Solovyov and Larionov

1

He was born by the train station bearing the unprepossessing name Kilometer 715. The station was not very big, despite the three-digit numeral. There was no movie theater, no post office, not even a school. Nothing but six wooden houses stood along the railroad bed. He left that station shortly after his sixteenth birthday. He went to Petersburg, was accepted at the university, and began studying history. This was to be expected, considering the surname—Solovyov, just like the famous historian—with which he had been born.

Solovyov’s advisor at the university, Professor Nikolsky, called Solovyov a typical self-made man, who had come to the capital with a string of sledges bearing fish, but of course that was a joke. Petersburg had ceased being the capital long before Solovyov’s arrival in 1991, and no fish was ever to be found at Kilometer 715. To the adolescent Solovyov’s great regret, there was neither a river nor even a pond there. Reading one book after another about maritime journeys, the future historian cursed his landlocked existence and decided to spend the remainder of his days—a rather considerable number at the time—at the place where land and sea met. The attraction of large bodies of water, along with his thirst for knowledge, settled his choice in favor of Petersburg. In other words, the comment about the fish sledges would have remained a joke if not for its emphasis on overcoming one’s initial circumstances; something elegantly stated in the English expression. Say what you will, but the historian Solovyov was a most genuine self-made man.

General Larionov (1882–1976) was another matter. He came into the world in Petersburg, in a family where being a military officer was hereditary. All of his relatives were officers, with the exception of the future general’s father, who served as the director of the railroad department. As a child, Larionov even had the good fortune to know his great-grandfather (there was a penchant for longevity in the family), who was, naturally, a general, too. He was a tall, straight-backed old man who had lost his leg back in the Battle of Borodino.

In the eyes of the young Larionov, every movement his great-grandfather made, even the very knock of his peg leg on the parquet floor, was filled with a special dignity. When nobody was watching, the child loved to lift his right foot up, traverse the room on his left leg, and recline on the sofa with a deep sigh, resting his arms on the back of the sofa like great-grandfather Larionov. Larionov’s grandfather and his lush-mustached uncles were not really any worse than his great-grandfather, but neither their gallant officer’s appearance nor their talent for eloquence (his great-grandfather was not a talker) could even begin to compete with the absence of a leg.

All that reconciled the child to his two-legged relatives was their abundance of medals. He liked a medal one of his uncles had received, For the suppression of the Polish rebellion, more than anything. The melody of the word combination fascinated the boy, who did not have the faintest idea about Poles. In light of the child’s obvious affinity for the medal, his uncle finally gave it to him. The boy wore this medal—along with the medal For the conquest of Shipka, which he received from another uncle—right up until the age of seven. The word Shipka certainly lost out to the word rebellion in terms of sonority but the beauty of the medal itself made up for its phonetic shortcomings. The child’s happiest moments were spent sitting among his officer relatives with the two medals on his chest.

These were still Russian officers of a bygone time. They knew how to use cutlery (including the fish knife, now forgotten), effortlessly kissed ladies’ hands, and performed numerous other courtesies unimaginable for officers of a later epoch. General Larionov had no need to overcome his circumstances. Quite the opposite: he needed only to absorb the qualities of his environs, to brim with them. Which is, in fact, what he did.

His inclination to become a general manifested itself in early childhood, when he began lining up wooden hussars in even rows on the floor before he had fully learned to walk. Seeing him engaged in this pursuit, those present uttered the only possible combination of words, ‘General Larionov.’ Ponder the naturalness of the union of those two words: they were made for one another, they were pronounced without a pause and became a united whole, flowing from one to the other, just as a rider and his horse become a united whole in battle. General Larionov. This was his first and only name among the family, and he became accustomed to it immediately and forever. General Larionov. Whenever the child heard that form of address, he stood and silently saluted. He did not learn to speak until he was three and a half years old.

What, one might ask, unites two such dissimilar individuals as the historian Solovyov and the General Larionov, if of course it is permissible to speak of uniting a budding young researcher and a battle-weary commander who, furthermore, is no longer of this earth? The answer lies at the surface: historian Solovyov was studying General Larionov’s activity. After graduating from St. Petersburg University, Solovyov began his graduate studies at the Institute of Russian History, where General Larionov became his dissertation topic. Based on entries in reference books, there is no reason to doubt that by 1996—that being the time under discussion—General Larionov already belonged wholly to Russian history.

Needless to say, Solovyov was not the first to devote himself to studying the famous general’s biography. Over the years, a couple of dozen scholarly articles had appeared at various times. They were devoted to various stages of Larionov’s life and, above all, the mysteries associated with him that have yet to be unraveled. Although the number of works appears considerable at first glance, it seems completely insufficient if compared to the interest that General Larionov has always inspired, both in Russia and overseas. The fact that the number of scholarly research works is significantly fewer than the number of novels, films, plays, etcetera, in which the general appears—either as a figure or as a prototype for a character—does not appear to be accidental. This state of affairs symbolizes, as it were, the predominance of mythology over positive knowledge in everything concerning the deceased.

Beyond that, critical analysis by French researcher Amélie Dupont has shown that the mythology has even penetrated various scholarly articles about the commander. Which explains why the topic of research becomes a minefield, to a certain extent, for anyone just beginning work on the subject. However, even those articles (and Dupont writes about this, too) in which the truth comes across, thanks to all the splendor of scholarly argumentation, shed light on such narrow problems and episodes, that the significance of the extracted and argued truth is reduced to nearly nothing. It is remarkable that Dupont’s work ( The Enigma of the Russian General, a book published in French and Russian) is still the sole monographic research dedicated to General Larionov. This circumstance emphasizes, yet again, the dearth of sources on the subject. The fact that the French researcher managed to collect material for a monograph is due exclusively to her selflessness and particular treatment of her topic, which she has called the topic of her life.

In reality, it is no exaggeration to say that Dupont was born to research the Russian commander. In her case, this was not a matter of the historian’s external features, something the scholarly community permits itself to mock, due to her height (187 centimeters) and the emergence of a mustache after the age of forty. It is known, after all, that barbs and jokes behind a prominent specialist’s back (Dupont is called mon general in certain narrow circles) are usually nothing more than a form of envy. Consequently, mentioning Dupont’s destiny for her designated topic is, above all, a reference to her unusual persistence, something without which it would essentially have been impossible to discover the tremendously important sources she subsequently published. And, truly, those who surmise that the emergence of the mustache that caused the inappropriate reaction in scholarly circles could be attributed, first and foremost, to the researcher’s fascination with her topic, were not far from the truth. For the sake of objectivity, however, it must be noted that General Larionov himself did not have a mustache.

In all the preserved photographs (see the insets in Dupont’s book), there appears before us a carefully shaven person with his hair cut short and parted. The part is so even and the quality of the shaving so flawless that one unwittingly detects the scent of eau du toilette when contemplating the photographs. With regard to his appearance, General Larionov made the only possible valid decision, just as he did in most other situations. Thinking that his ideally proportioned facial features needed no framing, he did not style himself after Alexander III, as did the officers around him. What is interesting is that his face did not look handsome, despite its proportions. His face became livelier at a mature age, particularly in elderliness. It is not uncommon to contemplate a photograph of a person in his youth, marveling at its blatant insufficiencies and almost embryonic look when compared to what came later. In cases of this sort, one experiences regret regarding the existence of that stage in the life of the person portrayed. Needless to say, feelings of this sort are very highly ahistorical. As far as the general goes, his face looked more chiseled thanks to wrinkles that appeared, with age, under his eyes, and the bump that emerged on his nose. During one period of his life, between the ages of thirty-five and forty, his appearance was reminiscent of Cardinal Richelieu because of his facial expression and that bump, though not because of all his features. The peak of the general’s activity—as well as the mysteries connected with him—dates back to this period. Perhaps his resemblance to Richelieu was the resemblance of people possessing mysteries? Whatever the reason, that resemblance departed with time, too.

Even a fleeting glance at Dupont’s illustrative material attests to the undeniable prevalence of photographs from the final period of General Larionov’s life. The old man never made a point of having his picture taken but he also never put on airs by turning away from any cameras that greeted him: he regarded them with utmost indifference. That regard gave portraits of the general a naturalness rare for the genre. Perhaps the triumph of two photographic portraits of the general in international competitions at various times should be ascribed, above all, to that naturalness?

There is no doubt that even those who are not at all familiar with the general’s activity and have not heard his name would recall the black-and-white photograph of the old man sitting on a folding chair at the very edge of a jetty (Yalta, 1964). It became a classic of world photography, rather like the locomotive falling out the window of a Paris train station, rather like the lighthouse among raging waves, etcetera. Despite the summer heat, the old man is dressed in a white service jacket. He is sitting under a partially transparent awning, his legs crossed. The toe of a light-colored shoe is stretched before him, parallel to the ground, and almost blends in with the jetty, making it seem as if the lighthouse standing close by is balanced on the toe of that elegant shoe. The old man’s gaze is directed into the distance and filled with the particular attention of one not interested in anything closer than the horizon. That old man is General Larionov. One cannot deny that all previous photographs pale in comparison with that shot of the general, that they have grown to feel inexpressive and, to some extent, unworthy of this outstanding person. That the general remained in his descendants’ memory in his most, so to speak, mature form, could be considered his indisputable success. However, the biggest success of his life was, most likely, simply that he was not shot at the conclusion of the Civil War. This has always been considered inexplicable.

What is consequential, though, is that historian Solovyov decided to concentrate on that very enigma. Here, one might foresee objections of the sort that question whether historian Solovyov is, say, a figure capable of untangling this very complex historical snarl. And is it even worth placing hope on a very recent graduate who is, moreover, a self-made man? These objections do not seem well founded. It is sufficient to point out—and Dupont was the first to establish this fact—that Arkady Gaidar was commanding a regiment at the age of sixteen and a half. As far as self-made man goes, well, under a broad understanding of the term, anyone who has ever succeeded at accomplishing anything in life should be considered one.

It is sufficient to mention just one detail with regard to Solovyov’s work on self-improvement: he was able to change his Southern Russian pronunciation to aristocratic Petersburg pronunciation. Needless to say, there is nothing about the Southern Russian pronunciation, in and of itself, that is shameful or belittles the dignity of its speakers (just as, say, deficient Moscow speech is incapable of discrediting residents of the capital). Mikhail Gorbachev, after all, led perestroika in Russia using Southern Russian pronunciation. Unlike Solovyov, Gorbachev was not a historian—he himself made history without taking particular care about the orthoepic side of matters, a tendency that continued even after he left his post and retired. As far as Solovyov goes, when he murmured Russian tongue twisters in the dormitory kitchen, he was working on something that went beyond simply training himself in pronunciation: he was, as he characterized it, eliminating the provincialism within himself. Solovyov’s thesis advisor, the eminent Professor Nikolsky, played an important role in Solovyov’s development. After reading his student’s first important paper, which was devoted to Russia’s conquest of the Far East, the professor invited Solovyov to his office, where he said nothing for a long time, blowing on the paper tube of a Belomorkanal cigarette all the while (he had taken a liking to those cigarettes while working at the forced labor site bearing the same name).

‘My friend,’ said the professor after lighting the cigarette, ‘scholarship is dull. If you don’t get used to that notion, it will not be easy for you to pursue it.’

The professor requested that Solovyov delete from his paper the words great, triumphant, and only possible. He also asked his student if he was familiar with the theory according to which Russians squandered the energy granted to them by conquering expanses of inhuman dimensions. His student was not. Prior to acquainting Solovyov with this theory, Prof. Nikolsky requested that he delete the phrase phenomenon indicating progress, too. The author of the paper was asked to pay special attention to the formatting of bibliographical and persuasive footnotes. A careful look at this aspect of the paper revealed that the only properly formatted footnote was ‘Ibid., 12.’

To be utterly candid, the majority of what Prof. Nikolsky said seemed like nitpicking to Solovyov, yet it was this very discussion that formed the basis of a friendship between professor and student. The professor was at that age when his quibbles could no longer be offensive to the young man and Solovyov’s own history, which was anything but simple, did its part in forcing his advisor to show more leniency toward his student.

Prof. Nikolsky never tired of repeating to his mentee that, as a rule, pretty phrases in scholarship are misguided, and the beauty of those phrases is based on their alleged universality and an absence of exceptions. But—and here the cigarette in the professor’s hand would trace a smoky ellipsis—that absence is spurious. No exhaustive truths exist (hardly any exist, the professor corrected himself, bringing the statement into accord with his own theory). For each a there is always a b and a c to be found, as well as something that no letters can convey. An honest researcher takes all that into account, but his pronouncements cease being beautiful. Thus spoke Prof. Nikolsky.

At some point, Solovyov’s blue-eyed romanticism gave way to a pronounced inclination toward precision, so this was a time when he discovered a particular beauty: the beauty of reliable knowledge. This was a time when the young man’s papers started to be mottled with enormous quantities of exhaustive and meticulously formatted footnotes. Footnotes became for him more than an occasion to express respect for his predecessors. They revealed to him that there was no one realm of knowledge where he, Solovyov, would be first, and that scholarship is, to the highest degree, a process that is bequeathed. They were representatives of great, all-encompassing knowledge. They watched after Solovyov and educated him, forcing him to rid himself of approximate and uncertain assertions. They blew open his smooth school-based exposition, because a text, just like existence itself, cannot exist without conditions.

Solovyov inserted footnote after footnote, marveling that he had managed to get by without them at the beginning of his scholarly career. When footnotes began accompanying nearly every word he wrote, Prof. Nikolsky was forced to stop him. He announced to Solovyov, in passing, that scholars usually get by without footnotes at the end of their careers, too. The young researcher felt disheartened.

Despite Solovyov’s expectations, the Pacific Ocean—to which he fought his way in his first important paper—did not become his primary topic. Prof. Nikolsky was able to convince his student that the most important part of history takes place on a continent. Only a strong familiarity with that part of history gives a researcher the right to leave dry land from time to time. After a wrenching internal struggle, Solovyov decided to postpone setting sail.

Solovyov came to appreciate Petersburg fully during his five university years. He began wearing high-quality but unostentatious clothing (clothing becomes more colorful when advancing south, and not only in Russia), referenced the powers that be with the short word they, and took a liking to evening strolls on Vasilevsky Island. His habit of taking strolls continued later, after renting an apartment on the Petrograd Side (Zhdanovskaya Embankment, No. 11). He would walk home after finishing his work at the library. Sadovaya Street. Summer Garden. Troitsky Bridge. In the winter, when the Summer Garden was closed (in accordance with its name) and its statues were boarded up in boxes, Solovyov would choose another route. He would reach the Neva River via Griboedov Canal and then turn on to Dvortsovy Bridge, after walking past the Winter Palace (which was open year-round, unlike the Summer Garden). At home, he would place his soaked boots on the radiator. By morning they would turn white, from the salt scattered by the yard workers.

Solovyov came to love the Public Library’s special winter coziness: Catherine the Great’s figure in a half-frosted window, pre-war lamps on the tables, and the barely audible whispering of those sitting behind him. He liked the indescribable library scent. That scent united the aromas of books, oak shelves, and worn runner rugs. All libraries smell that way. The snow-covered, one-story village library where the young Solovyov had borrowed books smelled that way. It was an hour and a half’s walk from the Kilometer 715 station; Solovyov stopped by the library after school before heading back to his station. He would sit, half-facing the elderly librarian Nadezhda Nikiforovna’s desk, while she searched for his books somewhere behind the cabinets. As he awaited Nadezhda Nikiforovna’s return, Solovyov would examine his violet fingers, which he sank into his rabbit-fur hat. Her voice would emerge from behind the cabinets from time to time.

‘Captain Blood: His Odyssey?’

‘Already read it.’

He read everything. The village library became his first true revelation and Nadezhda Nikiforovna was his first love.

Unlike the houses by the railroad, the library was very quiet and did not smell of railroad ties. Mixed in with the fabulous library potion was the smell of Red Moscow perfume. This was Nadezhda Nikiforovna’s perfume. If there was anything Solovyov felt was missing later, in his Petersburg life, it was likely Red Moscow.

‘In Search of the Castaways?’

Her quiet voice made goosebumps slowly descend down Solovyov’s spine. After licking a fingertip, Nadezhda Nikiforovna would pull his library card out of the drawer and enter the necessary notation. Fascinated, Solovyov followed the movement of her large fingers, with their dulled nails. A cameo glistened on her ring finger. When she placed a book on a shelf, Nadezhda Nikiforovna’s ring grazed the wood and the cameo produced a muffled plastic sound. That sound took on an extraordinary elegance, almost an elite quality, in Solovyov’s ears because it was so unlike the clanging of train carriage couplers. Later, he would qualify it as world culture’s first bashful knock at the door of his soul.

More often than not, Solovyov did not come to the library alone: he was with a girl named Leeza, who lived in the house next door. Leeza was not allowed to walk home by herself and was ordered to wait for Solovyov at the library. She would sit some distance away, silently observing the book exchange process. Sometimes she would borrow something Solovyov had already read. Solovyov immediately forgot about Leeza after coming home. He would recollect all the details of his visit to the library, indulging himself in dreams of married life with Nadezhda Nikiforovna.

It should be emphasized that he was eight years old then and his dreams were fully virtuous. Remote as he was from civilization’s hotbeds (and based on Nadezhda Nikiforovna’s expression, from those hotbeds’ settled ashes, too), Solovyov vaguely imagined the tasks of marriage, as well as the ways it takes its course. As it happened, that village library was his sole link to the outside world, ruling out the availability not only of erotic publications but of suggestive illustrations in periodicals as well. Nadezhda Nikiforovna censored new acquisitions in her free time, ruthlessly cutting those items out.

There is nothing surprising in the fact that five years later, when their instincts were awakening, Solovyov and Leeza were deprived of all manner of guidance in that sphere and progressed by groping along, in the literal sense of the word. Nevertheless, when the adolescent Solovyov engaged in sex in later years, he did not consider himself unfaithful to Nadezhda Nikiforovna. The idea of marriage, which had so warmed his heart as a child, lost no attraction for him then, either. The change took place only upon recognizing that certain things should not be demanded of Nadezhda Nikiforovna.

Leeza’s surname—Larionova—does not lack interest in this present narrative. This present narrative is inclined to accentuate various resemblances and coincidences because there is meaning in any similarity: similarity opens up another dimension and alludes to a true perspective, without which one’s view would certainly hit a wall. In taking on research into General Larionov’s life and work, Solovyov bore in mind his own previous familiarity with that same surname. He placed significance on such things. Needless to say, the young researcher could not yet explain the role of the Larionovs in his life, though even then he felt the role would not be secondary.

As happens more often than not with events that are intended to occur, Solovyov’s research topic came to him by chance. Another graduate student, Kalyuzhny, had worked on the topic before Solovyov. Yes, this pleasant fellow lacked all manner of scholarly energy and, really, most likely any energy whatsoever. His efforts were sufficient for him to make his way to some academic beer joint and settle in there for the entire remainder of the day. Kalyuzhny regarded the general sympathetically and experienced an undeniable curiosity regarding his fate. The primary thing he did not understand was that (and here Kalyuzhny’s index finger slid along a glass) the general had remained alive. Over the course of several years, Kalyuzhny retold Dupont’s classic research to everyone who sat down at his table. This long retelling obviously wore him out in a real way because he did not write a single line during those years of unending narration. Gathering his last strength, graduate student Kalyuzhny unexpectedly did what the general had not brought himself to do in his day: he left the country. Kalyuzhny’s further fate is unknown.

Solovyov’s fate is known, however, and, according to the unanimous opinion of his colleagues, it was up to him to replace his drop-out associate. Only a few months after entering graduate school, Solovyov delivered a paper at a conference: ‘Studying the Life and Activity of General Larionov: Conclusions and Outlooks.’

The conclusions that Solovyov drew and the outlooks he summarized made a most favorable impression on the scholarly public. The paper testified not only to the young researcher’s well-organized mind but also, in equal measure, to his deep insight into the topic. The climax of the paper, which evoked extraordinary animation in the hall, was his introduction of corrections to data in Dupont’s monograph that had been considered unshakable until that day.

And so, it turned out that there were only 469 soldiers on record in the 34th Infantry Division of the 136th Taganrog Regiment, not the 483 soldiers Dupont asserted. It also emerged that the French researcher had, on the other hand, reduced the number of soldiers in the 2nd Native Division of the Combined Cavalier Brigade to 720 (the true number was 778). Dupont did not shed full light on the role of Colonel Yakov Noga (1878–?) in the Crimean campaign; however, the officer’s level of education had clearly been overstated: the French researcher mistakenly indicated that Noga graduated from the Vladimir and Kiev cadet corps, though he graduated only from the Vladimir (named for Saint Vladimir) Kiev Cadet Corps. Solovyov set forth a series of more minor quibbles with the French monograph, but in this case one must think it permissible to limit discussion to the examples cited above. Even they are enough to characterize the quality of the young scholar’s work and his unwillingness to blindly trust his predecessors’ authority.

This was Solovyov’s finest hour. Dupont hid behind a marble column in the conference hall as she listened to Solovyov’s paper. According to the accounts of those who saw her at that moment, the French historian’s eyes were brimming with tears. A person less dedicated to scholarship might have been offended by all the corrections that Solovyov introduced. That person might have become embittered or, who knows, shrugged their shoulders and snorted with disdain. Or said, let us suppose, that the specified clarifications held an extremely relative value in explaining the Crimean events of 1920. But Dupont was not that sort of person. At Solovyov’s ‘Thank you for your attention,’ she ran out from behind the column and embraced the presenter. Was that ardent scholarly embrace—which combined sobbing and smudged mascara and a prickly mustache—not a triumph of sincere values and evidence of the sanctity of the great international solidarity of researchers?

Standing behind the lectern, her faced streaked with mascara, Dupont recalled everyone who had devoted themselves to researching the post-revolutionary period at various times. She referred, with particular emotion, to Ieronim A. Ratsimor, who had conceived of, but not managed to complete, the monumental Encyclopedia of the Civil War.

‘He died on the letter K,’ Dupont said of the deceased, ‘but if he could have held on for just one more letter, our level of knowledge about General Larionov would have been different, completely different. But now we see,’ and with these words the researcher once again drew Solovyov to herself, ‘our worthy successor. Now we can feel calm about leaving.’

The polite Solovyov initially wanted to object to what Dupont had said, to ask that henceforth she continue engaging in the work that was so important to everyone, but she would not allow it. With a sweep of her huge hand, she seemed to conjure out of thin air her monograph about the general, which she then forcefully pressed to Solovyov’s chest. After kissing him again in parting, she marched across the conference hall and vanished into the duskiness of a corridor.

She called him from Paris. Positively everything about the young researcher interested her: his views on history overall, his biases in terms of methodology, and even—this was completely unexpected—his material standing. Unlike all the other areas, Solovyov found no intelligible answer to her question about the matter. Dupont herself deduced the reality of the Russian scholar’s material standing: it was simply lacking.

Stunned by that circumstance, Dupont delved into the reasons for such a somber state of affairs. Standing firm on determinist positions, the representative of French historical scholarship lined up a long cause-and-effect chain. There is no point in citing it in full: the events Dupont referred to are well known to any Russian schoolchild, though perhaps it is worth dwelling on several fundamental principles that are characteristic of this chain.

According to Dupont, several factors determined our society’s advancement, with key roles played by an insufficient propensity for labor, an inclination for appropriating another’s property, and a heightened sense of justice. The cause-and-effect chain that had formed within the French researcher’s head finally coiled into a circle that she recognized, on second thought, as vicious.

The state of affairs she depicted did not, in fact, seem rosy: appropriation of another’s property intensified—to an extreme—a sense of justice within society, which in turn sharply reduced the society’s propensity for labor. Needless to say, the latter circumstance could not help but stimulate an inclination for appropriating another’s property and that automatically led to an even more heightened sense of justice and even less propensity for labor. It was within this context that Dupont examined the destructive Russian revolutions, the many-year rule of Communists (no less destructive, according to her assessment), and a whole series of other events.

That combination of factors was combustible on its own (‘Molotoff cocktail!’ Dupont sighed), and was aggravated by a personal factor. A series of figures proceeding along Russian history’s teetering stage had managed to push the contradictions to extremes. In the French scholar’s view, president Boris Yeltsin occupied a special place among them and had obviously misused his skills as an orchestra conductor. The success of his Berlin performance made him so giddy that he thought of nothing but the conductor’s baton from then on. Under that baton’s light stroke, the appropriation of another’s property finally reached the point where the sense of justice was no longer intensifying and the propensity for labor was no longer decreasing. As far as Yeltsin’s decisive manner for problem-solving went, Dupont characterized it in her article ‘The Headless Horseman’, published in Sobriety and Culture in 1999, as a typical cavalry charge.

There is no doubt that Dupont became entangled in a whole series of questions while forming her chain of cause-and-effect. For example, she demonstrated an overt exaggeration of the role of the individual in history (it probably comes as no surprise that Dupont’s political views were staunchly de Gaullist), most likely brought on because the history she herself was working on was the history of a general. Beyond that, the dialectic of the necessary and the accidental—which is so important for a correct assessment of historical events—became a stumbling block for her. She simply could not figure that out by using Russian history. At some point, she began to see that necessity was accidental in our country to a certain degree. In other words, she could not manage to distinctly formulate the reason behind Solovyov’s squalid existence. And so Dupont transferred all her irrepressible energy to something more consequential. She replaced her search for answers to Russia’s accursed questions with a search for funds for the young scholar’s needs.

After brief reflection, the French researcher made an appeal to the All-Russian Scientific Foundation, with the vague hope that this particular institution was counterbalancing the government’s shortchanging of its scholars. After a short conversation in Moscow—people in the know had advised her to get in touch with the fund’s employees only in person—the foundation’s experts regarded the proposed research topic as insufficiently all-Russian. In saying their goodbyes, (‘There was a shadow of something left unsaid at our meeting!’ Dupont complained afterwards), they recommended their guest approach the Russian Foundation for Scientific Workers.

They heard out Dupont more favorably at the Foundation for Scientific Workers, and even fed her tea with biscuits of the Stolichnye brand. Along the way, they asked if she was an employee or at least an expert at any kind of French foundation. Upon learning that Dupont had nothing to do with French foundations, they inquired of the researcher who exactly at the All-Russian Scientific Foundation had recommended she approach the Foundation for Scientific Workers, and asked what that person had said. Surprised by the question and, above all, the questioner’s unusual tone, Dupont choked and they pounded her on the back until an ill-fated shard of one of the Stolichnye biscuits emerged from the Parisienne’s throat. They asked no further questions after that, helped her on with her coat, and gallantly kissed her hand. In Moscow, by the way, they do that no worse than in Paris.

Dupont undertook a further attempt to help the Petersburg graduate student: she got in touch with the S.M. Solovyov Foundation by telephone. In Dupont’s mind, a foundation named for the great Russian historian could not refuse to support another historian, one who was both still young and bore the same surname. Oddly enough, in this case it was precisely the surname that became the stumbling block. Afraid of being accused of nepotism, there was a refusal on the other end of the line to even review an appeal of this sort. Astonished at the scrupulousness of Russian foundations, a pensive Dupont hung up the receiver.

Finally, at the suggestion of colleagues, she appealed to some famous entrepreneur or other, allegedly a man of contradictions who mixed market speculation with philanthropic activity. It is entirely possible that the contradictions were exaggerated since, according to information that reached her later, philanthropic activity inexplicably turned out to be one of the most profitable income items of his entrepreneurship. Whatever the case, Dupont approached him with a long letter, in which she noted the thoroughness of the scholar’s work and enumerated, among other things, the corrections the latter had entered with regard to manpower in the subunits.

To the addressee’s credit, he did not force Dupont to wait long for an answer. His letter offered the highest appraisal of Solovyov’s industriousness and attention to detail. The philanthropist then went on to point out that data for 1920 offered no relevance for him since he was predominantly interested in information about armies currently in operation.

Needless to say, even such a gallant rejection could not suit a person whose colleagues had nicknamed her mon general. Dupont set off on another attack and wrote the patron a far more voluminous letter. This letter examined, in the most detailed fashion, the essence of each of the adjustments Solovyov had entered, with historical parallels and brief statistics regarding comparable subunits of European armies. As for the relevance of the data, the enterprising philanthropist was introduced to an extremely ancient point of view, according to which all history repeats itself. After subjecting the designated theory to constructive criticism, Dupont nonetheless stipulated that she certainly did not exclude the possibility of certain recurrences. The only point with which the French researcher categorically refused to agree was the possibility (even theoretical) that a second General Larionov could appear on the peninsula. In concluding her letter, so there would be no omissions, she even specified that people of the general’s sort are born only once every thousand years.

It is unknown what had the greater effect here—the digression into the territory of the philosophy of history, the French researcher’s resoluteness in standing up for her position, or the actual volume of the letter—but the entrepreneur-philanthropist answered with approval. He even joked agreeably in his response that the researcher’s observation regarding a general of Larionov’s sort might exclude the possibility of such a general appearing in the near future but it instilled certain hopes for the period following the year 2882. In expectation of that blessed epoch, he was designating that Solovyov receive, throughout his graduate studies (i.e. for three years), a stipend that was small but adequate for a modest life. This was a genuine victory.

Solovyov was stunned by the news of the stipend. He knew nothing of the efforts being made by the French woman on his behalf and felt genuinely happy when he heard about the gift. The phrase saying the stipend was designed for a modest life could not cloud his joy. On the one hand, Solovyov’s life had always been modest, but on the other, he supposed, justifiably, that his notions of modesty differed mightily from his benefactors’ notions. As informed as they were, they could not even guess the extent of the modesty of a scholar’s life in Russia.

‘You should go to Yalta,’ Dupont told the scholarship recipient. ‘I’ve looked high and low at everything in the capitals, but I’ve never made it all the way to Crimea. If there’s something new to be found anywhere, it’ll be in Yalta.’

She said that at the beginning of July. Solovyov spent about three weeks systematizing his papers. During that process, it emerged that there would be a conference (that, by some strange coincidence, was supposed to be funded by the S.M. Solovyov Foundation) in Kerch in August—General Larionov as Text—and so, despite the event’s quirky title, Solovyov sent in his topic for a paper.

Feeling prepared for work under Crimean conditions, Solovyov appealed to the director of the institute for permission to travel for his work. Judging by the director’s pensive chewing at the temple of his eyeglasses, Solovyov grasped that such work-related travel was not being granted to him uncontested. And here the young scholar began feeling awkward when he remembered, for the first time in three weeks, that Yalta was a resort city. Solovyov began explaining his motives for the trip with a vehemence unusual for an academic institution (in his agitation, he even forgot to mention the conference) but the director relaxed his toothy grip on his glasses and waved them in the air in agreement. After all, in recent years, work-related travel had been unfinanced due to lack of funds and involved nothing more than permission to be absent from the institute. Solovyov received that permission.

He left the institute’s ostentatious building and headed, unhurried, in the direction of Tuchkov Embankment. On a whim, he turned down a side street, and ended up in a café. Solovyov could not remember when he had last been in a café and ascertained, with some surprise, that his life was becoming less modest. Solovyov viewed the dinner he ordered for himself that evening as a farewell meal. He already had a train ticket and could feel it (not without pleasure) when he put his hand into his jacket pocket. Without a doubt, August was the most apt month for work-related travel to Yalta.