The Lost Pianos of Siberia

by Sophy Roberts

  ‘Down with autocracy!’: Ibid.

  There was no coal glinting in the scree: Chekhov, Sakhalin Island

  ‘white spick-and-span cottages’: Ibid.

  a ‘symbol of the state’s attempt at “enlightenment” and edification’: Brian Donahoe and Joachim Otto Habeck (eds): Reconstructing the House of Culture: Community, Self, and the Makings of Culture in Russia and Beyond (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011)

  ‘Can a man who’s warm understand one who’s freezing?’: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, trans. H. T. Willets (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005)

  PART TWO: BROKEN CHORDS

  ‘Reality is incomprehensible and abhorrent . . . filling him with hope?’: Anatoly Lunacharsky, On Literature and Art (1932) trans. Avril Pyman (Moscow: Progress, 1973)

  ‘I am not sure that in the kind of world in which we are living . . . become aware of their existence and importance’: Claude Lévi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning (London: Routledge, 2001)

  ‘And someday in the future . . . like some improbable salamander’: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, Volume I, trans. Thomas Whitney (London: Harper Perennial, 2007)

  8. THE LAST TSAR’S PIANO: THE URALS

  Cases of wine . . . no longer allowed to wear their epaulettes: These details are given by Helen Rappaport in The Race to Save the Romanovs (London: Hutchinson, 2018), a book which traces the different ways in which the Romanovs might have been rescued from their Siberian detention.

  the American journalist John Reed . . . refusing tips: John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World (New York: Vintage, 1960)

  ‘I know nothing greater than the Appassionata . . . can create such a beauty’: Maxim Gorky, Lenin: A Biographical Essay, trans. Zbyněk Zeman (Edinburgh: Morrison & Gibb, 1967)

  huddled up around their few remaining possessions: See Ivan Vladimirov’s painting, 1919, Miserable Life of Russian Nobles and Persons of High Rank During the Revolution, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, in which the grand piano is being used as a table. Vladimirov lived a double life during the early Soviet era. While publicly praised for his works emphasizing the heroism of the new regime, he was covertly producing images showing the true horror of the Revolution.

  Grand pianos were being driven around the city on the back of trucks: See Brian Moynahan, Leningrad: Siege and Symphony (London: Quercus, 2013)

  ‘Drag pianos out onto the streets . . . they fall to pieces’: Vladimir Mayakovsky, ‘Battle-order to the Army of Art’, in ‘Vladimir Mayakovsky’ and Other Poems, trans. James Womack (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2016)

  Becker ceased output . . . reduced to ten men: Anne Swartz, Piano Makers in Russia in the Nineteenth Century (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2014)

  a situation compounded by trade embargos imposed by European countries: See Marina Frolova-Walker and Jonathan Walker, Music and Soviet Power 1917–1932 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2012)

  ‘We are all either consumed by ceaseless activity . . . the confusion about us’: Letter from Belyayev to Mayakovsky in January 1919, cited in ibid.

  Kubatsky was given his own train . . . dressed in his ceremonial military uniform: This anecdote about the count in Crimea is taken from a study of the changes that swept through Russia’s musical intelligentsia during the rise of the Soviet state: Frolova-Walker and Walker, Music and Soviet Power.

  the number of civilian casualties ran to nearly four times more: This comparison is made in Anna Reid, Leningrad: Tragedy of a City Under Siege, 1941–44 (London: Bloomsbury, 2011)

  even see a bird flying: Robert Wilton, The Last Days of the Romanovs (London: Thornton Butterworth Limited, 1920)

  black bread for breakfast, while all the Empress ate was macaroni: J. C. Trewin, Tutor to the Tsarevich: An Intimate Portrait of the Last Days of the Russian Imperial Family, compiled from the papers of Charles Sydney Gibbes (London: Macmillan, 1975)

  a report by Nikolai Sokolov: Though profoundly wrong in many of its conclusions, the Sokolov Report (first published in France in 1924) continues to provide researchers with a trove of original information relating to the last days of the Romanovs and their murders. Part of Nikolai Sokolov’s investigations involved taking detailed inventories of items found at the mineshaft at Ganina Yama and the Ipatiev House, even measuring the depth of the individual bullet holes found in the cellar walls. I used two versions of the Sokolov Report in my research, one abridged and translated from the original Russian edition: The Sokolov Investigation, trans. John F. O’Conor (London: Souvenir Press, 1972), and the other the full report in Russian: Nikolai Sokolov, Ubiĭstvo tsarskoĭ sem’i. Polnaia versiia (Moscow: LitRes, 2017).

  The Bolsheviks shot the Tsar first . . . : For this widely told story, I have used a number of different sources. One of the most dramatic – and extremely graphic – retellings of the Romanov murders is given in Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Romanovs: 1613–1918 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2016).

  fragments of jewellery . . . the same disused mine: These details are largely taken from Robert Wilton’s account of the Romanovs’ final days. Wilton, the London Times’ correspondent in St Petersburg, was among the first Western observers on the scene. He even conducted his reporting in tandem with Sokolov, the official investigator. His conclusions, however, were flawed by his virulent belief that the Russian Revolution, and the murder of the Romanovs, were the result of a global Jewish conspiracy: Wilton, The Last Days of the Romanovs.

  head had been smashed with a rifle: Ibid. The account of both imperial dogs is told by Wilton.

  the Bolsheviks tried to destroy the evidence . . . : The Sokolov Investigation, trans. John F. O’Conor. See also Greg King and Penny Wilson, The Fate of the Romanovs (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2003)

  He was the only person aside from officials inside the cordon: See Vitaly Shitov, Dom Ipat’eva: letopisnaia khronika v dokumentakh i fotografiiakh, 1877–1977 (Chelyabinsk: Avto Graf, 2013) – a primary source I owe a significant debt to for his unique research into the history of the Ipatiev House.

  recalled sacred songs and women singing . . . ‘Let Us Forget the Old World’: See Wilton, The Last Days of the Romanovs. Also, King and Wilson, The Fate of the Romanovs

  the piano was moved from the hall: Kent de Price, ‘Diary of Nicholas II, 1917–1918, an annotated translation’, Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, and Professional Papers (University of Montana: 1966)

  told a more sinister version of events: King and Wilson, The Fate of the Romanovs

  the piano Nicholas II mentions in a diary entry: de Price, ‘Diary of Nicholas II, 1917–1918, an annotated translation’

  Aleksandr said he had visited the Ipatiev House . . . : Russian readers can find a more detailed description of the events that led Avdonin to the Pig’s Meadow site, as well as a comprehensive list of everything he found, in the 2013 account he wrote of his search: Aleksandr Avdonin, Ganina Iama: istoriia poiskov ostankov tsarskoĭ sem’i, Second Edition (updated), (Ekaterinburg: Real Media Kompaniia, 2013).

  Then there was a poem by Mayakovsky: See Vladimir Mayakovsky, ‘Imperator’, in V. V. Mayakovsky, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii: T. 9. (Moscow: Gos. izd-vo khudozh. lit., 1958)

  the old Koptyaki Road: This is the place name Avdonin uses in his book, rather than Pig’s Meadow. Aleksandr Avdonin, Ganina Iama: istoriia poiskov ostankov tsarskoi sem’i, Second Edition (updated), (Ekaterinburg: Real Media Kompaniia, 2013).

  ‘amateur Sherlocks or Pushfuls’: Wilton, The Last Days of the Romanovs

  9. THE END OF EVERYTHING: THE ALTAI MOUNTAINS

  ‘the End of Everything’: This local phrase is a translation of ‘Ukok’.

  the town of Barnaul was alive with pianos: Thomas Atkinson, Oriental and Western Siberia (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1858)

  the eminent German biologist Carl Friedrich von Ledebour: Audrey le Lièvre, ‘Nineteenth-century Dorpat and Its Botanical Influence’, Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, 14:1 (February 1997)

>   He gathered close to a thousand butterflies: Henry J. Elwes, ‘On the Lepidoptera of the Altai Mountains’, Transactions of the Royal Entomological Society, 47:3 (September 1899)

  Russia’s Prince Elim Pavlovich Demidoff: ‘A Russian is the Richest Man in the World’, New York Daily Tribune (October 1884)

  he bagged thirty-two of the largest wild sheep on the planet: Elim Demidoff, After Wild Sheep in the Altai and Mongolia (London: Rowland Ward, 1900)

  a long history of attracting hardy migrants: ‘These peasants, like most pioneers, are not much interested in politics; they ask only to be let alone to carve out their own destinies’ – observations made by American travellers Helen Wilson and Elsie Mitchell, who went to the Altai in 1925: Vagabonding at Fifty (London: Coward McCann, 1929).

  which ravaged the country . . . until 1922: There is some debate among historians about the year the Russian Civil War came to an end. See Jonathan D. Smele, The ‘Russian’ Civil Wars, 1916–1926: Ten Years That Shook the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

  still fresh from the country’s civil-war upheavals: See Nicholas Roerich, Altai-Himalaya: A Travel Diary (London: Jarrolds, 1930). He describes the evidence of the horrors from an Old Believer, ‘hacked with sabers’, to the River Katun where they drowned the Whites.

  accompanied by Wagner’s music and a portable gramophone: Andrei Znamenski, Red Shambhala: Magic, Prophecy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia (Illinois: Quest Books, 2011)

  with the assistance of high culture . . . will humanity thrive: For Roerich’s full credo, see Nicholas Roerich, Corona Mundi (New York: International Art Exchange, 1922). See also Ruth A. Drayer, Nicholas and Helena Roerich: The Spiritual Journey of Two Great Artists and Peacemakers (Illinois: Quest Books, 2005).

  Altaian space junk, shot by Norwegian photographer Jonas Bendiksen in 2000: The image series also documented the effects of the jettisoned rocket fuel in Russia and Kazakhstan, and the livestock locals claimed were being killed by poisoned soil. See pro. magnumphotos.com/Catalogue/Jonas-Bendiksen/2000/Spaceship-Junkyard-NN144467.html

  ‘the pitch of an unheard-of blending’: Boris Pasternak, Safe Conduct, trans. Beatrice Scott (New York: New Directions, 1958). Pasternak’s autobiography has a fascinating section on his ambition to be a composer, and the family’s relationship with the Russian composer Aleksandr Scriabin. Pasternak’s mother was a well-known concert pianist.

  ‘melting pot of nations’: Nicholas Roerich, Heart of Asia (New York: Roerich Museum Press, 1929)

  four tiny specimens of ‘Denisovan Man’ have ever been found: See Viviane Slon, Bence Viola, Gabriel Renaud, Marie-Theres Gansauge, Stefano Benazzi, Susanna Sawyer, Jean-Jacques Hublin, Michael V. Shunkov, Anatoly P. Derevianko, Janet Kelso, Kay Prüfer, Matthias Meyer, Svante Pääbo, ‘A Fourth Denisovan Individual’, Science Advances (July 2017)

  The Ukok Princess . . . and flakes of gold: See Natalya Polosmak, ‘A Mummy Unearthed from the Pastures of Heaven’, National Geographic (October 1994). Polosmak writes eloquently about her discovery, as well as the mixed emotions she feels as an archaeologist disturbing a grave. She describes carrying the girl’s body from her place of interment, the corpse supported on a stretcher with white gauze pinned down ‘like the wings of a specimen butterfly’. When they were due to extract the mummy to Novosibirsk, a snowstorm blew in from nowhere. Then an engine failed in the helicopter carrying the Ukok Princess. ‘I believe that thoughts and ideas do not vanish, that they still exist in the layers of atmosphere that blanket the earth,’ Polosmak wrote in her report for National Geographic.

  ‘gleams of a remoter world’: Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘Mont Blanc’, in The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 2002)

  10. THE MOSCOW OF THE EAST: HARBIN

  ‘A passport . . . particularly in Russia’: Thomas Preston, Before the Curtain (London: John Murray, 1950)

  Sokolov was travelling with three suitcases . . . a finger: Greg King and Penny Wilson, The Fate of the Romanovs (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2003)

  likely cut from the hand of the Empress in order to retrieve a ring: Edmund Walsh, ‘The Last Days of the Romanovs’, The Atlantic (March 1928)

  As early as 1907, plays censored by Tsarist Russia premiered in Harbin: Simon Karlinsky, ‘Memoirs of Harbin’, Slavic Review, 48:2 (Summer 1989)

  Russian drosky drivers in brightly coloured silk shirts: Walter M. Holmes, An Eye-witness in Manchuria (New York: International Publishers, 1933)

  ‘It was like a dream of old Russia . . . raw and unbeautiful’: Adelaide Nichols, ‘The Seven Blue Domes of Harbin’, New York Times (March 1923)

  ‘red on the outside, white on the inside’: Laurie Manchester, ‘Repatriation to a Totalitarian Homeland: The Ambiguous Alterity of Russian Repatriates from China to the USSR’, Diaspora, 16:3 (December, 2007)

  They became prey to Harbin’s white-slave traders and ‘underworld gentry’ . . . swung from telegraph poles: Amleto Vespa, Secret Agent of Japan (London: Victor Gollancz, 1938)

  a wide-eyed, twenty-year-old White Guard: Few records exist of Dmitri Alioshin, a White Russian officer who fled to Harbin after the Revolution and fought briefly in Baron von Ungern-Sternberg’s Mongolian army. Alioshin disappeared soon after the publication of Asian Odyssey, and a lack of records has raised doubts about his real identity. Regardless, the book gives a rare account of the civil war and Russian Harbin. Dmitri Alioshin, Asian Odyssey (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1940).

  There were two operas, six theatres, and music halls in full blast: F. A. McKenzie, The Unveiled East (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1907)

  Four years later, jazz was seeping into Siberia . . . travelling along the seams of the Trans-Siberian Railway: Edwin Ware Hullinger, The Reforging of Russia (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1925), cited in Benjamin J. Beresford, Rhapsody in Red: Jazz and a Soviet Public Sphere under Stalin (Arizona State University, August 2017). Beresford’s dissertation is a lively piece of research on early Soviet jazz – and important to my understanding of how this style of music evolved inside the USSR. One of his primary sources suggested that jazz arrived in Novosibirsk before Moscow.

  The Harbin Symphony Orchestra included principals . . . : See Sheila Melvin and Jindong Cai, Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music became Chinese (New York: Algora Publishing, 2004)

  Some thirty music schools were flourishing in the city: Amy Qin, ‘In China, Rejuvenating a Classical Music Heritage Linked to a Jewish Community’, New York Times (August 2016)

  When Lundstrem stumbled on a recording: Eugene Marlow, Jazz in China: From Dance Hall Music to Individual Freedom of Expression (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2018)

  His brother, Igor, played the saxophone: S. Frederick Starr, Red and Hot: The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983)

  ‘King of Jazz in the Far East’: See Oleg Lundstrem’s obituary by John Fordham, ‘Oleg Lundstrem’, Guardian (October 2005)

  Moscow’s Bolshoi later moving to Paris for careers at the Folies Bergère: Alexandre Vassiliev, Beauty in Exile: The Artists, Models, and Nobility Who Fled the Russian Revolution and Influenced the World of Fashion, trans. Antonina W. Bouis and Anya Kucharev (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000)

  White Russian ‘princesses’ worked as dancing girls alongside gypsy performers: John B. Powell, My Twenty-Five Years in China (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1945)

  the less attractive Harbin women, observed an American journalist in 1933, tended to work in dentistry: Lilian Grosvenor Colville, ‘Here in Manchuria. Many Thousand Lives Were Lost and More Than Half the Crops Destroyed by the Floods of 1932’, National Geographic Magazine (February 1933)

  ‘Here in Harbin, the whole house rocked with “Bravas!”’: Adelaide Nichols, ‘Any Night at the Opera in Harbin’, New York Times (March 1923)

  Josef Kaspe, who had arrived in Harbin around 1903: Professor Dan Ben-Canaan, the foremost academic on Harbin’s Jewish hist
ory and diaspora, helped me find my bearings when my hunt strayed briefly into China. Ben-Canaan’s book, The Kaspe File (Heilongjiang: Heilongjiang People’s Publishing House, 2009), gives the most detailed published analysis of the Kaspe history and murder case currently available. My telling of it owes a debt to his work.

  ‘Finish it quickly . . . human beings have limited strength’: Cited in Ben-Canaan, The Kaspe File

  ‘a cottage industry’: Jamie Bisher, White Terror: Cossack Warlords of the Trans-Siberian (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005)

  more than twenty thousand Russian residents in Harbin: Manchester, ‘Repatriation to a Totalitarian Homeland’

  A large proportion of kharbintsky . . . piano left to spoil in the Siberian rain: Ibid.

  From 1936 to 1945, the Japanese turned a Harbin suburb . . . grisly human experiments: The story of Unit 731 – including the shattering testimony of labourers and victims’ families – is told in Yang Yan-Jun and Tam Yue-Him, Unit 731: Laboratory of the Devil, Auschwitz of the East (Stroud: Fonthill Media, 2018).

  The city blinks with multi-lane highways: Sophy Roberts, ‘Harbin: Opera and Ice Sculpture in China’s Frozen Megacity’, Financial Times (February 2018)

  Harbin’s fifty churches and synagogues . . . during Mao’s Cultural Revolution: Kiki Zhao, ‘Chinese City With a Russian Past Struggles to Preserve Its Legacy’, the New York Times (June 2017)

  ‘During China’s Cultural Revolution . . . like the bones of the bourgeoisie’: Richard Curt Kraus, Pianos and Politics in China: Middle-Class Ambitions and the Struggle over Western Music (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)

  In 1966, Mao’s Red Guards smashed instruments . . . drove soloists to suicide: Ibid.

  11. BEETHOVEN IN A RED CHUM: THE YAMAL PENINSULA

  ‘Muddle instead of Music’: ‘Sumbur Vmesto Muzyki: ob opera “Ledi Makbet Mtsenkovo uezda”’, Pravda (January 1936)