An early pandemic hero

In these troubling times, with Covid-19 reaping havoc across the world, it is worth remembering Waldemar Mordecai Haffkine, a Russian born scientist credited with carrying out the first effective programmes for tackling pandemics. Born 160 years ago today, he developed vaccines for cholera and bubonic plague, and organised successful inoculation campaigns in India - until being falsely accused of causing several deaths. He left behind diaries covering much of his life, some of which are held by the British Museum, but there is very little information online about their content. One biographical study suggests that his diaries reflect bitterness towards ‘faithless assistants’.

Haffkine was born into a Jewish family on 15 March 1860 in the prosperous Black Sea port of Odessa (then in Russia now in Ukraine). His early education took place in Berdyansk, a port much further east on the Black Sea, but he returned to Odessa to study natural sciences at Malorossiisky University. There he came under the influence of microbiologist Elie Metchnikoff, a future Nobel Prize winner. After earning a doctorate, he joined the staff of the Odessa Natural History Museum where he worked until 1888, publishing five papers on the hereditary characteristics of unicellular organisms. Although his career was blighted by growing anti-semitism, he was allowed to leave Russia for Switzerland where he joined the University of Geneva, teaching physiology. Two years later, he moved to Paris to join Metchnikoff who had been invited to head the newly­ opened Pasteur institute. Haffkine was employed as an assistant librarian, but also worked in the lab on bacteria.

By the early 1890s, Haffkine had shifted his attention to studies in practical bacteriology. He developed an anti-cholera vaccine that he tested on himself. Anxious to assess the value of the vaccine, he applied to the Russian embassy and others for a suitable opportunity. The British ambassador in Paris, and a former Viceroy of India, helped enable Haffkine to visit India, where ongoing epidemics were rife. He was appointed state bacteriologist to the Indian government in 1893, and successfully employed his cholera vaccine. He set up a lab (which later moved to Mumbai and even later became the Haffkine Institute), and went on to develop a vaccine against bubonic plague. In 1897, he was knighted by Queen Victoria. In 1901, he was made Director ­in ­Chief of the Plague Laboratory with a staff of 53, and his plague vaccine was used to inoculate half a million people.

There was, however, much scheming against Haffkine. His staff, mostly British officers, were less than enthusiastic at having a Jew running the organisation. Some British officials thought him a Russian spy; and Indian dissidents tried to discredit him by attacking the vaccine as a poison or made up of animal flesh. When 19 inoculated people died of tetanus, Haffkine was blamed. After an enquiry, he was relieved of his position (some even named this The Little Dreyfus Affair). He returned to Europe in 1904. The enquiry decision was eventually, in 1907, overturned, and with the support of many eminent scientists, Haffkine was able to restore his reputation and return to India in 1908.

With his previous post (at the plague lab he had set up) occupied, he was made Director-in-Chief of the Biological Laboratory in Calcutta, but it had no facilities for vaccine production, and his terms of employment were restricted. Frustrated, he retired at the minimum age of 55, and returned to Europe, to live in France, then Switzerland. He travelled widely, with a renewed passion for Jewish issues, focusing on the welfare of Jews and migration as well as the health and education of the Jewish people He never married. He died in 1930. Wikipedia has some further biographical information online, as does the US National Library of Medicine. But better sources are Barbara J. Hawgood’s article on Haffkine in The Journal of Medical Biography (available at The James Lindlay Library website) and Marina Sorokina’s article Between Faith and Reason Waldemar Haffkine (1860-1930) in India which can be found on the Russian Grave website.

Haffkine left behind a store of diaries. According to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York it holds a ‘photostat’ of Haffkine’s diary and a typed transcript. It says: ‘The diary is fragmentary for the period 1895-1908, but is complete for the period May 1915 to October 1930. The original manuscript is at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The diary has a “guide” and annual indices.’ However, I cannot find any evidence of the diaries on the Hebrew University website. The National Library of Israel does have a Haffkine archive, but it doesn’t specifically mention any diaries. On the other hand, the British Library (India Office Records and Private Papers) holds some 16 diaries (plus an index of social engagements) kept by Haffkine, dating from 1919 to the year of his death. Furthermore, the US National Library of Medicine holds ‘published materials from the India Home Department related to the vaccination incident (along with Haffkine's personal diaries on microfilm)’

Unfortunately, I can find very little further information about Haffkine’s diaries online. Sorokina in her article Between Faith and Reason mentions her subject’s diaries three times.
- ‘The diaries and notebooks of the young Haffkine show him to have been a romantic and revolutionary.’
- ‘An officer-­in- charge of the Laboratory, Major William Barney Bannerman, who had spent about 20 years serving the Indian Medical Service, intrigued against Haffkine with the support of some of the staff. In his diaries, Haffkine wrote bitterly of Bannerman: “There is nothing for him to do. . . we do not let him do anything else.” ’
- In his diary Haffkine sadly confessed to himself: “The main feature of my life is solitude”.

Also, Hawgood says in her article that Haffkine’s ‘personal diaries for the years 1903-05 reflect his bitterness that “he was dispossessed of the fruits of his labours by faithless assistants [British medical men]”.’

Manuscripts don’t burn

It’s 80 years to the day that Mikhail Bulgakov, one of Russia’s most interesting 20th century writers, died. Although feted at home for a short period in the 1920s, his satirical tone fell out of favour with the authorities, and he spent the last decade of his life unable to publish any writing. His most famous book - The Master and Margarita - was kept secret for years after his death and not published until the 1960s. Intriguingly, he had, in the book, used the phrase ‘Manuscripts don’t burn’, and this has since become a famous quote. The phrase, however, applies even more pertinently to a diary Bulgakov kept in the 1920s which, after having been confiscated by the authorities and returned, he himself destroyed! Yet, a copy was found 60 years later, buried in the KGB’s files.

Bulgakov was born in Kiev in 1891 to Russian parents, his father being a professor at the Kiev Theological Academy. He married Tatiana Lappa in 1913, and with the outbreak of the First World War volunteered as a doctor for the Red Cross. He was sent to the front line, where he was severely injured. In 1916, he graduated from the medical school at Kiev University and then served in the White Army, before also briefly serving in the Ukrainian People’s Army. After the Civil War, much of his family emigrated to Paris, but Bulgakov went to the Caucasus, and was then refused permission to leave Russia. In 1919, he gave up medicine for literature, and in 1921 moved, with Tatiana, to Moscow to pursue the life of a writer.

In Moscow, he worked as a journalist and for the literary department of the People’s Commissariat of Education. Parts of a largely autobiographical novel (much later published in English as The White Guard) were serialised in a journal. In 1924, he married again, to Lyubov Belozerskaya. In 1926, according to Wikipedia, he published a book called Morphine, which gave an account of his addiction to the drug (taken initially to ease the pain of war wounds). From the mid 1920s, though, Bulgakov mostly wrote and staged plays, especially with the Moscow Arts Theatre. He was at the height of his popularity in 1928 when he had three plays showing. But, increasingly, he found himself at odds with the Soviet authorities for the nature of his satire; and, before the end of the decade, government censorship was preventing publication of any of his work or the staging of any of his plays.

In 1929, Bulgakov wrote to Maxim Gorky (see The New York Times, for example): ‘All my plays have been banned; not a line of mine is being printed anywhere; I have no work ready, and not a kopeck of royalties is coming in from any source; not a single institution, not a single individual will reply to my applications.’ In 1931, Bulgakov married for the third time, to Yelena Shilovskaya, who would prove a dedicated and inspirational partner. And then, at a complete loss, he wrote to Stalin asking for permission to emigrate. He refused, but arranged for him find work in the theatre, as an adapter of classics and a producer. Stalin’s favour protected Bulgakov from arrest, but the political climate remained too hostile for his writing to be published.

During the last decade or so of his life, Bulgakov worked on what would become his most important literary work - The Master and Margarita, a multi-leveled satire and fantasy - but it was suppressed by the authorities. Bulgakov died on 10 March 1940, and it was not until the 1960s that The Master and Margarita was finally published, subsequently bringing its author considerable but belated worldwide attention. See also Encyclopaedia Britannica, IMDB, Library of Congress, or Russiapedia for further information.

For a few years in the 1920s, Bulgakov kept a diary, says Dr Julie Curtis, in her biography Manuscripts Don’t Burn: Mikhail Bulgakov - A Life in Letters and Diaries (published by Bloomsbury in 1991, and a few pages of which can be read online at Amazon.com.)

In her preface, Curtis writes: ‘An extraordinary story attaches to [the diary], which everyone, including Bulgakov, had supposed to have been destroyed over 60 years ago. In 1926, Bulgakov’s apartment was searched by the OGPU (a forerunner of the KGB) and his diaries were confiscated, along with the text of The Heart of a Dog. Since Bulgakov was on this occasion only marginally implicated in a case being mounted by the secret police against one of his acquaintances, he soon began to make official complaints demanding that the manuscripts be returned. He finally got them back some three years later, in 1929, whereupon he immediately burned the diaries and resolved never to keep a diary again. Since that time, it had been assumed that the diaries were lost, until the advent of Glasnost prompted the KGB to admit that, in fact, the OGPU had made a copy of at least part of of the diary back in the 1920s, and this was still sitting in the KGB’s archives.’

‘The fate of Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita,’ Curtis continues, ‘which was published after being kept secret for a decade while he was alive, and for a further 26 years after his death, together with this astonishing re-emergence of his diary 60 years on, has lent a peculiarly prophetic force to a phrase from The Master and Margarita which defiantly proclaims the integrity of art: ‘Manuscripts don’t burn.’ This is the phrase from the novel most frequently quoted in the Soviet Union today.’

Although there are relatively few entries from Bulgakov’s diary in Curtis’s book, Curtis does give more general information about them: ‘In these diaries Bulgakov is very frank, a foolishness which taught him a painful lesson when the diaries were confiscated, and which he never indulged in again; amongst other things, they contain traces of a condescension towards Jews which has caused some dismay amongst his present-day admirers. He is also candid when it comes to speaking about himself and his relationship with Lyubov, whom he describes as his ‘wife’ for some months before the official registration of their marriage. There is an unattractive irritation with himself that he should be so physically infatuated with her, and there is a hint of his doubts about the strength of her commitment to him, which seems to have led, on occasions, to him making scenes. . . The diaries reveal, too, Bulgakov’s obsessive preoccupation with his health, which may be attributable to the fact that as a doctor he knew that there was always a danger he might succumb to the same disease as his father . . . In addition, we can trace in the pages of the diaries the indications of a nervous susceptibility which would lead in due course, when his life really became difficult, to bouts of terror at being left alone and a fear of walking alone on the street. Overall, the image of Bulgakov that emerges from his diaries is not quite that of the cultivated man of letters he was to project in later years.’

Subsequent to Curtis’s biography, Roger Cockerell edited and translated a selection of  Bulgakov’s diaries and letters covering a 20 year period (1921-1940). This was published by Alma Classics in 2013 as Diaries and Selected Letters. Cockerell based his selection on a Russian edition of the diaries and letters published in 2004, though he also consulted a more complete (Russian) edition of the diaries and letters dating back to 1997.

Here are several of Bulgakov’s diary entries, as found in Cockerell’s edition.

29 October 1923
‘The heating was on for the first time today. Spent the entire evening sealing the windows. This first day of heating was especially noteworthy for the fact that the famous Annushka left the kitchen window wide open all night. I really don’t know what to do with the wretches who live in this apartment.

I have a severe nervous disorder connected with my illness, and such things drive me mad.

The new furniture from yesterday is now in my room. In order to pay on time we had to borrow five chervonets from Mozalevsky.

Mitya Stonov and Gaidovsky came round this evening, invited me to join the journal Town and Country. Then Andrei. He was reading my ‘Diaboliad’ and said that I had created a new genre and an unusually fast-moving plot.

It had only been the Moscow Agricultural Pavilion on fire at the Exhibition, and it had been quickly put out. Definitely arson, in my opinion.’

6 November 1923
‘Kolya Gladyrevsky has just gone; he’s creating my illness. After he’d left I read Mikhail Chekhov’s poorly written and second-rate book on his great brother. I’m also reading Gorky’s brilliant My Universities.

I’m now full of thoughts, and have just begun to realize clearly that I need to start being serious about things. And, what’s more, that writing is my entire life. I’ll never return to any sort of medicine. I don’t like Gorky as a person, but he’s such a huge, powerful writer, and he makes such terrifying and important points about writing.

Today, at about five, I was at Lezhnev’s, and he said two things of significance to me: firstly, that my short story ‘Psalm’ (published in On the Eve) was magnificent, as “a miniature” (“I would have published it”), and, secondly, that On the Eve was universally despised and loathed. That doesn’t frighten me. What does frighten me is the fact that I’m thirty-two, and the years I have wasted on medicine, my illness and my weakness. I’ve already had two operations on the idiotic tumour behind my ear. <...> They’ve written from Kiev to say 1 should begin radiotherapy. Now I’m afraid that the tumour will spread. And I’m afraid that this blind, stupid, detestable disease will interrupt my work. If I’m able to carry on, I’ll write something better than ‘Psalm’.

I’m going to start studying from now on. My voice may sometimes trouble me, but it cannot be anything other than prophetic. Quite impossible. And I cannot be anything other than a writer.

Let’s wait and see, learn and be silent.’

8 January 1924
‘There’s a bulletin in today’s newspapers about the state of Trotsky’s health. It begins as follows: “On the 5th November last year L. D. Trotsky was ill with influenza...” and ends as follows: “...to take time off, with a full release from all his responsibilities, for a period of not less than two months.” Any further comment on this historic bulletin would be superfluous.

And so, on 8th January 1924, Trotsky was kicked out. May God help Russia: He alone knows what the future holds for her! May God help her.

Spent the evening at Boris’s. Have just got back with Taska. Great fun. I drank wine, and my heart was fine.

The chervonets is worth 3.6 billlion.’

16 April 1924
‘Just returned from the opening of the railwaymen’s congress at the Assembly of Nobility (now Union House). The entire editorial hoard of the Hooter, with very few exceptions, was there. My job with others, was to correct the shorthand report.

In the circular hall, divided by a thick curtain from the Hall of Columns, there was the clatter of typewriters and the bright electric lights of the chandeliers glowing in their frosted white shades. Kalinin, in a dark-blue shirt, round-shouldered, mispronouncing his Rs and his Ls, appeared and said something or other. In the dazzling floodlights they were filming everywhere.

After the first session, there was a concert. Mordkin and the ballerina Kriger danced together. Mordkin is handsome, flirtatious. Performers from the Bolshoi sang, including, amongst others, Viktorov, a Jew, a dramatic tenor with a repellently piercing but huge voice. A certain Golovin, a baritone from the Bolshoi, also sang. It turns out that he is a former deacon from Stavropol. Joined the Stavropol Opera and within three months was singing the part of the Demon - and then, a year or so later, found himself the Bolshoi. Incomparable voice.’

25 July 1924
‘What a day! Spent the morning at home writing a satirical piece for Red Pepper. Then the daily process began of dashing from one editor to another in search of money, without seeing any chink of light ahead. Saw the unspeakable Furman from the newspaper Dawn of the East. Two of my pieces were returned. I had great difficulty getting Furman to hand the manuscript back, since I owed them the twenty roubles they’d already paid me. I had to write him a note that I would return the money no later than the 30th. Then I handed in one of these articles to Red Pepper, together with the one I had written earlier that morning. I’m sure they’ll be rejected. And then, in the evening, Sven rejected my article for Splinter. Was at his apartment, and somehow managed to get a promissory note for 20 roubles, for tomorrow. Nightmarish existence.

To cap it all, I rang Lezhnev in the afternoon to learn that there was no point in negotiating with Kagansky concerning the publication of The White Guard as a separate edition, as he hadn’t got any money at the moment. This was a new surprise. I now regret that I didn’t take the thirty chervonets at the time. I’m sure The White Guard won’t now be published.

In short, the Devil only knows what’s going on.

It’s late, about 12; have been with Lyubov Yevgenyevna.’

5 January 1925
‘The weather in Moscow is something quite extraordinary: in the thaw everything has melted, and the mood amongst Muscovites precisely mirrors the weather. The weather suggests February, and there’s February in people’s hearts.

“How’s this all going to end?” a friend asked me today.

Such questions are asked in a dull, mechanical way, hopelessly, indifferently, any way you like. Just at that moment there was a group of drunken communists in my friend’s apartment, in a room right across the corridor. In the corridor itself there was a foully pungent smell - one of the Party members, my friend told me, was asleep there like a pig, completely drunk. Someone had invited him. and my friend hadn’t been able to refuse. Again and again he went into their room with a polite and ingratiating smile on his face. They kept shouting to him to join them. He kept coming back to me, cursing them in a whisper. Yes, right: somehow this must all stop. I believe it will!
Went specially today to the publishers of the Atheist. It’s situated in Stoleshnikov Alley or, rather, in Kozmodemyanovsky, not far from the Moscow City Council building. M.S. was with me and he delighted me from the first.

“What, aren’t they smashing in your windows?” he asked the first girl we came across, sitting at a desk.

“What do you mean?” (confused). “No, they aren’t” (threateningly).

“What a pity.”

I wanted to kiss him on his Jewish nose. It turned out that there were no copies from 1913 left. All sold, they reported proudly. We managed to get hold of the first eleven back numbers from 1924. Number 12 had not yet appeared. When she found out that I was a private individual, the young lady, if that’s the right way to descibe her, gave them to me reluctantly.

“I should really be giving this to a library.”

Apparently they have a print run of 70,000, and it’s a total sellout. There are some unspeakable swine in the office who keep on leaving the room and coming back in again; and a small stage, curtains, scenery...  On a table on the stage there’s some sacred book, a bible perhaps, with a couple of heads bent over it.

“Just like a synagogue,” said M. as we were leaving the building.

I was very interested to know just how much this had all been said for my special benefit. It would be wrong of course to exaggerate, but I have the impression that some of the people who have been reading The White Guard in Russia use a different tone of voice when speaking to me - with a kind of oblique, apprehensive deference.

I was very struck by M.’s reaction to the extract from The White Guard. It could be described as rapturous, but even before this I’d had this feeling growing inside me, a process that had been going on for some three days. I will be terribly sorry if I’m mistaken and if The White Guard is not an exceptional piece.

When I skimmed through the copies of the Atheist at home this evening I was shocked. The salt was not in the blasphemy, although that was huge, of course, if you’re looking at it just from the outside. The salt was in the idea, an idea that can be historically proved. Even Jesus Christ was being depicted as a crook and a scoundrel. It’s not difficult to understand who’s responsible for this. The offence is immeasurable.’

***

And here are a few entries from Yelena’s diary (found in Curtis’s biography) concerning the last few days of Bulgakov’s life.

29 September 1939
‘I will go straight to Misha’s grave illness. . . World events are seething all around us, but they reach us only indistinctly, so struck down are we by our own misfortune.’

1 January 1940
‘1939, the most difficult year in my life, has gone, and may God grant that 1940 should not be the same!’

15 January 1940
‘Misha is correcting the novel [The Master and Margarita] as much as his strength will allow, and I am copying it out . . .’

16 January 1940
‘42 degrees below zero! . . . I believe that he will get better.’

10 March 1940
‘16.39 Misha died’

This article is a revised version of one first published 10 years ago on 10 March 2010.

Holiday on our Earth

Happy birthday Viktor Petrovich Savinykh, 80 years old today. An heroic figure in the Soviet Union, he took part in three space flights in the 1980s, and went on to become president of the Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography. During his second space mission, on Soyuz T-13 and T-14, he kept a diary, later published in Pravda. Subsequently, the US’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service published an English translation. Here is Savinykh in that diary musing philosophically towards the end of the mission: ‘I got up earlier than the other fellows for the first session. I listened to congratulatory telegrams. While the fellows were sleeping, I prepared a “Holiday Breakfast”. Today is a holiday on our Earth and that means for us as well, since we are a small part of our Homeland, which made all this equipment and entrusted it to us to work on. This is a very great trust. And a [huge] responsibility which lies on us. . .’

Savinykh was born in Berezkiny, Kirov Oblast, Russia, some 900 km ENE of Moscow, on 7 March 1940. He was educated locally in the secondary school at Tarasov, and subsequently at the Perm College of Railway Transport. After working briefly on the Sverdlovsk railway as a team leader, he joined the Soviet army in the railway troops, and then took part in the construction of the Ivdel-Ob highway. From 1963, he studied at the Optical and Mechanical Faculty of the Moscow Institute of Geodesy, Aerial Photography and Cartography Engineers (MIIGAiK - later the Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography), graduating in 1969. He then went to work at the Central Design Bureau of Experimental Engineering; and, in December 1978, he was selected for cosmonaut training. He married Lilia Alekseevna, a teacher, and they have one daughter.

Savinykh was involved with many of the Soviet space missions in the 1980s, and flew with three of them as flight engineer. His first space flight took place from March to May in 1981 on Soyuz T-4 spacecraft. His second, June-November 1985, was on Soyuz T-13, transporting personnel to the Soviet space station Salyut 7. It was a mission which proved unusually complex, and involved return on Soyuz T-14. His third flight, on Soyuz TM-5, was part of an international mission in June 1988 that docked with the Mir station. He retired from active service in 1989, and went on to teach at, be rector of and then president of, MIIGAiK. He is the author of a number of textbooks and monographs, articles on remote sensing of the Earth from space, as well as popular science books about space. He is the recipient of many awards and honours, not least being named Hero of the Soviet Union twice. Further biographical information (which largely focuses on his space achievements) is available at Wikipedia (an English translation of the Russian page has more details), Astronautix or Geodesy and Cartography.

During his second space flight, Savinykh kept a near daily diary. He had some kind of agreement with the Russian newspaper Pravda which later published the diary. Pravda described it as the ‘compressed chronicle, a summary of the thoughts and feelings which arise in the alternation of space days and nights’. Subsequently, the article was picked up, translated and published by the US’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service in its USSR Report - Space dated 12 September 1986 - available online as a pdf. More about the mission, and the diary, can be read in Soviet Space Programs: Piloted space activities, launch vehicles, launch sites, and tracking support put out by the US Government Printing Office in 1988.

Here are some extracts from Savinykh’s flight diary.

10 June 1985
‘Today is the first time I have managed to write a few words. Inside the station it is cold, the viewports have frost on them, like windows in wintertime in the country. There is frost on the metal parts, near the hull. We sleep in the living quarters compartment of the ship in sleeping bags, it is not cold there. We work in warm overalls and down hats borrowed from home. Our feet freeze in our flight boots and so do our hands if we don’t have any gloves on. Within the station it is quiet and dark. We work in the light and at night we use lamps. Our health is good. Hope has emerged.’

11 June 1985
‘We turned on the lights at the first post and how it made a difference in living conditions. And in the evening we even warmed up some canned goods and bread and dined on a hot meal. A Holiday! Today we spent almost the entire day in the station and by evening we were quite frozen. Volodya’s feet were warmed up by the heaters which had warmed up by dinnertime. We did not look at the Earth. Again a complete overhaul, but much more complicated. The lifeless station is slowly coming back to life.

Yes, we tried a hot meal for the first time already a week after our launch.

Finally, the quietness of our “carriage” stopped being so oppressive. The first live sound we heard was the noise of the drive for the solar batteries. I stood (or more accurately, hung) opposite the 10th viewport, looking at the 4th plane. The reduction gear began to make a noise, the plane deployed and life began.

The clocks and the “Globus” began ticking and the ventilators started making a sucking noise. Without them it was recommended to us that there not be two people in the work compartment at the same time. We could exhale around ourselves such a cloud of C02 that it would then be impossible to breathe. But, in fact, it is not possible to sit in separate compartments all the time. In order not to make the ground nervous we said we were separated but, in actual fact, of course, we were working together, dispersing the clouds around ourselves, each using his own primitive method.

Our subsequent life also took shape. Exposed panels on the walls and ceiling, a huge number of hoses and cables strung out along the entire length of the station, an endless search for the needed connectors, their attachment and detachment in order to check the instruments and equipment.’

22 June 1985
‘In the morning we were supposed to take photos in accordance with the “Kursk-85” program, but once again cloudiness did not allow this. And at the next session our wives came into the Flight Control Center. We missed their voices and those of the children. For two sessions the conversation concerned matters on Earth. My daughter still has one exam left - physics. And the Graduation Ball is already scheduled for the 26th. The time had come to say goodbye to school. For me these years had sped by completely unnoticed, they had been devoted to preparations for flights...

There is one term that is closely connected with cosmonautics: psychological support. Sometimes the specialists in this field have been puzzled as to why I show such passive concern regarding the selection of artists for concert programs on board the station. And not just me alone. But we did not get together up there to harass people with our own whims in connection with favorite or disliked performers. We are grateful to everyone who comes to Ostankino to share their lively words and songs. The main support lies in how things are going. You solve the latest problem - and you are literally flying on wings.

I remember a lot of things, at times even things not very notable to another person, with gratitude. The arrival of Vladimir Kovalenko at the institute to defend my dissertation. A film with a farewell recording of the great pilot, Ivan Kozhedub, prepared before the journey by the fellows from the radio industry. A twig of absinth placed in the on-board journal by Aleksey Leonov. A professional conversation with an intelligent, precise and composed specialist who understands you. I would like to mention Stanislav Andreyevich Savchenko, the developer of many astrophysical and geophysical programs. At such a great distance he can sense with amazing accuracy how you are working with an instrument, at which star a viewport is looking and what your mood is in general. Or a conversation on sailing with the famous trainer and teacher, Sergey Mikhaylovich Voytsekhovskiy, and with world-recordholder Volodya Salnikov. We discussed with them not only the secrets of sports mastery, but also the design of possible training simulators, for example, a rowing machine, to supplement adequately and suitably our on-board equipment... The festive meetings with cosmonauts from fraternal countries -  Gurragcha , Germashevskiy, Jehn , Prunariu, Mendez. The voices of our fellows - Volodya Solovyev, Lenya Popov, Sasha Aleksandrov, Svetlana Savitskaya and all the others. You can note how the mood improves after all these things, as does productivity.’

25 June 1985
‘Yesterday we were so tired I had neither the strength nor the time to write. I hardly got out of the supply ship. We changed out the water heater, flooded it with water, thoroughly washed out all the hoses and were soon drinking tea. After our exercises we had three packets of tea with milk. What a story!

Now the station resembles a train depot: packages, sacks, assemblies, containers of food. All this stuff that arrived and such excessive quantities. It forms an obstruction. Equipment arrived for going outside - we are beginning to put the stuff up and check it.”

Regarding dreams. For some reason the most frequent and most alarming dream is a search for some kind of hose or connector. You look and look but you just can’t seem to find it...’

26 June 1985
‘I had a headache this morning. Apparently there is poor ventilation in the sleeping area since everything is heaped up in there. I took some Analgin and it went away. Today I extended the air pipe.’

27 July 1985
‘For two sessions we watched the Moscow Festival on the screen. The picture was excellent and the weather did not let us down. Two festival participants, absent for a valid reason (as they said on the television), ensured the weather.

Now it was necessary to ensure the “weather” on the station as well. And to do this it was necessary to go out into space and build up the third solar battery. The preparations for the excursion were more complicated than usual. During the check-out my suit turned out to be non-hermetic. We looked and looked and we found where it was hissing. It turned out that in weightlessness one small strap from inside had gotten into the joint for closing the knapsack. It was necessary to shorten it. Additional time was spent on all this. A note recalls: “1 August was a day off, but we spent the whole day on preparations.” Finally, my first excursion into open space.’

12 August 1985
‘A communications session was held and I watched the clock, and such is the picture I saw. My mother in a bright rural cottage and guests gathering. Today is my daughter’s birthday. Grandmother has pirogies. And our work proceeded, the day is going excellently.’

14 August 1985
‘We conducted an experiment in accordance with the line of the GKNT for the purpose of determining the pollution of the atmosphere of cities. We worked in the Zaporozhye area. Good orientators, we had previously set the gyroscopes and were accurate and then we kept it in the field of vision of all the equipment: the MKF-6, the MKS-M and the rest...’

7 November 1985
‘I got up earlier than the other fellows for the first session. I listened to congratulatory telegrams. While the fellows were sleeping, I prepared a ‘Holiday Breakfast.’ Today is a holiday on our Earth and that means for us as well, since we are a small part of our Homeland, which made all this equipment and entrusted it to us to work on. This is a very great trust. And a hugh [sic] responsibility which lies on us. . .’

Dobzhansky, Darwin and religion

Theodosius Dobzhansky, a Russian-American scientist who did much in the 20th century to marry Darwin’s biological theories with the new science of genetics, was born 110 years ago today. His papers, held by the American Philosophical Library, include over 50 notebooks and diaries, but there is very little information about their content in the public domain - except that found in a biographical essay linking Dobzhansky’s religious outlook to his scientific understanding.

Dobzhansky was born on 25 January 1900 in Nemyriv, then in the Russian Empire now in Ukraine. His father was a mathematics teacher. In 1910, the family moved to Kiev, where Dobzhansky attended secondary school and decided to become a biologist. In 1915, he met Victor Luchnik, an older college drop-out who was obsessed with beetles. Dobzhansky studied at the Kiev state university from 1917 to 1921, specialising in entomology, and stayed on teaching until 1924. Also in 1924, he married Natalia Sivertzeva; they had one daughter. He then moved to Leningrad (now St Petersburg), to study under Yuri Filipchenko, where a Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) lab had been established.

In 1927, Dobzhansky went to work at Columbia University in New York City as a Rockefeller Fellow, continuing his work on fruit flies with the geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan. Subsequently, he accompanied Morgan to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and, on being offered a teaching position there, decided to remain in the US, becoming a citizen in 1937. That same year, he published the groundbreaking Genetics and the Origin of Species, which helped establish evolutionary genetics as an independent discipline. He returned to Columbia as a professor of zoology in 1940, and remained there until 1962, when he moved to Rockefeller Institute (later Rockefeller University). After his official retirement, he went, in 1971, to the University of California at Davis. Following a long battle with leukaemia, he died in late 1975.

The Understanding Evolution website has this assessment: ‘Dobzhansky’s ability to combine genetics and natural history attracted many other biologists to join him in the effort to find a unified explanation of how evolution happens. Their combined work, known as The Modern Synthesis, brought together genetics, paleontology, systematics, and many other sciences into one powerful explanation of evolution, showing how mutations and natural selection could produce large-scale evolutionary change.’ Further information can also be found online at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Genetics.

Dobzhansky left behind 54 notebooks and diaries. These are held by the American Philosophical Library which provides this information: ‘The fifty-four notebooks and diaries give a virtually uninterrupted first-hand commentary on Dobzhansky’s life and career, save for the period 1936-1941. Although the earliest dates are 1934, the first entries (sketches and data on coccinellid beetles) may have been made as early as 1917. With few exceptions, the entries are all in Russian, although two long stretches written in English occur during the late 1940s and early 1950s (presumably the years during which he felt most alienated from Russia) and from 1971 until his death. In an entry from this period, he commented that he was again writing in English so that his last thoughts would be accessible to friends and relatives unable to read Russian.’

Although none of Dobzhansky’s diaries have been published (as far as I can tell), they have been used as source material for biographical works, in particular by Jitse van der Meer in his essay on Dobzhansky for Eminent Lives in Twentieth-century Science & Religion (edited by Nicolaas A. Rupke, published by Peter Lang in 2009). Some pages can be previewed online at Googlebooks. The following paragraphs, quoted directly from the essay, are based almost entirely on information gleaned from Dobhansky’s diaries, and are referenced by van der Meer with over a dozen citations (not included here) from those diaries (held by American Philosophical Library).

‘. . . This is why he was concerned about moral and religious education. In 1969, following a conversation with his grandson Nicolai he wrote about the younger generation: “But the trouble is that they do not have moral and religious schooling, and that they grow up to be egotists and self-centred and free thinkers”.

Religious faith had existential meaning for Dobzhansky. During the height of WW II he tried to encourage his despondent colleague and friend Leslie Dunn (1893-1974), but failed. He then observed that Dunn needed religion, but that he did not have it. Dobzhansky deliberately initiated discussions about Dostoevsky, specifically of The Grand Inquisitor, to bring others such as his colleagues and friends Carl Epling (1894-1968) and Alfred Ezra Mirsky (1900-74) closer to God. He tried to be Christian and prayed almost every morning. Many notes in his diary, especially from the last years of his life, started and ended with expressions glorifying God. For instance, the entry for March 1, 1971 has the traditional ending, “but first of all God, glory to you.” He prays for strength in the face of illness, pain and death and thanks God for the grace of his blessings.
 
One of the most important characteristics of Russian Orthodoxy is the religious unity of believers in the practical and spiritual sense expressed in the idea of sobornost. This formed the context for Dobzhansky’s concerns about the Church. For instance, he appears hopeful about the apparently unusual presence of young people at a Russian church service. He deplores the absence of religion and the commercialization of churches in Japan and is bitterly disappointed about the rejection of his religious vision of evolutionary progress by both atheists and the Christian Church. These concerns are consistent with his own church attendance.

A further characteristic of Russian Orthodoxy is that the architecture of their church buildings reflects the universe. Dobzhansky expresses sensitivity to the spiritual symbolism of architecture after visiting the palace of Louis XIV in Versailles. Comparing it with the cathedral in Chartres he wonders how a Christian monarch could build a palace that he considers a piece of anti-Christian propaganda.’

The horizon is getting darker

‘The horizon is getting darker. Some days ago we heard about Ristlaan’s vicious speech at the Radio House, where he, among other things, had emphasized that the people who do not understand how hostile the letter is would have no place in an ideology establishment. I am not responsible for the wording but the atmosphere at the radio has been whipped to fine froth and some exaggerations are easily born in this situation.’ This is from a diary kept by Andres Tarand in 1980-1981 during a political crisis in Estonia, one that centred on a public letter written by 40 intellectuals, including himself. Tarand - who is 80 today - went on to become the country’s prime minister for a brief period in the 1990s.

Tarand was on born 11 January 1940 in Tallinn. He graduated from the University of Tartu with a degree in climatology in 1963, and the same year he married Mari Viiding, with whom he had two sons. He went on to complete another degree in geography (1973), as well as undertake research at the Tallinn Botanic Gardens, eventually becoming its director (to 1990). In 1980, he was a signatory to the so-called Letter of 40 Intellectuals, a public letter defending the Estonian language and protesting Russification policies. He was elected a member of the Estonian Parliament in 1992 remaining so until 2004. He served twice as minister for the environment in the 1990s, and, briefly, was prime minister (November 1994 to April 1995). From 1996, he was on the board of the University of Tartu. He was elected to the European Parliament in 2004. He has also been involved in many environmental organisations in the Baltic and Nordic areas. A little further information is available in English at Wikipedia.

I have no idea or not if Tarand has been in the habit of keeping a diary, but in 2005 (I think) he published an edited version of one he kept from 1980 to 1981 - he called it Litterae non Erubescunt Diary 1980- . . .’ An English translation can be found on his own website. He says of the work: ‘This book is my diary, kept during a couple of years in the 1980s. The decade was a turning-point for most of the nations who belonged to the so-called socialist camp. Some of them, though, are still struggling with immense internal difficulties. The Letter of 40 that was an acute irritant to the authorities at the time, was characteristic only of Estonia, where the main aim was to protect and preserve the national language. The publication was partly caused by youth’s demonstrations in the autumn of 1980 but the actual reason for it was the Russification that followed the secret decree of the Communist Party in 1978. I have no wish to diminish the role of the other nations, undermining the supports of the Soviet empire, be it the revolt in East Germany or the activities of the Polish Solidarnos c up to 1980 but I would like to emphasize that the fear of losing one’s native language is obviously inversely proportional to the size of the nation.’

Tarand claims that ‘changes in the text compared to the original diary are minimal and basically linguistic not contextual’. However, it seems, for several reasons, to be more of a diary-memoir than pure diary. Firstly, the narrative often flows as if written in the past, and is rarely interrupted by a date heading/headline (eg: ‘On the morning of 21 November I went to . . .’ and ‘The last week of November was rather eventless for me. . .’). Secondly, there are many entries which benefit from future knowledge (but this may be because, at the time, he wrote the diary days or weeks later). There are also many contextual additions (eg: letters) to the diary from later dates. Nevertheless, the work provides interesting detail, both personal and political, on events of the time.

7 January 1981
’The horizon is getting darker. Some days ago we heard about Ristlaan’s vicious speech at the Radio House, where he, among other things, had emphasized that the people who do not understand how hostile the letter is would have no place in an ideology establishment. I am not responsible for the wording but the atmosphere at the radio has been whipped to fine froth and some exaggerations are easily born in this situation. The idiocy embraced also the 1 January concert of the Ellerhein chamber choir the last song of which was announced as an English folk song Night. Actually, the beautifully performed song that was heard was Silent Night. Somebody, obviously the Central Committee employee Toomas Leito, “told the ones who needed to know“ and the event and song were declared to be dirt. And that despite the fact the the whole programme was made up of spiritual music of the seventeenth century. This clearly shows that not religion but cultural coherence is under attack, just like 40 years ago people who had the so-called English orientation were deported to Siberia or nothing can be heard of the “third way“ in 1944.

This is some general background. More concrete steps are summons to top men again. Fred Jü ssi had been summoned to Slutsk, Ita Saks to Jõ eruüü t. Juhan Viiding was at Kuusberg‘s already yesterday. These are the first blossoms of the third round.

Late at night the phone rang. Rein Saluri sounded a bit more sober than he actually was. When I had gone up to his flat, it became clear at once what he was trying to talk about. His mixed up phrases and fragmentary sentences summed up as a lament how difficult it was for him and Jõ eruüü t to condemn Ita Saks at the party bureau session. This was given as a reason why both men were drinking excessively. Another worry seemed to be that the authors of the letter have carelessly given a blow to the Estonian culture in general, as now the journal Keel ja Kirjandus (Language and Literature) was being investigated. The pillars of culture, he said, were extremely busy saving the Estonian culture and they were irreplacable as there were so few of them. This was about Kuusberg as the secretary of the Writers‘ Union among others. The emphasisis laid on the differences between him as a pillar and me as a second-rate figure made me angry for a while and my reply was that Saluri’s inner tensions and ambiguity between the party life and culture should not be extended to culture in general. Piret Saluri was obviously embarrassed about her husband‘s proclamations and the next day she tried to explain his outbursts by the undue influence Jo eru u t had on Saluri.

Evidently at the same time another conversation like that took place in Tartu between Hans Trass and another student of his - Martin. These two men discussed the possible sad fate of the Botanic Gardens thanks to the unworthy behaviour of the vice director. It is only a supposition and Martin should be more than medium-drunk to admit it.’

8 June 1981
’On the 8th of June something happened in the Botanic Gardens that I eyewitnessed. I still do not know how much it was connected with the letter, i.e. the connection has been openly admitted but its deeper meanings have not been disclosed. I came to work from our summer cottage by the morning bus and so could not get there before 11 a.m. In my office, Pä ts’ kitchen, I found hordes of dead and injured bees. One swarm had settled in the chimney already earlier and now they had evidently come into the room through the flue. The weekend in the cool room and hunger had played havoc with them. I opened the window and started to collect the bees on a punchcard and placed them in the small patch of sun that reaches the windowsill only in June. Being busy with the bees I noticed three men approaching from the direction of the barn. Their gait was so characteristic of their profession that I said to myself: again some KGBeshniks, let them walk, I am busy with more important things. I did not see them any more and did not pay attention either. (They evidently went to make a phonecall at the secretary’s.) It took me about an hour to save the bees and do some current jobs before I could go to the clayhouse. I had not been there long when I noticed Rein Ratas going into Taimi’s room. I would not have paid much attention to it had he not had a very peculiar look on his face. About ten minutes later another man appeared in the same corridor, asking for me. Approaching him I recognized the senior investigator Jaup. I greeted him and commented on our former acquaintance. He asked me to come out for a private talk. We had our private talk in front of the clayhouse. Jaup asked whether Aasalo was our employee and I answered in the affirmative. Jaup said he had a search warrant for Aasalo’s workplace and home both and passed it to me. I made clear that the warrant was indeed sanctioned by the prosecutor and could not think of anything to gain time. It might be possible that this is what the brigade was waitng for, some underground activity perhaps. (Why else did they not do anything before, although they had been at the Botanic Gardens already since morning?) As Martin was on a business trip in Tartu, I was the highest official present and could not protest. Jaup asked me whether I knew anything of the key to Aasalo’ safe. I said that I had not worked in that house for some time and did not know even the safe for sure. On our way towards the 46th house, Jaup deliberated about how we (the forty authors) had wanted to do good but the letter had got abroad and now they had to investigate again how it could happen. I might have asked what sort of crime was spreading a not anti-soviet material but the warrant stated “also anti-soviet material”. I was afraid that there might be something like that in the safe and in this case I must be stricktly official. I was still hoping to gain time with looking for the key but it became clear how nai ve I was at once. Two more KGB men who joined us in front of the greenhouse did not introduce themselves. When we reached no 46, the taller, spectacled one, stood on watch about ten metres from the door (does this mean that they hoped to discover some organized activities?). Together with the others we entered the passage where three safes stand one upon another. We asked which of them could be Aasalo’s. L. Saaver did not know but Sander who was coming downstairs suggested that we should try the upper one as the middle one was mine. The last hint was quite unnecessary and I did not like it at all, as my safe was full of maps, among them copies of the presently “secret” ones. The investigators were very happy about Sander’s directions and they were ready to open the upper box. For that they needed the tall man who was keeping watch in the yard who stepped in, pulled a key from his pocket and opened the safe at once. A preceptive moment on the background of our thoughts at the moment when we put our valuables in a safe. . .

Later I understood that a totalitarian state could not afford to make complicated locks for safes: men in its own service would have more trouble only. I risked offering the skilled safeopeners an opportunity to open the other safes as well but they were not interested. So I just stood there and watched how the shorter KGBeshnik was taking one folder of detailed plans of land use after another out of the safe and laid them aside after having given each a cursory glance. I even started to hope that the safe was clean but then I glimpsed something pinkish red and the hope died. The searcher said hurriedly, too quickly actually, “Here it is!” and it really was there. My immediate impression that the searchers knew exactly what they wanted and the searcher was too quick, not even pretending to have a better look at everything in the safe.’

A Russian princess in Nazi Berlin

Seventy years ago today, a young dispossessed Russian princess, Marie Vassiltchikov, arrived in Berlin looking for work, and a new start to her life. But Germany was at war, and the job she found would see her on the periphery of a plot to murder Hitler, and then escape to Vienna. Through all the turmoil of those days, she would keep a diary. Much later, this would be published to great acclaim as ‘one of the most extraordinary war diaries ever written’.

Vassiltchikov was born in 1917 in Saint Petersburg, the fourth of five children. Her father was the Fourth Duma, Prince Hilarion Vassiltchikov and her mother the former Princess Lidiya Vyazemskaya. Following the Bolshevik October Revolution in 1919, the family fled Russia by joining members of the Romanov family evacuated by the British fleet. Vassiltchikov lived as a refugee, initially in the French Third Republic, then Weimar Republic Germany, and then Lithuania where her father’s family had owned property before the revolution. She worked for a while at the British legation, and remained in Lithuania until just before the start of World War II.

In early 1940, Vassiltchikov and her sister travelled to Berlin where, as stateless persons and qualified linguists, they were able to obtain work permits. After brief employment with the Broadcasting Service, Vassiltchikov transferred to the Auswärtiges Amt (AA), the German Foreign Ministry’s Information Office, where she worked as an assistant to Dr. Adam von Trott zu Solz, a key member of the anti-Nazi faction. Indeed, von Trott was one of the group who plotted to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944. Following the attempt, Vassiltchikov and others went to Gestapo headquarters to plead for his life, bringing bring food and other packages until they were warned by a guard not to return.

After von Trott’s execution, Vassiltchikov fled to Vienna, where she worked as a nurse. At the end of the war, it is said she was found by the US army digging for food outside a concentration camp. After the war, she worked as an interpreter for US Army. She married Captain Peter Harnden in 1946, and they settled in Paris, where they had four children, and where Harnden opened an architectural firm. After Harnden’s death, Vassiltchikov moved to London where she died in 1978. Further information can be found at Wikipedia.

A great deal is known about Vassiltchikov’s life in Berlin as, from just before her arrival in the city until the end of the war, she kept a diary. Later in life she started editing these diaries, but it was her brother George H. Vassiltchikov who completed the process, leading to pubilcation in 1985 by Chatto & Windus of The Berlin Diaries 1940-1945 (reprinted by Pimlico in 1999). The book received excellent reviews, not least from John Le Carré: ‘Quite simply, one of the most extraordinary war diaries ever written. Innocent and knowing at once, it portrays the death of Old Europe through the eyes of a beautiful young aristocrat whose world itself is dying with the events that she describes.’ Some pages can be previewed at Googlebooks and Amazon, and a review can be read at The New York Times. (It is worth noting also that the Imperial War Museum website has an oral history audio recording by George Vassiltchikov.)

Here are the first half dozen entries to be found in The Berlin Diaries 1940-1945.

1 January 1940
‘Olga Puckler, Tatiana and I spent the New Year quietly at Schloss Friedland. We lit the Christmas tree and tried to read the future by dropping melted wax and lead into a bowl of water. We expect Mamma and Georgie to appear any minute from Lithuania. They have announced their arrival repeatedly. At midnight all the village bells began to ring. We hung out of the windows listening - the first New Year of this new World War.’

3 January 1940
‘We departed for Berlin with eleven pieces of luggage, including a gramophone. We left at 5 a.m. It was still pitch dark. The estate manager drove us to Oppeln. Olga Pückler has lent us enough money to live for three weeks; by that time we must have found jobs. Tatiana has written to Jake Beam, one of the boys at the American Embassy she met last spring; our work at the British Legation in Kaunas may be of some help to us there.

The train was packed and we stood in the corridor. Luckily, two soldiers had helped with the luggage, as otherwise we would never have been able to squeeze in. We arrived in Berlin three hours late. As soon as we reached the flat the Pucklers have kindly allowed us to stay in temporarily, Tatiana started telephoning friends; it made us feel less lost. The flat, in the Lietzenburgerstrasse, a street running parallel to the Kurfurstendamm, is very large, but Olga has asked us to do without outside help on account of the many valuable contents, so we are only using one bedroom, a bathroom and the kitchen. The rest is shrouded in sheets.’

4 January 1940
‘We spent most of the day blacking out the windows, as no one has been here since the war started last September.’

6 January 1940
‘After dressing, we ventured out into the darkness and luckily found a taxi on the Kurfurstendamm which took us to a ball at the Chilean Embassy off the Tiergarten. Our host, Morla, was Chilean Ambassador in Madrid when the Civil War broke out. Although their own government favoured the Republicans, they gave shelter to more than 3,000 persons, who would otherwise have been shot and who hid out in the Chilean Embassy for three years, sleeping on the floors, the stairs, wherever there was space; and notwithstanding great pressure from the Republican Government, the Morlas refused to hand over a single person. This is all the more admirable considering that the Duke of Alba’s brother, a descendant of the Stuarts, who had sought refuge at the British Embassy, was politely turned away and subsequently arrested and shot.

The ball was lovely, quite like in pre-war days At first I feared I would not know many people, but soon I realised that I knew quite a few from last winter. [Missie had visited Tatiana in Berlin in the winter of 1938-1939.] Among those we met for the first time were the Welczeck girls, both very beautiful and terribly well dressed. Their father was the last German Ambassador in Paris. Their brother Hansi and his lovely bride Sigi von Laffert were also there, and many other friends, including Ronnie Clary, a very handsome boy, just out of Louvain University, who speaks perfect English - which was rather a relief, as my German is not quite up to the mark yet. Most of the young men present are at Krampnitz, an officers’ tank training school just outside of Berlin. Later, Rosita Serrano [a popular Chilean chanteuse] sang, addressing little Eddie Wrede, aged nineteen, as ‘Bel Ami’, which flattered him enormously. We had not danced for ages and returned home at 5 a.m., all piled in the car of Cartier, a Belgian diplomat, who is a friend of the Welczecks.’

7 January 1940
‘We are still searching painfully for jobs. We have decided not to ask any friends to help, but to turn directly to business acquaintances.’

8 January 1940
‘This afternoon, at the American Embassy, we had an appointment with the Consul. He was quite friendly and at once gave us a test, which rather unnerved us, as we were not mentally prepared for it. Two typewriters were trotted out, also shorthand pads, and he dictated something at such speed and with such an accent that we could not understand all he said; worse, our two versions of the letter he dictated turned out not to be identical. He told us he would ring us up soon as there were vacancies. We cannot wait long, however, and if something else turns up meanwhile, we will have to accept. Unfortunately, as most international business is at a standstill, there are no firms here in need of French- or English-speaking secretaries.’

Light, motley, whimsical

Korney Chukovsky, one of Russia’s most popular writers for children, died 50 years ago today. He was also an influential literary critic and analyst, a translator of English classics, and a supporter of writers persecuted under the Soviet regime. He kept a detailed diary almost all his life, but this was only published in the post-Soviet era. The diary’s editor calls it ‘a cultural document of major importance’, but it’s also one of the best kinds of literary diaries, ranging widely in content from dark self-analysis to playfulness (‘light, motley, whimsical’), from political commentary to personal revelation (‘My soul is empty. I can’t squeeze a line out of myself.’).

Nikolay Vasilyevich Korneychukov was born in 1882 in St. Petersburg, the illegitimate son of a peasant woman from Ukraine (whose name he was given) and a wealthy Jewish man whose parents forbade him to marry her. The mother moved to Odessa with Nikolay and his sister, where Nikolay studied at the local school. After being expelled, apparently for being illegitimate, he earned his diplomas through correspondence courses. He published a first article for the newspaper Odesskie novosti, and continued contributing a wide range of culture items. During this time, he reworked his pen name to Korney Chukovsky. Around 1903, he married Mariya Goldfeld, and they would have four children. 

Having taught himself English, Chukovsky went to London from where he worked as correspondent for Odesskie novosti between 1903 and 1905. Back in Russia, first in St Petersburg but then in Finnish Kuokkala (now Repino in Russia), he launched a satirical magazine (Signal), started translating works from English (such as those by Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, O. Henry, and Mark Twain) which became very popular. He also wrote analyses of contemporary European authors, publishing From Chekhov to Our Days (1908), Critique Stories (1911) and Faces and Masks (1914).

However, Chukovsky is best remembered for his children’s books: Krokodil (Crocodile, 1916), Moydodyr (Wash ’Em Clean, 1923), Tarakanishche (The Giant Roach, 1923), and Mukha-tsokotukha (Fly-a-Buzz-Buzz, 1924). Some of these were famously adapted for the theatre, animated films, opera and ballet. After returning to St. Petersburg, he started to observe and write down the way children speak. This led him to publish From Two to Five (1933), a popular guidebook to the language of children. 

During the Soviet era, Chukovsky also edited the complete works of the influential Russian poet Nikolay Nekrasov. From the 1930s, he lived in the writers’ village of Peredelkino near Moscow. Often at odds with the establishment throughout his life - using his popularity to help authors persecuted by the regime, not least Solzhenitsyn - he won favour with the Soviet government later in life, and was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1962. He died on 28 October 1969. Further information is available at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Russiapedia.

Chukovsky was a committed diarist throughout his life, and left behind many notebooks. A two-volume Russian edition of his diaries only appeared after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991-1994 (edited by Elena Chukovskaya and Victor Erlich); and an English one-volume translation (Michael Heim) in 2005 entitled simply: Diary, 1901-1969 (Yale University Press). In his introduction, Erlich calls the diary ‘a cultural document of major importance’. Some pages of the book can be previewed at Googlebooks and Amazon.

A note from the publisher gives some details on Chukovsky diaries.’ The diary of Kornei Chukovsky is an immense document spanning seven decades and three generations, starting in prerevolutionary Russia and encompassing almost the entire Soviet era. Although little could be considered unimportant or uninteresting, about one-quarter of the original text had to be cut to make a book of readable length for the nonspecialist. The diary, kept with some irregularity from 1901 to 1969, is contained in twenty-nine notebooks. Because of the scarcity of paper in the 1920s some entries were scribbled on reverse pages of letters to Chukovsky or on separate sheets that were later stapled into appropriate notebooks. In an entry dated 27 May 1957, Chukovsky says that dozens of his diaries were lost. In the diaries that survived a number of pages had been torn out. Some years are barely or not at all represented. There are no entries dated 1915 or 1938 and very few entries for the years 1916-1917 or for the late 1930s. In this volume, the reader will find two kinds of ellipses: those originally made for the Russian edition, by Elena Chukovskaya, Kornei Chukovsky’s granddaughter (marked with < . . . >), and those made specifically for this edition (marked with [ . . . ]).’

Here are several extracts.

24 February 1901
‘Curious! I’ve been keeping a diary for several years and I’m used to its free form and informal content - light, motley, whimsical: I’ve filled several hundred pages by now. Yet coming back to it, I feel a certain reticence. In my earlier entries I made a pact with myself: it may be silly, it may be frivolous, it may be dry; it may fail to reflect my inner self - my moods and thoughts - granted, so be it. When my pen proved incapable of giving bold and concise expression to my hazy ideas, which the moment after they came to me I was unable to make out myself, when it ended up merely reflecting commonplaces, I bore it no particular ill will; I felt nothing more than mild frustration. But now, now I am ashamed in advance of every clumsy formulation, every sentimental outburst and superfluous exclamation mark; I am ashamed of the careless bumbling, the insincerity so characteristic of diaries, ashamed for her sake, for Masha. I categorically refuse to show this diary to her. < . . . >

Heavens, the rhetoric! Can I show this to anyone at all? [. . . ]’

27 November 1901
‘Novosti has published a long feuilleton of mine, “A Perennial Issue” signed Kornei Chukovsky. The editors identify me as “a young journalist with paradoxical but highly interesting opinions.” I feel not the slightest elation. My soul is empty. I can’t squeeze a line out of myself.’

9 September 1907
‘Had a visit from Repin today. He is very polite. His beard is grayish and -  you’d never know it from his portraits - grows straight into his mustache. He is unassuming. No sooner did he arrive than he climbed up on the couch and took down Vrubel’s portrait of Bryusov. “Good show. That’s Bryusov, all right.” Somov’s portrait of Ivanov. “Good show. That’s Ivanov, all right.” He called Bakst’s portrait of Bely “painstaking.” His comments on the engravings of Byron’s portraits: “banal” and “clichéd.” He approved of Lyubimov’s caricature of me. Then he took a seat and we talked about Rossetti (he is too academic) and Leonid Andreev (“Red Laughter” represents the insanity of war today; the governor is a combination of Tolstoy, Gogol, and Andreev). < . . . > When I showed him his Alexei Tolstoy, he said, “That was after his death. It influenced me. Some rotter touched it up. It’s terrible!” Then we went downstairs for tea, pears, and plums. < . . . > He had left his coat upstairs and ran up to get it so as not to be thought an old man. I saw him out to the gate and watched him depart, a hunched old man in a cape. [. . . ]’

16 June 1917
‘I nearly drowned yesterday. I jumped into deep water from the boat, swam a bit, and felt myself being pulled down. I couldn’t cry out to Kolya, I forgot how to speak; I could only show him with my eyes. (From childhood I was certain I’d die in the water like the Russian critics Pisarev and Valeryan Maikov.) At last Kolya caught on. [ . . . ]’

14 February 1918
‘With Lunacharsky. I see him nearly every day. People ask why I don’t try and get something out of him. I answer I’d feel bad taking advantage of such a gentle child. He beams with complacency. There is nothing he likes more than to do somebody a favor. He pictures himself an omnipotent benevolent being, dispensing bliss to all: Be so good, be so kind as to . .. He writes letters of recommendation for everybody, signing each, with a flourish, Lunacharsky. He dearly loves his signature. He can’t wait to pick up his pen to sign. He lives in a squalid little flat off a nauseating staircase in the Army and Navy House opposite the Muruzi House. There is a sheet of paper (high-quality, English) on the door that says “I receive no one here. You may see me from such-and-such a time to such-and-such a time at the Winter Palace and at such-and-such a time at the Commissariat of Education, etc.” But no one pays the slightest attention to it: he is constantly barraged by actors from the imperial theaters, former emigres, men with harebrained schemes or out for easy money, well-meaning poets from the lower classes, officials, soldiers, and more - to the horror of his irascible servant, who rages each time the bell rings: “Can’t you read?” Then Totosha, his spoiled and handsome young son, runs in, shouting something in French - never Russian - or the ministerially unceremonious Madame Lunacharskaya. It is all so chaotic, good-natured, and naive that it seems a comedy act. [ . . . ]

Lunacharsky is late for his appointments at the Commissariat of Education: he gets involved in a conversation with one person and makes others wait for hours. To show how liberal he is, he has a portrait of the Tsar hanging in his office. He calls in his visitors two by two, seating them on either side of himself, and while he talks to one of them the other can admire the Minister’s statesmanlike acumen. It is a naive and harmless bit of swagger. I asked him to write a letter to the Commissar of Post and Telegraph Offices, Proshian, and he willingly picked out a letter on his typewriter to the effect that I was such-and-such a person and he would be delighted if Proshian agreed to reopen Kosmos. [ . . . ]’

12 November 1918
‘Kolya showed me his diary yesterday. It’s very good. He writes perfectly decent poems - and by the dozens. Otherwise he’s impossible: he forgets to turn off lights, he’s hard on books, he ruins or loses things.

A meeting with Gorky yesterday. He outlined the preface he’s going to write for our project, and suddenly he lowered his eyes, gave a wry smile, started playing with his fingers, and said, “Only with a government of workers and peasants are such magnificent editions possible. But we’ve got to win them over. Right, win them over. So they don’t start quibbling, know what I mean? Because they’re real schemers, those devils. We’ve got to win them over, know what I mean?”

I had a run-in with Gumilyov at the meeting. A gifted craftsman, he came up with the idea of creating a “Rules for Translators.” To my mind, no rules exist. How can you have rules in literature when one translator ad-libs and the result is top-notch and another conveys the rhythm and everything and it doesn’t go anywhere? Where are the rules? Well, he lost his temper and started shouting. Still, he’s amusing and I like him.

Gorky looks like an old man when he pulls on his silver-rimmed glasses before reading something. He receives batches of letters and pamphlets (from as far as America these days) and skims them with the eye of a merchant poring over his accounts.

Kolya may not be a poet, but he’s poetry personified!’

State of mental anguish

‘We are all in a state of mental anguish. We feel we are forgotten by everyone, abandoned to our own resources and at the mercy of this man. Is it possible that no one will raise a finger to save the Imperial family? Where are those who have remained loyal to the Czar? Why do they delay?’ This is from the diary of Pierre Gilliard, born 140 years ago today, who was tutor to the children of the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II. Nicholas, his wife, and their children would all be murdered a couple of months later. Gilliard’s diary is considered by some to be the ‘best, first-hand account of the life of the last Imperial family’.

Gilliard was born on 16 May 1879 in Fiez, Switzerland, near the border with France. Little seems to be known of his early life, but he became a teacher and tutor of the French language. In 1904, he travelled to Russia to work for the family of Duke George of Leuchtenberg, who was related to the royal family. By the following year, he had been engaged as tutor for the elder children of Tsar Nicholas II - the Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana Nikolaevna. Having grown fond of the family, he stayed with them after the revolution in 1917 during their exile to Siberia. However, he was prevented from continuing to do so when they were again moved, to Ekaterinburg, in May that year. After the infamous murders, he remained in Siberia until the White Army arrived, and for a further three years, assisting Nikolai Sokolov with his investigations of the murders.

In 1919, Gilliard married Aleksandra Tegleva who had served as nanny to the Tsar’s youngest daughter, Grand Duchess Anastasia. In 1920, he returned to Switzerland where he became a French professor at the University of Lausanne. In the mid-1920s, he and his wife became involved in assessing - and ultimately rejecting - a claim by Anna Anderson that she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia (her burial place having remained unknown during the Communist era). Gilliard was awarded the French Legion of Honor. He suffered a severe car accident in 1958, from which he never fully recovered, and he died in 1962. A little further information is available Wikipedia, Alexander Palace, or History of Royal Women.

Gilliard is remembered today because of his involvement in refuting Anderson’s claim but also because he kept a diary of the hugely eventful time he spent with the Russian royal family. Initially published in French, it was translated into English (F. Appleby Holt) and published in 1921 by Hutchinson & Co as Thirteen Years at the Russian Court - A Personal Record of the Last Years and Death of the Car Nicholas II and his Family. This is freely available online at Internet Archive and at the Alexander Palace website. The Tsar and the Tsarina both also kept diaries, right up until their last days, which have also been published - see Hope remains above all and Death of the Romanovs respectively.

Bob Atchison on the Alexander Palace website says this: ‘The best, first-hand account of the life of the last Imperial family of Russia was written by Pierre Gilliard, French tutor to the Tsar’s children. He wrote “Thirteen Years at the Russian Court” to refute the the misleading and false books he discovered upon his return to Western Europe. He criticized the “absurdities and falsehoods” he found that were accepted as truths and endeavored to put things right by publishing this book. His goal was to “to bring Nicholas II and his family back to life.” Since this book was written the opening of Soviet archives has expanded our understanding of the facts surrounding [the] murder of the Romanovs in Ekaterinburg. For example, Pierre[’s] secret and heroic efforts in smuggling messages, money and jewels in and out on behalf of the family at great risk to his own safety has been revealed.’ Here are several extracts from Gilliard’s diary.

25 January 1918
‘Tatiana Nicolaievna’s birthday. Te Deum in the house. Fine winter’s day; sunshine; 15° Réaumur. Went on building the snow mountain as usual. The soldiers of the guard came to help us.’

2 February 1918
‘23° R. below zero. Prince Dolgorouky and I watered the snow mountain. We carried thirty buckets of water. It was so cold that the water froze on the way from the kitchen tap to the mountain. Our buckets and the snow mountain “steamed.” To-morrow the children can begin tobogganing.’

4 February 1918
‘The thermometer is said to have dropped last night below 30° Reaumur (37° Centigrade). Terrible wind. The Grand-Duchesses’ bedroom is a real ice-house.’

8 February 1918
‘The soldiers’ committee has to-day decided to replace Pankratof by a Bolshevik commissary from Moscow. Things are going from bad to worse. It appears that there is no longer a state of war between Soviet Russia and Germany, Austria, and Bulgaria. The army is to be disbanded, but Lenin and Trotsky have not yet signed the peace.’

13 February 1918
‘The Czar tells me that the demobilisation of the army has begun, several classes having already been disbanded. All the old soldiers (the most friendly) are to leave us. The Czar seems very depressed at this prospect; the change may have disastrous results for us.’

25 February 1918
‘Colonel Kobylinsky has received a telegram informing him that, from March 1st, “Nicholas Romanoff and his family must be put on soldiers’ rations and that each member of the family will receive 600 roubles per month drawn from the interest of their personal estate.” Hitherto their expenses have been paid by the state. As the family consists of seven persons, the whole household will have to be run on 4,200 roubles a month.’

5 March 1918
‘Yesterday the soldiers, with a hang-dog look (for they felt it was a mean task), began to destroy the snow mountain with picks. The children are disconsolate.’
 
15 March 1918
‘The townspeople, hearing of our situation, find various ways of sending us eggs, sweetmeats, and delicacies.’

17 March 1918
‘To-day is Carnival Sunday. Everyone is merry. The sledges pass to and fro under our windows; sound of bells, mouth-organs, and singing. . . The children wistfully watch the fun. They have begun to grow bored and find their captivity irksome. They walk round the courtyard, fenced in by its high paling through which they can see nothing. Since the destruction of their snow mountain their only distraction is sawing and cutting wood.

The arrogance of the soldiers is inconceivable; those who have left have been replaced by a pack of blackguardly-looking young men.

In spite of the daily increase of their sufferings, Their Majesties still cherish hope that among their loyal friends some may be found to attempt their release. Never was the situation more favourable for escape, for there is as yet no representative of the Bolshevik Government at Tobolsk. With the complicity of Colonel Kobylinsky, already on our side, it would be easy to trick the insolent but careless vigilance of our guards. All that is required is the organised and resolute efforts of a few bold spirits outside. We have repeatedly urged upon the Czar the necessity of being prepared for any turn of events. He insists on two conditions which greatly complicate matters: he will not hear of the family being separated or leaving Russian territory.

One day the Czarina said to me in this connection: “I wouldn’t leave Russia on any consideration, for it seems to me that to go abroad would be to break our last link with the past, which would then be dead for ever.” ’

10 April 1918
A “full sitting” of our guard, at which the Bolshevik commissary reveals the extent of his powers. He has the right to have anyone opposing his orders shot within twenty-four hours and without trial. The soldiers let him enter the house.’

15 April 1918
‘Alexis Nicolaivitch in great pain yesterday and to-day. It is one of his severe attacks of haemophilia.’

24 April 1918
‘We are all in a state of mental anguish. We feel we are forgotten by everyone, abandoned to our own resources and at the mercy of this man. Is it possible that no one will raise a finger to save the Imperial family? Where are those who have remained loyal to the Czar? Why do they delay?’

25 April 1918
‘Shortly before three o’clock, as I was going along the passage, I met two servants sobbing. They told me that Yakovlef has come to tell the Czar that he is taking him away. What can be happening? I dare not go up without being summoned, and went back to my room. Almost immediately Tatiana Nicolaievna knocked at my door. She was in tears, and told me Her Majesty was asking for me. I followed her. The Czarina was alone, greatly upset. She confirmed what I had heard, that Yakovlef has been sent from Moscow to take the Czar away and is to leave to-night.

29 April 1918
‘The children have received a letter from the Czarina from Tioumen The journey has been very trying. Horses up to their chests in water crossing the rivers. Wheels broken several times.’

3 May 1918
‘Colonel Kobylinsky has received a telegram saying that the travellers have been detained at Ekaterinburg. What has happened?’

Making of a Russian censor

‘The minister of education summoned me for a talk. I arrived at 1 o’clock. “The matter of your appointment to the Press Committee,” the minister said to me, “has taken a rather serious and delicate turn. The emperor has expressed his desire for your appointment [. . .] “Yes,” I replied, “this really puts me in an awkward position. I am prepared to undertake any kind of work which would offer at least some hope for a cause which means so much to me as learning and literature. But if this committee was created for the moral supervision of literature, as its members claim it was, there are no grounds for its existence and it doesn’t have a leg to stand on. If it is going to turn into a secret committee, it is standing on muddy ground and I don’t want to soil myself on it.” ’ This is the Ukrainian, Aleksandr Nikitenko, writing in his diary, exactly 160 years ago today, about being offered a top posting as a central committee censor - all the more remarkable an achievement since he had been born into serfdom. The diary was published in English, some 100 years after his death, as The Diary of a Russian Censor.

Nikitenko was born in Sloboda, Ukraine, in 1804 or 1805, a serf and the property of Count Nikolai Sheremetev, for whom his educated father acted as an estate manager. By 1822, he was working in Ostogozhsk scraping a living as a private tutor. In 1924, he came to the notice of several educated and influential individuals, who then helped him, first, to become a free man, to take up residence in the household of E. P. Obolensky (a future Decembrist), and to study history and philosophy at the Saint Petersburg University. In 1826, he published his first article ‘On Overcoming the Misfortunes’, and was subsequently hired as secretary by the district superintendent of education, K. M. Borozdin. In that position, he compiled a commentary for the new censorship code. He married in mid-1833.

By 1834, Nikitenko had been appointed professor of philology at the university, and in 1837, he was awarded his Doctor of Philosophy (with a dissertation ‘On Creative Power of Poetry or Poetic Genius’). From 1833 to 1848, Nikitenko was a member of the local censorship committee, and a liberal one it seems, since he was arrested on more than occasion for allowing certain literary works to be circulated. From 1853, he worked for the Ministry for People’s Education as extraordinary commissioner; and from 1859 until 1865 he served as a member of the Central Censorship Department, ardently promoting the importance of literature. Otherwise, he acted as editor for several publications, such as Sovremennik (1847-1948) and Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniya (1856-1860), and Severnaya Pochta (1862). He died in 1877. A little further - though not much - biographical info can be gathered from Wikipedia, the Saint Petersburg Encyclopaedia, or H-Net. In 2001, Yale University Press published Nikitenko’s Up from Serfdom. My Childhood and Youth in Russia, 1804-1824 as translated by Helen Saltz Jacobson. Some pages of this can be read at Amazon.

A dozen of so years after Nikitenko’s death, in 1888-1992, a diary he had kept throughout his adult life was published in three volumes. An English edition, abridged, edited and translated by Jacobson, was brought out in 1975 by University of Massachusetts Press as The Diary of a Russian Censor. This can be previewed at Googlebooks. The Saint Petersburg Encyclopaedia says of the diary that it provides ‘a unique and valuable source for the study of the history of Russian society, literature and culture’. Here are two extracts, from the English translation, written as Nikitenko was reflecting on whether to accept an offer to join the central censorship department.

20 February 1859
‘The minister of education summoned me for a talk. I arrived at 1 o’clock.

“The matter of your appointment to the Press Committee,” the minister said to me, “has taken a rather serious and delicate turn. The emperor has expressed his desire for your appointment, and now I am conveying his wish to you. Count Adlerberg has informed me about it.”

“Yes,” I replied, “this really puts me in an awkward position. I am prepared to undertake any kind of work which would offer at least some hope for a cause which means so much to me as learning and literature. But if this committee was created for the moral supervision of literature, as its members claim it was, there are no grounds for its existence and it doesn’t have a leg to stand on. If it is going to turn into a secret committee, it is standing on muddy ground and I don’t want to soil myself on it.”

We talked about it for a long time and finally I promised Evgraf Petrovich that I would try my best to change this whole situation for the better.

While we were discussing this, Mukhanov arrived, and I immediately got involved in a conversation with him on this issue.
 
Mukhanov tried to prove to me that the committee had no reactionary intentions; that it did not have anything in common with the Committee of April 2; that the emperor was certainly not interested in creating a similar apparatus.

“Personally, Your Excellency,” I replied, “I am not worried about it becoming another Committee of April 2, because I think that’s impossible. I consider the very thought of it repugnant to the spirit of our times as well as an insult to our enlightened emperor. But I can’t hide the fact from you that the public is very prejudiced against this new committee.” ’

26 February 1859
‘All week I’ve been busy thinking about the proposal to join the committee and have been involved in discussions with them about it. I was invited to a meeting on Monday, the 23rd, where I came face to face with Count Adlerberg, Timashev and Mukhanov.

I was received very courteously, particularly by Count Adlerberg. I had made up my mind to express frankly both my convictions and my views on the committee, so they could decide for themselves whether I could participate in their affairs. They listened to me very attentively.

I told them of the public’s negative attitude toward the committee; that it considered it another April 2nd committee; that I personally considered it an impossibility today and thought their committee could not be either repressive or reactionary; that its sole function was to serve as an intermediary between literature and the emperor and to influence public opinion by getting the government’s views and aims across via the press in much the same way as literature did by bringing its ideas to the public.

They took all this very well. Then I added that if I were to sit on the committee, it would have to be with the right to vote. It was decided that I would give them a memorandum containing the gist of my remarks and that I would bring it with me on Thursday.

Today, Thursday, I read my memorandum to them in which I outlined my ideas in greater detail. Enlarging upon the thesis that literature did not nurture any revolutionary schemes, I took the position that there wasn’t the slightest reason to take repressive measures against it; that ordinary censorship measures were completely adequate; that literature couldn’t and shouldn’t be restrained by administrative measures; and that, perhaps, the committee should limit itself, according to the emperor’s wishes, to keeping a watchful eye on the mood of the public and to guiding public opinion, rather than literature, on to the right path.

I forgot to mention that, on Monday, after my discussion with the committee, I went to see the minister and told him that I was demanding voting rights. He completely supported my demand and tried to persuade me to accept the position of administrative director of the committee on that condition, since the voting right would put me in a position where I could undoubtedly be a force for good.

He also told me that, on Sunday, at the ball, he had spoken to the emperor about me and referred to me as one, who, in his opinion, could be more useful on the committee than anyone else. The emperor turned to Adlerberg and said: “Hear that, Aleksandr?” Earlier, too, while the committee was being formed, the minister had proposed my name for membership along with the names of Vyazemsky, Tyutchev, Pletnyov, and E. P. Kovalevsky (his brother).

After all this my memorandum was accepted, and tomorrow a report goes to the emperor. The die is cast. I am now embarking on a new career in public service. I shall certainly encounter difficulties - and enormous ones, too. But it would be wrong and dishonest of me to evade them, to refuse to do my part. There will be a great deal of gossip. Perhaps many will reproach me because I, with my spotless reputation, have decided to sit on a tribunal which is considered repressive. But that’s exactly the point, gentlemen. I want to stifle its appetite for repression. If I can work effectively - fine. If I can’t. I’ll leave.

In any case, I am absolutely determined to fight to the bitter end against repressive measures. But, at the same time, I am convinced that literature ought not to sever all its ties with the government and assume a hostile stance. If I am right, then it is incumbent on one of us to hold on to this tie and to assume the role, so to say, of a connecting link. I shall try to be that link.

Perhaps I shall succeed in convincing the committee that it must approach this sort of business in broad statesmanlike fashion; that it should not war with ideas, with literature, or with anything at all, because it is not a clique but a public figure; that it should not irritate people; that it has an enormous responsibility toward Russia, the emperor and posterity, and that because of this responsibility, it must not get involved in petty literary squabbles, but should look beyond all that and view literature as a social force which can do a great deal of good for society. Yes, I shall assume this new responsibility, if I am given the right to vote. Tyutchev, Goncharov, and Lyuboshchinsky warmly endorse my decision.

I think even the committee understood the purity of my intentions. Not a word was mentioned there about any kind of benefits or rewards. As far as salary is concerned, I shall be satisfied with the first figure to be named. As far as my other activities are concerned, it goes without saying that I shall have to curtail them.’