by Frazier
Buchanan was shocked: “Although I am far from believing that a puritanical observation of Sunday is required of us; yet I confess I have been shocked with its profanation in this Country. The Emperor & Empress who are models of correct moral deportment in other respects give their balls & grand fetes on Sunday evening; & I am confident it has never entered their thoughts that in this respect they were acting incorrectly.” The Works of James Buchanan, 2:218.
Alexander Herzen: Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, p. 480.
Cochrane tied the waistcoat around his middle: Cochrane, Narrative of a Pedestrian Journey, p. 71.
German-speaking scientists in Siberia: Besides Humboldt, the list includes Müller, Steller, and Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt, of the Bering expedition; also, Strahlenberg, Adolph Erman, and Peter Simon Pallas; Pallas wrote the classic study of Siberian rodents.
American aggressiveness in trade: John Foster Fraser, an Englishman who traveled Siberia in 1901, expressed his displeasure at the great number of American products sold there in comparison to the scarcity of English ones: “That my country should purvey to Siberia little else but sauce—I felt like smashing the bottle!” (The Real Siberia, p. 127).
the long ride of Captain Fukushima Yasumasa: Stephan, The Russian Far East, p. 78.
Another timely idea of Count Muraviev’s: Lengyel, Siberia, p. 117.
pushed a wheelbarrow of dirt: Bobrick, East of the Sun, p. 353.
“intelligently comments”: Nerhood, To Russia and Return, p. 105.
“extremely superficial”: Babey, Americans in Russia, p. 164.
“Tovarish soldiers”: Williams, Through the Russian Revolution, p. 67.
whom the low ceilings had knocked off: Lengyel, Siberia, p. 208.
were held in Tobolsk: Florinsky, Russia, 2:1436.
including a Colt .45: Alekseev, The Last Act of a Tragedy, p. 152.
about fifty thousand Czech soldiers: Many histories of the period talk about the Czech Legion and its adventures. See Stephan, The Russian Far East, pp. 122ff.; Bobrick, East of the Sun, pp. 393ff.; Figes, Natasha’s Dance, pp. 530–31.
unless he had killed someone that day: Graves, America’s Siberian Adventure, p. 241.
playing the “Internationale”: Stephan, The Russian Far East, p. 137.
referring to the Russian peasants as “swine”: Graves, America’s Siberian Adventure, p. 19.
through a hole in the ice: Bobrick, East of the Sun, p. 411.
poured molten lead down his throat: Mayakovsky, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: A Poem.
friendship mission to Siberia: Wallace, Soviet Asia Mission.
“Where I Was Wrong”: Culver and Hyde, American Dreamer, pp. 339, 474.
Ivan Fedorovich Nikishov: Ivan Nikishov is mentioned, for example, in Ginzburg’s memoir, Within the Whirlwind, where a boy in the camp says, “When I grow up I’m going to be Nikishov. And everyone will be afraid of me” (p. 225). Solzhenitsyn, in The Gulag Archipelago, tells of a performance in Magadan when Nikishov interrupted Vadim Kozin, a widely known singer of that time: “All right, Kozin, stop the bowing and get out!” Kozin subsequently tried to hang himself but was taken down from the noose (2:498).
“The larch were just putting out their first leaves”: Wallace, Soviet Asia Mission, p. 35.
“drenched with the blood of Russian ‘common men’ ”: Dallin and Nicolaevsky, Forced Labor in Soviet Russia, pp. xiii, xiv.
“We visited gold mines”: Owen Lattimore, “New Road to Asia,” National Geographic, December 1944, p. 64.
Lattimore later conceded: Stephan, The Russian Far East, p. 232.
CHAPTER 10
Morskoi Kabinet: In The Empire of the Czar (pp. 255ff.), Custine describes a tour of the Cottage Palace in which his guide was the Grand Duke (the future Alexander II): “I had earnestly begged Madame —— to procure for me admission to the English cottage of the emperor and empress. It is a small house which they have built in the midst of the noble park of Peterhof, in the new Gothic style so much in vogue in England.”
Custine found the Cottage Palace to be much like the houses of the English rich but without any outstanding pictures or sculpture to indicate a love of the arts, and “too servile” in its following of English fashion in its furnishings. On the stairs, partway into the tour, the Grand Duke excused himself and left, but in such a manner that Custine was charmed: “To know how to leave a guest without wounding his feelings is the height of urbanity.”
Custine proceeded upstairs to the Morskoi Kabinet, which he said was “a tolerably large and very simply ornamented library, opening on a balcony which overlooks the sea. Without leaving this watch-tower, the emperor can give his orders to his fleet. For this purpose he has a spy-glass, a speaking-trumpet, and a little telegraph which he can work himself.”
“Depending on the wind”: Brodsky, On Grief and Reason, p. 59.
Cape Smythe Air: This company name no longer exists; Cape Smythe Air merged with Frontier Flying Service in 2005.
Eric Penttila: Eric is now the manager of Evergreen Helicopter in Nome. He is no longer the pilot.
a tale of heroism: The rescue took place on Friday, August 13, 1993. A number of news stories and articles told of Eric Penttila’s heroism; for example, “Plane Down in the Bering Sea,” Today’s Christian, September–October 1996, p. 28.
“The weather becoming clear”: Bobrick, East of the Sun, p. 223. This quote appears to be a revision of the entry of July 6, 1779, in the journal kept by Captain Charles Clerke, who took command after Cook was killed in the Hawaiian Islands in February of the same year. The quote in Clerke’s journal is: “At 10 the Weather becoming somewhat clearer we saw the peak’d Hill upon the American Shore bearing s 64 e, this is the only remarkable Hill about this part of the Country and is therefore an excellent Landmark, its Lat[itude] is 65 33 n & its Longitude 191 34 e. The East Cape of Asia at the same time bore s 40 w distant 5 Leagues, there is a great deal of Ice adhering to the shores of this part of Asia we are running by and the Hills are totally immers’d in Snow. The Weather continued throughout Mod: & hazy, we pass’d in the Night many small pieces of Ice . . .” Cook, Journals, vol. 3, part 1, pp. 688–89. The revised version of the quote does give the gist of the original accurately; the sailors did see both continents at the same time, and from their position they would also have seen the Diomedes, which the journal notes elsewhere.
absolute quiet in your soul: Rytkheu, Stories from Chukotka, p. 118.
CHAPTER 11
sixty-six satellites in low-earth orbit: For details of the Iridium system, I thank Liz DeCastro, public information officer at Iridium headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland.
driving too fast: Russians have always had a love for driving fast. The Russian nobility of the eighteenth century called it “le vertige de la vitesse” (the vertigo of speed). Countess Maria Volkonsky, hurrying across Siberia to join her husband in exile, sped along in “the ‘bird troika,’ as Gogol was to call it, driven by Russian horses ‘with the whirlwind sitting upon their manes’ ” (Sutherland, The Princess of Siberia, p. 136). Rattled by the fast driving of Russian coachmen, Custine learned to say “Tikho!” (Take it easy! or, Calm yourself!) (Empire of the Czar, pp. 362–63). That’s still what you say today.
CHAPTER 12
from Vologda to Velikii Ustyug by sled: Ides, Three Years’ Travels, pp. 1–2.
a village on the Pinega River: Fisher, Voyage of Semen Dezhnev, p. 120.
CHAPTER 13
the blankness of the place: Since I visited, a church has been built on the site of the Ipatiev House.
In the early 1970s: Information about the discovery, analysis, and reburial of the bodies can be found in the Los Angeles Times, March 11, 2004, p. A22, and The New York Times, July 18, 1998, p. A1.
“When we passed through the gate of Ekaterinburg”: Kennan, Siberia and the Exile System, 1:49.
1,445 freight wagons: Ibid.
tea caravans: On the subject of what a nuisance the tea caravans were, see G
owing, Five Thousand Miles in a Sledge, pp. 195–96.
Tea that came overland: Custine mentioned “this famous tea of the caravans, so delicate, as is said, because it comes overland” (Empire of the Czar, p. 518). About sixty years later, John Foster Fraser wrote, “There are old-fashioned Russians who declare that tea loses its flavour if it gets within breath of sea air.” The better, non-sea-air-contaminated tea was called “overland tea” (The Real Siberia, p. 84).
“No other spot”: Kennan, Siberia and the Exile System, 2:52.
CHAPTER 14
In a document dated 1592: Müller, Istoriia Sibiri, 1:343. The author is the scientist of the Bering expedition.
sent the bell to Siberia, too: Kennan, Siberia and the Exile System, 1:421.
may have melted there in a fire: Rasputin, Siberia, Siberia, p. 86.
the Code of Laws of 1648: Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 3:355–56.
seven thousand four hundred exiles in Siberia: Wood, The History of Siberia, pp. 117–18.
removing the disfigured from public view: Kennan, Siberia and the Exile System, 1:75.
Empress Elizabeth: Wood, The History of Siberia, p. 7.
four classes of exiles: Kennan, Siberia and the Exile System, 1:79–80.
“The memory of this torture”: Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead, p. 126.
Pokoinik: Kennan, Siberia and the Exile System, 1:143.
Fourierist discussion group: Florinsky, Russia, 2:812; also Wood, The History of Siberia, p. 12.
a letter by Vissarion Belinsky: Berlin, Russian Thinkers, p. 173. Belinsky’s arguments so moved reform-minded young Russians that many had the letter committed to memory; it was not permitted to be printed in full until 1905. See Florinsky, Russia, 2:820.
Prince Dolgoruky: Strahlenberg, Russia, Siberia, and Great Tartary, p. 253.
Abram Petrovich Gannibal: Rasputin, Siberia, Siberia, p. 394.
Alexander Menshikov: Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 3:339.
Natalie Lopukhin: Fries, A Siberian Journey, p. 161.
Serfdom, as an institution: Hill and Gaddy, The Siberian Curse, p. 76. Historically, a serf who ran away was regarded as free if he wasn’t caught within six years (Rasputin, Siberia, Siberia, pp. 80–81).
I have seen one of those: On the title page, it says, “Puteshestvie, iz’ Peterburga v’ Moskvu [no author listed], 1790. V’ Sanktpeterburg.” There is also an epigraph: “ ‘Chudishche oblo, ozorno, ogromno, stoz’vno, i layai’—Tikhlemakhida, Tomb II, Kn: xviii, sti: 514.” The Tikhlemakhida is a translation of Fénelon’s Adventures of Telemachus, done by the Russian poet V. K. Trediakovskii; the epigraph means “A monster ugly, repulsive, huge, hundred jawed, and barking.” Very likely it is intended to refer to serfdom. After all the hard knocks the author and his book went through, the sight of the Houghton Library’s ex libris on his book’s endpaper, with the school’s motto, “Veritas,” gladdens the heart.
Herzen and his friend Nikolai Ogarev: Masters, Bakunin, p. 46.
“I am certain that three-quarters of the people”: Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, p. 271. Herzen published the chapters having to do with his exile in a separate volume, titled My Exile in Siberia. Sticklers for geographic accuracy might point out that Viatka, Herzen’s place of exile, was not technically in Siberia, being west of the Urals. Today Viatka is the city of Kirov. We passed through it on our way to Perm and Ekaterinburg.
refusing to say where he got it: Kennan, Siberia and the Exile System, 1:326. All the exile stories in this paragraph are from Kennan’s book.
a prisoner named Tumanov: Wood, The History of Siberia, p. 122.
Mikhail Bakunin: Details of Bakunin’s biography are from Masters, Bakunin. A close study of his escape from exile is Carr, “Bakunin’s Escape from Siberia,” pp. 377–88.
by leaving her behind: In fairness to Bakunin, he did later send for her. She met him in Stockholm, and their odd marriage continued, although in 1868 she had a child whose father was rumored to be Bakunin’s associate Carlo Gambruzzi. She was not with Bakunin when he died, in July 1876.
“ ‘Can one get oysters here?’ ”: Edmond de Goncourt, quoted in Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, p. xxxiv.
a revolutionary named Leib Bronshtein: Stephan, The Russian Far East, p. 69.
267 times as much: Shalamov, Graphite, p. 272. Shalamov expresses the weights in puds, a unit of measurement used in former times; one pud equaled about 36 pounds. The Decembrist prisoners (according, he says, to the memoirs of Maria Volkonsky) had a quota of 3 puds of earth a day. Miners in the Kolyma mines had a quota equal to about 800 puds a day. Three into 800 is about 267.
“I read memoirs”: Shalamov, Kolyma Tales, p. 344.
used fake ration cards: Some of these offenses are listed in Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 3:255–56. Others are in Dallin and Nicolaevsky, Forced Labor in Soviet Russia, p. 175, and Diment and Slezkine, Between Heaven and Hell, p. 236.
“Don’t feed us Soviet straw”: Dallin and Nikolaevsky, Forced Labor in Soviet Russia, p. 22.
A woman got ten years: Conquest, The Great Terror, p. 284.
“Let’s remember his soul”: Asher, Letters from the Gulag, p. 54.
the Tibetan Buddhist High Lama: Forsyth, A History of the Peoples of Siberia, p. 330.
“Oh, it’s boring”: Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 3:576.
Vyacheslav Molotov ambassador to Mongolia: Hosking, Russia and the Russians, pp. 531–32.
Penal Colony Number 10: David Remnick, “The Tsar’s Opponent,” The New Yorker, October 1, 2007, p. 66.
CHAPTER 15
Members of a tribe called the Tungus: Ides, Three Years’ Travels, p. 31.
retreated into smoke-filled huts: Erman, Travels in Siberia, 1:201.
“delicate portion of my privy parts”: Fries, A Siberian Journey, p. 137.
“It seemed as though the walls and ceiling”: Chekhov, The Island, p. 121.
they put out his campfire: Arsenyev, Dersu Uzala, p. 90.
Dostoyevsky waxed lyrical: Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead, p. 283.
“much pestered by gnats”: Bell, Journey from St. Petersburg, p. 86.
descending on young foals: Fries, Siberian Journey, p. 137.
suffocating reindeer: Stephan,The Russian Far East, p. 11.
paint them all over with tar: Erman, Travels in Siberia, 2:95.
The Lonely Planet guidebook: Vic Hawthorn, Russia, Ukraine & Belarus, 2d ed. (Oakland, CA: Lonely Planet, 2000), p. 569.
“sailed on the 8th day of June”: Armstrong, Yermak’s Campaign, p. 131.
Remezov Chronicle: Ibid., pp. 27–28.
“then all the infidels”: Ibid., p. 140.
“a vision of a shining Christian city”: Ibid., p. 112.
Shaybani, a brother of Batu: Groussett, The Empire of the Steppes, pp. 393–94.
Shaybanids often fought with the Taibugids: Ibid., pp. 489–90; also Armstrong, Yermak’s Campaign, p. 2.
Hanefite teachings: Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 86–87.
a lenient, even generous attitude: Izhboldin, Essays on Tatar History, pp. 105ff. See also Armstrong, Yermak’s Campaign, p. 61.
the founders of Russian noble families: “According to the avowedly approximate computations of [the historian V. O.] Kliuchevsky, at the end of the seventeenth century about 17 percent of the Moscow upper class was of Tatar or eastern origin” (Florinsky, Russia, 1:63).
convert to Christianity: Oliver Roy, The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations, pp. 28–29.
CHAPTER 16
spent time in an ancient prison in Omsk: Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 3:50.
“Em Che Ess”: Men of this organization are seen all over Russia; it also makes public-service safety announcements on TV.
CHAPTER 17
the most beautiful city in Siberia: Chekhov, “The Crooked Mirror” and Other Stories, p. 200.
goes back to John Quincy Adams: See Adams
, John Quincy Adams in Russia. The ladies of Russia get no mercy from J.Q. For example, “After dinner came some additional company; among whom Princess Woldemar Galitzin, venerable by the length and thickness of her beard. This is no uncommon thing among the ladies of this Slavonian breed. There is at the Academy of Sciences a portrait of a woman now dead, but with a beard equal to that of Plato” (p. 141); also, “Count St. Julien was looking through his glass at the dancers and lamenting that the sex in Russia was not handsome . . . Oh, at Vienna not a guingette of chambermaids but would show more handsome women than all Petersburg could produce” (p. 343). (A guingette is a suburban tavern.)
too manlike, rough, and otherwise unattractive: Babey, Americans in Russia, pp. 81, 85.
“all the vague and shadowy delicacy”: Custine, Empire of the Czar, p. 498.
personally had won that war: Clay, Life of Cassius Marcellus Clay, p. 462: “I did more than any man to overthrow slavery. I carried Russia with us, and thus prevented what would have been the strong alliance of France, England and Spain against us; and thus was saved the Union!”
married Russian women: Stephan, The Russian Far East, p. 134.
as many as thirty couples at a time: Ibid., p. 140.
“Entirely too many of these women”: Graves, America’s Siberian Adventure, pp. 309–10.
turn on her heel and walk away: Blakely, Siberia Bound, pp. 130–32.
One article I read: Caroline Moorehead, “Women and Children for Sale,” The New York Review of Books, October 11, 2007.
Second River transit prison: Mandelstam died in the Vtoraya Rechka (Second River) transit camp on December 27, 1938. See Bobrick, East of the Sun, p. 450.
“people who believed in only one thing”: Kennan, Siberia and the Exile System, 2:361ff.
CHAPTER 18
the country’s interim dictator: Mazour, The First Russian Revolution, p. 162.
His wife, Ekaterina: Mazour, Women in Exile, pp. 44ff.
later a saint of the Orthodox church: Figes, Natasha’s Dance, pp. 72–73.
Pushkin rhapsodized: Mazour, Women in Exile, p. 61.
Prince Andrei Bolkonsky in War and Peace: This is from the guides at the Volkonsky house-museum.