Peter the Great at war

Peter the Great, who died all of 300 years ago today, is widely regarded as a pivotal figure in Russian history, responsible for modernising and westernising the country through extensive reforms. Though not a diarist himself, Patrick Gordon, a friend and military adviser for over 10 years, did keep a diary, one that is widely accepted as providing ‘unparalleled insight’ into some aspects of Peter’s reign.

Peter grew up on the Izmaylovo Estate (near Moscow) and was educated at the Amusement Palace from an early age by several tutors (one of which was Gordon). When his father died in 1676, he left the sovereignty to Peter’s elder half-brother, the crippled Feodor III, but the government was largely run by Artamon Matveyev, the political head of the Naryshkin family and one of Peter’s greatest childhood benefactors. When Feodor died in 1682 childless, a dispute arose between the Miloslavsky and Naryshkin families over who should inherit the throne. Peter jointly ruled with his elder half-brother, Ivan V, until 1696, but because Ivan was partially incapacitated, a council of Russian nobles chose the 10-year-old Peter to become tsar, with Ivan’s 25-year-old sister Sophia as regent.

In consequence of Sophia’s overt exclusion of Peter from the government, he did not receive the usual education of a Russian tsar. Instead of being confined within the narrow bounds of a palace, he grew up in a free atmosphere, enjoying, it is said, noisy outdoor games often of a military ilk, his favourite toys being arms of one sort or another. Early in 1689 Peter’s political marriage was enacted to Yevdokiya Fyodorovna Lopukhina. That same year 1689, after a failed coup by Sophia, Peter forced her to enter a convent, where she gave up her name and her position as a member of the royal family. After assuming sole control and over time, Peter implemented sweeping changes across Russian society, government, and military - though the reforms came at a significant human cost due to forced labor and harsh implementation.

Influenced by travels in Western Europe, Peter sought to bring Russia closer to European standards and practices, and indeed laid the groundwork for Russia’s emergence as a European power. He is credited with establishing the senate, reforming government structure, and creating the ‘table of ranks’ to determine precedence based on merit rather than birth. Economically, he encouraged the development of industry, commerce, and education, establishing factories, shipyards, and schools throughout Russia. He introduced the Julian calendar, reformed the Russian alphabet, and launched the first Russian newspaper. And, in 1703, he founded St. Petersburg.

Peter created a modern standing army and built Russia’s first navy, significantly enhancing the country’s military capabilities. With the initial help and advice of Gordon (who rose to the rank of general), Peter engaged in several significant military campaigns throughout his reign: the Azov campaigns of 1695-1696 against the Ottoman Empire resulted in the capture of Azov and access to the Black Sea; the Great Northern War, lasting from 1700 to 1721, against Sweden (which ultimately led to Russia’s emergence as a major Baltic power); and the Russo-Persian War from 1722 to 1723, which temporarily expanded Russian influence in the Caucasus and Caspian Sea region.

Peter married twice and had 11 children, though many died in infancy. His eldest son from his first marriage, Alexis, was convicted of treason and executed in 1718. Before his death, Peter issued a decree changing the rules of succession, allowing him to choose his heir. However, he died on 8 February 1725 without naming a successor. Further information is widely available online - at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, World History and Library of Congress (which lists primary sources).

Peter the Great did not keep a diary himself. However, his close associate and military adviser, Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries, maintained a detailed diary, one that is widely accepted as providing ‘unparalleled insight’ into some aspects of Peter’s reign. See A soldier of fortune for a biography of Gordon and much about his diaries. The Gordon diary manuscripts were held in the archives of the Imperial Russian foreign office, and a complete German translation, edited by Dr Maurice Possalt, was not published until the mid-19th century. Only parts of the diary appeared in English, in 1859, thanks to the Spalding Club which published Passages from the Diary of General Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries (AD 1635-AD 1699), as edited by Joseph Robertson. A 1968 edition is readily available to read online at Internet Archive.

However, much more recently, the diaries (1635 to 1699) have been published in full across six volumes by Aberdeen University Press. The sixth and final volume, edited by by Dmitry Fedosov - Diary of General Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries 1635-1699 - appeared in 2016. On its website, the publisher quotes the historian Professor Robert Frost: ‘The sixth and final volume of The Diary of General Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries is in some ways the most significant of all. It covers the vital period in which Peter the Great launched his challenge to the traditional Russian system and set Russia on the path to great power status. Gordon played a central role in two of the great dramas of these years: the successful siege and defence of Azov, which firmly established Russian power on the Caspian Sea, and the crushing of the Revolt of the Streltsy, the most dangerous early challenge to Peter’s reforms. Gordon’s diary gives unparalleled insight into these dramatic events and adds much to our knowledge of one of the most significant and charismatic rulers in Russian history. Gordon tells the story with characteristic detachment and a wealth of detail. As a diarist he ranks with Samuel Pepys, and the publication of Volume VI marks the completion of a project for which Dmitry Fedosov and Paul Dukes deserve to be congratulated. After three centuries, the original text of a hugely important historical work, and what can also be seen to be a significant literary achievement, is fully available for the first time.’

Every one of the six volumes is freely available to read online or to download. 

Here is a brief AI overview of what can be found out about Peter from Gordon’s diary.

‘- The diary mentions many contacts between Gordon and the young Peter before and during the tsar’s seizure of power from his half-sister, Regent Sophia.

- Peter’s challenge to traditional Russian systems: Gordon’s diary covers the vital period when Peter launched his efforts to modernise Russia and set it on the path to becoming a great power.

- Peter’s military campaigns: As a general under Peter, Gordon likely recorded details of military operations and strategies employed by the tsar.

- Peter’s personality and behaviour: Gordon’s diary entry from 1690 suggests that Peter enjoyed the company of his boyars, counsellors, and officers, indicating his sociable nature.

- Peter’s early governance: The diary provides context for the political climate during the young tsar’s rise to power and his initial years of rule.

- Peter’s interactions with foreigners: As a Scottish officer in Russian service, Gordon’s diary likely includes observations on Peter’s attitudes towards and dealings with foreigners in his court.’

Here are several verbatim extracts from volume VI of Gordon’s diaries (though the older, single and much edited version is easier to digest!).

1 July 1698

’45 men of Coll. Hunder[t]marks reg-t being by lott to dy were brought out, and after some supposed intercession mercy was showne that every two should cast lotts; w-ch being done & they set apart, it was told them that if yet they would tell who were the ring-leaders of the mutiny, they should be let go tree. After some pawses they began to mumple & tell of one or two, who being brought to the torture, without much ado confessed themselves guilty & told of 3 or 4 more, who were also brought to the torture, and after some stripes they confessed also. So were set apart and ordered to prepare themselves tor death, and these on whom the lotts had fallen wer let tree.

Orders came in the afternoone that these who had twice deserted & some others should be hanged.’

2 July 1698

‘This day were 72 persons hanged to fyve and to three on gibbets. Many streltsees as on the former dayes sent away, the officers & sojours who convoyed them getting a months pay, the sojours getting provisions sent from Mosco, and the podvods who remained with us getting to a kopike a day.

Wee examined many this day and sentenced 4 to be beheaded, and ordered the sick & wounded with 4 persons more tor future further inquisition to be left in the monastery, so that but 25 persons remained here.’

3 July 1698

‘This day his Majesty letters came to dismiss the army and was read publikely, in the beginning whereof wee had all thanks for our services. The gentry departed immediately, and three of the sojours regiments aft[er] dinner. The Generalli[ssi]mus and wee his Towarises with cancellary, chancellours &c writers with the Butirsky regiment stayed all night.

This day were the last of the streltsees sent away.’

19 October 1698

‘Many executed.

Roman & Michael came from Evanofsky and brought with [them] on 4 podrodes 2 kades with honey, 2 czetferiks of hairegroates, a czetverik with a czetfericzok of oate-groates, a 3d p[ar]t of a tunne of brandy, a czetfert & 5 czetferikes ot rey meale, a bagge with wooll, 2 pillowes with feathers.

The Imperiall Envoy gave me a visitt.

My regiment ordered to releeve the guards in his M. Hoffe, castle & towne.’

20 October 1698 

‘The Great Ambassade at audience by his Majesty. Was at a great deale more ease this bygone night & today as before.

Payed of the potter Simon Osipuf for 1,431 potts to the 3 ovens in the after chambers & the one in the after hoffe in the lower roome, at 3 dengees the pott, 21 rubles 15 alt. 3 dengees.

My regiment releeved the guardes in the towne.’

21 October 1698

‘I kept my bed still.’

22 October 1698

‘A great feast by Leo Kirilovitz [Naryshkin], where his M. & others.’

It is worth noting that Peter was much moved by the death of Gordon as shown by the final two paragraphs in Joseph Robertson’s edited version of Gordon’s diaries: ‘His strength was now fast failing, and during the following summer he became so weak that he was unable to leave his bed. He died at seven o’clock in the morning of the twenty-ninth of November, 1699. The Czar, who had visited him five times in his illness, and had been twice with him during the night, stood weeping by his bed as he drew his last breath; and the eyes of him who had left Scotland a poor unfriended wanderer, were closed by the hands of an Emperor.

Peter himself ordered the funeral procession, and took his place in its long line, accompanied by all the pomp of his empire, and followed by the representatives of most of the great powers of Europe. The body was carried on the shoulders of twenty-eight colonels; two generals supported the footsteps of his widow, and twenty ladies, the wives of high Muscovite dignitaries, walked in her train. The religious obsequies were performed by the priests of the church which he loved, in the first chapel of stone which the Roman Catholics were suffered to raise in Moscow. It was built chiefly by his bounty, and his tomb was dug before its high altar, in a vault.’

The champion of reason

‘I want to be known as the greatest champion of reason and the greatest enemy of religion.’ This is Ayn Rand, a Russian-American writer and philosopher, born 120 years ago today. Her few novels were extremely popular in their day, and she developed a philosophical system, Objectivism, which also drew many admirers. She kept notebooks for much of her life, jotting thoughts about her novels and philosophy, and these were edited and published in the 1990s as Journals of Ayn Rand.

Alisa Zinovievna Rosenbaum was born on 2 February 1905 in St Petersburg into a wealthy Jewish family. The October Revolution and Bolshevik rule led to the family’s property being confiscated, and to them fleeing as far as the Crimean Peninsula. After graduating from high school there, Alisa returned, with her family, to Petrograd, where she was one of the first women to enrol in the state university, majoring in history. Subsequently, she studied for a year at the State Technicum for Screen Arts in Leningrad. Around this time, she adopted the surname Rand, and took her first name as Ayn.

In 1926, Rand went to visit relatives in the US, staying a few months in Chicago, before heading for Hollywood. There she did odd jobs, worked as a junior scriptwriter, and met a young actor Fank O’Connor who she married just before her visa ran out. She became an American citizen in 1931; several attempts to bring her family members to the US, though, failed.

In the early 1930s, Rand sold a screenplay to Universal Studios, and had a play produced on Broadway (later turned into a film by Paramount). Her first, partly autobiographical, novel - We the Living - was published in 1936. Although not a success at the time, later, when her other novels sold so well, Rand issued a revised edition which went on to sell over three million copies.

By the 1940s, Rand had become politically active; and she volunteered for the presidential campaign of Republican Wendell Wilkie. She took on speaking appointments, and came into contact with other free market-leaning intellectuals. Her first major success as a writer came with The Fountainhead, published in 1943, a novel of romance and philosophy. Warner Bros hired her to write a screenplay for a film version (which came out in 1949). Subsequently, she was hired by Hal Wallis (who had produced Casablanca for Warner) as a screenwriter and script-doctor for his own, new production company. One of her projects was to write a screenplay about the development of the atomic bomb - although the film never got made. Meanwhile, her political activities led her to become associated with other anti-Communist writers.

In 1951, Rand moved to New York where she established a group of admirers, including Nathan Blumenthal (later Nathaniel Branden) and his wife Barbara, and Barbara’s cousin Leonard Peikoff. By 1954, she and Nathaniel were having an affair with the full knowledge of their spouses. Atlas Shrugged, considered Rand’s most important work, was published in 1957, and became an international bestseller. More than any other of her novels, Atlas Shrugged was rich in her developing ideas on philosophy, a system she called Objectivism.

Thereafter, Rand eschewed fiction in favour of promoting her philosophical ideas, by writing books, giving lectures, and often taking controversial stances on political issues (wholeheartedly rejecting religion, for example, and supporting the right to abortion). In 1958, Branden established the Nathaniel Branden Lectures (later Institute) to promote Rand’s philosophy. This expanded considerably, until it was offering courses in 80 cities; but, in 1968, Rand denounced Branden and publicly broke off with him and the Institute.

After an operation for lung cancer in 1974, Rand’s work activities declined. Her husband died in 1979, and she passed away in 1982, leaving her estate to Peikoff. Further biographical information can be found at the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Wikipedia. Wikipedia also has an extensive article on Rand’s Objectivism

Soon after Rand’s death, Peikoff released extracts from her notebooks for publication in two magazines The Objectivist Forum and The Intellectual Activist. Then, in 1997, Dutton released Journals of Ayn Rand, edited by David Harriman with Peikoff’s approval. The book has its own Wikipedia entry, which states: ‘Some reviewers considered it an interesting source of information for readers with an interest in Rand, but several scholars criticized Harriman’s editing as being too heavy-handed and insufficiently acknowledged in the published text.’

In a foreword, Peikoff explains: ‘Ayn Rand’s Journals - my name for her notes to herself through the decade - is the bulk of her still unpublished work, arranged chronologically. [. . .] The Journals contain most of AR’s notes for her three main novels - along with some early material, some notes made between The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and some notes from her final decades.’

He continues: ‘If the primary value of the Journals to us is the evidence it furnishes of AR’s growth, a second value is the evidence that her growth was a product of thinking - in the art of which the Journals may serve as a textbook. The subtitle of this book really ought to be: How to Answer Your Own Questions.’

In his preface, Harriman says: ‘In a note to herself at the age of twenty-three, AR wrote: “From now on - no thought whatever about yourself, only about your work. You are only a writing engine. Don’t stop, until you really and honestly know that you cannot go on.” Throughout her long career, she remained true to this pledge - she was a “writing engine”. With the publication of her journals, we can now see the “writing behind the writing” and appreciate fully the prodigious effort that went into her published work. AR’s notes, typically handwritten, were spread among numerous boxes of papers she left behind at her death in 1982. My editing of this material has consisted of selection, organization, line editing, and insertion of explanatory comments. Selection. This book presents AR’s working journals - i.e. the notes in which she developed her literary and philosophical ideas. Notes of a personal nature will be included in a forthcoming authorized biography.’

Many if not most of the entries in Journals of Ayn Rand (which can be previewed online at Googlebooks) are not dated, and those that are tend to be more associated with her philosophical musings (as opposed to those about her novels). Here are a few samples (the last concerns her work for Hal Wallis on the atomic bomb screenplay).

9 April 1934
‘The human race has only two unlimited capacities: for suffering and for lying. I want to fight religion as the root of all human lying and the only excuse for suffering.

I believe - and I want to gather all the facts to illustrate this - that the worst curse on mankind is the ability to consider ideals as something quite abstract and detached from one’s everyday life. The ability to live and think quite differently, thus eliminating thinking from your actual life. This applied not to deliberate and conscious hypocrites, but to those more dangerous and hopeless ones who, alone with themselves and to themselves, tolerate a complete break between their convictions and their lives, and still believe that they have convictions. To them, either their ideals or their lives are worthless - and usually both.

I hold religion mainly responsible for this. I want to prove that religion breaks a character before it’s formed, in childhood, by teaching a child lies before he knows what a lie is, by breaking him of the habit of thinking before he has begun to think, by making him a hypocrite before he knows any other possible attitude to life. [. . .]

Why are men so afraid of pure, logical reasoning? Why do they have a profound, ferocious hatred of it? Are instincts and emotions necessarily beyond the control of plain thinking? Or were they trained to be? Why is a complete harmony between mind and emotions impossible? Isn’t it merely a matter of strict mental honesty? And who stands at the very bottom denying such honesty? Isn’t it the church?

I want to be known as the greatest champion of reason and the greatest enemy of religion.’

6 November 1944
‘The art of writing is the art of doing what you think you’re doing. This is not as simple as it sounds. It implies a very difficult undertaking: the necessity to think. And it implies the requirement to think out three separate, very hard problems: What is it you want to say? How are you going to say it? Have you really said it?

It’s a coldly intellectual process. If your emotions do not proceed from your intellect, you will not be able to apply it, even if you know all the rules. The mental ability of a writer determines the literary level of his output. If you grasp only home problems well, you’ll only be a writer of good homey stories. (But what about Tolstoy?)’

25 January 1946
‘Interview with Mrs Oppenheimer: Test was referred to as “Trinity”. Test was on a Monday - the next Saturday Mrs. Oppenheimer gave a party - evening dress. Mood was one of relief. After Hiroshima they did not feel like celebrating. The Oppenheimers were the first family to move to Los Alamos. [The town] had about 30 people then - a big dormitory for scientists in one of the schoolrooms. The Oppenheimers lived in one of the masters’ houses of the old school. Community life was much friendlier and more harmonious than in other cities - higher mental level. Dr Oppenheimer took job only on condition that his essential workers would know the secret. A great part of their work was spent in meetings and conferences. At first, scientists were afraid of possible German atomic research, but later learned there was none. Scientists worked in order to save lives and end the war. Was it in order to beat the Germans to the discovery? “Good God, no!” ’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 2 February 2015.

Patients becoming hysterical

‘Yesterday evening was really frightening. The air-raid siren went off at eight o’clock, just as we were giving the patients their supper. The anti-aircraft guns immediately began firing very close by. Then suddenly there was a huge burst of thunder and the sound of breaking glass. I was in the women’s ward at the time, and the patients immediately began shouting and groaning, many of them becoming hysterical.’ This is from a diary kept by Lena Mukhina - born 100 years ago today - during the early months of the Siege of Leningrad. She was only 16 at the time, but the diary is said ‘to paint a picture of a city reeling from the impact of war and the struggle of its innocent, defenceless inhabitants for survival’.

Mukhina was born on 21 November 1924 in Ufa, some 1,000 km to the east of Moscow. In the early 1930s, she moved with her mother to Leningrad. There she experienced the first six months of the Nazi siege, part of the time working in a hospital. In June 1942, she was allowed to leave on a special train carrying evacuees to Kotelnich in the Kirov Oblast. But, somehow, she ended up in Gorky where she began a milling apprenticeship at a factory training school. It was not until the autumn of 1945 that she returned to Leningrad, and there she enrolled at the school of art and industry. Three years later she graduated with a degree in mosaics. After only a few weeks as a mosaic artist, and a spell working in a mirror factory, she was made redundant, and headed for Moscow to return to the flour milling industry.

In 1950, Mukhina became a labourer at the Southern Kuzbass thermal power station, rising quickly to become a designer - for the organisation’s slogans, displays etc. However, by 1952, she was working at the Kuntsevo Mechanical Works, where she remained for 15 years, mostly in the branding department. Before retiring due to ill health, she worked as a painter of designs on fabrics at the Kuntsevo Factory of Artistic Haberdashery, and as a homeworker for the Soviet Army factory. She died in 1991.

Mukhina is only remembered today because of a diary she kept for a year, partly during the Siege of Leningrad. This was donated anonymously to a state archive in 1962, only to be rediscovered half a century later by Sergei Yarov. It was edited and printed in Russian (2012) before being translated into English by Amanda Love Darragh - published by Macmillan in 2015 as The Diary of Lena Mukhina. Some pages of the English edition can be previewed at Googlebooks, while the full work can be read freely at Internet Archive (with log-in).

The following paragraph comes from the editors and authors of a foreward (Valentin Kovalchuk, Aleksandr Rupasov and Alexsandr Chistikov): ‘This diary, written by sixteen-year-old Leningrad schoolgirl Elena (Léna) Mukhina and miraculously preserved from that dreadful era, gives us a human insight into the last days of peace and the first days of war. With astonishing candour and a mix of childish naivety and adult wisdom, it paints a picture of a city reeling from the impact of war and the struggle of its innocent, defenceless inhabitants for survival. The obvious talent of the writer captures our attention from the very first pages, swiftly drawing us in and holding us in a constant state of suspense as we experience the tragedy and heroism of ordinary, everyday people, on whom nations are built and by whom history is both made and recorded.’

4 October 1941
‘I haven’t written for such a long time. But today I feel an urge to write. Dear God, what are they doing to us, to my fellow Leningraders and me?

I’m working in the hospital wing of the Clara Zetkin Institute of Maternity and Infancy Protection. We hospital orderlies work twenty-four-hour shifts: I work from nine in the morning to nine the next morning, then I have a day off until nine the following morning. So I am able to sleep only every other night. It’s very hard, but not unbearable. However when I don’t manage to get any sleep at all, just a few moments dozing in the bomb shelter, then it’s horrendous. For example, now it’s quarter to seven. Between half past seven yesterday evening and six o’clock this morning there were six air raids. Of these, two lasted about three hours, two lasted two hours, and the final two were an hour and a half and an hour. I’m working in a hospital and it’s very hard work, but I’m getting used to it. On the positive side, on days when I’m working I don’t go hungry and I’m entitled to a first category ration card with 400g of bread per day.

I haven’t seen Tamara since we composed that note to Vova and promised to see each other the following day. Yesterday I wrote her a note and asked Rozaliya Pavlovna to give it to Osya, so that he could pass it on to Tamara. So 1 still don’t know anything about the fate of my message to Vova. But I have no regrets about writing to him so abruptly.

During one of the air raids I somehow got talking to Ida Isaevna about friendships between men and women. You can love only one man, but at the same time it is possible to be friends with many men. Ida Isaevna told me that when she was seventeen she was friends with some of the boys she knew, and their friendship is still as strong as ever. Five of them from her class were friends - two girls and three boys.

We’re also two girls - Tamara and I, and three boys - Vova, Misha and Yanya. I don’t know why we aren’t friends. Do the boys treat us badly? No. Are they somehow unsuitable as friends? Again no, on the contrary. They’re exactly the kind of boys it’s good to have as friends. So what’s wrong? I don’t know. But in my opinion, we don’t know how to talk to one another.

It’s a pity, such a pity. In these bleak wartime days we are the only five from our class left in Leningrad. We could be developing lifelong friendships. There’s nobody stopping us. Dima, Emma, Roza, none of the other girls are here. But still!

Tamara and I both have fairly calm temperaments. The boys are also quite reserved. Relations between us feel somehow strained, because we’re so formal with one another. Besides, Yanya is not really like the rest of us. He’s so studious, it’s hard to be friends with someone like that. We would become friends more easily if relations between us were simpler, more straightforward. Like normal relationships between boys and girls. If we were attracted to one another. If they made advances towards us. . . and we resisted.’

18 October 1941
‘Yesterday evening was really frightening. The air-raid siren went off at eight o’clock, just as we were giving the patients their supper. The anti-aircraft guns immediately began firing very close by. Then suddenly there was a huge burst of thunder and the sound of breaking glass. I was in the women’s ward at the time, and the patients immediately began shouting and groaning, many of them becoming hysterical. Anisimov ran in with the duty doctor. Somehow they managed to restore calm. When it had quietened down a little I carried the plates to the canteen with another orderly. They told me I could scrape the leftover kasha out of the pot. I had just started eating when I became aware of a strange noise coming from outside the window - people shouting, and police whistles. I asked one of the nurses what was happening. She reacted with astonishment: “Didn’t you know? There’s a fire out there, across the street. The Karl Marx factory is on fire. Go and have a look.” She took me to the bathroom and drew the curtain to one side, and I saw how bright it was outside, brighter than daylight. Great tongues of flame were shooting up into the sky, and red smoke was swirling all around. Yes, it was an enormous fire at the Karl Marx factory, across the street from our building. I understood straight away what the noise was. It was the sound of firemen working and shouting to one another, fire engines arriving and the droning of the water pumps. They didn’t manage to put the fire out until four o’clock in the morning.

Vladimirova died in the night. They brought a new patient with a head injury and a seventeen-year-old boy with a neck injury, who had been one of the firemen on the roof.’

See also Only Tanya is left.

Only Tanya is left

The diary of the teenager Tanya Savicheva has to be one of the most poignant documents left behind by the Second World War, no matter that it is also, probably, the shortest diary of any significance on record. Tanya, who died 80 years ago today, lived through part of the Siege of Leningrad and watched her family members die one by one around her, recording each death on a page of her notebook.

Tanya was born in Gdov, Russia, near the border with Estonia, in January 1930, the youngest child of a baker and seamstress. Her father died when Tanya was six, leaving her mother with five children. The family planned to spend the summer of 1941 in the countryside, but the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in June disrupted their plans, so most of them decided to stay in Leningrad.

As a former capital of Russia, and militarily important as a main base for the Soviet Baltic fleet, Leningrad was a prime target for the German army. A siege of the city started on 8 September 1941, when the last road to the city was severed, and it was not lifted fully until 27 January 1944 - making it one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history.

All of Tanya’s family worked to support the Soviet army, even Tanya, then only 11, dug trenches and put out firebombs. One of Tanya’s sisters, Nina, went to work, and never returned leaving the family thinking she was dead. Tanya was given a small notebook in memory of Nina, and, after a while, she used it sparingly to record the deaths of her family members, including one sister (Jenya) and one brother (Leka).

By March 1942, Tanya was the only one of the family left. She was discovered, barely alive, by special nursing missions who went through the streets of Leningrad. Along with more than 100 other children, in a similar state, she was transported to Shatki, a village in the Gorkovskaya region. There the villagers tried to look after the children; though most survived, Tanya eventually succombed to tuberculosis, and died on 1 July 1944.

Tanya never learned that some of her family survived. Nina, in fact, had been saved and transported away from the front line. She returned, with the siege over, in 1945, to her house, where she found, amidst bare walls and complete ruin, Tanya’s notebook. Tanya’s brother Misha also survived having suffered severe injuries at the war.

See Wikipedia, the Russian Orthodox Church website, or Russiapedia, for more information.

Today, Tanya’s diary is in the Museum of the History of St Petersburg, and a copy is at the Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery (where around half a million people, who died during the siege, are buried in mass graves). There is some suggestion that the diary might have been presented by Allied prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials, though there appears to be no proof of this. It contains just a few pages, with a few words on each page, as follows (translation according to Wikipedia).

‘Jenya died on 28th Dec. at 12.00 PM 1941’

‘Grandma died on 25th Jan., 3 PM 1942’

‘Leka died on 17th March at 5 AM 1942’

‘Uncle Vasya died on 13th Apr. at 2 o’clock after midnight 1942’

‘Uncle Lesha on 10th May at 4 PM 1942’

‘Mom on 13th May at 7.30 AM 1942’

‘Savichevs died.’

‘Everyone died.’

‘Only Tanya is left.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 1 July 2014.

Flying into an abyss

Ivan Bunin, the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, died 70 years ago today. Though admired for his short stories and poems, it was his diaries, written in the aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and published in the 1920s, that brought him fame among his compatriot emigrés in France as well as wider attention within European literary circles. It was not until the 1990s that parts of his diaries began appearing in English versions.

Bunin was born in 1870 into an old, noble family with a literary heritage, in the province of Voronezh, Central Russia. Having been tutored at home, he was sent to a public school in Yelets in 1881, but left in 1886 due to financial difficulties caused by his father’s gambling. The following year, he published his first poem in a literary magazine. He followed his brother to Kharkov, where he worked for a local paper, and then moved further south to Oryol where he became editor of a local newspaper, enabling him to publish his own stories, poems and reviews.

His first book - Poems 1887-1991 - appeared in 1891, and thereafter he managed to place some of his writing in St Petersburg magazines. In 1892, he moved, with his lover Varvara Paschenko, to Poltava settling in the home of his brother, Yuly. From there he travelled all over Ukraine, and, in 1895, visited St Petersburg for the first time. Thereafter, dividing his time between Moscow and the Russian capital, he made friends with Chekhov and Gorky, and was much inspired by Tolstoy.

Bunin married Anna Tsakni in 1898, but left her two years later. By the end of 1906, he had fallen in love with Vera Muromtseva, and the two then lived together, travelled in the Middle East, and married in 1922. Bunin, meanwhile, was making his literary name with short story collections, such as Bird’s Shadow, as well as translations - one of Longfellow’s Hiawatha earned him a Pushkin Prize from the Russian Academy. Another Prize, and membership of the Academy followed in 1909. He also translated D. H. Lawrence, Byron and Leonard Woolf.

In 1910 Bunin published his first short novel, The Village, which gave a bleak portrayal of Russian country life, caused controversy, and brought him fame. Its harsh realism, Wikipedia’s bio notes, prompted Maxim Gorky to call him ‘the best Russian writer of the day’. After winters in 1912-1914 with Gorky on the Italian resort island of Capri, he wrote what has become his most famous short story, The Gentleman from San Francisco. Bunin did not greet the 1917 October Revolution with enthusiasm. He left Moscow first for Odessa, and then, in 1920, to settle in France, where he had another grand affair, with the poetess Galina Kuznetsova, 30 years his junior, though they were both married.

In France, Bunin was hailed as one of the most important living Russian writers, and soon became the figurehead for a generation of expatriates. In 1933, he was the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, ‘for following through and developing with chastity and artfulness the traditions of Russian classic prose’. Russipedia says, though, that ‘everyone knew the real reason behind his winning the prize was the publishing of The Accursed Days, which voiced his aristocratic aversion to the harsh realties of the Soviet state’. In 1934-1936, Petropolis published, to Bunin’s approval, his complete works in 11 volumes.

Although friends arranged for the Bunins to move to the US during the Second World War, they chose to stay in their isolated house in Grasse, often with other long-term residents, and sometimes sheltering fugitives from the Nazi regime, which Bunin hated. The Bunins returned to Paris in 1945, and from around 1948 Bunin focused his creative time on writing memoirs and a book about Chekhov which he never finished; but he was often disillusioned and bitter. He died on 8 November 1953. Further biographical information is available from Russiapedia or Wikipedia.

Bunin kept a diary for most of his life. Parts of it - 1918-1920 - first appeared in print in the mid-1920s when Bunin published them in a Paris-based Vozrozhdenye newspaper under the title The Accursed Days (later put in book form by Petropolis). It was not until 1998 that this was translated by Thomas Gaiton Marullo and published in English, by Rowman & Littlefield, as Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution. Much of it can be freely read online at Googlebooks.

Substantial extracts from Bunin’s diaries have also appeared in translation by Marullo (published by Ivan R. Dee, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield) in three biographical volumes all subtitled A Portrait from Letters, Diaries, and Fiction: Russian Requiem, 1885-1920 (1993); From the Other Shore, 1920-1933 (1995); The Twilight of Emigre Russia, 1934-1953 (2002). 

Of the first volume, Rowman & Littlefield says: ‘Mr. Marullo gives us a compelling picture of a writer searching for himself amidst a society experiencing momentous change. Bunin alternated between periods of despair and joy throughout most of his life. He stood for traditional Russian values in a time of complete upheaval - in the “dark night” between the twilight of imperial Russia and the dawn of the new Soviet state - and he despised the revolutionaries who sought to overturn the ways he cherished. His life and art come alive in this immensely successful book.’

Of the second volume, it says: ‘Mr. Marullo gives us a vivid picture of a man suddenly and agonizingly without a country. Bunin’s life and art, which depended so heavily on traditional Russian values, seemed to be overthrown in a moment, and the writer found himself marooned amidst Western culture, clinging to his old ideals. Through his writings we are also provided a window on the lively but despairing and often fractious community of Russian emigrés in Paris in the twenties, which included Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff Chafiapin, Prokofiev, Chagall, Kandinsky, Pavlova, Diaghilev, and Zamyatin.’

Here are several extracts from Bunin’s diary as translated by Marullo for Cursed Days.

18 February 1918
‘Beginning February 1st we have been ordered to observe new style. So according to the Soviets, it is now February 18th.

Yesterday there was a meeting “Wednesday [a literary group]. Many of the “young people” were there. Mayakovsky behaved rather decently most of the time, though he kept acting like a lout, strutting about and shooting off his mouth. He was wearing a shirt without a tie. The collar of his jacket was raised up for some reason, just like those poorly shaven people who live in wretched hotel rooms and use public latrines in the mornings.’

19 February 1918
‘The newspapers report that the Germans have begun their attack. Everyone says: “Oh, if it were only so!”

We took a walk to Lubyanka. There were “meetings” everywhere. A red-haired fellow talked on and on about the injustices of the old regime. He was wearing a coat with a round, dark-brown collar. His face was freshly powdered and shaven; he had red curly eyebrows and gold fillings in his mouth. A snub-nosed gentleman with bulging eyes kept objecting hotly to what the red-haired fellow was saying. Women were fervidly adding their two cents’ worth, but always at the wrong time. They kept breaking into the argument (one that was based on “principle,” so the red-haired fellow said) with details and hurried stories from their own lives, by which they felt compelled to prove God-knows-what. Several soldiers were also there. They acted as though they understood nothing; but, as always, they had their doubts about something (or more accurately, everything) and kept shaking their heads suspiciously. [. . .]

A lady complained hurriedly that now she didn’t have a piece of bread to her name, even though once she had had a school. She had had to let all her students go because she had nothing to feed them. “Whose life has gotten better with the Bolsheviks?” she asked. “Everyone’s worse off and we, the people, most of all!”

A heavily made-up little bitch interrupted her, breaking in with naive remarks. She started to say that the Germans were about to arrive and that everyone would pay through the nose for what they had done.

“Before the Germans get here, we’ll kill you all,” a worker said coldly and took off. The soldiers nodded in agreement: “If that isn’t true!” they said, and they also left.’

21 February 1918
‘Andrei (my brother Yuly’s servant) is acting more and more insane. It is even horrifying to watch. He has served my brother for almost twenty years, and he has always been simple, kind, reasonable, polite, and devoted to us. Now he’s gone completely crazy. He still does his job carefully, but it is apparent that he’s forcing himself to do so. He cannot look at us and shies away from our conversations. His whole body inwardly shakes from anger; and when he can keep silent no longer, he lets loose with wild nonsense.

For instance, this morning, when we were visiting Yuly, N. N. said, as always, that everything has perished and that Russia was flying into an abyss. Andrei was setting the table for tea. He suddenly began waving his arms, his face aflame: “Yes, yes, Russia’s flying into an abyss, all right! But who’s to blame, who? The bourgeois, that’s who! Just you wait, you’ll see how they’ll be cut to pieces!” ’

5 March 1918
‘I went to Nikolaevsky Station. It was very sunny out, almost too much so, with a light frost. From the hill behind Myasnitsky Gates - I saw a blue-grey haze, clusters of homes, and the golden cupolas of churches. Ah, Moscow! Snow was melting on the square in front of the station. The entire place shone like gold, mirrorlike. I was taken by the massive, powerful sight of carts with boxes on them. Can it really be that all this power, this wealth is coming to an end? There were a great many peasants, soldiers in many kinds of old overcoats, wearing them any old way, and with various types of weapons - one had a saber at his side, another had a rifle, another had a huge revolver in his belt . . . These are now the masters of everything, the heirs of colossal heritage . . .’

Irreversibly into the abyss

’The Germans play their game cleverly: treason on all sides. Why is it that in no other people drawn into the war is there so much treason as among the Russians? [. . .] The Germans have been able to take good advantage of this characteristic of the “Russian swine.’’ Revolutionary Russia faces the task of either changing its ways or flying irreversibly into the abyss!’ This is from a ‘remarkable’ diary left by Iurii Vladimirovich Got’e, a Russian intellectual and historian, born 150 years ago today.’ 

Got’e was born in Moscow on 30 June 1873 (new style). His father was an upmarket bookseller whose grandfather had founded the family bookshop in 1799, and Got’e was the first eldest son not to take over the business. Instead, he chose to go to Moscow University and pursue a scholarly career in history and philology. Following graduation, he undertook a year of military service, then he taught in schools and from 1903 at the university. In parallel, he worked first for the Archive of the Ministry of Justice before being employed in the library at Rumiantsev Museum, eventually becoming head librarian.

In 1913, Got’e published his doctoral dissertation on the history of local administration. Two years later, he was appointed professor at Moscow University. Over time, he also spent several years teaching at the Geodesic Institute and at the municipal Shaniavski University. From 1919, he switched to teach archaeology, and he participated in numerous excavations in Eastern Europe. His lectures on the region’s pre-history were published in 1925 and 1930. Between 1934 and 1941, he was associated with the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History. Between 1898 and 1930 he was first academic secretary and then assistant director of the Lenin All-Union Library. He died in 1943. There is very little further information about his life freely available online, but see The Free Encylclopedia.

However Got’e did leave behind a set of diaries kept through five years (1917-1922) of revolution, civil war, family tragedy, hunger, and progressively deteriorating living conditions. These were translated and edited by Terence Emmons for publication by Princetown University Press in 1988 as Time of Troubles: The Diary of Iurii Vladimirovich Got’e - see Amazon or Googlebooks to preview a few pages. According to Emmons, Got’e wrote the diary entries on a stool in the doorway of the room in communal quarters where he and his family took refuge after their own apartment had been sequestered in 1919.’ Toward the end, Emmons continues, ‘the entries become noticeably less frequent, mainly because by this time Got’e was afraid to keep the diary at home, but also because of his exhaustion, which was no doubt mingled with awareness that the new regime, having survived the Civil War, the Polish war, and the internal rebellions of 1921, was there to stay: the great uncertainty about the immediate future of the country that had sustained the chronicle for nearly five years had begun to fade.’ 

According to the publisher: ‘Among the few diaries available from inside early Soviet Russia none approaches Iurii V. Got’e’s in sustained length of coverage and depth of vivid detail. Got’e was a member of the Moscow intellectual elite - a complex and unusually observant man, who was a professor at Moscow University and one of the most prominent historians of Russia at the time the revolution broke out. Beginning his first entry with the words Finis Russiae, he describes his life in revolution-torn Moscow from July 8, 1917 through July 23, 1922 - nearly the entire period of the Russian Revolution and Civil War up to the advent of the New Economic Policy. 

This remarkable chronicle, published here for the first time, describes the hardships undergone by Got’e’s family and friends and the gradual takeover of the academic and professional sectors of Russia by the new regime. Got’e was in his mid-forties when he wrote the diary. At first he felt that Bolshevism meant complete doom for Russia, but eventually his ardent patriotism led him to accept the Bolsheviks’ role in preserving the integrity of the Russian state. The diary was discovered in 1982 in the Hoover Institution Archives, in the papers of Frank Golder, to whom Got’e himself had entrusted it in 1922.’

Here are several extracts.

17 July 1917
‘The newspapers are a little better. The hope has been kindled since July 15 that at the cost of yielding all of Galicia and complication of the already disgusting Ukrainian question (since, after all, the whole of the Ukraine lying beyond our borders is again in the power of the Germans), at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, the idiots will get smarter. Kerenskii’s efforts to create a genuine coalition government, with the exception of the adventurist Chernov and similar adventurists, ideologue-fools, and maybe charlatans, deserves every sympathy, but isn’t it already too late? Haven’t they been screaming and yelling and confusing the unfortunate Russian - stupid, ignorant, and unprepared for any kind of Rospublic (as Ivan Pavlov from Pochep says) - for too long? The Germans play their game cleverly: treason on all sides. Why is it that in no other people drawn into the war is there so much treason as among the Russians? (1) From ignorance; (2) from the complete absence of a feeling of solidarity and fatherland; (3) from the fact that the leftist ideologues have been courting the minority nationalities for a good hundred years now; (4) from the benighted and anticultural deceitfulness that was remarked already by the foreigners’ narratives of the seventeenth century. The Germans have been able to take good advantage of this characteristic of the “Russian swine.’’ Revolutionary Russia faces the task of either changing its ways or flying irreversibly into the abyss!’

18 July 1917
‘[My] mind turns always to the same (subject). A quiet day without mail. A feeling of complete indifference on the one hand; (on the other] a feeling of regret that a people that could have made something of itself is committing suicide. What will we be - Muscovy, China, or Turkey? Will we have the energy to get on our feet? Although Kerenskii evoked the heavy hammer in the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, we may be only the glass that splinters. In any case, of all the combatant peoples, we have turned out to be the weakest in nerve, and thus Hindenburg’s thought is true - those with strong nerves will win. So everybody but us will win and logically should make peace at our expense: we will answer for all, and especially for our own stupidity, ignorance, and dishonesty. How often we all think: it’s good to no longer be tied to mama’s apron strings! In any case we are not a match for the Germans: they are unquestionably higher than we are in every respect, and most of all in personal endurance and courage; one can hate them, but it is impossible not to respect them.’

15 January 1918
‘A day without newspapers and with a small quantity of rumors; an extremely oppressive frame of mind, all the same. I saw V. F. Kokoshkin; that ebullient man is completely downtrodden and dispirited, and, in truth, he has cause to be. I His impressions from Petrograd: there everyone is even more dispirited than here. The blacks, led by A. A. Vyrubova, are playing some kind of role, but what kind is not clear to him. I have received information in the last few days from other sources as well that these forces are doing something. But to what degree are all these forces, those and others, organized? Isn’t it simpler to think that everything is happening spontaneously, without plan and with a complete absence of any kind of organization, like everything in Russia?’

20 July 1918
‘At the post office I read one of the bolshevik Pravdas - it seems that all is well in the West; if the Kadets are not adopting a German orientation, they are at least gravitating toward an understanding with them; the Czechoslovaks are squeezing the bolsheviks in various places. Everything else remains unchanged. A letter from Malfi - it seems they are leaving for France today. The good and gentle ideologue - but we will still do something. Work in the meadow all day; we all get dog-tired.’

8 April 1919
‘They have taken Odessa, probably because no one wanted to defend it. All the same, the policy of the Allies seems to me completely incomprehensible; now they start something, now they give it up. In regard to the Russian south, however, I do not see things as hopeless. Yesterday I had to undertake a journey to Iaroslavl’ station and to Mashkov Pereulok, whence I brought home twenty-three pounds of bread, four and one-half pounds of salt, and eighteen and one-half pounds of rye; I had an Alpine sack on my back, and two other sacks in my hands; thus the professor strolls around Moscow. The university question is progressively turning into a big mush. The bolsheviks, that is, Pokrovski! and co., have eliminated both of our history departments and replaced them with some kind of fantastic ones; some kind of further meeting is being proposed, but it all comes down to the fact that whatever straightforward appointment they may think up is better than the fiction of cooperation that was offered earlier. Something completely unimaginable is occurring on the streets of Moscow - one great puddle, which is traversed only by those who absolutely must go out.’

Vladimir Ivanovich in Hollywood

‘We had a tour of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio. It is a huge institution, located on fourteen acres of land. Everything here is large scale [. . .] We were shown the stores, set installations of entire streets and even towns, a huge set with a pool into which a submarine dives (this has been prepared for the new production of The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne), fragments of different shootings (for instance, the scene where a huge live boa constrictor is winding around the body of a half naked girl).’ This is from a diary kept when the influential Russian theatre director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko visited Hollywood. Nemirovich-Danchenko - who died 80 years ago today - was a co-founder of the famous Moscow Art Theatre.

Nemirovich-Danchenko was born in 1858 into a Russian noble family of mixed Ukrainian-Armenian descent in western Georgia. His father was an officer in the Imperial Russian army. He was educated in Tbilisi, where he was already keen on drama, and then at Moscow State University. He left his studies to work in the theatre, first as a theatre critic, then as a playwright - his first play, Dog-rose, was staged in 1881 - and then also as a teacher. By 1891, he was installed as a teacher at the Moscow Philharmonic Society, where he trained many future famous actors. He espoused new ideas such as the need for longer rehearsals and less rigid acting styles.

In 1898, Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski (later to be renowned for his Method Acting) and Nemirovich-Danchenko founded the Moscow Art Theatre. This was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas that were the main form of theatre in Russia at the time. Its first season featured plays by Ibsen, Aleksey Tolstoy and Shakespeare, but it was not until it staged several of Chekhov’s plays that the theatre became famous. Chekhov had envisioned that fellow playwright and friend Maxim Gorki would succeed him as the theatre’s leading dramatist but this was not to be. The theatre went into decline, until that is it took on international tours. With tensions growing between the two co-founders, Nemirovich-Danchenko set up, in 1919, a musical theatre studio branch. This was reformed into the Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre in 1926.

In 1943 Nemirovich-Danchenko established the Moscow Art Theatre School, which is still extant. He was awarded the State Prize of the USSR in 1942 and 1943, the Order of Lenin, and the Order of the Banner of Red Labor. He died in Moscow on 25 April 1943. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, IMDB, and Moscow Art Theatre. 

Nemirovich-Danchenko did not leave behind any diaries as far as I know, or certainly none that have been translated into English. However, a close associate of his, Sergei Bertensson who joined the Moscow Art Theatre in 1918, did keep a diary during a trip, taken with Nemirovich-Danchenko, to the United States in the 1920s. This was translated by Anna Shoulgat into English, edited by Paul Fryer, and published by the Scarecrow Press in 2004 as In Hollywood with Nemirovich-Danchenko, 1926-1927: The Memoirs of Sergei Bertensson. A few pages can be previewed at Googlebooks and Amazon.

According to the publisher: ‘Sergei Bertensson’s diary of his trip to Hollywood with Russian theatre great Nemirovich-Danchenko is a unique record of an extraordinary and under-documented chapter in film and theatre history. For a year Bertensson followed his employer as he met with directors, producers, and stars, forever discussing projects that would never be realized. Some of the leading figures in Hollywood history appear in this record, including Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and John Barrymore. Bertensson’s observations of life in Hollywood on the eve of the talkies revolution provide us with a compelling snapshot of movie history in the making, seen from the unusual perspective of an outsider.’

Here are a few extracts.

6 October 1926
‘The whole day has been spent on the reading of the script of François Villon; however, we have finished it. Vladimir Ivanovich likes the denouement, but on the whole he has found lots of vague and absurd details.’

10-11 October 1926
‘Vladimir Ivanovich remains keen on The Snowmaiden and fantasizes on this subject a lot.

The scheduled lessons with Marceline Day did not take place. She did not come, having informed us that she had been called for shooting. We went to see how a big mass scene on the square before Notre Dame de Paris was shot at the Universal studio. This involved about 600 people. There was much noise, animation, banal gesticulation, and swinging of hands. Barrymore himself, in the comic makeup mask of “the king of fools,” sitting on the head of a statue of a horse, played with full nerve, was brave, vivid, and graceful like a statue.

When I met Ms. Day there, I suggested that she should continue her lessons with Vladimir Ivanovich on the next day, but she became somehow confused and said that first she had to discuss this with Considine. When Barrymore finished his scene, Vladimir Ivanovich told him about this. The former got awfully angry and called it a shame and a disgrace and promised to sort it out by the evening.’

15 October 1926
‘We had a tour of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio. It is a huge institution, located on fourteen acres of land. Everything here is large scale: the wardrobe - a four-story house, the storage of props and furniture - a four-story building as well, and it has enough furniture to furnish approximately 250 apartments. On a permanent basis they have thirty-four directors, fifteen “stars,” a group of actors (fifty people), 1,200 technical staff members, and 250 administrative people. The work is simultaneously carried out on seven to eight stages. They produce thirty movies a year, among them such big productions as Ben Hur, The Big Parade, and others. 

We were shown the stores, set installations of entire streets and even towns, a huge set with a pool into which a submarine dives (this has been prepared for the new production of The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne), fragments of different shootings (for instance, the scene where a huge live boa constrictor is winding around the body of a half naked girl). During one of the shootings Vladimir Ivanovich was photographed together with the “stars” Alice Terry and Ramon Navarro.

Upon completion of the tour, we were introduced to the director of the studio, Thalberg.

We had to wait for him for about ten minutes. Thalberg is a young man; he is not yet thirty, but his authority is absolutely unlimited, and he receives an enormous salary plus a royalty from the completed movies. He is said to be exceptionally smart and good at business. We stayed with him for just a few minutes and left with a strong impression that the whole organization was hallmarked with bad taste. As if after visiting the backstage of the Moscow Art Theatre you happen to visit the backstage of a provincial theater. If at Schenck’s studio there is not enough artistic atmosphere, here you do not feel such atmosphere at all. This is just a big and perfectly arranged factory.’ 

24-25 October 1926
‘We continued reading Camilla. We observed how a short love scene between Barrymore and Marceline Day was shot. The usual cliché: on her part - self-admiration and pleasant smiles; on his part - banal operatic gestures and movements (and he seems to feel uncertain and awkward inside).

The set is ultrarealistic. A piece of stone castle, a real stone staircase and landing leading to it; below there is a large garden and a pool with a fountain. The garden is a huge hedgerow made up of natural greenery, pruned in the style of Versailles. The entire garden is laid out with pieces of live green turf, and among this grass there are artificial trees with paper rose camellias. Paper roses decorate the branches of the bushes, fringing the castle windows. They persuade that in a photograph the artificial will brilliantly merge with the natural and will give quite a real picture. The arrangement of this garden demanded no less than two days of the most thorough work and lots of money.

Vladimir Ivanovich sent Mary Pickford a bouquet of flowers. He was greatly impressed with her artistry.’

Secondary arias were omitted

‘We obeyed and stood at the walls for forty minutes. Anti-aircraft guns were firing somewhere in the distance. After the lights out, the performance continued, albeit at an accelerated pace: secondary arias and duets were omitted . . .’. This is the celebrated Russian poet Vera Inber - who died 50 years ago today - writing in her diary about an air raid during a visit to the opera. It was the early days of Germany’s siege of Leningrad, an offensive that would last for 872 days and take the lives of 1.5 million people. Inber’s diary of those desperate times was subsequently published, and later translated for publication in English.

Vera Moiseyevna Shpenzer was born in Odessa in 1890. Her father (a cousin to Leon Trotsky) ran a scientific publishing house, and her mother was a teacher of Russian. She briefly attended classes in history and philology. Her first poems were published in 1910 in local newspapers. Until 1914, she lived, together with her husband Nathan Inber, in Paris (where she paid for her first collection of poems to be printed), Switzerland and then Moscow. She worked as a journalist and foreign correspondent, traveling across the country and sometimes living abroad. In her literary writing, she associated with the constructivist movement. 

Through the 1920s and 1930s, her writing focused on Moscow, the Revolution, and Vladimir Lenin. She wrote short stories - depicting the clash between old and new Soviet life - and for the theatre. During the Second World War, she joined the Communist Party and began producing patriotic works. In 1941, she moved with her second husband, Ilya Davydovich Strashun, to Leningrad, where Strashun had been appointed director of a medical institute. Her poem Pulkovo Meridian, which details daily life in Leningrad during the siege, won a Stalin Prize in 1946. After the war, she continued to live in Leningrad. She died on 11 November 1972. A little further information is available from Wikipedia, The New York Times, Encyclopedia.com, and the Jewish Virtual Library.

Inber kept a diary during the siege of Leningrad; this was published in 1945. Some time later, in 1971, it was translated into English by Serge M. Wolff and Rachel Grieve for publication by Hutchinson in 1971 as Leningrad Diary. I cannot find much about this online, though Carol Harrison uploaded the following review for Good Reads:

‘A remarkable diary, describing the siege of Leningrad during World War II. The author, an eminent Russian poet, tells the daily struggles and tragedies, from the extreme food and water shortages to the relentless shelling, from the sudden terrible deaths to the persistence of concerts and lectures even when going across the street was a risk to life (but so was staying at home). At the end of the book, although the war is still going on, Leningrad is beginning to rebuild, and there is already a museum commemorating the long siege. Trees are being replanted, and the botanical gardens are planning new trips to re-gather plants from around the world. 90% of their collection died from the cold during the siege, and the loss of tadpoles and frogs also meant the loss of some plants dependent on them. The overall message of the book is summed up by a fifteen-year-old boy who is mortally injured: “a waste”. War is always a waste of lives and of nature and of beautiful, purposeful buildings.’

And I found a substantial article about Inber and her poetry in English on a Russian website (with trigger-happy adverts!) which also had a few extracts from her diary.

26 August 1941
‘Our apartment on Pesochnaya, on the fifth floor, is high, light, half-empty. Only bookshelves and plates on the walls are plentiful. Unfading Elizabethan and Catherine’s roses, nicholas, blue and gold ornament. Gray-white faience. A fragile economy. Where with him now ?! Bedroom windows and balcony overlook the Botanical Garden. Although it is still hot, some trees are already preparing for autumn: they have dressed up in all gold and scarlet. And what else will happen in September! From the balcony one can clearly see a huge palm greenhouse, all of glass. There are few people in the garden. I haven’t been there yet. Let's go on Sunday . . .’

9 September 1941
‘In the afternoon, as usual, there were several alarms, but we nevertheless decided to go to the Musical Comedy, to the “Bat”. . . In the intermission between the first and second acts, another alarm began. The administrator came out into the foyer and, in the same tone as he probably announced the replacement of the performer due to illness, he said clearly: “I ask the citizens to get as close to the walls as possible, since there (he pointed to the huge span of the ceiling) there are no ceilings here”. We obeyed and stood at the walls for forty minutes. Anti-aircraft guns were firing somewhere in the distance. After the lights out, the performance continued, albeit at an accelerated pace: secondary arias and duets were omitted . . . As the car rounded the square, we suddenly saw black swirling mountains of smoke, illuminated from below by flames. All this piled up in the sky, swelled, let out terrible curls and spurs. Kovrov (the driver) turned and said in a dull voice: “The German threw bombs and set fire to the food depots.” . . . The houses stood on the balcony for a long time, everyone looked at the burning Badayev warehouses. We went to bed at eleven. But at two o’clock in the morning I had to (for the first time in Leningrad) go down to the shelter. . .’

17 September 1941
‘Our room is very small: a desk by the window, two iron beds, a bookcase, an armchair and two chairs. To wash, you have to bring in a stool and a basin. On the walls are portraits of scientists. There is a round iron stove in the room. Outside the window are mighty poplars. We have convinced ourselves that they will protect us from the fragments. And the room itself is well located. In the depths of the letter “P”, between the wings of the house . . .’

12 February 1942
‘The view of the city is terrible. Met six or seven dead on a sled. (In “The Lay of Igor’s Campaign” there is a “mortal sleigh.” ice, drinking water. An early, early premonition of spring.

5 August 1942
‘In general, I have a feeling that only while I am working, nothing bad can happen to me.’

See also Only Tanya is left

I will become a fighter

‘I want to devote my life to science, and I will, but if necessary, I will forget astronomy for a long time and I will become a fighter.’ This from the diary of a young Russian woman, Yevgeniya Rudneva, born a century ago today. She was studying astronomy at Moscow University but heeded a call by Stalin’s government to train as a military aviation navigator. She flew over 600 bombing raids and, tragically, died aged but 23.

Rudneva was born on 24 December 1920 in Berdyansk, a Black Sea port in southeast Ukraine. (Although most sources, including the Russian-language Wikipedia, cite this as her birthday, the English-language Wikipedia cites it as 24 May 1921). Her mother was Jewish but her father was Russian Orthodox. She went to secondary school in Moscow, and then studied astronomy in the faculty of mechanics and mathematics at Moscow State University. 

Exhibition of intolerance

‘A Menshevik deputy ascended the rostrum and attempted to refute the charges brought against his party, but the other Soviet members interrupted and hissed so violently he could not proceed. Communist speakers followed, in essence repeating the words of Kamenev. The exhibition of intolerance, so unworthy of a revolutionary assembly, depressed me.’ This is from a memoir by Alexander Berkman, a Russian anarchist born 150 years ago today. After living in America for 20 years, more than half of which were spent in prison, he returned to his home country - only to be severely disappointed in the revolutionary government of Lenin and Trotsky. His memoir was published as a ‘diary’, but at least one expert believes he rewrote parts of the diary for publication.    

Berkman was born on 21 November 1870, the son of a Jewish businessman, in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire. The family was prosperous enough to be allowed to move, despite the usual restrictions for Jewish people, to St. Petersburg where young Berkman received a privileged education reserved for the city’s elite. However, growing radicalism among the workers led to a wave of violence and the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Soon after, his father died, the business had to be sold, and the family lost their right to live in the capital. The family moved to Kovno, but there Berkman increasingly turned to revolutionary literature (though it was banned by the new Tsar). After his mother died in 1887, he emigrated to the United States and settled in New York City.

Berkman quickly involved himself in radical political communities, joining a fight to free the men convicted of the Haymarket Bombing. He came under the influence of Johann Most, the best known anarchist in the US, and became a type setter for Most’s newspaper. He met Emma Goldman, a young Russian immigrant, on her first day in New York City; the two formed a relationship and lived together - indeed they remained close friends for the rest of Berkman’s life. In 1892, Berkman and Goldman relocated to to Worcester, Massachusetts, where they made a living providing lunches for local workers. Later the same year, Berkman attempted to kill Henry Clay Frick, a steel industry executive who had ordered an attack on striking workers, some of whom died. Berkman was convicted of murder, and served 14 years at the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania in Allegheny City.

In 1906, Berkman was released. By the following year, he had become editor of Goldman’s magazine Mother Earth, which would soon grow into the country’s leading anarchist publication. Together, Berkman and Goldman set up the Ferrer Centre in 1910, a free school and community centre for adults. In 1912, Berkman published his Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist. With the outbreak of WWI, Berkman and Goldman focused their activities first on keeping the US out of the war, and then on opposing conscription. They soon contravened the newly minted Espionage Act, and were both sent to prison for two years. When released, in 1919, they were deported to the Soviet Union (along with many others). On arrival, they toured Russia collecting material for the Museum of the Revolution in Petrograd.

However Berkman and Goldman found Lenin and Trotsky were strongly opposed to anarchism. When they ordered a military response to a worker uprising in the port of Kronstadt - again, as with the steel workers in the US - there were many fatalities. Severely disappointed with Russia, Berkman left, settling first in Berlin where he wrote The Bolshevik Myth and helped with the publishing of Goldman’s My Two Years in Russia. Subsequently, Berkman moved to France, eking out a living as a translator and editor. He also wrote his last book Now and After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism. In the 1930s, Berkman’s health began to deteriorate. After two unsuccessful operations, he decided to end his life. He died in June 1936 as a consequence of a botched attempt to shoot himself. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Spartacus Educational, PBS or the Anarchy Archives.

Two of Berkman’s three books were sourced from, or written like, diaries. Wikipedia says of Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1912) that ‘it reads like a diary’ though, in fact, it was written after Berkman’s release from prison, and contains no dated extracts. The Bolshevik Myth (Diary 1920-1922) was published by Boni and Liveright in 1925 - freely available at Internet Archive and The Anarchist Library. Although some parts, especially at the beginning during Berkman’s sea voyage back to Europe, read like a diary and have dated entries, the bulk of the narrative does not, and flows more like a memoir. Moreover, it appears that in preparing the book Berkman re-wrote his own diary entries. (Wikipedia refers to Nicolas Walter who researched Berkman’s papers at the International Institute of Social History and found that the diary format was, basically, a literary device.)

Here is part of Berkman’s preface to The Bolshevik Myth: ‘The present work is compiled from the Diary which I kept during my two years’ stay in Russia. It is the chronicle of an intense experience, of impressions and observations noted down day by day, in different parts of the country, among various walks of life. Most of the names are deleted, for the obvious reason of protecting the persons in question.

So far as I know it is the only journal kept in Russia during those momentous years (1920-1922). It was a rather difficult task, as those familiar with Russian conditions will understand. But long practice in such matters - keeping memoranda even in prison - enabled me to preserve my Diary through many vicissitudes and searches, and get it safely out of the country. Its Odyssey was adventurous and eventful. After having journeyed through Russia for two years, the Diary succeeded in crossing the border, only to be lost before it could join me. There followed an anxious hunt through several European lands, and when hope of locating my notebooks was almost given up, they were discovered in the attic of a very much frightened old lady in Germany. But that is another story.

Sufficient that the manuscript was finally found and can now be presented to the public in the present volume. If it will aid in visualizing the inner life of the Revolution during the period described, if it will bring the reader closer to the Russian people and their great martyrdom, the mission of my Diary will be accomplished and my efforts well repaid.’

Here are several dated extracts from the book.

17 January 1920
‘Landed, 2 P. M. Sent radios to Tchicherin (Moscow) and Shatov (Petrograd) notifying them of the arrival of the first group of political deportees from America.

We are to travel in sealed cars through Finland to the Russian border. The Captain of the Buford allowed us three days’ rations for the journey.

The leave-taking of the crew and soldiers touched me deeply. Many of them have become attached to us, and they have “treated us white,” to use their own expression. They made us promise to write them from Russia.’

18 January 1920
‘Crossing snow-clad country. Cars cold, unheated. The compartments are locked, with Finnish guards on every platform. Even within are the White soldiers, at every door. Silent, forbidding looking. They refuse to enter into conversation.

2 P. M. - In Viborg. We are practically without food. The Finnish soldiers have stolen most of the products given us by the Buford.

Through our car windows we noticed a Finnish worker standing on the platform and surreptitiously signaling us with a miniature red flag. We waved recognition. Half an hour later the doors of our car were unlocked, and the workman entered to “fix the lights,” as he announced. “Fearful reaction here,” he whispered; “White terror against the workers. We need the help of revolutionary Russia.”

Wired again today to Tchicherin and Shatov, urging haste in sending a committee to meet the deportees on the Russian border.’

6 March 1920
‘At the first session of the newly elected Moscow Soviet, Kamenev was in the chair. He reported on the critical food and fuel situation, denounced the Mensheviki and Social Revolutionists as the counter-revolutionary aids of the Allies, and closed by voicing his conviction about the near outbreak of the social revolution abroad.

A Menshevik deputy ascended the rostrum and attempted to refute the charges brought against his party, but the other Soviet members interrupted and hissed so violently he could not proceed. Communist speakers followed, in essence repeating the words of Kamenev. The exhibition of intolerance, so unworthy of a revolutionary assembly, depressed me. I felt that it grossly offended against the spirit and purpose of the august body, the Moscow Soviet, whose work should express the best thought and ideas of its members and crystallize them in effective and wise action.

After the close of the Soviet session began the first anniversary meeting of the Third International, in the Bolshoi Theater. It was attended by practically the same audience, and Kamenev was again Chairman. It was a most significant event to me, this gathering of the proletariat of all countries, in the persons of its delegates, in the capital of the great Revolution. I saw in it the symbol of the coming daybreak. But the entire absence of enthusiasm saddened me. The audience was official and stiff, as if on parade; the proceedings mechanical, lacking all spontaneity. Kamenev, Radek, and other Communists spoke. Radek thundered against the scoundrelism of the world bourgeoisie, vilified the social patriots of all countries, and enlarged upon the coming revolutions. His long and tedious speech tired me.’

21 October 1920
‘A clear, cold day. The first snow of the season on the ground, Moscow presents a familiar sight, and I feel at home after our long absence.

Eagerly I absorb the news at the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. The Twelfth Army has precipitately retreated from Warsaw, but the Poles are not pursuing. It is officially realized now what a serious and costly mistake the campaign was, and how baseless the expectations of a revolution in Poland. It is hoped that a quick peace may be patched up without too great sacrifices on the part of Russia.

Happier is the news from other fronts. Eastern Siberia has been cleared of the last remnants of Kolchak’s army under Ataman Semyonov. In the Crimea Wrangel is almost entirely crushed, not the least share of credit admittedly belonging to Makhno. Far from aiding the counter-revolutionary forces, as had been reported, the povstantsi joined the fight against the White general. This development was the result of a politico-military agreement between the Bolsheviki and Makhno, the main condition of the latter being the immediate liberation of the imprisoned Anarchists and Makhnovtsi, and a guarantee of free speech and press for them in the Ukraina. The telegram sent at the time by Makhno requesting the presence of Emma Goldman and myself at the conferences did not reach us. It was not forwarded by the Foreign Office.

Our anxiety about Henry Alsberg is, relieved: he is now safely in Riga, having been permitted to leave Russia after his forced return from the south. Albert Boni and Pat Quinlan are in the Tcheka, no definite reason for their detention being assigned. Mrs. Harrison, my erstwhile neighbor in the Kharitonensky, is held as a British spy. Nuorteva, Soviet representative in New York, was deported from the States and is now at the head of the British-American bureau in the Foreign Office. Rosenberg, the bad-tempered and ill-mannered confidential secretary of Tchicherin, all-powerful and cordially disliked, is about to leave for the Far East, “on an important mission,” as he informs me. Incidentally, as if by afterthought, he refers to the “funeral tomorrow,” and with a shock I learn of the death of John Reed. The Expedition is to leave this evening for Petrograd, but we decide to postpone our departure in order to pay the last tribute to our dead friend.

A fresh grave along the Kremlin wall, opposite the Red Square, the honored resting place of the revolutionary martyrs. I stand at the brink, supporting Louise Bryant who has entirely abandoned herself to her grief. She had hastened from America to meet Jack after a long separation. Missing him in Petrograd, she proceeded to Moscow only to learn that Reed had been ordered to Baku to the Congress of Eastern Peoples. He had not quite recovered from the effects of his imprisonment in Finland and he was unwilling to undertake the arduous journey. But Zinoviev insisted; it was imperative, he said, to have America represented, and like a good Party soldier Jack obeyed. But his weakened constitution could not withstand the hardships of Russian travel and its fatal infections. Reed was brought back to Moscow critically ill. In spite of the efforts of the best physicians he died on October 16.
The sky is wrapped in gray. Rain and sleet are in the air. Between the speakers’ words the rain strikes Jack’s coffin, punctuating the sentences as if driving nails into the casket. Clear and rounded like the water drops are the official eulogies falling upon the hearing with dull meaninglessness. Louise cowers on the wet ground. With difficulty I persuade her to rise, almost forcing her to her feet. She seems in a daze, oblivious to the tribute of the Party mourners. Bukharin, Reinstein, and representatives of Communist sections of Europe and America praise the advance guard of world revolution, while Louise is desperately clutching at the wooden coffin. Only young Feodosov, who had known and loved Jack and shared quarters with him, sheds a ray of warmth through the icy sleet. Kollontay speaks of the fine manhood and generous soul that was Jack. With painful sincerity she questions herself - did not John Reed succumb to the neglect of true comradeship . . .’

 1 March 1921
‘Many arrests are taking place. Groups of strikers surrounded by Tchekists, on their way to prison, are a common sight. Much indignation in the city. I hear that several unions have been liquidated and their active members turned over to the Tcheka. But proclamations continue to appear. The arbitrary stand of the authorities is having the effect of rousing reactionary tendencies. The situation is growing tense. Calls for the Utchredilka (Constituent Assembly) are being heard. A manifesto is circulating, signed by the “Socialist Workers of the Nevsky District,” openly attacking the Communist régime. “We know who is afraid of the Constituent Assembly,” it declares. “It is they who will no longer be able to rob us. Instead they will have to answer before the representatives of the people for their deceit, their thefts, and all their crimes.”

Zinoviev is alarmed; he has wired to Moscow for troops. The local garrison is said to be in sympathy with the strikers. Military from the provinces has been ordered to the city: special Communist regiments have already arrived. Extraordinary martial law has been declared today.’

2 March 1921
‘Most disquieting reports. Large strikes have broken out in Moscow. In the Astoria I heard today that armed conflicts have taken place near the Kremlin and blood has been shed. The Bolsheviki claim the coincidence of events in the two capitals as proof of a counter-revolutionary conspiracy.

It is said that Kronstadt sailors have come to the city to look into the cause of trouble. Impossible to tell fact from fiction. The absence of a public press encourages the wildest rumors. The official papers are discredited.’