Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

At the time the casual insult had stung him, as was its intention, but Kuibyshev had smiled nonetheless, not wishing to cause unpleasantness at the New Year’s Day party. They were both guests of Nélie Jacquemart-André at her house on Boulevard Haussmann and had enjoyed critically appraising their hostess and the new arrivals as she received them beneath the Winterhalter portrait of her late husband, Edouard. The gathering had been both charmant and profitable. So many of the wives were looking for new furs (“My dear Monsieur Kuibyshev, I have had nothing new since the turn of the century! My furs are in absolute shreds.”), as were their husbands on their behalf (or, as in the case of the young diplomat, their mothers) that his attendance had proved both commercially and socially advantageous. Such glittering occasions, he had learned, were very much like catching cats. The trick was never to try to sell his pelts, however bad business was, but instead to wait modestly to be approached. In the meantime, he had had a useful, if ultimately disappointing, conversation with Jules Lavirotte about the new apartments at 23 Avenue de Messine. He had entertained hopes of establishing his Paris agency there in the new building when it opened but Lavirotte had hinted that the Rothschilds now held an interest and it was understood that they would bring in their own people. There was nothing to be done.

The young Englishman had been paid back for his sly insult that afternoon in Kuibyshev’s rooms – how Illya had enjoyed making him squeal! – but he had nevertheless been correct. The Russian Empire was still as backward as any other part of Asia; at least forty years behind the other imperial nations of Europe if its railway system was an indication, and the blame rested squarely at the feet of the Tsar and his ministers. The Autocracy was riddled with stupefying incompetence and stultifying deference and shored up by endemic corruption and a morbid fear of the future. Men of entrepreneurial vision such as himself were strongly discouraged and often obstructed, and state investments were made only as a last resort and then grudgingly. Which other modern Empire would build only a single track railway system that delayed supplies to its armies in the East, making them wait in sidings while returning trains of injured troops travelled in the opposite direction? It was little wonder that the Japanese had been able to advance so rapidly and be victorious.

How much quicker would this journey be, he asked himself, if I was travelling by rail instead of by coach? It would take a few days, probably, rather, than weeks. A branch line up from Tiumen through Tobolsk and then up to Berezovo… Why, my furs could be in Berlin within a week, in San Francisco within a month. And how much faster still would it be if there was a northern rail route to Archangel!

But he knew that such a scheme demanded shrewd investment and entrepreneurial vision: two of the many virtues that the Autocracy lacked. Foreign confidence had slowly begun to return now that the reaction to the revolutionary crisis had shown that the government was firmly intent on restoring order. He regarded this new resettlement as good news but it would be insufficient to bring Russia into the circle of wealthy countries. Hampered by its subservience to its rulers, Russia would always be a semi-backward nation; an uncouth candidate, never an elected member, of the European “club”.

We have all the natural resources of America, but none of its national spirit, he reflected. We could be just as rich as the Americans but we are oppressed by our size, our history and our distrust of innovation and risk. We cry to be free yet readily yield to the knout. We want to be taken as modern Europeans yet cling to ancient Byzantium. To outsiders the concept of a “Modern Russia” must seem a lie wrapped in a fraud inside a contradiction.

The comparison with America saddened him. For over a generation the new country had acted like a magnet for dissatisfied youth and it was now tearing from him someone close to his heart.