The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

Juxtaposing the cultural explosion to the feverish political turmoil is tantalizing. Was it clear in the social circumstances that a serious fissure in the body politic existed? Was the cultural flowering one that was hurtling through a limited time frame? Were there instances where the idyllic estate life still existed? Educated Russians were keenly aware of the great debates in society. The fledgling civil freedoms were savored deeply. Where Russia should move as a nation was a time concern, though perhaps one that was less keenly felt thousands of miles from the major cities. Despite all of this acuteness and

The Vanished Presence: Russia before 1914

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involvement, no one could be expected to see that entry into World War I was through the gates of doom.

Nickolas Lupinin

NOTE

1. Anna Geifman, Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894–1917 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993).

Chapter One

Viktor Chernov, Idylls on the Volga

Viktor Chernov is best known for an intense political activism. While yet a teenager in the 1880’s, he committed himself to the revolutionary cause and was a hunted man by the 1890’s. A man of great independence, he nevertheless became a member of the SR’s (Social Revolutionaries), a party he was later to head. Strong pro-peasant and terroristic policies were hallmarks of the SR’s and Chernov was notoriously indefatigable in the pursuit of both. The Bolshevik victory in 1917 did not prove to be the answer and he ultimately had to flee Russia. The selection below describes a boy coming of age and hardly hints at the future terrorist. One could say that Chernov lived many lives, from the Volga region of his birth to his death in New York in 1952. This excerpt is from Chernov’s Pered burei [Before the Storm]. New York: Izd. Imeni Chekhova, 1953.

I was born amidst the boundless steppes beyond the Volga in the town of Novouzensk, Samara Province, but spent my childhood, boyhood and callow youth in the town of Kamyshin on the broad expanse of the Volga River. Kamyshin lay on the right bank of the Volga where the now-shallow Kamyshinka flows into it. But in the memory of the old-timers the shallow river was once a broad watery expanse covered by thickets of bulrushes. Back in those times, small flotillas of daring river pirates would hide there seeking refuge and freedom in the Volga wilderness from the burdens and laws of the Tsarist regime. They were constantly at war with the world which they had rejected. They would wait in ambush for lone commercial vessels or for whole fleets and shoot out like an arrow into the fast mid-stream while startling the waters with their local, non-Russian, shout: “Saryn’ na kichu” (come

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Chapter One

out on the stern), which was a demand for immediate surrender to the mercy of the attackers.

Some of the old-timers would mix fact with folklore and even point out the favorite hide-outs of legendary pirates Vas’ka Chaloi, Erem Kosolap, and Kuz’ma Shaloput. But to the west of Kamyshin there indisputably was a huge fortress mound in the shape of a radically truncated pyramid with a flat and rather broad top. It stood out in its protruding loneliness amidst the flatness of the surrounding steppe. Local tradition tied it to the name of Sten’ka Razin [an 18th-century rebel], but it had to be much older. For a long time, visiting archeologists wanted to excavate it, but it never went further than talk.

Important sounding and authoritative words poured from such talk—Khazars, Cuman, and Uzzes. It seemed that these ancient names created a greater impression on the eavesdropping children than they had on their busy elders. The whistling sound of the name Uzzes had a magical impression on us. We imagined them as riders fused with their steeds, men who were almost centaurs. We loved playing at being Uzzes, clambering on to unharnessed horses with the help of hostlers as they led them to the Volga to drink and bathe. We enjoyed whooping wildly as we imagined our docile quadrupeds to be wild ponies of the steppe.