Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

But Modest, author of the libretti for his brother’s operas Queen of Spades and Iolanthe—and, like his brother, a homosexual, as evinced in his frank unfinished autobiography—had an agenda. He wanted to refute, without saying so outright, the rumors of Tchaikovsky’s suicide, at that time already circulating in Russian musical circles; they were elicited in part by the fact that the composer’s last work was his tragic Sixth (“Pathétique”) Symphony, which many contemporaries considered a requiem for himself.

Modest, however, spoke of Tchaikovsky’s “hysteria” in the biography and noted his “out-of-the-ordinary nervousness,” adding, “according to some contemporary scientists, genius is a kind of psychosis.”¹⁴ (Modest was referring to the influential French psychiatrist of the period, Théodule Ribeaux, fashionable in Russia, too, who wrote in one of his popular works, “The character of hysterical patients can change like the pictures in a kaleidoscope … the most constant thing about them is their inconsistency. Yesterday they were cheerful, sweet, and polite; today they are gloomy, irritable, and inaccessible.”)¹⁵

Tchaikovsky’s doctor, Vassily Bertenson, also stressed the composer’s “extreme nervousness,” which forced him to lie awake at night “with the sense of overwhelming horror.”¹⁶ Lacking Prozac in those days, Tchaikovsky smoked “insatiably” (he had begun smoking at the age of fourteen), adding powerful doses of alcohol. According to Dr. Bertenson, the composer “abused cognac and there were periods, his brothers said, when he was on the verge of real alcoholism.”¹⁷

Alina Briullova, who was close to Tchaikovsky for many years, confirmed that “he truly was a man with sick nerves,” and had “a definite neurosis, that sometimes grew acute to the point of inexpressible suffering: a burning, causeless ennui, which he could not shake, an inability to control his jangling nerves, a fear of people … it tormented him terribly and poisoned his life.”¹⁸

The psychiatrist Ribeaux described this type as having “sudden flares of anger and indignation, uncontrolled delights, fits of despair, explosions of crazy merriment, impulses of strong attachment, unexpected moments of tenderness or fits of temper, during which they, like spoiled children, stamp their feet and break furniture.”

The best illustration for that page from a psychiatrist’s treatise is this excerpt from Tchaikovsky’s December 1877 letter to his brother Anatoly (first published by Valery Sokolov), describing the scene the composer made at his faithful servant, Alexei Safronov. “I suspected that there was something wrong with his genital member. I kept pestering him about how things were. He resisted. I suddenly grew furious, tore at my tie and shirt, broke a chair and so on. When I was indulging in these strange gymnastic exercises, my eyes suddenly met his. He was so terrified, he was looking at me so piteously, completely pale, he kept saying ‘What’s the matter with you, calm down,’ and so on, that I instantly did.”¹⁹

A nervous wreck (a modern diagnosis might be “borderline personality disorder”) certainly can enjoy moments and even long periods of happiness, but it would be quite a stretch to call him happy. A similar stretch is calling the attitude toward homosexuality in Tchaikovsky’s Russia tolerant.

Let’s look at the case of Prince Meshchersky, the favorite example of the modern-day Tchaikovsky “revisionists.” Yes, the Romanovs tolerated the openly homosexual Meshchersky (who, according to Alexander Poznansky, was Tchaikovsky’s “intimate friend”)²⁰ and supported his ultra-conservative publication, The Citizen, with generous government grants. But the Russian political elite seethed and kept looking for ways to open the eyes of Alexander III and then Nicholas II about Meshchersky.

Yevgeny Feoktistov, chief of the department overseeing press and publishing under Alexander III, recorded in his diary that Prince Meshchersky made “a very depressing impression on all decent people; his newspaper is considered the tsar’s; they said that it should serve as the mouthpiece of the Sovereign himself, and just as if on purpose, the disgusting story with some flutist or drummer came to light … How could I not mourn that the Sovereign, distinguished by an instinctive disgust for everything base and perverted, has given a man shamed in public opinion the chance to abuse his name?”²¹

Such diary entries, made by some of the most influential figures of the period, were quite common.²² Their hostile or mocking tone makes it clear: in a situation when sodomy was considered a crime (the Criminal Code read: “Anyone guilty of the unnatural act of sodomy is subject to being stripped of all rights and exiled to Siberia”), accusing someone of homosexuality was a potent weapon and was routinely used to discredit political enemies and for blackmail.