Authors: Simon Sebag Montefiore
No one’s watching us anymore—that’s all over now.”
“But for how long?” asked Maxy so seriously that Katinka thought he was being absurdly gloomy. The joy of being alive and young suddenly took hold of her—and she spun around and kissed him, quite recklessly.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is the story of the women and children of a fictional family across several generations and I hope it will be enjoyed as that: an intimate novel about a family. But it was inspired by the many stories, letters and cases that I found in archives and heard in interviews over ten years of researching Russian history. My own ancestors escaped from the Tsarist Empire in the early years of the last century and sparked my lifelong interest in Russia.
There are some historical characters in the book—Rasputin and Stalin being among the most obvious—and their portrayals are as accurate as I could make them. But as I wrote this book, Sashenka and her family began to seem more real than their factual contemporaries.
Historians generally write about extraordinary people who’ve shaped world events. But in this novel I wanted to write about how an ordinary family coped with the triumphs and tragedies of twentiethcentury Russian history. I was fascinated by the courage and endurance of the many thousands of women who lost their husbands and children and I wondered: how did they survive? And how would any of us have behaved in such terrible times?
Above all, this is a book about love and family—but I also wanted to make these strange and tragic times in Russian history interesting for readers who perhaps wouldn’t read history books. The details of high society in St. Petersburg, its shops, restaurants and clubs, prisons and dives, its tycoons and secret policemen, the Smolny school and the Okhrana offices, and many of its outrageous characters such as Prince Andronnikov are mainly factual. In the Soviet period, Stalin, Beria, Rodos and Kobylov are historical, as are the details of the prisons, their guards, and the customs of the labyrinthine Soviet bureacracy. The language and details of the documents in part three are real too, although some of the archives have been invented. The village of Beznadezhnaya is imaginary, though typical of many places I’ve known in the north Caucasus.
The story of Sashenka and her family is inspired by many true stories, including those of the Jewish wives of Stalin’s henchmen, the arrests of writers such as Isaac Babel, and the case of Zhenya, the wife of Nikolai Yezhov, the NKVD boss who destroyed all those who loved her. (This also appears in my history
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar.
) I owe a huge debt to my sources, whose work I have used liberally: for part one (St. Petersburg, 1916), I used Vladimir Nabokov’s famous and exquisite memoir,
Speak Memory
; a brilliant privately published memoir of a wealthy Jewish family,
The Silver Samovar
by Alexander Poliakoff, whom I knew as a boy;
The Five
by Vladimir Jabotinsky; Ilya Ehrenburg’s multivolumed memoirs; as well as novels such as
The Moskat Family
and
The Manor
by Isaac Bashevis Singer.
On the history, politics, art and society, I used a superb book,
Passage Through Armageddon
by W. Bruce Lincoln. On the details of the Tsarist secret police, see
Russian HideandSeek:
The Tsarist Secret Police in St. Petersburg, 1906–14
by Iain Lauchlan and
The Foe Within
by William C. Fuller, Jr. But I found most of this material during the research for my latest history book,
Young Stalin.
On the Stalin period in part two, most of the material comes from my own research into the Soviet élite for my history,
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar,
but I owe much to brilliant material in
The KGB’s Literary Archive
by Vitaly Shentalinsky. I also used the novella
The
House on the Embankment
by Yury Trifonov and the novels in the Arbat trilogy by Anatoli Rybakov.
Recent history books such as
Stalinism as a Way of Life
by Lewis Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov,
Thank You Comrade Stalin
by Jeffrey Brooks and
Rulers and Victims
by Geoffrey Hosking were invaluable sources. The outstanding and unforgettable book
The Whisperers
by Orlando Figes is especially enlightening because it reveals how Sashenka’s story was, in many ways, commonplace. I recommend it to anyone who is intrigued by my story and wants to know what really happened to private lives and families in Russia. Even in the 1990s— even now—Russian families are discovering their extraordinary pasts and being reunited with vanished relations.
Experts will recognize that Mendel’s letter complaining of his treatment in prison is closely based on the tragic letter written by the theatrical director V. Meyerhold.
As for my sources for part three, the age of the oligarchs, and of course the mysteries and delights of archival research in Russia, all I can say is that I spent a lot of time as a journalist and then a historian in both Moscow and the Caucasus during the 1990s. Most of the material in his section has been drawn from my own experiences.
Thanks to Galina Babkova for investigating what it was like to study at the Smolny; to Galina Oleksiuk, who taught me Russian, and has corrected and checked the manuscript for Russian context; to Nestan Charkviani for giving me Georgian color; to Marc and Rachel Polonsky for having me to stay at their apartment in the Granovsky Building; and to Dominic Lieven for his encouragement.
Thanks to everyone at my publishers, Transworld, and in particular to Bill ScottKerr, Deborah Adams for her copyediting skills and Claire Ward and Anne Kragelund for the cover image. I have been most blessed by the brilliant, expert, sensitive and meticulous work of my editor, Selina Walker.
My parents, Stephen and April SebagMontefiore, edited and improved the book. My wife Santa, an accomplished novelist as well as a loving best friend, gave me golden advice on character and plot. And the exuberant charm of my beloved children—daughter Lily and son Sasha—constantly encouraged and inspired me.
Simon Montefiore
December 2007
A NOTE ON NAMES AND LANGUAGE
Places in Russia tend to change their names with the tides of history. St. Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and was known as such until 1914, when Nicholas II changed its Germanic sound to Petrograd, “Peter’s city.” In 1924, the Bolsheviks renamed it Leningrad. In 1991 it became St. Petersburg once again. Tiflis is now known as Tbilisi, the capital of independent Georgia.
The rulers of Russia were called Tsars, though in 1721 Peter the Great declared himself Emperor and thenceforth the Romanovs were known as both.
Russians use three names in a formal context: a first name, a patronymic (meaning son/daughter of) and a surname. Thus Sashenka’s formal name is Alexandra Samuilovna Zeitlin and Vanya’s is Ivan Nikolaievich Palitsyn. But Russians (and Georgians) usually also use diminutives as nicknames: Sashenka is the diminutive of Alexandra and Vanya is the diminutive of Ivan, etc.
In the Pale of Settlement, the Jews spoke Yiddish as their vernacular, prayed in Hebrew and petitioned in Russian. The Georgian language is totally different from Russian and has its own alphabet and literature.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
The names of historical figures are marked with an asterisk.
The Family: the Zeitlins
Sashenka (Alexandra Samuilovna) Zeitlin, schoolgirl at the Smolny Institute Baron Samuil Moiseievich Zeitlin, St. Petersburg banker and Sashenka’s father Baroness Ariadna (Finkel Abramovna) Zeitlin, née Barmakid, Sashenka’s mother Gideon Moiseievich Zeitlin, Samuil’s brother, journalist/novelist Vera Zeitlin, his wife, and their two daughters,
Vika (Viktoria) Zeitlin and
Mouche (Sophia) Zeitlin, actress
The Family: the Barmakids
Abram Barmakid, Rabbi of Turbin, Ariadna and Mendel’s father Miriam Barmakid, Ariadna and Mendel’s mother
Avigdor Abramovich “Arthur” Barmakid, Ariadna and Mendel’s brother who left for England
Mendel Abramovich Barmakid, Ariadna and Avigdor’s brother, Bolshevik leader Natasha, a Yakut, Mendel’s wife and Bolshevik comrade Lena (Vladlena), only daughter of Mendel and Natasha
The Zeitlin Household
Lala, Audrey Lewis, Sashenka’s English governess
Pantameilion, chauffeur
Leonid, butler
Delphine, the French cook
Luda and Nyuna, parlormaids
Shifra, Samuil’s old governess
St. Petersburg, 1916
Peter de Sagan, Captain of Gendarmes, officer of the Okhrana, penniless Baltic nobleman Rasputin,* Grigory the “Elder,” peasant healer and the Empress’s “friend”
Anya Vyrubova,* Empress’s close friend and Rasputin supporter Julia “Lili” von Dehn,* Empress’s close friend and Rasputin supporter Prince Mikhail Andronnikov,* wellconnected influencepeddler Countess Missy Loris, Ariadna’s American friend, married to Count Loris, St. Petersburg aristocrat
Boris Sturmer,* Premier of Tsarist Russia, 1916
D. F. Trepov,* penultimate Premier of Tsarist Russia, 1916
Prince Dmitri Golitsyn,* last Premier of Tsarist Russia, 1916–17
Alexander Protopopov,* syphilitic politician and the last Tsarist Minister of the Interior Ivan ManuilovManesevich,* spy, con man, journalist and fixer for Premier Sturmer Max Flek, Baron Zeitlin’s lawyer
Dr. Mathias Gemp, fashionable doctor
The Bolsheviks and Others, 1939
Vladimir Illich Lenin,* Bolshevik leader
Grigory Zinoviev,* Bolshevik leader
Josef Vissarionovich Stalin,* né Djugashvili, nickname “Koba,” a Georgian Bolshevik, later General Secretary of Communist Party, Premier and Soviet dictator Vyechaslav Molotov,* né Scriabin, nicknamed “Vecha,” Bolshevik, later Soviet Premier and Foreign Minister
Alexander Shlyapnikov,* worker and midranking Bolshevik in charge of Party during February Revolution of 1917
Hercules (Erakle Alexandrovich) Satinov, young Georgian Bolshevik Tamara, Satinov’s young wife
Mariko, Satinov’s daughter
Ivan “Vanya” Palitsyn, worker, Bolshevik activist
Nikolai and Marfa Palitsyn, Vanya’s parents
Razum, Vanya’s driver
Nikolai Yezhov,* “the Bloody Dwarf,” secret police chief (People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs—NKVD), 1936–8
Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria,* a Georgian, Stalin’s secret police chief (People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs—NKVD), 1938 onward
Bogdan Kobylov,* Georgian secret policeman, Beria’s chief henchman, “The Bull”
Pavel Mogilchuk, NKVD investigator, Serious Cases Section, State Security, and author of detective stories
Boris Rodos,* NKVD investigator, Serious Cases Section, State Security Vasily Blokhin,* NKVD executioner, Major, State Security Count Alexei Tolstoy,* writer
Ilya Ehrenburg,* writer
Isaac Babel,* writer
Klavdia Klimov, deputy editor of Soviet Wife and Proletarian Housekeeping Misha Kalman, features editor, Soviet Wife and Proletarian Housekeeping Leonid Golechev, NKVD commandant of Special Object 110, Sukhanovka Prison Benjamin (known as “Benya”) Golden, writer
The Vinsky Family of the North Caucasus
Dr. Valentin Vinsky, a Russian doctor in the village of Beznadezhnaya Tatiana Vinsky, his wife
Katinka (Ekaterina Valentinovna), their daughter
Bedbug, Sergei Vinsky, Valentin’s father, a peasant
Baba, Irina Vinsky, Valentin’s mother, a peasant
The Getman Family of Odessa
Roza Getman, née Liberhart, widow from Odessa
Pasha (Pavel) Getman, Roza’s son, a billionaire oligarch Professor Enoch Liberhart, Roza Getman’s father, Professor of Musicology at the Odessa Conservatoire
Dr. Perla Liberhart, Roza Getman’s mother, teacher of literature at Odessa University
Moscow, 1990s
Maxy Shubin, historian of Stalin’s Terror
Colonel Lentin, Russian secret policeman, KGB/FSB, the Marmoset Colonel Trofimsky, Russian secret policeman, KGB/FSB, the Magician Kuzma, archivist in KGB/FSB archives
Agrippina Begbulatov, archive official
Apostollon Shcheglov, archivist
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Simon Sebag Montefiore was born in 1965 and was educated at Harrow School and Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge University. As a historian, he has written three studies of Russian power.
Potemkin: Catherine the Great’s Imperial Partner
was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper and Marsh Biography Prizes.
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
won the History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards. His latest book,
Young
Stalin
, won the Costa Biography Prize, the LA Times Book Prize in Biography and the Bruno Kreisky Prize for Political Literature, and has been shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His books are now published in thirtyfour languages. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he lives in London with his wife, the novelist Santa Montefiore, and their two children. For further information see simonsebagmontefiore.com.