Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy
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Nevertheless, Nikolay cannot imagine selling his business and leaving Russia for the greater safety and comfort of the West, as many of his partners have tried to convince him to do. For Nikolay his life, and the lives of his family, are too tied to Russia to consider leaving. Material things come and go. His family once possessed large country estates and urban palaces and collections of art. All this was taken from them, and Nikolay has no interest in such things. His decision to remain in Russia is connected to a different form of capital, what he calls the capital of being part of the six-hundred-year-old history of the Trubetskoy family. This is a form of capital, he says, free of vanity, that no one can ever take from him and that he is most proud of; this is the capital—the knowledge of one’s family, its role in Russian history, and one’s duty to one’s ancestors—that he is most adamant on passing about to his children and that keeps him in Russia.
Such an attitude might strike some as irrational, fatalistic, typically Russian. But considering what happened to Nikolay’s family, to the nobility, indeed to Russia itself in the last century, it is easy to see where such thinking comes from. To condemn it would prove only an absence of empathy and blind arrogance, for the events described in this book or, more precisely, the causes behind them, lie beyond reason, as much as we might like to think otherwise. Although the larger causes of the revolution can be accounted for, can anyone say why some perished and some survived? Why, for instance, was Count Pavel Sheremetev, the sole surviving male of the family and someone who had taken part in monarchist politics before the revolution, allowed to live and die a free man? Why was Pavel’s sister Anna left to die an old woman even though her husband had been imprisoned and shot and all three of her children sent to the gulag, two never to return? Why was Dmitry Gudovich shot in 1938 and his brother Andrei spared? Why did one Prince Golitsyn, Lev, die of typhus while a prisoner of the Reds in Irkutsk in 1920 and another Prince Golitsyn, Alexander, also a prisoner near death from typhus in Irkutsk in 1920, survive, escape Russia, and spend the rest of his life in comfort in Southern California surrounded by his family? Absurd enigmas such as these could be cited over and over. There was a randomness to the violence and repression that speaks to the illogical nature of Russian life in the twentieth century, indeed to the illogical nature of life itself, however much we may wish to think otherwise. There simply is no way to explain why some perished and some survived. It was, and remains, inexplicable. It was chance or, as many Russians would have it, fate.
Of Nikolay’s four grandparents, three died behind bars. Vladimir Trubetskoy was shot in Central Asia in 1937, and his wife, Eli, died of typhus in Moscow’s Butyrki Prison in 1943, the same year Vladimir Golitsyn perished at Sviyazhsk. Only Nikolay’s grandmother Yelena Golitsyn lived a full life, dying of natural causes in 1992, aged eighty-seven. I ask Nikolay whether his grandmother talked much about her life and all that had befallen her family, both the Sheremetevs into whom she had been born and the Golitsyns into whom she had married. Yes, he tells me, she did. What stood out most was the time Yelena told him that three hundred of her relatives had been killed by the Bolsheviks. He once asked her whether she was still angry at their killers and whether she could ever forgive them. I forgave them long ago, she explained to Nikolay, but I will never forget.
NOTE ON SOURCES
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
NOTE ON SOURCES
Former People is the first book in any language to examine the fate of the nobility in the decades following the Russian Revolution, a surprising gap in the historical record that can chiefly be explained by the fact that for most of the past century the subject could not be studied in the country where these events took place. As one of the Soviet Union’s many so-called bélye piátna, blank spots, the story of the nobility could not be talked about, and so it simply did not exist; it had been blanked out and made to disappear.
It was only in the final years of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev that the history of the nobility after 1917 became an acceptable subject of historical inquiry. In the early 1990s, when the dam of official censorship and self-imposed silence was breached, a flood of books, articles, conferences, films, and symposia began to pour forth. Over the past two decades we have learned a great deal of what happened to this class thanks to the work of hundreds of historians, archivists, curators, journalists, and the descendants of noble families who have now published a large amount of documentary material that for decades lay in their desk drawers and cupboards. For the most part, this has been a process of recovery. Something that had been repressed and ignored at long last became part of recorded history. Histories that had been forced into the dark finally came to light. Much of this work has been devoted to the study of particular noble families or clans or to the incorporation of the nobility into local histories that they had either been written out of or depicted in dishonest and propagandistic ways. My goal in writing Former People has been to synthesize this vast body of material and thus make the larger history of the nobility clear and intelligible while at the same time highlighting the stories of individual lives so as not to lose sight of the human dimension of this enormous tragedy.
Former People draws on a range of sources—personal correspondence, diaries, memoirs, petitions, laws, fiction, poetry, interviews, genealogies, political tracts, journalism, police reports, biographies, photographs, cartoons, and caricatures. Along with scholarly monographs and a large number of secondary works, I have made use of many primary sources, both published and unpublished. Most of these documents I located in state or public archives, but I was also fortunate to have access to many documents in private family collections.
One of these deserves special mention. I first became acquainted with Father Boris Mikhailov while researching my previous book, The Pearl. Now an Orthodox priest in Moscow, Father Boris for many years was a conservator at the Ostankino Estate Museum. For more than a decade he conducted extensive research into the history of the Sheremetevs in various archives, gathered information on the family from its members scattered throughout the world, and conducted interviews with a few surviving Sheremetev descendants in the former Soviet Union, including Xenia Saburov, Andrei Gudovich, and Yelena Golitsyn (née Sheremetev). The archive he managed to assemble (referred to in my notes by the abbreviation “ABM”) is an invaluable resource. I am exceedingly grateful to Father Boris for making his archive available to me.
All families tell stories that record who they are and what they have been through. This is especially true of noble families. In researching Former People I have met many people who told me stories about their families. These stories, passed down through the generations, are an important source, but like all historical sources, they have their limitations. What is not written down is susceptible to revision with each retelling; what is remembered may be as much what one wished had happened—or how or why it happened—as it is about what in fact did happen. Dates are forgotten, names confused, places mistaken. In the case of the Russian nobility, the oral record faced exceptional distortion because of the shattering of families as a result of the revolution and civil war and subsequent waves of emigration as well as the need for silence and, at times, dissembling to survive the repression of the 1920s and 1930s. Whenever possible, I have checked oral testimony (and stories only written down years after the fact) against written documents and particularly against documents contemporary to the period in question.
It would be naive, of course, to think that the written word necessarily has greater purchase on the truth, especially when talking about Soviet history. Documents can and do lie. Soviet officials, for example, repeatedly lied about what had happened to the millions of people arrested and imprisoned in the gulag, writing to the families of many that they were serving their terms when in fact they had been executed. Reconstructing the historical record is never straightforward or easy.
NOTES
ABBREVI
ATIONS
ABM: Archive of Boris Mikhailov
AVG/M: A. V. Golitsyn, “Memoirs”
AVT/V: A. V. Trubetskoi, “Vospominaniia”
BA: Bakhmeteff Archive
BP: E. A. Bakirov, ed., Butovskii poligon
DS: Dvorianskoe sobranie
GARF: State Archive of the Russian Federation
HIA: Hoover Institution Archives
IDG: I. D. Golitsyna, Vospominaniia o Rossii
KhiG: Khoziaeva i gosti
KNA: Kuskovo Scientific Archive
KNG: K. N. Golitsyn, Vospominaniia
MVG/M: M. V. Golitsyn, Mozaika iz moei zhizni
MVG/MV: M. V. Golitsyn, Moi vospominaniia
NIOR RGB: Russian State Library, Scientific Research Division of Manuscripts
OGSh: O. G. Sheremeteva, Dnevnik i vospominaniia
OPR: L. Dolzhanskaia and I. Osipova, Obrecheny po rozhdeniiu
OR RNB: Russian National Library, Manuscript Division
PG: Alexandre Galitzine, ed., The Princes Galitzine
RGADA: Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts
RGALI: Russian State Archive of Literature and Art
RGIA: Russian State Historical Archive
SH: M. I. Smirnov and A. M. Golitsyn, eds., Sheremetevy
SVS: A. Alekseeva and M. D. Kovaleva, eds., Sheremetevy v sud’ be Rossii
TAS: T. Aksakova-Sivers, Semeinaia khronika
TsGAMO: Central State Archive of the Moscow Oblast
VMG/D: V. M. Golitsyn, Dnevnik 1917–1918 godov
WSHC: Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre
YP/D: E. Pisareva, “Dnevnik (1919–1920)”
YPS/V: E. P. Sheremeteva, “Vospominaniia detstva”
ZU: S. M. Golitsyn, Zapiski utselevshego
ZVG: V. M. Golitsyn, “Zapiski khudozhnika”
PROLOGUE
1. OGSh, 78–80; ABM; DS 6 (1997): 208–13; Kovaleva, Staraia Moskva, 136–40; OR RNB, 585.4614, 4626, 4627, 4628; TAS, 321–22; RGADA, 1287.1.5062; OPR, 20–23; YPS/V, 51–52; an excerpt from the memoirs of Y. P. Sheremeteva, published online at moskva.kotoroy.net/histories/31.html. Accessed November 10, 2008.
2. KNA, 27, 1–2; OR RNB, 585.4627, 28–28ob; Karnishina, “Vozvrashchaias’.”
3. Leggett, Cheka, 266–68; Shteinberg, Ekab Peters, 28, 255, 266–68; Patterson, “Moscow Chekists”; Peters, “Vospominaniia.”
4. Leggett, Cheka, 114.
5. OPR, 17.
6. Lincoln, Red Victory, 134, 136, 146; Afanas’ev, ed., Istoriia, 2:523; Tatyana Shvetsova, “Beginning of Terror,” The Voice of Russia website, www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=2445&cid=125&p=08.12.2005, accessed August 15, 2008. See also “Krasnyi terror (Beseda s Petersom),” Utro Moskvy, November 4, 1918, 1.
7. Smith, The Pearl.
8. A subsequent search did yield one result: Pavel Dzemeshkevich’s Dvorianstvo i revoliutsiia (Simferopol, 2004), a short book more revealing for what it says about the nobility’s descendants trying to make sense of the past than for any light it casts on the history of the nobility during the revolution.
9. Leggett, Cheka, xxxii.
10. Survival, 358–60.
11. Marchenko, Byt, 268–69.
12. Bashkiroff, Sickle, 78–97.
13. Coles and Urusova, Letters, 10, 300, 310, 341–44, 376–85.
14. Doyle, Aristocracy, 280, 288–90.
15. Ibid., 309.
16. Ibid., 289–90.
17. See PG, especially pp. viii–ix.
18. Doyle, Aristocracy, 311–40; Raeff, “Russian Nobility,” 115; Becker, Nobility, 178.
19. Chuikina, Dvorianskaia pamiat’, 10, 58, 188–89.
20. Ibid., 190–91.
21. Bertaux, ed., On Living Through, 1–22; Figes, The Whisperers.
22. Chuikina, Dvorianskaia pamiat’, 189.
23. Ibid., 180, 188–89.
24. Among such works, of particular importance for this book have been the many volumes of the series Khoziaeva i gosti, the published papers of the annual Golitsyn conference held at the former Golitsyn estate of Bolshie Viazyomy.
25. YPS/V, 51–52; ABM; OGSh, 78–80.
26. YPS/V, 79; ABM; OGSh, 79.
27. OR RNB, 585.4626, 13, 16, 21–21ob; 4627, 4, 13, 19; 4268, 4, 9, 13, 19; 4614, 2–3.
1: RUSSIA, 1900
1. Rogger, Russia, 102–107, 122; Nove, Economic History, 11–19; Falkus, Industrialization, 61–74.
2. Solov’ev, Kruzhok, 3; McMeekin, History’s Greatest Heist, xvi–xxii.
3. Rogger, Russia, 117–21, 127; Lincoln, War’s Dark Shadow, 35; Figes, People’s Tragedy, 88.
4. Rogger, Russia, 124–27.
5. See Rogger, Russia, chap. 2.
6. See Kolchin, Unfree Labor.
7. Rogger, Russia, 3–8, 10.
8. Ibid., 52–53; Riasanovsky and Steinberg, History, 363–69.
9. Rogger, Russia, 16.
10. Ibid., 11.
11. Once a Grand Duke, 168–69, 175–76, 186, 223–25, 283.
12. Rogger, Russia, 18; Riasanovsky and Steinberg, History, 369.
13. Once a Grand Duke, 223, 283.
14. Rogger, Russia, 20–22, 37–38.
15. Ibid., 2, 51–55, 59–61, 156–68; Emmons, “Russian Nobility,” 180–83; Raeff, “Russian Nobility,” 116–17; Hamburg, Politics.
16. Korelin, Dvorianstvo, 42–44, 292–303; Bibin, Dvorianstvo, 4; Wirtschafter, Social Identity, 21–37. More generally, see Becker, Nobility; Grenzer, Adel; Hamburg, Politics; Manning, Crisis.
17. Korelin, Dvorianstvo, 22.
18. Emmons, “Russian Nobility,” 179.
19. Lieven, “Elites,” 227–29, 232–33.
20. Skipworth, Sofka, 12–15; Zinovieff, Red Princess, 42.
21. Rogger, Russia, 88–89; Korelin, Dvorianstvo, 123.
22. The Cherry Orchard, Act 2, in Chekhov, Four Plays.
23. Rogger, Russia, 89–94. See also Grenzer, Adel, especially pp. 5–6, 99, 209; Becker, Nobility, 172–77; Hamburg, Politics, 238–39; Lieven, Aristocracy, 52–54. For a more negative view of the state of the nobility, see Manning, Crisis. On noble landownership, see also Osipova, Klassovaia bor’ ba, 30–31.
24. Grenzer, Adel, 211–12; Lieven, Aristocracy, 49–54, 115–16, 133; idem, “Elites,” 241–44; Krasko, Tri veka, 213.
25. Rogger, Russia, 48; Haimson, Politics, vii–viii.
26. Number of families: Haimson, Politics, vii. Other sources cite some one hundred thousand noble landed estates in 1905. See Barinova, Vlast’, 40.
27. Gill, Peasants, 2–3, 8, 16–17; Rogger, Russia, 71–73, 76, 79; Lincoln, War’s Dark Shadow, 51, 105.
28. Rogger, Russia, 71–72, 76–78, 86, 117–18; Robinson, Rural Russia, 64–116. See also Tian-Shanskaia, Village Life; Worobec, Peasant Russia.
29. Heretz, Russia on the Eve, especially chap. 6.
30. “Memoirs of Princess Barbara Dolgoruky,” HIA, 61. See also Obolensky, Bread, 68.
31. Russian Sketches, 177–79.
32. Rogger, Russia, 109–11.
33. Fitzpatrick and Slezkine, eds., In the Shadow, 169, 243–51.
34. See Lincoln, War’s Dark Shadow, 103–34.
35. Speak, 30.
36. Ibid., 155.
37. Ibid., 30–31, 45–46.
38. See Shtrange, Russkoe obshchestvo.
39. Madariaga, Russia, 241–55; Alexander, Emperor.
40. McConnell, Russian Philosophe; Lang, First Russian Radical.
41. Raeff, Origins; Barinova, Vlast’, 129.
42. Rappaport, Conspirator, 35.
43. Pomper, Russian Revolutionary Intelligentsia, 31–58.
44. Sablin, Sabliny, 28–38, 152–53.
45. Pipes, Unknown Lenin, 19; Rappaport, Conspirator, 11–15, 111, 198, 212, 247; Pomper, Lenin’s Brother.
46. Bagázh, 84, 85–87.
2: THE SHEREMETEVS
1. Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ Brokgauz-Efron, vol. 78, “Sheremetev, Fedor Ivanovich”; SH, 1:7–8, 25–26, 37–38.
2. Smith, The Pearl.
3. Shchepetov, Krepostnoe pravo, 20–21, 26; Krasko, Tri veka, 50, 413.
4. Fedorchenko, Svita, 2:418–19; SH, 2:140; Krasko, Tri veka, 415–16; Obolensky, “Semeinye zapiski,” 174 (1989): 238–39; ABM.
5. Fedorchenko, Svita, 2:418–19; Krasko, Tri veka, 416–17; ABM.
6. YPS/V, 3; Grabbe, Windows, 60–61; Obolensky, “Semeinye zapiski,” 174 (1989): 238–39; Krasko, Tri veka, 422; ABM; Iusupov, Memuary (1998), 90.
7. SVS, 200–01; ABM; Fedorchenko, Svita, 2:426–27; Krasko, Tri veka, 193; SH, 2:134–35, 138–39.
8. Kovaleva, Staraia Moskva, 76, 179–96; ABM; Fedorchenko, Svita, 2:426–27; SVS, 279.
9. Kovaleva, Staraia Moskva, 102, 109–14, 129–30; YPS/V, 36; “V. P. Sheremetev v Ostaf’eve,” 1990 art exhibition brochure.
10. SVS, 204, 311n.; ABM.
11. “Sheremetev, gr. Sergei Dmitrievich,” in Chernaia sotnia; SVS, 200; Kovaleva, Staraia Moskva, 4, 168–73.
12. Witte, Memoirs, 338, 499n., 679.
13. Kovaleva, Staraia Moskva, 70–75, 130–33; Krasko, Tri veka, 221; TAS, 65–66; SVS, 209, 227–42.
14. Wassiltschikow, Verschwundenes Russland, 203–05.
15. SVS, 324; Zhuravina, Dvorianskoe gnezdo, 141, 152, 173–76; Krasko, Tri veka, 344–47; SH, 2:144; Nicholas II, Dnevnik, 12–23.
16. Krasko, Tri veka, 349; SH, 2:144–45.