French Marquis on the Russian Roads: Astolphe de Custine and the Road Tradition

This paper discusses some observations and conclusions made by Astolphe de Custine, a French traveler and writer, during the summer months he spent in Russia in 1839. He traveled a lot around Russia and visited not only the largest cities of the empire but also the provinces. There are quite a few works about de Custine and his book Russia in 1839 in Russian historiography. However, it is important to pay attention not only to his generalized judgments about Russia but also to the specific details that are included in his famous book. The book contains few sketches of Russian provincial life, but a lot of road impressions of Custine’s travels in the Russian provinces. The road tradition encompasses the conditions, circumstances and situations that accompanied the long-distance overland movement. This topic is located at the intersection of historical knowledge, anthropology, and ethnography. It is connected with the social dimension of daily life. The road tradition of Russia attracted close attention of foreign travelers, who voluntarily or involuntarily compared it with their native road circumstances and situations to which they were more accustomed. Custine noticed the peculiarities of traffic and carriages, road improvement, scenes on suburban highways, and much more. The material reviewed and commented on in this paper makes it possible to clarify Custine’s attitude to the road tradition of Russia. It would be wrong to assume that he did nothing more than criticized the Russian provincial road infrastructure. Some of his observations are quite accurate, which is confirmed by other historical sources, and therefore are of interest to us now. However, in the case of a parallel road between St Petersburg and Moscow, which allegedly existed for the convenience of the Russian tsar, he turned out to be mistaken. In that instance, Custine’s habit of moralizing, shining with his thoughts and formulations on various occasions, played a mean trick on him.

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