Byzantium Endures

I have remembered Herr Lustgarten’s words because in some respects they were prophetic. The Russian people are again beginning to realise, I gather, the menace of the Zionist-Masonic conspiracy. I hear that the military is issuing instruction pamphlets warning soldiers of the dangers of international Zionism. As for the Yellow Peril, most Slavs are already only too well aware of that particular threat. The great creed Professor Lustgarten could never understand was the creed of Pan-Slavism, which flourished in Ukraine, heartland and birthplace of the greatest Slav state in the world. Potentially, it is the core of a single Slav state embracing Poland, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, even parts of Greece. It could form a bastion of its own intense brand of Western culture against the decadence represented by America or the barbarism represented by the new Tatar Empire under Mao. The hair-splitting obsessions of Germanic theology are not for us. We are concerned with our destiny. Ukrainian nationalism is at odds with Pan-Slavism. That is why I was never a nationalist. I was born into the Russian Empire and it is my greatest wish to die there, too, though I fear it will be a little longer before the Russian people return wholeheartedly to their ancient heritage.

Herr Lustgarten’s historical views did not always accord with my own but I found myself responding excellently to his tuition. He was delighted, and gave me extra lessons in the evenings. He assured me that if I pursued my studies diligently I would be sure of academic honours. My mother was ecstatic and it was satisfying to me that I was able to repay her for the sacrifices she had made. I had, she said, my father’s intellect, but I possessed her sense of values. I determined not to waste my brain as my father had wasted his. Mother accepted sewing work to pay for the extra courses and from the age of eleven (the year Stolypin was assassinated in Kiev) I received Mathematics and Science from Herr Lustgarten and Languages and Literature from Frau Lustgarten. This wonderful lady, as quiet and impassive and short and fat as her husband was volatile and lean, introduced me to the books which were to leave such a deep impression on me. Grimmelshausen, Dickens, Goethe, Hugo and Verne were all firm favourites by the time I was thirteen. I would also read the Pearson’s volumes which Captain Brown had given me. There were twenty-eight in all. I wish I owned them still. They would cost a fortune to buy, even if they existed. These were lost, with so much else, during the Civil War following Lenin’s usurping power. They had identical bindings of gold, blue and dark green on buff. I think I read every word in them at least twice. Here were the tales of H.G. Wells, Cutcliffe Hyne and Max Pemberton. Guy Boothby, Conan Doyle, H. Rider Haggard, Rafael Sabatini and Robert Barr are other names you rarely hear these days. Films, radio and television have completely destroyed literacy. The socialists have achieved their end: everyone is reduced to the level of the mouzhik. In my day we strove to improve ourselves. Today the common aim, even amongst the so-called educated classes, is to appear as stupid and as illiterate as possible.

By 1913, then, my waking life consisted almost entirely of work and reading. I saw Esmé only on the way to school (girls were segregated from boys) and we rarely spoke of anything but our education. Her father was very ill and she abandoned lessons increasingly to look after him. She was an angel. Save for my lasting friendship with her, I was essentially a solitary child and had few acquaintances. This and my penchant for scholarship earned me the jealousy of most other boys and I suffered the most horrible insults, usually without demur. I had a friend for a little while. His name was Yuri and he was about my own age, though much poorer than us. He used to come and sit by our stove while I studied in the evenings. I would help him with his lessons. My mother was delighted that I had a new playmate. But then a few ornaments were missing and only Yuri could have taken them. Next day I taxed him with the theft. He was frank in admitting it. I asked him why he had stolen from us, who had shown him kindness, and received the most shocking reply.

‘Because you are Jews,’ he said. ‘Jews are fair game. Everyone says so.’ Sickened by this slur, I complained to Herr Lustgarten who seemed unsympathetic in a way I still cannot quite define. ‘I am the son of a Cossack,’ I told him and his wife. ‘Come home with me and I’ll prove it to you.’