The Empire Must Die: Russia's Revolutionary Collapse, 1900-1917

Chapter 2

in which Sergei Witte fails to stop Russia from invading China and seizing Beijing

RUS OR ROUBLE

On a winter’s morning in 1895, Finance Minister Sergei Witte receives a batch of newly minted gold coins at his office in Saint Petersburg. He looks at them with a satisfied smile. Witte himself has “coined” a name for Russia’s new currency: the rus [an old name for Russia].

He believes that the rouble is overvalued. The official exchange rate against the French franc is one to four, and on the black market one rouble is selling for 2.5 francs. It is unprofitable for both industrialists (who buy equipment abroad) and for the state (which pays interest on loans). Therefore, the minister of finance wants to introduce a new gold standard and devalue the currency “to make life cheaper,” in his own words. After admiring the new coins, he ponders the backlash that will surely follow his monetary reform. He has no allies in the civil service—all members of the State Council oppose Witte’s plan. Also opposed are Russian landowners who sell agricultural produce abroad (to them the exchange rate is beneficial), as well as Russia’s most important foreign partner and creditor, France.

Witte makes a special trip to Paris to discuss his plans with French ministers and Alphonse Rothschild, the head of the financial empire. Rothschild is critical of Witte’s plans. He believes that the switch to gold is a mistake and advises Witte to go for the bimetallic standard: a currency based on gold and silver. But Witte does not trust silver, believing that it will soon be devalued and cease to be a precious metal. French Prime Minister Jules Meline is also against Witte and even writes a letter to the Russian tsar, asking him to make his finance minister see sense. But Witte stands firm.

“The educated classes of Russia oppose the reform almost unanimously,” recalls Witte. “Firstly, due to ignorance; secondly, out of habit, and, thirdly, for personal, albeit imaginary, interests. Thus, I had to swim against the tide that wanted somehow to preserve the status quo.”

In view of the scale of the opposition, he decides to sacrifice his new name for the currency. Let it be the rouble as before, then people probably won’t even notice. It will just be devalued.

Realizing that it will be easier to go through the tsar, rather than the many-membered State Council, he decides to ask Nicholas II to approve the monetary reform. Nicholas obliges. Witte’s authority in economic matters carries weight, since he was the favorite minister of Alexander III. Not only that, he is greatly respected by Maria Feodorovna, the mother of Nicholas. On 15 January 1897, the emperor signs a decree to mint the new gold rouble. “I have only one ally, but the only one that matters—the emperor,” says Witte.

Witte enjoys a good deal of influence in the early years under Nicholas II. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Russia becomes increasingly tied to the global financial markets, so the minister in charge of the country’s coffers wields clout. One of his colleagues is reported to have said: “Witte holds everyone in contempt because he knows he can buy the lot of us.”

Witte’s predecessors have borrowed heavily from abroad. The humiliating defeat in the Crimean War has highlighted Russia’s economic backwardness compared to Europe and the urgent need to modernize the economy. French bankers have stepped in. The thrifty Alexander III is grateful, describing France as Russia’s number one partner. During the visit of a French squadron to Russia, Alexander III listens humbly to the revolutionary anthem La Marseillase (at that time it was a crime to perform the tune in Russia, but French loans have changed all that).

It is Alexander III who appoints Witte as Russian finance minister, and he proves to be even more pragmatic than his predecessors. Many, including Nicholas II, subsequently describe Witte as a chameleon. Indeed, Witte’s political views do change radically over his thirty-year political career.

Emperor Alexander II’s assassination in March 1881 is a turning point in the career of the young provincial Sergei Witte, as indeed it is for Konstantin Pobedonostsev. Witte at the time is only thirty-one years old, nearly half the age of Pobedonostsev.

Witte has not yet entered the civil service and works as a manager for a private corporation in charge of the railway line to the southwest corner of the empire (modern Ukraine). But after the assassination of Alexander II, the young careerist Witte immediately decamps to the capital Saint Petersburg with the idea of setting up a secret society to protect the new monarch from the revolutionaries. He proposes to deal with the nihilists by applying their methods. The plan is to create a secret organization made up of the tsar’s most loyal servants to destroy the monarch’s opponents. He outlines his idea to Minister of Imperial Properties Count Vorontsov-Dashkov, who approves. The organization is called the “Holy Militia.”

Alexander III knows about the organization and showers it with public money. Even though the Holy Militia eventually disbands after two years with limited success, Witte catches the imperial eye. Of all the tsar’s “men-at-arms,” it is railwayman Witte whose career is assured.

In 1889, he moves to the Ministry of Finance, and in 1893 becomes transport minister. It is Witte who starts building the Trans-Siberian Railway and develops a reputation as a pochvennik [nationalist loyalist] and a Slavophile. The conservative entourage of Alexander III lobbies for Witte’s appointment as finance minister in the hope that, as a patriot, he will keep the protectionist customs tariffs introduced by his predecessor. However, on finding himself in the finance minister’s chair, Witte begins to borrow even more from the West than his predecessors did, and invests the money in a sweeping industrial modernization program. He opens up the country to foreign capital.

The Russian economy starts to develop rapidly. Awash with cash, Witte decides to create a newfangled stabilization fund—for a rainy day or (just as likely) a war.

“I was constantly criticized for holding too much cash in hand,” recalls Witte. “Many people, especially the papers, thought the national reserves would be better spent on industry. They said that no other country has a ‘cash storage system’, including those with well-managed finances, such as France, England and even Germany. I maintained that, for the Russian Empire, the concept of holding reserves worth hundreds of millions of roubles^* was not only sound, but necessary.”^†

Another of the new finance minister’s innovative reforms is the introduction of a state monopoly on vodka production. One of Witte’s advisers on this issue is the great chemist Dmitry Mendeleev. Witte acts as Mendeleev’s patron after the latter is kicked out of Saint Petersburg University for being too quarrelsome. The chemist is appointed to a specially created position where he will cause minimal trouble: head of the Bureau of Weights and Measures.

The Witte-Mendeleev alcohol reform does not go down too well, metaphorically speaking. The vodka lobby tries to resist and even complains to Nicholas II’s uncle, Grand Duke Vladimir, that it could lead to public disorder in the capital. But Witte convinces the duke and the tsar that all talk of unrest is exaggerated. “Reforms in Russia should be carried out quickly and urgently, otherwise they will stall,” says Witte. And he is right. There is no unrest in Saint Petersburg. Further south in Moscow, however, the introduction of the new state monopoly is delayed. According to the journalist and publisher Alexei Suvorin, Grand Duke Sergei, another of the emperor’s uncles, takes a bribe of two million roubles^‡ to postpone the introduction of the proposed liquor monopoly. Both Witte and the tsar are aware of this, adds Suvorin suggestively.

Having started his political career in the Holy Militia, Witte becomes more liberal with age, yet he retains an authoritarian streak. Suvorin, who is well versed in governmental affairs, asserts that Witte was one of the masterminds behind the crackdown on students in 1899–1901, and that Minister of Education Bogolepov issued his brutal order to dispatch rowdy students to the army at Witte’s behest. According to Suvorin, even the old Pobedonostsev had opposed that measure: “No, Sergei Yulievich [Witte], that is too much.”

In his memoirs, Witte paints himself as the main liberating force in the country. He does in fact become a liberal—but only later, in 1905, when forced to draft the first Russian constitution.

THE GILDED YOUTH

Russia’s economic growth in the latter half of the nineteenth century produces a burgeoning merchant class, which plays the role of the bourgeoisie. The new Russian middle class is made up of former serfs who have gone into trade and become rich. However, according to the census of 1897, merchants account for just 0.5 percent of the population; even nobles outweigh them with 1.5 percent. Generally speaking, the most powerful merchant dynasties come from Moscow and belong to the Old Believer clans.

The merchant dynasties appeared in Russia only at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The founder of the Morozov dynasty, Savva Morozov Sr., was a serf who redeemed himself (in the original sense) and then made a vast fortune from selling fabrics—assisted by Russia’s alliance with Napoleonic France and the continental blockade of England. The disappearance of cheaper English cloth from the Russian market and the need for import substitution enriched domestic producers. Savva Morozov Sr. eventually purchased English looms and his cotton-producing enterprise turned into a textile empire.

The Old Believer merchants are far more conservative in everyday life and in economic policy than the nobles. They are in favor of protectionism and import substitution and against the opening of Russia’s economy and the influx of Western capital—not only because they believe in Russia’s “special way,” but also because foreign bankers are their direct competitors. In the early twentieth century, memories of how the Old Believer merchants defended traditional values are anathema to the reformists.

Put simply, the nineteenth-century mores and moral precepts of the Old Believer merchants are much closer to the peasantry than to the nobility. “Merchants had almost no affinity with their children,” says Zinaida Morozova. “I think it’s because peasants demand respect for parents. For them, fear before God and fear before parents are paramount.”

At the turn of the century, when the new generation of merchants comes of age, the situation changes. The captains of Russian industry, who became fabulously wealthy during the reforms of Alexander II, are replaced by the “gilded youth,” who do not resemble the children of “semi-literate peasant traders” at all. They are well educated, travel to the West, and have a very different outlook on their position in the world.

The heir to his family’s textile empire, Savva Morozov, studies in Cambridge. Another Savva (a popular name in those days), the third son of the vodka merchant, railway builder, and “king of state procurements” Ivan Mamontov, is so beguiled by the theatre that he goes to Milan to study opera singing and even performs on stage at La Scala. The children of the austere Old Believers discover the Impressionists and make them fashionable all over Europe. Industrialist Ivan Shchukin’s son Sergei and the cousins of Savva Morozov, Ivan and Mikhail, are the first in the world to start collecting French Impressionism art. Meanwhile, the heir to the Tretyakov “paper empire,” Pavel Tretyakov, and silk manufacturer Kozma Soldatenkov (nicknamed “Kozma Medici”) assemble a huge collection of Russian art.

But when it comes to passion for the arts, no one beats the son of the merchant Sergei Alexeyev, a close relative of both the Mamontovs and the Tretyakovs. Konstantin decides not to go into the family business (there’s no need, since he has nine brothers) and instead devotes his life to the theatre. Alexeyev becomes an actor and a director, taking the stage name Stanislavsky.

Zinaida Morozova recalls that at the beginning of the twentieth century the merchant class represented the beau monde of Moscow: “The nobility had begun to withdraw from the limelight. The merchants were the ones interested in the arts. The Philharmonic Society consisted almost entirely of members of the merchant class. Merchant ladies were beautiful, well dressed and well-traveled, and their children studied foreign languages and attended to balls.”

Such a radical change in lifestyle, notes Zinaida Morozova, affected the psyche of the gilded youth, or, in her words, “the third generation” (i.e., the grandchildren of the founders of the merchant dynasties, the generation of Savva Morozov and Zinaida herself). “Most members of the third generation were not touched by culture. Most went through university and came out neurotic; only a tiny percentage came out normal.… The culture change was overwhelming. Our grandfathers didn’t know how to read and write. They were former serfs and self-made men who set up large factories. They gave their children governesses and tutors. The children had to study, but their brains couldn’t cope with the load.”

The psychological dissonance between external freedom and the patriarchal setup experienced by the “third generation” can perhaps only be compared with, say, the current crop of princes in today’s Saudi Arabia, who have to combine a forced respect for the traditions of their own country with a fascination for Western pop culture. “Some families preserved a peasant wildness, while others rapidly degenerated into nervous angst,” says Zinaida Morozova. “The older generation believed in God and had a moral compass, while the young rejected everything and didn’t find anything to replace it.”

The gilded merchant youth, unlike their parents, do not believe that they owe everything to the authorities. They argue with officials, defend their interests, and give Finance Minister Witte a headache. The relationship between the “Petersburg liberals” in the government, headed by Witte, and the Moscow “oligarchs”^* is becoming increasingly strained.

In 1896 Nizhny Novgorod hosts the Congress of Industrialists, at which excise tariffs are discussed. In attendance is the sixty-eight-year-old Dmitry Mendeleev (the author of the Customs Tariff Act), who, wishing to put his opponents in their place, states that arguing with him is futile because he has the backing of the emperor. The hall falls silent. But suddenly one of the young participants pipes up: “Scientific findings underpinned by the opinion of the tsar are not persuasive and a discredit to science.”

Sitting in the audience is the twenty-eight-year-old Maxim Gorky. He asks the people next to him: Who is this upstart? He is told that he is the heir to Russia’s largest textile empire, Savva Morozov. Morozov is thirty-four years old, half the age of Mendeleev.

Just a few days later Morozov becomes embroiled in another scandal. Members of the Nizhny Novgorod Fair, a major annual trade event, learn that Finance Minister Witte has refused the Committee of Industrialists an extension on its state loans. Morozov begins by delivering a rousing speech: “The state must be built on iron girders.… Our straw monarchy is not viable.… When officials talk about helping factories and workers, you all know it’s about helping them to an early grave.” Gorky reproduces Morozov’s words. Morozov subsequently writes a much more acerbic telegram to Witte, demanding more credit from the state banks. Other business leaders approve it, despite their reservations that the text is provocative. The next day Witte acquiesces to their demand.

OPERA, DRAMA, TRAGEDY

Konstantin Stanislavsky recalls that, when he was very young, Moscow was home to two popular domestic theatres: one owned by his family, the Alexeyevs, the other run by Savva Mamontov, who was also the artistic director. But it is at Mamontov’s theatre that the seventeen-year-old Kostya [Konstantin] Alexeyev begins his acting career under the stage name Stanislavsky.

“Mamontov had this amazing ability to work with people and do several things at once,” Stanislavsky recalls.

He was in charge of the whole production, yet found time to write dialogue, dictate telegrams about his railway business, and laugh and joke at the same time. As a result, the two-week job of staging a play was a kind of performance in itself. It was delightful and frustrating at the same time. On the one hand, the wonderful scenery was decorated by the finest artists of the day [for example, Viktor Vasnetsov], and the director’s creative vision ushered in a new era in the theatrical arts, forcing Moscow’s best venues to take note. On the other hand, it was full of amateurs who didn’t rehearse or even learn their lines properly.

According to Stanislavsky, Mamontov lacks patience. He becomes infatuated by an idea, then loses interest before seeing it through to completion. “It is strange that Mamontov, himself a sensitive artist and a painter, adopted such a slapdash approach to his theatrical work. We constantly quarreled with him about it. It created antagonism,” writes Stanislavsky.

Fascinated by Italian opera, the “railroader” Mamontov decides to create his own private opera, thereby encroaching on the state monopoly: hitherto all opera in Russia has been funded by the government.

This is Mamontov’s finest hour. He invites his fellow artists to design the scenery, including Valentin Serov, Mikhail Vrubel, and Konstantin Korovin. His opera singers are mostly Italian. One exception is Tatyana Lyubatovich (with whom he is having an affair) and the twenty-three-year-old Feodor Chaliapin, whom he met in 1896 and immediately invited on board.

“Fedenka [Feodor], at my theatre you can do whatever you like! If you need costumes, there’ll be costumes. If you want to stage a new opera, just say the word,” Chaliapin recalls the theatre owner’s invitation.

In 1897 Mamontov brings in the twenty-five-year-old Sergei Rachmaninoff as an assistant conductor. “Mamontov was a great man and had a great influence on Russian operatic art,” remembers Rachmaninoff. “In a way, Mamontov’s influence on opera was similar to Stanislavsky’s on drama. Mamontov was a born director. Many times I heard him give advice, even to Chaliapin. His tips were generally very brief: a casual remark, a general comment, a short phrase. Chaliapin immediately grasped what he meant.”

But Rachmaninoff also recalls that Mamontov often rushed things: “I remember the first performance of the opera Sadko, which Rimsky-Korsakov had just finished. Mamontov’s stage decorations, costumes and makeup were magnificent, but the orchestra was bad and the choir even worse,” says Rachmaninoff of the choristers who awkwardly hid sheet music up their sleeves. On one occasion, recalls Rachmaninoff, when the character Sadko is about to depart for the kingdom of the Sea Tsar, a wooden plank falls off the ship into the “water” with a terrible crash, and the “fish” swim across the stage facing the wrong way, so the audience doesn’t know what they are. Despite all this, Rimsky-Korsakov’s new opera is a huge success.

At the same time, other wealthy merchant families are busy setting up their own theatres. In 1898, the thirty-five-year-old Konstantin Alexeyev (Stanislavsky) makes the acquaintance of the thirty-nine-year-old playwright Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, and together they come up with the idea of creating a private drama theatre, free of pomp and affectation and with a topical, contemporary repertoire. The first performance, a staging of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich by Alexei Tolstoy, is attended by the thirty-six-year-old textile mogul Savva Morozov. Morozov enjoys the show so much that he buys out all the other investors in the theatre, leaving himself, Stanislavsky, and Nemirovich-Danchenko as the sole shareholders; he soon starts building a new home for the theatre.

The Moscow Art Public Theatre is the name given by Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko to their new venture (the word “public” is later dropped from the title). They use it to stage contemporary drama: Chekhov, Ibsen, Tolstoy (Alexei and Leo). Problems arise with Leo Tolstoy, since his plays are in the clutches of the censor.

At the time when Savva Morozov is in charge of Nizhny Novgorod Fair, a large annual trade event, a fierce cholera epidemic breaks out across the whole province. It requires a superhuman effort from Morozov to keep it in check, and he is left exhausted. According to his wife, on returning to Moscow, he lies on the floor of his office and says: “I’m tired. I can’t work any more.” It is then that he decides to see a play at the new Moscow Art Theatre, after which Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko invite him to join them. His wife opposes his new hobby, writing in her memoirs that she foresaw many of the problems that her husband would face: “Savva, I know the [Moscow Art] theatre is like a holiday for you, but I cannot accept that you will swap it for the factory and the people. The workers love and admire you. You have no right to abandon them. You will become a stranger to them.” He replies: “I have to follow my feelings.” Zinaida insists that “people have duties as well as feelings,” but her husband ends the conversation with the words: “I’m tired.”

He does not grow tired of the theatre, however. He helps to build it, takes an interest in the set design and lighting, and even makes sure that the paint is thinned to achieve the right “moonlight effect” on stage. Not only that, Savva Morozov falls in love with one of the company’s rising stars, the actress Maria Andreyeva.

Morozov and Mamontov’s social and charity work is renowned not only in Moscow, but also in the capital Saint Petersburg. They make the acquaintance of Witte and try to take advantage of it: Morozov seeks permission from the censorship committee to stage prohibited plays, while Mamontov tries to secure railway construction contracts for his firm. He soon wins a tender for the construction of the Donetsk coal railway followed by another to extend the Yaroslavl railway (built by his father) to Arkhangelsk. Witte is very grateful to Mamontov for taking on this project and awards him the Order of Saint Vladimir, Second Class, for services to the Russian Empire.

In 1899 Mamontov and Morozov decide to set up a joint newspaper to challenge Alexei Suvorin, the owner of the country’s most popular tabloid, New Time. They lure Suvorin’s best journalist, Alexander Amfiteatrov, offering him the post of editor. The new paper is called Russia.

However, despite Witte’s patronage, Mamontov’s business ventures do not go too well, perhaps because he spends too much time and money on the theatre instead of on his railway company. The railroad to Arkhangelsk, though important for the development of Russia’s far north, is not profitable. Mamontov comes up with a new idea to build a mighty corporation that will include not only railways, but also wagon- and ship-building plants, and a steelworks.

The new enterprise requires money, which he withdraws from the accounts of other companies he owns and channels through various business structures. To keep the enterprise afloat, various shady schemes are employed by Mamontov (and, more likely, his assistants). “Through fictitious transactions, fake accounts and reusing entries in the books, they contrived to transfer money from the railways to the factories and back again, while making it all seem creditworthy on paper,” then-Prosecutor of Moscow Aleksander Lopukhin describes the process.

Mamontov’s proximity to Witte soon helps him find a better solution. His company, the Society of the Moscow-Yaroslavl Railway, wins a concession to build an important railroad from Petersburg to the Volga region. The results of the tender are approved by the State Council, and Mamontov is sure that the high profitability of the new line will compensate his losses from the Arkangelsk project. But because he does not have the money to build it, he takes out a loan secured against the as-yet-unconstructed railway.

Suddenly, in 1899, the economy nosedives. Several railway companies in the United States go bust, and Europe suffers a stock market crisis. “The banks, the gold standard and Sergei Witte are all coming apart at the seams,” writes Suvorin in his diary.

In order to save his position and with it the banking system, Witte goes on the offensive against yesterday’s friend Savva Mamontov. He orders the banks to reclaim the loan. If Mamontov cannot pay it back, then his Vyatka concession will be forfeit. What’s more, the decision is taken in circumvention of the State Council, simply by obtaining the signature of the emperor.

“Witte launched criminal proceedings against Mamontov and his colleagues for their illegal financial dealings. But not only had the Ministry of Finance been fully aware of them, it had petitioned the State Council to award a concession to the very people it then decided to put in the dock,” recalls Prosecutor Lopukhin. “It was not so much that these people were dishonest, they had simply overreached themselves. Their actions were hardly moral, but the Ministry of Finance’s decision to throw them to the lions was incomprehensible.”^*

Subsequent events play out like a bad opera. Savva Mamontov cannot repay the loan to the bank, and Witte forces him to sell his shares in the Moscow-Arkhangelsk railway to the state for a symbolic price. Mamontov is bankrupt and charged by the state with embezzlement. He is arrested and paraded on foot all the way through Moscow to Taganka prison.

Mamontov tries to save his business. His friends, led by Savva Morozov, want to pay his bail, but the authorities demand an exorbitant 5 million roubles.^*

His fellow artists—Serov, Vrubel, Repin, Surikov, Polenov, Levitan, Vasnetsov—publicly support him. The portraitist Valentin Serov even approaches Nicholas II to let the unwell Mamontov be put under house arrest. The emperor concurs, but nothing happens. Feodor Chaliapin, however, who has walked away from Mamontov’s opera, declines to support the disgraced businessman.

Before his trial, Mamontov is finally allowed home. The court session is attended by Gorky. In a letter to Chekhov he describes the scene: “I saw Mamontov—what an unconventional figure! I don’t believe he’s a crook at heart. He simply got carried away by it all.”

Mamontov’s fate hangs in the balance. The courtroom awaits the jury’s decision with bated breath, no one more so than Stanislavsky. When the jury delivers a not guilty verdict, “the hall broke into applause. People tearfully rushed to hug their beloved [Mamontov],” he recalls. However, it is Mamontov’s swan song. He is bankrupt and unable to return either to business, the theatre, or his wife, who has not forgiven his affair with an opera singer.

Witte, too, is washed up. The Russian economy sinks into a recession from which it emerges only in 1907, when Witte himself is no longer in government—thanks to his sworn enemy, Stolypin.

ARTISTS AND SLAVES

Sergei Diaghilev, although dismissed from the Directorate of the Imperial Theatres, continues to receive financing for his magazine. In July 1902, it is officially announced that World of Art will continue to be subsidized, albeit to the reduced tune of 10,000 roubles a year^†—out of the emperor’s own pocket. At the same time, Diaghilev believes that the young artistic community should unite against the moribund authorities in line with global cultural trends: Germany has the Secession, France the Champ de Mars, and England the New Gallery. He urges all young Russian artists to rally round him because he will bring them glory. “I want to nurture Russian painting, purify it, and glorify it in the West,” he writes to his friend Alexander Benois. But Benois considers it delusional.

Diaghilev’s personal relations are complicated, none more so than with the one closest to him—his cousin and lover Dima Filosofov. He is caught up in a “love quadrangle.” Dima is becoming very close to the family of Zinaida Gippius and Dmitry Merezhkovsky. Filosofov becomes a permanent guest at their home and goes to all their religious-philosophical get-togethers. Merezhkovsky and Gippius contribute to World of Art. Filosofov is in charge of the literature section, for which Gippius writes literary criticism under male pseudonyms.

Intimate friendship with the Merezhkovskys distances him from Diaghilev. They describe their alliance as a “trinity.” Gippius is very attracted to Filosofov, even though she knows about his homosexuality. Moreover, their threefold relationship is far more equal than Filosofov’s partnership with Diaghilev: “Dima is Sergei’s slave,” say the Merezhkovskys.

Filosofov is not the only one who wants to break free of “Diaghilev’s enslavement.” Other artists also think that World of Art is run like a dictatorship; they want more say in its editorial and exhibition policy. Diaghilev’s authoritarianism irks the Moscow artists most of all, since they are always given less space than Diaghilev’s Saint Petersburg chums.

On 16 February 1903, after World of Art’s latest exhibition, the finest artists of both Saint Petersburg and Moscow pay a visit to the magazine’s office, Diaghilev’s apartment. The meeting turns into a revolt against Diaghilev. They talk about his dictatorial ways and demand that decisions be taken by a standing committee. Diaghilev is particularly wounded by the fact that his friends Benois and Filosofov are not on his side. When the former says that a new society is needed, the latter adds, “Amen to that.”

Diaghilev realizes that the only way to save his project is to bring in new stars to replace the ones on their way out. Filosofov’s departure means that he needs a new literary editor. His eye falls upon Anton Chekhov, and he showers the playwright with letters. But the latter writes a long and very polite refusal to every one of them. The reason is twofold: for health reasons, he cannot move to Saint Petersburg (“and the magazine cannot move to Moscow”), and he cannot work with Merezhkovsky because of the latter’s attitude to religion. “How could I get along with Dmitry Merezhkovsky, whose faith is didactic, while I lost mine a long time ago. I am bewildered by intelligent believers.”

But Diaghilev does not give up. Though he fails to lure Chekhov, he manages to pull Filosofov away from the Merezhkovskys. In the spring of 1902, after much persuasion and the odd scandal, Filosofov leaves the married couple, writing the following note: “I am withdrawing from our union not because I no longer believe in it, but because I personally cannot partake in it.” Diaghilev is pleased. He and Filosofov immediately go on a long trip to Italy together.

CONSTANTINOPLE IS OURS

Nicholas II has inherited from his father the imperial court, the government, the military—and countless problems. As his first major foray into global affairs, he sets his sights on capturing Istanbul (then Constantinople, but known in Russian as “Tsargrad,” an Old Church Slavonic rendering of the Greek name).

The “return of Constantinople” (even though it never belonged to Russia) is a highly voguish idea in Russian society in the late nineteenth century. Russian forces already stood at the threshold of the ancient city, during the Russian-Turkish war in 1878, towards the end of Alexander II’s reign. The “Slavophile patriots” dream of seizing Constantinople, and the press covers the idea widely. The most ardent supporter was Dostoyevsky: “The Golden Horn and Constantinople will all be ours, but there will be no capture or violence,” wrote Dostoevsky in his Diary of a Writer. “It will happen by itself, because the time has come or is at least very close. The signs are there. It cannot be otherwise. Nature has spoken.”

Witte recalls that, ever since the time of Alexander II, the Russian military has harbored thoughts of seizing control of the Black Sea straits and the Ottoman capital. The plan involves dispatching Russian troops through the Bosporus on rafts. However, Alexander III, later called a peacemaker, refrained from going to war with Turkey (although he liked the idea of taking Constantinople, but could not find the right time). The arrival of Nicholas II rekindles hopes of “hoisting an Orthodox cross over the Hagia Sophia.”

Shortly after the coronation of Nicholas II, the Russian government discusses whether to proceed with plans to take Constantinople. The talks are initiated by the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Alexander Nelidov, who predicts an imminent political catastrophe in the Ottoman Empire, which Russia should exploit by capturing the Bosporus.

Almost all those at the meeting are in favor, including the head of the general staff, the military and navy ministers, the foreign minister, and Nicholas II himself. “The only one to object, and very forcefully at that, was me,” says Witte. “I pointed out that it would lead to a European war and shake the great political and financial foundations of the Russian Empire bequeathed by Alexander III.”

Nicholas II listens to all the arguments—and gives the nod to proceed with the operation. The plan is to dispatch a landing force from Odessa and Sevastopol to Turkey, provoking unrest in Constantinople that could become the pretext for an invasion. Finance Minister Witte insists on a special entry in the minutes of the meeting outlining his position: “According to minister Witte, given the present circumstances, the occupation of the Upper Bosporus without the consent of the Great Powers is very risky and could have disastrous consequences.” The tsar ignores Witte.

But Sergei Witte is an experienced bureaucrat. He has been in the government for many years, knows the imperial court, and enjoys good relations with the emperor’s mother and older ministers. He takes his grievances to the tsar’s uncle, Grand Duke Vladimir, commander of the Imperial Guard and the Saint Petersburg Military District. Vladimir is a veteran of the aforementioned Russian-Turkish war, when Russian troops could have taken Constantinople, but stopped within striking distance. Grand Duke Prince Vladimir is both the country’s top military authority and a patron of the arts. A man of culture, he heads the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts.

After talking to the tsar’s uncle, Witte goes to see Pobedonostsev. The tsar’s mentor, despite his friendship with Dostoevsky, does not share the writer’s vision that Russia, as the “leader of Orthodoxy” and the “capital of pan-Slavism,” has a duty to seize Constantinople. “God have mercy on us,” Pobedonostsev writes to Witte on learning of the tsar’s approval of the proposed military operation. Pobedonostsev fears upheaval of any kind.

Witte’s efforts bear fruit in the end, and the elder statesmen manage to bring Nicholas II round to their point of view. Having just arrived in Constantinople, Ambassador Nelidov receives instructions to do nothing. The war is called off. The tsar finds himself unable to gainsay his uncle or Pobedonostsev, whom he fears. He calls off the Tsargrad operation—and blames Witte for everything, including his own indecision. He is particularly annoyed by Witte’s public criticism and belittlement of his royal ambitions. The emperor wants glory, and Witte is the spoiler-in-chief.

THE NOT-SO-GRAND DUKES

“What will I do?! What will happen to Russia? I’m not ready to be tsar! I can’t rule an empire. I don’t even know how to talk to my ministers. Help me, Sandro!” Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (Sandro) recalls the words of Tsarevich Nicholas immediately after the death of his father, Alexander III. It is October 1894, and the twenty-six-year-old Nicky (as he’s known in the family) is not mindful of state affairs.

His father, Emperor Alexander III, never took his son and heir seriously. An official recalls how one day at dinner, during a discussion of government business, the young Nicky tried to take part, whereupon his father began throwing bread rolls at him.

In 1894 Nicholas is certainly not interested in politics: he is in love. In the spring of that year he travels to Germany to propose to a young German princess called Alix. The engagement is announced on 7 April. Nicholas spends almost the entire summer with his fiancée in London before returning home in September. Alexander III is seriously ill and his doctors advise him to go to Crimea. But he ignores the quacks and instead goes hunting in Poland. There his condition worsens, after which the imperial family does indeed go south to Crimea.

However, there at Livadia Palace, the forty-nine-year-old tsar’s condition deteriorates further; the best doctors are called in from all across Russia. His relatives gather round, including Nicky and Alix, who has traveled to Russia specially. Also summoned is Father John of Kronstadt, Saint Petersburg’s most respected priest with a reputation as a healer and miracle worker.

On 20 October 1894 John of Kronstadt administers the Eucharist to Alexander III, after which (despite Father John’s legendary healing abilities) the tsar dies. The sudden death of the hardy, middle-aged monarch is a shock. And in the words of Grand Duke Sandro, the heir to the throne flies into a panic.

In 1901, five years after his coronation, Nicholas II still feels insecure. Even after his father’s death he is not the head of the family. Alexander III had four brothers: Grand Dukes Vladimir, Alexei, Sergei, and Pavel. In addition to them, Nicholas has more than ten uncles once removed—the grandsons of Nicholas I (of which Sandro is one, even though he is only two years older than Nicholas II).

And while in public the uncles behave respectfully, inside the family each grand duke has his own area of authority and expertise: Vladimir is commander of the Imperial Guard and president of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts; Alexei is commander of the navy; Sergei is governor-general of Moscow. They all consider themselves to be far more competent than their nephew and do not hesitate to say so. The young emperor is afraid to contradict them.

Witte recalls an incident during the early days of the reign of Nicholas II. He is about to approve an order from the tsar to establish a new base for the Russian fleet at what is today the city of Murmansk. Originally it was Alexander III’s decision, of which Nicholas is aware. However, his uncle Grand Duke Alexei intervenes, suggesting that the base should be sited at Libava (now Liepaja in Latvia). The young emperor has already assured Witte that he will implement his father’s decision, but now signs another order at the behest of his uncle, effectively behind the minister’s back. This decision proves to be a fatal mistake: during World War I the Russian fleet is trapped in the Baltic Sea by German vessels, forcing all supplies from Britain and elsewhere to come through Arkhangelsk; a railway to Murmansk is hastily constructed only in November 1916.

“It is regrettable that the grand dukes really do believe that they are grand,” writes Sergei Witte in his memoirs. “But the role they play is incommensurate with their limited knowledge, talent and education. Their influence on the Sovereign is mostly malign.” It should be noted, however, that Witte has no scruples about exploiting that very influence in his own interests.

Sergei Witte considers himself an expert on the Far East and is proud of his ability to establish relations with the Chinese. As transport minister, he initiated the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, known originally as the “Great Way.” It was in fact the long-dead Alexander III who first entrusted him with the project, and Witte treats the assignment as his life’s mission.

In 1895, the First Sino-Japanese War comes to an end. The Chinese army is defeated and, just before her sixtieth birthday, the Empress Dowager Cixi seeks and signs the infamous (in Chinese eyes) Treaty of Shimonoseki, ceding Taiwan and the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan. Taiwan and the city of Dalian on the peninsula are a long way from the Russian heartland, yet Witte believes that his pet project is at risk. Japan’s incursion into mainland China threatens the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Moreover, Witte is pondering two options: the railway to Vladivostok can either remain within the borders of the Russian Empire and skirt around the Amur River, or it can cut through the Chinese territories of Mongolia and Manchuria. He prefers the second, more direct alternative.

So Witte issues an ultimatum to Japan: it must not violate the territorial integrity of China and must (despite the recently signed treaty) return the Liaodong Peninsula to the Chinese. Other members of the Russian government are indifferent to the proposal, since, according to Witte, they are only interested in the West and have no concept of Chinese geography. But Nicholas II supports it. He has a personal grudge against the Japanese dating back to a visit he made there as heir to the throne, when an attempt was made on his life (the so-called Otsu incident). He likes Witte’s idea to suppress Japanese expansionism.

France and Germany also back Russia’s ultimatum—the European powers are averse to a powerful Japan, since they want to build relations with China themselves. In the end, Japan backs down and withdraws from the peninsula, accepting monetary compensation in return. Witte helps the Chinese government secure a loan from French banks to pay off Japan.

During the course of Witte’s highly successful talks with China, it is agreed with the Chinese court diplomat Li Hongzhang that the Trans-Siberian Railway will follow the shortest route through China, yet remain Russian property under the protection of the Russian military. This agreement (which is crucial for Witte) is part of a wider Russian-Chinese security alliance: Russia undertakes to protect China if attacked by Japan.

The negotiations between Witte and Li Hongzhang are overshadowed by a tragic incident. A Chinese delegation, headed by the latter, comes to Russia to attend the coronation of Nicholas II. On 18 May 1896, shortly after the coronation, there is a major stampede at Khodynka Field near Moscow. Witte and Li Hongzhang are practically eyewitnesses.

Witte says that the post-coronation festivities at Khodynka got underway early, before the arrival of the tsar. Food and gifts were being handed out. People rushed forward and stumbled. In the resulting melee two thousand people were crushed. “I was tormented above all by what to do with all the injured and how to deal with all the corpses,” writes Witte. “Would there be time to take the dying to hospital and move the dead to a place where they wouldn’t be in full view of the Sovereign, his retinue and foreign guests, and the jubilant crowd? The next question was, will the emperor cancel the celebrations and hold a liturgy for the dead instead?”

The Chinese envoy Li Hongzhang arrives at the scene at about the same time as Witte. “Is it really the case that the details of this misfortune will be reported to the emperor?” he asks.

Finance Minister Witte replies that the tsar has already been informed, that very morning.

“Your statesmen are inexperienced. When I was a governor, our province was hit by the plague. Tens of thousands of people in my area perished, but I always wrote to the emperor that everything was in order. When asked about disease, I replied that there was none. Tell me, how could I disappoint the emperor by announcing that the people were dying? If I was a dignitary of your Sovereign, I would conceal everything from him,” Witte paraphrases the Chinese envoy. “Well, we’re far removed from China in that respect,” the finance minister notes to himself with satisfaction.

However, the festivities are not cancelled, and everything proceeds as if nothing has happened. The emperor attends the royal concert as planned, although looking sadder than usual, according to Witte.

In the evening that same day, 18 May, a ball is held at the residence of the French ambassador, Count Montebello. Witte arrives and goes straight to the Moscow governor-general, Grand Duke Sergei, one of the tsar’s uncles. The latter says that the emperor has been advised to request that the ambassador cancel the ball and not to attend in any circumstance, should it go ahead. But Nicholas II ignores the advice, saying that the coronation should not be clouded by the Khodynka tragedy. Witte recalls the words of Li Hongzhang and realizes that Russia is not so far removed from China after all. Nicky and Alix arrive at the ball; the tsar dances the first contredanse with Countess Montebello, and the tsarina with the count.

Almost concurrently with the China agreement, Russia signs a treaty with Japan on joint actions in Korea. Korea, until recently considered a Chinese protectorate, is now in the zone of privileged interests of both Russia and Japan.

According to Witte, the young tsar is desperate to spread Russian influence in the Far East: “The emperor is fond of this idea because he came of age, so to speak, on a trip to the Far East. But he has no specific program, only an elemental desire to expand into the Far East and take control of the countries there.”

Witte indulges such fantasies, painting the Far East as the Russian Empire’s answer to British India. According to Witte’s memoirs, Nicholas dreams of adding emperor of China, Korea, and perhaps even Japan to his list of titles.

However, a problem soon arises in the shape of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The German emperor pays his first official visit to Saint Petersburg, staying at the Peterhof residence outside the Russian capital. The two monarchs are riding together in a carriage one day when Wilhelm suddenly asks: “Does Russia need the Chinese port of Qingdao?” Wilhelm explains that Russian ships never use the port, but German vessels, on the other hand, need a place to drop anchor. Germany, of course, would never enter the port without the consent of the Russian emperor, says Wilhelm.

Nicholas is taken aback and recounts the episode to his uncle, Grand Duke Alexei, the commander of the Russian fleet, adding that the German emperor has placed him in a very awkward position, since he is a guest and it would be impolite to refuse his request.

A few weeks later Saint Petersburg learns that the German fleet has captured Qingdao. It seems that Wilhelm took Nicholas’s diplomatic tiptoeing as consent. The tsar convenes a meeting of the Committee of Ministers at which Foreign Minister Muravyov proposes that Russia follow Germany’s example by grabbing one of the Chinese ports on the Liaodong Peninsula: Port Arthur or Dalian. Witte argues that Russia, a “friend of the Chinese,” cannot break the freshly signed agreement with China so abruptly. Moreover, it would throw down the gauntlet to Japan, since Russia only recently demanded that the Japanese show “respect for China’s territorial integrity.” Just because Germany has seized a Chinese port is no reason for Russia to do the same, says the finance minister. The emperor vacillates, but ultimately concurs.

A few days later, when Witte reports to Nicholas, the tsar remarks casually: “Do you know, Sergei Yulievich [Witte], I’ve decided to take Port Arthur and Dalian and have dispatched a flotilla. I did it because the foreign minister informed me that English ships are cruising in the areas around Port Arthur and Dalian, and that if we do not seize the ports, the British will.”

The emperor appoints a new minister of war: the young General Kuropatkin, celebrated in the press as a former chief of staff under the legendary General Skobelev, hero of the Russian-Turkish wars. Kuropatkin is known as an ardent supporter of taking Constantinople. But on becoming Russia’s new war minister, he quickly shifts his focus to the Far East. He wants to seize not only Port Arthur, but also all the adjacent territories along the Liaodong Peninsula, otherwise it will not be possible to protect the port. China is sent a demand to transfer the entire Liaodong Peninsula to Russia for a period of twenty-five years rent-free.

Witte says that he desperately resisted these plans, threatening to resign in protest. Yet this contradicts the memoirs of other officials. They claim that Witte was captivated by the idea of assimilating the Far East, and his Ministry of Finance allocated huge sums to build a new port in China. It was also Witte who came up with Dalian (Dalny in Russian, meaning “far”) as the name of the port.^*

But Witte’s version of events is that on receiving the emperor’s order to occupy Port Arthur he instructed the Ministry of Finance’s envoy in Peking (Beijing) to give Li Hongzhang a bribe of half a million roubles^† (according to some officials, all contracts signed between Witte and Chinese officials involved a backhander; Witte himself denies it). As a result, the Chinese government agrees to transfer the peninsula to Russia for twenty-five years rent-free. Russian troops immediately land at Port Arthur and occupy the entire region. Not a single shot is fired, since the Chinese admirals at Port Arthur have also been given a sweetener.

“Capturing the port has severed our traditional relations with China forever,” reflects Witte. “The capture itself and the events that followed have led the Chinese Empire to its present state: it will crumble and be replaced by a republic. The fall of the Chinese Empire will shake up the Far East, and the consequences will be felt by Russia and Europe for decades to come.”

YELLOW RUSSIA

At the turn of the twentieth century Russia is not overly prosperous, yet many of its neighbors are in far greater trouble, none more so than the ancient Chinese Empire. As in Russia, the ruling dynasty has been in power for three centuries: the Qing are the Chinese Romanovs. For much of the nineteenth century the empire has been engulfed by a struggle between the supporters of reform, modernization, and open relations with the West on one side, and the adherents of isolation, tradition, and China’s “special way” on the other. The antagonism runs deep, because free and unrestricted trade with the West has brought China a lot of problems. Great swathes of the population are addicted to opium, shipped in aboard British and Indian ships. The drug epidemic is accompanied by an outflow of hard currency (silver), since almost all the money is being spent on opium imports.

In 1839, Chinese opponents of opium take the extreme measure of closing all the country’s ports to foreigners. In response, the British navy prepares to land at Nanjing, the country’s southern capital. The Chinese army, equipped with medieval weapons, cannot compete with the British. In 1842, at the end of the First Opium War, China and Britain sign a treaty guaranteeing access to all Chinese ports and ceding Hong Kong as a British colony. Nanjing is the first of several humiliating treaties that China is forced to sign over the coming decades.

To add to its woes, China has leadership problems. The last adult emperor, Daoguang, dies in 1850 (aged sixty-eight), whereafter China is headed for half a century by youngsters. Xianfeng becomes emperor at the age of nineteen and dies at thirty; Tongzhi takes over aged five and dies at nineteen. Guangxu rules from the age of four to twenty-seven (when he is removed from power and placed under house arrest). Lastly, Pu Yi manages to rule from the age of two to the ripe old age of six.

Against the backdrop of successive child emperors, the country is effectively ruled by Empress Dowager Cixi (the former consort of Xianfeng), who skillfully takes over the reins of power. Like Empress Alexandra, she comes to the throne by chance, but believes that she is God’s chosen one and that a thirst for power and suspicious nature are prerequisites for a successful leader.

In the 1890s China’s rulers are split into two opposing camps: the conservatives (led by Cixi) do not want reform and favor closer ties with Russia; the other (smaller) group wants to modernize and looks instead to Britain and Japan, the latter having opened up to the West in the 1860s-80s under Emperor Meiji. The young Chinese emperor wants change, but is afraid of his adoptive mother, Empress Dowager Cixi.

Germany’s occupation of Qingdao is a turning point. Chinese society is outraged, and patriotic sentiment starts to swell. The philosopher Kang Youwei appeals to the Chinese emperor for liberal reform, essentially proposing a constitutional monarchy. Six months later, Emperor Guangxu starts to act. In June 1898, carefully so as not to alarm his adoptive mother Cixi, he begins to issue reform decrees: to set up Peking University, build railways, reshape the Chinese army along European lines, translate foreign books, purchase steam engines and machinery, combat systemic bribery, and publish government budgetary figures, among others. The reforms last for one hundred days and end in September, when Cixi stages a coup. The emperor is arrested and put under house arrest inside the Forbidden City. Almost all the decrees issued during the “Hundred Days’ Reform” are scrapped, and a wave of anti-reform repression begins. The emperor’s closest advisers are executed without trial.

Russia strongly supports the coup. Foreign Minister Muravyov informs Empress Cixi that she can rely on Russia’s help in the fight against the pro-Western reformers.

The reprisals against the pro-reformists degenerate into a state-sponsored pogrom. The empress and her court blame all of China’s ills on external enemies, the humiliating treaties, and the painful reforms. This is the start of the Yihequan [Harmony and Justice] Rebellion, which is less a rebellion and more an orchestrated uprising on the part of the authorities, which prompts a wave of attacks against foreigners and “national traitors,” in particular Chinese Christians. “Let us all strive to protect our homes and our ancestors’ graves from the dirty hands of foreigners. Let us spread the word to every corner of our domain,” reads a decree issued by Empress Dowager Cixi. In Europe the uprising goes by a different name: the Boxer Rebellion.

The situation soon flies out of control: diplomats in the capital Beijing are killed and Christian churches across the country are set on fire.

“This is the consequence of our occupation of the [Liaodong Peninsula],” Russian Finance Minister Witte says bitterly to War Minister Kuropatkin on learning of the unrest in the Chinese capital. But Kuropatkin, on the contrary, is pleased that he now has an opportunity to seize Manchuria.

Witte argues in his memoirs that he opposed the annexation of Manchuria, although he acknowledges that economic expansion into Korea appealed to him at the time.

The Boxer Rebellion erupts across China, and the European press describes monstrous pogroms on a daily basis. The European powers set up an international coalition to invade China and suppress the movement. Russia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, the United States, and Japan all send troops. On 20 June, the “Boxers” lay siege to the Legation Quarter in Beijing, and the next day Empress Cixi declares war on the eight-nation alliance. The night of 23-24 June witnesses what is described as the “Chinese St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre”: the brutal extermination of almost all Christians in the Chinese capital.

On the same day as the massacre, Russian Foreign Minister Muravyov, whom Witte blames for the capture of Port Arthur and the war in China, pays the latter a visit. Witte recounts that Muravyov was in a reconciliatory mood. According to Witte, Muravyov arrived drunk and drained another large bottle of champagne during the conversation with Witte and (mostly) his wife. “What a jolly life this Count Muravyov leads. If I’d made such a mistake, come morning I’d be dead. But he just drinks and makes merry. It’s all water off a duck’s back to him,” Witte recalls his thoughts that evening, without knowing that the next morning the foreign minister will indeed be found dead in his office.

War Minister Kuropatkin insists that Russian troops be dispatched to Beijing to punish the instigators of the pogroms. Witte objects, arguing against antagonizing the Chinese even further—let the Japanese handle the reprisal, he reasons. But Nicholas II takes the side of Kuropatkin, and Russian troops enter the Chinese capital and plunder its palaces. The Russians are joined by the Americans and the British. Empress Cixi flees the city, taking with her the arrested “emperor-reformer” Xianfeng. The commander of the Russian force, General Linevich, who received the Order of Saint George for his role in the operation, will return with ten chests full of stolen jewels.

Meanwhile, anti-Russian sentiment in Manchuria is on the rise, and the construction workers laying the railway line to Port Arthur are coming under attack. Witte demands a stronger military presence in Manchuria. Kuropatkin’s dream of occupying the region is about to come true. Officially it is announced that the occupation will last only until the Boxer Rebellion is put down, but in reality the Russian military has no plans to leave Manchuria, even when its mission is accomplished.

The first, most successful, and least known war of Nicholas II, the so-called Chinese campaign, comes to an end, leaving Russia in de facto control of northeast China. The tsar is pleased, not least because he has expanded his dominion. Members of his inner circle ponder the idea of creating a “Yellow Russia” by resettling Russians or even setting up a local Cossack corps in the region.

Only Leo Tolstoy is indignant and writes an “Address to the People of China”:

You have been invaded by armed Europeans, who, like wild animals, attacked, ravaged, pillaged, raped and killed you. These people describe themselves as ‘enlightened’ and (it pains me to say) Christians. Do not believe them. Not only are these people not enlightened (if by ‘enlightenment’ we mean an understanding of the eternal universal virtues of morality, temperance, humility, diligence and kindness), they are feral, corrupt, idle, selfish and evil, serving only their worldly lusts. Not only are they not Christians, they are the mortal enemies of Christianity. As they rampage among you, committing self-righteous evil deeds, their rulers, parliaments, ministers, kings and emperors sit at home and indulge in debauchery and lust, prescribing all the horrors that are perpetrated against you.

BATTLING DEATH AND THE REGIME

In March 1902, the young writer Maxim Gorky receives a telegram from Saint Petersburg. The Department of Russian Language and Literature of the Imperial Academy of Sciences has elected him an honorary member. Just shy of thirty-three, he is the youngest academician in the country. He immediately reports the good news to his neighbors in Crimea: Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy, both of whom are already academicians.

Tolstoy is feeling better. His fever has abated, yet he still does not leave the house. “The doctors say I’m recovering, but I’m still very weak. I do very little, scribble a few words here and there, and ponder all kinds of ideas that I will never be able to finish. But my soul is at rest, and I am surrounded by peace and tranquility,” he writes. His friends and family think about applying for a passport to send him abroad for treatment.

It doesn’t happen. Having only just recovered from pneumonia, the count falls ill with typhoid fever. But after ten days the seventy-two-year-old writer’s condition improves slightly. For the third time in three months he has cheated death.

Chekhov and Gorky continue to visit the convalescent Tolstoy. One day, at the end of March, Gorky arrives in a puzzled frame of mind. The governor of Crimea has just sent a telegram requesting that he return the notification about his election as an academician. There is something strange going on, which the three vacationing writers do not understand.

Meanwhile, Saint Petersburg is in a state of commotion. On learning of the “dissident” Gorky’s election, Interior Minister Sipyagin presents the tsar with a report on the writer’s activities. Nicholas II studies the document (he has never read Gorky, of course) and delivers his verdict: “More than peculiar.” He proceeds to dictate a letter to his education minister:

What guided the venerable sages in their decision, we cannot say. Neither Gorky’s age nor his brief works constitute grounds for his election to this honorable title. Far more serious is the fact that he is under investigation. How can the Academy of Sciences elect such a person in these troubled times? I am deeply disturbed by this and command that Gorky be deselected forthwith. I hope that this will help to sober up the Academy’s thinking.

The education minister (having replaced the murdered Bogolepov) is the seventy-nine-year-old General Pyotr Vannovsky, himself a former war minister. He hurriedly and blushingly informs the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, of the tsar’s decision.

Grand Duke Konstantin is not only another of the tsar’s uncles, but also a refined and distinguished poet, publishing works under the pseudonym KR. However, he does not stand up for his fellow writer or try to convince his nephew of the young Gorky’s merits.^* On the contrary, he requests that the Crimean governor withdraw the telegram informing Gorky of his election to the academy. Gorky refuses, saying that he will return the notice only if the academy itself asks for it.

The forty-seven-year-old Vladimir Korolenko, also an academician and Gorky’s number one admirer, tries to persuade the academy to stick by its decision, but to no avail. He is ignored and Gorky’s election is annulled.

Korolenko and Chekhov both resign from the academy in protest against Gorky’s expulsion. The apolitical Chekhov asks Tolstoy to support their démarche, but the ageing count says that he would prefer not to partake in bureaucratic squabbles and, in any case, he does not consider himself an academician, despite being an honorary member.

Chekhov, who has always avoided politics, is terribly offended. “Tolstoy is a weak man,” he complains to his friend Suvorin, the publisher of Russia’s main pro-government newspaper. “I know he considers himself an academician.”

A TRENDY PRIEST

The thirty-year-old priest Georgy Gapon returns to Saint Petersburg. Having recovered from his illness, he goes to serve in a church at Galernaya Gavan—a very deprived neighborhood not far from the Baltic shipyards, where workers, beggars, the homeless, and the unemployed all live next to the factories—in short, the protagonists of Gorky’s The Lower Depths. They adore Gapon’s sermons and pack the church full every time he preaches. Gapon, for his part, goes out of his way to communicate with his parishioners and listen to their grievances. After each service, Gapon visits the homeless shelters of Saint Petersburg and tries to come up with ways to help them (including financially), but his ideas are rejected by the church authorities.

Gapon simultaneously works as a teacher and priest at two orphanages, including the Olginsky asylum—a special children’s home patronized by Empress Alix and whose board of trustees includes many wealthy ladies. The thirty-year-old priest from the outskirts of Poltava becomes acquainted with the capital’s socialites, who fall for his simple charm: he is handsome, charismatic, well-spoken, and, in the words of his female admirers, “Christ-like.”

One of the priest’s new acquaintances is Senator Anichkov, the main custodian of children’s shelters in the capital and effectively Gapon’s boss. He often invites the priest to his home for a chat about charity work, plies him with good food and wine—which, he says, is all stolen by his uncle, who is in charge of procurements at the Winter Palace. Gapon is amazed by such an open admission.

Gapon unsettles his secular friends—especially women—with stories about the lives of the poor. He does not do it to shock. He passionately wants to alleviate the plight of the poor by getting them to do community work. Gapon’s admirers pass the word to Saint Petersburg Governor Kleigels, who summons the priest and asks him to write a report on the social rehabilitation of the unemployed.

Gapon writes a treatise entitled “On Measures to Combat Abject Poverty and Parasitism.” It is, in essence, a detailed program for setting up corrective institutions for homeless people. The report makes Gapon even more famous, and the text does the rounds with enlightened officials—and especially their wives—so that it soon ends up in the hands of the empress, who likes it, too. Alexandra intends to hold a special meeting to discuss Gapon’s proposals. The Tolstoyan from Poltava is on the cusp of fulfilling his dream.

However, no serious discussion of Gapon’s ideas takes place. A few months later the society ladies’ eyes and ears have wandered elsewhere, and Gapon is out of fashion. “I had the opportunity to observe the way high society works and did not envy it,” says Gapon. “Their conversations and actions were never sincere. Their lives were dull, boring and pointless. Their interest in charity was fleeting and superficial.”

However, those are Gapon’s later words. In 1902, he gets along with the beau monde and thinks he can utilize it. The church authorities are irritated by Gapon’s new existence and come into conflict with him. As a result, he decides to quit the orphanages and takes up a job offered by one of the society ladies, who is the head of the Russian Red Cross.

But again everything falls flat. Senator Anichkov, who has gotten to know some of the details of Gapon’s private life during their conversations, reports him to the authorities. No doubt he is offended by Gapon’s unflattering remarks in his widely read report about Saint Petersburg’s orphanages (for which Anichkov is responsible). He informs the church and the secular powers-that-be about the real life of Georgy Gapon. It turns out that the widower priest is in a relationship with an orphan at the shelter where he worked—the eighteen-year-old Alexandra Uzdaleva. Moreover, they are living together in a civil marriage, which the church forbids.

Anichkov’s revelation destroys Gapon’s reputation: in July 1902, he is expelled from the Theological Academy and officially defrocked. The thirty-year-old priest, who was so close to his life’s aim, has lost everything. He says goodbye to his parish and on 2 July 1902 delivers an impassioned farewell sermon: “Brothers, I am being forced out, but so be it. I am a martyr, yet for all my suffering the Lord has heard my prayer and provided a dwelling place. It is not far from here. Come and visit.”

But having nearly ruined Gapon, Anichkov inadvertently saves him. He writes a second denunciation to the secret police (Okhrana, a forerunner of the KGB). Gapon is paid a visit by a member of the secret police by the name of Mikhailov, who conducts an informal interrogation. The conversation plays a decisive role in Gapon’s fate, for Mikhailov offers him a job as a police informant.

As a child, Gapon was greatly moved by the tale of Saint Ioann of Novgorod, who was said to have straddled the devil and flown to Jerusalem (in a story by Nikolai Gogol, born in the same province as Gapon). According to his own memoirs, Gapon the little boy dreamt of the day when he would be able to “straddle the devil.” Now a stoolpigeon, that day has arrived.

Mikhailov not only commends Gapon to his superiors, but also writes a letter to Metropolitan Anthony of Saint Petersburg requesting that he be reinstated at the academy. Anthony immediately complies. Henceforth, Gapon begins a new life independent of the church authorities and never looks back.

THE ADMIRAL OF THE PACIFIC

Following the successful Chinese campaign, Nicholas II is brimming with confidence. Yearning for new adventures and victories, he pays ever less attention to warnings and ever more to risky undertakings. The retired officer Alexander Bezobrazov comes up with a plan to take over Korea by “creeping occupation.” His idea is for Russia gradually to buy up as much land as possible in and around the country, and then seize control before Japan does.

To begin with, Bezobrazov sets up a private timber company to develop forestland in the Yalu River basin between Korea and China. He buys a logging concession from the renowned Vladivostok merchant Yuliy Brynner (grandfather of the Hollywood actor Yul Brynner).

Witte recalls that Bezobrazov first tries to pitch his plan to Grand Duke Sandro, a childhood friend of the tsar. The latter agrees to press ahead with the idea. Sandro is a former sailor, has toured the world, knows the Far East reasonably well, and, importantly, does not like Japan. Adamant that the Japanese are dangerous and hostile to Russia, he advocates making preparations for war. Bezobrazov’s project appeals very much to the grand duke, who dutifully puts it to his nephew, the tsar. Nicholas II is easily swayed by the idea and offers Bezobrazov every kind of assistance. Not content with being the emperor of Great Russia, Little Russia (Ukraine), and White Russia (Belarus), Nicholas aspires to be the emperor of “Yellow Russia,” too.

Witte, although in favor of Russia’s economic expansion, writes in his memoirs that Bezobrazov’s idea is not to his liking and says that he refused to allocate money from the budget.

However, public opinion is sure of the opposite—that Witte supports the idea. It is he who “squandered millions on the city of Dalny (Dalian) and used public money to set up the Russian-Chinese Bank, which funded fraudsters in the Far East, such as Admiral Abaza, the crazy Bezobrazov and their chum Vonlyarlyarsky,” thunders Alexei Ignatiev, an army general. “Nothing good will come of this venture.… They’ve taken forest concessions from under the noses of the Japanese, who consider themselves the rightful owners of the Yalu region. Such greed will cost Russia dear.”

In the summer of 1902 Nicholas II travels to Tallinn (now the capital of Estonia, then known as Revel) to observe a naval exercise. In June he is joined by German Emperor Wilhelm II, who is a friend and cousin of Empress Alix. Witte says that when Wilhelm’s yacht was departing for Germany, it sounded the horn. “Translated into human language, the Admiral of the Atlantic Ocean was giving his regards to the Admiral of the Pacific Ocean,” writes Witte. “Wilhelm was saying: I intend to dominate the Atlantic, and I advise you to dominate the Pacific.”

According to Witte, Nicholas is a little bemused, but finds the idea of taming the Pacific irresistible. The Korean expansion continues. When the Japanese envoy Marquis Ito pays a visit to Saint Petersburg, Nicholas does not receive him. Ito brings a proposal that Tokyo will accept Russia’s occupation of the Liaodong Peninsula and Port Arthur, but in exchange Russian troops are to be withdrawn from Manchuria, especially since officially they were due to leave after the Boxer Rebellion, which is long over. He does not get a response. Even Witte does not seek a meeting with him. Witte considers himself an expert in negotiations with the Chinese, but has no empathy with the Japanese. The envoy leaves insulted.

In the fall of 1902, aware that the Far East is now the most important realm of Russian politics, Witte goes on a tour of the region, stopping over in Vladivostok, Port Arthur, and Dalian. The reality is sobering. It dawns on the pragmatic financier that negotiations with Japan are imperative, or else there will be serious trouble. On his return to European Russia, he immediately heads for Crimea, where the emperor is on vacation. Blindly believing Bezobrazov’s affirmations that everything is under control, Nicholas is irked by Witte’s intervention. He does not trust his finance minister, considering him to be a schemer. The tsar even refuses to hear Witte’s verbal report of his fact-finding trip to the Far East, asking him to send it to him in writing.

But Witte, ever the arch-bureaucrat, goes to see Prince Meshchersky, the publisher of the ultra-conservative newspaper The Citizen, and implores him to make the tsar see sense. Meshchersky, one of the most popular journalists even under Alexander III, is on first-name terms with the tsar. He promises to help. The prince writes a letter to the emperor, but receives a mysterious phrase in reply: “On 6 May [everyone] will see what opinion I hold on this matter.” Meshchersky and Witte wait for 6 May with bated breath. On the fateful day a royal decree is issued appointing Bezobrazov as Russia’s new secretary of state. His view of the Far East is well known: no troop withdrawal from Manchuria, no concessions to Japan, no step back in Korea.

In July 1903 Nicholas goes ahead with another of Bezobrazov’s ideas. The Liaodong Peninsula is transformed into a Far East governorship. The only other region in the Russian Empire to be classified as such is the Caucasus, where a “Russification” policy is in full swing. On the rare occasions that the emperor is asked whether he fears that his actions could lead to war with Japan, he replies: “There will be no war, because I do not want one.”

* About $1,318,333,333 in 2017.

† A similar argument is given by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin a century later when the decision is taken to create a stabilization fund from oil and gas revenue.

‡ About $26,366,666 in 2017.

* The word was not in vogue back then, and in any case the merchants and industrialists of the early twentieth century were not oligarchs in the full sense of the word—if only because they had very little political influence. Incidentally, today’s oligarchs also have little political influence.

* The case of Mamontov in some ways resembles the first trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the Yukos affair of 2003. In both cases market participants are profoundly surprised by the prosecution, as it contradicts the established rules of the game. Everybody committed fraud, and the colleagues of Mamontov (Khodorkovsky) do not understand why is he the only one who got punished. In both cases a biased trial resulted in business bankruptcy, even though initially it could have been saved.

* About $65,916,666 in 2017.

† About $131,833 in 2017.

* Witte wrote his memoirs after the Russian-Japanese War and is therefore sure that he foresaw that everything would end in disaster and asserts that he always persuaded Nicholas II to refrain from expanding into the Far East. This adjusted view of reality was probably designed to demonstrate his prescience in the eyes of the reader.

† About $6,591,666 in 2017.

* In Soviet times the head of the Union of Writers also often failed to stand up for its members.