Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy
Page 37
. . . when Papa would come in around five o’clock in the afternoon from the orchard and drink white wine with peaches and then tea and he would select for himself some crusty bread or rolls. [. . .] How soothing and happy it would make me to see his calm figure again, the way he would slowly smoke his Egyptian cigarettes. [. . .] The sounds of Chopin and Schumann, or Wagner, coming from the other room, Papa swaying at the piano, losing any sense of time or place and just living in a world of sounds, even the walls came to life, everything was filled with life. And I would go off to read in the old pink drawing-room (the one with the fireplace and bust), a fur coverlet from Albania lying across the couch. [. . .] I sat under a palm, surrounded by various old bookcases, shelves, baskets, and other small items, all very old, much from Rome.
Regardless, she counseled Boris of the need to live in the present: “Many live in the past or the future (as we do now), but one must always live in the moment—as long as you are alive, wherever you find yourself, you must fill the space all around you with yourself.” Her children had been fortunate to have had such a happy childhood, “for without that nest and our little corner we would all be poorer. But the time of the vultures is at hand. Soon the land, every home, the waters, everything will have to give up its corpses.” Remarkably, Anna never lost faith in tomorrow, and until her death, despite losing her husband and two of her three children to horrific deaths, she kept her faith in humanity. What is more, she had learned to live without fear; all her fear, she confessed to Boris, had died in the Corner House on Vozdvizhenka in 1918 the night the Cheka took “Papa” away.15
Everything of value has been preserved in us, and the traces left by the good things cannot be wiped out. I am an inveterate optimist. Neither grief nor even a pogrom, nothing at all has the power to destroy that which we hold dear and keep in our hearts.
Borya, we are sad now, we have all been separated, and each of us has his own heavy heart, and along with spiritual troubles we must struggle with physical deprivations that take much of our energies and possibly even our health. But this is nothing. The hidden meaning of my letters to you all, and most often especially to you, is my deep certainty that we must first and foremost master our own struggles and the dramas in our hearts, that is, within ourselves.16
Yes, Boris admitted to his mother, he still did have interests that kept him from being completely cut off from life: he loved literature and wanted to read more of Russia’s great writers; he thought a good deal about art, about Futurism, about the paintings of Uncle Pavel Sheremetev.17 His escape into the past could be explained by recent memories that “burned” and filled him with horror.18 Boris was overcome with worry for his mother and sister and concerned that the money they sent him made their poor lives that much more difficult.
My wish, my mad wish, that grows with every day is always for you, Xenia, and Yuri to be well, comfortable, and at peace, I’m tormented by this and can barely stand it. Sometimes it makes me crazy. [. . .] Dear Mama, do what you must for yourself! [. . .] I’m well since you support me, but who supports you? It’s hard for me to even think of this, Christ Our Lord may not be far, but who’s close to you?19
Her help unleashed awful memories of the civil war years when they were living together and she would give up her paltry share of food for him. “It’s unpleasant, shameful even, to recall this. Those hungry years on Vozdvizhenka. Why is it no matter how I try I cannot stop thinking about it? I never can.”20
The summer of 1930 found Anna and Xenia in Kaluga. Anna was offered a job teaching singing at the music school on the condition that she promise to stop attending church services and help with the school’s antireligious propaganda. She refused. “I am very sorry,” she told the school director, “but I simply cannot agree to this.” She managed to earn a bit of money giving private English lessons. Xenia found work selling newspapers on the street. She worked a twelve-hour shift most days, and the rest of the time she helped out at the library in a technical college for some extra income.21
For many years Xenia had been keeping a secret from everyone in her family that finally came to light in 1931. After moving to Kaluga in 1924 following the Fox-trot Affair, Xenia had made the acquaintance of an Englishman by the name of George Daniel Page, then working as a language teacher. He was decades older than Xenia, older even than her mother. Regardless, Xenia, then twenty-four, was smitten. They became engaged but agreed not to tell anyone and kept their secret for six years before finally marrying in 1931. When Anna found out about the marriage, she was furious. The marriage, however, proved to be brief, all of one month and five days. Soon after the wedding Page began preparing to leave the Soviet Union to return to England, possibly because of pressure from the OGPU. He wanted Xenia to come with him, but though she loved him, she refused; she simply could not imagine abandoning her mother while Boris and Yuri were away in exile. On January 2, 1932, Page left the country. Xenia never saw her husband again, although she did correspond with him for many years.22 Though the marriage was short, its consequences for Xenia would be profound.
In 1932, after three years in exile, Boris and Yuri returned home from Siberia. Anna was there in Moscow in December to meet Boris. He was a pathetic sight, weak, exhausted, bedraggled, his feet covered in worn-out galoshes stuffed with straw and held together by twine.23 Reunited, the Saburovs settled in the provincial town of Vladimir and tried to get on with their lives. Tatiana Aksakov-Sivers visited them and could not help noticing how difficult their lives were. All had trouble finding work; they had little to eat and relied on Pavel Sheremetev’s regular gifts of food and money. The four of them looked pale and weak, but at least they were all together at last.24
Life went on in this fashion for four years. And then tragedy befell the Saburovs once more.
In the early-morning hours of April 26, 1936, the NKVD came and arrested Boris and Yuri. “I will never forget Mother’s face,” Xenia recalled almost a half century later, “she came to me, stood in the door way, utterly shaken: ‘Both!’ ” It was all Anna could say. They were sent to the commandant’s office of the Ivanovo NKVD and held in the inner prison there in isolation for months. During the search of the Saburovs’ apartment, the agents had found several Bibles and various books on church history. When his interrogators asked Yuri about his political beliefs, he openly stated, “I am a monarchist.” Both brothers were convicted of counterrevolutionary propaganda and agitation and keeping counterrevolutionary literature—Article 58, Section 10 of the criminal code, just as in 1929. Yuri was also charged with being a member of an underground military organization. The arrests were part of a larger operation in Vladimir. A few days before the Saburovs were taken several clergymen had been arrested. One of them was Father Afanasy, bishop of Kovrov (later canonized), charged with being in contact with the Vatican and White Guards in Ukraine. The brothers were sentenced to five years in a corrective labor camp and were shipped out of Ivanovo by train sometime in September. Xenia, who had been bringing them food ever since their arrest, was at the station to see them off. Yuri claimed they were “cheerful and in good humor.”25
The brothers traveled to Vologda and then farther eastward to the town of Kotlas. There they were separated. Yuri was sent to a group of camps known as Ukhtpechlag situated in the area of the Ukhta and Pechora rivers in the Komi region of northwestern Russia. Boris was sent to Belbaltlag in Karelia.26 They never saw each other again. Yuri’s route took him farther to the north and east, while Boris rode westerly. He stopped for a period in a transit prison in Leningrad, when he wrote Anna in the middle of October to tell her not worry, for both he and Yuri were “in good health and fine spirits.” Four days later he sent another letter saying:
[I]t has been pleasant to breathe the Leningrad air again [. . .] The familiar sky grows light in the windows, a wet snow fell all day yesterday and today it’s slushy. I can image the wet railings of the Fontanka, the sidewalks, the autumn days. All of this is so close to me, I’ve only to walk out throu
gh the prison gates. But since this is impossible, this closeness blurs into something infinitely far away and unattainable.27
Yuri was moved between a number of camps from late 1936 to early 1937. He wrote home on April 19, 1937, from a camp near the railway head of Vetlosyan to say that he had received a few of their postcards but none of the letters, packages, or money they had sent. He felt bad that he had been so long in writing but had been without paper or pencil for a good while. “I am not living too badly, all things considered. So far I have been in three camps, but have never been required to do any heavy labor. I’ve been ill with dysentery. [. . .] Lately, I’ve been making bast shoes—I’ve learned how to weave, though I don’t do any of this myself, but just prepare the bast for weaving. It’s not difficult, of course, and I work in a warm building.” He went on to say that all his clothes had worn out, but they should not bother to send him any since he could get some through the camp authorities, though he would like some tobacco. Other than one or two fellow prisoners he could talk to, the rest were not terribly interesting, and they had few books or newspapers; but still they managed to pass the time in the evenings playing chess or reading aloud. He ended by expressing his desire to see Boris again.28
This was Yuri’s last letter. Sometime that spring he died of dysentery. When Yuri’s letters stopped coming, Anna became desperate. She began writing letters to the gulag administration, to camp directors, and to various Soviet officials, even to Lavrenty Beria, chief of the NKVD from late 1938, seeking information on Yuri’s condition and whereabouts. For years Anna kept writing but could get no answers. Finally, in 1940, she received an official letter informing her that in 1938 Yuri had been sentenced to an additional ten years “without the right of correspondence” and been sent to a camp deep in Siberia. His last known location was listed as Chibyu, near the Ukhta River. Anna died never learning the truth about her son’s death. He continued to haunt her dreams for the rest of her life. Once she saw him walking through a swamp heading somewhere far away. He was extremely pale and gaunt and turned to look at her with mournful eyes.29
After arriving in Karelia, Boris bounced between camps in Uroksa, Sennukha, and Kuzema. He fell ill in the spring of 1937 and was relieved of heavy forest work. Anna, who had been sending him food and money (the latter never reached him), wrote to Peshkov asking her to help get Boris moved to the gulag hospital at Bear Mountain (Medvezhya Gora, later changed to Medvezhegorsk). Boris had made the same request of the camp officials; failing this, he hoped that maybe he could convince them to send him to the work corridor at the Butyrki. Camp officials ignored their requests, however, and Boris’s condition deteriorated. His legs were swollen from edema, and he could no longer walk. By summer, he was bedridden. He was put on a special diet, however, and his daily intake of calories and animal fats was increased.30
The improved diet and gentler conditions, as well as visits from a few camp doctors later that year, returned Boris to health, and by the end of 1937 he was back in the barracks at Sennukha. He spent the winter out in the deep snow and cold, felling trees in the Karelian forest. By spring his health was broken once again. The edema had returned, his legs swelled, and then his lungs began to fill with fluid, and he had trouble breathing. Anna tried to get him released—but her requests were denied. By early July 1938, Boris knew he was dying. He wrote to his mother and Uncle Pavel Sheremetev to stop sending food since it would only be wasted on him. The last letter he wrote himself was dated July 9. “As for me,” Boris informed his mother, trying to shield her from the truth, “I will just say that things are as before and I am no worse, though I am getting weaker. In general, my overall condition notwithstanding, I am in good spirits and thank God for everything. I do hope to give my illness a good fight. I so terribly want to get back to you as soon as possible.”31 The swelling in Boris’s arms, legs, and chest grew worse, and by the middle of July he was too ill to write. He dictated to a fellow prisoner a few more letters home. The last was from July 28. He died in his sleep two days later and was buried on August 2 in the Sennukha camp cemetery. He was less than a month away from his forty-first birthday.32
Unaware that Boris was dead, Anna sent him a long letter on July 31 imbued with her deep religious faith and counseling acceptance of God’s will:
If I love you, and you love me, and we both and everyone else loves Him, then we are now under the care and protection of His love. May Christ keep and protect us from everything that is unbearable, grievous, and perplexing. We do not know His will, neither our future nor how our great toil at this hour of our ordeal will be decided. But know it will only be as is best for us. You see, I am calm. [. . .] You know I love you—but God loves you even more, deeper and better, and so you and I must give up our fates to Him to decide.33
Several days later her letter was returned unopened. On the envelope were the words: “No longer in the camp.” Her heart sank, and she expected the worse, thinking this a coded reference to his death. Anna went to Moscow to learn for certain, and there she was informed that Boris had indeed died on July 30. Anna later claimed to have experienced a vision that day. “At dawn on July 30, when Boris’s soul flew away from Sennukha, my room in Vladimir filled with light and I was caressed by some spirit. [. . .] Two souls came to me in my sleep and touched both sides of my face [. . .] Without a doubt, this was all predetermined from the beginning, from the very moment of his conception.”34 Upon returning to Vladimir, Anna held a small memorial service for Boris. One night Boris appeared in her dreams. He was sitting on the road with his hands and feet tied. Anna approached and asked what had happened. He calmly told her that he could move no farther, he had no way forward, and, pointing to his tied hands and feet, said that her grief was holding him back, making it impossible for him to move on to heaven. Anna recognized she had to accept his death and let him go.
During these difficult years Anna met an old woman in Vladimir. The woman told her she was “a fortunate mother.” Why, Anna asked, where is my good fortune? “Your good fortune rests in the suffering of your children, for this is a candle that forever burns before God,” the woman told her.35
“There still are righteous people in Russia,” the bishop of Kovrov once wrote, “who pray to the Lord for Her salvation. Were there no more righteous people, God would destroy us. Take for example my acquaintance Anna Saburov, the wife of the former governor of St. Petersburg. She lost her husband and father in the revolution, and in 1932 both of her sons were arrested, when she was ill herself, but never once in all her letters to me has she ever cried out to the Lord in protest.”36
The grief over Boris’s death was compounded by the fact that Anna was now alone. On the night of February 22, 1938, the NKVD returned to the Saburov apartment and arrested Xenia. They locked her up in Vladimir’s former monastery for six months. She became ill. First her legs swelled, followed by her entire body, even her face. She developed terrible diarrhea; pussy sores erupted on her scalp, and she had to cut off all her hair. At the end of September, Xenia was moved to Ivanovo. There her interrogator, a man named Belekov, beat her savagely. He pummeled her face, smashing her lips and knocking out many of her teeth, and dragged her around the room by her hair. (He could be seen walking the streets of Ivanovo as a pensioner almost fifty years later.) He kept after her to confess her crimes, but she had no idea what to say since she had never been told what she had been charged with. This went on for weeks. During the beatings Xenia struggled not to lose consciousness or say something that might cast suspicion on anyone else. She only learned of the charge at her trial in early October: espionage and counterrevolutionary activities (Article 58, Section 6). As evidence the NKVD cited her marriage to Page and some German marks found in her apartment sent by an aunt living abroad. She was convicted and sentenced to ten years in a labor camp. “I did not show them that I was devastated,” Xenia said. “I did not even let my lips quiver, though a flash of cold did run down my spine. They told me I could lodge an appeal. I did. I wrote
on the verdict that I did not recognize the charges.”37
On November 21, Xenia received a letter from her mother. It was marked “No. 2.” (Letters were typically numbered; that way the recipient knew when a letter had not gotten through.) Letter No. 1 had contained word of Boris’s death; thus this subsequent letter struck Xenia like a bolt of lightning.
This news about Boris devastated me. You must have written about it in the first letter, which never reached me. The whole time I had a feeling that something had happened and had been having dreams. I’ll write you more about this later, but for now just a few words so that you knew I am with you in heart and soul. I know better than anyone else what B. meant to you and what a loss this is for you. I am humbled by the manner in which you have received this, and am trying to accept this enormous loss in the same way, but at this moment I still cannot come to my senses.
Several days later Xenia wrote again. “Everything that concerns me now seems of secondary importance. None of it’s very important, it all seems so petty.” Xenia could not stop thinking about Boris; she dreamed of him every night. The loss of Boris naturally made her think of Yuri and worry even more about his well-being.38 Both she and her mother continued to believe he was alive.
In late 1938, Xenia learned she would soon be shipped off to a camp in the north. She wrote her mother to send some shirts, undergarments, and sandals. She said was ready for anything: “I completely submit myself to fate.” Xenia ended up in Plesetsk in the Arkhangelsk region. There she spent the next year and a half. It was a difficult place. The camp was full of hardened criminals, and they mocked Xenia, calling her the “Macedonian Princess.” In the winter the temperature dropped to nearly minus forty degrees Fahrenheit. She was put to work moving logs for a new railroad on four hundred grams of bread a day; her feet were covered in nothing but cotton socks and bast shoes. The heavy strain and miserable conditions quickly undermined her health, and she was assigned to the Temporarily Unfit for Labor Brigade and given a larger ration. She was soon sent back out to work in the forest, but still too weak to fulfill her quota, she was put in a punishment cell, and her rations were cut; the camp officials kept for themselves the food parcels Anna sent her. After Xenia’s release, some of the male prisoners took pity on her and helped her fulfill her work norm, giving her time to rest and warm herself by the fire. This cycle of forest work, illness, rest, recovery, and then return to the forest went on all winter and spring of 1939. On at least one occasion she was close to death, and it was thanks to the kindness of her fellow prisoners, food sent from her mother and Uncle Pavel (coffee, jam, milk, canned vegetables, much of which never reached Xenia), and the begrudging compassion of the camp officials that Xenia survived. She was exceedingly grateful to her mother, but, knowing how little Anna could afford these gifts and how difficult it was for her all alone back in Vladimir, it pained her to accept them. “I value your concern for my needs, both great and small, so very much. How you ease my condition. It is so true, ‘There’s no one like your mother!’ Oh, how I feel that here. Thank you for everything!”39