Tramvai!

April 6, 1899: First Electric Tram goes into operation in Moscow

Every morning, all over the world, countless commuters board busses, streetcars, subways, and commuter trains, sometimes with great effort, and head to the other end of town or to another town altogether, only to reverse the process come evening.

Today, public transit is such a natural part of urban life that we can hardly imagine that it was ever otherwise. How can people get by without a transit system? How would you get to and from work? How would you get around town?

Two or three hundred years ago the answer was simple: people with money had their own means of transportation, whether carriages or litters, and the simple folk had to live where they worked. Servants lived in their masters’ houses, peasants farmed lands adjacent to their huts, and workers lived in the settlements that sprung up around any factory, an easy walk away from their jobs, where they could hear the whistle calling them to work. Spending time getting to work was simply impractical, and where would a poor person get the means? Furthermore, given the fact that in the nineteenth century the workday could run 12 to 15 hours, there really wasn’t time.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, railway networks gradually spread across developed countries. At first, they were primarily intended for simple people, and in many countries, trains were not considered an appropriate means of transportation for “polite society,” who would be in danger of rubbing elbows with the poor. Be that as it may, the railroads made long-distance travel, as well as travel between city and country, a great deal easier. However, within cities, which were growing at a staggering pace, it was still hard to get around.

The first solution was the horse-drawn cab. Cabs could take you to a particular address, but they were expensive, and not fast enough to get you to work every day. And what to do if there was no cab to be found? Back in 1847 Moscow, the cabbies themselves came up with an innovative solution. They started to travel set routes (lines) and fit as many people as they could in their carriages – as many as twenty. This brought the price down and passengers figured out where they could board an omnibus – lineika (линейка) – and where they could get off. Interestingly, people in these conveyances were seated in two rows facing the street. Apparently, it was considered better for passengers to have their backs to one another and look out at the street (even at the risk of having their faces spattered with mud) than sit face-to-face with a stranger.

This was all very well, but the lineiki could not meet the needs of a big city like Moscow. Twenty-five years later, in 1872, the konka (конно-железная городская дорога or horse-drawn urban railroad) made its appearance, the immediate precursor of the streetcar or tramway. The city was crisscrossed with lines of track on which horse-powered streetcars could be pulled. Soon there were about 400 such streetcars drawn by about 2,000 horses. But with time, the city felt the need to pick up the pace. (Popular frustration with the speed of the konka is reflected in the saying: “Konka, konka, catch up with the chicken!” It sounds a lot better in Russian: «Конка, конка, догони цыплёнка!».)

In 1892, newspapers published an astonishing piece of news: in Kiev, electric streetcars had replaced horse-drawn ones. Based on the English word “tramway,” the system was given the name tramvai. A year later these trams were running in Nizhny Novgorod, and a year after that in Yekaterinoslav and Yelizavetgrad. It is easy to see why these cities were among the first to adopt this new technology – commerce and industry were flourishing there, causing a surge in population. Moscow may have been bigger, but it already had the konka, so it lagged behind a few years and got its tram system only in 1899.

Interestingly, in St. Petersburg, the konka owners managed to prevent the introduction of electric streetcars until 1907, whereas in Moscow the company that ran the konka system made the switch to electricity on its own. It did not take long before Muscovites grew accustomed to the sight of streetcars rolling along without the assistance of horses. Everyone knew that when the conductor sounded one bell it meant that the streetcar was about to pull away from a stop, two meant it was approaching a stop, and three, that the driver should immediately slam on the brakes.

People without money would try (over the vociferous objections of the conductor) to catch a free ride (проехаться «зайцем») by mounting the little platform at the end of the car, perhaps hanging on to the “tramway sausage” – the tube connecting the hydraulic brake system sticking out the back. That is exactly what the cat Behemoth does in Master and Margarita (which takes place in 1930s Moscow), exhibiting, as one might expect from someone affiliated with the dark forces, a good knowledge of local customs:

Ivan focused all his attention on the cat. He saw the bizarre feline walk over to the steps of an “A” streetcar that was standing at the stop, rudely push aside a woman who let out a shriek, grab onto the handrail, and even try to thrust a ten-kopek piece at the conductress through the window, open because of the heat.

The cat’s behavior so amazed Ivan that he froze in his tracks next to a grocery store on the corner, only then to become even more amazed by the behavior of the conductress. As soon as she saw the cat climbing onto the streetcar, she began shouting with such fury that she shook all over, “Cats aren’t allowed! No passengers with cats! Shoo! Get off, or I’ll call the police.”

But neither the conductress nor the passengers were amazed by the most important thing of all, namely, that a cat was not merely getting on a streetcar, which wasn’t so bad, but that he intended to pay his fare!

The cat turned out to be not only a fare-paying beast, but a disciplined one as well. At the first yell from the conductress, he stopped in his tracks, got off the streetcar, and sat down at the stop, stroking his whiskers with his ten-kopek piece. But no sooner did the conductress pull the cord and the streetcar start to move, than the cat did just what anyone who has been kicked off a streetcar and still has somewhere to go would do. He let all three cars go by, then jumped onto the coupler in the back of the last one, grabbed on to a piece of tubing that stuck out of the back with his paw and sailed off, saving himself ten kopecks in the bargain. [From Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor (Vintage: 1996).

Today, streetcars seem somehow quaint and old-fashioned. The authorities in Moscow, unlike those of other European cities, are trying to get rid of the tramway, since the rails are an annoyance for cars.

Since the streetcar began traversing our cities, it has made a number of iconic appearances in many of Russian literature’s poems, stories, and songs. In 1919, twenty years after the Moscow tramway system was launched and twelve years after it appeared in St. Petersburg, the poet Nikolai Gumilyov cast a streetcar in a strange, magical, and somewhat sinister light:

Шел я по улице незнакомой
И вдруг услышал вороний грай,
И звоны лютни, и дальние громы,
Передо мною летел трамвай.

Как я вскочил на его подножку,
Было загадкою для меня,
В воздухе огненную дорожку
Он оставлял и при свете дня.

Мчался он бурей темной, крылатой,
Он заблудился в бездне времен…
Остановите, вагоновожатый,
Остановите сейчас вагон.

The street I walked was unfamiliar,
A crow’s cawing sounded, shrill and brash.
I heard lute strains and distant thunder,
Then a streetcar flew up in a flash.

How I wound up standing on its footboard,
Is a puzzle I can’t explain away,
And odder still, the fiery tail behind it
Could be seen, despite the light of day.

On it rushed, a tempest dark and winged,
Hurtling lost, amid time’s vast expanse...
Stop, please driver, I implore you,
Stop this streetcar’s mad advance.

Gumilyov’s “Lost Streetcar” transported the author through cities and countries to faraway wonders. Two years after this poem was written, its author was shot, accused of involvement in an anti-Soviet plot. His books were banned for many decades. Almost a century after these events, another poet, Vecheslav Kazakevich, who taught for many years at a university in Toyama, Japan, featured this streetcar in a poetic remembrance of Gumilyov:

Не вступились звери за него,
люди за него не отомстили,
только для удобства своего
рельсы и вагоны сохранили.

Где бы только — в бурю или в май,
по Тояма или Могилёву —
ни звонил раздолбанный трамвай,
он всегда звонит по Гумилёву.

The beasts did not rise to defend him,
Venge the death that was so undeserved,
Although, since it brought them some comfort,
The streetcar and rails they preserved.

Wherever – amid snow or May flowers,
In Toyama or in Mogilyov –
The bell of a creaky old tram
No doubt tolls for bard Gumilyov.