Leo Tolstoy left his home 100 years ago. “War and Peace” and history

When I started reading “War and Peace” one month ago, I didn't even remember about the upcoming hundredth anniversary of Tolstoy's death. Today, I finished reading it and it happens that this is the day when one hundred years ago (28 October Old Style, 10 November New Style), Leo Tolstoy left his home together with his personal doctor Makovitsky. Tolstoy planned to escape from the annoying life in the comfortable mansion and to spend his last years in poverty and honesty. The doctor didn't quite understand Tolstoy, he thought they are going to visit some family members and didn't take enough money. Tolstoy kissed his daughter, took the suitcase and they left. They took third class railway tickets and departed to Kozelsk. A lot of people smoked in the car and Tolstoy had to go outside for fresh air. He spent about 45 minutes outside and these three quarters of an hour were crucial. Ten days later Tolstoy died of pneumonia on the railway station Astapovo. So smoking killed one of the most famous Russian writers.

Well, the story of his life and death is more or less well known and you can read his biography in almost any language. I would like to talk today about his novel “War and Peace”. Tolstoy wrote later that the novel is fiction and that it may distort history to comply with the author's intentions. Indeed, there is a large number of inconsistencies, contradictions and anachronisms in the book. Let's have a look at some of them.

Do you know how the Russian text begins? Here's the first paragraph:

— Eh bien, mon prince. Gênes et Lueques ne sont plus que des apanages, des поместья, de la famille Buonaparte. Non, je vous préviens que si vous ne me dites pas que nous avons la guerre, si vous vous permettez encore de pallier toutes les infamies, toutes les atrocités de cet Antichrist (ma parole, j'y crois) — je ne vous connais plus, vous n'êtes plus mon ami, vous n'êtes plus мой верный раб, comme vous dites

This is the original Russian text, and I mean it :) Later in the novel, Tolstoy also mentions some noble whose patriotic feelings made him learn speaking Russian. Of course, Russian aristocrats of the 19th century usually spoke very good French, but Tolstoy is wrong here. In the first decade of the century, foreign-speaking aristocrats were rare. Those who lived in Russia, had to talk to their servants (and sometimes they spoke in a folksy manner for this reason). Only those who were born in abroad, spoke some foreign language sufficiently well. And this language was hardly ever French, because after the revolution of 1789 very few Russian aristocrats visited the lawless and rebellious France, they preferred Germany. Strange enough, but French became popular in the aristocratic salons after the Napoleonic wars, when children grew up who were raised in 1790s-1800s by French tutors, who fled from the revolution to Russia.

The family of Kuragins is painted by Tolstoy in a rather strange manner. Tolstoy dislikes them and his feelings are seen even in the names of the family members. So, the name Hippolyte is outstandingly unaristocratic. This name was typical for bourgeoisie, especially Polish. The title “prince Hippolyte” must have sounded absurd in 1805. His sister's name is Helene. Her name looks French, but it wasn't used among French nobility because of its foreign, Anglo-German sound. In Russia of the early 19th century, the name associated with Russified Germans. Just as often the name may be found in the form “Länchen”, purely German (the name of the wife of Faddey Bulgarin). The brother of Hippolyte and Helene has the name Anatole. The name is neutral, but extremely rare in all countries of that time.

The novel begins in the aristocratic salon of Anna Scherer, maid of honor of the Empress. Another one of Tolstoy's errors. You see, maid of honour was not just a title. She was a maid, she could not be married. And maids absolutely could not invite guests, except for close relatives, and only during the day. So, a salon of a maid would be a flagrant violation of the public norms.

Besides, in July 1805 the guests of Anna Scherer would be out of the city, all of them. The royal family with all the courtiers would leave St. Petersburg to the summer residence. Army officers (including, for example, Dolokhov) would be in the summer camps.

Anatole Kuragin asks princess Mary for her hand in marriage, but he was only twenty years old. It was too early for him to marry. Later, he tries to run away with Natasha Rostova, even though he knows he cannot marry her (he had been married by that time). He should have known that Natasha was not a plebeian gal, she was a lady and ladies were not that defenceless. Firstly, Natasha's brothers would have demanded satisfaction. Secondly, Rostovs were a noble family and could have complained to the emperor himself, and his rage would have been quick and merciless. So, prince S. Trubetskoy was deprived of his title and property and sent to the army as a mere soldier when he tried to run away with a married lady.

Helene Kuragin wanted to divorce Pierre Bezukhov so much that she converted to catholicism, writes Tolstoy. Well, actually, she didn't have to. She could have divorced without much problems, because of the long time they lived separately. It was a legitimate reason for divorce. On the other hand, in 1812 the number of conversions to catholicism, always very small, dropped to zero. The problem was that the order of Jesuits was disbanded by the Pope in 1773 and restored only in 1814. In the meanwhile, the Jesuits found a shelter in Russia and their situation was so unstable that they would not risk losing the favor of the emperor by proselytizing.

Tolstoy writes about Prince Andrew: “After the Austerlitz campaign Prince Andrew had firmly resolved not to continue his military service, and when the war recommenced and everybody had to serve, he took a post under his father in the recruitment so as to avoid active service.” It was hardly probably, since nobody could make a Russian aristocrat to serve unless he wanted to. This freedom was granted by the 1762 Manifesto of Peter III.

When Natasha Rostova visited her uncle, she danced in typical Russian manner, says Tolstoy: “Where, how, and when had this young countess, educated by an emigree French governess, imbibed from the Russian air she breathed that spirit and obtained that manner which the pas de chale would, one would have supposed, long ago have effaced? But the spirit and the movements were those inimitable and unteachable Russian ones... She did the right thing with such precision, such complete precision, that Anisya Fedorovna, who had at once handed her the handkerchief she needed for the dance, had tears in her eyes, though she laughed as she watched this slim, graceful countess, reared in silks and velvets and so different from herself, who yet was able to understand all that was in Anisya and in Anisya's father and mother and aunt, and in every Russian man and woman.”

But Natasha spent a large part of her life in village and she had to have seen the village girls dancing and, of course, she knew the folk style of dancing.

Now, Pierre Bezukhov. When he first appeared in the book, “Anna Pavlovna greeted him with the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room”, because he was a bastard, but the bastards were not treated this way even in the highest society. So, another bastard, N. Novosiltsev, the base son of the sister of the Count Stroganov, was one of the “young friends” of the emperor Alexander.

In the age of ten, Pierre left Russia and spent another ten years abroad, and yet, unlike Hippolyte Kuragin, he speaks Russian very well.

Pierre's ties with the freemasons do not look very trustworthy. By that time the old-fashioned rituals of freemasons were already looked upon sarcastically, their Golden Age was in mid-18th century.

The funny thing with all these (and many other) anachronisms is that even when you are aware of them, the novel remains a masterpiece. You understand the characters better, the storyline becomes straight and clear. After all, Tolstoy is still a great writer, even though his Russian style looks so awkward that many Russian readers turn to hatred. So, one of very good science fiction writers, Svyatoslav Loginov, agnrily criticizes “War and Peace” for the last fifty pages, where Tolstoy explain his philosophy of history. I agree, these final pages are unbearable (and I never read them to the end). And yet, the book is great. The battle scenes are overwhelming, the plot is absorbing, the characters are vivid and the language is unmistakably Tolstoyesque: awkward but precise.

If you ask me, the best character in the book is Kutuzov, the master of zen war, who defeated Napoleon by escaping him. Oh, and the best reason to love “War and Peace” is not in the book. She is in the movie, and you know her name: Audrey Hepburn :).

This post is heavily based on the information borrowed from the article “Historical Context in Fiction: Aristocratic Society in the Novel ‘War and Peace’” by Ye. Tsimbayeva, published in the magazine «Вопросы литературы» 2004, №5. The full text is available here: “Исторический контекст в художественном образе (Дворянское общество в романе «Война и мир»)”

Upcoming anniversary

On April 1, Nikolay Gogol will be 200. Unknown fans recently launched the web-site Gogol200.ru. It's in Russian, but you can view a huge collection of illustrations to Gogol's books. Explore them, while I'm away on business trip till next Friday :).

I have to warn that the web-site is built in Macromedia Flash and it may be very uncomfortable.

Yesterday's papers: Gilyarovsky

(From Starosti.ru)

On 10 December, 1908 (27 November Old Style), Russkoye Slovo newspaper wrote:

Yesterday, well known journalist and writer Vladimir Alexeyevich Gilyarovsky celebrated 25th anniversary of his life in literature. For the whole day postmen were delivering congratulations from numerous admirers of Gilyarovsky's talent: from the chairman of the charitable society for senile theatre actors Garin-Winding, from the agricultural society to its first secretary, from Mr.Moter from Prague, the translator of Gilyarovsky's stories into Czech language, from Bulgaria, from Don Cossacks and others.

The Fisher's Photography presented the artistic portrait of the hero of the day. By the way, a deputation of vagabonds from Hitrov market also visited Vladimir Alexeyevich. One of the received letters was from the narodnik writer Maxim Semyonov, with the stamp of the jail where the author currently serves his sentence.

Wikipedia is rather laconic about Gilyarovsky:

Vladimir Alekseyevich Gilyarovsky (Russian: Владимир Алексеевич Гиляровский, 26 November 1853 - October 1, 1935), was a Russian writer and newspaper journalist, best known for his reminiscences of life in pre-Revolutionary Moscow ("Moscow and Muscovites"), which he first published in a book form in 1926.

He was born on the 26 November 1855 (according to church records, 1853 according to his own writings) on a manor near Vologda where his father, a Novgorodian, worked as an assistant to the manor's bailiff, a Zaporozhian Cossack whose daughter he later married. Gilyarovsky treasured his partly Cossack descent: as a young man, he posed for one of the Cossacks depicted on Repin's huge canvas Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks (this part of the picture is on the right. DM); he was also a model for Taras Bulba, whose figure is part of the Gogol Monument in Moscow.

Raised by his well-educated mother (who died when he was 8) and his aristocratic stepmother, he left home early and, after a series of odd jobs (which included stints at a toxic lead paint factory in Yaroslavl, as a tutor and as a barge hauler), he enlisted as a volunteer during the 1877-78 Russo-Turkish war. After a short career as a provincial actor, he established himself as a journalist, winning praise and notoriety as one of the best crime reporters in Moscow. His first book, "The Stories of the Slums" (1887) recorded his experiences with the Moscow underworld, the Moscow of poverty and crime, finding its epitome in the area of Khitrovka.

After the revolution he dedicated himself to writing memoirs. Among those were "My Travels" (1928), "Newspaper Moscow" (published posthumously), recording his reminiscences of the newspaper business of pre-revolutionary Moscow and of some famous people he'd worked with (such as Anton Chekhov), and "Theatre People" (also published posthumously). He died in Moscow on October 1, 1935.

Some days ago I couldn't find the English translations of poems by Cherubina de Gabriak, so now I am a bit disappointed by the absence of Gilyarovsky's stories in English. The translators still have a lot of work :). In the meanwhile, learn Russian and read these stories here. Or, just to get a general idea of what he wrote about and how he wrote, reread The Road by Jack London and imagine it was written in Moscow.

A short biography of Gilyarovsky was written by Lyubov Tsarevskaya and translated by the authors of Voices from Russia blog:

Some people become living legends. One such person in Russian history was Vladimir Gilyarovsky, a reporter who at the turn of the twentieth century was famous throughout Moscow, and was lovingly dubbed “Uncle Gilyai” by Muscovites. In giving directions to a coachman, you would simply say, “To Gilyarovsky”, and you would be taken straight to his house in Stoleshnikov Lane in the very heart of Moscow. Today, the house bears a memorial plaque. Next to his name stands but one word, “writer”. This tells the truth, of course, but not the whole truth. Nevertheless, no plaque can be large enough to carry the list of all the occupations and merits of this amazing man.

The future writer spent his early years in the town of Volga in northern Russia. At 17, he dropped out of school, and ran away from home leaving a note that said, “I’m gone to work as a manual labourer on the Volga”. This meant he would become a barge hauler, a hard occupation that required extraordinary physical strength and endurance. However, Gilyarovsky had such strength. He received it from his father. Once, as a grown-up, he came home and just for fun tied a poker in a knot. Of course, his father got angry, “why should my son damage kitchen utensils!”, but he did not say a word to his son. He simply took the poker and… undid the knot!

During the first decade after he left home, Gilyarovsky tried a variety of odd jobs. He worked as a barge-hauler and docker on the Volga, as a horse-herder, and volunteered to fight in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878, serving in a unit consisting of audacious intelligence officers. For his conspicuous bravery, he received the highest military award, the Order of St George. Then, Gilyarovsky joined a circus and enraptured the public with the daredevil stunt of racing on an unsaddled horse. Travelling with a company of wandering actors, he acted on the stage himself and dabbled in simple plays. He faced numerous dangers, and many times was on the verge of death. Nevertheless, he lived to be 83! He followed his own recipe of longevity, “Don’t let anybody or anything scare you, never be angry, and you will live 100 years”. His cheerful audacity and good-nature also came from his parents as well as his last name itself, which was given to his father when he entered seminary. In Latin, it means “cheerful”, and it was changed into a Russian last name. Gilyarovsky’s father never became a priest, but, the name stuck.

Update @2008-12-10 20:28: Etymologically, a more exact translation would be not "cheerful", but "hilarious". Both "hilarious" and "Gilyarovsky" are derived from Latin "hilaritas" and Greek "ἱλαρός" with the same meaning "cheerful, merry". DM

In 1881, at the age of 28, Gilyarovsky made Moscow his home, and lived there until his death in 1935. In Moscow, he became the recognised king of reporters, a journalist who knew today what was going to happen tomorrow. He described this ability in these words, “Many can see the facts. However, it is up to reporters to take a careful look at things. I love my profession with all my heart, and plunge into it often risking my life. Not a single time was my report turned down. Each was strict, verified, and pure truth”.

This was even more amazing since Gilyarovsky covered every aspect of life, ranging from theatre and society news to criminal happenings. He had a perfect knowledge of Moscow, particularly, the districts of the homeless, beggars, and thieves. Muscovites tried to avoid those neighbourhoods. However, Gilyarovsky was not scared. He sympathised with the hopeless, and understood the tragedy of their situation. Outcasts trusted him, and often turned to him for help. Gilyarovsky entitled his first book People of the Slums. The government censors suppressed the book and burned the whole edition.

After a long interval, Gilyarovsky issued several more books about Moscow and Muscovites, which put together, one might describe as an encyclopaedia of Moscow’s life at the turn of the twentieth century. No one produced a more extensive and trustworthy record of those days. As another twentieth century writer, Konstantin Paustovsky, put it, “Gilyarovsky was picturesque in everything. In his biography, his looks, his manner of speaking, his carefree attitude, and his diversified and many talents…”

November 23 in Russian history. The man who raised Soviet children

1908

One hundred years ago Nikolay Nosov was born in Kiev. He wrote many children's books, read by hundreds of millions of Soviet children for decades. Those who haven't read his stories about Neznaika, heard the audio recordings or (in the late Soviet years) saw animated films. The trilogy about Neznaika, Vitya Maleev at School and at Home and short stories are his best known books.

You can find the full text of the first book about Neznaika here: The Adventures of Neznaika and His Friends. See also a very brief review of the trilogy here: Nikolay Nosov: Neznaika trilogy. The author of the review, Layla AbdelRahim, qualifies the books in the following way: the first book is a socialist anarchist utopia of Flower town, the second, Dunno in Sun City, reminds one of the communist state and the third one, Dunno on the Moon, describes harsh realities of the capitalist society on the moon. This is true, but this is not why we loved the books. I recall one of my friends (we were, probably, 7 or 8 years old then), who had borrowed my copy of all three books (and they were not easy to buy in the USSR!), once whispered to me in a conspiratorial way: "You know what? The third book is about America!". Well, we didn't like the way people lived on the capitalist Moon, but the books were incredibly popular. Most of all I loved the second one, about the communist Sun City :).

As for the other books, I strongly advice that you check the translations of some short stories by Nikolay Nosov made by Svet from Windows to Russia:

ZIS
Cucumbers
The crucian carp
The crucian carp (part 2)
Mishka's porridge
Mishka's porridge (part 2)
The Pistol
The Pistol (part 2)
Gardeners
Garderners (part 2)
Rat-Rat-Rat
Laddy
Laddy (part 2)

March 13 in Russian history. Master, Margarita and N.Bukharin.

1938

70 years ago in Moscow the Trial of the 21 was over. 18 people, from top Soviet leaders to mere doctors were sentenced to death. 3 other people were sentenced to long terms in prison. (Two days later, on 15 March, ExecutedToday.com plans to publish an article about the trial of the 21 we wrote together.)

Among those sentenced to death was Nikolay Ivanovich Bukharin. I am not about to compete with the his biography published at Wikepedia. I have another story for you.

More than a year ago, on 13 February 2007, I wrote:

1940: Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov finished his best known masterpiece "Master and Margarita". Less than one month later, he died. Bulgakov started his work on this novel in 1928 or in 1929. In 1930, he burnt the first draft, when he learnt that his piece "Cabal of Sanctimonious Hypocrites, or Molière" was banned . The second version was being written since 1931 till 1936. The last, final version was in active work since 1936 till 1938, but Bulgakov kept adding and modifying the text till 1940. "Master and Margarita" is called by many critics one of the greatest Russian novels of the XX century. I would say, though, that the book is so heavily influenced and so tightly woven with the references to the general European culture, from Bible to Goethe, to Hoffmann, that it should be called one of the greatest works of the European, not Russian, literature. On the other hand, Bulgakov, in his turn, influenced Salman Rushdie's "Satanic verses" and even Rolling Stones. After all, it's a small world, isn't it?

Bukharin became the prototype for a less important character in "Master and Margarita", Nikolay Ivanovich, a "tenant from the ground floor", who is turned by a magic ointment into a boar. Natasha, Margarita's housemaid rides him to the sabbath when she becomes a witch. He has the same name as Bukharin and his face looks similar. He has the same "blond, wedge-shaped beard", wears pince-nez and a grey waistcoat. The attempts of Nikolay Ivanovich to seduce Natasha parody Bukharin's reputation of a womanizer (in 1929, when the action of the novel is set, Bukharin divorced his second wife). It may be interesting that Bukharin's favorite character in literature was doctor Faust. In 1932 he wrote an article about Göthe, proving that "the end of Doctor Faustus is a vague premonition, a prophetic dream of socialism." Since childhood, Bukharin was an atheist. On 12 June 1929 he opened the All-Union Congress of Atheists (in the novel, on 12 June the devil ran the black magic show at the Variety Theatre). In his biography, Bukharin recalled:

Once I read the famous "lecture on Antichrist" by Vladimir Solovyov and for some time I thought I could be the Antichrist. From the Apocalypse (and I was reprimanded by the school priest for reading it) I knew that the Antichrist's mother was a prostitute, and I interrogated my mother, and she was an unusually smart and working woman, who loved her children and was highly virtuous, whether she was a prostitute, which embarassed her to no end.

Bulgakov never thought Bukharin was a talented politician, or at least a real villain. This mediocrity, Nikolay Ivanovich, is not even invited to the devil's ball, but simply sent away to the kitchen.

Here are some episodes where Nikolay Ivanovich is mentioned:

1.

There was the noise of a car driving away from the front gate. The garden gate banged, and steps were heard on the tiles of the path.
'It's Nikolai Ivanovich, I recognize his footsteps,' thought Margarita.
'I must do something funny and interesting in farewell.'
Margarita tore the curtain open and sat sideways on the window-sill, her arms around her knees. Moonlight licked her from the right side.
Margarita raised her head towards the moon and made a pensive and poetic face. The steps tapped twice more, and then suddenly - silence. After admiring the moon a little longer, sighing for the sake of propriety, Margarita turned her head to the garden and indeed saw Nikolai Ivanovich, who lived on the bottom floor of the same house. Moonlight poured down brightly on Nikolai Ivanovich. He was sitting on a bench, and there was every indication that he had sunk on to it suddenly. The pince-nez on his face was somehow askew, and he was clutching his briefcase in his hands.
'Ah, hello, Nikolai Ivanovich,' Margarita said in a melancholy voice.
'Good evening! Coming back from a meeting?'
Nikolai Ivanovich made no reply to that.
'And I,' Margarita went on, leaning further out into the garden, 'am sitting alone, as you see, bored, looking at the moon and listening to the waltz...'
Margarita passed her left hand over her temple, straightening a strand of hair, then said crossly:
That is impolite, Nikolai Ivanovich! I'm still a woman after all! It's boorish not to reply when someone is talking to you.'
Nikolai Ivanovich, visible in me moonlight to the last button on his grey waistcoat, to the last hair of his blond, wedge-shaped beard, suddenly smiled a wild smile, rose from the bench, and, apparently beside himself with embarrassment, instead of taking off his hat, waved his briefcase to the side and bent his knees as if about to break into a squatting dance.
'Ah, what a boring type you are, Nikolai Ivanovich!' Margarita went on. 'Generally, I'm so sick of you all that I can't even tell you, and I'm so happy to be parting with you! Well, go to the devil's dam!'

2.

A heavy noise of ripping air came from behind and began to overtake Margarita. To this noise of something flying like a cannon ball a woman's guffaw was gradually added, audible for many miles around. Margarita looked back and saw some complex dark object catching up with her. As it drew nearer to Margarita, it became more distinct - a mounted flying person could be seen. And finally it became quite distinct: slowing down, Natasha came abreast of Margarita.
Completely naked, her dishevelled hair flying in the air, she flew astride a fat hog, who was clutching a briefcase in his front hoofs, while his hind hoofs desperately threshed the air. Occasionally gleaming in the moonlight, then fading, the pince-nez that had fallen off his nose flew beside the hog on a string, and the hog's hat kept sliding down over his eyes. Taking a close look, Margarita recognized the hog as Nikolai Ivanovich, and then her laughter rang out over the forest, mingled with the laughter of Natasha.
'Natashka!' Margarita shouted piercingly. 'You rubbed yourself with the cream?'
'Darling!!' Natasha replied, awakening the sleeping pine forest with her shout. 'My French queen, I smeared it on him, too, on his bald head!'
'Princess!' the hog shouted tearfully, galloping along with his rider.
'Darling! Margarita Nikolaevna!' cried Natasha, riding beside Margarita, `I confess, I took the cream! We, too, want to live and fly!
Forgive me, my sovereign lady, I won't go back, not for anything! Ah, it's good, Margarita Nikolaevna! ... He propositioned me,' Natasha began jabbing her finger into the neck of the abashedly huffing hog, 'propositioned me! What was it you called me, eh?' she shouted, leaning towards the hog's ear.
'Goddess!' howled the hog, 'I can't fly so fast! I may lose important papers, Natalya Prokofyevna, I protest!'
'Ah, devil take you and your papers!' Natasha shouted with a brazen guffaw.
'Please, Natalya Prokofyevna, someone may hear us!' the hog yelled imploringly.
Flying beside Margarita, Natasha laughingly told her what happened in the house after Margarita Nikolaevna flew off over the gates.
Natasha confessed that, without ever touching any of the things she had been given, she threw off her clothes, rushed to the cream, and immediately smeared herself with it. The same thing happened with her as with her mistress. Just as Natasha, laughing with joy, was revelling in her own magical beauty before the mirror, the door opened and Nikolai Ivanovich appeared before her. He was agitated; in his hands he was holding Margarita Nikolaevna's shift and his own hat and briefcase. Seeing Natasha, Nikolai Ivanovich was dumbfounded. Getting some control of himself, all red as a lobster, he announced that he felt it was his duty to pick up the little shift and bring it personally...
The things he said, the blackguard!' Natasha shrieked and laughed. The things he said, the things he tempted me to do! The money he promised! He said Klavdia Petrovna would never learn of it. Well, speak, am I lying?' Natasha shouted to the hog, who only turned his muzzle away abashedly. In the bedroom, carried away with her own mischief, Natasha dabbed some cream on Nikolai Ivanovich and was herself struck dumb with astonishment. The respectable ground-floor tenant's face shrank to a pig's snout, and his hands and feet acquired little hoofs. Looking at himself in the mirror, Nikolai Ivanovich let out a wild and desperate howl, but it was already too late. A few seconds later, saddled up, he was flying out of Moscow to devil knows where, sobbing with grief.
`I demand that my normal appearance be restored to me!' the hog suddenly grunted hoarsely, somewhere between frenzy and supplication. 'I'm not going to fly to any illegal gathering! Margarita Nikolaevna, it's your duty to call your housekeeper to order!'
'Ah, so now I'm a housekeeper? A housekeeper?' Natasha cried, pinching the hog's ear. 'And I used to be a goddess? What was it you called me?' 'Venus!' the hog replied tearfully, as he flew over a brook bubbling between stones, his little hoofs brushing the hazel bushes.
'Venus! Venus!' Natasha cried triumphantly, one hand on her hip, the other stretched out towards the moon. 'Margarita! Queen! Intercede for me so that I can stay a witch! They'll do anything for you, you have been granted power!'
And Margarita responded:
'All right, I promise.'
Thank you!' exclaimed Natasha, and suddenly she cried out sharply and somehow longingly: 'Hey! Hey! Faster! Faster! Come on, speed it up'' She dug her heels into the hog's sides, which had grown thinner during this insane ride, and he tore on, so that the air ripped open again, and a moment later Natasha could be seen only as a black speck in the distance, then vanished completely, and the noise of her flight melted away.

3.

In Natasha's place Nikolai Ivanovich now stood. He had regained his former human shape, but was extremely glum and perhaps even annoyed.
This is someone I shall dismiss with special pleasure,' said Woland, looking at Nikolai Ivanovich with disgust, `with exceptional pleasure, so superfluous he is here.'
'I earnestly beg that you issue me a certificate,' Nikolai Ivanovich began with great insistence, but looking around wildly, 'as to where I spent last night.'
'For what purpose?' the cat asked sternly.
`For the purpose of presenting it to the police and to my wife,' Nikolai Ivanovich said firmly.
'We normally don't issue certificates,' the cat replied, frowning, 'but, very well, for you we'll make an exception.'
And before Nikolai Ivanovich had time to gather his wits, the naked Hella was sitting at a typewriter and the cat was dictating to her.
'It is hereby certified that the bearer, Nikolai Ivanovich, spent the said night at Satan's ball, having been summoned there in the capacity of a means of transportation ... make a parenthesis, Hella, in the parenthesis put "hog". Signed - Behemoth.'
'And the date?' squeaked Nikolai Ivanovich.
We don't put dates, with a date the document becomes invalid,' responded the cat, setting his scrawl to it. Then he got himself a stamp from somewhere, breathed on it according to all the rules, stamped the word 'payed' on the paper, and handed it to Nikolai Ivanovich. After which Nikolai Ivanovich disappeared without a trace, and in his place appeared a new, unexpected guest.

Two other persons convicted during the trial of the twenty one and used by Bulgakov as prototypes for the characters in Master and Margarita are Genrikh Yagoda and his secretary Pavel Bulanov:

The last two guests were coming up the stairs!
'It's some new one,' Koroviev was saying, squinting through his lens.
'Ah, yes, yes. Azazello visited him once and, over the cognac, whispered some advice to him on how to get rid of a certain man whose exposures he was extremely afraid of. And so he told an acquaintance who was dependent on him to spray the walls of the office with poison ...'
'What's his name?' asked Margarita.
'Ah, really, I myself don't know yet,' Koroviev replied, 'we'll have to ask Azazello.'
'And who is with him?'
'Why, that same efficient subordinate of his. Delighted!' cried Koroviev to the last two.

This episode is directly linked to the anecdotical "confessions" of Bulanov:

When he [Yagoda] was discharged, he had already taken steps to the poisoning of the room where Nikolay Yezhov had to begin working soon. He gave me direct order to prepare the poison: to dissolve mercury in acid. I don't understand anything about chemistry and medicine and I may confuse the names, but he warned me to careful with the sulfuric acid: burns, smell and something like that. It happened on 28 September 1936. I fulfilled the order, prepared the solution. It was sprayed in the room by Savolainen in the presence of Yagoda and me.

The full text of Master and Margarita is available here: in Russian and in two English translations, by Michael Glenny (1967) and by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (1997).

These are two very good web-sites about Mikhail Bulgakov and Master and Margarita in particular:
MasterAndMargarita.eu, created by Jan Vanhellemont from Belgium
and Master and Margarita, created by Kevin Moss at Middlebury College.

PS: The book illustrations were taken from http://www.richcollection.ru/item.233.html

March 12 in Russian history. Arkady Averchenko.

1925

One of the smartest satirists in Russian literature, Arkady Averchenko, died in a hospital in Prague. In 1908 Averchenko became a secretary in a satirical magazine The Dragonfly and since August the magazine got the new name: The Satiricon. Since 1913 Averchenko was the editor-in-chief of The Satiricon. In 1917 Averchenko welcomed the February revolution, but the next one, the November revolution made him an exile. The Satiricon was closed by the bolsheviks in 1918 and Averchenko fled from Petrograd first to Ukraine and then to Crimea. In 1919 Averchenko began working in the newspaper of the Volunteer Army "The South". In 1921 he published one of his best known books, A Dozen Knives Into the Revolution's Back. V.Lenin read this book and commented: "This is a book written by a White Guard, resentful to the degree of madness." However, he admitted that the book is "highly talented".

Unfortunately, there's little information about Averchenko in English. One day I will write a longer article. As for now, a brief biography of Averchenko in English may be found here. Some short stories by Averchenko were translated into English by Serge Elnitsky and you can read them here.

1917

(27 February Old Style)

Nikolay II signed his abdication from the throne. The Satiricon published the text of the manifesto on the cover with Averchenko's visa in the top corner: "Read with pleasure. Arkady Averchenko." It was a mocking imitation of Nikolay's own words he used to approve documents.

Alexey Gastev

One of my favorite blogs, Languagehat.com, writes today about Alexey Gastev (Proletkult, Uchraspred, D-503). He quotes Richard Pipes who quotes Gastev and suggests that "this nightmare, in which one Western historian perceives a "vision of hope," provided material for Evgenii Zamiatin's anti-utopian novel, We":

The psychology of the proletariat is strikingly standardized by the mechanization not only of motions, but also of everyday thinking. . . . This quality lends the proletarian psychology its striking anonymity, which makes it possible to designate the separate proletarian entity as A, B, C, or as 325, 075, and 0, et cetera. . . . This signifies that in the proletarian psychology, from one end of the world to the other, there flow powerful psychological currents, for which, as it were, there exists no longer a million heads but a single global head. In the future this tendency will, imperceptibly, render impossible individual thinking.

Gastev's TsIT (Central Institute of Time) prepared recommendations on the scientific organization of labour for the Soviet factories and offices. Lenin used to have one of their reference cards pinned on the wall. In 1924, TsIT organized a commercial company, "Ustanovka", which allowed the institute to function without the financial aid from the state. They taught workers, engineers and officials to organize their time, to optimize production lines and conveyors. More than 500,000 people became students at TsIT's courses.

In 1928, Alexey Gorky visited TsIT and was so deeply impressed by the what he saw and heard that he embraced Gastev and said: "I can see now why you have left literature. It's worth it." Gastev's poetry was often called "the hymn to the heavy industry." Some of his verses have something in common with Walt Whitman: "The concrete is the idea of our working construction. Fed by the feat and the death, I work." Or this one: "I walk everywhere with my hammer, my chisel, my drill -- across the world. I step across borders, continents, oceans. I make the whole globe my motherland."

His best known poetic books, written in the period of Proletkult, are "The poetry of the workers' strike" and "A pack of orders". I don't know if these verses were ever translated into English, so here are two my lame attempts.

Order 04

Prisms of buildings.
Pack of twenty blocks.
Put it under the press.
Flatten it to a parallelogram.
Squeeze it to 30 degrees.
Remake the block-tank
into a worm-gear.
Diagonal movement.
Cut the streets without a shudder.
One thousand calories more for the workers.

Let's erect monuments

To the AMOEBA — who gave us reaction.
To the DOG — the greatest friend who calls us to the excercise.
To the MONKEY — the hurricane of live movement.
To the HAND — the miraculous intuition of will and construction.
To the SAVAGE — and his stone strike.
To the TOOL — as the banner of the will.
To the MACHINE — the teacher of precision and speed.
AND ALL THE BRAVE ONES who call
TO REMAKE THE MAN.

Gastev was arrested in 1938 and died either in 1938 or in 1941.

More verses by A.Gastev in Russian.