road in a drunken state (if they get wet or lose it, they will be tortured).

In the event of a violation of the integrity of the wax seals on the state letters of the driver, a preliminary detention awaited and delivery to Moscow for interrogation (which means, torture again). And for every hour of delay, the drivers were entitled to one blow with a whip. In general, the service was not easy.

Therefore, the coachmen gradually formed as a separate caste - the skill of managing horses and the art of harnessing, the intricacies of service and the dashing coachman whistle were taught from an early age, and the coachmen also settled compactly, in separate Yamsky settlements. Both in Moscow and in Yaroslavl (another Russian city famous for its coachmen), and in many other cities there were and still are Yamskie streets - there the drivers settled.

Traditions were strong in the coachman families. Until the end of the 19th century, the unconditional head of the driver's family was the grandmother - since the men spent most of their time on the road, the house remained under the control of women. The coachmen were religious, especially respecting Saints Florus and Laurus, who were considered the patrons of horses - for example, the main Moscow horse market was located on Zatsepa (near the present Paveletsky railway station), where the Church of Florus and Laurus still stands.

Podorozhnaya from Moscow to St. Petersburg to the second lieutenant of the Life Guards Jaeger Regiment, Durasov. January 25, 1836 - The State Museum of A. S. Pushkin

For the ordinary traveler, the coachman worked in this way. If there was money, it was possible to travel on state horses provided by the post office. To do this, it was necessary to obtain a road trip - a special document for the use of state-owned horses and a cart. Having presented it at the post station and paid for "runs" - money for a horse to travel a certain distance - the passenger followed to the next station with a coachman, who then returned to "his" station.

Of course, it was very, very expensive to ride both state and "free" horses (that is, without a road horse, just hiring coachmen). The well-known "cavalry girl" Nadezhda Durova wrote about her journey in 1836: "With the road trip, I would have paid no more than three hundred rubles from Kazan to St. Petersburg, without her I would have spent exactly six hundred."

For comparison: Alexander Pushkin's Mikhailovskoye brought about 3,000 rubles a year, his salary for a collegiate secretary (10th grade according to the Table of Ranks, the equivalent of a staff captain in the army) in 1822 was 700 rubles a year; a ruble could buy more than 3 kilograms of beef, and a thoroughbred horse, which was not ashamed to be harnessed to his carriage by a rich nobleman, cost 200 rubles …

In general, only the elite could afford rides by coachmen. But for that kind of money, the drivers rushed like crazy. Abbot Jean-François Georgel wrote in his "Travel to St. Petersburg in the reign of Emperor Paul I": "Russian coachmen carry extremely fast, almost all the time the horses gallop … you constantly risk breaking the carriage and capsizing, and you have to threaten them in order to force them go slower."

Experienced Russian travelers took spare axles and wheel rims with them in advance in their luggage, as they knew that they would be needed without fail.

I will pump with a whistle

"They carried it." 1884. Artist Pavel Kovalevsky - Pavel Kovalevsky

The meaning of this phraseological unit is precisely in the combination of speed and the famous coachman whistle. Although Peter tried with his decrees to introduce special signal horns for the coachmen in the German fashion, the coachmen did not accept them harshly. There was even a legend about a coachman who burned his lips with acid, just not to touch the "Basurmansky" horn.

The coachmen signaled their approach by whistling and shouting, and by the second half of the 18th century Valdai bells, hung under the arch of horses, came into fashion. True, they rang so loudly that in 1834, by decree of Nicholas I, riding with Valdai bells was prescribed only to courier troikas and firefighters when driving to a fire.

Well, the speed of the coachman's carriage was much higher than the speed of carriages in Europe - it was not in vain that the foreigners were afraid! The distance from Novgorod to Moscow, which is 562 versts (about 578 km), the coachman covered in less than three days. And Pushkin in "Eugene Onegin" generally writes: "Our troikas are indefatigable, and miles, comforting an idle gaze, flash in our eyes like a fence." A verst, let me remind you, is 1066 meters!

According to Pushkin in the notes, he borrowed this hyperbole from a certain K., known for his “playfulness of imagination,” who said that “once sent by a courier from Prince Potemkin to the empress, he rode so quickly that his sword, sticking its end out of the cart, knocked on the versts, as if on a palisade."

"Portrait of Emperor Nicholas I in a sleigh." 1850s. Artist Nikolay Sverchkov - Nikolay Sverchkov

In general, for those times the speed of the driver's troika was really impressive. The same Custine writes: “Our troika rushed at a speed of four and a half or five leagues per hour. The Emperor travels at a speed of seven leagues an hour. The railroad train would hardly keep up with his carriage. The land line is 4445 meters, respectively, its troika went at a speed of 20-23 km / h, and the imperial one - more than 30 km / h!

Of course, it was the rapid development of railways in Russia, which started in 1851 with the opening of the Moscow-Petersburg branch, that put an end to the coachman profession. Now all correspondence and cargo began to be delivered by trains, and long-distance passengers were soon transferred to the trains. The coachmen gradually returned back to their class - the peasantry, and remained in the people's memory only in folklore and classical literature.