Russian ceremonies. #3. Russian tea. Way to people.
Tea leaves started their way to Russian houses from two different sides. First it was appreciated by Siberian merchants, so the drink became popular in the Tea houses along the Great Tea Road. It appeared at the end of XIX century and connected Moscow - Kazan - Perm-Ekaterinburg - Tyumen - Tomsk - Irkutsk, horses helped camels and river ships to make the journey of 5930 versts (1 verst is 3500 ft.) a bit shorter - 70-80 days. Apart of Moscow they sold tea at Nizhniy Novgorod and Irbitsk - two main trading ports of Russia. They usually used the winter time for transportation by sleighs - 5-6 heavily loaded sleighs were gathered into a "svyazka"with one drayman, groups of drayman formed an "oboz" trains 3000 of which started their way from Mongolia to the Ural each year.
Tea was packed into "tsibiki" special baskets of grass, piles of bundles of Chinese paper with tea were placed inside the baskets, the later were wrapped round with horse skin hair inside.
However for peasants tea was a very expensive and unusual product. Peasant kept drinking their honey and herb drinks, kvass and lingonberry water. Saint-Petersburg drank coffee.
Moscow adopted the Chinese drink easily. 0n the 31st of December 1821 Alexander I gave a permission to sell and to serve tea at taverns and restaurants, in 1840 46 special tea-shops were opened in Moscow. One by one towns and villages start drinking tea and by the rein of Nicolas I each house was equipped with a samovar and teapots.
Another reason for Russian to accept tea so fast was that Russians lived according to the Orthodox Church rules which defend any alcohol during the most part of the year. so tea became the most popular hot drink, even though there was some period of anti-tea campaign in the country.
