September 25 / October 8, 1919
It has been almost a thousand days and a thousand nights.
I remember the summer of ’17 as the beginning of some terrible illness. I felt that I was mortally ill. My head burned, my thoughts were confused, and my surroundings took on a new and terrifying air. But I managed to stay on my legs and waited for something to happen. I waited with feverish tension, with the very last of my physical and spiritual powers.
At the end of that summer I opened the morning newspaper with hands that would not stop shaking; and I suddenly felt I was going pale, and that my mind was going blank as if I were about to faint. A hysterical appeal written in large letters struck me in the eye. “To one and all!”—a cry from Kerensky urbi et orbi, to the city and to the world, that Kornilov was a “rebel, a traitor of the homeland.” Kerensky did not understand what he himself had brought about,1 nor did he know that henceforth his own name would be cursed throughout Russia to the nth degree. . . .
I have had to listen to thousands of dispatches and bulletins issuing forth from what was once our Russia, news items that have chilled my bones and soul. And I have often said to myself: “Perish the day I was born and the night I was conceived!”2 If God extends my time on this earth, then perhaps my soul, having been charred by this evil fire, will again look from the heights and see all that is earthly, sordid, and soiled, all that is bloody and base in a different way from the very sickly manner in which I live life now. . . .
Truly, Job’s terrible story has become our own. . . . For truly we are “without a home” and outside of human existence. We live on the ashes of a great burned-out edifice, on a garbage heap on the outskirts of the city, beyond the pale of everything where I once drew breath, and outside the walls of a destroyed and profaned Zion.
On this day I lack the words to express all I have endured. But they are not necessary, for my torments can be understood without them.
May your warlike path be blessed, O Hope of Russia.
October 20 / November 12, 1919
Pogroms against the Jews have resumed. Before the Revolution they were rare, exceptional events.3 For the past two years, though, they have become a common, nearly everyday occurrence.4
This is intolerable. Always to be at the mercy of an unbridled human beast, a human pig; always to be dependent upon this pig’s kindness or wrath; always to live in fear for one’s home, one’s honor, and one’s personal life, as well as for the honor and life of one’s relatives and close ones; always to live in an atmosphere of fatal catastrophe, of bloody injury and theft; always to be fated to perish without any defense, and for no reason at all, and on the whim of a scoundrel or a brigand—this is an unspeakable horror which we all know now, too well.5
Those of us who have already endured three years of the “great Russian Revolution” have this common duty: we must constantly rise up against the perfidy of pogroms; we must constantly keep this wrongdoing in the public consciousness; and we must speak out constantly against what everyone knows is going on. . . . For, simply put, we cannot go on living like this.
The time has come for certain groups to think seriously about what they have been doing . . . revolutionaries, Russians, and Jews; people who plot murders with abandon; and all those who for so long now—either individually or in collusion with others—advocate hatred, malice, and seizures of all kinds . . . or yell “death, death!” on highways and byways.
Such groups arouse the beast in man. They set one person against another, class against class; they hoist red banners and fly black flags with white skulls. . . .
Yes, Trotsky is a Jew,6 but Lenin is not. Biographers write that Lenin’s father was “a Volga peasant who . . . became superintendent of schools in that region.”7 . . .
It is wrong that cathedrals have become movie houses and are named after “Comrade Sverdlov.” It is monstrous and base to kill a thousand absolutely innocent people to retaliate for the murder of one Uritsky. And it is equally heinous to blame a trampled-on Jew for desecrating churches8 or for plotting Uritsky’s end. After all, that deed was accomplished by Russian sailors, Red Army soldiers, Latvians, and Chinese.9
One cannot live without divine and human law, without a system of authority and protection to restrain self-willed individuals.1 Leo Tolstoy once remarked: “It is a terrible thing to say, but most people are animals.” But one must rise up against the animal in man and curb it in every possible way; and to do this one must include all peoples—those who are near and far, Russians, Jews, French, and Japanese. . . .
“Everyone is equal before the law,” General Denikin has said. His government is for conscience, not fear. . . . It seeks to struggle against everything that brings pain and grief to all the citizens of Russia, regardless of nationality or class.2 . . . The pogroms against the Jews are not the fault of Denikin’s government. The fault lies with those Russians . . . who wage all kinds of fratricidal strife and indulge in all kinds of bestial behavior. . . .
The pogroms against the Jews have been going on for such a long time now that one must call attention . . . to what the ill-fated Jewish population has had to suffer not only throughout the Ukraine but throughout all of Poland and the regions in the southwest. . . . Streams of Jewish blood have merged with the rivers of blood pouring forth from all the fronts of our civil war, a conflict that grows increasingly terrible and absurd. It is the elemental anger of the Russian people . . . that rages on with such terrible force.
What can [Denikin’s] government do about this unhappy state of affairs? One can only hope . . . that it will staunchly . . . with harsh and just punishment, put an end to all that is criminal, base, and unacceptable in the community of humankind. . . .
Our revolutionaries are completely justified when they express their indignation at pogroms and at the Russian extermination of the Jews. . . . But, good God, how cruelly and regularly did these revolutionaries also hurl their spears at me . . . when I spoke about the dark and bestial aspects of my people . . . or when I decried all the wrongdoing that passed under the name of revolution, or when I waited for Europe to intervene in the savage and absurd villainy that has been taking place on our Christian soil for the past two and a half years!
In December of last year, when the French entered Odessa . . . and promised to return us to some minimal level of humanity . . . I wrote:
And pain and shame—and joy. . . .
But let it all be so.
Hail to you, Varangian.3
Kill the enemy, destroy the foe!
In the name of God and humankind.
Stop the bloody killing,
Subdue the filthy hog,
Tear down the bloody flag,
Oust the demagogue!4
But how did our revolutionaries answer me? Odessa News wrote that my political views were “repulsive” and sought to lecture me by saying that “revolution is something more complex than Mr. Bunin thinks it is.” Southern Worker addressed these ironic ditties to me:
Fearful, you wasted no time
To revere the Varangian as your god,
And with shameful, abject praise
Proclaimed yourself his slave, his rod. . . .
I am encountering the same hostility even now. How many pages did Pavel Yushkevich fill when he calculated the number of Jews who were killed in pogroms? How many criminal acts did he register, how many cruel words did he utter as regards Russian savagery? . . . But just look at how this very same Yushkevich mocks me for my lecture on the Russian people and the Russian Revolution, how passionately he stands up for the very folk [which he himself has judged so harshly], how he fulminates against me, how he censures me. “Bunin’s judgments are boring and bilious,” he says.
Indeed, as far as Yushkevich and these other gentlemen are concerned, all the suffering, all the pain of our country’s great torments are only bile!
“Most honorable academician Bunin,” these rebels tell me, “one cannot approach the Revolution with the outlook and understanding of a criminal reporter. . . .”
These same revolutionaries continue: “Hegel talked about the rationality of all existence . . . and the Russian Revolution has this rationality, a sense of purpose.” . . .
I respond: “O, you extremely wise Hegelians . . . if you insist that rationality and sense exist when the skulls of landowners, merchants, and officers are being split open . . . then God knows what kind of conclusions you can come up with! . . .
October 25 / November 7, 1919
On October 25, 1917, the Winter Palace fell. It had been the meeting place for the so-called Provisional Government, a group of lawyers, doctors, and journalists who would peacefully sing student songs and hoist beers to Stenka’s “cliff.”
Why is this date so important? Precisely what happened on this day? This day brought to a climax six months of revolutionary chaos in Russia, events that took place under the exalted leadership of a second-class lawyer, who, as one of the ministers of this Provisional Government, I. M. Kishkin, told me, could not live an hour without cocaine.5
The supporters of the Revolution defend the “great Russian happening” by saying that “events of these days were just like those that took place during the great French Revolution.” One can only thank them for such a defense. Yes, yes, it was exactly the same. First, the vanguard was a group of dreamers and idealists who were shortsighted and flighty; who lacked an understanding of real life; who, even if they had been seized by noble goals, did not think them out to the end; and who, in the final analysis, were chatterboxes, phrasemongers, and power-hungry types. Then authority grew weak and confused. . . . Next the folk became increasingly savage and insane. Growing numbers of riffraff and scum—innate murderers, robbers, and scoundrels—screamed that they represented the “people.” Finally there arose from this folk a gang of the most select villains and beasts, genuine leaders of any genuine revolution, individuals who yelled “in the name of the people” and “freedom, brotherhood, and equality” in a frenzied, pompous, and theatrical way.
One must always remember that repulsive theatrics are one of the key features of any revolution. Indeed, this gang of thugs orchestrated a puppet show which was so bloody, a comedy which was so vile and base, that even a hundred years from now the world community will be stunned when it recalls how base and bloodthirsty the human heart can be . . . that it is the most evil and sordid of all the hearts beating on this earth.
Yes, the French Revolution was indeed monstrously loathsome and bloody, but how can one bloody and loathsome event justify another? . . .
This “great Russian Revolution,” though, differs from its great French counterpart in that it is more absurd, base, vulgar, and inane, and that it has brought about greater wickedness, destruction, shame, cold, hunger, and wholesale slaughter. The “great Russian Revolution” is a thousand times more bestial, filthy, and stupid than the vile original which it claims to copy, because it exceeds—step by step, item for item, and in a horribly shameless and explicit way—the bloody melodrama that had played itself out in France. The “great Russian Revolution” is worse than the “great French Revolution” because it is taking place on the Russian stage, amidst idiots from Poshekhon’ya6 and half-savages from the forest and the steppe; because it is being sustained by German mercenaries at the bidding of their government; and, because, I repeat, it is a vile and bloody puppet show, one that is beyond all human description.
October 25, 1917, was the beginning of a folk spectacle. Before that the violins had only been tuning up, even though Russia had already been destroyed, disgraced, and forever debased by the Kerenskys of all shapes, colors, and sizes . . . as well as by tens of thousands of the most bloody and insane petty tyrants, savages from the folk who, from March through August, had begun to register—only begun to register, mind you—with this very same Provisional Government.
I believe that from now on that date will be cursed by almost all the Russian presses that exist in places occupied by the White Army, by forces which are gradually destroying the blood-soaked stage where this spectacle plays out.
But I also know well that there still exist people who will joyously cry “Long live [the Revolution],” for they do not want to understand—or simply cannot understand—that one “cannot keep the rumble going after the drum has been beaten.” And part of the press here in Odessa will go along with such individuals, heart and soul.
But was it all that long ago that when the “people’s revolutionary army” marched triumphantly into Odessa, almost a third of the population, including many die-hard supporters of the Revolution, went into absolute panic, ran wherever their eyes could follow, and carried on worse than our ancestors did at the sight of the Polovetsian Hordes at the gates of their cities?7
Was it all that long ago that revolutionary ribbons and bows glowed like fire so pervasively on all Odessa “comrades” and even on cabbies’ horses, that the sight of red still oppresses the heart in such a sickly and nauseous way?
Was it all that long ago that red flags and glass stars, Medusa-like, hovered above the streets, the police stations, and theaters and clubs with the names of “Trotsky,” “Sverdlov,” and “Lenin”; and that the reflections from these flags and stars shone forth like streams of blood on the sidewalks, during those cursed wretched evenings when it was still light out but the clocks showed something mocking and absurd?
Was it all that long ago that “comrade” aristocracies and “warriors for socialism” declared “peace to the huts and war on the palaces” but then immediately took up living in these very same palaces?
Was it all that long ago that the streets were filled with pickpockets, criminal thieves, and sailors sporting automatic pistols and shiny boots?
Was it all that long ago that clean-shaven dandies tried as hard as they could to imitate the fops of the “old regime” whom they so hated? Was it all that long ago that they showed their gold teeth, their huge, cocaine-filled eyes, and their dandyish shoes, service jackets, and most repulsive looking riding breeches with the inevitable spurs? . . .
Was it all that long ago that these dandies and their hookers rushed through the strangely empty but still lighted streets in cars and smart-looking cabs to attend their own theaters and to applaud their own peasant actors?
Was it all that long ago that truck drivers parked alongside police stations and revved up their motors at night so that no one could hear the rifle shots and the cries of victims who were being tortured and killed, and sometimes even literally being stripped of their skins8—and all for the glory of the European “socialist proletariat,” who, to this very day, furiously demand that other countries stay out of these “internal affairs” of Russia?
Was it all that long ago that all kinds of “proletcults” flowered alongside the hellish receptacles of endless crimes, and that all kinds of young scoundrels created savagely boorish posters using the slogans of the Futurists, i.e., people of the future?
Was it all that long ago that artists hustled about, worrying about how to decorate and string lights over a city which, forsaken by God, had become a veritable place of execution, and that these artists did this to celebrate the joyous First of May and to entertain that very “revolutionary proletariat” who strolled about and looked at their “art” while munching sunflower seeds, having their socialist legs clothed with the trousers of murdered and robbed “counterrevolutionaries”? . . .
Was it all that long ago that these very same democrats who . . . protested so fearlessly when the Volunteers were here, taking them to task for the “repression of the free word,” “the interference with the democratic congress,” and the “arbitrary execution” of dozens of scoundrels, were so quiet and took cover when the “workers and peasants” returned and immediately snuffed out any human word, when they screamed . . . “Death, death!” . . . and when they began “arbitrarily” to execute and torture hundreds of thousands? . . .
Was it all that long ago that such events took place? And just how should these events be understood? . . . Simply put, such happenings are the stuff of all revolutions, not just that upheaval which calls itself bolshevism.
But bolshevism is a revolution, that very same revolution that is the inexpressible joy of all those people who dream of starting everything from the beginning and who, lacking a present, see the past as “cursed” and the future as “bright.” . . .
Yes, yes, my dear rebels, go on defending revolutions not only in Russia but throughout the world. Yes, yes, go on insisting that revolutions are “elemental” phenomena and that there are “reasons” for everything that happens. Are not earthquakes more “elemental” [than revolutions]? Are there not “reasons” for cholera and plague? But who rejoices over any of these? Yes, yes, go on fantasizing that a heavenly garden will grow from where thistle has been planted, and that “the doglike face of a generation” will bring to God’s world a new human countenance more splendid than any before now.
November 7 / 20, 19199
I have been leafing through the writings of Tolstoy, through pages I have read many, many times.
“There is no enlightenment other than the Christian one; our world is filled with scholarly savages. . . .” (“Thoughts”).1
“Your Imperial Majesty, I am a weak, insignificant, and sinful soul, who is writing to advise you as regards the most complex and burdensome events ever to occur [in our land]. . . .
“Your father, that Russian tsar, who had accomplished so much good and always wished the people well, was a kind man who was brutally murdered in the name of a common good.2 You now stand in his place and face the same enemies who wish to kill you also, in the name of that same bogus common good [that ended the life of your father]. I cannot imagine a worse situation than yours. . . .
“I know how far our present world is from the sacred truths handed down to us by Jesus Christ. . . . I know that I’m a worthless nobody who is subject to temptations that are a thousand times more trifling than those that surround you. And I know that I am being impudent and insane when I appeal to you to show a strength of spirit that is without precedent or example: to do good to enemies that wish you ill. . . .
“But truth will always be the truth. There are two plans of action you can follow, two pieces of advice you can pursue. You can put down evil with evil, or you can be ‘liberal’ and look the other way. Both these ways have been tried previously and lead nowhere. . . . But there is yet another new way—the way of Christian resignation to God’s will. . . . Your Majesty! Follow this way. . . . ‘Love your enemies’ ” (“Letter to Alexander III”).3
“The Marxes, the Jaureses, the Kautskys, and other theoreticians have written tons of books on how human society must be. . . . But no one talks about how to end the most immediate and potent cause of evil—the violence that workers commit against themselves. Just the reverse, everyone agrees to the necessity of the very violence that brings about enslavement. . . .” (“To the Revolutionary”).4
“To allow the Russian people to follow upon the path traveled by peoples of the West means consciously to commit acts of violence, i.e., to rob, to burn, to destroy, to kill, and to wage internecine war. . . . This error is at the root of all the chaos in the past, present, and even future lives of Christian peoples. . . . People have grown so accustomed to see force as the only way of influencing others that they do not see the contradiction in using violence to achieve equality and brotherhood. They do not see that equality, in its very essence, negates both power and subservience, that freedom is incompatible with force, that there can be no brotherhood between oppressors and oppressed. Indeed, this error gives rise to all the horrors of a terror. Furthermore this contradiction, which so coarsely and clearly expressed itself in the great French Revolution, is very much in evidence now. . . . And it will continue to make itself manifest in the ideas of the most progressive socialists and revolutionaries. . . .
“Revolutionaries say: ‘It is through murder that one brings about the ideas of a common good!’
“The great French Revolution was that enfant terrible which, in its most undisguised form, showed the absolute absurdity of that contradiction which humankind struggled for then and continues to struggle for now, i.e., ‘Freedom, brotherhood, equality—and death!’
“Revolutions have happened and continue to happen in France, Spain, and South America, and now in Russia; but whether these revolutions are successes or failures, their aftermaths have risen up like suppressed waves and have returned their countries to the very same situation as before, and sometimes to something even worse. . . . Forms change, but the essence of human relationships does not. . . . (“One Thing Do We Need”).5
“The people of the great French Revolution wished to achieve equality; but they erred when they thought this equality could be attained through violence. They should have realized that such a cause and effort could never be the case, since violence, in and of itself, is the sharpest manifestation of inequality. Neither can the freedom that is the goal of the present revolution6 be achieved by force. Yet the people who are waging revolution in Russia think that if they do everything that is part and parcel of European revolutions—solemn funerals, brilliant speeches, constituent assemblies, an end to prisons, and so forth—they will reach their goal! . . .
“Cromwell, that very great hypocrite and monster, executed another hypocrite, Charles I; furthermore he mercilessly sent millions of people to their ruin and destroyed the very freedom he was supposedly fighting for. . . .”7
“Louis8 was executed, and the Marats and Robespierres immediately seized power and committed crimes greater than the crown had ever been accused of. They destroyed not only people but also the truth that these people were proclaiming at this time. . . .”
“Therefore speak to me about your interests and not about [those of] the people. Do not lie when you speak about the folk. Wage war with the government if you cannot help doing so; but know that you are fighting for yourself, not for the people; that this violent struggle embraces nothing noble or good; and that it is also very harmful and stupid, and most importantly, immoral. . . .”
“For the people to improve their lot, they themselves must improve. . . .”
“In times of revolution, public morality keeps declining, and the most immoral people become the heroes of the period. . . .”
“Try to lighten the people’s burdens as much as possible, but if you cannot help them, then, at the very least, do not confuse or torment them. . . .”
“The people in Russia who are now fighting the government—liberal gentry, doctors, lawyers, writers, and students, together with several thousand workers who have had no contact with the folk but who have come under the sway of propaganda—consider themselves the representatives of the people, but they have no right to do so. . . . In the name of the people, these individuals demand that the government proclaim freedom of the press, freedom of conscience, freedom of assembly, the separation of church and state, and so forth. But ask the people, the 100 million peasants, their view of these demands, and one will find that folk are not interested in them at all. The liberal and revolutionary activists who draft these manifestos and programs . . . are out only for themselves. . . .” (From various articles).
Having cited these excerpts from Tolstoy’s writings, and having dwelled on the genuine essence of his teachings, I think I have done something that he would warmly approve of. . . . Indeed, even Tolstoy often has to be defended these days, since many of the individuals whom he has reproached in these excerpts either blaspheme his name or cite passages from his writings out of context, or maliciously distort his ideas to suit their own ends.
I repeat: Tolstoy is being routinely vilified and misrepresented by people who are covered with blood from head to toe, by monsters who are without precedent in the world, who have been ruling Russia in the name of the Russian people for two years already, yet who, louder than anyone else in the entire universe, cry out about the human good.
Some people now say that Tolstoy did a great deal of harm by destroying the authority and prestige of the government and by reprimanding Russian rulers and the upper strata of Russian society. But they forget that Tolstoy was like all great teachers of humankind in that he spoke for all time, not a specific moment in history. These individuals forget that when they rebuke Tolstoy, they also rebuke Christ and the Buddha.
By contrast, others rejoice that Tolstoy destroyed and reprimanded higher-ups. But these forget that he wished to destroy not only Russian authority but authority in general, and that he censured not only Catherine [the Great], Peter [the Great], and Nicholas II but, with his last words, also accused himself of being a very great criminal.
November 8 / 21, 1919
There was, and thank God there still exists, an intelligent and talented Russian writer who has been neither tortured nor murdered, who is neither dead from a heart attack nor from sorrow and pain for his homeland, or from shame at being a human being. He is a rare type of writer not only because intelligence and talent are, generally speaking, rare things these days, but also because he has not lost his intelligence and talent amidst all the various types of vileness that have flowered so lavishly in Russian literature over the past few decades. This writer is Iv. F. Nazhivin.
Nazhivin is a peasant by birth, who has endured much to develop himself and to become an educated person. He lived in Europe for a long time where he was both a leftist and a disciple of Tolstoy. When he returned to the homeland and during the Revolution,9 he lived for two years amidst his native villagers as well as those intellectuals with whom he shared scholarly and spiritual interests. Throughout this period he saw and suffered much; he pondered and reevaluated many things in life.
Nazhivin summed up his experiences in a remarkable book entitled What Really Should We Do?1 The work is valuable because it is talented and sincere: its facts, observations, and pictures of Russian life are authentic, not invented; its feelings, sentiments, and fundamental knowledge [of Russian life] are things that have been lacking in our literature, and, to our detriment, even more so now.
Because of his book, though, Nazhivin is beginning to be persecuted in a malicious, coarse, and most obscene type of way.
Why?
For the simple reason that he dared to say things that violated the credo of the left.
It would seem that one could simply say to Nazhivin: “In our view, you have made a mistake because of this thing or that.”
One could express himself even more strongly and say: “It is not good that you have said this or that”—if the person really deserves such a remark.
But when reviewers begin mocking this outstanding Russian person and writer, when they start slandering him with all kinds of clichés, as leftists are often wont to do, when they say that Nazhivin’s inner being is “bald” (whatever that means!) . . . that he has a “small and wrinkled soul with the devastated spirit of a frightened and repentant intellectual”2 (as if we truly have nothing to fear or atone for amidst the hellish ferocity and vileness of our revolution) . . . [when these reviewers also assert] that Nazhivin “recites anxious lyrics and sheds democratic tears on the waistcoat of officers in police stations” . . . that he changes his mind, even though this is nothing to be ashamed of . . . since many great . . . people have done so (after all, it was Tolstoy who said that only fools and dummies grow rigid, refuse to change, and do not mature with age and experience) . . . and finally, when these reviewers tell shameful lies about Nazhivin and distort his book at every turn . . . [such people] treat contemporary Russian literature with the greatest rudeness. And I . . . hardly the newest person in this literature . . . decisively protest their actions and hope that my views will be shared by many of my colleague writers. . . .
I repeat: one may or may not agree with Nazhivin. One may argue with him, refute him, or regret that he is no longer a socialist and a revolutionary but a constitutional monarchist (as he has begun openly to call himself). One may shrug one’s shoulders when Nazhivin suggests that Jews should be declared foreign nationals—if that is what he truly thinks—but to rebuke him . . . in an indecent way . . . or to rush off in a frenzy and seek to silence a great Russian individual and writer—such actions are not “liberal,” nor should they be tolerated or allowed.
Dear God, what is going on? One dare not say anything these days! One can’t “haul off and let someone have it” even in one’s own home! Is it so terrible for Nazhivin to think that his homeland, as he knows and understands it, would be better off as constitutional monarchy, not a socialist republic? What’s the big deal about that? Especially when given the fact that Nazhivin regularly makes the rounds of Muscovite cathedrals where, in his words, “all our history” unfolds before him: where, in his view, “the soul of Russia flickers under ancient arches, like the icon lamp before Tsar Ivan the Terrible’s tomb”;3 and where he so deeply feels the past of our old, albeit somber and dark, native home.
Has Nazhivin committed such a terrible crime, and are his feelings so depraved that they reveal a “longing for Ivan the Terrible,” as his critics insist. . . . Let Russia be our common home, and let all its peoples have equal rights in it. . . .
November 12 / 25, 1919
An Eastern proverb says, “If dogs are barking, that means we must be moving!”
But I know another Eastern poem:
Somebody once asked Saadi: “Where’re you off to so fast?”
“To chase a drunken camel,” Saadi said.
“But why bother about this? You’re no camel, after all!”
“Well, dear, the bazaar’s beyond your head:
There one can shout: ‘Saadi’s a drunken camel!’
And people will believe it and kill me dead.”
In Odessa, after my lecture on the Russian Revolution4 and two or three of my articles in the paper, people began to persecute me. They purposely distorted my words, even added things that I had never said.
The people of the Odessa bazaar will not succeed in turning me into a camel, but they are attempting to do so with singular inventiveness. . . . Indeed, they slander me with an abandon that is usually possible only when one lies about the deceased. . . .
For instance, in my recent “Notes on Nazhivin,” I truly did not say a single word in defense of Nazhivin’s beliefs, nor did I object to the possibility or to the charge that he had erred, or said an untruth, or uttered an infelicitous word in his writing. Rather, I only protested the rudeness, intolerance, fierce narrow-mindedness, liberal vulgarity, and bad writing [that greeted his works] and that has already caused so much harm in Russia. . . .
[A newspaper] responded . . . with a small article entitled “Time to Mourn,” which says that I myself am a camel, that I have been killed, and that I am also dead in Russian literature. . . .
Indeed, people have not only invented a story that I am among the deceased, but they also have begun to wail on the streets: “Time to mourn, time to mourn.”
And in all probability, there have been passersby who have stopped and thought: “Well, there’s no smoke without fire, and one can’t cry like that without a reason . . . so, perhaps, if Bunin’s not dead yet but still alive, he’s probably on his last legs.” Then Odessa News verifies the rumor, and everyone starts writing [obituaries]. In light of everything that had been said above, and also taking into account the wisdom of Saadi, I do not consider it superfluous to inform my readers that “rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
All joking aside, I do have this to say. I know that it is not good to get mixed up with the bazaar. And I repeat: [what has happened to me] is not a random or a personal occurrence but something that is typical, and by its very essence more remarkable than it seems at first sight. [What has happened to me] is something that is very, very stupid and sad, especially when one takes into account these terrible times which are far from over for us.
These days it is routine for our political rivals . . . to spread lies about us . . . to discredit us and shut our mouths. This is a bolshevism of a special type. As one of our writers for this newspaper said so well: “What’s the point of talking? All means [to ends] are good, and the best of them is to take your enemies to the wall and shoot them”!
I am not for the left or the right. I have been, am, and will be an implacable enemy of everything that is stupid and divorced from life, of all that is evil, false, dishonest, and harmful, whatever its source.
I also do not fear Russians, despite the fact that I have had the courage to say many harsh words about my people—words which not only reality but even L. N. Tolstoy have verified so terribly. . . .
Indeed, even though the critics have reproached me for citing Tolstoy, it was his own lips that uttered literally the following in 1909 (to Bulgakov):
“If I have cited Russian peasants as harborers of some especially attractive features, I regret what I have done, and I am ready to retract my words.”5
Furthermore, I am not afraid of Germans and the English. Nor do I fear Rumanians and the Jews. And I think that attempts to label me as favoring either right or left are stupid, malicious, and politically motivated.
I do acknowledge, however, that I have an acute sense for certain distinctive and distasteful traits that mark various nationalities. And, generally speaking, I do not have a high opinion of people, especially now, after all that God has caused me to see over the past few years.
I believed in people a bit more in the past than I do now—I was a supporter of the republics;6 but at present I have begun to have doubts about them. (Do not trouble yourself to look at me with menacing eyes—you do not frighten me.) And I am not so proud as those Odessa journalists who imagine that what satisfies English constitutional monarchists will not suit our idiots who lose their way in broad daylight and who gnaw at each other’s throats to the delight of Satan himself.
Even now I sometimes think: “In an ideal world, all these direct, equal, secret, and open elections would be a wonderful idea.” And, generally speaking, “government by the people” also seems quite plausible. But, as I am no shy ten-year-old, I will say openly and without any fear: I am convinced that all these Pilas and Sysoikas7 don’t give a damn about these open and secret elections, and that this Russian “government by the people” will once more perpetuate the most vile and bloody nonsense. We have seen and continue to see what our “government by the people” has shown itself to be!
I gasp from shame and pain when I think about this “government by the people” as well as about the reign of both the “Provisional Government” and of “Worker-Peasant Power.” I do not believe in something better or different either. I really don’t. Convince me [of the contrary]; I will be only too happy if you would.
I have still one more thing to say. . . . [for] I have no intention of hiding my emotions. . . . I have a genuinely savage hatred and a genuinely savage contempt for revolutions. [And I believe] that one cannot help but have these emotions in these days when one must have a steadfast heart to talk at length . . . especially when the republics are experiencing new extremes of internecine slaughter in the trenches and on the fronts, when they are standing on the very edge of the hellish abyss into which Russia has fallen, and when hundreds of thousands of beings—still living—suffer in unheard-of ways, when they perish in tears, grief, darkness, cold, and hunger, when they endure torture, shootings, bloody outrages, and constant insults and abuse, and when they groan under the heel of exultant scoundrels, monsters, and boars!
There, I’ve said it. This is what I personally feel and think at the present moment. What I will think and feel tomorrow, I do not know. But I will be the first one to rejoice should life lessen my pessimism. Now I’m saying what I’m saying: “I do not suggest anything, I do not propose anything, I am only stating how I think and feel.”
[I recall] the summer of 1917. . . . My head had become muddled from reading newspapers all day long, from the speeches, appeals, and exclamations from all those ludicrous and abominable Kerenskys. And I thought: “No, these Bolsheviks are a bit smarter. Not for nothing do they go on being impudent and arrogant. They know their public!”. . . .
[I also recall] a grey, nasty day at the end of October that year. Having made my way down along a dirty village street, I entered a hut. An old lady was lying on the stove;9 and a soldier’s wife, her daughter-in-law, was sleeping on a bunk bed. An old man was sitting on a wooden horse and making bast shoes. It was twilight. There was a terrible stench, and the wet and rotting straw on the floor made smacking sounds under our feet. It all was so humdrum, so backward and still, that I seemed to be living in the sixteenth century, not in the stormy epoch of the “great Russian Revolution,” on the eve of elections for the Constituent Assembly. I sat down on a bench, lit a cigarette, and said in a joking way:
“Well, old lady, are you getting ready to vote? After all, the election campaigns have already begun.”
She answered me in a rather bad-tempered way:
“What elections? What campaigns?”
“This is the tenth time I’ve told you about them. You know, the election campaigns that are going on all over the place.” She first fell silent and then spoke in a manner that was firm, unbending, and, because of our long-standing friendship, wantonly coarse:
“I know you’re joking. No village woman would take part in such a shameful thing—only stupid, curious girls, perhaps, but who would also object to getting all gussied up for such an event. May lightning strike them, all these elections. It’s fugitive soldiers and brash masters like you that’s shoved the tsar off his throne—now you’ll see what’s gonna happen. It’s all right now, but wait ‘till you see what’s gonna happen, what’s yet to come!”
“And how about you, old man?” I asked.
But he too answered very firmly:
“Master, you couldn’t tie me up and drag me to such a place. Why, they’d crack my skull if I didn’t vote the way they wanted me to. Russia has perished, master, you mark my words, it’s perished! We can’t have this voting thing.” . . .
“What do you mean—‘We can’t have this voting thing’?”
“We can’t have any freedom. Take me, for example. Don’t you see how quiet and submissive I am? I’m good and kind so long as I don’t have freedom. But if someone would give it to me, I’d be the first to rob, pillage, and destroy. Not for nothing do we have the proverb: ‘Freedom is worse than no freedom.’ No, master, I ain’t going to any elections, I’ll die first.”
At that moment the soldier’s wife woke up. She opened her clear eyes, still filled with sleep. Then, with a slight smile, she stretched and saw that I was looking at her.
“And what about you? Are you going?” I asked.
“You bet I am! Sure as I’m lying here! I’m not afraid of any old Kabelek.” . . .
You’re probably asking: “Who’s this Kabelek? What kind of person is he?”
Kabelek was one of those fugitive soldiers the old lady had spoken of, who had stormed through our village throughout the summer and fall of ’17. For days on end he would run about drunk. This Kabelek once saw the people of the village gathering in the churchyard to meet the two young women who had just arrived from the city to conduct a census. . . . He immediately rushed off to where everyone was; and once he got there he sent the registry table flying to the devil, waved his fists at the women and the peasants, and yelled in a frenzied voice: “Down with all of you! Get the hell out of here! I will not allow this to go on. Don’t you know what you’re signing your names to? To bring back serfdom, that’s what! I’ll kill everyone here first! All of you get out of my sight!”
And so it went all summer and fall. He kept chasing everyone away. He even chased away the laymen and clergy who had come to the church to vote. “Down with you all! Get the hell out of here!” he would say. “My brother is coming home from the front—he’ll give you something to pray about!”
The village gathered together five times that summer to “trim Kabelek’s wings”—but to no avail. They were afraid he would burn down their homes.
November 24 / December 7, 1919
Last year, on the First of May, there appeared in Moscow, in so-called “Soviet” Russia . . . the first issue of the Communist International.1 The cover of this journal had the usual cheap popular print: a most vulgar picture of a hastily drawn earthly sphere, surrounded with iron chains, and the figure of a worker who is smashing these chains with a hammer. Not unexpectedly, the worker is naked, wearing only a leather apron; and, equally unsurprising, he flexes muscles like those of Hercules.
Opening the issue, one first reads Gorky’s shockingly shameless proclamation to the “proletariat of the entire world” that Russia “is now performing a great, planetary deed.” Next come lines that lacerate the soul with their coarseness and vulgarity:
“One surmises that the old rulers of the Kremlin, the tsars and the priests, never suspected that its grey walls would embrace representatives from the most revolutionary group of contemporary humankind. But such a thing has happened. The mole of history has not done a half-bad job in burrowing under the Kremlin wall.”
These lines were penned by one of the most important representatives of “worker-peasant power” now reigning in the Kremlin. Good God, what a hundredfold absurdity this “worker-peasant” power is! What a supremely mocking laughter it has for a Russia that, narcoticized, had sold its soul to the devil! These lines were written by Trotsky; and, as you can see, they have a very confident ring about them. Trotsky, though, is right only in this: a mole is a beast that is blind and base, cunning and sharp-clawed; it has truly “not done a half-bad job” in burrowing into the Kremlin, but only because the ground under the wall is so soft. In everything else Trotsky is wrong. The old rulers of the Kremlin—its legitimate masters, its native fathers and children, the builders and champions of the Russian land—would turn over in their graves if they heard what Trotsky had said, and if they knew what his followers had done to Russia. Indescribable would be their pain at the sight of what is going on on either side of the Kremlin walls, where today’s Moscow poets joyfully proclaim:
Blood, blood rushes forth
Like water in a bathhouse
From an overturned bucket.2
Inexpressible horror would seize these tsars and “priests” at the sight of the enormous and bloody carnival that Russia has become. But it also seems to me that these individuals not only could have—but also should have—foreseen the misfortunes and disgraces that strike their unhappy land. They knew and remembered that Rus’ had been host to terrible and constant periods of sedition, internecine strife, “boilings over,” and absurdities.” They knew and remembered the words of the chronicler who might have been speaking of our own days when he wrote that “the earth was sewn with the seeds of internal strife and produced their bitter fruit,” that “the voice of the tiller was seldom heard, but that the ravens often cawed over the land, dividing the corpses among them,” and that “one brother said to another: ‘This is mine, and this is also mine,’ while pagans fell on them from all sides, winning victory after victory, and Kiev groaned under the infidel’s yoke, and Chernigov wailed under his blows. . . .”
The tsars and the “priests” could have foreseen much, for they knew and recalled the chronicles of Rus’ as well as the fickle hearts and fitful minds of their people. They knew and remembered their nation’s proclivity for “savagery” and tears, its boundless steppes, its impenetrable forests, its impassable swamps, their historical destinies, its neighbors “so greedy, cunning, and merciless,” its immaturity before their neighbors, its endless backwaters, and, finally, its fatal peculiarity of always moving forward in circles.
In a word, they knew and remembered everything that had safeguarded Russia’s “tsars and priests,” its prelates and ascetics in Moscow, Radonezh . . . and Solovetsk;3 everything that had made Ivan the Terrible exclaim—“I am a beast, but I reign over beasts!” In a word, they knew and remembered everything that has changed but little right down to our present day, and in truth could not change, as if by magic, in our steppes and forests and bogs, during that very short period of time in which a genuine Russian state came into being.
“The tsars and priests!” But we also truly did not foresee what had to happen. What has happened—what has happened again—is that same Pushkin rebellion4 which, “senseless and cruel,” we are only beginning to recall and reflect upon now. What has happened is merely what has happened before. Many people, though, still do not understand this, since they are thrown off by that new and vulgarly absurd word “bolshevism.” They believe that “something” singular has occurred, “something” without equal or precedent. And they believe this “something” is connected with the changing psychology of the world and with the emergence of that Europeanized proletariat which presents the world with a new and beautiful religion of the highest humanitarian ideals but which, at the same time, demands the “noninterference” [of the European powers] in the endless and basest criminality going on in the very light of day, in the Christian Europe of the twentieth century.
History repeats itself; but nowhere, it seems, does it repeat itself as it does with us. And its dynamics have given us God knows how many grounds for rosy hopes. But, consciously or unconsciously, we have forgotten these grounds. . . . Do you not know the first page of our history? “Our land is great and plentiful, but there is no order in it. . . . Pull us apart or we shall cut each other’s throats. . . . Bring peace into our midst—for we are unbelievably cruel, despite our starry-eyed idealism and faintheartedness. . . . Lead us to the shafts of the plow and force us to dig the furrows; otherwise our land, which is the richest in the world, will become overgrown with weeds, for we are lazy by temperament, despite our beastlike capacity for work. . . .
“In short, [we asked the Varangians] to come and rule over us, for everything with us is unstable and disorganized. . . . We are greedy and careless, capable of things which are most beautiful and noble—and also the lowest and most base. We approach life with a diabolical mistrust; but we can also be ensnared by the most absurd and crude lies, and be led, very easily, into any trap. . . .”5
That typifies our beginnings, and after that? We have Vas’ka Buslaev, who, in his old age, bitterly weeps and repents the crimes of his youth, i.e., he had “murdered and robbed” without end.6 . . . Next are the “great Russian revolutions”: the constant struggles among the principalities before the rise of Moscow, the equally endless internal strife in Moscow itself, and the false leaders and pretenders to the throne who hailed from the ranks of the lowest scoundrels and scum, individuals before whom we first groveled on our knees to frenzied shouts of joy and the pealing of bells, and then mocked their mutilated bodies with similar frenzy and repulsiveness. . . . Then came the ubiquitous savagery and massacres in the Ukraine, the bloody khan Razin who was literally worshiped by entire generations of the Russian intelligentsia, who passionately desired Razin’s second coming, that blessed time when “the people would awake. . . .”
And so, I repeat, our history has been one and the same thing: we vacillated in mind and heart, we swung from side to side, seeking self-destruction and ruin. We murdered and robbed, we caroused in taverns, and we gulped down fiery poisons which rose like a high tide in which crazed men and women literally drowned or “choked to death.” But on the following day we expressed our terrible hangovers in bouts of frenzied sentimentality, shedding repentant tears before the sacred churches we had cursed only the day before, and “parading” in front of the Red Staircase inside the Kremlin,7 bearing the bloody heads of decapitated false tsars and atamans. Remember, remember this, you, “the most revolutionary people of humankind,” who now sit in the Kremlin!
Having endured, however unwillingly, events that took place yesterday and that are still taking place today in the Ukraine, in the cradle of the Slavic soul, I, also involuntarily, recall Khmelnitsky and his followers. Who were they? What did they do? Again read from our history about things which have become normal for us:
“The serfs gathered in bands, completely destroying the homes of both rich and poor, and razing entire villages to the ground. They pillaged and burned and murdered and mocked the dead and those victims they had impaled on sticks—victims from whose backs they had torn the skin, whom they had sawed in two, roasted on coals, or scalded with boiling water. But their most savage frenzy they had reserved for the Jews. They danced and drank vodka on the Jews’ holy books, they tore the intestines from Jewish children, and, showing these to the parents, asked with ribald laughter: ‘Hey kike, is this kosher or not?’
“All of this is true.8 But we go and blame all these pogroms on the tsar and his ‘satraps and stooges.’ ”
And what about Khmel’nitsky? “First he fasted and prayed, then he drank himself into a stupor. Next he sobbed on his knees before the icon, and finally sang songs that he himself had written. He was first very tearful and mild, then suddenly savage and haughty. . . .” How many times did Khmel’nitsky change his “world-view”! How many times did he violate oaths and kissings of the cross! How many times did he betray his allies and friends!
Then there was Emel’ka [Pugachev] and Sten’ka [Razin], whose rebellions we are beginning to compare with what is taking place today—though we still dare not draw the obvious conclusions. Open your history books and read again what perhaps you read inattentively the first time around:
“And Sten’ka’s revolt spread throughout all of Russia. . . . And everything that was pagan rose up and made its appearance. . . .”
Yes, yes, let all the Trotskys and Gorkys stop boasting about their “red” Bashkiria,9 about the “planetary deeds” that had been accomplished long before the founding of the “Third International”!
Continue reading: “And there rose up the Zyrians and Mordovians, and the Chuvash, and the Cheremis, and the Bashkirs, and they murdered and rioted, themselves not knowing why. . . .”
And throughout the entire Muscovite realm, right up to the shores of the White Sea, there circulated Sten’ka’s “charming” letters, in which he declared that “he had come to destroy all boyars, nobles, and officials, to sweep away all power and authority, and to establish equality for all. . . .”
All the cities that Sten’ka had captured were turned over to the Cossacks, all the property of these places was “divided” among Sten’ka’s warriors. But each day Sten’ka himself would get drunk and condemn to death anyone who had the misfortune of not winning favor with the “people.”
Read on: “Sten’ka’s followers drowned some, hacked others to pieces, chopped off the arms and legs of still others and forced them to crawl about in their blood. They raped innocent maidens; and, imitating Sten’ka, they not only ate meat on fast days but also forced everyone else to do the same thing. . . .”
Sten’ka himself was a “self-willed and unstable individual. He was alternately somber and severe, then violent and insane. He would often make a pilgrimage on foot to the far-off Solovetsky monastery;1 but then he would mock the fasts, reject the sacred teachings, defile churches, and murder priests with his own hand. . . . Bloodthirsty and cruel, Sten’ka hated law, society, and religion—anything that restrained personal desires. . . . Suffering, honor, and humanity were unknown to him because envy and revenge penetrated his very being. . . .”
Sten’ka’s entire “army” consisted of fugitives, thieves, and sluggards—riffraff that called themselves “Cossacks,” although genuine Cossacks despised them as “fake Cossacks.” To all the bastards and scum whom Sten’ka captured in his net of promises, he vowed to give complete freedom and complete equality; but in reality he brought them into bondage, enslaving them all. The slightest disobedience was punished by the torture of the lash. He called them brothers, but he forced them to crawl on their knees before him. . . .2
Good God! What a striking similarity there is between the time of Sten’ka and the pillaging that is going on today in the name of the “Third International”; but there are differences. Sten’ka’s authority was a thousand times more genuine than today’s “worker-peasant power,” the most unnatural and absurd “absurdity” in Russia’s history. His government—menials like Vas’ka Us . . . was also a hundred times better than the “worker-peasant” government now sitting in the Kremlin and the Hotel Metropole!3
November 30 / December 13, 1919
The course of human affairs has been greatly affected by human limitations and mental poverty, by faulty thinking, observation, and logic, and by weak and unfocused thoughts which often cannot bring anything to a conclusion. Indeed, as we Russians are a deeply emotional people, we are particularly paralyzed by this last shortcoming.
But there are also . . . several other grievous sins that can be ascribed to all those people who, freely or otherwise, have contributed to the bloody outrages and horrors that we have already endured for three years.
These sins include estrangement from genuine life, ignorance of existence, and even an unwillingness to understand reality.
Herzen said: “If one does not know the people, one can conquer and oppress them, but one cannot liberate them.” The Russian folk have this ancient proverb: “We are like a piece of wood. From us come both the icon and the club.” But in our stupidity and flightiness, did we not ourselves desire this club? And together with this, did we not also want to see only an icon in the folk?
People took from literature and life only the things that were grist for the revolutionary mill; everything else whizzed by their ears or was passed over in silence.
Take Gleb Uspensky, for example. How cruelly he indicted the folk in his writings! “No, my memories [of the people] do not speak about human virtue,” he said. “Everyone in the village is unhappy, insane, mean, and base. . . . At first the peasant is strong, gentle, intelligent, and spiritually alive; but then he comes into possession of the land. . . .
“At one time priests and monks brought light to places where savagery reigned . . . but now there remains only Karataev4 and the predator. . . . I have often been asked why I depict only horrors in the village? But I do so . . . because they hold sway there. . . .
“Consider, for instance, the village kulak who runs a brothel. Everyone is impressed by what he has done. People say, ‘Way to go! He’s really raking it in!’ Or they bow before him and exclaim with joy: ‘He’s a better man than I. I’m a bum who’ll never amount to anything!’
“Also consider the young man in the village. What deep hatred, what inborn bloodthirstiness he harbors for his fellow peasants! Such an individual even likes to watch animals suffer and die. He once incinerated a whole bunch of puppies in an oven—and was very happy that he did it. . . .
“All of the village’s talent and intelligence belongs to the kulaks; and schadenfreude forms the basis of all their activity. No one values either himself or others. . . . All that people say is: ‘There’s no good stick to beat our brother!’ ”
This is what Uspensky wrote. But people saw [in him also] only what they wanted to see. . . . They had recast Russian peasants as socialists and republicans, and used Uspensky to attack me. . . .
It was only five years ago . . . that I came across some socialist peasants from Oryol who talked seriously about a mare that was twenty miles long and had fallen from the clouds and landed somewhere on the banks of the Volga. Why would our peasant revolutionaries even concern themselves about such an event? How could they spend time talking about such a thing?
About me these same revolutionaries have said: “Yes, of course, Bunin is an artistic talent who writes about this and that; what he writes is true but also not true. After all, he is not a peasant, and only a peasant can speak truthfully about other peasants.”
Yes, they have said even more ignorant things about me, completely forgetting that to write King Lear, for example, one does not necessarily have to be king. I could even ask my critics: “How can you who are not kings criticize King Lear?”
Last July in Odessa I came across a Red Army soldier teaching his comrades. He was on guard duty, sitting in a velvet armchair, toying with the lock on his gun, and intimidating the “citizens” who passed by. His face was vacuous-looking, his cap was perched way on the back of his head, and his greasy hair covered his dark, sleepy, hostile eyes! . . .
How we praised this very soldier, even though we had to tie hay to his left hand and straw to his right, so that during the first weeks of boot camp he could tell one from the other. . . . How we exclaimed and continue to exclaim to the entire world that this Red Army soldier is an ardent and willing participant in the “world socialist revolution”! . . .
I am writing all this not because I want to be funny, or because I am touched by such ideas personally, or because I want to settle accounts with my readers. After all, these are social matters which are tightly bound to the very disaster affecting all of Russia.
I have touched upon literature, its practitioners, its connoisseurs, as well as writers who depict the folk, because all of them bear responsibility for what has happened. Indeed, whether they know it or not, most of them are contributing to the chaos even now by nurturing their ideas and image of the folk precisely with huge doses of literature. And the literature over the past few decades has been terrible. Our grandfathers and fathers launched Russian literature on its course of fame; despite what people write about them today, not all our literary forefathers went to “warm waters,” “sought out the company of dogs rather than people,” walked with Parny’s books,5 or strolled in their “parks, amidst artificial grottos and statues with smashed noses.” No, our grandfathers and fathers knew the people. Indeed, they could not help but know them, if only because they lived on such close terms with them. They were flesh of flesh, bone of bone with the people, and they did not have to worry about money or other constraints in their pictures of the folk. This was all made manifest by Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, and many other writers. But what happened then?
Writers began to encounter nonfreedom because they believed their writing had to serve a definite idea. They also began to separate themselves from the people, since they had left the country for the city. Their knowledge of the folk began to weaken, and studies of the people were not successful. Kireevsky and Rybnikov wrote down a thing or two. Yakushkin visited the folk once or twice; but once when he was in the village, he had too much to drink and got into a fight with a local policeman. That was the end of his trips there.6
Then came the raznochintsy,7 who were much less talented than their predecessors, and who were bitter and mournful drunks with a grudge against the world. Just read, for example, all those Levitovs, Reshetnikovs, Orfanovs, and Nikolai Uspenskys. They were extremely tendentious, despite their noble goals, as well as completely dependent on fashion, on the ideology of their circle and the bias of the journals they wrote for. Gleb Uspensky, for example, had an abundance of nobility and talent; but he was also a man with a broken heart.
Uspensky and others were followed by an ever-growing group of so-called professional writers, who were not innate artists per se but who had pretensions to talent in their fiction. Readers were treated to highly polished puff pieces, liberal lying, and the inevitable love for the folk.
Clichés abounded. A horse became a . . .“sly outrunner.” A peasant riding in a cart was invariably “a serf-chik” who kept bending over to flog his “outrunner.” A provincial town had to have geraniums on the windowsills and pigs playing in the mud in the middle of the square. A landowner had to be a reactionary diehard, a local leader of the Black Hundreds, and a breeder of hunting dogs. The table in his home had to have “a brightly polished samovar, yellow cream, and rich cookies personally baked by some Marfa Polikarpovna.” A village was the site for “disheveled little huts that leaned up against one another, and that looked fearfully at passersby.”
Good God, how many legends did these writers concoct about the cruelties of serfdom and the virtues of Sten’ka Razin! And always when their characters were out hunting! “With my dog and my gun, I happened to wander into the dense Volga forests,” they began. “And I roamed about for quite some time, looking for fowl. But meanwhile the day had come to an end, the rain had gotten heavier, and I had to start thinking seriously about a place to spend the night . . .”—where, of course, the hunter had to hear the legend about Razin.
What next? Literature became really poor with all kinds of stupid, false, and pulp-fiction stuff. Then there . . . was Gorky, that very same Gorky who, in my twenty-year acquaintance with him . . . literally did not spend a single day in the village. Having returned to Russia after eight years in Capri, he never ventured any farther than Moscow; but he nevertheless wrote heroically about the Russian people, insulting reviewers and readers alike with his sham inspiration and his “vivid” images and ideas. . . .
Writers like Gorky lied about the people on cue, to conform to tradition and thus not to appear reactionary. Their fiction about the folk was false, ignorant, crude, and illiterate; but it was also a depository of information for intellectuals who knew absolutely nothing about the people. Literature about the village included such images as “ear-laden millet,” “flowering wormwood,” “pigeons sitting in birch trees,” and flowers that “ripened” in the garden. Tolstoy often regarded such writing as absolute fraud, as “caricatures liberally sprinkled with stupidity,” and a “complete falsification of art.”. . .
Once, in the spring of 1915, I was walking in the Moscow Zoological Garden and saw a guard . . . beating a swan with his boot and smashing ducks’ heads with the heel of his shoe. When I got home I found V. Ivanov waiting for me. I had to listen to a turgid speech about Russia’s “Christ-like image,” and about how, once Russia proved victorious over Germany, this Christ-like Russia would accomplish another great “task,” i.e., it would spiritually enlighten India—no less a country than India, mind you, which, as regards enlightenment, is three thousand years older than we are!8
What could I have said to him after what I had seen the guard do to the swan? We have “images” around here all right: that of a swan crushed by a boot. . . .
How did our intellectuals get their knowledge about the people? Besides literature, they also had conversations with the folk, for example:
Once late at night, a barin, returning home from some party or meeting and traveling along the streets of Moscow or Petersburg in an old rickety cab, asked the driver in a yawn:
“Hey, driver, are you afraid of death?”
But the driver mechanically replied to the stupid barin:
“Death? Why should I be afraid of death? There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“And do you think we can beat the Germans?”
“How can we not beat them? We’ve got to beat them!”
“You’re right, old boy, we’ve just got to. . . . But here’s our problem. . . . Our tsaritsa is a German.9 . . . And our tsar—what kind of a Russian is he really?”1
The cabbie nodded in a restrained type of way:
“That’s true, all right. I once had this boss who was a German. He charged me from fifty kopecks to a ruble every time my cow damaged the crops. A real son of a bitch he was. . . .”
From such a conversation one can rest fully assured that the “peasant has a wise attitude toward death,” and that he has not a shadow of a doubt as regards Russia’s triumph over Germany. One is also confident that the peasant is a potential wonder-working bogatyr’,2 a “religious pilgrim,” and a “simplehearted lover of Christ,” if only “he would not drink and be kept in chains.”
In early March ’17 everyone, with childlike excitement, thought and affirmed that a “miracle, a great miracle” had occurred, that there had been a “bloodless revolution,” and that “all that was old and rotten had been destroyed—forever!”
Will someone please explain to me what all this means? The peasant as a “religious peasant”? The revolution as a “miracle”—and a “bloodless” one at that?”
Let me see if I have this straight. A sober “religious pilgrim” has created a bloodless miracle which eclipses all other miracles. But the views of this miracle are . . . monstrous . . . shallow, flighty . . . and mistaken about the past. The “pilgrim” was not sober when he accomplished this miracle but in a drunken frame of mind. Also, the past has not been destroyed but has only repeated itself in almost every iota. Indeed, the only thing that has changed is the degree of unprecedented absurdity, bloodiness, lying, and vulgarity that is currently going on. No, “ancient Rus’ has not passed on”! I stubbornly affirmed this years ago, and I do so now; and, alas, with more right to so do than before.
Everywhere people say: “A great change has occurred in the Russian people. They are maturing not by the day but by the hour. Russia is engaged in a great new war, but just look at how the folk rose up in their struggle with German militarism! The greatest revolution in the world has come into being—and without a drop of blood! Long live this new war! Let it continue to its victorious end! Long live the liberated soldier-citizen!”
So now we had “change” and “risings up” and “not a drop of blood” and the “soldier-citizen” who was liberated by Order No. 1,3 whose authors—again, what terrible stupidity!—were some Steklov-Nakhamis and also a lawyer named Sokolov. This Sokolov was also a war commissar who, when he arrived at the front roughly two months later, was hit on the head by a pail—the doings of a soldier who, the newspapers said, “was covered with blood below his waist. . . .” God forgive me, but I recall that when I came across this story in the newspaper, I wrote “Read with pleasure!” in the margin. . . .
We could have predicted this atrocity; but we did not, nor did we want to.
When our English allies were fighting the Germans, there appeared in England several books about the Russian soul. They even bore such titles as The Soul of Russia. So at a time when the English thought the Revolution would sprinkle living water on Russia, and that it would redouble our efforts to vanquish the enemy, I happened to see an English journal with this picture of Russian life:
There was a great deal of snow. In the background was a small cottage, and in the front was a little girl who was walking toward it, dressed in a fur coat and with a bunch of schoolbooks in her hand. Upon close inspection this cottage turned out to be a Russian village school; the little girl was a student there, and, as the inscription under the picture announced, she had an extremely strange first name: Petrovna.4
Not long after that I happened to run into Kokoshkin. This Kokoshkin is now dead, having been murdered so brutally and absurdly, and with the same bestial indifference that I had often emphasized in my own pictures of killing by Russians—pictures which, incidentally, had so upset almost all my readers at that time, and which everyone had thought were fabrications. Anyhow, Kokoshkin and I were discussing the Russian people when he suddenly said to me with his customary politeness but also with an unusual sharpness:
“Let’s change the topic. Your views on the folk have always seemed—you will excuse me, too bizarre, if you know what I mean. . . .”
Having returned home after this conversation, I recalled with great surprise and even almost horror:
“What is going on? How can this ‘Petrovna’ be any better [than what I have said about the folk]? The English can, of course, be forgiven for their ‘Petrovna,’ but what about us? What childish ignorance or unwillingness there is to know our own people, a people who only recently had been destined to take part in the fate of Europe, and whose conscious, passionate readiness to do so was something that all the Kokoshkins of this world, together with hundreds of others, had affirmed in words that were greatly insincere, and also erroneous and simply deceptive! No, this [treachery] will come back to haunt us.”
And I was right. It did. Moscow caught fire because of a one-kopeck candle. And it is particularly dangerous to play with fire in houses made of wood and covered with straw. . . .
I find it very difficult to say all that I have said . . . for I no less than others have sought and continue to seek the Kingdom of God on this earth. But I am well aware of the cruel world of the “lords of San-Francisco”5 . . . as well as everything else on this evil and pitiful planet. . . . I know that what is impossible cannot become possible . . . (even though we sometimes are silent about this). . . . I know that the peasant who beat the swan with his shoe in the Moscow Zoo will not be a good socialist. . . . And I know that neither this ancient earth nor ancient Rus’ “has passed on.”
1. With the failure of the Kornilov Revolt, Kerensky assumed near-dictatorial powers and appointed himself supreme commander of the Russian armed forces. As a result, the last remnants of military discipline collapsed, and Russian soldiers began deserting the front. See Lincoln, Red Victory, 42–43.
2. Bunin is quoting from Job 3:3.
3. Bunin is sadly mistaken here. The Russian Empire, especially the Ukraine, had a long tradition of pogroms. (In fact, “pogrom” is among one of very few Russian words to enter the English language.) The last tsars masterfully joined anti-Semitism to the rampant xenophobia of the folk and to the schemes of politicians looking for scapegoats for their nation’s ills. Government officials and supporters of the tsar often depicted revolutionary leaders as foreigners and grossly exaggerated the numbers of Jews in their ranks.
As a result, Russian statesmen closed their eyes to the pogroms that occurred after the 1881 assassination of Alexander II. The fury continued sporadically for the next two decades. At the beginning of the twentieth century, no Jew could pass a crowd of lower-class Ukrainians or Russians without fear of hearing the terrible cry, “Bei zhidov!” or “Beat the kikes!” In the revolutionary events of 1905, local populations staged nearly seven hundred pogroms against the Jews, more than eight of every ten occurring in the Ukraine or nearby Bessarabia. Predictably, Jews suffered greatly in the years immediately after 1917, since they were blamed for the miseries of the Great War.
4. Most of the Jews in the new Soviet state lived in the Ukraine, where they made up more than 60 percent of the 2.6 million inhabitants. Compared to what would follow, the Jews in the Ukraine passed relatively unharmed during the early stages of the civil war. With the departure of the Germans from the area, though, they became frequent victims of pogroms. Indeed, before Hitler the greatest mass murder of the Jews occurred in the Ukraine during the Russian civil war. Estimates range from between 35,000 deaths to more than 100,000. If one includes individuals raped, wounded, orphaned, or stricken with disease, more than a million Jews suffered at the hands of their enemies in the years 1918 and 1919. All participants in the conflict were guilty of murdering Jews, even Bolsheviks. It was, however, the soldiers, Cossacks, and peasants of Denikin’s White Volunteer army who committed the greatest number of atrocities.
5. It should be noted that at this time Bunin was one of very few individuals who spoke in the Jews’ defense. Indeed, almost no one dared repeat Gorky’s bold statement that anti-Semitism was a “disgrace to Russian culture” and that the Jews “were the old, strong leaven of humanity who exalted its spirit and brought noble ideals to the world.” Rather, as one observer noted, people preferred “to remain silent and to wash their hands.” See Lincoln, Red Victory, 323.
Bunin also resisted pressure to join such anti-Semitic groups as the Union of the Russian People (Soiuz russkogo naroda), even though such resistance potentially endangered his life. See Muromtseva-Bunina’s diary excerpt of September 5/18, 1919, in Grin, Ustami, 313–314.
6. Anti-Semites in the Ukraine never tired of pointing out that prominent Bolshevik leaders were Jewish, i.e., Trotsky (whose real name was Bronstein), Zinoviev (Radomyslsky), Kamenev (Rozenfield), Litvinov (Meyer Wallach), Gusev (Drabkin), Sokolnikov, Sverdlov, Uristkv, Slutsky, and others.
7. This is not true. Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov was not a peasant but a highly educated intelligent who, like many idealistic youth of his time, renounced the opportunity for a brilliant career to devote himself to the needs of public education.
8. A common charge in the Russian and Ukrainian anti-Semitism of the time was that “Jew-Communists had changed our holy houses of God into stables.” See Lincoln, Red Victory, 320.
9. Moisei Uritsky, head of the Cheka in Petersburg, was killed by a poet turned assassin named Leonid Kannegiser. Ironically Uritsky, the son of devoutly Orthodox Jews from the Ukraine, was one of the few Bolsheviks who opposed Lenin’s summons to terror, since he feared that it only would deepen the hatred that had begun to consume Russians in the civil war. Uritsky’s murder, together with an attempt on Lenin’s life on the evening of that same day, triggered a new wave of terror in which many innocent people died in the slaughter. See Lincoln, Red Victory, 156–160.
1. The Ukrainian Cheka disagreed. They wrote in one of their newspapers: “For us, there do not, and cannot, exist the old systems of morality and ‘humanity.’ . . . To us, all is permitted. . . .” See Lincoln, Red Victory, 389.
2. Bunin is sadly and shamefully mistaken here: Denikin was an unabashed anti-Semite. He once told a group of Jews: “Gentlemen, I will be honest with you. I don’t like you Jews. But my attitude toward you is based on humanity. But I, as commander-in-chief [of the Volunteer Army], will take steps to prevent pogroms and other acts of lawlessness and will punish severely those who are guilty. I cannot guarantee, though, that there will be no excesses in the future.” Denikin believed and proclaimed that bolshevism and Judaism were essentially the same, that Jews were his enemies, and that all Jewry was responsible for Bolshevik “crimes.” Denikin deplored the pogroms as “acts of barbarism”; but he also believed that the folk had good reason to hate the Jews. He thus refused Jewish requests to condemn and stop the pogroms, or to punish instigators and participants of the violence. Such actions, he believed, would increase hostility toward his regime, exacerbate the already considerable dissension in his ranks, and nurture suspicions that he had sold out to the “enemy.”
Bunin, though, continued to regard Denikin as a hero. Seven years later, when both men were emigrés in Paris, Bunin gifted the Russian general with a copy of his works, inscribed with these effusive words: “To Anton Ivanovich Denikin, in remembrance of the most beautiful day of my life—September 25, 1919, in Odessa—when I would have unhesitatingly and gladly died for him!” Bunin was referring to the occasion of Denikin’s arrival in Odessa after its liberation from the Bolsheviks, and of the delirious welcome given to him by the city’s citizens, including Bunin. (The date, however, is wrong; Odessa was liberated in August, not September.) See Kenez, Civil War, 166–177; Lincoln, Red Victory, 318–323; and, Lehovich, White Against Red, 424, 524.
3. The Varangians were Norman warriors who served the Byzantine emperors. In Russian sources they are first mentioned in the Primary Chronicle in which, according to legend, they were invited to rule the Russian land. During the ninth and eleventh centuries Varangian warrior-bodyguards served Russian princes, and Varangian merchants conducted trade from Scandinavia to Byzantium along Russian rivers. Also, the Kievan princes Vladimir Svyatoslavich and Yaroslav the Wise often invited hired detachments of Varangians to participate in internecine wars and struggles against neighboring countries and peoples. Varangian warriors and merchants, though, did not play a substantial role in the development of the Russian state, and were rapidly assimilated into Russian society.
4. The final stanza of this poem reads: “Enough of the tears that villain has caused/ Under his banner of ‘equality and joy’/ Enough of these leaders of the streets/ And of sham power of the ‘people,’ of the hoi polloi.” See O. Il’nitskaia, “V Okaiannye Dni,” Neva, No. 3 (1991), 182.
5. Kishkin’s first initial is “N” (Nikolai), not “I,” as Bunin asserts. Although there is no truth to Kishkin’s charge, Kerensky’s frenzied oratory seemed to suggest that he had questionable sources for his inspiration. Milyukov recalled: “By the expression of [Kerensky’s] eyes, the tense gesturing of his hands, the intonations of his voice, which first rose to a scream . . . and then to a tragic whisper, by his measured phrases and calculated pauses, this man wanted to instill fear and to create an impression of power and force. The actual effect was pitiful.” See Lehovich, White Against Red, 121.
6. Bunin is referring to Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fictionalized autobiography, Old Days in Poshekhonie (Poshekhonskaia starina, 1887–1889), in which the writer censures the landed gentry of his youth.
7. The Polovtsy were a primarily Mongol- and Turkic-speaking people who, sometime in the eleventh century, migrated from the Trans-Volga region to the steppes north of the Black Sea. Originally nomadic herdsmen, they turned to various crafts and made shoes, saddles, weapons, and clothes. The Polovtsy clashed with the Russians from 1054 until the 1180s. In time they were absorbed into the Golden Horde or moved to Hungary, where they settled and were hired for military service.
8. This was true. The Cheka not only skinned people alive but had other ways of torturing its victims. In Voronezh, for instance, the Cheka rolled its prisoners around in a barrel into which nails had been driven; their counterparts in Kharkov used scalping as a preferred form of torture. In other cities Chekhists used a “death wreath” which applied increasing pressure to prisoners’ skulls; or they separated prisoners’ joints by sawing through their bones; or they poured molten wax on prisoners’ faces, arms, and necks. Chekhists in Kiev were the most sadistic of all. There the police placed rats in pieces of pipe that had been closed at one end, and placed the open end against prisoners’ stomachs. They then heated the pipes until the rodents, maddened by the heat, tried to escape by gnawing their way into the victims’ intestines. See Lincoln, Red Victory, 383–385.
9. Bunin wrote this article on the ninth anniversary of Tolstoy’s death.
1. Tolstoy’s “Thoughts” (“Mysli”) was a compilation of excerpts taken from his diary and other works, and was published in Sochineniia grafa L. N. Tolstogo (Moscow, 1911), vol. zo. This citation is found on 167.
2. During his reign, Alexander II implemented a series of reforms which included the abolition of serfdom, the establishment of zemstva or “district assemblies,” and changes in the judicial, municipal, and military systems. On March 1, 1884 in Saint Petersburg, Alexander was assassinated by a member of the terrorist group “The People’s Will.”
3. Tolstoy wrote “Letter to Alexander III” (“Pis’mo Aleksandru III”) on March 8–15, 1881.
4. Tolstoy wrote “To the Revolutionary” (“K revoliutsioneru”) on January 20–26, 1909.
5. Tolstoy wrote “One Thing Do We Need” (“Edinoe na potrebu”) on March 25, 1905.
6. Tolstoy is of course referring to the Revolution of 1905.
7. Bunin is referring to the English civil wars as well as to the Irish and Scottish campaigns in the mid-seventeenth century. Charles I was executed on January 30, 1649.
8. Louis XVI, last king of France.
9. Nazhivin visited the Bunins in late December 1918. The meeting, though, was bittersweet, since Nazhivin acknowledged the accuracy of Bunin’s dire predictions for his homeland. “I used to hate you, Ivan Alexeevich,” Nazhivin told the writer. “I could not bear to hear your name because of the way you depicted the folk in your novels. Now I bow low before you. . . . I, a peasant, did not see what you, a barin, saw. You alone were right.” See Muromtseva-Bunina’s diary excerpt, written on January 12, 1919, in Grin, Ustami, 205.
1. Nazhivin wrote What Really Should We Do? (Chto zhe nam delat’?) in 1919.
2. Throughout his time in Russia, critics leveled the same charge against Bunin. See, for instance, Iu. Aikhenval’d, “Literaturnye nabroski. Ivan Bunin. Sukhodol,” Rech’ (November 6, 1912), 2.
3. Ivan the Terrible is buried in the Cathedral of the Archangel (Arkhangel’skii sobor) inside the Kremlin.
4. Bunin is referring to his lecture “The Great Narcotic,” which appears in subsequent pages.
5. Bunin is again quoting from Bulgakov’s memoirs of Tolstoy.
6. After the Revolution, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Belorussia, and the Ukraine pursued a policy of “self-determination” apart from the new Soviet state.
7. Pila and Sysoika were poverty-stricken peasants in Fyodor Reshetnikov’s The People of Podlipovnoye (Podlipovtsy), published in 1864.
8. Bunin delivered his lecture “The Great Narcotic” on September 21 and October 3, 1919. What follows are three excerpts from his speech.
After the first reading of his lecture, Muromtseva-Bunina wrote on September 21, 1919: “Ian became completely hoarse after the lecture. He never imagined how hard it would be to read it through. Also, he got so carried away that he forgot to take a break. He held the public’s attention for three hours; not one person left the hall. When he finished, everyone rose and applauded him for a long time. Everyone was very excited. . . . One said, ‘Ivan Alexeevich is the greatest of all writers—what courage, what truth! It is remarkable! What an historic day!’ He had tears in his eyes, and I was deeply touched.” Two weeks later she added: “Ian read his ‘The Great Narcotic’ a second time. Even more people came out to hear him.” See Grin, Ustami, 315, 316.
9. Russian stoves are huge affairs with bunks for people to lie on top.
1. The Communist International (Kommunistcheskii Intematsional) was a journal published from 1919 to 1945.
2. Bunin is quoting from the poem “October” (“Oktiabr’ ”) by Anatoly Mariengof, published in the almanac Reality (Yav’) in 1919.
3. Radonezh was an old Russian city situated roughly fifty miles northeast of Moscow; Solovetsk is located on an island in the White Sea, some four hundred miles northeast of Saint Petersburg.
4. Bunin is referring to Pushkin’s study The History of Pugachev (Istoriia Pugacheva, 1833) and his novel The Captain’s Daughter (Kapitanskaia dochka, 1833–1836), both of which deal with the revolt of Pugachev.
5. Bunin is here paraphrasing from the Russian Primary Chronicle (Povest’ vremennykh let), the highly standardized account of early Russian history from its legendary origins to about 1110 A.D.
6. Vasily (Vas’ka) Buslaev is a prominent figure in the so-called Novgorodian cycle of Russian byliny or “epic folktales.” Buslaev was indeed a brawler. In fact, he and his colleagues would have slain all the men of Novgorod had his mother not wrapped him in her sable cloak and carried him off to her manor. Buslaev perished on a return trip from the Holy Land where he had sought to atone for his youthful sins.
7. The Red Staircase, or more accurately the Golden-Red Staircase (Zolotaia-krasnaia lestnista), was attached to one of the sidewalls of the Granovitaia Palace inside the Kremlin. It no longer exists.
8. Kenez writes: “The seventeenth-century Cossacks of Ataman Bogdan Khmel’nitsky, when rising against Polish rule, carried out massacres of Jews which would have no parallel until our own times.” Indeed, some 200,000 Jews died at this time. See Lincoln, Red Victory, 304–305, and Kenez, Civil War, 166.
9. Bashkiria is the home of the Bashkirs and is located in the area between the middle Volga River and the Ural Mountains. In the thirteenth century Bashkiria was ruled by the Mongolian Golden Horde, but beginning in 1557 it was gradually assimilated into the Russian state.
1. The Solovetsky Monastery, one of the most important monasteries of the Orthodox church in the Russian state, was founded during the late 1420s and early 1430s on the shoreline of Solovetsky Island in the White Sea.
2. Bunin is drawing his information about Razin, Pugaehev, and Khmelnitsky from his earlier readings of such Russian historians as Kostomarov, Solovyov, and Tatishchev.
3. The Metropole hotel, built in 1899–1903, is not only one of the best-known hotels in Moscow but has figured prominently in the early history of the Soviet state. Revolutionary troops battled to occupy the building in November 1917, and Lenin frequently spoke from the assembly hall of the building.
4. Platon Karataev is the “hero” peasant in Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
5. For instance, Parny’s Poésie érotiques (1778) were quasi-erotic elegies on the vicissitudes of love.
6. Bunin is referring to the attempts of all three men to collect folk sayings and songs in the mid-nineteenth century. He is also being unfair as Kireevsky, Rybnikov, and Yakushkin published their findings in many volumes.
7. Beginning with the reign of Alexander II (1855–1881), the raznochintsy were identified with radical revolutionary youth who aligned themselves with the folk and wished to transform both state and society.
8. For the influence of India on Bunin’s work, see T. Marullo, If You See the Buddha: Studies in the Fiction of Ivan Bunin (Northwestern University Press, forthcoming)
9. The Empress Alexandra was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and the daughter of Louis IV, grand duke of Hesse-Darmstadt. In the last years of Alexandra’s reign, she was widely but erroneously believed to be a German agent.
1. The mother of Nicholas II, Maria Fyodorovna, was the daughter of King Christian IV of Denmark. Nicholas was also a first cousin to George V of England.
2. A bogatyr’ is a hero in Russian folklore and epics.
3. Order No. 1 was an instruction issued by the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies on March 1, 1917—the same day the Provisional Government was being formed, and twenty-four hours before the abdication of Nicholas II. Essentially Order No. 1 equalized the rights of officers and soldiers, and placed all servicemen under the command of the Soviet. In so doing its authors sought to discredit military officers who had not joined in the February revolution and who conceivably could have halted its progress. The members of the Provisional Government, unsure both of themselves and of the loyalty of the troops in the city, accepted the order but hoped that nothing would come of it. They were wrong, though, and Order No. 1 contributed greatly to the dissolution of the Russian Army. For more on Order No. see Lehovich, White Against Red, 75, 92–93; and Swettenham, Allied Intervention, 17–18.
4. Petrovna is not a first or last name but a patronymic, meaning “daughter of Pyotr.”
5. A reference to the hero in Bunin’s story “The Gentleman from San Francisco,” written in 1915.