13 ‘Depositions made at the Kodiak office of the American Company by the hunter Abrosim Plotnikov and others who were witnesses to the massacre of the New Archangel fort and who escaped from the Kolosh in 1802,’ Tikhmenev, Russian American Company, vol. 2, p. 136.
14 Ibid., p. 138.
15 Though sadly there is no mention of the artefacts’ violent provenance.
16 Baranov’s letter to Kuliakov quoted in Tikhmenev, Russian American Company, vol. 2, p. 265.
17 Lisiansky quoted in Engstrom, Baranov, p. 121.
18 Captain Urey Lisianski (Yury Lisiansky), A Voyage Around the World, John Murray, London 1814 (facsimile edition Da Capo Press, New York 1968), p. 203.
19 Ibid., p. 243.
20 Ibid., p. 245.
21 Ibid., p. 224.
22 See Andrei Grinev, ‘Amerikanskaya Epopeya Aleksandra Baranova’, Voprosy Istorii, no. 8, Moscow 2000.
16. Hunger, Disease, Shipwreck and Death
1 Rezanov’s second secret letter to RAC, 15 February 1806, in Tikhmenev, Russian American Company, p. 190.
2 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, vol. 2, p. 70.
3 D’Wolf, Voyage to the North Pacific, p. 26.
4 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, vol. 2, p. 87.
5 Rezanov to Gideon from Sitka, 11 September 1805, Gideon, Voyage, p. 90.
6 Tikhmenev, Russian American Company, vol. 2, p. 157.
7 D’Wolf, Voyage to the North Pacific, p. 28.
8 When the pound went on the gold standard in 1823 the exchange rate was£1 = $4.86. In 1803 the pound was worth somewhat less than this because of the Napoleonic Wars.
9 Tikhmenev, Russian American Company, vol. 2, p. 160.
10 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, vol. 2, p. 89.
11 D’Wolf, Voyage to the North Pacific, p. 29.
12 Letter to Professor Blumenbach of Göttingen, February 1806 in Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, vol. 2, p. 102.
13 Ibid., p. 99.
14 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, vol. 2, p. 69.
15 Rezanov’s second secret letter to the RAC, 15 February 1806, in Tikhmenev, Russian American Company, p. 190.
16 Ibid., p. 193.
17 Rezanov, Voyage to Nueva California, p. 43.
18 Ibid., p. 45.
19 Tikhmenev, Russian American Company, vol. 2, p. 165.
20 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, vol. 2, p. 70.
21 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 73.
22 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 85.
23 Ibid., vol. 2, letter to Professor Blumenbach of Göttingen, February 1806, p. 110.
24 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 103.
25 Tikhmenev, Russian American Company, vol. 2, p. 157.
26 Ibid., p. 196.
27 D’Wolf, Voyage to the North Pacific, p. 42.
28 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, vol. 2, letter to Professor Blumenbach of Göttingen, February 1806, p. 99.
29 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 92.
30 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 93.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 96.
34 Rezanov, Voyage to Nueva California, p. 7.
35 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, vol. 2, p. 98.
17. Conchita
1 Jeremy Atiyah, The Great Land: How Western America Nearly Became a Russian Possession, Parker press, Portland 2008, p. vii.
2 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, vol. 2, p. 98.
3 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 140.
4 Stephen A. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the West, Simon & Schuster, New York 1996, p. 322.
5 Elin Woodger and Brandon Toropov, Encyclopedia of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Infobase Publishing, 2004, p. 150.
6 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, vol. 2, p. 145.
7 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 183.
8 8 April in the Western calendar.
9 Rezanov, Voyage to Nueva California, p. 11.
10 Ibid.
11 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, p. 150.
12 Rezanov, Voyage to Nueva California, p. 7.
13 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, p. 153.
14 Ibid., p. 152.
15 The mission, its roof supported on squat adobe pillars, still stands, and gives its name to the surrounding district, which is still predominantly Spanish-speaking.
16 Rezanov, Voyage to Nueva California, p. 15.
17 Vancouver, A Voyage of Discovery, vol. 2, pp. 502–3.
18 Rezanov, Voyage to Nueva California, p. 18.
19 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, vol. 2, p. 154.
20 Ibid., p. 180.
21 Rezanov, Voyage to Nueva California, p. 14.
22 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, vol. 2, p. 163.
23 Rezanov, Voyage to Nueva California, p. 28.
24 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, p. 178.
25 Ibid., p. 178.
18. Love and Ambition
1 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, p. 181.
2 Ibid., p. 180.
3 Rezanov, Voyage to Nueva California, p. 37.
4 Ibid., p. 64.
5 Eve Iverson, ed. by Richard A. Pierce, The Romance of Nikolai Rezanov and Concepción Arguello: A Literary Legend and its Effect on Californian History, University of Alaska Press, Fairbanks 1998, p. 85.
6 Thomas Russell, Notes to The Rezanov Voyage to Nueva California in 1806, Thomas Russell, San Francisco 1926, p. 83.
7 Rezanov, Voyage to Nueva California, p. 62.
8 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, vol. 2, p. 181.
9 Ibid., p. 179.
10 Rezanov letter to Iturrigaria, Dmitryshkin, Russian American Colonies, p. 109.
11 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, p. 177.
12 Indeed when Rezanov arrived in April the governor had only just heard the previous autumn’s European sensation – that Prussia had entered the Third Coalition, heralding another round of European war.
13 Rezanov, Voyage to Nueva California, p. 37.
14 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, vol. 2, p. 180.
15 Ibid., p. 183.
16 Rezanov, Voyage to Nueva California, p. 64.
17 Ibid., p. 64.
18 Ibid., p. 38.
19 Iverson, Romance, p. 100.
20 Ibid., p. 101.
21 Rezanov, Voyage to Nueva California, p. 39.
22 Ibid., p. 181.
23 Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels, vol. 2, p. 185.
19. I will never see you – I will never forget you
1 Rezanov’s second secret letter to the RAC, 15 February 1806, in Tikhmenev, Russian American Company, p. 190.
2 Surnik, Poslednee pismo Rezanova.
3 In 1795 Governor Diego de Borica issued Arguello a Spanish land grant for the Rancho de las Pulgas – the Ranch of the Fleas. This was the largest grant on the San Francisco Peninsula and consisted of 35,260 acres (142.7 square kilometres) in present-day San Mateo County. It encompasses the present-day towns of San Mateo, Belmont, San Carlos, Redwood City, Atherton and Menlo Park. See Moessner, ‘The First Russian Ambassador to Japan’.
4 Rezanov, Voyage to Nueva California, p. 21.
5 Ibid., p. 47.
6 Sunday, 11 January 1931, Iverson, Romance, p. 135.
7 Rezanov, Voyage to Nueva California, p. 52.
8 Engstrom, Baranov, p. 166.
9 Ibid., p. 162.
10 Istomin, ‘Dva Varianta Pisma’.
11 The second copy is now lost.
12 24 Jan 1807, Istomin, ‘Dva Varianta Pisma’.
13 Secret instruction left by Rezanov to Baranov, 20 July 1806, Yudin Collection, Library of Congress, box 1, folder 11.
14 Lopatnikov, ‘Nikolai Rezanov’.
20. The Weeping Country
1 Tikhmenev, Russian American Company, vol. 2, p. 101.
2 Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Horner-Nachlass, Ms.M.5,60.
3 Quoted in Moessner, ‘The First Russian Ambassador to Japan’.
4 Langsdorff continued, ‘The deceased, as one is wont to say, now may be answering
before God’s judgement chair for all of his cruelties and heinous deeds. As with everyone, Rezanov cheated the Spaniards here [in California]. He claimed our ship was on a voyage of discovery and purchased with contraband goods – to Russia’s shame – grain and flour to stave off the threat of starvation in Sitka.’
5 Langsdorff to Krusenstern, Tobolsk, 20 December 1807, Archive of the Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, Fond 31, 1, 11.
6 Tikhmenev, Russian American Company p. 101.
7 Ibid., p. 102.
8 Sitka, 23 March 1806, quoted in Sverdlov, ‘Rezanov: Obraz I Lichnost’.
9 See Leonid Sverdlov, A. V. Postnikov (ed), Krusenstern i Rezanov Argo, Moscow, 2006.
10 See Vice Admiral Shishkov’s Preface to Gavriil Davydov, tr. by Colin Bearne,ed. by Richard A. Pierce, Two Voyages to Russian America 1802–1807, St Petersburg 1810, reprinted by Limestone Press, Kingston, Ontario 1977, p. 4.
11 Captain Vasily Golovnin, Memoirs of a captivity in Japan during the years 1811,12 and 13 with observations of the country and people, Henry Colburn and Co., London 1824, vol. 1, pp. 67–75.
12 Draft of letter to Count Maletsky-Yakutsky, 5 November 1806, Yudin Collection, box 2, folder 9 pp. 213–14.
13 Ivan Kalashnikov Zapiski irkutskogo zhitelya, 10 January 1807. Quoted in Black, Russians in America, p. 177.
14 Lopatnikov, ‘Nikolai Rezanov’.
15 Ibid.
16 Anna Surnik, Poslednee Pismo Kemergera: Rashifrovka in Russkaya Amerika, Vologda no. 1, Vologda 1994, pp. 29–31.
17 Ibid.
18 Rezanov to Buldakov, 25 January 1807 from Irkutsk, received at RAC 6 March 1807, ibid.
19 See memoirs of Krasnoyarsk merchant I. F. Parfentyev 1891, quoted in Avdyukov et al., Komandor.
20 Yermolaev, ‘Pskovsky Chinovnik Rezanov’.
Epilogues
1 Lee B. Croft George Anton Schaeffer: Killing Napoleon From the Air, Sphynx Publications, 2012, pp. 14, 53.
2 Nikolay Bolkhovitinov, ‘Adventures of Doctor Schäffer in Hawaii, 1815–1819’, Hawaiian Journal of History, 1973, vol. 7, pp. 55–78.
3 Though the Tsar later relented a little and allowed trading operations.
4 Peter R. Mills, Hawaii’s Russian adventure: a new look at old history, University of Hawaii Press, 2002.
5 For the worse, it must be said.
6 See James R. Gibson, The Decembrists, Fort Ross, 2009.
7 Marc Raeff, The Decembrist Movement, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey 1966, pp. 19-21.
8 Frederick W. Seward. Seward at Washington as Senator and Secretary of State, vol. 3, 1891, p. 348.
9 T. Ahllund, tr. by Panu Hallamaa, ed. by Richard Pierce, ‘From the Memoirs of a Finnish Workman’, Alaska History, 21, Anchorage Fall 2006, 1–25, originally published in Finnish in Suomen Kuvalehti, no. 15/1873 – no. 19/1873.
10 19 April/1 May 1805, Löwenstern, First Russian Voyage.
11 On 22 April 1807 the astronomer on the voyage, Johann Caspar Horner (1774–1834), wrote to Krusenstern about Tilesius’ unfulfilled plans to publish his own work about the voyage, which Count Nikolai Petrovich Rumjantsev would pay for, and mentioned Löwenstern’s voluminous journal:
‘Such vermiform professors indeed remain deplorable, unreliable spirits. I am sure that if something comes [of the descriptions of the voyage], the Count will have more sea birds and dung worms than historical views. If he really intends to contribute something historical [about the voyage] or even to anticipate the publication of your voyage, then I will produce a work with woodcuts for which Lwn [Löwenstern] can give me the data, which my untroubled memory has forgotten. There is no danger in doing that since such spirits as T[ilesius] and R[ezanov] do not like each other. In addition, T produces so much all at once that nothing can come of it and he does not have endless numbers of views and pictures.’ (Ernst F. Sondermann, ‘Johann Caspar Horner über Japan’, Tohoku Gakuin Daigaku Kyoyogabu Konshu, Nr. 149, 2008, 1–26).
Löwenstern did not wish this to be published, as he makes clear in his scoffing remarks about the quill drivers on board the Nadezhda shortly before the departure from Nagasaki. (19 April 19 /1 May 1805): ‘The one, with quite a lot of talent, the least ability, and the greatest pretensions is Tilesius. Langsdorff will not be deficient in keeping himself undamaged through the voyage in every way, even if at the cost of others. Espenberg also seems inclined through the voyage to want to be brilliant in the literary world. Horner has to prove and make known to the world his observations and research in astronomy and the physical world in order to give our work validity. Romberg, who works on translations, also will not be deficient (through Karamsin) in giving the world his two bits. There are as many journals as people onboard (all the better).’
The allusion is to the famous writers of travelogues Johann Georg Forster (1759–94) and Count Marc Antoine Louis Claret de Fleurieu de Latrouette (1729–93), who described the exploration of the south Pacific.
12 Moessner, ‘The First Russian Ambassador to Japan’.
13 Instead RAC historians chose to publish Rezanov’s scheming and unbalanced letters to St Petersburg in their 1867 offical history of the company.
14 There were a few hitches on the way. Tolstoy was arrested at the gates of St Petersburg in 1805 on the orders of the Tsar and sent to serve in a distant fortress for three years before he was finally allowed back to reap the social glory in the capital. See Filipp Vigel, Zapiski, Moscow 1892.
15 Aleksei Polikovskii, Graf Bezbrezhnyi: dve zhizni grafa Fedora Ivanovicha Tolstogo-Amerikantsa, Minuvshee, Moscow, 2006.
16 Alexander Sergevich Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, tr. by Charles H. Johnston, Penguin Books Ltd, London 1977, book 6, verse 4.
17 Istomin, ‘Dva Varianta Pisma’.
18 Löwenstern, First Russian Voyage, p. 416.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid., p. 417.
21 Moessner, ‘The First Russian Ambassador to Japan’.
22 Löwenstern, First Russian Voyage, note 1, p. 452.
23 Ibid., note 20, p. 444.
24 Davydov, Two Voyages, p. 19.
25 D’Wolf, Voyage to the North Pacific, p. 124.
26 Gavriil Derzhavin, Sochineniya Derzhavina s obyasnitelnymi primechaniyami Ya. Grota, Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg 1866, part 3, pp. 30–36.
27 Sergei Alexandovich Kokoshkin.
28 www.ru.rodovid.org/wk/Запись:625661.
29 Iverson, Romance, p. 136.
30 Russell, Notes, p. 93.
31 According to Thomas Russell she lived with the family of Don José Antonio de la Guerra y Noriega, the ‘first family of California’ .
32 Russell, Notes, p. 95.
33 Sir George Simpson, An Overland Journey Around the World 1841–2, Lea and Blanchard, Philadelphia 1847, p. 207.
34 Iverson, Romance, p. 89.
35 Henry Lebbeus Oak, Annals of the Spanish Northwest: California, San Francisco, 1886 (facsimile edition Kessinger Publishing, 2010), vol. 4, p. 9.
36 Like many bright New Yorkers of his generation, Harte had gone to seek his fortune in California in 1853 at the age of seventeen. He tried his hand at mining, teaching (unhindered by having left school at thirteen himself), messenger boy and finally journalist and writer. While working as assistant editor for the Northern Californian Harte began writing stories of the American frontier such as ‘The Luck of Roaring Camp’ (1868), a tale of roistering miners tamed by the responsibility of raising an orphan infant. The legend of the Wild West had been a thriving genre since James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans was published in 1826, but Harte quickly became a master of the Western short story.
37 Gary Scharnhorst, Bret Harte: opening the American literary West, Oklahoma University Press, Norman, Oklahoma 2000, p. 87.
38 Thanks to the popularity of Harte and Atherton, the story of Conchita and Rezanov became a part of Californian lore. ‘When we think of the love stories that have survived the ages, Alexander and Thais, Pericles and Aspasia, Antony and Cl
eopatra, and all the rest of them – some of them a narrative unfit to handle with tongs – shall we let this local story die?’ thundered one John F. Davis, a former judge who in retirement was the grand president of a club which grandly called itself the Native Sons of the Golden West. The occasion was a dinner on 24 November 1913 marking the placing of a commemorative bronze tablet upon the oldest adobe building in San Francisco, the former presidio, now the US Army Officers’ Club. ‘Shall not America furnish a newer and purer standard? If to such a standard Massachusetts is to contribute the Courtship of Miles Standish, may not California contribute the Courtship of Rezanov? You men of this army post have a peculiar right to unsheathe a flaming sword. For this memory of the comandante’s daughter is yours – yours to cherish, yours to protect. In the barracks and on parade, at the dance and in the field, this “one sweet human fancy” belongs to this presidio; and no court martial nor departmental order can ever take it from you.’
39 Like his contemporaries Bella Akhmadulina and Evgeny Yevtushenko, he was allowed to travel to the West, where he so impressed W. H. Auden that the latter translated several of Voznesensky’s poems into English.
40 During a visit to Vancouver in 1970 Voznesensky read about the Rezanov–Conchita tale in Russia’s Eastward Expansion (1964) by American scholar George Lensen.
41 ‘The Deathbed Sstory of Rezanov’, a companion poem to ‘Avos!’
42 Before the dress rehearsal, which would be attended by state censors, Rybnikov and Voznesensky took a taxi to Moscow’s Patriarchal Cathedral and lit a candle in front of the icon of the Holy Virgin of Kazan – which is mentioned in Voznesensky’s libretto. She seems to have worked the necessary miracle: the state censor, who had rejected Rybnikov’s attempts at rock operas eleven times, approved Junona I Avos entire and uncut.
43 In 1983 the show, with its original cast, was broadcast on Soviet TV and was widely seen as a landmark in the post-Brezhnev thaw. After a special plea by the French designer Pierre Cardin, the show toured to Paris, Germany and the Netherlands and then New York, where Hair! producer Joseph Papp began work on an English production. It became a kind of traveling showcase of Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost, a defiantly non-Soviet work of art for a new age.
Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of a Russian America Page 39
