Russians in the Alps

Mikhail Shishkin

---

Our compatriots came to Davos long before it became the economic and political center of the world

Fragment from Mikhail Shishkin's book "Russian Switzerland. Literary and historical guide"

Davos and St. Moritz are among the most expensive and prestigious resorts in Switzerland. A peculiar idea has developed here about new Russian travelers: Russians, in the image of the world of the Davos waiter, are those who tip more than the cost of the order.

It’s funny that winter Alpine resorts owe their fame largely to the great-grandparents of the “new Russians”. The Russian discovery of Davos and St. Moritz took place already in the 19th century, when sanatoriums appeared here in connection with the discovery of the healing effect of mountain air on pulmonary patients.

Davos, St. Moritz, and other resorts of Grisons since the mid-19th century have become points of attraction, first for the Russian aristocracy, and then for everyone.

Tchaikovsky, who was vacationing in Davos in November 1884, writes to Nadezhda von Meck: “Yesterday I finally arrived in Davos... The place consists of a number of excellent and crowded hotels and several private villas. In this wilderness there are a bunch of first-class shops, a theater and its own newspaper, all kinds of entertainment establishments, such as the railway, Russian mountains, shooting gallery, etc. Winter is completely Russian.”

But the real Russian pilgrimage to these places begins at the turn of the century. Thus, in 1892, Russians made up only one percent of Davos guests - 257 people, and in 1912 already 11 percent of the total number of vacationers - 3,422 people. The Russian colony in those years was second in size after the German one. In 1899, a Russian library was opened in the Resort Center of Davos - now the Hotel Europe - and in 1908 the magazine "Davos Bulletin" began to be published here in Russian and was published regularly three times a month until 1916. It is interesting that this magazine, which contained a lot of medical information, was sent to 1000 doctors in Russia and served as a kind of advertising for the Swiss resort. In addition to Vestnik, the Russian printing house in Davos published the magazine European Resorts and the literary and political review Abroad, as well as guides in Russian to Graubünden, a mountain canton in eastern Switzerland. Those Russian publications that are banned in Russia are also published here, such as Tolstoy’s pamphlet “I Can’t Be Silent.”

The organizer of activities related to Russian culture at the resort is the Russian Society - Cercle Russe, officially registered in 1902. Its task is not only to organize concerts, but also to support poor Russian patients. In October 1909, the “Russian Home for Insufficient Tuberculosis Patients” opened. At first, the “Russian House” was located in the Tanzbühl boarding house; in 1913, the “Russian Society” bought the villa “Anna-Maria”. Russian charity balls with gypsy choirs and balalaika orchestras, held every year, become the highlight of the season. In 1912, an amateur Russian theater was even founded, which staged plays on the stage of the Belvedere Grand Hotel.

Many boarding houses specialize in receiving patients from Russia, and in 1912 the first Russian sanatorium in Davos opened at the Kaiserhof Hotel (now the Bernina Hotel). Guidebooks to Switzerland are filled with advertisements for “Russian” establishments in Davos, for example, in the “Russian Baedeker” for 1909 we read: “Davos, a resort for pulmonary patients. Russian boarding house. Davos Platz, Haus Albl. Sunny location, best table, electric lighting, bath, permanent doctor. Price from 6.50 per day." Or: "Davos Dorf. Guesthouse Villa Veccia. Equipped with the latest comforts. The owner speaks Russian."

The number of Russians grew so rapidly that in 1914 work began on the construction of a Russian Orthodox Church. Before this, the service was held first in the Oberrauch house in Davos-Dorf, then in the Roman Catholic chapel with the beautiful name “Snow Mary” (Maria zum Schnee). In April 1909, this room was consecrated by priest Sergei Orlov from Geneva. The Russian community of Davos begins to raise money for the construction of the temple, and in 1913, in the so-called English Quarter, a plot of land is purchased at the address: Scalettastrasse, 8. The order is received by the German architect Jakob Liedemann, but due to the outbreak of the war, work is stopped. Later, in 1933, the Villa Amitiers will be built on the foundations of this church.

With the influx of Russian citizens to Graubünden, the Russian government even opened a vice-consulate in Davos in 1911, thus making this resort village the fourth place in Switzerland after Bern, Geneva and Lausanne with an official Russian representation.

We learn about how the Russian aristocracy vacationed at winter resorts from the memoirs of Matilda Kshesinskaya, the famous prima ballerina of the St. Petersburg ballet. In December 1912, she came to St. Moritz to visit her future husband, Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich. “Andrei met me at the station in St. Moritz, and we rode in a sleigh with a couple of horses and bells to the Kulm Hotel, where he was staying and where rooms had been prepared for me. St. Moritz made a charming impression on me: everything was in deep snow , the sun shines and warms, like in summer, the whole city is like a toy, and everyone walks around in multi-colored sweatshirts and scarves, which gives the picture a cheerful flavor. Andrey and I had lovely rooms that were like a separate apartment overlooking the skating rink and the distant valley .

The first thing we did was go shopping with Andrei to outfit me in winter: special boots for walking in the snow, sweatshirts, scarves and knitted hats and gloves. There were plenty of these things in all the stores, for all tastes and means.

In the morning, no earlier than 11 o’clock, Andrei went to the skating rink. Previously it was too cold, we had to wait until the sun came out from behind the mountains. The first days I watched him skate, and then I took lessons myself, but there was too little time to learn. At the skating rink in the sun it was simply hot, the thermometer rose above 20 degrees Celsius, although at the same time in the shade there was a frost of about 8 degrees below zero. This could be seen on two thermometers, one on the sunny side and the other on the shady side.

In the afternoon we ordered paired sleighs, horses with bells and, wrapped in warm blankets, went for a ride around the surrounding area. There were many of them, all beautiful and varied, there were pine forests, valleys, mountains, all covered in snow and bathed in the hot sun. We came across the same sleighs, with people riding like us, all happy and happy, at least in appearance.

The view of the main street was funny, everyone was walking with skis in their hands or dragging sleds behind them to go up and down the mountains, everyone in a wide variety of clothes of all the colors of the rainbow.

It was necessary to return home before sunset, in winter no later than 5 o’clock, otherwise it would be freezing. We had breakfast and lunch in the common restaurant in our part of the hotel; others had their own dining room. Sometimes, if we were very tired and too lazy to get dressed, we had dinner in our rooms and the food was excellent.”

We came not only for the winter season, but also in the summer. The artist Margarita Voloshina, who came here from Italy, left enthusiastic memories of her holidays spent in the Engadin, one of the most beautiful valleys of the Grisons: “After all these great things, it seemed impossible to experience something more powerful. And yet the summer in the Engadin was, as it were, the crown of it all our journey. This country, where the air is filled with the sound of countless flowing streams of icy water, where in the sky right behind the light a black abyss can be discerned, this luminous country was to me then, and forever remained, not a geographical space, but a certain state of consciousness, something, "What, perhaps, in ancient times, pilgrims in Jerusalem could experience. This is how I always felt later, when I was there: being, reality."

Not everyone, however, is delighted with the trendy resorts. Max Voloshin, for example, during his trip in June 1901 bypassed St. Moritz. With friends, he walks from Italy through the Bernina Pass to the Engadine Valley. In his general diary he writes: “We passed by St. Moritz with its hotels and electric trams.” For an overnight stay, travelers choose Pontresina, neighboring St. Moritz. Here they stay at the Steinbock Hotel. Another entry in the diary: “Our room at the Steinbock Hotel turned out to be very bad, cold and damp. I felt very unwell and slept poorly at night and suffered from homesickness.” And here is a review about Pontresina: “The town consists of hotels, and on the street there are more of their agents than tourists... Everywhere there are pillars with an inscription indicating the way to the restaurant.”

In the same 1901, the future famous philosopher Nikolai Lossky travels in an extravagant way through the eastern part of Switzerland - on a bicycle. “Having crossed the border of Switzerland,” we read in his memoirs, “I went up to Davosplatz and from there went down to Ragaz, where I arrived late in the evening. In the morning, going out to see the city, I saw that next to my hotel there was a cemetery. I went there and immediately I came across a beautiful monument to Schelling. Just before this I was translating Kuno-Fischer about Schelling and had great sympathy for this philosopher. I remembered that he died in Ragaz and that a monument to him was erected by his admirer the Bavarian king. That made a great impression on me the circumstance that fate led me to spend the night near his grave." In the same resort of Bad Ragaz, a few years later the blind Pyotr Boborykin would write his memoirs.

Romantic places attract people of art. In the autumn of 1912, for example, they came to St. Moritz Bely with Asya Turgeneva. In the winter of next year, Rachmaninov and his wife are vacationing in Arosa, a resort town located between Hur and Davos. N.A. Rachmaninova recalls: “We decided to go on vacation to Switzerland, to Arosa. We really liked Arosa, and we stayed there all January. It was warm in the sun, and frosty 17 degrees in the shade. Sergei Vasilyevich promised me that he will not go sledding along the steep roads, on which, shortly before our arrival, two people fell to their deaths. And then one day he comes all covered in snow without a hat... I couldn’t resist and slid down the sled, losing my hat on the way. Thank God it passed safely. Then we often sledded with him along the beautiful but safe roads of Aroz. What a wonderful air there was. The sunrise was amazing when the first rays appeared from behind the mountains."

Russian resort life in Davos becomes the theme for the novel “Sanatorium of Death and Love” by writer Lydia Pisarzhevskaya, published in 1914.

Of course, Russian revolutionaries also vacationed in Graubünden. The beginning of the Social Democratic development of Davos was laid by Plekhanov - he was treated here in the winter of 1887 - 1888. In 1909, Lenin wrote to the Bolshevik Dubrovinsky in Davos: “Don’t worry, get serious treatment. Under no circumstances leave the sanatorium... Don’t spare a few hundred francs, it’s ridiculous.”

Davos becomes one of the centers of revolutionary emigration. Savinkov’s militants wait here for pauses between successive assassination attempts. Lunacharsky, Kollontai, Inessa Armand, Chernov give presentations here.

With the outbreak of war, the noisy life at the resorts comes to a standstill, and Swiss hotels are deprived of income from wealthy tourists from Russia. Margarita Voloshina spent the winter of 1917 here. In the book “The Green Snake” she recalls: “For the first time I saw this beloved country in winter. Above the snow, shining with dazzling whiteness, the abyss of the sky opened up, dark blue, almost menacing. Frozen waterfalls formed motionless folds, like on the clothes of archaic Greek statues. With When I was a child, I remembered St. Moritz as a small village with one modest hotel. Now I saw a dead city. Because of the war, the giant hotels were closed and looked like Assyrian mausoleums. It seemed to me that not twenty-three years had passed since then, but two hundred and thirty years, and I witnessed the emergence and death of an entire civilization. I myself was, as it were, torn out of life and transported to the boundaries of existence, into the silence of eternity. And into this frozen world, newspapers brought incredible news: there is a revolution in Russia..."

From Davos, Lenin called Karl Radek, who was vacationing here in a sanatorium, with an urgent phone call to Zurich. The last Russians are leaving the resorts - emigration is returning to Russia.

After the revolution, Russian speech is heard less and less in these places. The Russian library - 2000 volumes - from Davos, due to lack of demand, is transported to Bern and merged with the collections of the Eastern European Library.

One of the few Russian residents of Engadin in those years was Vaslav Nijinsky. The famous dancer settled after the war with his wife and daughter at Villa Guardamunt in St. Moritz-Dorf. Exhausted by his confused relationship with the aging Diaghilev, on the one hand, and his wife Romola, on the other, Nijinsky wrote his sensational “Diary” here in 1919. He calls himself “God’s Clown” and is desperately struggling with his oncoming mental illness - he is trying to explain to everyone that he is only playing crazy. He explains to the guests: “You see, I’m an artist, but I don’t have a troupe. I’m losing the stage. I thought it would be an interesting experiment if everyone saw how well I play, and for six weeks I played the role of a madman, and the whole village, and "My family, and even the doctors, believed me. An orderly wearing a massage therapist's mask is looking after me."

Nijinsky either takes part in sledding competitions, rushes down, risking crashing, along the steep turns of an ice chute, then wanders around with his daughter’s cross, urging everyone he meets to go to church, or begins to dance crazy improvisations on mountain steeps.

In January 1919, he staged a performance at the Suvretta House Hotel - he was going to dance to express the suffering of young people who died in the war. Before going on stage, he says with trepidation to his wife: “Today is the day of my union with God.” The public does not perceive Nijinsky's dance. Many in the hall get up and leave. This is his last performance.

From St. Moritz, his wife takes him to Zurich, to a psychiatric hospital.

Sometimes post-revolutionary emigrants also allow themselves to relax in the mountains of Grisons. So, in the summer of 1929 in Davos, after a long break, Vyacheslav Ivanov met with Emilie Medtner. Ivanov and his daughter Lydia come from Italy, Medtner, who in exile became a student and translator of Jung from a symbolist, comes from Zurich. Music is playing in the cafe where the meeting takes place. Medtner in Moscow was known for causing pain and seizures from music. It was believed that the cause of the disease was a family tragedy - the woman he loved, Emilia, became the wife of his composer brother. However, now Emilius does not even pay attention to the noisy chords. To the bewilderment of his old friend, he replies: “The result of Jung’s treatment.” Lydia Ivanova recalls: “On me personally, the image of Medtner made an extremely depressing impression: he seemed to me like a man, partly already dead, who still walks and acts normally. As a result of the treatment, something in his soul (music?) was killed. What - something very significant. The soul is no longer fully alive, crippled, amputated. Jung achieved this with his psychoanalysis? But what a price!"

A few years later, having received the Nobel Prize, Bunin came to St. Moritz on vacation with his wife.

A very rare exception in those years was the visit of guests from Soviet Russia to the resorts of Graubünden. Such a rare case is the arrival to Davos of Konstantin Fedin, who was treated for tuberculosis at the Helios sanatorium from September 7, 1931 to July 2, 1933. Here the writer wrote “The Rape of Europa” and “The Arcturus Sanatorium” - a kind of Soviet response to Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain”.

Nabokov often came to Grisons in the summer during the Swiss period of his life. For example, the writer and his wife spent July 1965 in St. Moritz. Nabokov rests in the Grand Hotel of the Bad Tarasp resort in the summer of 1966. In Lenzerheide in the summer of 1972 he spent a month of incessant rain. In the summer of 1975, the writer came to Davos on vacation, having returned from France, where the French translation of “Ada” was presented.

In Davos the following year, Nabokov suffered a fatal fall during his daily “hunt.” On a July day, a 76-year-old writer climbs the rocks after fluttering prey and, slipping on a steep slope, falls. The net that has fallen out of your hands clings to a branch. Nabokov tries to reach him and falls again, but is no longer able to get up. Luckily for him, the cable car line is nearby. Those riding in the cabin see an old man, who, as it seems to them, lies down to rest in the sun, smiles and waves at them. Only on the way back, seeing Nabokov lying in the same position, does the cableway employee realize that help is needed. People with stretchers are sent for Nabokov. He manages without fractures, but after this incident his body begins to be overcome by illnesses from which the writer will never recover. Upon his return to Montreux, he would have to go to hospital, and from then on, his stays in a hospital bed would become more frequent. Nabokov will joke that his net, left in the mountains, hangs on a branch “like Ovid’s lyre.”

Copyright 2000 by Pano Verlag