Russka: The Novel of Russia

  For the notion of a country house was still new to Russia. The knight’s manor and the magnate’s castle, so much the rule in England or France, could be found as far east as Poland – but in old Muscovy they had been completely unknown. As for the country villa of the Renaissance, with its cultivated pursuit of leisure – the idea would have been unimaginable. Until the eighteenth century, when the Bobrovs visited their estates, they had always stayed in houses within the walled town of Russka. Though a noble who was very poor might find himself living in a village, in a house almost indistinguishable from the peasants’, only after the reign of Peter the Great did landowners even begin to live like European squires.

  Their country houses were nearly always modest. While Russian rulers and their favourites had palaces that might rival those of Germany or France, the houses of men like Bobrov would have seemed makeshift to an English gentleman. Indeed, their construction and scale were far closer to those of the landowners in the newly freed colonies of America.

  Only one thing had spoiled the tranquillity of the Bobrovs – the name of their village: Dirty Place. When they had lived in Russka it had not mattered, but when he came to live on the estate, Alexander had found the name offensive and absurd. He had toyed with various new names before inclining towards one derived from that of his own family: Bobrovo. Bobrovo, therefore, was now the official designation of the village and estate, though some of the older peasants still referred to it as Dirty Place.

  Today there was a sense of expectancy in the house. In the area around Moscow, new regiments were nastily being raised. The previous afternoon, Bobrov had received a personal letter from the military governor of Vladimir asking him to supply more serfs as recruits. The peasants in the village had been drawing lots that very morning and shortly he would hear who had been chosen.

  His own second son, Alexis, though only nineteen, was proudly serving as an infantry officer. Every time anyone approached the house, Tatiana would rush to the door, hoping they might be bringing a letter from him. Patriotism, excitement, seemed to be in the air.

  And yet, in all these preparations, there was one great problem that filled Alexander Bobrov with a special sense of foreboding.

  ‘For it’s not Napoleon’s troops I fear so much,’ he told Tatiana. ‘It’s our own people.’ The serfs.

  When the story of Napoleon’s great invasion of Russia is told, it is often forgotten that, in the months leading up to it, a great many Russian landowners feared an internal revolution more than they feared the invader. And for this view there was good reason. All over Europe, the conquering emperor of the French had claimed to be liberating people from their rulers in the name of the Revolution: to many of them he was a hero. Indeed, of the huge force who were to march with him into Russia in 1812 – the legendary Grand Army – less than half were French at all. And of all these European contingents, none fought more eagerly than those from the next-door Polish territories – formerly grabbed by Austria and Prussia when unhappy Poland was partitioned – whom Napoleon had indeed liberated. No wonder then if Russian leaders feared that their own subjugated Poles, and their oppressed Russian serfs, might rise in sympathy with this liberating army. ‘He’ll do what Pugachev failed to do, and give us a real revolution,’ Bobrov had predicted gloomily.

  If the outside world was full of danger, however, the salon where the Bobrovs were sitting was a scene of quiet, domestic calm. There were several pieces of rather stiff English furniture, two ancestral pictures and some sombre classical landscapes, all brought from St Petersburg. But the general impression of the room was still one of friendly disorder.

  Alexander and Tatiana were sitting in armchairs. He wore an old blue English coat, cravat and silk stockings; she wore a long, high-waisted pink dress, with a bright shawl draped over her shoulders. In her hands was a piece of embroidery. Near the fire sat their eldest surviving son, twenty-two-year-old Ilya. He had his mother’s round face and fair hair. He was reading a book. In Alexander’s opinion, the young man should have been away fighting, like his brother. But perhaps because, back in ’89, she had so nearly lost him at birth, Tatiana had always kept him at home, insisting he was delicate. ‘He doesn’t look delicate to me,’ Alexander would grumble. ‘He just looks fat and lazy.’ It was a pity he had let Tatiana spoil the boy, because Ilya was intelligent. But Alexander could not be bothered to do anything about it now.

  And then there was little Sergei. It would have surprised Alexander to know that his face lightened into a smile whenever he looked at this ten-year-old. Yet what a bright little fellow he was, with his black hair, his laughing brown eyes – the other Bobrov children’s eyes were blue – and his merry ways. He was sitting by the window now, with his sister Olga, inseparable as usual, drawing funny pictures to make her laugh.

  Lastly, close by the children, sat a plump peasant woman in her early forties. This was the children’s nanny, Arina. A few minutes before, she had been telling the children one of her inexhaustible fund of fairy stories and Alexander, too, had half-listened, marvelling as he always did at the richness of the Slav folk tradition.

  On the nanny’s lap sat a baby girl of one, an orphaned niece that the Bobrovs had allowed her to bring to live in the house, and to whom she had given her own name: Arina.

  It was a pleasant scene. On a table in the centre of the room, in woven baskets, were rice and egg pirozhki and other pastries; on a plate, some cinnamon crescents; on another, an apple pie. In a little bowl was some raspberry syrup, with which Tatiana liked to flavour her tea, and slices of lemon for everyone else. For Alexander there was also a little flask of rum. And on a side table stood the most important item of all: the samovar.

  It was a splendid one. Alexander had bought the samovar in Moscow and was very proud of it. It stood some two feet high, was silver, and shaped rather like a grecian urn. Heated by charcoal, the water in the samovar was always boiling hot, and from time to time Tatiana herself would go to fill the teapot with a fresh supply from the samovar’s tap.

  So, on that cold, snowy day, the family quietly awaited news from the outside world.

  It was little Sergei who, glancing out of the window, suddenly stood up and said: ‘Look, Papa. Visitors.’

  Several things were striking about Ivan and Savva Suvorin. The first was that, at twenty, Savva was as tall as his father, so there were now two giants in the village. The second was that, unlike most Russian peasants who wore felt or bast shoes, the Suvorins both wore stout leather boots, which proclaimed their wealth. The third was that each wore a huge hat: the father’s shaped like a bulbous dome, the son’s high and rounded, with a large brim – almost like an old English Puritan’s hat – so that as they walked along they resembled nothing so much as a tall wooden church and belltower.

  Both wore heavy black coats. From the older man’s belt hung a bag of coins. He made no secret of the fact that he had money. What was concealed, however, was the equal quantity of coins that was sewn into the inside of the other’s clothing. ‘God knows if we shall need it,’ Ivan remarked. ‘You can never tell with that greedy wolf.’

  For the rich serf was going to see his master Bobrov; and the money was to save his son’s life.

  ‘Cheer up, Savva,’ he added, ‘you drew the lot – it was fate – but I can save you. It may be expensive, but better a serf than dead, eh?’ To which his son did not reply.

  Savva very seldom smiled: he could not see the point. Though he was only twenty, something in his square young face suggested that on this matter, as upon most, his opinion had long ago been formed. With his black hair, huge nose and black, watchful eyes, he was already as formidable as his father. His mouth was usually pursed into a thin line of silent defiance, and his firm, determined walk somehow suggested that, wherever he was going, it was because he didn’t much care for the place he was coming from.

  It was in silence, therefore, that they completed their walk up the slope to the house.

  Alexander Bobrov could sca
rcely believe it had happened. Fate, for once, must have decided to smile upon him. As he gazed at the two Suvorins who now stood before him in his study, he had to fight to suppress a grin.

  For this could only mean one thing: money. The question was, how much?

  Bobrov was not a greedy man. Though he had once dreamed of riches, he had always rather despised money grubbing as such. But time, failure, and children to provide for had left their mark, so that it might be said that, nowadays, he was sporadically greedy.

  ‘So, Suvorin, your son doesn’t want to be a soldier?’ he remarked pleasantly. He turned to Savva. ‘You would get your freedom, you know,’ he added.

  Since the time of Peter the Great, when a fixed proportion of all the souls in Russia became liable for military service, it was the rule that the serfs chosen – usually, as at Bobrovo, by lot – were granted their freedom upon discharge. But what was that worth when the twenty-five-year service was usually a sentence of death? Men had been known to mutilate themselves to avoid this fate. And now young Savva had drawn the unlucky lot, and Alexander Bobrov could hardly believe his luck.

  For though the Suvorins were owned by Bobrov, they had money. Their achievements in the last ten years had been considerable. Not only did they turn out large quantities of silk ribbons, but they now ran a whole network of other serfs, taking their cloth to Vladimir market in return for a cut of the profits. Suvorin had a dozen looms working for him these days, and was adding more all the time.

  All of which suited the landowner very well. For whatever he does, he told himself, Suvorin still belongs to me.

  The rich serf was profitable to Alexander for a very simple reason. For while the serfs down on the Riazan estate still paid their dues with three days’ barshchina labour, he nowadays made all the Bobrovo serfs give him a cash obrok: and the amount of the obrok to be paid was set, at any figure he pleased, by the landowner! Twice in the last three years he had raised Suvorin’s obrok; both times the fellow had grumbled but paid. ‘God knows what he’s still hiding from me,’ Alexander had complained. Now was the chance to find out.

  For there could be only one reason for this visit. Bobrov knew it very well, and intended to enjoy every moment of it. He leaned back in his chair, half-closed his eyes, mildly enquired: ‘So, what can I do for you?’ and waited. And just as Bobrov had known he would, Suvorin bowed low, and announced: ‘I have come, Alexander Prokofievich, to buy a serf.’

  Then Alexander Bobrov smiled. For he had serfs to sell.

  It had taken many centuries, but by the turn of the nineteenth century the legal position of the Russian peasant had finally reached its lowest point. Peasants now – whether serfs owned by a landlord or state peasants bound to crown land; whether well-off like the Suvorins or semi-starving – were all virtually slaves. A serf had almost no rights at all. Bobrov knew one landowner who insisted on a first night with every serf girl when she was married. He had heard of an old lady who had sent two serfs to Siberia because they forgot to bow to her carriage as it passed. The landlord was employer, judge and executioner. Indeed, even the one right he did not have – that of sentencing a serf to death – was easily circumvented by whipping the offender until, by accident, he died.

  Above all, serfs could nowadays be bought and sold like chattels. A pretty girl or a man with special skills could fetch a high price. In a celebrated case, a magnate had sold an entire serf orchestra for a fortune.

  Of course, it was wrong. It was monstrous. In his radical days, in the salons of Catherine’s St Petersburg, Alexander would have conceded as much. Nowadays, it was well known, the Tsar himself considered the practice of serfdom utterly repugnant.

  ‘But he can’t change it, not yet. The gentry won’t let him,’ Alexander would correctly argue. ‘And in the meantime, I must provide for the family,’ he told himself. At least on the Bobrovo estate, serfs were seldom flogged and never killed.

  In all this terrible dealing in souls, probably no practice was more common than the selling of men as military recruits. And it was not the landlords who usually bought these.

  It was other serfs.

  For the recruiting officer cared not one rap whence the soldier came. As long as he had a body for cannon fodder, it was enough. A rich serf like Suvorin, therefore, did not let his own son go to war. He simply went to the landowner and bought another fellow to go in his place.

  So here he was, and the only question was, how much? Slowly Bobrov considered, while the Suvorins waited.

  It was quite by chance that, at this moment, Tatiana and young Sergei should have entered the room. The landlord’s wife had run the estate long enough to guess what business the Suvorins must have called upon. She had always rather liked the stern couple. Perhaps it was her Baltic ancestry, but their businesslike ways appealed to her. She looked at her husband enquiringly. As for young Sergei, he just smiled at them cheerfully, as he did at everyone.

  And why was it that their entry should have caused Bobrov to change his price? Was it a sudden memory of his humiliation at Sergei’s birth? Was it a sense of his failure at his career and his wife’s success at running the estate when he was in prison? Whatever the cause, instead of the five hundred roubles he had thought of asking for, he calmly announced: ‘The price is a thousand roubles.’

  The two serfs gasped. He had struck home this time; he could see it in their faces. The amount, of course, was outrageous. The top rate being asked for substitutes, even by the greediest landlords, was about six hundred roubles at that time. But it was not unknown for landlords to charge even greater sums if they thought the purchaser might have the means.

  ‘Of course,’ he added coolly, ‘I could just decide to send Savva anyway.’ It was within his power. Then he watched as the two serfs looked at each other.

  They had brought eight hundred roubles. To get another two hundred they would have to dig under the floorboards. It was all they had in the world.

  ‘I could bring such a sum tomorrow, Alexander Prokofievich,’ Suvorin said glumly.

  ‘Very well, I will send for one of the Riazan serfs to take Savva’s place.’ Alexander concealed his smile, but he felt a glow of triumph. It was not easy to run the estate better than his unfaithful wife, but he had discovered that milking the richer serfs was one way. And he had certainly got the better of Suvorin today. In his triumph over the serf, he scarcely gave young Savva more than a glance.

  Savva looked at the Bobrovs. Tatiana he did not mind. She was fair and she was practical. He correctly saw, from the distant look on her face, that she had no part in this. But the rest of them, father and sons, he hated and despised. He might have admired them, although they oppressed him, if they were strong. But he knew that they were not. He glanced at Sergei. Somehow he looked different. His bright brown eyes were watching Savva with apparent amusement: was the boy laughing at him?

  The young peasant knew little of the past. Back in Peter the Great’s time, his grandmother had told him, her own grandmother had escaped from fire when the villagers burned themselves in the church. Then she had returned here later. ‘We’ve been here as long as the Bobrovs,’ she used to say. But that was all he knew. Of his earlier ancestors, cheated by a Bobrov on St George’s Day in the faraway reign of Ivan the Terrible, he knew nothing. He had never heard of Peter the Tatar and his severed head. All that was lost, long forgotten, buried in the ground.

  What Savva knew was that these Bobrovs were his enemies: he knew it in his soul. And as he looked at them now, he made a simple, irrevocable decision. He would be rid of them. It might take him many years; he would need to be cunning and to be strong; but he had strength and endurance.

  Master versus serf: it would be a duel, perhaps to the death.

  1812, October

  Sombre blue-grey skies; dark trees. First refugees had come by, then troops, each followed by complete silence – as when, after a shot has been fired and its echo died away, one continues to listen intently and the silence seems so much greate
r because one hears nothing.

  The Russians had fought; they had defended the fatherland; the serfs had been loyal. And was it not natural to fight when they saw before them not only the French, but their traditional enemies from the ancient days of Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible – the German Prussians and the Poles?

  First there had been the day when news came of the huge but inconclusive Battle of Borodino; soon afterwards, that Napoleon had entered Moscow. And then, the fire.

  It could be seen from over thirty miles away – that tower of fire and smoke that rose, for three days, like a vast pillar into the September sky to announce that Moscow itself was burned down and that the mighty conqueror had been robbed of his prize. Still the emperor of the French lurked in the charred city. What would he do next?

  Russka had been busy. Troops had come streaming through as the Russian army prepared to shadow the foe along the great curve of the River Oka. A few days before, a whole regiment of infantry in their green coats and white leggings came swinging by. Then squadrons of cavalry.

  It was one October morning, during these days, that Sergei and his sister Olga were sitting with nanny Arina and her baby girl by the fire in the nursery.

  There had been fresh news, and fresh rumours, every day. Napoleon was still cooped up in the burnt and empty city of Moscow. Would he try to strike up at St Petersburg where the Tsar was fortifying the approaches? Would he try to pull back to Smolensk? If so, the crusty old veteran, General Kutuzov, and the main Russian army were waiting for him on the way. Or would he attempt to sit out the winter in Moscow?

  How thrilling it all was. Sergei was so excited, so anxious to see Kutuzov, or even the French, that Alexander had laughingly told him: ‘You won’t be satisfied until Napoleon himself has paid a visit to Russka!’