I love the masses

‘Evening. Soul-rending melancholy . . . Glory, death, and a prostitute. I left the house exhausted, weakened by unsuccessful work. Nevsky Prospect glowed, moving, rang out, rustling with black skirts, and stirring with the feathers of hats. The sidewalks jumped under my feet, glimmering with the light of lamps in the windows, swinging streetlights, moving, trodden for a thousand nights.’ This is from the early diaries of Nikolay Nikolayevich Punin, a prominent Russian art scholar and writer little known in the West, who was born 130 years ago today.

Punin was born on 28 November 1888 in Helsingfors (now Helsinki), Grand Duchy of Finland, to a Russian army doctor and his wife stationed there. He was schooled in St Petersburg, and studied the history of art at the city’s university from 1907 to 1914. He then worked as an art critic and editor. In 1917, he married Anna Arens and they had one daughter. The following year, he was appointed by Anatoly Lunacharsky (the first Bolshevik Soviet People’s Commissar responsible for Ministry and Education) to head the Petrograd Committee for Education (i.e. Narkompros), and to be the People’s Commissar of the Russian and Hermitage Museums.

At the Russian Museum, Punin co-founded the department of iconography and organised major exhibitions for the next 20 or so years. He believed that modern art criticism should be scientific (even trying to reduce the creative process to a mathematical formula), and was among the most widely read Russian writers on the arts in the 1920s.

During the 1920s, and into the 1930s, Punin lived with the famous Russian poet Anna Akhmatova - they had known each other since before the Revolution. Their home in St Petersburg became a focus of the city’s cultural life; much later the house was turned into a museum dedicated to Akhmatova. When Punin was arrested in the mid-1930s, Akhmatova helped ensure his release by writing to Stalin. Their common-law marriage - but not their friendship - had broken down, for Punin had already begun an affair with a young assistant at the Hermitage, Martha Golubeva, whom he would soon marry.

In 1949, Punin was arrested for the third time (he had also been arrested in 1921) on accusations of ‘anti-Soviet’ activity - having described many of Lenin’s portraits as tasteless. He was sent to the Gulag camp in Vorkuta, northern Russia; and there he died in 1953. There is very little information in English about Punin online, and even his Wikipedia entry is short. However, in 2012 the Dutch publisher Brill brought out an English biography by Natalia Murray, The Unsung Hero of the Russian Avant-Garde: The Life and Times of Nikolay Punin, which can be previewed at Googlebooks. See also a review of the book at Russian Art + Culture.

Murray opens her introduction with this assessment: ‘Nikolay Punin is not a name widely known in the West. His file has languished in the KGB archives since his death in 1953, and his grave in the Gulag where he died is marked only by a number. Furthermore, his own reputation became submerged under that of his lover, the poet Anna Akhmatova. Proof of this is that the Anna Akhmatova Museum in the House on the Fontanka in St. Petersburg, is in fact in Punin’s old apartment. Yet, during his life, this remarkable individual was one of the most influential figures in the turbulent but exciting arena of post-revolutionary Russian art. The story of modern art in Russia became Punin’s personal fate.’

Punin kept diaries throughout his life, not always religiously but often enough to fill a dozen or so notebooks. Most of these diaries were purchased in the 1970s from Punin’s daughter by the University of Texas (UT) when Sidney Monas, then UT professor of history and Slavic languages was living in Leningrad. In 1999, University of Texas Press published The Diaries of Nikolay Punin 1904-1953 as edited by Monas and the translator Jennifer Greene Krupala. Monas provides a full explanation of how he came to be offered the diaries in his introduction. There is one chapter for each of ten notebooks 1915-1936, as well as a first chapter on ‘Early Materials from the Punin Diaries, 1904-1910’ and a last chapter on ‘Late Materials from the Punin Diaries, 1941-1952’. Some pages can be sampled at Googlebooks and at Amazon. Here are several extracts.

7 September 1916
‘My brother [Leonid] has been killed (1st of Sept.). At dawn on the first he went out with a rear guard of partisans on reconnaissance. Having sent part of the men on a wide sweeping movement behind the German position, he attacked with the rest. They say that a company of Germans suddenly appeared before them, charging at them with bayonets. He quickly ordered a counterattack, but immediately fell, wounded by two bullets. One through the leg, the other through the hip. A machine gunner with his wits about him opened fire on the advancing Germans; he killed them by the dozens and turned the others back. My brother was carried away, but because there was no dressing station or ambulance nearby, and because he did not present himself to have his wounds dressed, he died from loss of blood at 1:30 p.m.’

16 September 1916
‘Germany! - confusion in every heart, memories, alarm, hatred. Germany is damnation, Germany is barbarism, Germany is the enemy. In the chaos, vanity, vaingloriousness of nationalistic sentiments: self-esteem, pride, greed, indeed it is difficult to find peace of soul and clarity, and firmness of thought. Only a madman or a saint can lift his gaze beyond your cruel eyes, oh, masses. When you turn vulgar, it takes great efforts not to rejoice with you, but when you become agitated, only an inhuman force of will or depth of intuition can save one from your nasty eyes. You are agitated and who is safe from you? I am neither madman nor saint, and I am not safe. In the seclusion of my notebook, however, in the cowardice of my silence, pathetic, mute, completely inaudible, I whisper a word in protest against you. I say: Germany is our future, Germany is the only country worthy to exist, Germany has won already or she will win. Germany is the sun of Europe, the golden band on the surface of the ocean, the way of the future. In what political and economic conditions would war not have arisen two years ago? Historically Germany has had only one role in this conflict, the leader of Europe and the revolutionary of Europe’s spiritual order. Germany had matured and realized her maturity, Germany had found a way out of the individualistic morass, of religious weakheartedness, of moral blight. Germany understood before any other country the triumph of the technical world, showed it to Europe, led humanity out of the era of realistic humanism, and opened the era of spiritual technology. Machines and masses, stormy energy, directness and solidity of achievement, an immensity of the expanses of thought, the purity and practicality of this thought, cruelty, anger, temperament, pride, arrogance, organization, socialism (only the socialist leaders are blind: Germany realized socialist ideals before all others, having made them, moreover, viable; people are unequal, and for this very reason there can be a viable form of socialism even under monarchy), and finally, their full justification of animal egoism - these are the qualities in which Germany surpasses Europe, and which Europe will have to study for a long time to come, with varying success. The flight of the German mind is winged, the ideas with which Germany so suddenly provided Europe were so vital that they were immediately recognized by those who weren’t hypocritical, those who knew desire, those who loved life, and who did live. England herself recognized them and realized them with her own extraordinary aplomb, France follows them, Russia strives toward them. To cleanse the world of everything virtuous, soft-hearted, of everything past-oriented and burdensome, to make the world new, to give birth to it again, to save it - Germany was called to this, and Germany accomplished this with exceptional heroism and self-sacrifice. Worthy of immortality, she revealed her soul and bared her heart, and humanity rose up against her will and strength with the hatred and surprise of pitiful mediocrity, not understanding the significance of German organized militarism, or the monarchical socialism of her governing system, or the futurism of her cultural, her spiritual, her moral ideas.’

26 November 1916
‘Evening. Soul-rending melancholy . . . Glory, death, and a prostitute. I left the house exhausted, weakened by unsuccessful work. Nevsky Prospect glowed, moving, rang out, rustling with black skirts, and stirring with the feathers of hats. The sidewalks jumped under my feet, glimmering with the light of lamps in the windows, swinging streetlights, moving, trodden for a thousand nights. Speech, whispers, the touch of hands meeting, the crowd and loneliness. Women in dark coats, beautiful in their exhaustion; women of perfection, adored streetwalkers, stylish libertines, dull, stupid, and shameless; carried along madly, slowly ambling, shuffling in galoshes; and in these faces, the majority of which were hideous, there was, in essence, the single thought of this sex: I am selling myself. The only women brave enough to be sincere!. . . It is precisely for you that I would give my life, my death, my glory . . .’

24 February 1917
‘The mood is extremely tense. It is difficult to do my own work. On Nevsky from time to time crowds gather, Cossacks are riding. The Duma is procrastinating. The failure of the Ministry of Health doesn’t correspond to the tension of the day. By evening rumors of strikes spread through the whole city; the running of the trams was disrupted. People are stocking up on kerosene, candles, water. There really is very little bread; there are lines at the stores; some women cry out from the pain of not receiving any bread.’

13 August 1917
‘How I hate England. I hate it with an animal hatred.’

15 August 1917
‘If I lived out my life, without having aroused a feeling of compassion in any of the people around me, I would think I had lived it worthily.

I love the masses because they don’t evoke in me a feeling of compassion, even when they perish.

To hell with individualistic and personal feelings, I want to live only as a collective.’

Diaries and literary biography

Until now there has been no significant analysis of the use of diaries in the development of literary biography. A new survey, however, finds important links between the two genres and draws attention to several key features: how diary material has been more fundamental for major developments in literary biography than is generally acknowledged; how published diaries flourished while biography languished in the nineteenth century; and how some biographers - even of the most famous diarists - have relegated their subject’s diaries to little more than a resource to tap into when convenient, while others perceive the persona of the diarist as crucial to a writer’s ‘life.’

These are the main conclusions of one chapter in Wiley-Blackwell’s important new work published today: A Companion to Literary Biography. The book contains 33 essays, written mostly by academic scholars, and an introduction by the editor Richard Bradford, an esteemed literary biographer and noted expert in the field. According to the publisher: ‘The Companion brings a new perspective on how literary biography enables the reader to deal with the relationship between the writer and their work. Literary biography is the most popular form of writing about writing, yet it has been largely neglected in the academic community. This volume bridges the gap between literary biography as a popular genre and its relevance for the academic study of literature.’ Some pages are available to preview at Googlebooks, and the book can be purchased (for £120!) from Amazon.

I, myself, contributed Chapter 10 - The Role of Diaries in the Development of Literary Biography. Here are the conclusions to that chapter (much of which can be read, at the time of writing, in the e-book version available at Googlebooks).

‘The history of literary biography has been much studied and written about, but not from the standpoint of how it might have been affected and influenced by diaries and diarists. Here, I have tried to redress that imbalance by touching, albeit lightly, on some features in both genres, features that show, among other things, how significant changes in the development of biography may well have been driven or fueled by diary writers. It is an impossible leap to see the origins of literary biography in Japan 1,000 years ago (since they were not published in English until the twentieth century), but, on the other hand, it should not be ignored that so long ago there was an artistic culture in which life writing - diaries, biographies, travel journals - not only existed but reached heights of literary excellence still much admired today.

Some 500 years later comes the first evidence in England of individuals, from various different strata in society, recording their lives in diary form - biographical writing. For the Boy King, Edward VI, inspired by his tutor, Cheke, to give more significance to his reflections by writing them down, we have a document of immense historical importance, but one that gives us, at the very least, a feeling of the boy’s life. For Henslowe, his simple account notes are an invaluable first-hand source about the literary world in which he and Shakespeare worked. Most intriguing of all is Anne Clifford, whose diary is one of the very first to document feelings and thoughts, as well as a remarkable story that resonated strongly with one of the twentieth century’s literary figures, Vita Sackville-West. 

Pepys and Evelyn were diarists of the highest order, but in very different ways, not least because their diary habit emerged long before such feats of life writing were commonplace. And it is worth emphasizing that their diaries remained hidden, unpublished until the early part of the nineteenth century. Modern biographers of Pepys, notably Tomalin, have rightfully placed his diary center stage in their ‘life’; but the same cannot be said of Evelyn, for his most recent biographer, Darley, has ignored the diaries as a literary work - this despite Evelyn having kept his diary for 80 years. Other modern biographers have also been dismissive of the persona of the diarist, or diaries as a work to be discussed in relation to a subject’s life - Sutherland does much the same with Scott, O’Keeffe with Haydon, and Briggs with Woolf.

Many, if not most of those, who study the history of English literature agree that Johnson and Boswell can be found at the well-spring of literary biography, the former for his Lives of the Poets, and the latter for his biography of the former. It is clear that around Johnson, and partly because of him, there was a culture of keeping a diary, one that infected not only Boswell, but Fanny Burney and Hester Thrale. And out of this cauldron of life-writing activity came Boswell’s great biography, and another of Johnson by Thrale. It is well understood today that Boswell’s Life of Johnson was heavily dependent on his diaries, but it is my contention that his pivotal place in the development of literary biography came about largely because of his diaries, because he was a diarist. All four writers remain of much interest to modern biographers, their diaries (only travel diaries in Johnson’s case) providing plenty of material to interpret and reinterpret. 

Forward in time from Boswell come two important literary biographies, Moore’s life of Byron and Lockhart’s impressive work on Scott. Both these, in fact, were derived in part from much admired diaries. Indeed, it was Byron’s youthful travel diaries that inspired a middle-aged Scott to begin a journal that would be judged as one of his greatest works. Byron was not a diary keeper by nature, nor were others in the Romantic circle. Shelley tried, but it was his wife, Mary, who kept their joint journal up to date and maintained it beyond her husband’s death, much to the interest of modern biographers. And Dorothy Wordsworth’s diary, a plum source for her husband’s biographers, has over time come to be highly regarded and has raised her own status to that of a literary figure.

While literary biography is considered to have been stagnating for most of the nineteenth century, it was a boom period for diaries - everyone was at it, and many producing works of literary and historical excellence. In Britain, there were writers as different as George Elliot, Lewis Carroll, and Beatrix Potter, whose diaries would shed much light on their lives and their writing; and there were those from the theater world, such as the actress Fanny Kemble (whose later diaries were a bold voice against slavery in the United States). The same pattern was developing overseas. In the United States, there were writers like Emerson, who left behind voluminous diaries, as well as Louisa Alcott, providing unparalleled biographical insights. The author Stendhal, the painter Delacroix, and the Goncourt brothers were all producing diaries that would become French classics of the genre; and in Russia diary writing was becoming a way of life for all the Tolstoys.

With so many writers monitoring their lives by this time, it was inevitable that some would wish to descend further into the depths of their minds and consciousness, looking for explanations of their own behavior and actions, to understand their relationships with other people and the world around, or because they were simply curious to record what they found. For this chapter, I have chosen the very different painters, Benjamin Haydon and Marie Bashkirtseff, the English don Arthur Benson, and the Swiss philosopher Henri-Frédéric Amiel to demonstrate how diarists were beginning to exploring their inner selves, and thus leave behind more enlightening information than biographers had generally had access to beforehand. And by the end of the nineteenth century, two writers - Alice James and W.N.P. Barbellion - stand out for the hyper-consciousness and care with which they wrote their diaries, aware of public interest in the inner life, and aiming for literary success.

If the genre of literary biography had been stagnating for much of the nineteenth century, it was about to explode with ideas - first with Lytton Strachey, then with Virginia Woolf. My aim has been to show that wherever one looks in the genre’s history, there are diaries and diarists, and this is no less true of its reinvention with Strachey and Woolf. My main argument is that by the time of this literary revolution there was a plentiful supply of new, fresh, and invigorating diary material not only feeding into what information was available to biographers but challenging them to find new ways of writing the ‘life.’ It is interesting - I claim no more - that Strachey chose four subjects, for his Eminent Victorians, all of whom were diarists, but diarists with this newly widespread predilection for self examination. Interesting, too, how steeped Woolf was in the diary genre. She was extremely well-read in other people’s diaries, and was reading the newly published diaries of Anne Clifford, edited by her friend Vita Sackville-West, while writing Orlando, a fictional biography of Sackville-West. This turned out to be her most innovative contribution to literary biography. She was also a brilliant diarist herself, and almost every one of her biographers acknowledges how central diary writing was to all her other writing. Thus, it also my contention that the very act of writing a diary has been instrumental in allowing writers to break through into new biography forms, as with Boswell, but so too with Woolf.’

Refuge in numbers

‘As for me the mind comes ahead always and everywhere. And the worldly wisdom, known from books, is saying that mind and love can scarcely be reconciled. That is what makes me fear sometimes that Olia probably will not be happy with me. As for me, I shall probably always take refuge in Mathematics.’ This is taken from the diaries of Georgy Feodosevich Voronoy (or Voronoi), a Russian mathematician of Ukrainian descent born 150 years ago today.

Voronoy studied at St Petersburg University, where he was a student of Andrey Markov, another celebrated mathemetician. In 1891, he married Olia, and they would have six children (although one died in childbirth). In 1894, he became professor at the University of Warsaw, and in 1897 put forward a doctoral thesis on continuous fractions. He is best known for developing theories on the so-called Voronoi tessellation. He died in November 1908, and in 1918 the Ukraine government released special coins to commemorate the centenary.

Wikipedia has a small amount of information about Voronoy; a little more is available, partly thanks to diaries, in published books freely available online.

The St. Petersburg School of Number Theory by Boris Nikolaevich Delone and Robert G. Burns, first published in Russian in 1947 (the English translation is viewable on Googlebooks) contains a brief biography of Voronoy. The authors say, ‘the depth and importance of [his] spacious works is such that they have had a profound influence on modern number theory. Voronoi was in fact the cofounder, along with Minkowski, of the geometry of numbers’. While still at St Petersburg, he studied a particularly hard maths problem, and wrote in his diary: ‘I myself have lost hope of ever solving this problem’. And in equally self-doubting mode, he wrote: ‘The pure mathematics lectures captivate me more and more. I prefer Professor Sokhotsky’s lectures in the special course on higher algebra to all the others. . . The main thing that concerns me is whether I have enough talent.’

There is one further Voronoy diary entry, from 1904, quoted in The St Petersburg School of Number Theory: ‘I am making great progress with the question under study [indefinite quadratic forms]; however, at the same time my health is becoming worse and worse. Yesterday I had for the first time a clear idea of the algorithm in the theory of forms I am investigating, but also suffered a strong attack of bilious colic which prevented me from working in the evening and from sleeping the whole night. I am so afraid that the results of my enduring efforts, obtained with such difficulty, will perish along with me.’

There are more substantial extracts from Voronoy’s diaries to be found in Life and Times of Georgy Voronoi by Halyna Syta and Rien van de Weygaert, a 30-page monograph free to download from ResearchGate. The authors explain that Voronoy’s children saved their father’s manuscripts - including mathematical notebooks and diaries - and that they are now held by the National Library of Ukraine’s institute of manuscripts. Here are a couple of extracts from the monograph that refer to and quote from Voronoy’s diaries, as well as one dated diary extract.

‘It says something about the personality of Georgy Voronoi that in these student years he confided his doubts to his diary. Fortunately, this diary has been partially preserved. Along with his descriptions of everyday experiences and events, it is a sincere self-confession of a young man. It discloses his character, his inner world, the process of his creative growth and self-consciousness. The author is active and sensitive and cannot remain indifferent to the events around him. He also tries to help when necessary. At times he is hot-tempered, for which he later expresses regret. He states “I am merrily gazing at God’s world and to everything I touch I submit myself with rapture”. Georgy aims “to reach everything by heart, and not just by intellect” and tries to look at himself from the outside. In this, he displays a rather low self-esteem, while also trying to grasp his own feelings and inclinations: “What am I after all? I am fond of playing cards. I do not have any noble pride. That is, if I am mocked I do not get angry and do not quarrel with the offender. I feel my weakness in front of the powerful of this world”.’

‘Recollections about his acquaintance and the development of his relations with Olia Krytska occupy a particular place in the diary. Georgy writes so sincerely about his feelings, with such virtue and temperament - (events are almost ignored, only his feelings are recorded) - that these pages read like a real novel. He determined once and forever for himself that his destiny was in Bohdany, but he concealed his feelings for the time being because he had no financial basis for his own family. His father insisted on this decision. Such a vagueness in relations brought him many sufferings, but he patiently waited for his hour and did not permit any other passion to find the way to his heart. In 1889, on the eve of his departure, Georgy wrote about his last visit to Bohdany:

”Once more I am writing down my last visit to Krytskis... I am mounting the horse, once more saying goodbye to everybody, that is the end to everything which filled my life during the four months and which will cause me to behave stern and cool during the whole stretch of the Petersburg year. Only mathematics as a bright star is shining afore me, in it I trust all my hopes... The experience of the last year has strengthened my endurance, and my creative eagerness, suppressed before, is bursting into action, and I am certain that Petersburg will bring me much that is new in this respect. So goodbye, Olia, goodbye, Zhuravka! Till the new spring I shall cover myself with my armour. And, as if dreaming I shall see this summer, which gave me so much strength and health and those grains of happiness, which I know I shall so often experience when reading my diary in Petersburg, picking them from those talks with Olia, which I wrote down, along with everything which so often made my heart beat.”

31 December 1890
‘True to the old custom, today, on the eve of New Year, I cast a glance at how I have lived through and deeply felt the Old Year. The first thing which I gladly note and which has become a harbinger of my future happiness is: Olia loves me. I know it now for certain! How happy I am! So long I had been silently suffering from doubts, and at last it has been clarified, and I have already become Olia’s fiancé! ...

Yes, now I know well that Olia loves me, but nevertheless lasting doubts and expectations have brought some bitterness. I seem to have become hardened in my permanent solitude. Ever growing passion for Mathematics has developed in me an egotism of no small degree. I am afraid I cannot feel strongly and surrender fully to my feelings.

As for me the mind comes ahead always and everywhere. And the worldly wisdom, known from books, is saying that mind and love can scarcely be reconciled. That is what makes me fear sometimes that Olia probably will not be happy with me. As for me, I shall probably always take refuge in Mathematics.’

This article is a substantially revised version of one first published 10 years ago on 20 November 2008.

The name of Gagarin

‘So ended this anxious, joyful, victorious day. Humankind will never forget the day of April 12, 1961, and the name of Gagarin will forever fit into history and will be one of the most famous.’ This is from the diary of Nikolai Petrovich Kamanin, a Soviet aviator who rose through the country’s ranks eventually to be chosen to run its nascent space programme, which then successfully put the first human being - Yuri Gagarin - into space. Kamanin - born 110 years ago today - kept diaries throughout his service for the Soviet space programme. These were only published for the first time after his death, but they are now freely available online.

Nikolai Petrovich Kamanin was born on 18 October 1908 (though, possibly, 1909 - see Wikipedia) in Melenki, Vladimir Oblast, some 200km east of Moscow. His father, who had joined the Bolsheviks, died when Nikolai was only 11. He joined the Soviet army in 1927 and then transferred to the air force. After training, in 1929, he joined the Lenin Air Regiment. In 1934, using biplanes, he rescued many survivors after a steamship had been crushed by Arctic ice in the Chuckchi Sea. Along with other rescuers, he was made a Hero of the Soviet Union, a newly created honour. During the Second World War, he served in many roles, in Asia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, and was regularly promoted, finally commanding the 5th Attack Air Corps, and concluding with the rank of lieutenant general.

Kamanin continued to command the air corps until 1947, based first in Tiraspol and then in Arad (Romania). After a short while as deputy chief of the USSR Civil Air Fleet, he served as chairman of the DOSAB Central Committee, and from 1951 to 1955 as deputy chairman of the DOSAAF Central Committee for Aviation. From 1956 to 1958 he was in charge of the 73rd Air Army of the Turkestan Military District. In 1958, he was promoted again to deputy chief of the Air Force General Staff for combat training. In 1960, he was commissioned to organise the selection and training of astronauts for space flights, and was directly involved in planning and organising the first manned space flight by Yuri Gagarin. In 1966 he was appointed Assistant Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force for Space, and the following year he was made colonel general. He was sidelined from 1969, after several disastrous years for the Soviet space programme (including Gagarin’s death during a routine fight), and he was discharged from the armed services in 1971. He died in 1982.

From the start of his appointment to the nascent Soviet programme, in 1960, right through until his retirement, Kamanin kept detailed diaries. Though under lock and key until the break-up of the Soviet Union, they were published in 1995. According to Wikipedia, they explain the development of the Soviet manned programme and related internal politics, and how there were four sides to Kaminin’s work: Coordination of design bureaus developing the life support systems for manned spaceflight; Tracking, search and recovery of landed craft; Management of cosmonaut training squads; and Other space launches. The published book is freely available online, at a Russian website, Militera, and individual pages can be translated into English via Google translate. Many thanks to Mark Wade, who runs the Astronautix website, for this information. Wade’s own article on Kaminin’s diaries includes very useful English summaries (by date) of much of the diary’s contents (although he says he mostly omitted any personal content, or entries about non-space related activities).

Here is Wade’s assessment of the diaries: ‘Despite some failings, Kamanin’s diaries are the only accounts we have for many key events and the only contemporary account of the inside workings of the Soviet space programme. They convey marvelously the human vitality of the space race on the Soviet side. The periods spent out on the steppes in Kazakhstan for launches have all the atmosphere of a male-bonding camping trip. They work hard, all hours, but also party hard and spend Sundays on hunting or fishing expeditions. The stories are reminiscent of American accounts of the hard work and sheer pleasure of pioneering space from similar hardship posts - from the swamps of Cape Canaveral to the deserts of New Mexico.’

The foreword to the diaries (as translated by Google) includes this: ‘ “The Space Diaries of General Kamanin” is a historical document that most reliably reflects the development of the national cosmonautics and the complex interrelation of events in the first decade of manned space flights. But documents of this kind are not only of historical value, they are very important from a practical point of view, because without a clear idea of ​​the past it is impossible to comprehend the present, and without an understanding of the present one cannot make predictions for the future.’ And here is Google Translate’s version of one entry - the day Yuri Gagarin was the first human to travel in space.

12 April 1961
‘At 4:50 local time, I, Karpov and Nikitin, stood up as if on cue. At 5:30 we will raise the Jura and Herman. The night went very well, fell asleep about 22 hours. A little starts to dawn, the traffic increases on the road. We arrived from the tenth site, Karpov went to raise the youth.

At 6:00 a meeting of the commission. It was surprisingly simple and short. All the reports boiled down to one phrase: “There are no comments, everything is ready, no questions, you can start.” After the meeting, I signed a flight mission, went to the MIC and looked at how a medical examination and putting on spacesuits was going. Everything went right on schedule. At 8 o’clock I, together with the lead engineer of the ship, took the elevator to the top of the rocket and checked the cipher (145) of the logical lock. The logical lock worked fine. At 8:20 Marshal Moskalenko arrived at the start. We agreed with him about the procedure for landing Gagarin in the ship. The bus with the astronauts should arrive at the launch site at 8:50. All cosmonauts and [?] remain at the bus, before the Gagarin elevator, Korolyov, Rudnev, I and Moskalenko must see off.

It was possible to keep the planned order with difficulty. Coming out of the bus, Yura and his comrades were a little impatient and started hugging and kissing. Instead of wishing a happy journey, some would say goodbye and even cry - they had to force the cosmonaut out of the embraces of the [?] almost by force. At the elevator, I firmly shook Yury’s hand and said: “See you in the Kuybyshev area in a few hours.”

After 10 minutes the suit and connection were checked. At KP, I, Popovic and Korolev kept in touch with the board. For all the preparation for the start there was only one small hitch when closing the N1 hatch. The hatch was closed, but due to the lack of contact, it had to be re-opened and fixed a minor malfunction. All the radio was recorded on tape. Audibility was excellent, Gagarin’s answers are short, clear and clear. The cosmonaut’s well-being, judging by his reports, by his voice and telemetry, was good. A few seconds before the start on the message of the Queen - “Start”, Yura replied: “Let’s go!”

The start was great. Overloads on the launch site did not have a noticeable effect on the astronaut’s voice. The radio connection was good. The astronaut felt fine. At the 150th second of the flight, after resetting the fairing, Jura reported: “Light, see the Earth, clouds, visibility is excellent.” After a few seconds, he reported on the separation of the first stage of the carrier. In 13 minutes after the launch, we already knew that the world’s first manned flight in near-earth orbit began. At the moment of the transition from the start to Kolpashevo there were several unpleasant seconds: the astronaut did not hear us, and we did not hear him. I do not know how I looked at that moment, but Korolev, who was standing next to me, was very worried: when he took the microphone, his hands trembled, his voice broke, his face was twisted and changed beyond recognition. All breathed a sigh of relief when Kolpashevo and Moscow reported on the restoration of communication with the astronaut and the launch of the spacecraft into orbit.

20 minutes after the start, I went with a group of comrades to the airfield. The An-12 took off and headed for Stalingrad (the estimated landing point for this orbit was 110 kilometers south of Stalingrad). Already in the air, we heard the TASS report about the safe landing of an astronaut in the Saratov region, and a few minutes later we were informed by the Air Force’s command post: “Everything is in order, Major Gagarin flies to Kuibyshev.” After this joyful message, everyone (there were ten of us in the plane) began to kiss, dance, and Vasily Vasilyevich Parin took out the cherished bottle of brandy. I advised to drink it when meeting with Yura ...

At the factory airfield in Kuibyshev, we were met by Colonel Chechiyants from the Air Force General Staff and reported on the situation: “Gagarin landed safely 23 kilometers from Saratov and a few minutes later he called Moscow. Later, already from Engels, together with Agaltsov they spoke on “HF” with Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Vershinin and other leaders. ” By this time, a significant crowd had already gathered at the airfield. We arrived: the secretary of the Kuibyshev Regional Party Committee, the chairman of the regional executive committee, the district air force commander and other leaders. The arrival of the authorities strengthened the influx of workers at the airport from the factory. I had to order the commander of the IL-14, on which Gagarin and Agaltsov flew, to taxi to the farthest station. We did not have time to drive up to the aircraft in cars, as here a large crowd formed. The plane’s door opened, and Yura was the first to descend - he was wearing a winter flight helmet and a blue spacesuit. I was worried and worried about all the nine hours that had passed since it landed in a spacecraft prior to this meeting at the Kuibyshev airfield, as if it were my own son. We hugged and kissed. Cameras clicked from all sides, the crowd of people was growing. There was a danger of a big crush, and Yura, although he was smiling, looked very overworked. It was necessary to stop hugging and kissing. I asked Agaltsov and Yura to get into the car and immediately go to the regional committee dacha. Three hours later, Rudnev, Korolev, Keldysh, and other members of the commission flew in from Tura-Tama.

The cottage of the regional committee was located on the high bank of the Volga, from the balcony of the third floor there was a beautiful view of the river. At ten o’clock in the evening everyone gathered at the table. Present were six cosmonauts, members of the State Commission, and heads of the region. Rudnev, Gagarin, Korolev, Murysev, Mrykin made toasts, but drank very little - it was felt that everyone was very tired. At eleven o’clock we went to the bedrooms. So ended this anxious, joyful, victorious day. Humankind will never forget the day of April 12, 1961, and the name of Gagarin will forever fit into history and will be one of the most famous.’

Guilty of murder

‘I was at my post by 8 a.m. Two men have died, one after a trepanning operation, the other when he was being carried to the operating-table. It has been an unhappy day for me, because I have been through a very trying experience. Perhaps, by writing down all the facts clearly, my mind may be eased of some of its guilt. ‘Guilt’ is a strong word to use, but I was told during the afternoon by Ivan Ivanovich, our head dispenser, that I could consider myself “guilty of murder”.’ This is from the ‘compelling’ diary of Florence Farmborough, a young British nurse who worked for the Russian Red Cross during the First World War, and who died 40 years ago today.

Farmborough was born in 1887 in Buckinghamshire, the fourth child of a family of six, and named after Florence Nightingale, a friend of the family. In 1908, she went to Kiev as a child’s companion and teacher. And then, two years later, she moved to Moscow to take another position as English tutor to the daughters of a heart surgeon. During the First World War, she trained as a nurse at a hospital established by Princess Golitsin in Moscow. In early 1915, she joined a Russian mobile medical unit as a surgical nurse. Her unit was usually very close to the action on the Eastern Front, and often confronted daily with hundreds of wounded.

After returning to Britain in 1918, Farmborough was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. In 1926, she moved to Valencia, Spain, where she lectured in English, and then to Salamanca. She was a supporter of General Franco during the Spanish Civil War, and made radio propaganda broadcasts to English speaking-countries. Her book, Life and People of Spain, was published in 1938. She later returned to England and worked for the Women’s Voluntary Service during the Battle of Britain, becoming particularly involved in the rehabilitation of Spanish-speaking Gibraltarians.

Farmborough later spent four years as a government censor in Jamaica, checking correspondence to and from South America. Back in England, she settled at Sompting near Worthing, Sussex, and gave Russian lessons at her home to pupils from the local high school. Later she moved to Newton Abbot. She made a return visit to Russia in 1962, and visited the Holy Land in 1966. In the mid-1970s, she was the subject of a BBC documentary. She was awarded Honorary Life Membership of the British Red Cross. She died on 18 August 1978. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, Lives of the First World War, Working Nurse, Imperial War Museum, and Encyclopedia.com

While working as a nurse with the Russian army Farnborough also acted as a war correspondent for the BBC and The Times, carrying a glass-plate camera, tripod and darkroom essentials from camp to camp; her many photographs are now held by the Imperial War Museum, and are considered of historical importance. She also kept a diary, often written on scraps of paper. However, it was not until the 1970s, when she was already an old woman, that she decided to edit the diary, subsequently published by Constable as Nurse at the Russian Front - A Diary 1914-18. Since then, it has become a source book for those studying the Great War, the realities of war, and women’s roles in war - see here for example. Reviewers at Good Reads rate the book as compelling, heartbreaking, fascinating. Here are several extracts. (I have listed them by their date in the Western calendar, but have also included, in brackets, the date as given in the book, Russian style, i.e. 13 days behind behind the Western calendar.) 

3 June (21 May) 1916
‘I was told that in Hut 131 a sick woman needed attention. At length I found her, a young mother, sick with typhoid, and her baby. We Sisters are doing our level best to instil into the village-folk the urgent need to boil all their drinking-water - an idea which seems unable to take root in the peasant mind. The same old argument is raised: his parents never drank boiled water, why should he? But we persist. They listen attentively, but their minds are quite impervious to the meaning of ‘pollution’ and ‘contamination’.

Before retiring for the night, it was whispered around that a great battle was expected within the next twenty-four hours, but we sceptically went off to sleep, having heard it so often before.’

27 June (14 June) 1916
‘I was told that well over 200 men had passed through our Unit today; I was also told something that almost took my breath away: that some 3,000 men are to come to us during the next few days to be fed, as the Zemski Soyuz has arranged that enormous supplies of food should be stored in the town under our unit’s supervision. This will entail a vast amount of extra work for our Letuchka; luckily, however, the regiments concerned have agreed to send us extra help.

I sat in the operating-room, awaiting further newcomers. I think that I must have slept, for when I opened my eyes, my watch was pointing to midnight, and all around was very quiet. At 6 a.m. more wounded arrived. One of them had a most unusual wound; a bullet had entered his body at the shoulder-blade, gone down his right side and lodged in his thigh. After an early breakfast, we resumed our work. I extracted a bullet from the upper left arm of a young soldier; it was not a difficult extraction, for the tail-end of the bullet was visible, but even after the wound was cleansed and bandaged, he continued to weep and moan: “Sestritsa, bolit! bolit! [Little Sister, it hurts!].” I was washing the face of another young soldier, a face covered with grime, dust and dried blood. “Sestritsa,” my patient said, with an attempt at a smile. “Leave it dirty! I shall not go visiting any more.” At first I thought that he was joking and some light-hearted repartee was on the tip of my tongue; then I saw the ugly gash on his head and I understood what he meant.

One of the stomach patients had deteriorated greatly in the last few hours. The craving for water was on him; it was all that a Brother and I could do to prevent him from throwing himself off his straw mattress. In his delirium he cried out that he and his comrades were drinking from a great river, and that he was drinking, drinking, always drinking.

In the tent which housed the sick, the patients were less restless. One soldier refused to drink because the water given to him had been boiled; he vowed that boiled water always gave him colic. A young Tatar assured me that if only I would allow him to sit up and smoke, in two days’ time he would be up and about again; but as things were, he said that it was Plokhoye delo! Ochen plokhoye delo! [Bad business! Very bad business!].’

30 July (17 July) 1916
‘About 70 wounded came during the night while I was on duty. I have heard that the 103rd Regiment has managed to cross the River Koronez and occupy Dubenko, half of which town had been in its possession for several days past. The 102nd Regiment has gone into reserve for three days after three and a half months in the trenches.

Our next attack is timed for 4 p.m. The guns have been blazing away. Mamasha and I slipped away for a few minutes, climbed a small hill and crouched on its summit among waving corn and wild flowers. From our vantage point, we could see the Front spread before us. Shells were falling, throwing up blackish clouds of earth about our trenches; farther away, our shells were engaged in similar action near the enemy’s defensive ramparts. Shrapnel was exploding in mid-air, leaving puffs of slowly dissolving smoke behind, and scattering bullets and metal particles to right and left. We picked a few flowers and returned to our quarters.

Dusk had scarcely descended when cartload after cartload of wounded made their appearance. Difficulty arose regarding transport; the highways round Barish were under fire and our ambulance-vans in urgent request alongside the Fighting Lines. We placed the men on the straw-strewn earth in the empty sheds, told them to rest awhile and, at the earliest opportunity, they should be driven to the Base. A young Tatar, heavily wounded, was carried to the operating-table. He could speak no Russian and vainly tried to whisper something to us which we could not understand. One of our Tatar drivers was sent for; he stooped low over the prostrate form, but no answer came to his eager questioning. “He’s gone!” said a voice. The weather-beaten face of the older tribesman stiffened with emotion as he walked away. An infantry officer whose thigh-wound had been dressed and bandaged, declared that he could walk without difficulty; he was most anxious to help and assured us that he had taken a first aid course before joining the Army. He was allowed to tend the more lightly wounded and this he did with considerable skill, but insisted on wearing rubber gloves which, he said, gave him greater confidence and grip.’

26 August (13 August) 1916
I was at my post by 8 a.m. Two men have died, one after a trepanning operation, the other when he was being carried to the operating-table. It has been an unhappy day for me, because I have been through a very trying experience. Perhaps, by writing down all the facts clearly, my mind may be eased of some of its guilt. ‘Guilt’ is a strong word to use, but I was told during the afternoon by Ivan Ivanovich, our head dispenser, that I could consider myself “guilty of murder”. It seems strange to write these words, but the whole scene was strange. I was watching over three men who had recently been operated on, but were gradually losing their hold on life. Our surgeons had seen them in the morning, had said that there was nothing more that one could do for them, only “tend them to the end”. One of the three was the stomach case, operated on during the previous night. He had regained consciousness, but found it difficult to speak; he could articulate only one word: Vo da [water]. I would shake my head; tell him gently that he must not drink; when he would be stronger, water would be given to him. I could see that he was dying, but his cries for water were insistent; he was beseeching, imploring; his thirst must have been agonising. Near one of the other men, a mug of water was standing. He had seen it and, raising an arm, pointed towards it. His eyes challenged mine; they were dying eyes, but fiercely alight with the greatness of his thirst. I reasoned with myself: if I give no water, he will die tormented by his great thirst; if I give him water, he will die, but his torment will be lessened. In my weakness and compassion, I reached for the mug; his burning eyes were watching me; they held suspense and gratitude. I put the mug to his lips, but he seized my arm and tilted the mug upwards. The water splashed into his open mouth, sprayed his face and pillow, but he was swallowing it in noisy gulps. When I could free my arm from his grasp, the mug was empty.

I was deeply distressed and knew that I was trembling. I wiped his face dry and he opened his eyes and looked at me; in them, I saw a great thankfulness, an immense relief. But, before I could replace the mug, a strange, gurgling sound came from him, and, out of his mouth, there poured a stream of thick, greenish fluid; it spread over the stretcher-bed and flowed on to the floor. His eyes were closed and . . . he had stopped breathing. I ran to the door; in the yard stood a Brother and Ivan Ivanovich. “Come quickly,” I begged them. They followed me in, but there was nothing that one could do, for he was dead. Ivan Ivanovich seemed to take in the whole picture at a glance. “Have you given him water to drink?” he asked. “Yes,” I nodded. “His thirst was terrible.” “Then you have killed him,” he said, and added: “Quite simply, you have killed him.” “He was dying,” I gasped. “So you thought you would put the finishing touch!” Shrugging his shoulders, he left the room. The Brother called an orderly and together they washed the dead man and carried him to the mortuary-shed.

I remained in the room until one of them returned. I felt cold and lifeless; as though some violent thing had struck me unawares. Only Mamasha was in our room; she was the last person whom I wished to see; she was so practical and undemonstrative, but I felt that I had to tell somebody. She listened patiently. Then she said: “You are very silly to let these things prey on your mind. You were certainly wrong in disobeying orders, but this kind of thing is happening every day in our abnormal world at the Front. As to Ivan Ivanovich, I have always said that the man is a knave or a fool, or both. In the circumstances, and knowing that death was near, I am sure that, had I been in your place, I should have done exactly the same thing.’’ “Mamasha,” I sobbed. And then for the first time in our long acquaintance, Mamasha took me into her arms and I could feel the throbbing of her motherly heart, comforting and consoling. It didn’t hurt half so much after that. I knew that all my life I should have the grievous memory of hastening a soldier’s death through my disobedience; but, at the same time, there would be another less grievous memory: that of a pair of dying eyes looking at me with infinite gratitude. Throughout the evening, the wounded were being brought to us. We buried our many dead as dusk fell, with prayers, music and the silent homage of soldiers who were stationed in the vicinity.’

21 June (8 June) 1917
‘Enemy aeroplanes had been over about 4 a.m. and awakened us; discontented murmurings came from most beds. We took turns in washing, with as little water as possible. Once or twice we had tried to persuade Rupertsov, our tent-boy, to scrounge another bucketful for us. He would screw his face up and shake his head. Smirnov’s tent was next door to the water-cart and woe betide the person who tried to steal more than his share, for Smirnov knew each one’s quota to a spoonful. Our water-cart had to go to Bojikov to be filled, so we had been warned not to be extravagant.’

27 October (14 October) 1917
‘I was still dressing when the father returned. Outside in the street a little group of mourners stood; two were carrying an empty coffin; another was holding a discoloured banner. There was no priest. They took the boy’s body, which we had wrapped in a sheet, and laid it in the coffin. The father came hastily toward me, bowed low and kissed my hand. I do not know whether he saw the tears in my eyes. As they moved away, they began to sing a dirge-like chant.

In the evening, we were told that all the Red Cross Otryads of the Zemski Soyuz would be disbanded, with three exceptions: the 1st, 5th and 10th. So we, the 10th, would, thank God, remain!’

Death of the Romanovs

One hundred years ago today the Russian imperial Romanov family and its attendants, all under house arrest at Ekaterinburg 1,000 km east of Moscow, were were shot, bayoneted and clubbed to death, as ordered by the new ruling Bolshevik party, headed by Vladimir Lenin. Among the murdered were Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Tsaritsa Alexandra and their five children. Both the Tsar and the Tsarina kept diaries - see Hope remains above all for extracts from the Tsar’s (dull) diaries - but to mark this anniversary I have chosen the very last (and also very dull) diary entries penned by the Tsaritsa - Alexandra Feodorovna - as found in The Last Diary of Tsaritsa Alexandra.

Alix Viktoria Helene Luise Beatrix was born in 1872, the sixth child (of seven) born to Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine (part of the German Empire), and his first wife Princess Alice of the UK, the second daughter of Queen Victoria and Albert. Her early life is said to have been carefree and happy, but when six years old she, and other members of the family, fell ill with diphtheria. Her mother and one sister died leaving Alix reserved and withdrawn. She and her siblings grew close to their British cousins, spending holidays with Queen Victoria. The British queen intended Alix to marry her grandson Prince Albert Victor, who was second in line to the British throne, but Alix had fallen in love, years earlier, with Grand Duke Nicholas, heir to the throne of Russia. Despite many obstacles, the two eventually married in 1894, and, on being accepted into the Russian Orthodox Church, Alix took the name Alexandra Feodorovna, and she became the Russian Tsaritsa and Empress.

There is a substantial literature on the Tsar and Tsarina, and much information online, not least at the extensive Alexander Palace Time Machine. See Hope remains above all for further biography links. Wikipedia has an extensive entry on the murder of the Romanov family. It explains how the Bolsheviks revealed the death of Nicholas II but kept secret the other murders, and how it was only in 1979 that the bodies were discovered. It would be another 10 years, in the glasnost period, before the full details of that night - 16-17 July 1918 - were revealed to the West.

After Alexandra’s death, hundreds of letters she wrote to her husband were found at Ekaterinburg. These have been much employed by historians to help explain the unfolding of events prior to the  Russian Revolution. But, like her husband, Alexandra also seems to have kept diaries all her life. With the demise of the Soviet state, several of these, long hidden in the Moscow archives, came to light, including for the years 1887-1892, 1894 and 1916-1918. They are mostly written in English, though her native language was German (and she spoke fluent Russian). Only one of these, however, has been published in English (others have been translated into Russian and/or Dutch - see a discussion at the Alexander Palace Forum ), notably The Last Diary of Tsaritsa Alexandra, as edited by Vladimir A. Zozlov and Vladimir M. Khrustalëv (Yale University Press 1997).

According to Yale University Press: ‘The 1918 Diary takes us into [the Tsarista’s] private world, revealing the care she lavished on her children during this period of revolutionary turmoil, how she felt toward her husband, Tsar Nicholas, and what she imagined about the profound struggle - between past and present, old and new worlds, the sacred and the profane - then occurring over the destiny of Russia. The diary reveals that even in her most intimate reflections, she remained the representative of a great system of belief that had prevailed for hundreds of years in Russia and that she and Nicholas hoped to perpetuate. We see in painful detail the tragic daily confrontation between this system of belief and the reality of the modern world that had, in every sense, broken free of her and Nicholas’s control.’

Robert K. Massie, a US historian and biographer, provides an informative introduction to the Last Diary: ‘Its cryptic, unemotional style stands in sharp contrast to the tumultuous style of her letters. Here she is creating, for herself alone, a simple record of the highlights of each day: the weather and temperature; family illnesses and health; meals; periods and subjects of study; visitors (welcome and unwelcome); books read; games played. Her religious faith is evident. On the diary’s first page, she displays her effort to master the numerical system of Old Church Slavonic (different from everyday Russian, which uses Arabic numerals). Through the diary, she records saint’s days, feast days, and other religious holidays. Every religious service held by the family in Tobolsk and Ekaterinburg is set down. Usually, her feelings about an event break through only in a highly abbreviated form. Nevertheless, despite its style and brevity, the diary is filled with poignancy and drama. Alexandra does not know what is going to happen; the modern reader does. Fleshed out by our knowledge from other sources, this diary gives a clear picture of these grim weeks and tells us much about the character of this much-criticized, reclusive, and melancholy woman.’

The book also contains a short essay by Jonathan Brent (then editorial director at Yale University Press) on the diary itself in which he explains its rather pedantic form, its preoccupation with numbers and the use of coded language. He writes: ‘Alexandra’s diary brings the inexorable, predetermined succession of days, anniversaries, hours, and minutes - numbers following one another seemingly without end - into relation with the daily, unpredictable contingencies of the weather, her children’s temperatures, and the chaotic events of the Revolution. We see the empress presiding over a world within a world, which is given simple form in her daily observations.’ And, a little further on he says: ‘Although Alexandra’s incessant jottings of time, place, weather, holidays, and anniversaries may seem, at first glance, of little or no importance, they are, upon reflection, what give this little book unique significance as a text. The diary records not only the empress’s own day-by-day descent into the maelstrom of revolution and the modern world, but principally her symbolic accommodation of the new and her resistance to the destruction of a traditional order of thought, action, and belief.’

Here are the last seven entries in the Tsarista’s last diary (though I have left out the temperature and time notes that accompany each entry in the published work).

10 July 1918
‘Sunny morning.

Went out in the afternoon with the others, ideal weather; very strong back & leg ache fr. kidneys probably.

2 day the others have no meat & live upon Kharitonov’s Tobolsk remaining meagre provisions.

Took a bath.

bezique. They still find excuses not to bring Vladimir Nikolaevich’

11 July 1918
‘The Ox Command, insisted to see us all at 10, but kept us waiting 20 m. as was breakfasting &c eating cheese

wont permit us to have any more any cream. Workmen turned up outside & began putting up iron railings before our only open window. Always fright of our climbing out no doubt or getting into contact with the sentry. Strong pains continue. Greyish weather.

Brought me for 6 days, but so little only suffices for putting in the soup.

The Bull very rude to Kharitonov.

Remained in bed all day. Lunched only, as they brought the meat so late. Anastasia read to me whilst the others went out. Lovely weather.’

12 July 1918
‘Bright sunshine - in the afternoon then were severel showers 6c short thunderstorms.

The others went out twice, Maria remained with me, I spent the day on my bed & got into it again at 9:30. Lovely evening. Every day one of the girls reads to me Spir. Readings, i.e. Complete Yearly Cycle of Brief Homilies for Each Day of the Year (Grig. Diachenko).

Constantly hear artillery passing, infantry & twice cavalry during the course of this week. Also troops marching with music - twice it seems to have been the Austrian prisoners who are marching against the Chechs (also our former prisoners) who are with the troops coming through Siberia & not far fr. here now. Wounded daily arrive to the town.’

13 July 1918
‘Beautiful morning. I spent the day as yesterday lying on the bed, as back aches when move about.

Others went out twice. Anastasia remained with me in the afternoon. One says Nagorny & Sednyov have been sent out of this government, instead of giving them back to us.

At 6:30 Baby had his first bath since Tobolsk. He managed to get in & out alone, climbs also alone in & out of bed, but can only stand on one foot as yet. 9:45 I went to bed again.

Rained in the night.

Heard three revolver shots in the night.

14 July 1918
‘Beautiful summers morning. Scarcely slept because of back & legs. Had the joy of an obednitsa - the young Priest for the 2nd time.

The others walked - Olga with me. Spend the day on the bed again Tatiana stayed with me in the afternoon.

Spir. Readings, Book of the Prophet Hosea, ch. 4-14, Pr. Joel 1- the end.

tea - tatted all day & laid patiences. Played a little bezique in the eveing, they put my long straw couch in the big room so it was less tiring for me.

Took a bath & went to bed.’

15 July 1918
‘Greyish morning. Later sunshine. Lunched on the couch in the big room, as women came to clean the floors, then lay on my bed again & read with Maria J. Sirach 26-31. They went out twice as usual. In the morning Tatiana read to me Spir. Readings. Still no Vladimir Nikolaevich - at 6:30 Baby had his second bath - Bezique. Went to bed 10:15.

of warmth at 10:30 evening.

Heard the report of an artillery shot in the night & several revolver shots.’

16 July 1918
‘Grey morning, later lovely sunshine. Baby has a slight cold. All went out 1/2 hour in the morning, Olga & I arranged our medicines. Tatiana read Spir. Readings. They went out. Tatiana stayed with me Sc we read: Bk. of the Pr. Amos and Pr. Obadiah. Tatted. Every moring the Command, comes to our rooms, at last after a week brought eggs again for Baby.

Supper.

Suddenly Lyonka Sednyov was fetched to go & see his Uncle & flew off - wonder whether its true & we shall see the boy back again!

Played bezique with Nicholas.

to bed. 15 degrees.’

Quarrelling with Fyodor

‘I was thankful when this miserable day came to an end, for I detest quarrelling. Fyodor never waked me to give me my good-night kiss, and that is a bad sign. But perhaps it was better so; we should only have started quarrelling again.’ This is Anna Snitkina, the very young second wife of the great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, confiding in a diary which she considered as ‘the friend’ to whom she could ‘entrust my hopes, my thoughts, and all my fears’. Anna died a century ago today, but in her later years transcribed some of her diary (written only for a few years, and in shorthand) into Russian; and she also prepared a manuscript of reminiscences about her husband.

Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina was born in 1846 in St Petersburg. On leaving school she trained to be a stenographer. She was engaged by Dostoevsky to work on a novel, The Gamblers. By this time, Dostoevsky, in his mid-40s, had completed several novels, including Crime and Punishment. He had also spent four years in a prison camp for subversive writings, travelled much in Europe, developed a gambling addiction, and been married (to Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, who died in 1864). Within months of meeting Anna, and despite a 25 year age gap, the two were married, in February 1867. Dostoevsky’s gambling debts were such that Anna had to sell her jewellery before the couple could embark on an extended honeymoon in Europe. They remained abroad, in Germany, Switzerland and Italy, for four years, during which time Dostoevsky wrote The Idiot and began work on Demons, and Anna gave birth to two children, though the first died aged three months.

Anna proved to be a steadying influence on her husband, sharing his poverty, enduring his gambling sprees, nursing him through illnesses (he suffered from epilepsy), and helping to manage his finances. On returning to Russia in 1871, the family’s money problems were ongoing, but Anna gave birth to a third child. In 1873, however, they successfully formed their own publishing company, and published Dostoevsky’s Demons. On the back of this success, Dostoevsky launched a periodical, A Writer’s Diary. In 1875, a fourth child was born to the couple in the mineral spa town of Staraya Russa, where they sometimes went for Dostoevsky’s health, and where they eventually bought a house. It was here that Dostoevsky wrote most of his last and most feted book, The Brothers Karamazov. He died in 1881. Thereafter, Anna worked on the archive of literary material and photographs left behind by her husband; and she designed a room in the Historical Museum in Moscow dedicated to him. She also attended to her hobby of stamp-collecting. She died on 9 June 1918. There is a little further information (though not much) about Anna at Wikipedia (as well as within Dostoevsky’s own entry), Russkiy Mir, and Encylopedia.com.

During the first year or two of her marriage, Anna kept a detailed diary in shorthand, filling at least seven notebooks. She only began transcribing this into Russian in the 1890s as an aid to writing her memoirs, and, in fact, only transcribed a small part of the diary, notably six months in 1867. Most of the notebooks no longer seem to be extant, and were possibly destroyed by Anna herself. However, the 1867 diary was published for the first time in Russian in 1923; and Anna’s memoir followed in 1925. The memoir (with extracts from the diary) appeared first in English (Routledge, 1926) and the diary itself appeared two years later. Published as The Diary of Dostoyevsky’s Wife it was edited by René Fülöp-Miller & Dr. Fr. Eckstein, and translated from the German edition by Madge Pemberton (Victor Gollancz, 1928). The memoir - Dostoevsky Portrayed by his Wife - is still in print - see Googlebooks for a preview.

Fülöp-Miller, in his preface, gives Anna’s own explanation (as found in the memoir) for why she decided to keep a diary: ‘For the first eighteen months of our married life I kept my diary exclusively in the form of shorthand notes, with occasional gaps of small importance during the time of my illness. I kept this journal for a variety of reasons; for one thing I feared lest, in the rush of new impressions, many small incidents would fade entirely out of my memory; the writing of it, moreover, was an excellent way for me to keep up my shorthand, and help to perfect it into the bargain. But my principal reason was of quite a different nature; my husband was to me such an interesting and wholly enigmatical being, that it seemed to me as though I should find it easier to understand him if I noted down his every thought and expression. Added to which, there was no single soul abroad to whom I could confide either my doubts or my observations, and I came to regard my diary as the friend to whom I could entrust my hopes, my thoughts, and all my fears.’

The following (rather banal) extracts are taken from the 1928 edition of the diary.

2 May 1867
‘I got up at nine, and remembered I must send my letter to Mama, to whom I write every week, and that I simply must ask them about sending money. I enclosed a little note in this letter for Masha, to whom so far I have not written much. Fyodor woke up while I was finishing the letter; and I told him I was going to the post, and went out quickly. I really was back in a few moments, but Fyodor said he would have to keep a fast hold of me, as I was “slippery as a piece of silk.” After tea Fyodor declared he must go to the chemist’s to get some medicine. I was seized with a dreadful fit of jealousy, and thought he was going to meet some other woman. I sat by the window, leaning out as far as I could till I nearly fell out, looking through a pair of field glasses at the way lie went and mum come hack by. Already my heart was filled with all the torment of a deserted wife; my eyes, staring in front of me, were full of tears, and still no Fyodor came. At last I saw my darling strolling along another way home, all unconscious. I went to him at once, and told him what I had been through. (It would have been interesting to know the precise object of my jealousy, for it really could only have been old Ida, or even Frau Zimmermann!) The walk had tired him so much that he sat down and went fast to sleep, after asking me to wake him in half an hour. Suddenly the idiotic thought came into my head that he was dead; full of fear I crept up to him, and saw as I looked at him that he was as alive as could be. I waked him up at a quarter to six; he dressed, and we went through a rather sharp shower out to the Terrace to eat. But there we were to meet with a strange happening, that made it impossible for us to go there for meals in future. Four of the waiters were sitting in the room and playing cards as we went in, and in the room next to it where were only two other customers besides ourselves, only the “Diplomat” was on duty. A Saxon officer came in, and the “Diplomat” flew to serve him. Fyodor knocked, but the “Diplomat” took no notice. Fyodor knocked again, and then the “Diplomat” came up, but made no attempt to listen to us, excused himself, and went back again to the officer. We meant to eat only a la carte, and ordered some soup; the waiter scarcely heard us out, and then brought it to us. Long after we had finished it, he never came near us again, but continued to attend to the officer. Once again Fyodor knocked, and then the waiter spoke very rudely, saying he heard and would be with us presently, and that there was no need to keep on knocking. Then he brought some wine. Fyodor ordered a veal cutlet and two portions of roast fowl. After a while up came the waiter, bringing one portion only of roast chicken. We asked what he meant by it and he declared we had ordered one chicken only. Fyodor put him right and the man went away again saying he would soon bring all we wanted. Fyodor got into a terrible rage. He was all for going away immediately, saying he would not be treated like that by servants, but I took their part as best as I could, as I so wanted to go on dining. Fyodor declared he could wish himself alone. The waiter came back bringing with him one veal cutlet. Obviously he had made this mistake on purpose. Fyodor then completely lost his temper. He asked for the bill which the waiter said came to twenty-two silver groschcn. Fyodor paid him a thaler and wouldn’t take the change up from the table. We left the place, furious. I was really not so furious as Fyodor as to me it had a comic side, our not eating there. I implored him to calm himself, but he wouldn’t, and began to scold. So I told him if he insisted going on like that I would rather go home. Then he began to shout at me and I got so cross I began to go home, but on the way I thought how lonely it would be sitting there all alone, and went to the post instead, to see if there were any letters. But there was nothing, so I bought some cigarettes and went home. Ida told me Fyodor had been back already, walking up and down and then going out again. That made me feel dreadfully upset, for I couldn’t imagine where he had got to. Then I looked out of the window and saw him coming along. I was ever so glad and received him as if nothing had happened. He was pale and agitated, and obviously depressed by our quarrel. He told me how he had hurried after me at once, and not finding me at home thought I must have gone on to the Terrace, to show my independence by eating there. We dressed then and went out in the pouring rain. But where to go we knew not for one can hardly get lunch at eight in the evening. We passed the Hotel Victoria on our way, so we went in. Everything there was very nice and well ordered; newspapers and writing material lying on the tables. We asked for the menu and chose three dishes, and this little meal came to two thalers, ten silver groschen. Certainly everything was beautifully done, but the price is fearfully high. Actually twelve silver groschen for one chop - who ever heard of such a price! We also had ices, and I must say we had never seen such beautiful pink ices as those they brought us, and not really so very dear, either. At nine o’clock, when we had finished our meal we went on our way home again; but to-day was to be a day of disagreements. I had opened my umbrella; but as I do not know how to handle it so beautifully as do these immaculate Germans, I got it all tangled up with some worthy German gentleman. Fyodor started positively yelling at me and for very rage I started to tremble all over. We had to go to the locksmith to get our trunk, but the shop had been closed long ago and all our knocking was in vain. We started quarrelling again once we were at home, drinking tea - oh, what a miserable day! I wanted to talk quite calmly to Fyodor about his journey the next day; but he misunderstood me and started shouting again; that was too much for me; I started shouting myself, and then went into the bedroom. Repentance followed, moaning over my misery, doubts as to whether we were suited to one another, and so on and so forth. How foolish are all these heart storms and all this unhappiness over something that is not really even there! I was thankful when this miserable day came to an end, for I detest quarrelling. Fyodor never waked me to give me my good-night kiss, and that is a bad sign. But perhaps it was better so; we should only have started quarrelling again. Fyodor is going away, not to-morrow, but the day after.’

29 July 1867
‘Early this morning, the weather was perfectly lovely, but towards ten it clouded over and rain began to fall. More boredom, and I simply do not know what to do with myself. I suppose I should go along to the Reading Room, but I don’t like turning up there in my shabby gloves. So I stayed in again all day, and was most dreadfully at a loose end. For sheer lack of occupation I started translating a French book. It would be a good thing to get used to it, and then I should be able to translate something good. The weather was as dismal as my state of mind, and I could hardly wait for our dinner to be brought in, which was better to-day. Afterwards, Fyodor lay down for an hour’s sleep, and I read. When he got up again we went to the post and then on to the Reading Room, where we found a great many people, including ladies. But for some reason or other there was a heavy smell of cabbage, and at the reading table there was no room. We sat down by the window. The man in charge handed Fyodor some Russian papers at once, and we started reading; when it got dark we moved to the table, on which a lamp was burning. An Englishman was wandering around, also wanting to read, but he couldn’t find a proper place, and created quite a disturbance in the room that is usually so silent. It annoyed me very much. I read the “Moscow News” and the “Northern Bee.” At last the fidgety Englishman changed his place, and I was duly glad of it. A Russian lady, fairly elderly, sat herself down next to us and demanded Russian papers. She was probably beautiful in her day, but now is so no more. Like all the Russian women here, she was dressed in Russian fashion, and very badly at that. Then came in a charming girl, whom I, had I been a man, should have fallen in love with. A dear little nose, blue eyes, sable eye-brows, but unfortunately her face so made up that, for all she could not have been more than three and twenty, she appeared quite wrinkled. Finally we went home; on the way, I went into a baker’s shop and bought “Lenten Buns,” which I did not much care for at first, but afterwards continued to eat the whole evening. I was fearfully cold, and shivering all over my body, so that I almost began to think I was sickening for nettle rash. After drinking some tea I lay down on Fyodor’s bed and went to sleep, while he worked and wrote. He told me to-day he was going to start dictating his article to me to-morrow. I am delighted about it as that means I shall have something to do and time will not hang so heavy on my hands. I lay there for a couple of hours, then went to bed, and to sleep again. Fyodor was very sweet when he came to bed later, and said a multitude of nice things.’

The Diary Junction

Hope remains above all

‘The arrival of this “Red Guard,” as it is now called, or any armed detachment, excites rumors and fear here. It was simply amusing to hear what they say these last few days. The commander of our detachment apparently also was confused, since the last two nights the guards detachment and machine guns were brought in the evening. Hope remains above all in these present times!’ This is from the diary kept by Nicholas II, the last emperor of imperial Russia, in the months leading up to the execution of him and his family. Nicholas, who was born 150 years ago today, wrote in his diary nearly every day. An English translation has never been published as such, but one is available online thanks to Kent de Price, an arts student at the University of Montana in the 1960s, who wrote his dissertation on the diary. However, considering Nicholas’s imperial and dramatic life, the diary is an extraordinarily dull document.

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Romanov was born on 18 May 1868 in Alexander Palace, St Petersburg, the eldest son of Emperor Alexander III and Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia. He had five younger siblings. The family was closely related to other European royal families, making annual trips, for example, to Danish royal palaces to visit his mother’s parents - the Danish king and queen. He was educated at home by tutors with a military focus, and served in the army for three years, before touring Europe and Asia for the best part of a further year. In 1894, after the death of his father, he succeeded to the Russian throne. Days later, he married German princess Alix of Hesse, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. As Russian Tsarina and Empress, she became known as Alexandra Feodorovna. They had four daughters before a son and heir was born in 1904, though it soon became clear he suffered from the inherited disease of haemophilia.

Nicholas II proved an insecure and incapable leader, distrusting his ministers; and he was often dominated by Alexandra. It was she who sought the advice of spiritualists and faith healers, most notably Rasputin, who eventually acquired great power over the royal couple. At home, Nicholas ruled autocratically believing he had a divine right to do so; but he met rising unrest with intensified police repression. And, abroad, he took naive fateful decisions. In mid-1905, he concluded an alliance with the German emperor William II, yet Russia was already allied with France, Germany’s long-standing enemy at the time. To the east, his expansionist ambitions led to a disastrous war with Japan. Russia’s defeat led to discontent at home. After the army shot at a crowd of protesters in St Petersburg, Nicholas was forced to allow a constitution and to establish a parliament, the Duma. During the early years of the First World War, his position was strengthened by an alliance with Britain and France; however after mid-1915, when he took direct control of the army, he was increasingly seen as responsible for its military failures.

With Nicholas often away, German-born Alexandra became increasingly involved in domestic issues, but also the focus of public criticism, as was her mystic ally Rasputin. In late 1916, Rasputin was murdered, and by February 1917 there were widespread demonstrations in the capital. When Nicholas lost the support of the army, he had no choice but to abdicate. A provisional government was established, and the royal family were eventually imprisoned in the Ural Mountains. In 1917, the Bolsheviks overthrew the government, and after a punishing peace treaty with Germany in 1918, civil war broke out. In July of the same year, Bolsheviks executed Nicholas and his family. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, British Library, BBC, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Biography.com, Spartacus, or the Alexander Palace Time Machine.

Historians note that Nicholas kept a daily diary, usually written at 11pm every night. A French edition of this, covering the years July 1914-June 1918, appeared in Paris in 1924. But no English edition followed. In the mid-1960s, a portion of the diary, from March 1917 to July 1918, was translated into English by Arlo Furnis at the behest of a student, Kent de Price, who was writing a dissertation on the diary for his arts degree at the University of Montana. This dissertation has since become freely available online at the university’s ScholarWorks and at Internet Archive. English translations of selected parts of the diary can also be found at the Alexander Palace Time Machine, though these differ markedly form those by Furnis.

Nicholas’s diary is very disappointing (considering his status), for it lacks any detail about political events going on in the country, and tends to be a dull roll call of domestic routines. Kent de Price says this: ‘He confided family events, people who visited him, and items of interest in his personal life. Nicholas has been criticised by many for saying little of importance in the diary. But the reader should remember that his entries were meant to be read by no one outside the family. Important events would, of course, be recorded in official court journals, of which Nicholas would retain a copy.’ Here are several extracts (though I’ve tried to choose some which are slightly more interesting than most).

11 March 1917
‘In the morning I received Benckendorf. I learned from him that we had stayed here long enough. It was a pleasant realization. I continued to burn my letters and papers. Anastasia had an earache, so now she went with the rest of them [the sick children]. From 3 o’clock until 4:30 I walked in the garden with Dolgorukov and worked in the garden. The weather was unpleasant with a wind at about 2 degrees above frost. At 6:45 we went to vespers in the camp church. Alix took her bath before I took mine. I went to see Anna, Lili Dehn and the rest of our friends.’

21 March 1917
‘Today Kerensky, the present minister of Justice, came. He went through all the rooms and wanted to see us. He talked to me for five minutes. He introduced the new Palace commander and then left. He ordered the arrest of poor Anna and took her to the city together with Lili Dehn. This happened between 3 and 4 o’clock while I was walking. The weather was disgusting and it corresponded to our mood. Marie and Anastasia slept almost all day. After dinner the four of us calmly passed the evening away with Olga and Tatiana.’

3 April 1917
‘It was a wonderful spring day. At 11 o’clock, I went with Tatiana and Anastasia to Mass. After breakfast I went walking with them and all during that time the ice was breaking up near our summer dock; a crowd of idlers again collected at the railings and from the beginning to the end observed us. The sun was shining warmly. During the evening I played “Mill” with Alexis and then read aloud to Tatiana.’

14 May 1917
‘It was in different surroundings that we celebrated the 21st anniversary of my coronation! The weather was 15 degrees in the shade. Until Mass I took a walk with Alexis. During the day from 2:00 until 4:30 we spent the time out in the garden; I went for a ride in the canoe, and in the boat; and I worked for a while in the vegetable garden, where I prepared the new beds, and later we were on the island. After tea and during the evening I read.’

3 June 1917
‘After tea Kerensky suddenly came by car from the city. He stayed with me for a while. He asked me to send to the investigating committee some papers and letters having relations to internal policies. After my walk and until lunch I helped Korovichenko in an analysis of those papers. During the day he was helped by Kobylinsky. We sawed up the tree trunks in the first place we cut. During that time something happened to Alexis’s toy rifle. He was playing with it on the island; the sentry walking in the garden saw him and asked the officer to take it away from him.’

5 June 1917
‘Today dear Anastasia turned 16 years old. I took a walk with all the children until 12 o’clock. We all went to prayer services. During the day we chopped down some big fir trees at the crossing of the three roads along the Arsenal. There was a colossal fire, the sun was reddish, and in the air was the smell of burning, probably from peat burning somewhere. We went sailing for a little while. During the evening we walked until 8 o’clock. I started the 3rd volume of Le comte de Monte Christo.’

28 June 1917
‘Yesterday we lost 3,000 troops and about 30 vehicles. Word of God! The weather became cloudy and warm. After my walk I gave a history lesson to Alexis. We worked out there again and cut down three fir trees. After tea and until dinner I read.’

31 July 1917
‘It is the last day of our sojourn In Tsarskoe Selo. The weather became wonderful. During the day we worked in the same place and sawed down four trees and sawed up yesterday’s. After dinner, we awaited the time of our leaving, which keeps being put aside. Unexpectedly Kerensky arrived and told us we were leaving.’

5 August 1917
‘During the trip along the Tura, I slept very little. Alix and I had one very uncomfortable cabin, and all the girls were together in the fifth cabin down the corridor. Further toward the bow was a good sitting room and a small cabin with a piano. Second Class is under us, and this is where all the soldiers from the First Regiment who are traveling with us stay. All day we went topside, and stayed in the pleasant air. The weather was overcast but dry and warm. In front of us was a mine sweeper and behind another steamship with the soldiers from the 2nd and 4th Infantry Regiments and the rest of the baggage. We stopped two hours to load firewood. Toward night it got cold. We have our kitchen staff here on the steamship. Everybody went to sleep early.’

24 August 1917
‘It was a nice day. V. N. Derevenko and his family arrived and that was the biggest thing that had happened for days. Unfortunately, bad news from the front was confirmed. We learned that Riga still stood but that our army had retreated far into the northeast.’

5 September 1917
‘Telegrams arrive here twice a day; many of then are composed so obscurely that it is difficult to understand them. Evidently in Petrograd there is great confusion. Again there has been a change in the staff of the government. Evidently no one escapes from the enterprises of General Kornilov; he himself sides part of the time with the generals and officers who are prisoners to their own army and part of the time with the army. He goes to Petrograd and then leaves again. The weather became wonderfully hot.’

25 September 1917
‘It was nice weather, 14 degrees above frost in the shade. During our walk the Commissar, his foul assistant commissar. Ensign Nikolsky, and three sentries searched our house looking for wine. Not finding any, they came out in half an hour and left. After tea we began to move our things which had arrived from Tsarskoe Selo.’

14 November 1917
‘Today was the 23rd anniversary of our wedding! At 12 o’clock services were held; the choir got confused and went astray. It must be that they had not been practicing. The weather was sunny, warm and with gusts of wind. After tea, I re-read my last diary. It was a pleasant occupation.’

14 February 1918
‘We have had to reduce our expenses significantly for food and servants because the use of personal capital is reduced to only 600 rubles a month. All the last few days we have been occupied calculating the minimum which we would be allowed to take, all in all.’

14 March 1918
‘The bodyguards here were dismissed when their term of service was finished. But nevertheless together with the guard detachment they had to be sent to the city. From Omsk they sent a command for this village. The arrival of this “Red Guard,” as it is now called, or any armed detachment, excites rumors and fear here. It was simply amusing to hear what they say these last few days. The commander of our detachment apparently also was confused, since the last two nights the guards detachment and machine guns were brought in the evening. Hope remains above all in these present times!’