The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

In Penza during those accursed days I ran into Olga L’vovna Azarevich (her first husband was prince Drutskii-Sokol’ninskii, and by birth she was a princess of the Golitsyn family). She had lost everything. Through ill fortune there wasn’t even any money left in the bank. In fact she had much to lose: her estate Muratovka with 3000 desiatinas of land [8,100 acres], a distillery, a sheep-raising enterprise, many horses, cows, a well-furnished home. Everything was plundered and pillaged. She managed to donate some valuable paintings to the museum of the Penza art school so that they would not perish. In spite of everything she did not despair. “Oh well,” she said, “God gives, God takes away.” I don’t think the Lord our God could ever be involved in parceling out latifundia, much less employing insane, wild, drunken soldiers to misappropriate them. Nonetheless, such a degree of not being bound by the bounties of this world is, in my opinion, wonderful. And this very Russian feeling I have observed among many property owners. Russians are not strongly bound to land. As Marina Tsvetaeva wrote: “I know, I know that earthly wonder is a wonderful carved cup, which is no more ours than the air or the stars.”

Roman Gul, We’re in Power Now

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In emigration, in the city of Nice, Olga L’vovna ran a tiny café for Russian emigrants. Day after day she worked, went to the market, and cooked. She died in Nice at a venerable old age. Nobody ever heard a complaint from Olga L’vovna, or lamentations about lost silver and gold, although she once possessed it in abundance. In her life, as in many others, there was something else, something more precious than silver or gold.

Chapter Fifteen

Sergei Mamontov, Civil War: A White Army Journal

The Russian Civil War (1918–1920) is the setting here. A soldier in the White Army, Mamontov provides a unique perspective on the war in his book of memoirs. He notes: “It is often difficult to distinguish one’s feelings. Simultaneously there was fear and valor, loathing and compassion, timidity and a sense of duty, desperation and hope.” He is relentlessly truthful and markedly dispassionate in his judgments. His two-page introduction to the memoirs is as cogent a summation of the Civil War as one can find anywhere. Taken from Sergei Mamontov, Pokhody i koni [Marches and Stallions]. Paris: YMCA Press, 1981.

TO THE UKRAINE

My brother and I became totally convinced of the inability of various political groups to get us south. I even doubt whether such groups existed, and if they did, whether they were not Bolshevik fronts. It was easy to fall into a trap and best to count on our own resources. Once in the hallway my brother simply said to me:

“Let’s go.”

“Let’s go. But when?”

“Now. Why put it off?”

“Good. Let’s go.”

And that was all. Mother silently packed a small suitcase for the two of us. Father saw us off at the Briansk Railway Terminal, gave us money, and blessed us. We parted forever. He died of typhus in 1920.

A railroad man put us into a freight car. The train set off southward into the unknown. The next day we arrived in Zernovo, the last town under Bolshevik

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control. Beyond lay the Ukraine, occupied by the Germans. We were lucky; there were no border guards in Zernovo. I waited at the station while my brother went to the farmer’s market. He found a peasant from the Ukraine who agreed to take us south for a hundred rubles. In the meantime he advised us to walk out of town and hide in a wheat field along a road where he would pick us up at night. That’s what we did.

When the peasant drove by at night, he was followed by a whole group of people. His feisty wife sat on the cart. On foot there were food smugglers, a family of the “bourgeoisie,” and three German prisoners-of-war. It was an irony of fate that we, Russian officers, trusted our recent enemies, the Germans, most. They were obviously fleeing from the Bolsheviks. And we spoke some German. We walked along behind the wagon for a long time. It was a moonlit night.

“This village has the first Bolshevik checkpoint.”

We made a large semi-circle around the village and marched for an hour. There was another checkpoint. We went around it as well. “This village has the third and last checkpoint. It’s the worst, because they send out patrols.”

The whole night the peasant’s wife was angry at him. She was to give up her place to the father of the family and a small child who could not walk anymore. Her husband had not bought her the promised new items of clothing. She began to carp at him in a high, angry voice. In the still of the night her voice carried far, and she could be heard by the Bolsheviks. “Shut up, you witch! You’ll get us into trouble,” said the father of the family.

“You’re the devil yourself,” screeched the peasant woman