Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy

by Douglas Smith

  He also took pleasure in work. He began to write his memoirs, and being active and going back over his personal history, and that of Russia, brought him renewed energy. As he worked, he came to the realization that the revolution had brought at least one benefit—namely, that now everyone had to work in order to survive and no more could members of his class be “squeamish” at having to earn a living.4 Although he focused on his personal life in his writings, this “departure into the past,” as he called it, made him think about the present crisis and its causes. Few persons of his station were able, in the thick of the events or even years later, to observe and assess the wild and tumultuous flow of history with greater perspicacity.

  April 25, 1918. One cannot help but see that we, the people of the present century, are paying for the sins of our forefathers, and particularly for the institution of serfdom with all its horrors and perversions that I was born early enough to know and to witness with my own eyes and that still disturb me now.

  June 20, 1918. Who is to blame that the Russian people, the peasant and the proletarian, proved to be barbarians? Who, if not all of us?

  Their rulers were in part to blame. Alexander III’s reign had amounted to nothing more than “total repression of the people’s energies, of its yearning for enlightenment, freedom, and progress.” As for Nicholas II, he was a “pathetic charlatan” who blindly followed his “traitorous wife.”5 Society at large was little better. The Russian muzhik was “a wild creature, almost an animal,” which no one had noticed before, and beneath their “polish” the nobles were “wild in their souls . . . I don’t know what’s worse, what’s wilder, the unruliness of the insolent, barbarian crowd or the petty tyranny of our aristocrats and grandees who consider themselves the ‘salt of the earth.’ ”6

  As time passed, the revolution acquired an almost mystical significance for this aging agnostic, becoming “the work of Godly Providence and righteous retribution for our sins.”7 The mayor never succumbed to the nostalgia for the tsarist past that became prevalent among many of his class. Even in the spring of 1920, after years of extreme oppression against the mayor’s family, he could step back and ask himself which regime—tsarist or Soviet—was the more “absurd” and “criminal” and wonder whether the “bankruptcy” he saw all around him was “a quality of the Slavic nature or the natural fruits of the tsarist regime that had turned us into slaves.”8 As late as 1930, the mayor wrote in his diary: “Just like tsarist power, Soviet power, too, was founded on fraudulent theories—the first on Godly origin, the second on communism.”9

  That spring of 1918 the mayor and Sofia were still in Moscow, together with their son Mikhail, his wife, Anna, and their children. Mikhail had managed to find work in a bank, and although the pay was meager, not even keeping up with inflation, he did receive a small food ration of fifty grams of bread for each member of the family. As it was for all Russians then, the overriding concern was getting enough to eat. The Golitsyns were largely surviving on bread, potatoes, and dandelion greens. The mayor’s little grandson Sergei hunted for willow seeds in the city’s parks to try to blunt his hunger pangs. Like many others of the once wealthy, they were selling their art and jewelry to the “baggers” who smuggled food into the cities from the countryside. Sofia moaned at having to part with her paintings by the Russian masters Isaac Levitan and Vasily Polenov for a few sacks of potatoes, but there was nothing to be done. She did have to admit that the absence of rich French sauces at the family table had at least cured her perpetual indigestion and brought back a more youthful glow to her skin; she later exclaimed that thanks to the lack of food, she had finally lost more than thirty-five pounds.10

  In May, the mayor and Sofia’s daughter Vera Bobrinsky invited the family to join her at the estate of Bogoroditsk south of Moscow in Tula Province. Vera was married to Count Lev Bobrinsky, with whom she had five children. In her letter, Vera wrote that they had plenty of food and that they all were safe there, thanks to a group of local SRs protecting them from the Bolsheviks. The Bogoroditsk estate was enormous, comprising more than thirty thousand acres, a large manor house, park, and lake. The Bobrinskys, who traced their origins back to Count Alexei Bobrinsky, Catherine the Great’s illegitimate son with Prince Grigory Orlov, had been one of Russia’s wealthiest noble families. Following the revolution, dozens of family members and close friends moved to Bogoroditsk, including fourteen-year old Kirill Golitsyn from Petrograd and Vladimir and Eli Trubetskoy and their two children. They still had many of their servants, and they settled in to a relaxed, quiet yet sociable life, marked by regular presentations of plays and sketches starring the children and musical evenings with Grandmother Sofia on the piano, Vladimir Trubetskoy on the cello, and an Austrian prisoner of war by the name of Salzmann on the violin.11

  Tragedy struck that summer after several members of the family had become involved in a plot to save the former tsar and his family from captivity in Tobolsk. A few of the conspirators had visited Tobolsk the previous year and established contact with Nicholas, and he had reportedly approved their operation. The plan was to rescue Nicholas and his son Alexei and spirit them away to the Orenburg Cossacks, with Nicholas shaved and traveling incognito as the French governor to Alexei, disguised as the son of wealthy parents; Alexandra and the daughters were to be taken east across Siberia to safety in Japan. One of the leaders of the conspiracy was Mikhail Lopukhin, Anna Golitsyn’s youngest brother. He was responsible for recruiting trustworthy tsarist officers and was to head a select group in charge of the former tsar’s safety on the journey to Orenburg. Joining him were Vladimir Trubetskoy and some of Vladimir’s cousins, including Alexander and Sergei Yevgenevich Trubetskoy and Nikolai Lermontov.

  Over the course of several days in early January 1918, the conspirators left Moscow in small groups, traveling along different routes so as to avoid suspicion. They quickly realized, however, that their plan had no hope of success. Every station they passed through swarmed with Red soldiers, and upon reaching Chelyabinsk, they learned that Troitsk, where they had planned to take Nicholas, had already been overrun by the Bolsheviks. Discouraged but not ready to give up, the men stayed in Chelyabinsk and hatched a new plan to hide Nicholas deep in Siberia. They sent out scouts to search for the safest route and best hiding places, but as they worked on the details of their plan, the Bolshevik presence grew ever stronger, and any chance they had of overpowering Nicholas’s captors and escaping with him and his family evaporated. Fearful of being discovered, the conspirators returned to Moscow in the middle of February.

  For nearly all the young officers, this was the end of the story. Their involvement in the plot remained undiscovered. Most, including Vladimir Trubetskoy, gave up their flirtation with anti-Bolshevik activities.12 This was not the case, however, for Sergei Trubetskoy or Mikhail Lopukhin. Lopukhin now joined a new organization called the Union for the Defense of the Motherland and Freedom. Secret anti-Bolshevik cells of former tsarist officers were then forming in a few Russian cities. Between December 1918 and 1920, twenty-two underground officer groups with names such as the National Center, the Right Center, the Tactical Center, the Sokolniky Battle Organization, the Order of the Romanovs, All for the Motherland, the Black Point, and the White Cross were uncovered and broken up by the Bolsheviks. As many as sixteen thousand men joined the anti-Bolshevik underground. Although their goals varied (from passing on information about life under the Bolsheviks to the White Army to plotting armed insurrection), nearly all the cells proved ineffective. Sergei Trubetskoy, who joined the National Center in Moscow, later wrote that although they tried to mastermind a number of conspiratorial activities, they were “completely unsuited” for such work.13 General Denikin concurred: “With no resources, with no mutual trust among them or clear understanding of cooperation, and, mainly, with no real power, their efforts proved flabby from the beginning and did not produce any results.”14

  The Union for the Defense of the Motherland and Freedom was an exception, however. Fo
unded by Boris Savinkov, a novelist, former leader of the SRs, and noted terrorist (he had taken part in the 1903 murder of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich), the union set up cells in numerous Russian cities in 1918. Its plan to seize power in Moscow that spring with the support of German prisoners of war was uncovered by the Cheka, but the union did manage to instigate revolts in Yaroslavl, Rybinsk, and Murom, all of which were put down by the Reds. Savinkov fled the country for France, and nearly all of the union’s members, including Mikhail Lopukhin, were arrested.15

  Most of the officers arrested in the wake of the uprisings, as many as six hundred in Moscow and Kaluga alone in early July 1918, were shot.16 Mikhail’s cell had been discovered after one of its members had informed on it to the Cheka. Some of the members had enough warning to escape to the south before they could be arrested, but Mikhail was not so lucky. As soon as she learned what had happened, Anna left Bogoroditsk for Moscow to try to get Mikhail released. She went to plead before several high-ranking Bolsheviks, including Lev Kamenev, Yakov Peters, and Felix Dzerzhinsky (whose eyes burned like a “horrible fire,” she noted). None of them would help. Finally, she went to see Pyotr Smidovich. A longtime Bolshevik, the chairman of the Moscow Soviet, and the son of a nobleman, Smidovich had a reputation as a good and honest man. Moreover, his brother-in-law had worked before the revolution as a tutor in the Lopukhin home and had always spoken highly of the family. Smidovich agreed to do what he could to save Mikhail, but only if he would pledge to give up his anti-Bolshevik activities.

  Anna visited Mikhail three times in prison and begged him to accept the offer; Anna’s husband wrote to him as well, but he refused to cooperate. Smidovich himself went to Mikhail and asked him to reconsider, offering his protection once Mikhail was free. But he was turned down too. Mikhail said that had it been another Bolshevik he would have easily lied, but he respected Smidovich and so thought he owed it to him to be honest. Anna visited Mikhail one last time. She told him that she accepted his decision, blessed him, and left. Mikhail and forty other prisoners were driven out on the evening of August 23, 1918, to the Bratskoe Cemetery near the village of Vsekhsviatskoe; they were lined up against a brick wall and shot. After learning of Mikhail’s execution, Anna went to search for his grave. She found the wall, pocked with fresh bullet holes, and the spot where he had been shot; the ground in front of it had been freshly dug up and the soil turned over. She never did find his body, however. She went to the prison and retrieved Mikhail’s few personal things, including his jacket, which she gave to her son Vladimir, who wore it the rest of his life in memory of his uncle.17

  At the prison Anna was handed a letter addressed to her from Mikhail dated August 20. On the envelope were the words: “Do not open until you have learned of my death.”

  Dearest Annochka,

  Things have ended up so sadly and so painfully. But what are we to do? Remember my words and draw comfort from them—“Without God’s will, nothing happens.” Which means this is how it must be. I want to do everything in my power to comfort you and our loved ones. [. . .] I don’t want you to be sad or to pity me; just remember me often and not with a sad feeling of loss, but remember everything good and joyous connected with me.

  I am still alive even now, and I am certain that in the future my last minute will not be as hopelessly painful as it may seem, so don’t torment yourself over me. [. . .] Thank you, dear Annochka, for your love. I was not lonely in my final moments. [. . .] Well, so it’s farewell, farewell to Mama, to Zhenia, to everyone. For truth, it’s nothing. Everything is in God’s hands.18

  Mikhail’s execution devastated the family. Anna’s younger son Sergei, then nine years old, later recalled how his uncle’s death became a turning point in his life:

  I became someone different, my carefree play with the other boys all but came to an end. I would go to the park by myself, I read and thought a great deal. Since that time I began to lead a double life—one involved interaction with others, conversations, games with my sisters, hobbies, pleasures, the other, second life was secret, carried out within myself that I did not admit even to my mother. This second life, for me the more important and pleasant one, lasted throughout my childhood and youth, throughout all the subsequent years and continues to beat in my heart. [. . .] There’s nothing terribly surprising about this, this is how life is in our country, for we all live a double life. What is surprising is how early, due to the tragic death of Uncle Misha, I learned to speak and act in one way, and think to myself something utterly different.19

  By late summer conditions at Bogoroditsk had begun to deteriorate. The SRs had left, and the Bolsheviks turned their attention to the colony of nobles still living peaceably at the old family estate. An article appeared in the newspaper The Red Voice under the title “How Long Will We Stand for This?!,” denouncing the “suspicious little countesses” and “chubby-cheeked little counts in sailor suits” at Bogoroditsk and asking when, finally, this noble nest was to be extirpated. One night in late October a group of soldiers, led by a sailor strapped with bandoliers and waving a Nagant, burst into the manor house while the family was enjoying some music. The men began searching the house, accompanied by the violin-playing Salzmann, who never put down his instrument. They found nothing other than some letters in French and German, which they held up as proof the men were spies. The next morning they loaded the mayor, Lev Bobrinsky, and Vladimir Trubetskoy into a cart and took them away; a crowd of peasants came out to watch. The other family members were given forty-eight hours to leave, and the few remaining servants were sent to live in an alms-house. Anna and her children moved into town (also called Bogoroditsk) and found shelter in a run-down inn. When it rained, the water poured through the numerous holes in the roof, cascaded down the walls, and spread out in rivulets across the floor. Anna was amazed to see how this filled her children with delight.20

  The mayor and his two sons-in-law were freed after six weeks. They had not been home for long before being arrested a second time in early 1919. The men were first taken to Tula and from there to the Butyrki in Moscow. This time the mayor and Lev were quickly released; Kamenev, now the chairman of the Moscow Soviet, invited the mayor to come see him before he left the city. He apologized to the mayor for his arrest, telling him how well he remembered the kind treatment the mayor had given to political prisoners when he had run the city and presenting him with a letter of protection. The Golitsyns guarded Kamenev’s letter with care, and it is still in their possession; it may well have saved the mayor’s life, though its power did not extend to the rest of the family.21 Vladimir Trubetskoy was eventually released as well and returned to his wife and children.22

  Despite the arrests, searches, and horrendous living conditions, life went on for the extended Golitsyn family. Kirill Golitsyn, one of the mayor’s grandchildren, who had been sent from Petrograd to live with the family at Bogoroditsk, noticed how no one gave up or even complained of his fate.

  No one was downhearted and the abnormality of life in no way showed itself in people’s moods or character. Everyone adapted to the difficulties, just as every living thing adapts to the conditions of its environment. It was no doubt hardest for Grandfather and Grandmother, but the old folks didn’t complain. My aunts and uncles had no time to be downhearted—they were utterly consumed by the daily struggle to find enough food for everyone.23

  The youngest members of the family made secret nighttime raids on the apple orchard back at the former estate; the family’s meat consisted of the occasional foal.24 One of their former servants, worried that the family was starving, managed to send Anna a bit of chicken and some rusk; though they had little themselves, Anna too shared their meager larder and sent bread and coffee to those in need.25

  The desperate search for food placed them on par with the rest of Russia. In Petrograd, people were stripping the bark from the trees and pulling up the grass from the city’s parks to make soup; they descended on horses that dropped dead from starvation with knives and ha
tchets, lugging back to their freezing apartments whatever flesh and organs and sinew they could salvage. Prince Sergei Trubetskoy had to laugh that when his servant now announced, “Your Excellency, your horse is ready,” this no longer meant it had been saddled, but cooked and served.26

  Anna was eventually able to move her family out of the inn and into the apartment of a local schoolteacher. One of the lodgers was a young Bolshevik who fell for the charms of Anna’s daughter Sonya. When Sonya rejected his advances, he denounced the family to the local authorities, and once again the family was kicked out and forced to move, this time within twenty-four hours. The harsh memory of this incident never left Sonya’s brother Sergei:

  This feeling of having been insulted—they offend you, they keep you down, they run you out, they don’t recognize you simply because you are your father’s son—this feeling, first born in me when we were run out of the Bobrinskys’ estate, and then compounded by this second eviction, which I fully comprehended and was so hard to bear, has been with me nearly my entire life.27

  By late summer of 1919, as Denikin’s White Army marched northward, talk had begun to spread in town that the retreating Reds had begun taking hostages and shooting them. The Golitsyns knew the risk was real. That year two of Anna’s cousins had been taken hostage and shot in Orel.28 The mayor and his son Mikhail decided to hide; the former quietly checked himself into the local hospital in a common ward, and the latter went to live with a work colleague. The danger seemed to pass after several days, however, and both returned home. On the night of October 16, the mayor was awakened to find that Vladimir Trubetskoy had been arrested after a search of his apartment in town. The Cheka had also come to arrest Mikhail, but he had managed to hide. So they arrested Anna instead, as well as their daughter Lina and Sonya Bobrinsky, their niece. As they took the women away, the Chekists told the family they would release the women if Mikhail turned himself in. The family got word to Mikhail, and he immediately presented himself to the Cheka. That evening of the sixteenth, the women were freed. A few hours later Mikhail and Vladimir and the other hostages were taken to the train station. Family members followed the two men to the station, and Mikhail’s son Sergei was able to toss a few potatoes to his father before they were herded onto the train.29