Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

The continual marriages to German princesses by his predecessors made Alexander III’s “Russian” blood rather dubious, but he looked like a fairy-tale folk hero: a broad-shouldered giant with reddish blond hair and a stern look. The Wanderer Surikov considered Alexander III a true representative of the Russian people: “There was something grand about him.”¹¹

Alexander III created the first museum of national art—today the world-famous Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. It is hard to overestimate the ideological and practical significance of that gesture: it was declared at the summit of authority that Russian art has museum value, not a view shared by many at the time.

The tsar’s collection highlighted the works of the Wanderers. He also patronized the great playwright Alexander Ostrovsky, whose delicious comedies of merchant life corresponded to the Wanderer aesthetic. In 1884, Alexander III bestowed an annual pension of 3,000 rubles on Ostrovsky, followed by a “special audience,” joking as they met, “I hope you know who I am, and I know you. I am very pleased to see you at the palace.”¹²

One would have expected Alexander to support the Bunch as well, but that did not happen. There is a simple explanation. In those days, many connoisseurs disliked the works of the Mighty Bunch: they seemed ugly, vulgar, and crass. Mussorgsky’s music was mercilessly mocked by both Turgenev and Saltykov-Shchedrin.

Alexander III loved Tchaikovsky’s music. Today it may seem that one can love Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky both, but back then the two geniuses seemed—to themselves and others—to represent polar opposites in music. The usually gentle and tactful Tchaikovsky exclaimed wrathfully, “I send Mussorgsky’s music to the devil with all my heart; it is the most banal and vile parody of music.” Mussorgsky responded in kind.

So it comes as no surprise that Alexander III, who had pushed through Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin into the repertoire of the imperial theaters, would have personally crossed off a new production of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov from the planned season in 1888 of the Maryinsky Theater.

That fact led the Soviet critics to proclaim that the highest authorities had been implacably hostile to Mussorgsky. In fact, Mussorgsky had a patron at the very top: Terty Filippov, who had served more than twenty years in the State Comptroller’s Office (he was its director; in fact, Filippov reported personally to the monarch between 1889 and his death in 1899). Controlling the revenues and expenses of all state and public funds, Filippov was one of the most powerful officials in the land.

Filippov was a curious and even extravagant character. The illegitimate son (according to gossip) of a provincial postmaster, he made his fantastic state career thanks to his reputation as an effective manager, honest and incorruptible—very rare in Russia, both then and now.

Filippov’s friends, impressed by his erudition in cultural and religious matters, saw him as a potential minister of education or high procurator of the Holy Synod. But Pobedonostsev was high procurator and very wary of Filippov as a possible rival.

The views of both men were similar: they were staunch conservative defenders of the autocracy and the Orthodox Church. Yet there had been a time when Filippov was an ardent reader of Belinsky’s articles and George Sand’s novels, a “ruthless atheist” and almost socialist. His outlook changed, but traces of his Bohemian youth remained.

Filippov was a music lover, with a pleasant tenor, who enjoyed singing folk songs and organized a pretty good choir at the Comptroller’s Office. He became a leading expert on Russian antiquity, studying old manuscripts, icon painting, and church music. This led to a close friendship with the composer Balakirev, the guru of the Mighty Bunch, who introduced Filippov to Mussorgsky.

Mussorgsky was undoubtedly the most talented member of the Mighty Bunch, but no one in the group understood it. They treated him the way a family might a gifted but wayward child, despairing of his eccentric behavior, intemperate drinking, excessive (in the opinion of others) self-regard, and inability to work in an organized and concentrated manner (attention-deficit disorder, perhaps). In their correspondence and conversations about Mussorgsky, words like “complete idiot,” “almost an idiot,” and “clouded brain” came up frequently.

When Mussorgsky was composing, people tugged at him from all sides with endless advice and criticism, friendly and otherwise. The press hated him. When his opera Boris Godunov (based on Pushkin) was shown for the first time in 1874 at the Maryinsky Theater, the critics were like attack dogs: “ugly monotony,” “cacophony in five acts and seven scenes,” and “stinking object.” They were particularly exercised over the “blasphemous” tampering with the text of Pushkin’s tragedy.