Long distances between stations and rough roads were hard for one horse to travel. For this reasons troikas (carriages drawn by three horses) came into being and made possible the quick movement of people from one side of the large country to another. His environment determines to some extent a person's character.
The Russian is not himself without his country's spaciousness. Travel gives him an opportunity to get to know Russia, to express his love for it, to open his soul. That is why many intimate conversations take place during journeys when green forests and snow fields are flashing past the window of a railroad carriage or a starry sky stands high and, as one poet put it: "a star speaks to another."
Rushing troikas helped travellers escape from the routine world of realities and transfer themselves to the world of dreams, and little imagination was needed to develop troikas into artistic images. Troikas race in Pushkin's novels and poems. It has been calculated that he himself travelled some 30 thousands km in troikas. "Oh, Troika! Bird of a Troika!" Gogol begins his dedication to the troika.
Look at the horses, which are drawing light carriages. They are the offspring of those fiery horses on which the sun rode out into the sky every morning and which were ridden by gods and bogatyrs of old folk legends.

(Written and translated into English by Vadim Shchanitsyn)