Notes to and Comments on A Gentleman in Moscow, Book Two

Notes to A Gentleman in Moscow, Book Two

Page 111 “Field Marshall Kutuzov.” Field Marshall Mikhail Kutuzov was a commanding officer in the Russian army in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. He commanded the Russian forces in the 1812 Battle of Borodino. Although that battle was technically a victory for Napoleon, it actually marked the beginning of the end of the French invasion of Russia. Kutuzov is considered to have been one of imperial Russia’s best generals.

Page 111 “eastern embankment.” I believe that the term eastern embankment was part of the territory on which the Battle of Borodino was fought.

Page 114 “streetsweepers.” When I was in Russia in 1975 and 1976 the streets were still mostly cleaned by hand, usually by older women using brooms made of twigs. I assume that scene that I saw is the scene the text is referring to here.

Page 114 “Mayakovsky.” Vladimir Mayakovsky was a prominent Russian Communist author. Though he supported the ideals of the Communists and admired Lenin, by the late 1920s he fell out of favor with the regime; and the artistic style called Social Realism, which was not Mayakovsky’s style, became the only officially accepted type of art. He committed suicide in 1930.

Page 115 “Zelinsky.” The character just called here Zelinsky appears to be fictional. There is a famous Russian chemist named Zelinsky who would have been active at the time this story is set, but this character clearly is not that chemist.

Page 115 “zavitsuki.” Zavitsuki is a sort of Russian cookie, although frankly I’d never heard of them until I read that word in this book.

Page 117 “Anna Urbanova.” This character is fictional.

Page 123 “Akaky Akakievich.” Akaky Akakievich is the main character in a story by the influential Russian author Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) titled The Overcoat. Dostoevsky once said: “We all come out of Gogol’s overcoat.”

Page 125 Moscow as the seat of Russian governance. Moscow rose to dominant position among numerous small Russian principalities beginning in about the fourteenth century. By the sixteenth century Moscow ruled all of central Russia. The Grand Princes of Moscow began to call themselves Tsar, a Slavic version of Caesar. Central Russia was ruled from Moscow until 1712, when Tsar Peter I, aka Peter the Great, moved the capital to his newly created city of St. Petersburg on the Gulf of Finland. The Communists moved the capital back to Moscow after 1917.

Page 129. On the train to St. Petersburg. Also the reference to St. Petersburg on page 130 and elsewhere. This appears to be an error. The name of the city of St. Petersburg was changed to Petrograd in 1914, Petrograd being a Russian equivalent of St. Petersburg, a change made at the beginning of WWI to make the city sound less German. It remained Petrograd until 1924 when the name was changed to Leningrad after the death of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. It was changed back to St. Petersburg in 1991 upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1923, when this part of the book is set, the name of the city would have been Petrograd not St. Petersburg. The city suffered horribly during World War II. The Germans besieged it from September, 1941, to January, 1944. The city had only a trickle of food and other supplies during all that time. Over one million people died, many of them from starvation. I suppose it is possible that in the early 1920s people still called the city St. Petersburg rather than Petrograd, but when I was in Russia everyone called it Leningrad.

Page 134 “Pravda.” Pravda is the Russian word for truth. It was the name of the newspaper of the Russian Communist Party. It began publication outside Russia in 1911 and in Russia in 1912. It was an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (originally of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party which became the CPSU) from 1912 to 1991. Despite its name it usually contained very little truth. It functioned primarily as a propaganda tool of the Russian, then the Soviet Communists.

Page 136 “Nevsky Prospekt.” Nevsky Prospekt is the main street of St. Petersburg. It is named after the Neva River, the river on the banks of which the city stands. In the early spring of 1976 I was standing on it waiting for a bus or a streetcar on a day when a late winter storm had hit the city. I wasn’t dressed for the weather. It was one of the coldest experiences of my life.

Page 136 “With the recognition of the USSR.” The USSR was established in 1922. The United States recognized the it only in 1936.

Page 136 Comrade Soslovsky. This character is fictional.

Page 137 “due to their long intermarriage with the Poles.” Belorussia (sometimes translated as White Russia but not to be confused with the Whites, the name usually applied to the forces opposing the Bolsheviks in the civil war that lasted from 1917 to 1922) is located between Russia and Poland. The border between Russia and Poland has moved back and forth several times over the centuries. The Slavic people in the western parts of the Russian empire (the Ukrainians and the Belorussians) have long been attracted to western Europe. The government of imperial Russia never recognized either the Ukrainians or the Belorussians as people different from Russians.

Page 147 “Neman River.” The Neman River flows southeast to northwest through Belorussia and Lithuania. In 1812 it would, roughly speaking, have marked a border between the Slavic parts of the Russian Empire and Poland. Napoleon’s army crossed it at the beginning of its invasion of Russia. I assume the French army crossed it again as it retreated from Russia.

Page 147 “Hussars.” The Hussars were a regiment of cavalry.

A comment: This story is set against an actual historical background. Several things are named that suggest the extent to which old Russia and its ways were changed under the Communists. People with connections rather than ability (the Bishop and others) are advantaged over those without connections. The old landmarks of Moscow are changed—streets are renamed, old statues replaced, etc. The world in which the Count grew up is disappearing as this story progresses. That is in fact what happened.

Let me give you an anecdote from my time in Moscow. My late wife (Mary’s mother) and I got to know two fifth year journalism students at Moscow State University, a young man and a young woman. We would go see them most Sunday afternoons at the young man’s dorm room. One day he was there, but she wasn’t. He offered no explanation. I had learned that if a Soviet person didn’t explain something it was probably best not to ask, so I didn’t. The next week again he was there but she wasn’t. My curiosity got the better of me. I said to him “I hope she’s not ill.” That, I figured, was a safe way to express my concern and perhaps to have my curiosity satisfied. He replied: “I know that I’m alright, but she’s not the same person I am.” That was all he had to say. His words explained everything to anyone familiar with Soviet ways. He meant that he was connected somehow with people, undoubtedly members of the Communist Party, who would protect him from any negative consequences of his associating with Americans. She did not have those connections. Both of these people were about to graduate from Moscow State University. They would be placed in their first jobs as journalists. A new journalist in good with the Party might get a cushy post in Moscow or Leningrad. A new journalist not in good with the Party might get posted to some place like Magadan in far eastern Siberia. Someone had probably leaned on the young woman, telling her that her contact with Americans had to end if she didn’t want to end up in Magadan or someplace equally remote and unpleasant. In the Soviet Union connections mattered more than ability. I suppose that’s true everywhere to some extent, but that truth was carried to extremes in Soviet Russia. We see the beginnings of it in some of the details contained in this story.

Page 155 Admiral Stepan Makarov. This is an historical person. He was a highly regarded naval leader who commanded the Russian navy during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 about which I wrote in an earlier note. His flagship, the Petropavlovsk, hit a Japanese mine, and he went down with it.

Page 156 The only contribution Russia had made to the West was the invention of vodka. Allow me another personal story. In March, 1969, about seven months after the Soviet invasion of August, 1968, I was in Prague Czechoslovakia, with a group of German students from the University of Stuttgart, where I was participating in a year abroad program from the University of Oregon.[1] As we sat in a Czech beer hall some young Czechs, apparently students, approached us. As we were speaking German they asked us in German: “Ost odor West?” East or west? East or west German, that is. When the Germans answered west these young Czechs welcomed us warmly and joined us for a beer. (They would have damned us to hell if we’d said east, for East Germany participated in the Soviet invasion of 1968). One of them asked me what my future plans were, and I said I intended to do graduate studies in Russian history. Wrong answer. This young Czech said to me: Why would study Russia? Nothing good has ever come out of Russia! I have never seen hatred like the hatred I saw in these young Czechs toward Russia. Of course, they had good reason to hate the Russians, but it simply isn’t true that nothing good has ever come from Russia or that Russia’s only contribution to the West has been the invention of vodka, as the Count makes clear as the story continues. (The Russian word vodka, by the way, is the diminutive form of the Russian word for water. Vodka means little water, and many Russians drink it as if it were only water as the characters in this part of the book do.) There is much to reject and condemn in Russian history, but that is no reason to reject the positive things that have also come from that country.

Page 159 Order of St. Andrew: The Order of St. Andrew was the highest civilian award in the Russian Empire. Very few were given, and the recipients were people of great cultural or other achievement. That Count Rostov received it means he was some kind of very prominent person before the Russian revolution. Peter the Great established the award late in the seventeenth century. The Soviets abolished it. The Russian Federation today has reinstated it. St. Andrew the First Called, for whom the award is named, is the patron saint of Russia. I couldn’t find anything about a Jockey Club or the title Master of the Hunt in Russia. There is a Jockey Club in Great Britain. Perhaps that is the reference here.

Page 160 Novobaczky. The spelling here is odd for a Russian name. In Polish our ch sound is spelled cz. There is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet that transliterates into English as ch, but not one transliterated as cz. Perhaps the suggestion here is that this family has Polish roots, although that would be difficult to indicate in Cyrillic. Or perhaps our author isn’t that familiar with Cyrillic letters and Polish spellings.

Page 165 Helena Rostov. In Russian her name wouldn’t be Rostov, it would be Rostova. Russian names reflect the gender of the person they name (assuming of course that there are only two genders). Masculine names usually end in consonants, like the v of Rostov. Feminine names end in a (or ia or ya, a transliteration of the Cyrillic letter that looks like a backwards R, which is a vowel not a consonant). Hence Helena would go by Rostova, not Rostov.

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[1] I was in Moscow when that invasion happened, but that’s a different story.