Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy (61 page)

NOTE ON SOURCES

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INDEX

NOTE ON SOURCES

Former People
is the first book in any language to examine the fate of the nobility in the decades following the Russian Revolution, a surprising gap in the historical record that can chiefly be explained by the fact that for most of the past century the subject could not be studied in the country where these events took place. As one of the Soviet Union’s many so-called
bélye piátna
, blank spots, the story of the nobility could not be talked about, and so it simply did not exist; it had been blanked out and made to disappear.

It was only in the final years of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev that the history of the nobility after 1917 became an acceptable subject of historical inquiry. In the early 1990s, when the dam of official censorship and self-imposed silence was breached, a flood of books, articles, conferences, films, and symposia began to pour forth. Over the past two decades we have learned a great deal of what happened to this class thanks to the work of hundreds of historians, archivists, curators, journalists, and the descendants of noble families who have now published a large amount of documentary material that for decades lay in their desk drawers and cupboards. For the most part, this has been a process of recovery. Something that had been repressed and ignored at long last became part of recorded history. Histories that had been forced into the dark finally came to light. Much of this work has been devoted to the study of particular noble families or clans or to the incorporation of the nobility into local histories that they had either been written out of or depicted in dishonest and propagandistic ways. My goal in writing
Former People
has been to synthesize this vast body of material and thus make the larger history of the nobility clear and intelligible while at the same time highlighting the stories of individual lives so as not to lose sight of the human dimension of this enormous tragedy.

Former People
draws on a range of sources—personal correspondence, diaries, memoirs, petitions, laws, fiction, poetry, interviews, genealogies, political tracts, journalism, police reports, biographies, photographs, cartoons, and caricatures. Along with scholarly monographs and a large number of secondary works, I have made use of many primary sources, both published and unpublished. Most of these documents I located in state or public archives, but I was also fortunate to have access to many documents in private family collections.

One of these deserves special mention. I first became acquainted with Father Boris Mikhailov while researching my previous book,
The Pearl
. Now an Orthodox priest in Moscow, Father Boris for many years was a conservator at the Ostankino Estate Museum. For more than a decade he conducted extensive research into the history of the Sheremetevs in various archives, gathered information on the family from its members scattered throughout the world, and conducted interviews with a few surviving Sheremetev descendants in the former Soviet Union, including Xenia Saburov, Andrei Gudovich, and Yelena Golitsyn (née Sheremetev). The archive he managed to assemble (referred to in my notes by the abbreviation “ABM”) is an invaluable resource. I am exceedingly grateful to Father Boris for making his archive available to me.

All families tell stories that record who they are and what they have been through. This is especially true of noble families. In researching
Former People
I have met many people who told me stories about their families. These stories, passed down through the generations, are an important source, but like all historical sources, they have their limitations. What is not written down is susceptible to revision with each retelling; what is remembered may be as much what one
wished
had happened—or
how
or
why
it happened—as it is about what in fact
did
happen. Dates are forgotten, names confused, places mistaken. In the case of the Russian nobility, the oral record faced exceptional distortion because of the shattering of families as a result of the revolution and civil war and subsequent waves of emigration as well as the need for silence and, at times, dissembling to survive the repression of the 1920s and 1930s. Whenever possible, I have checked oral testimony (and stories only written down years after the fact) against written documents and particularly against documents contemporary to the period in question.

It would be naive, of course, to think that the written word necessarily has greater purchase on the truth, especially when talking about Soviet history. Documents can and do lie. Soviet officials, for example, repeatedly lied about what had happened to the millions of people arrested and imprisoned in the gulag, writing to the families of many that they were serving their terms when in fact they had been executed. Reconstructing the historical record is never straightforward or easy.

NOTES

ABBREVIATIONS

ABM: Archive of Boris Mikhailov

AVG/M: A. V. Golitsyn, “Memoirs”

AVT/V: A. V. Trubetskoi, “Vospominaniia”

BA: Bakhmeteff Archive

BP
: E. A. Bakirov, ed.,
Butovskii poligon

DS
:
Dvorianskoe sobranie

GARF: State Archive of the Russian Federation

HIA: Hoover Institution Archives

IDG: I. D. Golitsyna,
Vospominaniia o Rossii

KhiG
:
Khoziaeva i gosti

KNA: Kuskovo Scientific Archive

KNG: K. N. Golitsyn,
Vospominaniia

MVG/M: M. V. Golitsyn,
Mozaika iz moei zhizni

MVG/MV: M. V. Golitsyn,
Moi vospominaniia

NIOR RGB: Russian State Library, Scientific Research Division of Manuscripts

OGSh: O. G. Sheremeteva,
Dnevnik i vospominaniia

OPR
: L. Dolzhanskaia and I. Osipova,
Obrecheny po rozhdeniiu

OR RNB: Russian National Library, Manuscript Division

PG
: Alexandre Galitzine, ed.,
The Princes Galitzine

RGADA: Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts

RGALI: Russian State Archive of Literature and Art

RGIA: Russian State Historical Archive

SH
: M. I. Smirnov and A. M. Golitsyn, eds.,
Sheremetevy

SVS
: A. Alekseeva and M. D. Kovaleva, eds.,
Sheremetevy v sud’ be Rossii

TAS: T. Aksakova-Sivers,
Semeinaia khronika

TsGAMO: Central State Archive of the Moscow Oblast

VMG/D: V. M. Golitsyn,
Dnevnik 1917–1918 godov

WSHC: Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre

YP/D: E. Pisareva, “Dnevnik (1919–1920)”

YPS/V: E. P. Sheremeteva, “Vospominaniia detstva”

ZU
: S. M. Golitsyn,
Zapiski utselevshego

ZVG: V. M. Golitsyn, “Zapiski khudozhnika”

PROLOGUE

1
. OGSh, 78–80; ABM;
DS
6 (1997): 208–13; Kovaleva,
Staraia Moskva
, 136–40; OR RNB, 585.4614, 4626, 4627, 4628; TAS, 321–22; RGADA, 1287.1.5062;
OPR
, 20–23; YPS/V, 51–52; an excerpt from the memoirs of Y. P. Sheremeteva, published online at moskva.kotoroy.net/histories/31.html. Accessed November 10, 2008.

2
. KNA, 27, 1–2; OR RNB, 585.4627, 28–28ob; Karnishina, “Vozvrashchaias’.”

3
. Leggett,
Cheka
, 266–68
;
Shteinberg,
Ekab Peters
, 28, 255, 266–68; Patterson, “Moscow Chekists”; Peters, “Vospominaniia.”

4
. Leggett,
Cheka
, 114.

5
.
OPR
, 17.

6
. Lincoln,
Red Victory
, 134, 136, 146; Afanas’ev, ed.,
Istoriia
, 2:523; Tatyana Shvetsova, “Beginning of Terror,” The Voice of Russia website, www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=2445&cid=125&p=08.12.2005, accessed August 15, 2008. See also “Krasnyi terror (Beseda s Petersom),”
Utro Moskvy
, November 4, 1918, 1.

7
. Smith,
The Pearl
.

8
. A subsequent search did yield one result: Pavel Dzemeshkevich’s
Dvorianstvo i revoliutsiia
(Simferopol, 2004), a short book more revealing for what it says about the nobility’s descendants trying to make sense of the past than for any light it casts on the history of the nobility during the revolution.

9
. Leggett,
Cheka
, xxxii.

10
.
Survival
, 358–60.

11
. Marchenko,
Byt
, 268–69.

12
. Bashkiroff,
Sickle
, 78–97.

13
. Coles and Urusova,
Letters
, 10, 300, 310, 341–44, 376–85.

14
. Doyle,
Aristocracy
, 280, 288–90.

15
. Ibid., 309.

16
. Ibid., 289–90.

17
. See
PG
, especially pp. viii–ix.

18
. Doyle,
Aristocracy
, 311–40; Raeff, “Russian Nobility,” 115; Becker,
Nobility
, 178.

19
. Chuikina,
Dvorianskaia pamiat’
, 10, 58, 188–89.

20
. Ibid., 190–91.

21
. Bertaux, ed.,
On Living Through
, 1–22; Figes,
The Whisperers
.

22
. Chuikina,
Dvorianskaia pamiat’
, 189.

23
. Ibid., 180, 188–89.

24
. Among such works, of particular importance for this book have been the many volumes of the series
Khoziaeva i gosti
, the published papers of the annual Golitsyn conference held at the former Golitsyn estate of Bolshie Viazyomy.

25
. YPS/V, 51–52; ABM; OGSh, 78–80.

26
. YPS/V, 79; ABM; OGSh, 79.

27
. OR RNB, 585.4626, 13, 16, 21–21ob; 4627, 4, 13, 19; 4268, 4, 9, 13, 19; 4614, 2–3.

1:
RUSSIA, 1900

1
. Rogger,
Russia
, 102–107, 122; Nove,
Economic History
, 11–19; Falkus,
Industrialization
, 61–74.

2
. Solov’ev,
Kruzhok
, 3; McMeekin,
History’s Greatest Heist
, xvi–xxii.

3
. Rogger,
Russia
, 117–21, 127; Lincoln,
War’s Dark Shadow
, 35; Figes,
People’s Tragedy
, 88.

4
. Rogger,
Russia
, 124–27.

5
. See Rogger,
Russia
, chap. 2.

6
. See Kolchin,
Unfree Labor
.

7
. Rogger,
Russia
, 3–8, 10.

8
. Ibid., 52–53; Riasanovsky and Steinberg,
History
, 363–69.

9
. Rogger,
Russia
, 16.

10
. Ibid., 11.

11
.
Once a Grand Duke
, 168–69, 175–76, 186, 223–25, 283.

12
. Rogger,
Russia
, 18; Riasanovsky and Steinberg,
History
, 369.

13
.
Once a Grand Duke
, 223, 283.

14
. Rogger,
Russia
, 20–22, 37–38.

15
. Ibid., 2, 51–55, 59–61, 156–68; Emmons, “Russian Nobility,” 180–83; Raeff, “Russian Nobility,” 116–17; Hamburg,
Politics
.

16
. Korelin,
Dvorianstvo
, 42–44, 292–303; Bibin,
Dvorianstvo
, 4; Wirtschafter,
Social Identity
, 21–37. More generally, see Becker,
Nobility
; Grenzer,
Adel
; Hamburg,
Politics
; Manning,
Crisis
.

17
. Korelin,
Dvorianstvo
, 22.

18
. Emmons, “Russian Nobility,” 179.

19
. Lieven, “Elites,” 227–29, 232–33.

20
. Skipworth,
Sofka
, 12–15; Zinovieff,
Red Princess
, 42.

21
. Rogger,
Russia
, 88–89; Korelin,
Dvorianstvo
, 123.

22
.
The Cherry Orchard
, Act 2, in
Chekhov
,
Four Plays
.

23
. Rogger,
Russia
, 89–94. See also Grenzer,
Adel
, especially pp. 5–6, 99, 209; Becker,
Nobility
, 172–77; Hamburg,
Politics
, 238–39; Lieven,
Aristocracy
, 52–54. For a more negative view of the state of the nobility, see Manning,
Crisis
. On noble landownership, see also Osipova,
Klassovaia bor’ ba
, 30–31.

24
. Grenzer,
Adel
, 211–12; Lieven,
Aristocracy
, 49–54, 115–16, 133; idem, “Elites,” 241–44; Krasko,
Tri veka
, 213.

25
. Rogger,
Russia
, 48; Haimson,
Politics
, vii–viii.

26
. Number of families: Haimson,
Politics
, vii. Other sources cite some one hundred thousand noble landed estates in 1905. See Barinova,
Vlast’
, 40.

27
. Gill,
Peasants
, 2–3, 8, 16–17; Rogger,
Russia
, 71–73, 76, 79; Lincoln,
War’s Dark Shadow
, 51, 105.

28
. Rogger,
Russia
, 71–72, 76–78, 86, 117–18; Robinson,
Rural Russia
, 64–116. See also Tian-Shanskaia,
Village Life
; Worobec,
Peasant Russia
.