Chapter 9
in which art fan Sergei Diaghilev and religious fanatic Sergei Trufanov (Iliodor) try to stay independent from the state and even use it to their advantage
RUSSIAN CHIC IN PARIS
In October 1906, an exhibition of Russian art opens at the Grand Palais in Paris. The main guest of the vernissage is the fifty-nine-year-old Grand Duke Vladimir, the president of the Imperial Academy of Arts and Emperor Nicholas II’s uncle, one of the most senior and respected members of the House of Romanov. Until recently, he commanded the Petersburg Military District, in which capacity he opened fire on the Bloody Sunday procession in 1905. However, in Paris he is known as a patron of Russian art, not a military despot.
A year ago, Vladimir took great offense at Nicholas and Alexandra for not approving the marriage of his son Kirill and then expelling him from Russia. As a result, Vladimir and his entire family now spend most of their time in Europe.
The French have never seen an exhibition quite like it: the exposition begins with a collection of religious icons (unprecedented), followed by eighteenth-century art and contemporary works by Vrubel, Serov, Benois, and Bakst. The whole thing is the brainchild of the thirty-four-year-old Sergei Diaghilev.
The public reaction is immense. The critics are raving, and even the French president and other luminaries attend. The grand duke is highly satisfied, so much so that Diaghilev convinces him to consolidate the success by treating the French to some Russian opera. The grand duke agrees.
Not all of Diaghilev’s friends are ecstatic about his venture: Benois, for instance, says that it is risky to take money from the grand dukes. The former imperial darling Serov, who since Bloody Sunday has not worked for the Romanovs, considers it unseemly to have dealings with an “executioner.” Diaghilev replies that it is impossible to put on exhibitions abroad without big money, and no one except the imperial family is prepared to splash out.*
Meanwhile, Diaghilev takes the exhibition to Berlin, where he arranges a private viewing for Kaiser Wilhelm II. Spotting a portrait by Bakst of Diaghilev himself, the German emperor inquires about the identity of the elderly lady propped up in the background. Diaghilev replies that it is his old nanny Dunya. Wilhelm takes a great interest in how Dunya is getting on.
Diaghilev enjoys the life of a European celebrity.
The grand duke likes splendor, and Diaghilev is happy to indulge his sponsor’s tastes. Vladimir continues to provide funding (increasingly from the state budget, not his own pocket). When in 1908 Diaghilev stages a production of Boris Godunov at the Grand Opera in Paris, with Chaliapin in the title role, the luxury of the scenery and costumes surpasses anything that has gone before. “Let the grandeur drive the French out of their minds,” Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov describes his plan for staging Mussorgsky’s unfinished opera, which he has undertaken to complete. The performance turns into a grotesque, exotic carnival revolving around an idealized view of Russian antiquity. Grand Duke Vladimir likes the costumes so much that he decides to put them on display at the Hermitage.
The grand duke’s favor rescues Diaghilev. The cost of staging Boris Godunov at the Grand Opera is so vast that it cannot possibly be recouped. Russian cultural officials demand that Diaghilev be prosecuted for embezzlement. But the grand duke intercedes and thwarts any legal action: the sum of 100,000 francs* owed by Diaghilev to his contractors is ultimately paid out of the Russian treasury.
HOLY TERROR
The left bank of the Seine at this time is home to Diaghilev’s cousin, Dima Filosofov, and his associates Zinaida Gippius and Dmitry Merezhkovsky. Having moved to Paris, they continue to invent their own version of Christianity. Back in 1905, Merezhkovsky propounded the notion that “autocracy comes from the Antichrist” and later that “the Russian revolution is not only political, but religious.” In Paris they make the acquaintance of Boris Savinkov and other émigré revolutionaries.
For the self-styled Troyebratstvo (“brotherhood of three”), the revolution is a new religion. Merezhkovsky pens an article entitled “Devil or God?”—essentially a response to the late Dostoevsky’s novel Demons, the title of which was a reference to its revolutionary protagonists. Merezhkovsky highlights what he describes as the torment of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, comparing them with the early Christians in the Roman Empire: “They endured torture and death in order to bring the Good News.”
The terrorist Boris Savinkov is as far removed from Christianity as can be, yet Zinaida is fascinated by him. For hours on end, she questions him about how it feels to kill someone. In between assassinations, Savinkov is fond of composing verse. He shows some of his poems to Gippius, who assures him that he has talent. She bestows him with the pseudonym “Ropshin” and persuades him to pursue his literary endeavors.
The justification of violence in the name of revolution is the main theme of Gippius, Merezhkovsky, and Filosofov’s symposia. Together, they write a philosophical treatise under the title “Tsar and Revolution,” which begins with a political analysis of the situation in Russia by Filosofov, before developing into an unprecedented justification of terrorism by Gippius.
In his article “Tsar-Pope,” Filosofov concludes that Russia is a theocratic state, wherein the emperor is the head of the Orthodox Church, just like the Roman pope leads the Catholic Church. Hence, any struggle against the regime must aim to destroy Orthodoxy. Nicholas II cannot grant a constitution, writes Filosofov, because for him it would be a betrayal of his faith. Orthodoxy is the soft underbelly of Russian autocracy.
But the most seminal article in the collection, which is called Revolution and Violence, is penned solely by Gippius. In it, she postulates that murders committed in the name of revolution can—and should—be justified. After all, she remarks cold-bloodedly, there are situations, such as duels or wars, where killing is natural. What is more, killings “committed for the sake of the future and inspired by reason and moral feeling” are acts of holy self-sacrifice. In her opinion, terror that strikes a blow to autocracy is godly and pious. “Tsar and Revolution” goes down a storm in Paris. Merezhkovsky’s lecture “On Violence” at the Sorbonne attracts so many people that a larger hall has to be found.
Meanwhile, Boris Savinkov is obsessed with a new idea. Disillusioned with the previous tactic of terror, which involved small, secret cells that spent years tracking down victims, he wants to raise terror to a new level. The situation in Russia demands a struggle on a grander scale with an army of terrorists and a “secret order” of assassins led by Gershuni, assisted by Savinkov and Azef. However, neither Gershuni nor Azef likes the plan. Azef (himself a double agent) says that any more than fifty people in the organization will lead inevitably to police penetration. The central committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party declines to support Savinkov.
Instead, Gershuni proposes that all efforts be focused on one target: the tsar. The successful terrorist attacks against Sipyagin, Plehve, and Grand Duke Sergei forced the government to adopt reforms, but were followed by a clampdown. Now the time is ripe to set up a militant organization with the aim of assassinating Nicholas II.
Gershuni’s plan takes shape in October 1907. At the same time, he receives a disturbing letter from fellow party members in Saratov alleging that Azef is a police agent. Gershuni, the party leader, trusts Azef like a second self, and cannot believe that his chosen successor, the man who has organized all the most high-profile terrorist attacks so far, is a traitor. Yet neither can he dismiss the allegation out of hand. So he asks his colleagues to investigate further.
Meanwhile, the Petersburg police are busy rounding up a large terrorist cell for plotting to commit the most audacious attack in Russian history. Members of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party were planning to blow up the State Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament. They are sure that they were betrayed by one of their own.
Gershuni’s health after his Siberian exile is failing. He goes to Switzerland, where he is diagnosed with advanced lung sarcoma. The news demoralizes the Parisian SRs. In March 1908 they receive a visit from the “Sherlock Holmes of the revolution” Vladimir Burtsev, a journalist who specializes in exposing illegal policing methods. Burtsev tells the party’s central committee that he is in possession of evidence that unmasks Azef as an agent. Burtsev even hypothesizes that the SRs’ entire military organization is a police operation, and that almost all the party’s acts of terrorism were secretly sanctioned by the authorities.
For the SR leaders, Burtsev’s words seem hysterical. Chernov and his comrades lay into him, finding hundreds of contradictions in his investigation and describing the main source as a misinformer. Nevertheless, Burtsev’s theory is reported to the sickly Gershuni. To disprove the charges, Gershuni wants to go to Russia with Azef and assassinate the tsar together. Most likely they will both die, but at least it will clear the militant organization of the false accusations. But just days later Gershuni passes away.
Thus, within a brief interval, Russia’s most powerful opposition party is deprived of its two most charismatic leaders—Gregory Gershuni and Mikhail Gotz. It is Viktor Chernov who becomes the most significant of the party leaders. The Saratov investigation ordered by Gershuni is discontinued.
WALKING ON THIN ICE
In the winter of 1907 Nicholas II summons the head of the Moscow secret police, Colonel Gerasimov, to find out why he has not dealt with the terrorists. The tsar is concerned about the ongoing assassinations of officials. According to rank and protocol, Gerasimov does not have the right to sit in the presence of the tsar, so both men spend the nearly two-hour-long conversation standing by the window, looking out over the park.
Nicholas asks why Gerasimov has not managed to destroy all the terrorists. Gerasimov’s answer is simple: Finland. The Finnish border is only two hours away from Saint Petersburg; the revolutionaries are able to commit crimes in the Russian capital and hop across the border where the Finnish police are hostile to the Russian authorities and are themselves revolutionary. Russian police officials investigating in Finland are routinely detained themselves and sent back to Saint Petersburg, complains Gerasimov.
Nicholas is astonished. What should be done, he asks. Gerasimov advises him to annul the constitution granted to Finland: “I am ready to do everything to put an end to this intolerable situation. I shall talk to Stolypin,” replies the tsar.
Surprisingly, despite having been part of the Russian Empire for a century, Finland in 1907 is the freest “country” in Europe. Back in 1807, Emperor Alexander I had concluded an alliance with France (against Britain) and joined the “continental blockade” of the British Isles. Since Sweden was an ally of Britain, Russia launched an attack on the former, and by 1809 the Swedish territory of Finland was in Russian hands. It was Russia’s “fee” for not interfering in Napoleon’s conquest of Europe. By 1812, with Europe duly conquered, Napoleon took the fateful decision to invade Russia. When the dust and cannon balls settled, Napoleon’s empire was no more, and there was nothing to prevent Finland from remaining an autonomous principality within Russia. The reformer Alexander II allowed the Finnish Sejm (parliament) to convene, although he did not sign a Finnish constitution.
Problems arose at the turn of the century, when Plehve became the state secretary of Finland. He, along with Governor-General Bobrikov, launched a Russification program in Finland that poisoned Finnish minds against Russia. In 1904 both Plehve and Bobrikov were assassinated before the end of their reforms. Come 1905, Finland was a revolutionary breeding ground.
The “Finnish revolution” is a considerable success. By 1906 all of Bobrikov and Plehve’s repressive laws have been abolished, and Nicholas II has signed the newly drafted Finnish constitution: Finland is the first country in Europe to implement universal adult suffrage, including votes for women. It is effectively a separate country, a kind of “domestic offshore territory.”
But in 1907 the pendulum swings back. Nicholas II asks Stolypin to “put an end to the intolerable situation,” and in October that same year the Russian government dissolves the Sejm and starts to “cleanse” Finland of Russian revolutionaries, who all relocate to Western Europe.
In December 1907 Lenin leaves Helsinki. On board the train he suspects that he is under police surveillance and jumps off. The next part of the journey involves traversing the Gulf of Finland. The ice is thin, yet Lenin decides to make the crossing on foot—a Jesus Christ moment later immortalized by Soviet historians. The ice is cracking underfoot, and Lenin is sure that he will go under. There is only one thought running through his head: what a stupid way to die! A month later he arrives in the tranquil Geneva. Things look hopeless: there is political stability in Russia, and the revolution has been suppressed. Lenin starts to think that this gloomy backwater will be his final resting place.
In May 1908 Stolypin submits his plan for solving the Finnish question to the State Duma. For generations, Finns have considered their country a special legal state. However, says Stolypin, Russia also has rights: not for nothing did Peter the Great “shed streams of Russian blood” on the shores of the Gulf of Finland in constructing his mighty capital. Losing Finland “would inflict incalculable damage on the Russian state,” since “Russian moral and spiritual power has been invested in the cliffs and waters of Finland,” he asserts. The Duma members applaud and vote to grant the government sweeping powers with respect to Finland. Within two years Finnish autonomy is almost a distant memory.
Like his predecessors Plehve and Bobrikov, Stolypin will not live to reap what he has sown. Lenin, for his part, is destined to return to Finland in 1917, whereupon the Finns will do everything they can to help him seize power.
The open political debates of 1905-6 were seriously limited by 1907. The Third Duma, under the thumb of the authorities, is “not a place for discussion.” All conversations are now conducted secretly behind closed doors, often inside private clubs.
The disillusionment with politics revives an old pastime—Masonic lodges. Freemasonry first appeared in Russia in the 1700s, and by the early nineteenth century it is an important cultural trend, as described by Tolstoy in War and Peace. However, in 1822 Alexander I forbids all secret societies and the tradition is curtailed. But eighty-five years on, after the dissolution of the First Duma, the Russian liberal intelligentsia once again imports Freemasonry from France. Following the dissolution of the Second Duma, clandestine Masonic life strikes deeper roots.
On 8 May 1908, the Freemasons Bertrand Seneschal and Georges Boule arrive in Saint Petersburg to officially open the “Polar Star” Masonic lodge in Russia. Freemasons in the capital hold meetings inside a rented apartment directly above the office of the Duma faction of the Kadets. The French duo also opens the “Revival” Masonic lodge in Moscow.
Rumors about the Freemasons spread faster than the lodges themselves. The right-wing press comes up with the term “Judeo-Masonic” to describe almost anyone who is not a monarchist. The Black Hundreds cannot stand the Jews or Western intellectuals. The Duma, too, often blames Russia’s woes on the Masons, although there are probably fewer than a hundred of them in the whole empire.
Nicholas II reads the right-wing press and believes it. He asks Gerasimov about the link between the revolution and Freemasonry. Gerasimov replies that the Masons have nothing to do with it, but the emperor does not believe it. He orders an investigation into Russian and foreign Masons, and instructs the police to set up a special commission to counter the movement.
There is a real stir among the Masons when one of their “brothers,” Prince Sergei Urusov, makes it known that Yevgeny Azef is a police agent. Urusov learns about it from his brother-in-law and best friend, the ex-police chief Alexei Lopukhin, Azef’s former boss. The news horrifies the Masons. They are not so much worried about the SRs as fearful for themselves, because their ranks could also be dotted with agents, but they do warn the SRs of the impending danger.
MASONS AGAINST CONSPIRACY
Nikolai Morozov of the Moscow lodge, a former member of People’s Will, is entrusted with the task of warning the SRs of Azef’s treachery. In May 1908, he travels to Paris and meets with his People’s Will boyhood friend Mark Natanson, now a member of the central committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. The latter refuses to listen and advises Morozov to remain silent about Azef; otherwise, despite his past accomplishments, he will become an enemy of the Socialist-Revolutionaries.
Nevertheless, Natanson sets up a commission that carries out a six-month investigation that fails to unmask a traitor. “Sherlock” Burtsev continues to voice his suspicions and in August, at their next congress in London, the SR leaders decide to hold an internal party trial of the journalist (an “honor trial”) for having slandered the militant organization by describing it as the brainchild of the Interior Ministry. Three of the most respected party veterans are selected as the “judges”: Prince Peter Kropotkin (sixty-one years old, thirty-two in exile abroad), German Lopatin (sixty-three years old, over thirty in prison and exile abroad), and Vera Figner (fifty-six years old, sentenced to death, then spent twenty years in prison). The opinion of these living legends is law.
The decision to hold an “honor trial” in Paris is not to everyone’s liking. Savinkov, for instance, is against giving Burtsev’s insinuations the oxygen of publicity.
But Chernov and Azef insist on the trial. Savinkov suggests that he and Azef go together to Russia: if they are arrested or even executed, it will restore the honor of the militant organization, says Savinkov. But Azef declines. He believes that only by trying Burtsev in front of the party “will the absurdity of all these suspicions be revealed.”
Meanwhile, news of the forthcoming trial leaks to the Parisian public. The Freemasons, in particular, are outraged. They try to frame a plan to smoke out Azef and help Burtsev, who needs a witness whose testimony could turn the tide—for instance, his source, Alexei Lopukhin, the former police chief and Azef’s former handler.
In early September, the Masons send Burtsev a letter informing him of Lopukhin’s whereabouts in Germany. The so-called Russian Sherlock Holmes tracks him down and eventually catches him on board a train from Cologne to Berlin. They have a chat.
The train is already approaching Berlin when Burtsev opens up that he has unmasked a mole inside the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Burtsev only wants to hear yes or no, and cannot believe his luck when Lopukhin mouths the real name of the police agent—Yevno Azef. No one but Lopukhin refers to Azef, his former protégé, by the name in his passport.
REVELING IN REVEL
On 27 May 1908 King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, who goes by the nickname of “Europe’s uncle,” pays an official visit to Russia. He is the son of Queen Victoria and the uncle of both Empress Alexandra of Russia and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, while his spouse, Queen Consort Alexandra, is the aunt of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia and the sister of his mother, Maria Feodorovna. The two monarchs intend to discuss the new military alliance between Russia, Britain, and France: the Triple Entente.
The visit causes considerable consternation. Edward VII wants to go to Saint Petersburg, but Nicholas II is against the idea: “In England he’s used to strolling around wherever he wants, and will do the same here. I know him. He’ll walk to the theatre and the ballet, and probably go and inspect some factories and shipyards.” The tsar is worried because the Russian capital is full of terrorists. In the end, the meeting is transferred to the quiet city of Revel (today’s Tallinn in Estonia).
But the terrorists are on the ball. Long before Edward VII’s visit, Azef informs Gerasimov of a plot to assassinate Nicholas II—and Revel happens to be one of their favored locations. There are two options: either attack the imperial train or assassinate the tsar during a visit to the country estate of one of his courtiers. Azef manages to thwart both attempts, but informs Gerasimov afterwards that he is tired of working for the police and wants to “live in peace.” Gerasimov does not try to talk him out of it and even offers to keep paying him a thousand roubles a month.*
THE TRAGEDY OF THE YUSUPOVS
On 22 June 1908 the richest family in Russia (the Yusupovs, not the Romanovs) suffers a tragedy. The twenty-five-year-old Nikolai Yusupov, the elder son of Princess Zinaida Yusupova, the sole heiress to the family fortune, and Count Felix Sumarokov-Elston (who took his wife’s name to become Prince Yusupov), is killed in a duel.
The reason for the duel is heartbreak. Nikolai’s parents forbade him from marrying his beloved Marina, so she married another. The lovelorn Nikolai turns to an occultist by the name of Shinsky for help. The mystic says that Nikolai’s guardian angel is calling upon him to challenge his rival to a duel.
After the death of her elder son, Zinaida Yusupova is close to insanity. Nikolai was the pride and joy of the family. Now the Yusupovs’ only son is the twenty-one-year-old Felix. His parents make every effort to “correct” his behavior, which is uncommon, even for a spoilt heir.
On one occasion as teenagers, Felix and his elder brother were thinking of ways to amuse themselves (since they were too young to visit the local amusements). Nikolai’s friend, a girl of humble origin called Polenka, had the idea of dressing Felix up as a woman, which the latter greatly enjoyed: “I realized I could go anywhere dressed as a woman,” he recalls. “From that moment on, I led a double life. By day I was a schoolboy, by night an elegant dame.”
Some friends of their parents learn about Felix’s predilection, but Nikolai persuades them to keep silent. Felix’s transvestite ways continue. Eventually, Prince Yusupov learns about his son’s behavior. Mortified by the shame, he says that hard labor in Siberia would be the only fitting punishment. “I have always resented the injustice shown to those who behave differently,” says Felix Yusupov. “You can reproach homosexual love, but not the lovers themselves, because for them normal relations are repugnant. Is it their fault that they are created like that?”
After the death of his brother, Felix is sent for “re-education” at the home of Zinaida’s closest friend, Grand Duchess Elizabeth, the sister of Empress Alexandra and the founder of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent. Felix loves Aunt Ella and helps with her charity work. At the same time, he forms a close bond with Grand Duke Dmitry, Ella’s nephew, whom she is also bringing up. Dmitry is four years younger than Felix and effectively replaces Nikolai as his brother.
They spend their summers in Crimea and winters at Tsarskoye Selo. On several occasions, Felix is summoned by Empress Alexandra to discuss his future. He says that he wants to study in Oxford. “Every self-respecting man,” says Alexandra, “must serve either the military or the court.” Felix says that he will inherit a huge fortune, including land and factories, and that managing it properly will be of service to Russia. Alexandra replies that Russia is not as important as the tsar, because “the tsar and the fatherland are synonymous.” Right on cue, Nicholas II enters the room. “Felix is an incorrigible revolutionary,” she informs her husband.
KILLING THE EMPEROR
It is 23 September 1908 in Kronstadt. Aleksei Lopukhin has just admitted to Vladimir Burtsev that Azef is a police agent, but no one yet knows about it. There is a month to go before the SRs’ “honor trial” of Burtsev in Paris. Meanwhile, at the Russian navy’s main base at Kronstadt, Emperor Nicholas II is inspecting the new cruiser Rurik, which was built in Glasgow. Neither the emperor nor his attendants are aware that two crewmembers are recruits of the SR militant organization. Their task is to shoot the tsar at point-blank range.
The preparations for the operation have lasted all summer. First of all, Savinkov visits Glasgow. He and another experienced terrorist, Pyotr Karpovich, who in 1900 assassinated Russian Education Minister Bogolepov, interview potential regicides. They find two volunteers willing to assist. The initial plan is for the sailors to find a secluded place on the ship for either Savinkov or Karpovich to live while the vessel sails to Russia, after which the stowaway will assassinate the tsar during the handover ceremony.
Soon the double agent Azef joins the planning phase of the operation. Having discussed everything, the SR leaders conclude that the chances of remaining unseen and then successfully killing the tsar are minimal. It is then that the sailor volunteers announce that they themselves are willing to assassinate Nicholas. As crewmembers, there will be no need for them to hide.
Savinkov is afraid that they “will bottle it” at the critical moment, but in the end sanctions the mission. The men are issued weapons. Savinkov returns to his fellow SRs and his friends the Merezhkovskys in Paris, while Azef goes to see his family in the south of France. Both await the day for Nicholas II to climb aboard the Rurik and come face to face with his killers.
Azef says nothing about the plan to Gerasimov; otherwise the inspection of the cruiser would simply be cancelled. Azef seems to be preparing for the “honor trial” in Paris, in which respect a successful regicide in Kronstadt would be a decisive argument against Burtsev’s claims.
According to the plan, the first sailor is due to offer Nicholas a glass of lemonade and shoot. But he freezes, as Savinkov feared. The second sailor takes the tsar on a tour of the holds. He, too, fails to pull the trigger. Savinkov says later that he is not surprised: “I knew they’d bottle it.”
On 10 October, the “honor trial” of Burtsev begins in Paris—it is important because if he loses, the SRs will be permitted to kill him (according to their own laws). Azef is not present, but his “lawyers” Chernov, Savinkov, and Natanson are in fighting spirit. They exalt Azef as a glorious freedom fighter nonpareil.
“That may be true,” replies Burtsev, “but only if he is an honest revolutionary. I contend that he is a provocateur, a liar and an utter scoundrel!”
The “judges” are gradually inclining to side with Burtsev. Shortly after the start of the trial, on 11 November, Lopukhin, back in Saint Petersburg, receives a secret visit from Azef himself, who demands that Lopukhin retract his statement. Lopukhin, fearing that Azef has come to kill him, denies ever having spoken to Burtsev. The even-more terrified Azef starts to think that someone else has betrayed him. Leaving Lopukhin’s apartment, Azef goes to see his friend Gerasimov, who describes him as “haggard and pale, with the look of a hunted beast.”
“It’s over,” wails Azef. “I’m done for. All my life I’ve lived in perpetual danger.… And now, just when I’ve decided to put a stop to this wretched game, they’re going to kill me.” He remembers what he himself did to Gapon, who was only suspected of collaborating with the police.
Gerasimov says goodbye to Azef, gives him 3000 roubles,* and a few fake passports. But Azef does not run—he returns to the SRs in Paris. Meanwhile, a member of the central committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, by the name of Argunov, travels to Saint Petersburg at the request of the “judges” to interview the “key witness.” On 18 November Lopukhin tells him about Azef’s recent visit.
Lopukhin is afraid that Gerasimov and Azef, both professional killers, will try to silence him. In search of protection, he writes to friends and Stolypin that the head of the secret police is on his tail and, on 23 November, departs for London.
On 23 December 1908, the SRs are due to decide Azef’s fate. Lopukhin repeats his testimony and most of the leadership, including Savinkov, votes to kill Azef. But first, it is decided to interrogate him one last time: Chernov, Savinkov, and others go to Azef’s home. He is waiting for them.
His comrades have already voted to murder him, but now they give him a reprieve. They tell him that he has been exposed and demand a confession. Azef denies everything. They give him twelve hours to rethink, and then leave. It is all a rather absurd, psychological game. Savinkov, who three years ago together with Azef forced Pinhas Rutenberg to kill his closest friend, Georgy Gapon, now hesitates to kill his own friend Azef, against whom far more serious allegations have been made.
Only now does Azef collect his belongings and bid his wife farewell. He lies, telling her that he is going to Berlin to work as an engineer. In fact, he goes to see his mistress, with whom he has been cohabiting for several years. Azef who has two wives at the same time obviously loves them both and means to be sincere with both of them.
The SRs are demoralized. Some party members, desperate to kill Azef, hire a villa in Italy and try to lure him there, as Gapon was once enticed and murdered at a dacha in Ozerki. They need someone he trusts as bait, like Savinkov. But the latter wants to forget all about the incident. Azef eventually settles in Berlin and continues to travel around Europe. No one pursues him.
The unmasking of Azef makes the headlines in Russia and across Europe. The trial of Burtsev ends with an apology and the resignation of the entire central committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. As if that were not enough, both Savinkov and Chernov are now accused of treachery.
Horrified, many prominent members leave the party. Barely a week later Stolypin reports what has happened to the tsar. Nicholas II is struck by Lopukhin’s betrayal—through the Azef connection, it seems that the police are complicit in the assassinations of Plehve and others. Lopukhin is arrested on charges of divulging state secrets, and his trial is held in April 1909. “I hope the sentence is hard labor,” writes the tsar on the case file brought to him. The former police chief is indeed sentenced to five years’ hard labor. The verdict outrages many, including some officials.
During the preceding two months, Azef is the subject of much debate in the Duma—perhaps the most candid discussions in the history of Russian parliamentarianism. What is the purpose of the special services, asks one member. It seems that they spend vast sums of public money on solving crimes that they themselves have helped to commit!
There at the meeting is Stolypin, who argues long and hard that the Interior Ministry does not have blood on its hands, that Azef did not organize any terrorist attacks and that the government does not engage in the tactics of provocation. However, he does admit that some occasional ugliness is required in order to maintain stability. The government will renounce such tactics when the time permits, and not before, says Stolypin. It is perhaps the best speech of his career: “We, the government, build scaffolding to facilitate the construction process. Our adversaries describe this scaffolding as an eyesore and try to shake it to the ground. The scaffolding will collapse and perhaps crush us all, but if that be so, let it happen when the edifice of the renovated, liberated Russia is already standing. That time is coming, gentlemen, for not only strength is on our side, but truth.”
This metaphor will echo throughout the speeches of Russian leaders for decades to come.123 In them, the “ugly scaffolding” of government is cited as a temporary but necessary phenomenon required to guarantee future prosperity, while “strength and truth” are always quoted as the bedrock of state power. Stolypin’s promise is never fulfilled: “ugliness” does not give way to “freedom from injustice,” but is aggravated, spawning ever-greater lawlessness. The scaffolding is never removed.
AS PURE AS CRYSTAL
Having lost their eyes and ears inside the terrorist underground, the secret police are forced to rely on other senses, namely touch. The authorities believe that the SRs’ militant organization has been defanged, but know that fanatical individuals and groupings not subordinate to the central committee still exist. Only now there is no way to find out about them. The tsar’s security detail is particularly anxious. The new court commandant asks Gerasimov to investigate a group that sometimes gathers in the small house belonging to the former lady-in-waiting Anna Vyrubova in Tsarskoye Selo. Nicholas and Alexandra themselves are often seen there, in the company of a suspicious character, a peasant by the name of Grigory Rasputin. The court commandant puts a watch over him, for he might be a terrorist.
Gerasimov compiles two dossiers: the first about Rasputin’s youth spent in Siberia, the second about his life in Saint Petersburg. The Siberian dossier tells that Rasputin led an “immoral lifestyle” in his hometown, while the surveillance in Saint Petersburg indicates that he keeps the company of prostitutes, going with them to the bathhouse. The police question the women, who, according to Gerasimov, describe him as a “dirty, coarse libertine.” However, there are no serious charges against Rasputin. He does not even seem to drink (or at least get drunk). However, on the basis of this patchy information Gerasimov concludes that “such a man cannot be allowed within a ‘cannon shot’ of the tsar’s palace,” and duly reports to Stolypin. The prime minister agrees: “The life of the imperial family must be as pure as crystal. If a shadow is cast over the tsar in the national consciousness, the moral authority of the autocrat will perish and misfortune will ensue,” says Stolypin, and decides to have a word in the imperial ear.
Nicholas II assures Stolypin that he will no longer meet with Rasputin, whereupon the prime minister orders that the preacher be exiled from Saint Petersburg. The police continue to follow Rasputin and decide to arrest him on his return from Tsarskoye Selo, right at the train station. As if sensing the danger, he leaps out of the carriage, hurls himself into a cab, and dashes to the grand palace of his patroness, Grand Duchess Milica of Montenegro. The police keep watch over the palace for several weeks, but he does not step foot outside. The decision to exile Rasputin is eventually forgotten.
DIRTY DANCES
Grand Duke Vladimir continues to offer Diaghilev his patronage. Both he and his wife, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna (known as Miechen inside the family), revel in the role of European patrons. Miechen, a princess from a small German principality, is a highly ambitious and influential society lady.
After his first Parisian success, Diaghilev announces that he wants to bring the Russian ballet and opera to the city. His friend Benois writes a libretto for a short ballet entitled Le Pavillon d’Armide. The main role in Le Pavillon d’Armide is intended for Matilda Kschessinskaya, the thirty-five-year-old prima ballerina of the Imperial Theatres. In her youth, Matilda was the mistress of Nicholas II (before he became emperor), and now she simultaneously cohabits with two grand dukes: the thirty-five-year-old Sergei and the twenty-five-year-old Andrei. Grand Duke Andrei is the youngest son of the arts patron Grand Duke Vladimir and his wife Miechen, and is his rival Sergei’s nephew-once-removed. In 1902 Kschessinskaya gives birth to a baby boy, Vova (Vladimir), who is considered the son of Grand Duke Sergei (although Andrei thinks otherwise). Kschessinskaya’s remarkable fusion with the imperial family makes her the most powerful artiste in Russia.
At the last minute, the capricious prima donna pulls out of the production: she considers Le Pavillon d’Armide to be beneath her. Urgently searching for a replacement, Diaghilev stumbles upon the rebellious twenty-six-year-old Anna Pavlova, a friend of the choreographer Mikhail Fokine and an active participant in the theatre strike of 1905. Seeing her on stage, Diaghilev enthuses to Benois: “That’s what we’ll take to Paris.”
The 1909 tour program features several ballets. Diaghilev wants to bring the influential Kschessinskaya back on board, but Fokine is opposed—Kschessinskaya let him down, so he prefers Pavlova. But Diaghilev gets his way. Kschessinskaya, now seemingly not averse to the production, is offered the main role in Le Pavillon d’Armide, while Pavlova is given the title role in Giselle, which, however, Kschessinskaya takes as an insult.
On 4 February 1909, Grand Duke Vladimir dies at the age of sixty-two. Diaghilev long mourns his patron’s death. At the funeral he meets Nicholas II, who, crossing himself, says: “He was very fond of you.” On 11 March, with Diaghilev having won over the tsar, his troupe begins rehearsing at the Winter Palace, right inside the Hermitage Theatre. The conditions are luxurious—royal footmen bring the ballet dancers tea and chocolate during breaks. However, the rehearsals last only one week: Grand Duke Andrei, the son of the late patron and the lover of Kschessinskaya, writes to Nicholas that Diaghilev is a wily operator “who is smearing the good name of my late father.” On 17 March the tsar decides to ban the rehearsals in the Hermitage Theatre and to stop paying for the sets and costumes. Kschessinskaya immediately refuses to take part in the enterprise, again.
Diaghilev runs to his patroness Miechen. It is a strange family conflict: the late Vladimir’s wife Miechen supports Diaghilev, while his son Andrei is trying to ruin him.
Nicholas takes the side of Andrei and Kschessinskaya. Diaghilev is suddenly deprived of everything. He is forced to find a new rehearsal room, and his artists take their belongings there on foot. The paparazzi have a field day. Their main target is the twenty-five-year-old dancer Ida Rubinstein, the heiress of a wealthy family of Jewish bankers.
Not a classically trained ballerina, Ida is known for arranging and funding her own private performances. In late 1908, she performs a ballet version of Oscar Wilde’s biblically themed Salome. It is banned immediately.
Rubinstein manages to give only one performance, on 20 December 1908. During the “Dance of the Seven Veils,”* she strips practically naked, wearing only a dress made from beads. The public is shocked. It is a blatant attempt to offend the public’s religious feelings. The police burst into the hall and seize the papier-mâché head of John the Baptist (who is remarkably unmoved by it all). Soon Diaghilev invites Rubinstein to join his troupe to add a bit of scandal to the upcoming tour. The papers write about indecent rehearsals, describing the whole project as sordid and anti-government.
TWO BELIEVERS AND THEIR RELIGIOUS FEELINGS
The violation of religious feelings is, in fact, part of the wider struggle between Orthodox conservatives and liberal intellectuals,† which is the main political motif of 1909. The former are becoming so influential that they are beginning to take on the secular authorities, whom they accuse of displaying a criminal lack of spirituality.
It spills over on 20 December 1908, when the Jewish Ida Rubinstein blasphemously prances around naked with the head of John the Baptist on the very same day that John of Kronstadt, a member of the Holy Synod and still the most popular priest in Russia, passes away.
John of Kronstadt is not only the most commercially successful priest-cum-healer, raising hundreds of thousands of roubles,* but also an important political figure. He is the spiritual symbol of the Union of the Russian People and the Black Hundreds, and is the main enemy of the “godless intellectuals.” In the last few months of his life, John prays that Leo Tolstoy will die before he does. God is unimpressed; Tolstoy outlives Kronstadt by nearly two years.
During his life, John acquires more than a few acolytes. One is Rasputin, who is flashy but uninterested in politics. Another is the monk Iliodor who, on the contrary, traveled to Saint Petersburg in 1906 to demand the dissolution (and execution) of the Duma. Gerasimov, the hardboiled police chief, considers him to be a dangerous fanatic.
Iliodor is an active member of the Union of the Russian people, a preacher, and a writer, who curses all Jews and intellectuals. The monk’s position is so radical that the Holy Synod forbids him from engaging in literary activity (Iliodor does not obey). His fiery sermons draw vast crowds of listeners. In between his rantings, he casts out devils and “performs miracles.”
In the monastery courtyard where he preaches, Iliodor constructs a huge cardboard dragon that he dubs the “hydra of the revolution.” At the end of each sermon, he ceremoniously pierces it with a spear in the manner of Saint George and cuts off its head (which miraculously grows back for the following day’s performance).*
None of this would matter if Iliodor limited his attacks to Tolstoy, “yids,” and intellectuals. But he also denounces the governor of Saratov, the Holy Synod, and even Prime Minister Stolypin. In March 1909, the church authorities decide to punish Iliodor by transferring him to Minsk, now capital of Belarus. The monk goes to Saint Petersburg in search of potential intercessors and finds one in the sympathetic shape of Grigory Rasputin.
In March 1909 Iliodor is twenty-nine; Rasputin is forty. They are completely dissimilar. Iliodor is well educated and accepted in society. He is an articulate orator able to debate with the capital’s leading monarchist intellectuals. Rasputin, on the contrary, is a semi-literate peasant who repels more people than he attracts. His fan club includes Empress Alexandra and her associates, but they are ashamed of their friendship with the preacher. The vainglorious Rasputin seeks fame and notoriety. He hires journalists to write about him, but to little avail. So he begins to brag more and more about his proximity to the imperial family.
Iliodor’s plea for help greatly flatters Rasputin. He likes the smart and popular Iliodor and wants to assist—not least to demonstrate his own importance. Through his mediation, the Holy Synod revokes its decision to relocate Iliodor.
A SECT IN CAPRI
Maxim Gorky, having moved to Capri near Naples, sets about creating his own kind of sect. He rents a huge villa that becomes home to numerous friends, guests, and adherents. The longer he lives abroad, the more he begins to idealize the Russian folk.
Gorky devotes a great deal of time to reading literary works sent to him by workers and peasants. He enjoys it very much, remarking that it is very “biblical” in content. Gorky adopts a more religious mindset, and he is jokingly referred to as the “bishop of Capri.” He has his photograph taken with guests in biblical poses: for example, with Gorky as Abraham, his stepson Zinovy as Isaac, and their family friend, the head of the Bolshevik militant organization, Leonid Krasin, as an angel (rather inappropriately).
On the island of Capri, the forty-year-old Gorky gets on particularly well with the thirty-three-year-old art historian Anatoly Lunacharsky. Together, they begin to invent a new religion—a religion without God based upon the principles of Marxism. Both are passionate about “god-building,” as they call it. Gorky says that the religious approach to Marxism has far more promise than the traditional version, because the common man will struggle to come to grips with socialist dogma. Lunacharsky aspires to create some rituals to go along with their new religion.
The party comrades leave no stone unturned in their joint venture. Plekhanov comes up with the nickname “Blessed Anatoly” for Lunacharsky. Lenin twice visits Gorky on Capri, where he rests, bathes, and fishes, but on returning to Switzerland he continues the attacks on his comrades.
The “god-builders” soon move from theory to practice. Party money (partly from smash-and-grab raids) is used to take workers from Russia on trips to Capri, where Gorky lectures them on literature and Lunacharsky and other Marxists teach them about socialism.
RAIDERS OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE
The Union of the Russian People continues to grow. It is the largest mass political party in Russia, numbering around four hundred thousand members, and various scandals, such as the murder of the Duma member Herzenstein, have not dented its popularity. The investigation of the latter incident is still ongoing. The killing took place on Finnish soil, and the Finnish justice system intends to get to the bottom of it.
The main surprise of the trial is the unexpected appearance in court of Prusakov, the former personal secretary of Dubrovin, as a witness for the prosecution. He says that the union’s combat squads are used to fight political opponents, settle personal scores, and commit robbery and extortion. Inside the Pale of Settlement, they are in the business of racketeering and threatening pogroms. Some of the money goes to the state treasury, but mostly it remains in the pocket of the “scum,” as the witness describes members of the combat squads. Dubrovin guarantees them total immunity: crimes are either hushed up or, in more serious cases involving court proceedings, convicted persons are immediately pardoned.
The status afforded to members of the combat squads allows them to escape punishment for all offenses, even ones unrelated to the union. Some, for instance, illicitly sell documents to Jews permitting them to work outside the Pale, including in Saint Petersburg.
Nevertheless, the commander of the combat squads, Nikolai Yuskevich-Kraskovsky, appears before the Finnish court. The court also summons Dubrovin, but he goes to Crimea to visit the local governor-cum-dictator, Colonel Dumbadze, also a member of the union. Dumbadze interferes in everything personally from censoring the press to exiling dissenters and even regulating swimwear on the beach.
In 1907, an attempt is made on Dumbadze’s life when a bomb is thrown at him from the balcony of a dacha. He escapes practically unharmed, but, to make a statement, he razes the dacha to the ground without allowing the owners (presumably not the terrorists) to remove a single belonging. The owners sue and even enlist the support of Stolypin, who orders damages of 60,000 roubles* to be paid.
Yet Nicholas II takes a liking to Dumbadze: “If I’d had more people like Colonel Dumbadze a few years ago, everything would have been different,” he says to Stolypin. The Black Hundred press, which the tsar devours, extols the Yalta governor and reviles the prime minister, which causes the latter’s relationship with Nicholas to deteriorate ever more noticeably.
Stolypin, for his part, does not spare his enemies. While Dubrovin is hiding from the Finnish justice system in Crimea, the prime minister sanctions a forcible takeover of the Union of the Russian People. In July 1909, the organization’s headquarters are moved from Dubrovin’s apartment to a separate room in Baskov Lane† in Saint Petersburg. In December a new chairman is elected—the Stolypin-loyal right-wing Duma member Nikolai Markov. Funding increases immediately: from 1910, the government allocates the union 3 million roubles a year.*
All accessories to the Herzenstein murder are convicted, but are personally pardoned by Nicholas II soon after the trial. However, the combat squads of the Union of the Russian People curtail their official activity as a result of the trial.
NON-RUSSIAN RUSSIAN BALLET
Despite all the efforts of Kschessinskaya and Grand Duke Andrei, on 19 May 1909 Diaghilev’s troupe goes on tour to Paris. The first performance is none other than Le Pavillon d’Armide. The main role is due to be filled by Anna Pavlova, but her relationship with Diaghilev breaks down, and she ends up organizing her own private tour. That clears the way for Pavlova’s understudy, Tamara Karsavina, while the male role is performed by the twenty-year-old Vaslav Nijinsky, arguably the greatest male ballet dancer in history.
It is not just a success, the papers write, but an “invasion,” an “explosion,” an “eruption.” The writer Marcel Proust compares the Russian ballet to the Dreyfus affair—for several weeks the Parisian public can speak of nothing else. The Petersburg press, meanwhile, writes not of the triumph, but of the scandal, the “perversion of classical Russian opera,” the “defilement of Russian art.” At the same time, both Paris and Petersburg are talking about a rumored love affair between Diaghilev and Nijinsky.
Despite the resounding success, the tour makes a huge loss: 86,000 francs,† which Diaghilev must reimburse to the Théâtre du Châtelet. The producer does not want to pay and tries to negotiate a secret deal with the rival Grand Opera. When the double-dealing is uncovered, Diaghilev’s Parisian friends grow cold overnight. The director of the Théâtre du Châtelet informs the press that Diaghilev is a crook and sends a detailed report to the Russian authorities. It is alleged that Diaghilev has been posing as a government official in order to raise funds.
Miechen tries to intercede on Diaghilev’s behalf, but her son Andrei, Kschessinskaya, and officials from the Directorate of the Imperial Theatres overrule her. The Ministry of the Court blacklists Diaghilev and vetoes all his projects. The road back to Russia is closed off, so he launches a new venture with a different business model, shorn of government funding or patronage.
Diaghilev pays off his debts with the help of old Parisian friends from the days of his very first exhibitions, plus new ones in the shape of composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, as well as a young pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov by the name of Igor Stravinsky. He commissions the latter to write a ballet in the exotically costumed style of Boris Godunov, whereupon Stravinsky comes up with The Firebird. But the dancers rebel, opining that the ballet has no melody and does not even sound like music. Stravinsky himself plays at every rehearsal, which “the piano finds distressing,” joke members of the troupe.
The tour is preceded by a powerful PR campaign, with Stravinsky heralded as the new genius of Russian music. But the main hit is the now-deceased Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade with Nijinsky and Ida Rubinstein in the lead roles. Leon Bakst is also lauded for his costumes and scenery. He instantly becomes the world’s most sought-after fashion designer: magazines publish interviews with him, and galleries host his exhibitions. Parisian ladies clamber over each other to order dresses “à la Scheherazade.”
After this success, Diaghilev faces another problem with Russian cultural officials. They forbid his dancers from taking part in anything Diaghilev-related. The director of the Imperial Theatres, Vladimir Telyakovsky, declares that Russian art should be promoted in Russia, not Europe. So Diaghilev creates his own permanent theatre company, which becomes known as the Ballets Russes. It is a struggle to convince his stars to abandon the reliable state theatres of Russia in favor of his risky venture, but the Russian authorities themselves unwittingly lend a hand.
On 23 January 1911 Nijinsky performs the male role in Giselle at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg. There in the hall sits Empress Dowager Maria Feodorovna, plus a sprinkling of grand dukes and duchesses. Maria Feodorovna finds Nijinsky’s tight-fitting garments obscene (normal by today’s standards). During the intermission, he is requested to change his outfit, which he refuses to do. The next day he is fired. The management hints that if Nijinsky apologizes, all will be forgiven. But he decides to go over to Diaghilev. In April 1911, the Ballets Russes ceases to be Russian when the troupe moves to a permanent rehearsal studio in Monte Carlo.
BISHOPS AND SOCIETY LADIES
In late December 1909, the twenty-two-year-old Felix Yusupov, now a student in Oxford (despite Alexandra’s admonition), returns home for Christmas. His childhood friend Munya Golovina excitedly tells him about an illustrious old man “who has been sent to purify and heal our souls and guide our thoughts and actions.” Intrigued, the young Yusupov asks Golovina to introduce him to the “saint.” Rasputin’s face is “sly and lusty, like a satyr” and “filth exudes through the guise of purity” is how the young prince describes his first impressions, admitting at the same time that this “strange subject” has a mysterious hold on him.
Not only on him. During the winter of 1909-1910 Rasputin is almost a daily visitor at Tsarskoye Selo, where Empress Alexandra and her daughters spend hours in conversation with him. When he does not come, they write him touching letters: Alexandra calls him “my beloved and never-to-be-forgotten teacher, savior and mentor.” At the same time, she asks the children never to talk about Rasputin, even to relatives.
But Rasputin is already the talk of Petersburg high society. The rumors are spread mostly by members of the clergy and the ladies-in-waiting. Rasputin once held the elders of the church in great esteem, especially the rector of the Theological Academy, Bishop Theophan, who introduced him to the Montenegrin princesses and other imperial personages. But when Alexandra starts to cold-shoulder the bishops in favor of “folk preachers,” Rasputin’s respect for his former benefactors evaporates.
Rasputin also falls out with his Montenegrin patronesses, Stana and Milica. They continue to have faith in their spiritual confessor Theophan, while the empress prefers Rasputin. As a result, the Montenegrins lose access to Alexandra, supplanted by the peasant from Siberia. It is a tiff of historical significance, for it causes a rift between Nicholas II and Stana’s husband, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, which directly affects the outcome of the First World War.
The most common rumor about Rasputin is that he is a member of the banned mystical sect known as the Khlysts (a corruption of the word “Christ”), whose acts of worship, according to popular myth, involve trances and orgies. Rasputin was accused of being a Khlyst by a local priest back in his native village of Pokrovskoe. The charge was withdrawn after an official investigation, but the stain on Rasputin’s (not entirely squeaky-clean) reputation remains.
By March 1910 rumors about Rasputin are everywhere in the press. The monarchist newspaper Moscow News accuses him of meeting female admirers in the bathhouse. “This man’s victims are convinced that touching Grigory gives them a feeling of angelic purity and heavenly bliss,” writes the journalist Novoselov.
The higher clergy continue to feed rumors to the Black Hundred press. The editor of Moscow News, Lev Tikhomirov, cites one of his direct sources as Bishop Theophan, who has now “sensed what Grigory is all about, but too late.” On 30 April 1910, the paper’s front page demands that the Holy Synod investigate Rasputin’s Khlyst connections.
Rasputin is supported by the monk Iliodor in the latter’s own inimitable way: “You, editorial whores, should be nailed to a pillory in full view of all Russia and whipped for having insulted the blessed elder Grigory.”
The Black Hundred press revelations are soon picked up on by the liberal newspapers, including the Kadet publication Speech, edited by Pavel Milyukov. It prompts another conversation between Nicholas II and Stolypin. On the previous occasion, Nicholas promised never to meet with Rasputin again—this time he is more honest: “I agree with you, Pyotr Arkadievich [Stolypin], but ten Rasputins would be preferable to one hysterical empress,” he says to the prime minister, explaining that his wife is seriously ill and believes that only Rasputin can help ease their son’s hemophilia (genetic disorder carried by the females in the House of Hesse). Nicholas demands an end to the persecution of Rasputin and the interference in his personal affairs. The government’s press committee promptly bans the newspapers from writing about the preacher.
Nicholas asks Rasputin to return home until the hullabaloo dies down. First, he travels to see his friend Iliodor in Tsaritsyn (today’s Volgograd), where he is given a magnificent reception. The two monks then travel together to Rasputin’s hometown of Pokrovskoe. Exiled and humiliated, Rasputin wants to prove that he is not a spent force. He shows Iliodor some letters he has received in Siberia from Empress Alexandra and her daughters. Iliodor reads them with interest and asks to keep some as a memento. Rasputin unwisely agrees.
TOLSTOY’S TESTAMENT
In January 1910, at his Yasnaya Polyana estate, Leo Tolstoy starts composing a story entitled “Iliodor the Monk.” It is not intentionally about the fanatic from Tsaritsyn, but simply that the names coincide. The work begins with the monk suddenly losing faith and the rite of the sacrament becoming a mockery to him. Tolstoy never finishes the story.
Tolstoy does not mention the real-life Iliodor anywhere in his writings. It is a trait of his to ignore those who curse him. Yet, he keeps a close eye on the press and wonders if he should respond publicly. For instance, he reads Vekhi* and thinks about writing a review of Sergei Bulgakov’s article (which says that the intelligentsia’s struggle for progress ignores individual rights), but changes his mind.
Tolstoy corresponds with Stolypin for several years. He tries to persuade the prime minister to abolish private ownership of land and condemns the military courts. In August 1909 Tolstoy pens a very personal letter in which he says that Stolypin’s “dreadful actions” threaten both the latter’s life and posthumous reputation: “Your name will be used as a byword for rudeness, cruelty and deceit.” However, he decides not to send the letter to Stolypin. Tolstoy at this time is more consumed by a personal battle against not Stolypin or the church, but his wife. The eternal subject of the dispute is his will.
In the summer of 1909, despite his wife’s opposition, Tolstoy leaves Yasnaya Polyana to visit his close friend and disciple Vladimir Chertkov, who is renting a house nearby. Chertkov’s wife tries not to let him in, but in vain. During the visit Tolstoy draws up a will, which deprives his wife of her inheritance.
It is a kind of love (or perhaps death) triangle. The sixty-six-year-old Sofia Andreyevna, Tolstoy’s wife, and the fifty-six-year-old Chertkov are fighting not for the eighty-year-old Tolstoy’s life, but effectively his afterlife. Tolstoy believes that Chertkov understands him far better than his wife does. When he dies, Tolstoy wants all his works to be taken out of copyright so that they belong to everyone, not the family. Sofia is categorically against the proposal, while Chertkov is determined to fulfill his mentor’s wish.
On Chertkov’s side (and against her mother) is Tolstoy’s youngest, favorite daughter, Alexandra. According to Chertkov’s scheme, Sasha (Alexandra) will be entitled to all her father’s literary works when she turns thirty-five, while Tolstoy’s sons and other daughters will get nothing, because only Sasha can be trusted to ensure that Tolstoy’s works remain freely accessible to all of mankind and exploited by no one.
It turns into a major scandal. Sofia Andreyevna effectively goes mad with jealousy. She constantly threatens her husband with suicide and promises to write a note blaming him for her death and to send it to all the newspapers. The doctors believe that she is suffering from hysterical paranoia, while the writer himself thinks that his wife is feigning insanity. She, meanwhile, blames Chertkov for everything and discusses with her sons how to declare Tolstoy insane if he really does deprive the family of its inheritance. In the autumn of 1910 she announces that she forbids Tolstoy from ever seeing Chertkov again. For Tolstoy, it is the last straw.
On the night of 27-28 October, hearing his wife rummaging around in his possessions in search of his will, Tolstoy leaves home in the company of his personal physician. He wants to visit the Shamordino Convent, where his sister is a nun, and then, together with Sasha and Chertkov, go south to Rostov, Odessa, Constantinople, and Bulgaria. He leaves his wife a farewell note, in which he asks her not to look for him.
But the press makes that unlikely. A day later, the papers report Tolstoy’s departure as a major event. Journalists race after him and publish detailed commentaries on where Tolstoy has been and what he ate for breakfast that morning.
Tolstoy and his doctor travel in a third-class compartment with simple folk. To get some fresh air after being cooped up inside the smoke-filled train, the count disembarks at a station and stands on the chilly platform for about an hour. According to his doctor, that is when he catches a cold.
Excommunicated from the church, Tolstoy calls in at the Optina Pustyn Monastery and on to the Shamordino Convent, but the journey is interrupted at Astapovo rail station, for the writer is now ill with pneumonia—his temperature is forty degrees Celsius. He is taken to the stationmaster’s quarters, where Chertkov and his daughter Sasha keep vigil by his bedside. It is not long before the rest of the family discovers his whereabouts. They arrive, but the dying Tolstoy does not wish to see Sofia Andreyevna.
He passes away on 7 November 1910: “I love many things. I love everyone,” are reportedly his last words, according to his son Sergei. Residents from surrounding villages ask for a funeral service to be held in the station church, but it is forbidden by the Holy Synod.
Tolstoy is buried without church rites or even a cross under a simple mound of earth with no tombstone. Sofia Andreyevna challenges the will in court, but without success. Sasha and Chertkov buy up Yasnaya Polyana from her and, as Tolstoy bequeathed, give it to the peasants.
The news of Tolstoy’s death prompts a surge of student demonstrations in Russia’s two capitals under the slogan “Down with the death penalty!” In response, the Ministry of Education issues new rules prohibiting student rallies and annulling the autonomy of universities. This sparks another protest. The rector of Moscow University, Manuilov, resigns, followed by several dozen professors in solidarity with him, including the natural scientist Vernadsky and the physiologist Timiryazev—one hundred and thirty people in total. The student unrest worsens, and thousands of students are expelled from Moscow University as a result.
RED TRIANGLE
Vladimir Lenin, together with his wife, mother-in-law, and friend Grigory Zinoviev, move to Paris from Geneva in December 1908. Having made up with his old friend Martov, he launches a new newspaper called Social-Democrat, whose editorial board includes Zinoviev and Kamenev. Lenin, as usual, throws tantrums, curses the heresy of his Marxist comrades, and spends a lot of time playing cards with his mother-in-law in the local library.
In 1909, under the pseudonym Ilyin, Lenin publishes the philosophical work Materialism and Empiriocriticism. The publicist Semyon Frank, reviewing the work, is surprised that such a meaningless mix of philosophical words and invective can possibly hope to find a publisher and a readership. It is a failure.
Another blow is when Lenin’s Social Democratic Party comrades strip him of control over the party finances. Prior to 1910, his duties included managing a large fortune left to the Marxists by a deceased wealthy supporter in Moscow. Now the money is taken from the quarrelsome Lenin and placed at the disposal of a disinterested party, namely the German Social Democrats. The funds are transferred to Germany.
It is a difficult time. Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, recalls that many Russian émigrés live in poverty and suicide among them is a common phenomenon. But the hotheaded Lenin seeks salvation from depression. In 1910 he meets an émigré from Russia, Inessa Armand, the wife of a major Moscow industrialist, who, intoxicated by Marxism, abandoned her husband and went abroad. She is thirty-six years old; Lenin is forty. They have an affair, which Lenin does not hide from Krupskaya. On the contrary, Inessa is a regular guest at their house. Krupskaya even takes a liking to her and spends time playing with her children. Convinced that the relationship between her husband and Inessa is serious, Nadezhda offers her husband a divorce. But Lenin is categorically against the idea. He has grown used to his wife and wants everything to remain the same.
EPIDEMIC OF SUICIDES
The hottest topic in the Russian press is not the epidemic of suicides among Russian émigrés, but the one inside the country, especially among grammar school* students. The cheapest and most popular method is poisoning by vinegar. The number of suicides sharply rises as political freedoms are curtailed and feelings of despair increase. Young people have been riding a wave of politics and revolution, but now they face the prospect of having all their hopes crushed by the revival of the old order. Many newspapers have a dedicated “Suicides” section.
The popular Stock Exchange Gazette publishes a survey in which public figures express their attitude towards suicide. The general feeling is one of sympathy. The writer Fyodor Sologub describes suicide as a “valve” and a “release mechanism for weakness,” while the poet Mikhail Kuzmin asks why the Motherland has the right to demand that a man lay down his life for her sake, but forbids him from laying down his life for his own sake.
The publication provokes a storm of indignation. Many publicists, including Maxim Gorky and Leon Trotsky, angrily denounce their colleagues for encouraging people to take their own lives.
In any case, the public mood has changed. Five years ago, people lapped up lectures on political economy, but now politics is out of fashion—mysticism, decadence, and noir are in vogue. Private clubs host lectures with titles such as “The Negation of Life,” while a stage adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Suicide Club is a hit in all provincial theatres.
CHALIAPIN ON HIS KNEES
In the spring of 1911, Russia’s top opera singer, Feodor Chaliapin, wants to shoot himself—or in any case never again set foot in Russia. Chaliapin is being hounded by the press.
It all begins on 6 January. The Mariinsky Theatre is hosting a performance of Boris Godunov, and Nicholas II and family are seated in the royal box. During the intermission, Chaliapin speaks with the tsar, who requests him to sing more in Russia and do less touring abroad. Chaliapin is unaware of the ongoing conflict between the Mariinsky Theatre choir and the director of the Imperial Theatres, Telyakovsky, who refuses to raise their salaries. So the choristers appeal to Nicholas himself. When the performance ends, Chaliapin is about to leave the stage when the audience starts shouting, “Anthem, anthem!” The choristers break into a rendition of “God Save the Tsar” and fall to their knees. Chaliapin reluctantly lowers himself on one knee. The choir’s trick works, and the tsar raises their wages. Chaliapin duly sets off on tour. Two days later, now in Monte Carlo, he learns that the Russian papers are writing that it was his idea for the choir to kneel down. They publish fictional interviews with him, saying that he has succumbed to patriotic feelings and decided at the same time to ask the tsar to forgive his friend Maxim Gorky.
Even close friends condemn Chaliapin for toadying to the authorities. Gorky himself is upset that Chaliapin is using him to “cover up his underhandedness.” The highly principled Valentin Serov sends several newspaper cuttings with the words “Shame on you” scribbled on them, and Plekhanov returns Chaliapin’s signed portrait with a short note reading “No longer required.”
Chaliapin is horrified. He writes that he does not want to return to Russia: “Life among the Russian intelligentsia has become intolerable. Anyone in a waistcoat and tie considers himself an intellectual and passes judgment as he pleases.” He starts to imagine that he is considered to be “a double agent like Azef” and could be killed “by some revolutionary fanatics.” Only six months later does Chaliapin venture to write to Gorky to try to justify himself, whereupon he journeys to Capri for an emotional encounter, during which they embrace and make up.
STOLYPIN VICTORIOUS BUT HUMBLED
Throughout 1910 Iliodor the monk feels quite at ease in Tsaritsyn. The governor of Saratov, Tatishchev, is so unnerved by his presence that in the summer of 1910 he packs everything in and moves with his wife to nearby Samara. It is at this point that Stolypin decides to extend his law and order regime to Tsaritsyn.
In January 1911, at the prime minister’s insistence, the Holy Synod transfers Iliodor to the Tula diocese as the rector of Novosilsky Monastery, just one hundred and fifty kilometers from Yasnaya Polyana, the estate of the late Leo Tolstoy. But Iliodor refuses to go: “I will not submit to Stolypin. I refuse to let him turn the Church into a police station.” He is taken there by force. The new Saratov governor, Stremoukhov, appointed in December, is worried that Iliodor will flee. He does indeed. A month later Iliodor reappears in Tsaritsyn, where he holes himself up inside his former monastery.
Now he starts preaching that the emperor has been captured by the “Judeo-Masonic ministers,” of whom the most dangerous is Stolypin himself, who should have “the Masonic spirit beaten out of him.” Iliodor’s fanatical supporters, many of whom are women, are ready to fight the police for the sake of their leader.
Iliodor spends the month of February waiting for the intervention of friends from the Russian capital. Rasputin cannot assist, for he is currently on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. But having learnt about his friend’s misfortune, he sends Alexandra telegrams in defense of Iliodor. Nicholas II faces a choice: his wife and Rasputin want him to revoke the decision of the Holy Synod. According to the letter of the law, the tsar cannot do this by himself, but Stolypin inadvertently comes to Iliodor’s aid.
In early March the prime minister intends to reform the zemstvo system and introduce it to the territory of modern-day Ukraine and Belarus—but with a difference. Since much of the population is non-Russian, including many Poles, Stolypin wants to introduce quotas for ethnic minorities in the new zemstvos.
The Union of the Russian People and other right-wingers oppose the reform. For them, the introduction of elective zemstvos means a greater role for ethnic minorities in government. On 4 March 1910, the Law on the Western Zemstvo, as it is called, is rejected by the State Council.
Stolypin is so angered that he immediately resigns. Nicholas hesitates to accept. On 10 March, he tells Stolypin that he is not ready to part with him and agrees to his conditions, of which there is one: the law must be passed forthwith without the consent of the State Council or the Duma. This is illegal, but there is a loophole: it is possible to announce a temporary recess of the Duma and the State Council, and sign the law during that window. That was how the agrarian reform was adopted.
Nicholas II agrees to Stolypin’s sleight of hand: a recess of the Duma and the State Council is scheduled for 12-15 March, and on 14 March the tsar signs a decree on the creation of the Western Zemstvo. There is nothing for the lawmakers to discuss when they convene after their forced break: the law has been adopted and cannot be repealed.
Even Stolypin’s supporters are outraged. “You have damaged our young Russian constitution, and yourself even more,” says Alexander Guchkov, a representative of the Moscow merchant class, the current chairman of the State Duma and Stolypin’s former right-hand man. “You were once a political heavyweight, now you’ve committed political hara-kiri.” In protest, Guchkov resigns from his post as chairman of the Duma.
Stolypin does not realize the extent to which Guchkov is right. The episode ruins his relationship with Nicholas II once and for all. The tsar hates being pressured. He has never forgiven Witte for forcing him to sign the 17 October manifesto, and now he accuses Stolypin of blackmail and coercion.
Moreover, Stolypin has lost the moral right to insist that Nicholas observe the laws of the land. When Rasputin asks him to annul the Holy Synod’s decree and allow Iliodor to live in Tsaritsyn lawfully, he readily agrees. On 1 April Emperor Nicholas II personally grants Iliodor the right to return to Tsaritsyn, and the next day the Holy Synod repeals its own decree. The church leaders are humiliated. Metropolitan Anthony, who excommunicated Tolstoy a decade previously, suffers a stroke.
But that is not all. In early May Iliodor travels to Saint Petersburg. On the eve of his arrival, the tsar, on the advice of Rasputin, dismisses Lukyanov, the ober-procurator of the Holy Synod (the “minister of the church”), despite Stolypin’s protests. The imperial family invites Iliodor to perform a vigil service at the palace church and listens carefully to his sermon. In his memoirs Iliodor claims that during this encounter Nicholas II asked him to obey Rasputin and to attack only his enemies (“Jews and revolutionaries”), not his ministers.
Iliodor returns to Tsaritsyn victorious and sends a letter to the governor, saying that the latter is “cursed.” The frightened governor writes to Saint Petersburg, asking for an explanation. He is told that the “curse,” which was not approved by a general vote of the members of the Holy Synod, has no legal force.
It is hard to imagine a greater humiliation for Stolypin. At the end of the summer, he meets with Guchkov, his former right-hand man, and complains to him that Iliodor is a threat to the state because he is undermining both local and supreme power. Guchkov describes Stolypin’s tone of voice as “forlorn.”
While Stolypin is trying to create a zemstvo in Kiev province and fighting Iliodor, an emergency occurs in Kiev: on 20 March the corpse of a twelve-year-old boy named Andrei Yushchinsky is found in a small cave in the forest. He was killed the week before. The body is covered with forty-seven stab wounds and has been exsanguinated.
Rumors of ritual murder immediately abound. At the boy’s funeral, leaflets are distributed stating that he was killed by the Jews to use his blood to make matzo for Passover. The member of the Union of the Russian People who handed them out is detained, but soon released. The unionists start planning a pogrom. The complicit police persuade them to wait until autumn, since the tsar is due to visit Kiev to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the abolition of serfdom. The Black Hundreds acquiesce.
The police consider various scenarios, one of which involves arresting the boy’s mother and stepfather. But Kiev is a city where the Union of the Russian People enjoys great influence, which naturally results in the strong reactionary press insisting that the boy was killed by the Jews. Dubrovin’s Russian Banner is leading the campaign. The right-wing members in the State Duma, headed by Purishkevich, ask if the government is aware that the Kiev boy was tortured and murdered by a criminal Jewish sect that practices blood libel. The Duma declines to respond, but in any case it is of little consequence.
Anti-Semitism is rife: the public attitude towards Jews is comparable to how modern folk feel about illegal immigrants. Everyone knows that the tsar reads the Black Hundred press and supports the radical anti-Semite Iliodor, against whom even Stolypin is powerless. The government funds right-wing organizations, which are multiplying and competing for public money. The struggle against the “Jewish threat” is considered a noble cause. Therefore, the police need no special instructions to pursue the ritual killing theory. This version of events suggests itself.
On 22 June, the police arrest the Jewish Mendel Beilis, a salesman from a brick factory located not far from the scene of the crime. Thus begins the most high-profile case in the history of the Russian legal system.
SHOTS IN THE STALLS
The celebrations in Kiev on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the abolition of serfdom begin in late August. Stolypin arrives in Kiev on 25 August and discovers that he is persona non grata: he is cold-shouldered by the imperial court and denied a place aboard the tsarist steamer on a trip to Chernigov. He does not even have a carriage, and has to hitch a ride from Finance Minister Kokovtsov.
The numerous scandals of recent times, including the Iliodor and Rasputin sagas, have taken their toll. If Iliodor’s memoirs are to be believed, in the summer of 1910 Rasputin tells the latter that he will soon force Stolypin out of office (as he did with the ober-procurator of the Holy Synod) and replace him with Kokovtsov. It is not even a matter of personal enmity, but circumstance: the tsar no longer favors Stolypin, and the government is whispering that he could soon be exiled to the post of governor of the Caucasus.
On 1 September Stolypin meets with Russian nationalists in Kiev. “You have my sympathy and support. I think you are the salt of the earth,” he says. That same evening the prime minister goes to the opera.
Deputy Interior Minister Kurlov warns Stolypin of a suspected plot to assassinate him. He is given an enclosed vehicle, which he uses, despite the summer heat. The source of information about the assassination plot is a police agent by the name of Bogrov. He warns that the attempt on Stolypin’s life will take place at the theatre. Bogrov is given a theatre pass for him personally to point out suspicious types in the audience.
During the interval Bogrov approaches Stolypin’s seat in the stalls and fires twice at point-blank range. He is a double agent, like Azef, whom Stolypin recently defended in the Duma. Bogrov is seized. The wounded Stolypin looks around in the direction of the royal box, makes the sign of the cross to Nicholas II, and collapses. He is carried out of the hall, and the orchestra is ordered to start playing the national anthem to restore calm.
The program for the end-of-serfdom anniversary celebrations is curtailed, but Nicholas still makes the trip to Chernigov. Empress Alexandra remains in Kiev and urgently summons Rasputin for consultations (it is rumored) on whom to appoint as the new prime minister.
Stolypin dies in hospital on 5 September. Nicholas II does not visit the bedside of his dying prime minister. Only after the trip to Chernigov, on 6 September, does he go to pay his last respects. He kneels by the coffin and prays. The new prime minister is indeed Kokovtsov. “Do not follow the example of Pyotr Arkadievich [Stolypin], who overshadowed me so much that I was invisible,” the tsar exhorts the new head of government.
Stolypin is buried at the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. His death prompts a wave of laudatory articles in which he is compared to the late emperor-reformer Alexander II.
Stolypin’s predecessor, Sergei Witte, however, believes that his death is for the best. Now on an honorary pension as a member of the State Council, Witte hated Stolypin, believing him to have “corrupted the Russian administration, destroyed the independence of the courts and the press, and trampled over the dignity of the State Duma, turning it into his personal department.” It is mainly envy, but Witte is right about one thing: Stolypin did indeed take manual control of the courts and the elections. In the post-Stolypin era, this system continues to operate under different management. Meanwhile, the double agent Bogrov is sentenced by a district military court to death and hanged on 12 September.
A LOCAL APOCALYPSE
After the death of his enemy Stolypin, Iliodor becomes even more aggressive, seemingly suffering from progressive mental illness. This time he provokes a scandal with the Moscow City Duma. On learning that the city authorities intend to buy up the estate of Leo Tolstoy at Khamovniki and build a museum, he writes an obscene telegram to the local head Nikolai Guchkov (the brother of Alexander), demanding that the purchase be cancelled or the estate turned into a prison or a brothel. Iliodor hangs up a portrait of Tolstoy inside his monastery, so that visitors can “spit at his despicable mug.” Written on Tolstoy’s forehead are the words “Satan’s servant.”
On 26 September, preaching to his flock, Iliodor announces the impending end of the world and the coming of the Antichrist, calling on his followers to dig catacombs under the monastery as a place to hide. In order to keep the enemy out, he orders any curious onlooker to be beaten over the head with a shovel. A total of 991 families volunteer, and the work is done mostly by women and children.
The police files mention a rift between Iliodor and Rasputin, caused by the former allegedly asking the latter to use his government connections to secure funding. Rasputin refuses, whereupon all hell breaks loose.
On 16 December 1911 Rasputin meets Iliodor and Germogen. The fifty-three-year-old Germogen, the last member of the church hierarchy to support Rasputin, begins to accuse him of immorality, demanding that he no longer cross the threshold of the imperial palace. Rasputin verbally insults Germogen and physically pushes him. Iliodor and several others come running and a fight breaks out. Iliodor and Rasputin roll head over heels down a flight of stairs, while the roughed-up Germogen screams blue murder at Rasputin. Rasputin breaks free, swears revenge, and runs away.
Psychiatrists would be fascinated by the case study of Iliodor. He not only predicts the coming of the Antichrist, but also arranges his own local political apocalypse. A couple of weeks after the scuffle, leaflets are distributed in Saint Petersburg bearing the text of letters sent by Empress Alexandra and her daughters to Rasputin—the ones that Rasputin showed boastfully to Iliodor: “How painful it is without you,” writes Alexandra in one such letter. “My soul is only at rest when you, teacher, are sitting next to me. I kiss your hands, lean my head on your shoulder and desire only to fall asleep there forever.” The letter is signed: “Yours eternally and lovingly.” Rumors spread that the empress is Rasputin’s mistress.
It is hard to imagine what happens to the introverted empress when she learns that the whole of Saint Petersburg is reading her personal correspondence.
In January 1912, the Holy Synod decides to banish Iliodor (again) to a remote monastery in Vladimir province. Germogen is dismissed from the Holy Synod by imperial decree and sent to Saratov. He refuses to comply and gives interviews to the press, whereupon his diocese is subjected to an “audit.” After various infringements are found, he is removed from office and sent to a monastery in Grodno province.
The newspapers try to cover the events, but papers that publish articles in defense of Germogen and against Rasputin are confiscated by the Interior Ministry. The scandal continues all month. On January 24, the leader of the Union of 17 of October Party (the so-called Octobrists), Alexander Guchkov, queries the Interior Ministry about the reason for confiscating the papers. Nicholas II is furious. The ministers in the new cabinet, headed by Kokovtsov, are afraid to approach the tsar, and so they dispatch Count Fredericks to advise him to send Rasputin out of the capital for a while. Finally, on 15 February, Rasputin visits Prime Minister Kokovtsov for a long talk. The next day Rasputin leaves for his home village, most likely having been offered money by Kokovtsov.
There is hope that the situation is improving. On 26 February, the new chairman of the Duma, the Octobrist Mikhail Rodzianko, who was elected after Guchkov’s resignation, goes to see the tsar. He brings with him a suitcase full of documents. For two hours he reads out testimonies that Rasputin is a member of the Khlyst sect and goes with women to the bathhouse, and shows the tsar letters from repentant women seduced by Rasputin and clippings from foreign newspapers alleging that Rasputin is a revolutionary tool to discredit the Russian monarchy. Nicholas II is struck by the evidence. He asks Rodzianko to compile a detailed report (that he can show to his wife). And as a sign of goodwill, he introduces Rodzianko to his son Alexei, who describes the former as the “biggest and fattest man in Russia.”
Rodzianko leaves with the feeling that he has moved a mountain, and starts boasting that the tsar commissioned him to prepare a report to expose Rasputin. On 8 March he informs Nicholas that the text is ready, but the very next day Guchkov, the leader of Rodzianko’s own faction, delivers a fiery speech against Rasputin in the Duma: “Let it be known that the Church and the State are in peril.… You all know what a painful drama Russia is experiencing.… At the center of this drama stands a mysterious, tragicomic figure, like a native from the Other World or a relic of the Dark Ages.”
The Duma’s discussion of Rasputin is perceived by Nicholas II as a deep personal insult. He no longer receives Rodzianko and does not read his report. Three days later the entire imperial family leaves for Crimea. They are seen off by all the members of the government. Empress Alexandra walks past in silence, not greeting or looking at anyone. “This atmosphere of fibs, gossip and spitefulness is suffocating,” Nicholas tells Kokovtsov. “I am leaving now and shall return as late as possible.”
BACK TO RUSSIA
The year 1911 is a testing one for Diaghilev. His Italian tour almost falls through, and he has trouble with Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka—Bakst is behind schedule with the set designs and Stravinsky himself hurriedly writes the score during rehearsals. Meanwhile, Diaghilev and Fokine are at daggers drawn. There is no theatre available, so the troupe rehearses in a restaurant.
Diaghilev also quarrels with Ida Rubinstein. She is now settled in Paris and loves to shock people: at her apartment she greets guests naked and keeps a living panther, which on one occasion tries to pounce on Diaghilev. Terrified, he clambers onto a table, while Ida laughs. That is effectively the end of their already complex relationship. Lastly, a scandal erupts between Benois and Bakst. Envious of his comrade’s success, Benois calls Bakst “a Jewish mug” and refuses to work on Diaghilev’s team. “Fifteen years of shameless exploitation have utterly demoralized me,” says Benois. Yet despite all the problems, the troubled season ends on a high note: the performance at London’s Covent Garden is a triumph, which also makes the company profitable for the first time in its history.
Diaghilev returns to his dream of achieving recognition back home, and for that purpose tries to reach an agreement with his most formidable foe in Saint Petersburg—Matilda Kschessinskaya. Without her favor, it is impossible to perform. The fact is that the twenty-two-year-old Vaslav Nijinsky faces being called up for military service. If he were employed by the Imperial Theatres, he would be exempt, but as things stand, he must remain abroad. Without him, a tour of Saint Petersburg is impossible.
Diaghilev asks Kschessinskaya to help Nijinsky to avoid the army draft in exchange for giving her a chance to perform on the London stage. Kschessinskaya is already forty and dominates Russia, but she has never conquered Europe and time is running out. Diaghilev promises to stage two classical ballets by Tchaikovsky for her in London: Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty (neither of which is part of Diaghilev’s usual repertoire). “It’s a shame,” says Valentin Serov. “Despite her merits, she is not an artiste.… Nor do I see any need for a production of Swan Lake.” For Serov, the former imperial portraitist, who parted company with the Romanovs after Bloody Sunday, any brown-nosing of the grand dukes is intolerable.
In late September 1911, a Saint Petersburg court unexpectedly declares Nijinsky to be a draft dodger. Moreover, Kschessinskaya is unable to persuade the Imperial Theatres to let Diaghilev use the Mikhailovsky Theatre, so he finds a less prestigious venue: the People’s House of Nicholas II—a former pavilion from the All-Russia Exhibition of 1896 that was transported to the capital from Nizhny Novgorod. Nevertheless, some Nijinsky-less performances in the Russian capital are scheduled for February 1912.
Meanwhile, Kschessinskaya and Diaghilev’s joint production in Covent Garden goes according to plan. In October 1911 Kschessinskaya arrives in London, accompanied by the grand dukes, and shocks the public with her abundance of jewelry. In addition to Kschessinskaya, the troupe is joined by Anna Pavlova, who dances in Giselle. All the performances are attended by the star of London high society—the young Oxford student Prince Felix Yusupov. He is friends with Pavlova, whom he describes as “heaven-sent.” Her response is: “You have God in one eye and hell in the other.”
On 5 December 1911, far from the triumph of London, Serov, the most principled of Diaghilev’s friends, dies in Saint Petersburg. Diaghilev does not have time to attend the funeral, arriving only on 15 December. The next tragedy occurs in late January, when a fire breaks out at the People’s House, rendering it unfit for staging a ballet. The frantic Diaghilev approaches Alexei Suvorin, the publisher of New Time, an ultraconservative who is totally unpalatable to the metropolitan intelligentsia.
Suvorin has his own private theatre, which Diaghilev begs to be allowed to rent. But Suvorin’s price is mockingly unaffordable. “That’s how the homeland greets us! It’s clear how much we are needed,” writes the insulted Stravinsky. “The vile petty hucksters and miscreants serve at the altar of filth, vulgarity and baseness. The presence of so many Suvorins and other riff-raff in Russia is insufferable.” In the end, the most famous ballet troupe in the world fails to find a stage in Russia. Diaghilev moves the show to Dresden.
* In the early twenty-first century Russian cultural society will once again be wondering if it is ethically fine for cultural workers to receive state funding. Most people say yes: just like Diaghilev, they believe it to be impossible to find any other sources of funding, while funding cultural development of the country is one of the governmental duties.
* About $487,783 in 2017.
* About $13,183 in 2017.
* About $39,550 in 2017.
* Pyotr Stolypin will be one of the most respected pre-revolutionary politicians in Russia in the early twenty-first century. In 2011 Vladimir Putin orders a monument to Stolypin erected in front of the Russian Government building and even donates his month’s salary for it.
* The dance performed by Salome for King Herod.
† Which continues to this day: in 2015 Russia’s culture minister sacked a Siberian theatre director after the Russian Orthodox Church criticized his modern staging of Wagner’s Tannhäuser.
* Equivalent to millions of dollars in 2017.
* In the early twenty-first century religious hard-liners have also suddenly gained political strength. In 2012 the State Duma has passed a law against “offending religious feelings” (the phrasing is an exact match to that of the early twentieth century). Moreover, some public initiatives involving limitation of the rights of sexual minorities, state intervention into private life, and checking whether pieces of art correspond with moral norms used to be disregarded, but now they gain massive public attention.
* About $791,000 in 2017.
† Where Vladimir Putin once lived.
* About $39,550,000 in 2017.
† About $419,494 in 2017.
* A collection of articles published in 1909 criticizing the Russian intelligentsia.
* Known as gymnasia in Imperial Russia.
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