The Burning of Moscow

by Alexander Mikaberidze

  I was all astonishment at the immensity and variety of Moscow, a city so irregular, so uncommon, so extraordinary, and so contrasted, never before claimed my attention. The streets are in general exceedingly long and broad: some are paved; others, particularly those in the suburbs, formed with trunks of trees, or boarded with planks like the floor of a room; wretched hovels are blended with large palaces; cottages of one storey stand next to the most stately mansions. Many brick structures are covered with wooden tops; some of the timber houses are painted, others have iron doors and roofs. Numerous churches present themselves in every quarter, built in the oriental style of architecture; some with domes of copper, others of tin, gilt or painted green, and many roofed with wood. In a word, some parts of this vast city have the appearance of a sequestered desert, other quarters of a populous town; some of a contemptible village, others of a great capital.27

  Police reports reveal that Moscow’s population exceeded 275,000 people in 1812.28 The largest social group (32.5%) was the commoners, known as dvorovye liudi, who occupied an ambiguous status in gentry’s houses. There had been two kinds of serfs, those who were tied to the soil (krepostnye liudi) and those who were tied to the master (dvorovye liudi). The latter generally comprised the entire staff of the nobleman’s house, from the housekeeper to the lowest lackey. The dvorovye liudi were often subjected to abominable treatment from their masters, who had an almost absolute authority over them, including the right to sell them. Besides the dvorovye, the next largest population groups were the landlord (14.9%) and state (13.6%) peasants, who, in exchange for a tax (e.g. obrok) were allowed to leave their lands to find work in towns; living in teams (artel’) formed on a regional basis, they were engaged in commerce, manufacturing or crafts, but never fully assimilated into the urban fabric. The people who gave the city its urban character were merchants, foreigners, shop-keepers, physicians, civil servants and others who lived in the city year-round, enjoying modest material comforts and certain privileges accorded to the urban populace. Merchants (kuptsy), including foreign traders, represented 7 per cent of the population but were outnumbered by the combined artisans and craftsmen (meshane and tsekhovye) at 9.5 per cent, including foreigners. The rest of the population included clergy, professional groups (teachers, lawyers, writers, physicians, etc.), veterans and others.29 Law and order was upheld by 398 senior and 3,777 minor police officials, who, according to official reports, maintained good order in the city – only 6 violent deaths (but 32 suicides) were reported in 1811.30

  The nobles (dvoryane) comprised a small sliver of the population (6.3%), and a small fraction of them were aristocrats wielding enormous power and influence in the city’s political, public and cultural arenas. The general perception of Russian aristocrats is derived from literary depictions by the great Russian writers. In Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, the main protagonists are immensely rich Muscovites: Pierre Bezukhov has an annual income of half a million rubles, while Nikolai Rostov famously loses 43,000 rubles in a single card game.31 Yet, in reality, very few Muscovite nobles were so rich; most of them were landless civil servants who lived on much more modest incomes. When the Russian government began assessing the damage inflicted by the great fire of 1812, some 281 noble families, who had lost their entire households, submitted their reports, which reveal that the median value of their losses was 2,500 rubles. Nobles usually spent their summers at their country estates and flocked to Moscow for the winter season, when families visited each other and attended various festivities.

  Moscow held a unique status in Russian society. The city’s rise to pre-eminence initially involved cultivating favour with the Mongols, who had devastated the Russian principalities in the late thirteenth century. Moscow’s power was greatly enhanced when the city assumed the role of the centre of Russian Orthodoxy, and it was the Muscovite ruler who led the Russian struggle against the Mongols. In 1380, at the battle of Kulikovo Field, Moscow’s Prince Dmitrii Donskoii shattered the myth of Mongol invincibility and strengthened Russia’s national awakening. A century later Ivan III the Great freed Russia from the Mongol yoke and laid the foundation for the emergence of the new powerful state. Moscow thus became the centre of the grand principality of Moscow (or Muscovy), which eventually reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Moscow helped to develop Russian imperial and national ideology, bolstered by Russian Orthodoxy. With the fall of Constantinople, the Byzantine capital and the seat of Greek Orthodox Christianity, to the Muslim Turks in 1453, Russians increasingly perceived Moscow as the last bastion of ‘genuine’ Christianity. Drawing on biblical references, the Russian church embraced the doctrine of Moscow as the Third Rome and the true champion of Christianity: ‘Two Romes have fallen,’ Abbot Filofei wrote to Grand Duke Vasilii III in 1510. ‘The Third [Moscow] stands, and there shall be no fourth.’ This doctrine legitimized Russia’s imperial expansion and the divine right of Russian autocracy. A visitor standing on the Vorobyevo Hills could observe the magnificent panoramic sight of Moscow with its 329 cathedrals and churches, 24 monasteries and 33 bell towers.32

  Moscow’s importance, however, diminished in the eighteenth century. Once the very incarnation of ‘Holy Russia’, the city was relegated to secondary status when Tsar Peter the Great, who famously disliked Moscow and what he perceived as its backwardness and obscurantism, transferred the Russian capital to St Petersburg in 1712; Catherine the Great shared Peter’s aversion for Moscow, especially its unplanned and disorderly layout, which the Empress regarded as symptomatic of the city’s general backwardness. Such attitudes from such august rulers naturally had a profound impact on Moscow: its population dropped considerably and it lost its dominant position in Russian political life. But while St Petersburg acquired the imperial trappings of a capital city, Moscow still retained its historic and pre-eminent role as an ecclesiastical and administrative centre. The Russian sovereigns, after all, continued to travel to Moscow for the ancient coronation rites. In addition, many governmental agencies remained in Moscow, which continued to serve as the centre for a major province. Nevertheless, there was also a sense of embitterment among the Muscovites about the decline in their city’s stature, and comparisons soon began to be drawn between the old and new capitals. A certain rivalry even developed between the two cities (it continues in one form or another to this day) and Muscovites always sought to depict their hometown as the more truly Russian city, with its ancient past, onion-domed churches and narrow, winding streets, as opposed to St Petersburg with its foreign-designed architecture and European-style grid of streets and avenues. In 1834 Pushkin, remembering the Moscow of his childhood, wrote:

  At one time there really was a rivalry between Moscow and Petersburg. Then in Moscow there were rich nobles who did not work, grandees who had given up the court, and independent, carefree individuals, passionately devoted to harmless slander and inexpensive hospitality; then Moscow was the gathering place for all Russia’s aristocracy, which streamed to it in winter from every province. Brilliant young guardsmen flew thither from Petersburg. Every corner of the ancient capital was loud with music, there were crowds everywhere. Five thousand people filled the hall of the Noble Assembly twice a week. There the young met; marriages were made. Moscow was as famous for its brides as Vyazma for its gingerbread; Moscow dinners became a proverb. The innocent eccentricities of the Muscovites were a sign of their independence. They lived their own lives, amusing themselves as they liked, caring little for the opinion of others … From afar haughty Petersburg mocked, but did not interfere with old mother Moscow’s escapades.33

  Before 1812 Moscow had turned into a hotbed of political opposition that came primarily from conservative aristocratic nobles who remained resentful of the liberal reforms earlier in Alexander’s reign, of the influence that the great Russian reformer Mikhail Speransky wielded before his abrupt dismissal in March 1812, and of their own failure to play a more important governmental role. This tendency persisted even two decades after Napoleon’s invasion, when the En
glish captain Charles Colville Frankland noted that ‘There is a liberty of speech, and thought, and action, in Moscow, which does not exist in Petersburgh … The fact is, Moscow is a sort of rendezvous for all the retired, discontented, and renvoye’d officers, civil and military, of the empire. It is the nucleus of the Russian opposition. Hence almost all the men whose politics do not suit those of the day, retire hither, where they may find fault with the Court, the Government, &c. as much as they please, without much fear of interruption.’34 For many Russians the city indeed remained the heart of the empire. ‘If Moscow is lost, everything will be lost,’ a contemporary opined in 1812, reflecting a general belief in the city’s importance for Russia. ‘Bonaparte knows well of this: he never considered our capitals as equals. He knows that for Russia, only the ancient city of Moscow is genuinely important while the glittering and elegant St Petersburg is just another city in the realm. This is simply an undeniable truth.’35 The usually sarcastic Philipp Vigel refrained from any derision when he spoke of the former capital, eulogizing it as a ‘majestic and beautiful’ city, ‘our history, our sacred relic, the cradle of our might!’ After the Russian capital was transferred to St Petersburg, Moscow became a place where aristocrats who preferred to avoid the court would spend the long winter months, entertaining with generous dinners, parties and balls. In War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy expressed the sentiment of many early nineteenth-century Russian noblemen when he portrayed Pierre Bezukhov viewing Moscow as a cosy and comforting place, where he could escape from the bustle and hurry of life in the capital (St Petersburg): ‘he saw … those old Moscovites who desired nothing, hurried nowhere, and were ending their days leisurely; and when he saw those old Moscow ladies, the Moscow balls, and the English Club, he felt himself at home in a quiet haven. In Moscow, he felt at peace, at home, warm and dirty as in an old dressing-gown.’36

  Moscow was the economic and cultural centre of Russia. The last decades of the eighteenth century saw an increase in the number of manufacturers established in the city, and by January 1812 there were over 460 factories located mainly along the Yauza and Moscow rivers in the Lefortovo, Taganskii, Serpukhovo and Presnenskii suburbs.37 The city also housed some of the earliest Russian industries, mainly textile and paper factories; according to Peter Vyazemskii, the majority of Russian books and periodicals were published in Moscow. As the commercial centre of the country, Moscow also accommodated some of the largest markets in the empire. The Merchant Court (Gostinnyi dvor), often referred to as the Bourse by the Allied participants, was among the oldest trade centres in Moscow; Siegmund Freiherr von Herberstein, the sixteenth-century Austrian diplomat who wrote extensively on the history and geography of the Muscovite Rus, described ‘a large house, surrounded by a wall, that is called the merchant’s house, where merchants live and store their goods’.38 The Merchant Court expanded throughout the seventeenth century, especially in the 1660s when reconstruction works were led by the wealthy merchant Averkii Kirillov, and it was considered among the most gorgeous buildings in the entire city; it even featured the first apothecary in Russia. In the late eighteenth century, with the tremendous expansion of the Russian state, the decaying Merchant Court could no longer accommodate the growth of trade and had to be rebuilt. The construction works began in the late 1780s but the new building, located on the Ilyinka and Varvarka streets, was completed only in 1805. It featured over 190 trade rows with hundreds of shops.

  The Merchant Court, however, was not the sole trade emporium and the city’s other sixteen markets delivered every kind of provisions and supplies. Furthermore, the city featured 568 hostels, more than 40 restaurants, 166 taverns, 11 coffee houses, some 200 wine cellars, 200 pubs, 162 bread bakeries and 163 bakeries. As the leading centre of education in Russia, Moscow had a university, 3 academies, a gymnasium, 22 schools, 24 boarding schools, and 5 state and 9 private printing houses.39 Theatre held a special place in the Muscovites’ hearts and more than two dozen private and public theatres staged plays on a daily basis. Among the former were the theatres of N.P. Sheremetyev and S.S. Apraksin, famous for their lavish stage productions that occasionally even featured live animals, while at the house of P.A. Poznyakov, guests frequently attended plays performed by serfs. Among the public institutions the most famous was the Petrovskii Theatre, a large wooden building that staged both opera and ballet productions but burned down in 1805. It was replaced by a newly constructed theatre on Arbat Square, which surprised contemporaries with its opulent decorations; here people of various social backgrounds mixed together.40 Theatre was extremely popular in Moscow and it was said that ‘even lackeys often recited verses from the Rusalka [one of the most popular contemporary plays], while servants occasionally sang entire arias from the same play’.41 In addition to Russian theatres, there was a French theatre that, in the years leading up to the Napoleonic invasion, was involved in a bitter rivalry with its Russian counterparts. The theatrical tastes and aesthetic standards of the Russian nobility were based on (and shaped by) French theatre, and most preferred attending the French company’s productions. In 1808 the main event of the theatrical season in Russia was the debut of the famed French actress Mademoiselle Marguerite Georges in Racine’s Phaedra, and memoirs of many contemporaries expound on her stage presence, technique and extraordinary beauty. On the eve of the war with France, and amidst a politically charged atmosphere, Russian theatres could not but become battlegrounds of ideology and aesthetics. If Russian ‘gallomanes’ (or Zhorzhisty) flocked to see Georges, Russian ‘patriots’ fervently applauded the performances of Ekaterine Semenova, a promising young actress who was praised for her ability to convey the emotional qualities of a ‘Russian soul’. Passions raged violently and two factions – Zhorzhisty and Semenovisty – quickly formed around the actresses. In a stroke of marketing genius, the Directorate of the imperial theatres chose to pit the two actresses against in each other by inviting them to perform the same play on alternate days at the Arbat Theatre in Moscow. People stood in long lines to catch a glimpse of these great actresses and box office receipts exceeded expectations. The symbolism of this contest between Russian and French actresses, taking place on the eve of war between their respective countries, was, naturally, not lost on the public, which, despite earlier admiring Georges’s talent, now wholeheartedly embraced Semenova’s authentic Russianness.42

  The greatest threat to Moscow’s urban life came from fires – a frequent hazard since early times. In the mid-seventeenth century the German diplomat Adam Olearius observed that in this city of wooden houses ‘not a month, or even a week, goes by without some homes – or if the wind is strong, whole streets – going up in smoke. Several nights while we were there we saw flames rising in three or four places at once. Shortly before our arrival, a third of the city burned down and we were told that the same thing happened four years earlier.’43 As in many other cities of Europe, Moscow’s houses were built too closely together. There was no regular street pattern and in many places houses and outbuildings were thrown together without plan. As a result, careless handling of fire could easily lead to conflagrations that, for example, destroyed much of the Kitai-gorod and Belyi Gorod in 1699. Just two years later the Kremlin and its vicinity were devastated as well. These fires were eclipsed by the conflagrations of 1712, 1730, 1736 and 1737, which all claimed the greater part of the city. Hardly had the Muscovites recovered from the last conflagration when another, in 1748, devastated a considerable part of the city. Following the plague infestation of 1771, the city suffered one more calamity in 1773.44 These fiery incidents were naturally very difficult to contain due to the wooden construction of the city. In the first half of the eighteenth century the Muscovites often prevented the spread of fire both by using water and by pulling down houses in the fire’s path and carting off the wood before it could ignite.45 The fire of 1773, however, did compel the government to address the underlying problems that caused so much suffering among the Muscovites. The result was the general plan of 1775, one of the
most important pieces of Russian urban planning of the eighteenth century, which, with modifications, influenced the subsequent growth of the city. But the plan was not carried out and the threat of fires endured; in January 1812 the Russian police reported the outbreak of sixty-eight fires in the city the year before. These fires were quickly extinguished by Moscow’s firefighting brigade, consisting of about 2,100 men with some hundred fire engines. But at least one contemporary complained about the poor quality of this force:

  The firefighting brigade had poor horses, engines and other tools. There was no signal system that could have informed [firefighters] in which districts fires had broken out. As a result, fires were accompanied by great confusion, [firefighters] dragged their feet, unaware where they should go, and half of the homes had usually burned down by the time they showed up. By then, people from neighbouring houses had usually rushed to put out fires with hooks, axes and buckets of water. Water, however, had to be drawn from wells which further constrained firefighters’ actions. Everywhere one could hear wailing, crying and praying for the Lord’s succour. The fire, meanwhile, consumed everything… .46

  Chapter 3

  The Governor

  In the spring of 1812 Ivan Gudovich, the 71-year-old governor of Moscow, who had been popular with the Muscovites because of his eccentric behaviour and limited interference in their affairs, retired from his position owing to deteriorating health.1 The new governor of Moscow was Count Fedor Vasilievich Rostopchin, who turned 49 years old that fateful year.2 He had been in favour under Empress Catherine the Great and enjoyed a brilliant but short career under Emperor Paul; he languished in disgrace for over a decade before making a stunning comeback as the governor of Moscow in the spring of 1812. By the end of that year his decisions concerning the defence of Moscow would earn him an everlasting notoriety. ‘This Rostopchin will be looked upon as a villain or a Roman,’ the famed French writer Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle) observed in a letter. ‘We must see how he will be judged.’3 Unfortunately for Rostopchin, history largely remembered him as a villain and ‘modern-day Herostratus’ who was single-handedly responsible for the burning of Moscow.