Russka: The Novel of Russia

  He knew the Book of Revelation thoroughly, and quoted passage after passage explaining how each referred to a current event.

  As Daniel became daily more appalled by what he saw in Moscow, his head also became more full of the monk’s formulae and quotations. The fellow is certainly learned, he concluded. And it seems to me that what he says must be true.

  But if indeed the end had come, then that must mean that the Antichrist himself had arrived upon earth. Many thought so. And in that case – who was he?

  Some said Tsar Alexis. Others believed that it was Nikon, who, many of them added, must also have been Jewish!

  But here again, the little monk had better information.

  ‘Tell me this, who was Peter’s real father?’

  ‘Tsar Alexis.’

  ‘Perhaps. But why then is he such a dark giant? Can you think of another?’

  Daniel gazed uncomprehendingly.

  ‘Ah, my friend, you are a good man: you do not see evil. I tell you, the father of this Peter was none other than the wicked Nikon himself. And this foul, illegitimate offspring is not a true Tsar at all. Does he behave like a true Tsar?’

  Daniel could only agree that he did not.

  ‘It is Peter himself who is the Antichrist,’ the little monk concluded in triumph. ‘It is he who is here to begin the Apocalypse. Be warned.’

  God knew, with each passing month, Peter was giving his subjects good cause for thinking that this must be the case. And no wonder, too, that if any final proof was needed, it came with this new and infamous act of changing the counting of the years.

  ‘For is it not said,’ the monk reminded Daniel, ‘that the Antichrist shall change the time? Is it not said that the years of God shall be abolished when the years of Satan are proclaimed?’

  ‘All this is true,’ Daniel agreed.

  ‘Bear witness, then,’ his friend admonished him, ‘that this is indeed the Antichrist.’

  The festival of Epiphany, which falls on January 6, was always celebrated in Russia in a very beautiful way.

  Deriving from the ancient Jewish Feast of Lights, the festival of Epiphany – or Theophany as the Orthodox usually call it – means ‘The Shining Forth’. At this festival are especially remembered Christ’s appearance to the Wise Men, and his baptism by John in the River Jordan.

  It is a lovely and a delicate festival, calling to mind images of light, water and a dove descending.

  At Epiphany, in Russia, it was the custom to bless the waters; and in Moscow this ceremony was of particular beauty.

  Little Maryushka was excited therefore when her father announced that morning that they would all go to the river to watch.

  She had been aware of a tension in the air for the last three weeks. She had seen her parents and the Lady Eudokia consulting each other and heard such words as ‘wickedness’ and ‘the Second Coming’ murmured. She had seen the decoration over the doorways and heard people say it was the New Year; but since her father sternly told her it was not, she supposed everyone else must have made a mistake.

  But today, at least, all seemed to be well. There was only the faintest wind. The cloud cover was high and thin, so that the pale presence of the sun was sensed, if not seen. The streets were full and by the time they reached the river a huge crowd was gathering. She could even see people sitting on the tall roofs of the houses. They crossed the frozen river and took up a position opposite the high walls of the Kremlin.

  In the middle of the frozen river, inside a large area enclosed by rails, stood a little wooden building, like a shrine, densely hung with icons. Before it she could see a broad circular hole in the ice, like a well. Young priests and deacons were standing about there.

  Maryushka looked up at her father. Although she already understood what it meant to be one of the Raskolniki, she hoped it was all right to enjoy these ceremonies performed by the ordinary Church; she was glad, therefore, to note a look of approval on Daniel’s face as he gazed at the river, and she held her mother’s hand happily.

  Soon, she knew, she would see both the Patriarch and the Tsar himself as they sat in splendour, on twin thrones upon the ice, to watch the blessing of the waters. She was so fascinated that she forgot even to glance up at her parents again.

  Across the ice now, she could see the front of the procession. A banner was waving; there was a faint glint from the jewelled mitres of the priests. They were coming.

  But then, suddenly, another sound was heard: the sound of pipes and drums – brisk, cheerful, but harsh. And now on to the ice swung column after column of soldiers, marching smartly in step. They wore close-fitting German coats of red, green or blue, with gaiters and tricorn hats. They carried flintlocks. And they were cleanshaven. In front of each company marched a man with a banner; and before the first column strode a huge, tall man dressed in a green uniform. While the drums rolled and the pipes squeaked, some twelve thousand foreign-looking soldiers marched out on to the ice and formed a huge square around the area where the priests were to bless the waters.

  Only when the troops were in place did the priests come on to the ice.

  But now at last they came. How stately, how gorgeous the procession was. A huge gold cross was followed immediately by an enormous lantern with mica windows, carried on the shoulders of a dozen priests, in which huge candles were burning brightly. Some five hundred priests in their golden robes and jewelled mitres followed in stately procession behind: archbishops, bishops, archimandrites, priests and deacons; and as they gathered, hundreds of tall tapers were lit. On a raised dais now, a deacon stood holding aloft a huge banner on which, in gold, was depicted the double-headed eagle of the Russian Tsars. On a throne sat the Patriarch. Here, indeed, was all the gorgeous panoply of old Russia.

  But where, she wondered, was the Tsar? Why was the Patriarch sitting alone?

  ‘Where is Tsar Peter?’ she whispered.

  ‘He’s there,’ Arina replied.

  Maryushka frowned. Which one was he then?

  The blessings had already begun. A mitred priest was passing the censer over the water: one, two, three times. Long candles were being dipped in the water. The waters were being blessed.

  It was a sacred moment. At this instant, Maryushka knew, the waters of the river were mystically transformed into those of the River Jordan. This, indeed, was holy Russia.

  During all this time, the massed troops had remained silent. At each important point in the service of blessing, the huge standard with the double-headed eagle had been waved, and the standards of the soldiers, as if in reply, had at once waved back in unison. As the ceremony ended, they were brought forward to be sprinkled with Holy water.

  Then it was done. The priests began to turn. When suddenly the whole sky appeared to crack.

  To Maryushka, for a second, it seemed as if the world must have come to an end. The great thunderclap, followed by a roar, seemed to fill the whole sky, the whole day. She started so violently that she left the ground. And then, even as the mighty roar of the cannon massed along the Kremlin wall was reverberating back and forth across the river, a second awful crash followed as the twelve thousand men before her raised their muskets and fired a volley into the air; a few moments later there was another; then a third.

  And the little girl, completely taken by surprise, burst into tears.

  This was Tsar Peter’s contribution to the celebration of Epiphany.

  Only afterwards did her parents explain to her that the tall man in green, standing far away from the Patriarch, was the Tsar and that the roar of the guns was meant to be a happy celebration.

  As for Daniel, it seemed to him that, for the first time, he had truly seen the face of the Antichrist.

  It was hard. It was cold. It was unlike anything seen in Russia before. For the Antichrist, this Peter, he now realized, was the state itself, without religion. And he remembered a phrase he had heard some Moscow Raskolniki use only the week before, and which he had not quite understood.

  ??
?That’s it,’ he murmured. ‘All power is Antichrist because all men are subservient to it.’

  Peter was the new state. And he was about power.

  It was a week later that his friend the little monk disappeared.

  Daniel heard that they had taken him to the Preobrazhensky Prikaz for questioning. Ten days later, he heard from the community of Raskolniki that the little fellow was dead. He had freely confessed to saying that Peter was the Antichrist. He even told his guards that they should not obey the Tsar. But he had refused to name any accomplices. They had punished him by the death known in Russia as kopchenie: with this method, the victim is slowly smoked to death like bacon.

  It was the week after this that Daniel left Moscow for Russka.

  1703

  Andrei was pleased to be going to Moscow again – all the more so since he had discovered by letters that his old friend Nikita Bobrov was still alive.

  And I understand he’s still rich, like me, he thought with a grin.

  Life had been good to him, Andrei considered. There had been tragedies: he had lost three children and his first wife. But there had been a happy second marriage and three more children, of whom his greatest joy was his son, Pavlo.

  What a handsome, brave young fellow he was – a true Cossack.

  As for their estates – they were considerable.

  ‘Which is why,’ he would remark slyly, ‘I am a good Russian!’

  Since the days of Bogdan and the union with Muscovy, the Ukraine had suffered some terrible times while Poland and Russia fought over her, and Cossack factions had fought between themselves in the period usually known as the Ruin.

  But that was over now. After numerous disputes, Russia and Poland had finally signed a perpetual peace. Poland kept the land west of the River Dniepr, with the exception of ancient Kiev, and Russia held the land to the east, known as the Left Bank. At this time also, the Orthodox Churchmen in Kiev finally placed themselves under the Patriarch of Moscow instead of Constantinople. There was some grumbling – because these Ukrainians still considered themselves more sophisticated than the Muscovites – but they did it.

  It was also at this point that Russia found a new and satisfactory Hetman to rule the Left Bank. He was a nobleman of polished manners and education who had at one time served the Polish King. His name – almost as famous as Bogdan’s in the Ukraine – was Ivan Mazeppa.

  His aim was very simple: control the land for Russia; strengthen the Cossack gentry; leave the poor Cossacks and peasants as they were; and, of course, enrich himself. This policy made the ordinary people hate him, but it certainly worked.

  Ivan Mazeppa, in a feat rarely equalled in the highest days of feudalism, managed in thirty years to amass very nearly twenty thousand estates. He also gave estates to his faithful officers, who included Andrei and his son. ‘Thanks to Mazeppa we have ten estates,’ Andrei would remind his son. ‘And see how cleverly he has managed to make a friend of young Tsar Peter.’ For it was true that Mazeppa had managed to form a close and very profitable friendship with the new Tsar, who trusted him more than most of his court.

  And, thank God, young Pavlo was in the good graces of Mazeppa. Better still, he had fought his first campaign with him when the Cossacks helped at the taking of Azov. Pavlo had been only seventeen, but he had caught the attention of Tsar Peter himself. Who knew what sort of career he might one day have! He could even be Hetman.

  He was a dark, handsome young man of twenty-five, a little shorter than Andrei had been, but very strongly made. The previous month he had broken his arm in a fall, and returned home to visit his parents while it mended. And though at first young Pavlo had been furious to be out of action, Andrei had suddenly remarked to him one day: ‘My boy, I think perhaps this is an opportunity after all.’

  The times were certainly exciting. Russia had begun her great war on the Baltic coast with Sweden. And Charles XII, that country’s bold young king, was still so confident he could defeat the half-trained Russians that he had calmly attacked Poland as well. For a good Cossack, all this could only mean one thing – an opportunity to fight and enrich oneself. ‘The Tsar needs good men for his northern campaign. And Mazeppa’s going to ask his permission to take back some of the Polish lands across the Dniepr,’ Pavlo had told his father. ‘Either way, I can’t wait to get into action.’

  ‘But there are more ways of getting ahead than fighting,’ old Andrei had reminded his son. ‘Look at Mazeppa.’

  What better time could there be for Pavlo to go to Moscow and recommend himself to Tsar Peter?

  Everything had worked out well: Mazeppa himself had given Pavlo a letter to Peter; Andrei had discovered that his old friend Nikita Bobrov had a son who was close to the Tsar. It was with high hopes, therefore, that he rode northwards into Russia. Of the young Tsar he did not know a great deal. The poor Cossacks hated him. They respected his conquests in the south and the fact that he had finally ended the payments to the Khan down in the Crimea. But they hated the new religious ways – many had already become Raskolniki – and they detested the new war in the north. Their wild and undisciplined ways were useless against the trained infantry of the Swedish King. Losses had already been high. ‘We’re cannon fodder for English and German officers,’ they truly said. But none of this greatly concerned Andrei now. A Cossack landowner was a very different fellow from these poor fighting peasants.

  It was spring when he left Kiev. The weather was getting warm, and the rivers were settling down again into their new courses. For each year, in their full spate, the melting rivers carried downstream such a mass of branches, ice floes and debris of all kinds, that their courses were subtly altered. Here a bank would collapse; there silt pile up a new one; fallen trees might turn a stream into new channels; a meadow become a swamp. Each year it was the same river, yet not the same.

  So, too, Andrei reflected, he was taking the same journey that he had taken half a century before: the same, but different, and this time with his son.

  Though he felt healthy, a little voice within had told him that he should not expect to make any more long journeys after this one. He was strong, but he was seventy-four. And so it was with a certain nostalgia, now, that he prepared to see Moscow for the last time.

  How many memories rose up before him as he rode: memories of his youth, of the Ox, of the girl Maryushka.

  Faces, he thought, that I shall never see again, on this side of life’s river.

  In the year 1703, the Bobrovs had a new Moscow house.

  It was stout, squat, on two floors: and it was built of stone. The rooms were low, but large; the floors were made of massive wooden planks, which were polished. The furniture was simple – a stout table, some wooden chairs. And in the main room, after the icon in the corner of course, the place of honour was occupied by a tall square stove with a chimney, which was covered with Dutch tiles.

  Procopy Bobrov had taken six months to persuade his father to import these tiles, but old Nikita, now that he had this stove, was proud of the thing.

  ‘Dutch,’ he would say, as he conducted his guests to look at them. ‘Yes, they’re Dutch all right.’

  So it was to the new stove, in the month of May that year, that Nikita Bobrov delightedly conducted his old friend Andrei and his son Pavlo.

  ‘What a joy this is,’ he cried. ‘After so many years. And as you see,’ he added, with a wave of the hand at the stove and the house in general, ‘things have changed since you were last here.’

  They had indeed.

  How strange it was to Andrei to find his old friend both cleanshaven, apart from a moustache, and in a tight-fitting German coat.

  ‘Why,’ he laughed, ‘my dear Nikita, you look almost like a Cossack!’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Nikita looked a little sheepish, yet also rather proud. ‘The Tsar’s orders, you know.’

  For within a year of the beard tax, Peter had struck again. This time, all classes above the peasant were to wear Hungarian or German short coats instead
of their long kaftans which, though undoubtedly warmer in the Russian winter, Peter had decided were too old-fashioned and impractical. He had even hung dummies, correctly dressed, by the city gates to instruct his subjects what to do.

  ‘Yes,’ Nikita went on, ‘you’ll find everything’s very western now. Young people allowed to meet each other before they’re married; our women not to be kept in seclusion – he even has them attend court with their husbands. Progress in every way, I dare say.’

  Though Andrei also noticed, when Eudokia came in to greet him, that she wore a long Russian dress in the old style and greeted him in the traditional reverent manner.

  ‘My wife preserves the old ways in the house,’ Nikita remarked, with a trace of embarrassment.

  For their part, the two Ukrainians thought it rather graceful. Andrei was fascinated by all that he saw and learned in the coming days.

  Nikita was obviously happy to see him, insisted he stay in his house, and took him everywhere. But it was not just the changing face of the city but the subtle change in attitudes that he noticed.

  For where, in their youth, Nikita had been harsh towards foreigners, now there was in his tone something faintly, but unmistakably, apologetic. ‘We have apothecaries in the city now, you know,’ he would say. ‘And a newspaper.’ Or: ‘There’s a new school of navigation here, and another for foreign languages about to start. But, of course, I dare say you’re used to such things in Little Russia.’ On another occasion, he even remarked humbly, ‘The Tsar has authorized Protestants. Do you think that is right?’

  Above all, Nikita noticed the change in the power of the Church.

  Once again, another department for the Church had been set up, but this time, Andrei gathered, the Tsar was effectively taking some of the Church revenues for the state.

  ‘He’s also taken a lot of church bells,’ Nikita explained, ‘for the cannon.’

  But far more striking, and shocking, was something Peter had simply failed to do.

  For three years before, the old Patriarch had died. And since he was nowadays their Patriarch too, the Orthodox in the Ukraine had wondered who the new one would be. So far only a temporary stand-in had been appointed. But when Andrei asked his host who he thought would succeed, Nikita shook his head. ‘You don’t understand. The word is that there isn’t going to be one. Peter doesn’t want one.’