M. S. Lunin: Catholic Decembrist 9783111583969, 9783111210674

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SLAVISTIC PRINTINGS AND REPRINTINGS 272

M. S. LUNIN CATHOLIC DECEMBRIST

by

GLYNN BARRATT Dept. of Russian, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ont. KIS 5B6, Canada

1976 MOUTON THE HAGUE - PARIS

© Copyright 1976 Mouton & Co. B.V., Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

ISBN 90 279 3444 4

Printed in the Netherlands

M. S. Lunin in 1822. Lithograph from a portrait (the property of Herzen).

M.S. Lunin in 1836, F r o m an aquarelle by N.A. Bestuzev.

PREFACE

This booklet grew out of two articles, "M. S. Lunin and the Question of Polish Souvereignty" and " T h e Catholicism of Mikhail Sergeyevich Lunin", which were published, several years ago, in The East European Quarterly (vol. V, 1, 1-12) and The Slavonic and East European Review (1971, 255-71).Insofar as I here cover the same ground, however, the material from those two articles has been substantially recast. My interest in M.S. Lunin, aroused on coming across papers in a Soviet archive used, in 1922-23, by S. Ja. Strajx in preparation for his seminal edition of Lunin's works and letters (Pis'ma i soCinenija M.S. Lunina, Petrograd, 1923), was further strengthened by awareness that no more than fifteen pages had been written on him, in a range of histories of the Decembrist movement, in any Western European Language, as by the publication, late in 1970, of N. Ja. Ejdel'man's short study, Lunin in the ¿izn' zameCatel'nyx ljudej series of the CK VLKSM ("Molodaja gvardija") press. It is in the hope of introducing "the proud, unbending, overwhelming daring of a Lunin" - to borrow Herzen's phrase (" LiSnie ljudi i Zeldeviki") to an English-speaking public, that this essay has been written. Ottawa, 1975

G.R.B.

INTRODUCTION

Mixail Sergeevió Lunin (1787-1845) was perhaps the most i n t r a n s i gent of the Decembrists. He alone, f i r s t exiled to the east of Lake Baikal, then to the fringes of Mongolia, continued to view politics a s "a profession, comparable with medicine". (1) He alone consistently and actively resisted the oppression of the Nicolaevan régime, i m plementing an ambitious and f a r - r e a c h i n g plan - the sending of the shrewd " l e t t e r s to his s i s t e r " , E. S. Uvarova, which were in reality political pamphlets designed f o r propaganda purposes, to be copied out in dozens and circulated both in Russia and abroad - until his death in exile. "The publicity enjoyed by my l e t t e r s , " he wrote justly, " t r a n s f o r m s them into a political weapon, to be used in the defence of freedom. " (2 ) That the intensity of his deep loathing for autocracy i m p r e s s e d contemporaries is plain f r o m any m e m o i r s , including those of Baron A. E. Rozen, F. F. Vadkovskij, N. V. Basargin, I . D . JakuSkin, N.I. L o r e r and Prince Sergej Volkonskij - fellow exiles in Siberia. It was loathing the m o r e noteworthy f o r Lunin's having served a s aide-de-camp to Nicholas' brother, the Grand Duke Constantine, Viceroy of Poland, and moved f o r several y e a r s in ducal c i r c l e s . Lunin was unique among the main figures involved in the fiasco of December, 1825, in a second way: the lieutenant-colonel of H u s s a r s and hero of the charge of Austerlitz was also a devout Roman Catholic. F a r f r o m detracting f r o m the force of his political convictions, m o r e over - convictions which remained throughout his life those of the dedicated Liberal - that faith strengthened and echoed them. For Lunin, indeed, religious and political concerns fused in one impulse. Born of early lessons, Masonic dogma, and his personal experiences in Russia and in France, that impulse was to do all that he could to undermine autocracy. It is difficult to overestimate the value and significance to those who read and copied them of Lunin's L e t t e r s From Siberia (1838-41). The Decembrist time of exile, a s M. V. NeCkina baldly r e m a r k s , (3) was not notable for outward signs of protest against government-inspired, mounting, and nation-wide oppression. In such a time and place, all open gestures, however weak o r hopeless, acquired a most p a r t i c u l a r significance: it was shortly a f t e r P . Caadaev's lapse into 'insanity' and PuSkin's tragic death, we must recall, that Lunin wrote - f o r all Russians to read - that " s t o r m s a r e born f r o m sighs of men who live under thatched r o o f s . . . that topple palaces. " (4) Such comments did not leave The Third Department of His M a j e s t y ' s Own Chancery, or Nicholas himself, unmoved. At night, on March 27,

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1841, Lunin was r e - a r r e s t e d and removed to Akatuj, "a place more grim than any other to be found in the whole of Transbaikalia. " (5) Still he persisted in his opposition to the government, as he himself described his written work. "In England," he observed, "it would be said: 'Lunin is a member of the Opposition'... My only weapon is thought, sometimes in accord with, sometimes in disagreement with that of the government. Opposition is natural to all political systems." (6) Such doctrines were not tenable in public, in post-Decembrist Russia. So noxious was the air in Akatuj thanks to the silver mines nearby that, in the words of P. E. Annenkova, " no bird could live within a radius of a hundred and fifty m i l e s . " (7) Lunin became a hermit in his last few months, spending his time in prayer and study. No less than had his last years proved, his death was terrible. He died in pain. Having no appropriate or proper instruments for autopsy, the local doctor opened up the head with a great axe. Only a Polish Catholic priest and a few Polish exiles a t tended the unglorious funeral. But Lunin's memory did not soon fade in Russia; nor, under the Soviet t s a r s , have his example, acts, or writings been forgotten. NOTES (1) Letter of June 6, 1838; see S.Ja. Strajx, Pis'ma i soiSinenija M. S. Lunina (L., 1923), 4 - hereafter referred to as Strajx. (2) Ibid., 60. (3) M.V. NeEkina, DviZenie dekabristov (M., 1955), 2 , 444-45. (4) Strajx, 53. (5) S. Maksimov, Sibir' i katorga (St.P., 1900), 92. (6) Strajx, 40. (7) P. Annenkova, Vospominanija (M., 1929), 166.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface Introduction 1. Formative Years 2. Radical Readjustment and Belief 3. Lunin in Secret Societies 4. Trial and Sentence Pawn Between Two Kings Lunin Under Interrogation Conclusion of Matters in European Russia 5. Letters From Siberia 6. Lunin's Political Writings The Letters "A Glance at the Russian Secret Society, 1816-26" "An Analysis of the R e p o r t . . . 1826" 7. The Last Years Appendix: P.N. Svistunov on Lunin Bibliography Index

vil IX 1 21 44 58 66 71 77 91 99 105 112 124 129 133

1

FORMATIVE YEARS

Mixail SergeeviC Lunin, hero of the Napoleonic Wars, pamphleteer and revolutionary, was born into a family of military traditions on December 8, 1787. (1) His father, Sergej Mixajloviff, was a service comrade of the poet Der£avin who, in a brief note, recalls the elder Lunin as typical of the more affluent rural dvorjane of the time of Catherine - hard-riding, knout-wielding, and reactionary. (2) Brigadier Sergej Mixajlovicf held wide estates in the Provinces of Tambov and Saratov at the end of a successful, if unremarkable, career. However delicate his son's mind might have grown by 1812 and it was, in Herzen's view, "one of the finest and most delicate in Russia" (3) - his, so Der2avin implies, was subtle only in a calculating way. Fedosija Nikitiifna, née Murav'eva, mother of our Decembrist and aunt to the Decembrists Nikita and Aleksandr, was considerably better educated than her husband. Like the Lunins, the (Vladimir) Murav'evs were wealthy. (4) Unlike them, they were, in the main, a highly cultured clan, had Liberal traditions and connections and were not above suspicion, during Lunin1 s early childhood, of harbouring strong sympathies with Freemasons and 'spreaders of the Liberal poison' such as N. I. Novikov and Schwartz. Fedosija Nikiticfna's young nephews Aleksandr and Nikita, one need hardly stress, were to prove dangerously to the fore during events of 1825-26. A beauty and (according to Nikita) a bluestocking, she died as a result of giving birth to a much wanted daughter, Liza. Lunin mourned her passionately but in private. He was four years old. Conscious of his own minor deficiencies where learning was concerned, Sergej Mixajlovicf wished his two sons, Mixail and Nikita, to receive sound educations. Had his wife lived longer, that wish would probably have long remained only a wish: the Brigadier was slow to act, when action meant expenditure. As it was, her death obliged him to take steps to see it realized; for, with a fearful suddenness, he found himself in middle age wholly responsible for two young boys, their welfare and their training. No obliging sister, no maiden aunt appeared to lend support. Sergej Mixajlovicf rose to the occasion in his fashion. Willing to acknowledge his responsibilities, he nonetheless failed to inquire closely enough by our hard, modern standards into the arrangements made, by tutors whom he did not know, for boys who were both semi-strangers to him, such were the contemporary mores. Lunin was, throughout his life, on terms of cool civility with his own father, (save when, in early manhood, all distance was dispelled by angry scenes. )

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Governors and tutors came and left in quick succession. Some did not give satisfaction and were speedily dismissed; others, conscious of unspoken but increasing strains throughout the household, chose to go. In consequence, Mixail Lunin's schooling soon became, by his account, a casual and ill-organized affair. Welcome light is thrown upon this time (1795-1802) by certain questions put to him by the Supreme Secret Commission of Enquiry (1825-26) established, to investigate the risings which had stained the f i r s t days of his reign, by Nicholas I. Of those questions, three dealt with education. (5) First, there came a general query as to subjects studied and "the form taken by early training". "Educated at my parents", Lunin b e gan his statement. "My teachers were an Englishman, Forster, Frenchmen, Vouvillier and Cartier, a Swede, Kierrulf, and a Swiss, Malherbe. " Next came a question as to "subjects in which the accused particularly strove to perfect himself". "In political subjects", r e plied Lunin with more truthfulness than prudence. Lastly came a query as to "any special lectures" attended. Lunin, his interrogators learned, had found time to follow none. Individually, perhaps, the replies are not especially revealing. As a group, they start to form a pattern that conveys far more than the bare facts contained in them. Other answers, too, in this same sequence of replies to the Commission's vogrosnjQejgunktY. of March, 1826, ("When I began to think", for example, in response to the question, "When did you develop a free manner of thinking?") (6), suggests real scorn for the proceedings in which his, Lunin's, part was a compulsory one. Materials on Lunin's youth are non-existent, on his adolescence sparse. However, there are aspects of the latter period of his life which are quite clear. One is that he was not over-disciplined in adolescence, thanks, no doubt, to Brigadier Sergej's non-interference in the work of transient and foreigns employes. Another is that Lunin had a nobleman's and future officer's upbringing, perfectly in keeping with his station and, as such, quite unremarkable. The rudiments of history and mathematics, modern literature, a smattering of Latin and much French: such were the more bookish ingredients in his later education. Pride of place, however, went to the more physical a c complishments. Lunin was, before he left his father's house, an admirable horseman and fine dancer. Fencing was his joy, aged seventeen. It is, all this considered, to the credit of Vouvillier, (who, of the assembled tutors, influenced his charge most markedly), that Lunin was in early manhood capable of starting on a 'course of selfimprovement' of his own, testing design. Whatever else he might not have been taught, he had been taught to teach himself. Equable by temperament and curious by nature, he received in adolescence an an education which, in short, differed in two points alone from that of hundreds of his near contemporaries. Those points were its e r ratic form and the essential fact that Vouvillier, the Abbé Vouvillier, was a zealous Jesuit. Lunin gained proficiency in modern languages at the expense of Greek and Latin. It was the common story; entering the Pension Noble of Moscow University in 1797, V. A. 2ukovskij found that barely two hours were reserved for study of the Classics in a week. (7)

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In the Corps de Pages, in St. Petersburg, the same emphases obtained. (8) Lunin, however, would at length rebel against that intellectual tyranny exerted by the moderns. Vouvillier, it was true, taught him elementary Latin for the Church's purposes; but study of the pagan Classics was not countenanced. (9) So, considering "the study of dead languages, and Greek and Latin especially, to be the key to higher knowledge", (10) Lunin found himself, in his mid-twenties, obliged to teach himself Greek (and, thus armed, embarked on an analysis of the New Testament in the original Greek text. ) It was, he found, "the language of the angels. " (11) Modern languages, however, were regarded as more useful, and thus as more desirable, than any ancient tongue. Perforce, Lunin adhered to the convention in such matters, while an adolescent still. With Kierrulf, he studied German. With Cartier and Malherbe, he studied French. It would have been most strange, indeed, had French, langue de la politesse, eluded him. Conversely, it is interesting and of note that Lunin senior saw fit, in the late eighteenth century, to hire an English tutor for his sons. For whereas children of both sexes were taught French as a matter of course in fashionable families, it was usually girls alone who were taught English. PuSkin's mastery of that language was uncertain at best throughout his life. (Typically enough, he renders "The Athenian's grave" as "la grève d'Athènes", when struggling to translate Byron's The Giaour in 1822. ) (12) Not even the blind poet, I. Kozlov, renowned for his translations of Byron's more exotic tales, had learned English as a youth. (13) By doing so in adolescence, Lunin joined a privileged minority. That he could in later life compose an essay of 3, 000 words in faultless English prose - "An Analysis of the Report Presented by the Secret Commission of 1826" - bears witness both to the effectiveness of Mr. Forster's teaching and, particularly, to his own tenacious application. Languages, calf-love, riding and fencing, visits to the Murav'evs and other relatives - such were the elements of Lunin's sixteenth year. The house on Riga Prospect which the Brigadier had bought after his marriage was a large one. It contained a handsome library, and there was a music-room, an orangery, and garden. Lunin's youth passed in an atmosphere of ease, wealth, and some culture. Certainly he always felt at home in the company of Roman emperors, several of whom ever kept watch over the Lunin mansion and a group of whom would, in the 1820s, preside over Colonel M. Lunin's villa, outside Warsaw. Certainly his subsequent preparedness to spend 180 roubles on a fine calf-bound edition of the works of Karamzin - and that at a time when his monthly pay as a subaltern was no more than 165 - suggests either that he proposed to cut the figure of the wellread officer or, far more probably, that one or several of his teachers had instilled in him a genuine taste for literature. (14) For music, too, Lunin acquired a liking in his adolescence that would stay with him until his death. He was, moreover, a most competent pianist, (15) and one who, out of a desire for continual improvement, took piano lessons still in his late 'twenties. (16) The events abroad of 1800-02, however, made the liberal arts, indeed, all arts

4 save those of war, seem painfully irrelevant to Russia's present needs. At first, rumours of conflict cast light shadows over family and social life. Soon, distant Napoleonic rumblings had grown too near to be ignored: in the Lunins', as in Anna Scherer's drawingroom, (17) all talk tended to war. Formal education, it was clear, must be abruptly ended for the Brigadier's first son. So, aged sixteen, Mixail Lunin joined his regiment and that of his own father and three cousins, the Imperial Lifeguard Chasseurs. He did so with impatience. We, however, must find time to emphasize some facets of his early life, since they will bear immediately on his middle years. First, we must insist upon the style, even the luxury, in which his adolescence passed. There were many servants in the house on Riga Prospect. Not until he was of age would Sergej Mixajlovifi' s financial situation worsen, and by then his attitude to wealth - one of the unquestioning acceptance - would have been established. (Finally, in 1816, the Brigadier sold the house on Riga Prospect and bought a smaller one on Torgovaja Street. ) (18) In reality, as has been shown, (19) the Lunins' family fortune was by no means huge even in 1802, although considerable. The point, however, is that Lunin viewed himself as others viewed him: as the principal heir of Sergej MixajloviC. Disappointments were not long delayed. Attitudes were not to be transformed on that account. Lunin and his brother were young masters, full of pride in birth and wealth, expectant of success. No doubt his large measure of personal pride alone would satisfactorily explain his readiness to challenge to a duel the Grand Duke Konstantin - his own Commanding Officer. The fact remains, however, that this training and upbringing as a whole had ceaselessly promoted his self-confidence, if not his self-sufficiency. Throughout his life, Lunin would be at ease with richer and more nobly-born and powerful men than he himself. Moreover, he would think himself their equal. Next, we shall stress two ways in which his formal education differed from what might, at the time, have been expected. One was mentioned earlier - the presence of Vouvillier and the influence allowed him. The other stems directly from the way in which Masonic thought was offered to the adolescent Lunin. For some years after the almost total ruin of the ancien régime, its hitherto content, prosperous servants in the Church had left Paris and been seeking out employment in the households of foreign noblemen. It was, for a short time in Lunin's childhood, fashionable among noble Russian families to hire a Catholic abbé as tutor. That fashion was extinct by 1800. Not content to swim against the stream where educational fashion was concerned, however, (Vouvillier was appointed only in the summer of 1797), Brigadier Sergej Mixajloviff went further - and hired an ardent, proselyting Jesuit. Vouvillier, for his part, had made no secret of his hope of bringing Russian souls into the popish fold. Lunin senior, it would seem, had not then felt inclined to take those hopes as menaces. (Ironically, within three weeks of the expulsion of all Jesuits from Russia, in 1820, Lunin would have met the Abbé Thirias in Paris. (20) Vouvillier's work

5 would long live after him.) The Masonic credo, too, might well have given Lunin senior pause, had he troubled to reflect on it or ponder its potential influence on his sons. For unlike the Roman Church, it was a force without uniformed agents, and thus a power not readily combatted - even had he wished to do so. Never had the Masons exercised a greater or a more pervasive influence in St. Petersburg and Moscow than in the years of Lunin's childhood. Once outlawed in the Empire, Lodges now flourished legally; once powerless, they now attracted members from the Imperial family itself. (21) In the field of education in particular, their strength had grown amazingly since Novikov and Schwarz had founded the Moscow Typographic Company (1783). Books, moralizing texts and tracts all furthered the Masonic cause. For Lunin, there was no escape and long before Vouvillier's work bore fruit he knew the full, terrible impact of Morality, and of its moving force in Russia, Freemasonry. Not until 1817, in company with Kjuxel'beker and his own cousin Nikita Murav'ev, did Lunin actually join a Lodge - the socially exclusive but proselyting Loge des Trois Vertus. Many years before that, however, he had felt the resurgence and strength of a movement once, under Pavel Petroviff, thought dangerous to the State's security, but now once more firmly entrenched in its position of respectability. Lunin was thirteen - of an age to note the different tone with which his father, never a Freemason and out of sympathy with the whole movement, had now begun to speak of the Invisible Temple - when the lodge of the Dying Sphinx was declared open once more on January 15, 1800 (22) By 1803, Börber, first Grand Master of the Directorial Lodge of Vladimir, had not only had an audience with Alexander I, but had so thoroughly persuaded him of masons' patriotic inclinations that, so it was said, Alexander had himself considered joining. (23) Thus attitudes could change within five years. (Masons, it may be said, met with increasing tolerance in Russia in the first years of the nineteenth century; still in 1816, Alexander was choosing "to look through his fingers at the matter" of the founding of new Lodges. (24) Only in 1822 were all Lodges, and all other societies of a secret or semi-secret nature, forbidden to exist throughout the Empire.) To this extent, then, Lodges were accepted by Court and by e s tablishment. At first glance, it seems a paradoxical, even a foolish situation - in other countries masons and Illuminati were regarded, with good reason, as intimately linked with movements of dissent or revolution. Had the Russian government no cause to act as other conservative governments had done, were doing and would do, and to suppress Masonic Lodges? The answer is, of course, that some Lodges posed real threats to that government, others, apolitical in orientation, none. It is significant that Lunin should have joined a Lodge of French colouring. Scornful of theorizing with no practical end, he could have found no satisfaction in the lofty mysticism of those St. Petersburg Lodges under German influence - the ultra-secret Lodge von Alexander zur Mildtätigkeit des gekrönten Pelikans, for

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example. Lodges under English or French influence, on the other hand, took little interest in the occult, tending rather to economic, philanthropic and even, after 1815, political objectives. And of all the Russian Lodges, none was politically more conscious than the Loge des Trois Vertus. Here certainly, although an effort by its members to formulate specific aims and plans came to disaster, (25) there was danger for autocracy. Here, Alexander could be blind; for while Masters of different Lodges might interpret the dogma of international fraternity according to their lights and Russian needs, there could be no distorting or ignoring the essentials. The purely moral nature of Masonic philosophy never prevented masons from taking an active concern in legal or political problems. Guiding the whole Masonic movement, in the view of Lunin's generation (and it is the interpretation, not the law, that must engage us here), were two interdependent precepts: that all men are created equal; and that one should act in such a way as to persuade others of that great truth. Despotic forms of government, it followed axiomatically, should be removed. Lodges, as one mason put it, "were oases in the desert of bureaucracy" (26) - desperately needed centres of free speech, free thought and Liberal companionship. In the word 'Liberal' lies the key to an appreciation of all Russian Freemasonry of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Masons believed in the lasting possibility of progress through free human reason; so, too, did Liberals. Masons thought highly of free institutions, as the vehicles of reason; so, too, did the Liberals. (27) Small wonder that the structure, o r ganization, even the ritual of Lodges should be borrowed wholesale by the Liberal secret societies that blossomed in the last eight years of Alexander's reign. (28) Those men who had so needed Lodges when the century began now needed the (political) Unions of Welfare and Salvation. Often they were the same men. Lunin was drawn into Masonics by the prospect of free speech, congenial, intelligent company, and concerted action of a Liberal nature. The movement disappointed him. Free speech and pleasant company he found in plenty; but there was no action, nor any possibility that there would ever be any for as long as most Masters held sway. Ryleev, Pestel', Fedor Glinka also grasped that simple truth. By 1820, Freemasonry in Russia had begun its slow decline, unequal to the challenge that the radical secret societies presented; no longer satisfied with being moral in their private dealings only, Russians strove to impose morality on the State's highest authority, the Tsar. But for Lunin there was another supreme authority, and in struggling to serve Masonic ends as well as those of the Church he found himself increasingly at war with his own conscience - the conscience that had prompted him to join a Masonic Lodge. To be at the same time a Roman Catholic and an active Liberal was simple; one might honour one's mother and father, yet do one's best to oppose legalized despotism. . . But to be a Roman Catholic and a mason was a more complex matter. In its ponderous suspicion of the whole Masonic movement, its practices, organization and intent, the Roman Church stood with the Orthodox. To add complications, the mistrust was

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mutual. Certain masons, though religious both by training and by nature, simply declared open hostility to the Church Militant in Russia. "In the early days of Christianity", wrote one tartly, "the vessels were wooden but the priests were golden; now, vessels are of gold, but priests are wooden. " (29) For Lunin, the conflict between his faith and his Masonic interests was short; inevitably, the Church conquered. Firm in his faith, he was obliged to leave a movement which, in any case, could not have satisfied his basic thirst for action. There were fortunately other outlets for that thirst, however, of which Vouvillier could approve. The military life was one, the Liberal pursuit another. In his belief in progress, to be achieved on all planes for the benefit of all mankind, Lunin stood apart from those of his own generation - men young in Catherine's day, schoolboys before the century was ended - and with Ryleev and Pestel'. The vague humanitarianism, the nebulous expression of belief in Good and Virtue, elaborate ritual and the veiled ridiculousness of much Russian Masonry, all these and other products of the last years of the age of Karamzin failed to inspire in him anything but an indifference tinged with scorn. His rejection of the interest of his own day, its foibles and prevailing moods - the aesthetic mysticism of Sukovskij, the sentimentalism of Poor Liza, gentle tears and sighing - all is well reflected by his age at the time of the revolt on Senate Square; in 1825 he was approaching forty. "Lunin was of the opinion", recorded a fellow exile, P. N. Svistunov (1803-89) "that the true work of our lives began on our entering Siberia, where we were called to serve in word and deed the cause to which we had dedicated ourselves." (30) The cause was bitter opposition to autocracy. Soviet scholarship has rightly honoured Lunin as the unrelenting enemy of despotism in its Russian guise. (31) He alone among Decembrists, it is justly stressed, continued systematically to harass the Third Department until his lingering death in Akatuj; he alone among the exiles in Siberia came to view politics as a profession, "comparable with medicine". (32) And yet the origins of his Liberalism and its connection with his Catholic faith have been, of not ignored, at least perfunctorily and superfically treated by Soviet commentators. (In the West, there have been none). It is a noteworthy and disappointing fact. It is noteworthy because Soviet scholars have accepted frankly the active Orthodox belief of various leaders of the 'standing revolution' of December, 1825; yet Lunin's Roman Catholicism, as though somehow unpatriotic, has been viewed askance. It is disappointing for, as will be seen in Chapter Two, far from detracting from the force or the sincerity of his political convictions, which remained throughout his life those of the dedicated Liberal, his religious faith both echoed and enhanced them. In him, indeed, religious and political concerns fused in a single impulse. That impulse, at once Catholic and Liberal, born of Masonic dogma, early lessons from Vouvillier and personal experience in France and Russia, was to do all that he could "to tease the white bear". (33) Lunin's political beliefs were formed in adolescence, if not childhood. He was a Liberal before the word was coined in its political

8

context (first being used as an insulting epithet describing the rebels in Madrid in the mid-summer of 1820). (34) He thought himself no better than a serf, no worse than the Tsar or his brother; all men, in his view, were equal and deserving of just, equitable treatment. Such, at least, was the theory - in practice, Lunin's pride would often hold him at a distance from his fellows, sometimes leading to extreme, almost despairing gestures of self-sacrifice or kindness. In Russia, where aristocratic pressure groups came closest to the European notion of parties, but where there were no permanent organized parties, 'Liberal' could be applied only to individuals. But typically, Lunin never accepted that no parties existed or could exist in Russia; and it is this, above all else, that distinguishes him among the Liberals of his time. In declaring, "If I were in England, they would say: 'Lunin is a member of the Opposition'," he was perhaps conceding inadvertantly that he maintained a fine pretense. Yet he was right to hold that "opposition is natural to all systems" (35) and still more so to think that, could he merely persuade others that there was, indeed, an organized party of opposition, the existence of that party would become, at last, a fact. As a political tactician, Lunin had few equals. Linking Novosil'cev, his "political opponent", (36) with Lunin himself, and the students of Spain with Neapolitan grandees, was a single, simple belief in progress leading to perfection of the human character and life on earth. As idealists, the Russian Liberals of the 1820s interpreted their dogma in accordance with specific national needs; but everywhere, always, a Liberal was one "favouring democratic reforms and the abolition of privilege". (37) Lunin held those beliefs and aspirations on reaching early manhood. The seeds of his revolt against civilian and military authority alike were already shooting visibly by 1807, when his "escapades" (as his Commanding Officer referred to them) brought him celebrity among his service colleagues. Later experience of war, injustice, outrage and sedition merely provided a rich soil in which those seeds might grow. It is time to summarize Lunin's experience of war, and of the Russian General Staff abroad. As was the custom among families with military or Court connections, or with hopes of sustaining either, Lunin was 'written into' a socially prestigious Guards regiment when still a child. He was thus eligible for regular, unearned promotion. Even before he left his father's house, Russia's conflict with Napoleon seemed likely; he waited with impatience. All promised a timely war and opportunity to deck himself in glory. With delightful rapidity, the Second Coalition crumbled (1800). Better still, Napoleon's ambitions grew at a pace to match his own, ensuring that armed struggle would not end, so to speak, prematurely. At last, in September, 1803, he joined the Life-Guard Chasseurs. As a fresh Junker hoping for action, Lunin could not have joined the army at a happier moment. War, every mess acknowledge, was now imminent; his skills as a rider and swordsman were precisely those most needed by the country. There began a hectic, cheerful

9

time of training and manoevres. No less than his mordant wit, Lunin's bravado soon won the appreciation of his regimental comrades. But bravado was accompanied by an underlying military competence that no one could deny. Promotion was not long delayed. By January 1805 Lunin was senior Junker, (38) by mid-November, transferred as he wished to the Kavalergardskij Regiment, estandardt-junker, and shortly afterwards, kornet. (39) It was a good beginning. Only the move to the Kavalergardskij Regiment might have caused his senior officers, had they been granted prescience, a long moment's reflection. In no other single regiment were there serving, in the years 1805-15, so many future Decembrists. Twenty-four officers of the Kavalergardskij Regiment, among them Pestel1 andAleksandr Murav'ev, Sergej Volkonskij and Mixail Orlov, Vadkovskij, Annenkov, Svistunov, V. P. IvaSev - each one a friend or relative of Lunin - were to be implicated in events on Senate Square, and pay the price of death or exile. (40) It is as vain to dwell on the minutiae of Lunin's brilliant military career, to which, in any case, four decorations bear eloquent witness, as to indulge in speculation as to which specific qualities most recommemded him to his superiors. In the absence of convincing evidence, such things cannot be known. Suffice it to refer here to a single document, preserved in the State Military and Historical A r chive, Moscow, in the fond of M. S. Lunin, and headed cryptically "Lunin, M. S.: Where and When in Action". (41) Listed on two yellowed sheets are half the main engagements fought by Russian armies on the soil of Western Europe between 1805 and 1815. Lunin, one reads, "was a participant in the action by Austerlitz", in which battle two Russian officers in every five were missing, dead. Also killed during the murderous morning of November 20, 1805, was Lunin's younger brother; he was blown to pieces. (42) Two years later, it is stated, Lunin, M. S. fought at Jena. For valour in the Battle of Gel'sborg (sic) he was decorated with the Order of St. Anna. Four days later, on June 2, 1806, he again rode against Massena's cavalry, at Friedland. So one might continue, but the point is clear: his record as an officer on active service was a distinguished, even brilliant one. For the Kavalergardskij Regiment, the years between Tilsit and 1812 brought a period of peace; but Lunin, now unable to be idle, kept himself busier than before. It was as though he needed risks, and therefore sought them out. From this time of lull and tedium, broken only by the crossing of the Niemen by the French on June 23, 1812, dates the beginning of his curious, idiosyncratic, even eccentric reputation - a reputation he himself, liking to be unusual, fostered by fresh sallies or 'escapades' each year. It would be foolish to ignore these calculated, frequently elaborate jests or shows of gay bravura, for they tell us much about their perpetrator in a time which, like his childhood, is but poorly documented. Only his active service years, indeed, are adequately covered by contemporaneous records, and it is vexing, after such a flurry of despatches, memoranda, lists and other documents, to find oneself once more in virtually a historiographic desert, where anecdotes

10

are small oases, memoirs often mirages. Records of charges now forgotten, of honours and medallions that long ago grew dull - such things are eloquent, yet say little or nothing of soldiers' characters. On that subject, lists of promotions, too, are silent. Does one infer from Lunin's steady rise to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel that he was a resourceful and quick-thinking officer? It seems entirely reasonable to do so, yet it is little more than speculation. Anecdotes provide a clearer picture. 1812-1815 saw the most famous of Lunin's escapades. So strong was the impression that they made on his contemporaries that records of no less than seven have survived, four in two versions or more. No less than reminiscences of other kinds, of course, such tales are to be treated with great care. Among those memoirists inclined to place as black an interpretation as possible on Lunin's every action, I. D. JakuSkin certainly has pride of place. Nikita Murav'ev, conversely, seldom fails to flatter Lunin's record. Fortunately, there are two or three versions of the more outstanding of the escapades, a fact which, far from blurring or distorting one's impression of them all, lends them focus and an added depth. Here, first, is a résumé of 'the bathing incident' : Camping near Petergof, twenty-five miles from St. Petersburg along the Bay of Finland, officers and men of Lunin's regiment were forbidden by their Commander, General DepreradoviC, to bathe lest, as the order put it, they offended the susceptibilities of passers-by. The weather was extremely hot. Waiting until General DepreradoviC was about to pass, therefore, Lunin plunged fully clothed into the Bay and thrashed about a little. The officer halted, and made a mild enquiry. Straightening up and saluting, Lunin explained: "I am bathing, but, so as not to infringe the order "(or, according to another variant, "not to break Your Excellency's order")" am doing so in the most decorous possible manner. " (43) Also in 1812, shortly before the French invasion, occurred the 'fortifications incident'. Lunin, wishing to make sketches of the Kronstadt fortifications from the sea, took a small boat from the naval depot and sailed out into the Gulf of Finland. He was spotted through a telescope, brought back to Kronstadt and commanded to present himself to Alexander himself, who had come to hear of the incident. The Tsar demanded an explanation. Lunin replied that he wished to compare eighteenth-century Russian fortification technique with that of Vauban, and had not officially requested permission for fear] of a refusal. But to sail alone in a small boat in the Gulf is dangerous, said the Tsar. But Peter the Great fought with those elements, replied Lunin; besides, I might have chanced on an unknown land in the Gulf, which I could have claimed for Russia. Alexander saw that Lunin was eccentric, and dismissed him. (44) A third, equally typical incident is that known as 'the baggage incident'. Stationed in Poland ten years later, and there serving under the Tsar's brother, Lunin claimed loudly, within earshot of the Grand-Duke, that whatever is done for the sake of effect alone in military matters decreases troops' effectiveness in combat. The Grand-Duke turned, and asked him what he meant. Lunin at once

11

ordered the troops before him to dismount. The instant several hundred feet touched ground, he gave the order to remount. Baggage slipped down from every man and horse, creating chaos. "Our brother here", said the Grand-Duke, smiling, "knows all our little ways!" Finally, mention may be made of the challenge and non duel between Konstantin Pavloviff and Lunin. There is, it should be said at once, much disagreement here between the various accounts. One thing is clear: the incident occurred late in Lunin's military career, seemingly during the autumn of 1822. (45) Briefly, the facts are these: an officer serving under the Grand-Duke, one Vladimir Norov, thinking himself insulted by the Duke, demanded satisfaction of him in a duel. It was refused. Thereupon, twenty fellow-officers retired from the regiment in sympathy with Norov. News of the incident b e gan to spread and, anxious for his own good name as well as that of the army in Poland, of which he was Commander, Konstantin Pavloviff then offered satisfaction to any officer who might require it. No one spoke or stepped forward, at the parade at which this was announced, except Lunin. "Your Highness deigns to offer satisfaction, " he said according to two versions; "Allow me to take advantage of such an honour. " "Come, brother", replied the Grand-Duke quickly, "you're still too young for that. " The challenge, made in a serious spirit, was refused light-heartedly. (46) One of the sources for this story, an anonymous article published by Herzen in his émigré journal The Bell (Kolokol) in February 1859, presents its own mystery. (47) Entitled simply "From Reminiscences about Lunin" ("Iz vospominanij o Lunine"), the article contains v a r i ous e r r o r s . It is asserted, for example, that the incident occurred in 1813-14. In general lay-out, the account recalls the tales and anecdotes of D. I. Zavaliâïn; but Zavaliâin would have known better than to make such a mistake in dating, being in 1822 in correspondence with Lunin. The author remains unknown. The article remains, however, and gives a fascinatingly complete account not only of the non-duel, but also of Lunin's refusal to flee abroad in 1825; of his bringing a full-grown bear into a Polish lady's drawing-room; and, for good measure, of the Russian government's intention to have Lunin shot for publishing seditious articles in London and New York (see Chapter Five). (48) An overall picture emerges of a bold, impulsive, proud young officer. Certainly the nature of those anecdotes related here is such as might encourage some embellishment, and it seems probable that each narrator, both in Lunin's time and later, simply embroidered what was handed on to him. And yet that very nature (which suggests involvement, even a performance on the part of the narrator), like the sheer number of tales to have survived, says no less of Lunin's impulsive, even overbearing, character, than the incidents themselves. One sees how it was that Pu Skin, making idle plans for Chapter Ten of his novel in verse, Evgenij One gin, should recall Lunin as "The friend of Mars, Bacchus and Venus". ("Here Lunin daringly / Suggested his decisive measures / And muttered in a trance in inspi-

12

r a t i o n . . . ") (49) For PuSkin, Lunin always remained the would-be regicide of 1816; of the eighteen extant stanzas of Chapter Ten, never finished, merely toyed with, only Lunin's (and JakuSkin's and N. I. Turgenev's) stands complete. The fact seems to pay tribute to PuSkin's admiration for Decembrists who were also personal friends. One sees too, in the light of such accounts, how Herzen, writing fourteen years after the death of Lunin, could still speak of "the proud, overwhelming, unbending daring of a Lunin". (50) Each of those adjectives rings true. And, it must be admitted, it is an unbending, stiff-necked boldness rather than overwhelming daring that these four anecdotes convey. The image that they summon up merely strengthens one's impression of a stormy individual who, however high and glorious his ideals, would have been trying company. More clearly than before, Lunin emerges as a man always content to "tease the white bear", as JakuSkin put it nicely, until the bear struck out. (51) There were other escapades between 1822 and 1824. Perhaps, as was suggested, war or the element of danger had become necessities to one who, by the age of twenty-eight, had spent more than a third of his whole life on active service. The question of self-confidence arises. Was Lunin in continual need of admiration? Of course he valued the esteem of fellow-officers, or some of them at least. But it is certain that he valued still more highly his own, private opinion of himself. Having once set himself high standards, one is tempted to summarize, he found himself the prisoner of those standards and so drove himself to extreme, sometimes foolish behaviour. The theory, alas, cannot be verified. It merely seems, we must say, that Lunin deliberately courted danger - his conduct in the Battle of Smolensk proves this - and that, increasingly, he did so because he expected it of himself. It was, one feels, in an attempt to maintain his own standards that he accepted the Grand-Duke's offer of a duel. Only Lunin accepted it, and he alone needed to do so. For more than twenty-five years, JakuSkin continued to disapprove of a middle-aged soldier who, as he saw it, "persisted in permitting himself such sallies" as might be fitting in a youth. (52) With less reason than PuSkin, who had not seen Lunin for years when he wrote the cited stanza of Evgenij One gin, JakuSkin, whose memoirs are essential to the study of Lunin's exile in Siberia, continued to think him the friend of Bacchus and of Venus, as well as the companion of Mars. That Lunin was an ageing bachelor who drank no spirits seems to have escaped JakuSkin's notice. But in 1812, Lunin was very much as PuSkin pictures him - only considerably less the "friend of Venus" than the poet chose to think. Then, at least, he was a bretteur, as Nikita Murav'ev described him, a handsome f e l low, good companion and player of cards and dice. It was with reason that JakuSkin would recall him, thirty years afterwards, as "the Kop'ev of our generation". (53) (A. D. Kop'ev, 1767-1846, a Guards officer and scribbler of the time of Pavel PetroviC, paraded down the streets of Moscow in a uniform that mocked the uniform then worn by the Imperial household units at GatClna, Pavlovsk and Kameno-Ostrov. His helmet had a monstrous peak and extended

13 wider than the wearer's shoulders, while his multicoloured gloves, which reached above the elbows, flared out like snapdragons). There was, indeed, a trace of the Kop'ev in Lunin. But there was much more, too, and for those other, nobler elements of character, JakuSkin had no eyes. One point in particular escaped his notice: that Lunin's decision to continue teasing the autocratic bear was conscious and deliberate. He alone, exiled first to 6ita, then to the frontiers of Mongolia, would continue the struggle with tsarism with all the energy of a Ryleev or Pestel' until his death; he alone would remain faithful to the cause for which he and JakuSkin had been exiled. But in 1812 Lunin was arrogant. Fully concious of his admirable intellect and a physique later to save his life in Finland, he had no time for mediocrity. In his adult onslaught on ancient Greek there is something of Tolstoj's later and comparable attack, the difference between the men being that Tolstoj flaunted his certificate, whereas Lunin chose to use his new-found knowledge in deliberate isolation. Even before the wars with Napoleon were over, Lunin served his Liberal ideals. A clash with the Establishment, it followed, grew ever more inevitable as Alexander's earlier liberal dreams faded away. Meanwhile, war paradoxically postponed that hour of conflict; Lunin's military career progressed apace. On July 13, 1812, large sections of the French and Russian armies met at Vitebsk. The Russians were obliged to retreat with heavy losses. Lunin took the reversal badly; Kutuzov's waiting policy was calculated to distress him. At last, the tide began to turn to the advantage of the Russians - Smolensk, fought on August 4-6, was not a French victory. But the Kavalergardskij Regiment was held in r e serve at the action. Not content with such a situation, Lunin took matters into his own hands. First, he acquired a private soldier's uniform. Next, a colleague's nag was borrowed - and Lunin rode into the fray. Nikita Murav'ev spotted him trotting away from the front at dusk. "And where have you been?" he inquired. "In the battle. " "What did you do there, cousin?" "Shot and killed two". (54) At Borodino, too, Lunin distinguished himself, being presented with a golden sword inscribed "For Valour" for his actions on that day (August 26). Not until the spring of 1814, however, did his hour of glory come. Twice within six weeks, the Russian armies having crossed the Rhine, he received high decorations. It was a splendid climax to the whole campaign. Within days, the Russian vanguard was in Paris and, as Mérimée informs us, wild-looking Cossack units bivouacked along the Champs Elysées. The Cossacks drew large groups of curious Parisians. (55) Alexander's personal conduct while in Paris is well-known. Playing a role close to his heart, the Tsar, as Waliszewski puts it, "se metta diligemment en montre et en valeur... avec des airs de grande modestie", (56) strolling along the boulevards dressed in the plain green uniform of the Semenovskij Regiment, exchanging casual bonjours... Lunin was not there to admire the grand performance, his regiment having been stationed in Saxony. By October, he and Alexander were both in St. Petersburg once more. So it was that Lunin found himself a veteran and hero, féted and

14 honoured for a while, at least, by his own countrymen. More than this, he had begun to move in high, even Imperial circles; the future promised well. Why should he not pursue a dazzling career, perhaps as aide-de-camp to his former C. -in-C., the Grand-Duke Konstantin? From every angle, matters promised well. For more than thirty months consecutively now he had been in the immediate company of courtiers and members of the Imperial family. Notwithstanding or, perhaps, as a result of the challenge that already linked their names, and possibly also because of Lunin's reputation as a marksman ("There was", his cousin records, "hardly a duel in St. Petersburg in which he did not take some part, and he himself shot several times"), (57) the Tsar's brother showed him marked kindness. How could such triumphs not impress, when told to men never received at court? "Lunin", recorded N. V. Basargin with respect many years later in Siberia, "had the closest of relationships with Karamzin, BatjuSkov, and many other remarkable men. We would listen with attention (in Cita - GB) to his behind-thescenes tales of events of the previous reign... and to his judgements on persons of that time who had been placed on undeserved pedestals." (58) (Basargin seems to have thought Lunin's relationships with the poets named closer than was actually the case; Lunin, hearing such tales about his past, did not scotch flattering exaggerations. But however that may be, he was one of the few Decembrists who had had, in happier days, frequent, prolonged contact with members of the Imperial family.) But for Lunin, the first year of success by the Establishment's own standards was to prove the last. What seemed to be the start of a career within the court's orbit was, as became apparent in the summer of 1815, merely the beginning of the end. Rather less than seven months having elapsed since his return to St. Petersburg from France, Lunin requested to be transferred to a line regiment outside the capital. He did so for three reasons. They were, in order of descending significance, that he could no longer pay the debts he had accumulated and was still accumulating - debts which his father, after a dramatic conference, refused to meet; that he was anxious for some action, some appropriate outlet for his energies; and that a recent duel had made his regiment a less inviting place than it had been. The factors are best dealt with individually. Lunin's relations with his father, with whom he had been living since returning from the West and on whom he was financially dependent stillj despite his army pay, were strained almost to breaking point by the summer of the year concerned. He was in debt, and hounded by his creditors for at least 10,000 roubles. Certainly he had, as his sister put it delicately, "expenses inevitable at his age and in his situation"; (59)but not only was his life as a Guards officer exceedingly expensive - he gambled at cards. Finally, Sergej MixajloviCs patience was exhausted; he would pay no more of his son's debts. (60) Tempers were frayed, father and son shouted. Afterwards, both repented and spoke softly. But still Lunin insisted that his father help him pacify the money-lenders who were persecuting him. The Brigadier declined. Lunin made a proposal: his

15 debts should be paid by his father, 5,000 roubles given to him - and never again would he trouble his father, or expect a kopek from him. He would retire and go abroad, thus living more economically than he would ever manage in Russia. The Brigadier expostulated. Could a Lieutenant-Colonel so lightly retire and leave his family? How, replied Lunin, could he not retire, since he was not in a position to satisfy his creditors? At last, the Brigadier agreed. Two carriages were sold to raise 5,000 roubles in cash, the money given to Lunin and matters, temporarily at least, were settled. (61) This scene occurred in the last weeks of 1815. Since Lunin's financial straits were so dire by the end of that year, surely we may assume that he was short of money in May, when he requested to be sent out of the Guards. Yet financial strains alone hardly explain the suddenness of his decision to seek a transfer to the regular Army. Those difficulties, after all, cannot have suddenly appeared (although Lunin may suddenly have understood their gravity), unless, as is improbable, he lost a massive wager some time in April or May. So we are drawn to the second explanation of his conduct. There can be no doubt that peacetime army life oppressed Lunin, like many other a c tive officers and veterans. As he must have realized, the likelihood of action was far greater in the regular Army than in a regiment of Guards. And, it was true, only in the extreme South of the Empire could he have hoped to see some action in 1816; there, line regiments were fighting an erratic but ferocious war with bands of mountainbased Caucasian tribesmen, and one might hope for an exiting death at the hands of the Circassians. Whatever other causes may have prompted him to leave the Kavalergardskij Regiment, we may surmise, one was a thirst for action. To find it, he was prepared to leave the country and, early in 1816, began to make enquiries about passages to South America, where Simon Bolivar's revolt against the Spanish was, so the Mercure de France reported, making good headway. (61) But no ship was due to sail for South America; the moment passed. Meanwhile, there were various duels to occupy his mind, one of which, with A. F. Orlov, the future head of the Gendarmerie, had the additional piquancy of having stirred up animosity against him in his own regiment. Orlov having fired twice and failed to wound him, Lunin twice fired into the air. The insult to Orlov was felt by others. While Lunin fretted impotently, his request for an immediate transfer was considered. The request was viewed unfavourably by the War Ministry. Incensed by an elaborately-phrased refusal, Lunin wrote directly to the Tsar. (62) Eventually, the Tsar replied: permission was accorded "to retire until such time as Lieutenant-Colonel Lunin's wounds should heal and... a further decision be reached". (63) It was enough. But official documents belie events; certainly Lunin had old wounds of which, presumably, he made some passing mention in his letter to the Tsar - a duel of 1814, for example, had resulted in an operation on his groin and upper leg. But these had not troubled him until he was told to be less troublesome. Lunin was not yet thirty when permission was accorded him to leave the military service. He mocked the notion of a brilliant career

16 (in the conventional sense) (64) as an administrator of any kind whatever; nor could he point to large estates needing his personal attention. It was natural that many 'explanations' of his curious decision to retire should circulate in Petersburg drawing-rooms, for that decision questioned the whole basis of the conduct and ambition of the service gentry in entirety. If intelligent, promising men could thus abandon a career in the Imperial service, was anything sacred or safe? The elder Lunin's health, some said therefore, was failing rapidly and Lunin, well aware of the responsibility that would be his, wished to acquaint himself with the estates. But such reasoning convinced only the dull - for if the family finances were unstable (as others concluded from the first premise), plainly Lunin would need the salary that high rank carried with it. Nor was Sergej MixajloviÓ particularly ill in 1815. It would not serve, and other reasons for his son's conduct were found. First, there was the theory later developed by D. I. ZavaliSin that professional dissatisfaction had induced Lunin to threaten to resign; unfortunately, others added maliciously, Lunin had not foreseen that Alexander would take the opportunity of ridding himself of him. Conscious that few fellow-officers could equal his war-record (so ZavaliSin argues plausibly), the Lieutenant-Colonel was annoyed that Alexander had not posted him full colonel either when peace had been concluded or during the Congress of Vienna, when many were promoted. (65) Again (some claimed), promotion was by seniority. Lunin's continued presence in his 1813 rank, it followed, created a blockage for others. One can give little credence to such unsupported arguments, of which that offered by the unknown author whose article on Lunin appeared in Kolokol in 1859 is by far the most outrageous. ("Poor Lunin", a c cording to that nameless individual, "was tormented by his colonel, who had special orders to do s o . . . " (66) While a senior officer might, indeed, have implied such an instruction, consciously or otherwise, it is exceedingly improbable that Alexander or any of his aides ever ordered any colonel, with directness of the kind suggested here, to 'torment' a junior officer; one is left with the "Who will rid me of this bishop?" speculation, which leads nowhere.) So we come to the third explanation of Lunin's brisk decision to retire - that afterwards offered by his sister, E. S. Uvarova, and, in a slightly different form, by the Decembrist P. Svistunov (180389). Lunin retired, both claim, because of a duel that misfired. The protagonist, whose name is unknown, was a Pole; no further details can be gleaned from memoirs or contemporary records. (67) Possibly Lunin did challenge a man with greater influence than he himself could match. Certainly pressure of some kind was brought to bear on him between May and September 1815, for, it was seen, at first he had proposed not to retire, but simply to transfer to a line regiment. Matters had changed during the summer, causing him to alter his position, too. Why Lunin wished to leave the Kavalergardskij Regiment in the first place remains a mystery. It was no mystery to many, on the other hand, that in the summer of 1816 Lunin was seriously contemplating the assassination of the Tsar. Always a bretteur, his need of action grew in proportion to its

17

unavailability. Peace brought frustration and, in the long months of inactivity that led to his retirement and the French journey that eased his mounting tension, Lunin had grown into a dangerously aggressive officer. Suddenly, his plans took on a violent directness. He alone it was, in 1812, who saw the full simplicity of the solution and the end of the Napoleonic problem: pretending to be a special envoy, he would gain access to Bonaparte and stab him with a crooked dagger he would carry for the purpose. As a solution to political entrave, it has a twentieth-century ring. Now it was Alexander whom he planned to kill (see Chapter Three). Duelling had earlier brought him fame, and a duel now contributed to the necessity of premature retirement. It was appropriate. Lunin's intended regicide, however, was not quickly forgotten by his countrymen when he left Russia for France in a mood veering between strange pride and proud strangeness. And no later change of mind (but not of heart) altered the fact that, of the several assassination plots formed by Decembrists in the years 1816-21, his was the earliest, the most disinterested and, in high Petersburg circles, the most familiar. (68) On his plan, and his alleged approval of other projects to assassinate the Tsar, rested the whole case brought against him ten years later by the Supreme Secret Court. Lunin did not express regret for his intentions. NOTES (1) Until 1925, and the appearence of an article by N. P. KaSìn, "K biografii dekabrista Lunina" (Katorga i ssylka, no. 5, 242-9), Lunin was believed to have been born in 1783. Lunin's own claim to be forty in June 1826, however, which he contradicted elsewhere; see S. Ja. Strajx, Pis'ma i soffinenija M. S. Lunina (L., 1926), 93 hereafter referred to as Strajx, is lent weight by the list cited by KaSln that gives details of all officers of the Grodnenskij Hussars in 1824. The list is preserved in CGVIA, fond 25 (1825), d. I, 1.25. ; Lunin is shown simply as rotmistr, aged 36. (2) G.R. DerZavin, Poln. sob. soC., 8 vols., vol. 5 St. P . , 1869), 730. (3) A.I. Herzen, letter of 22.n. 59 (4) See V. V. Rummel', Rodoslovnyj sbornik russkix dvorjanskix familij, 2 vols., vol. I (St. P . , 1886), under Murav'ev. (5) See Strajx for a résumé of the proceedings, "Lunin v processe 1826 goda". (6) For details, consult Materialy, vol. 3, 121; also Strajx, 94. (7) E. Ehrhard, V.A. Joukovski et le préromantisme russe (Paris, 1938), 24-32. (8) P. N. Daragan, Vospominanija pervogo kamerpaZa P. Daragana (St.P., 1902), 122; also my article "Eighteenth-Century Neoclassical French Influences on Pushkin and E.A. Baratynsky", Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 6 (1969), no. 4, 435-61. (9) Evgenij One gin, Chap. I, VI, 2-6. ; my translations throughout. (10) From his Zapisnaja KniZka (Notebook) under Aug. 27, 1837;

18 cited by Strajx, 20. (11) Lunin's s i s t e r Uvarova wrote of Greek a s his "favourite dialect" in a letter to General Dubel't, Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, of 28. 6.43. Greek books were sent to Lunin in exile. (12) On this, see V. Nabokov, Eugene One gin, 4 vols. , vol. 2 (N. Y. , 1964), 162-3. (13) Dnevniki i p i s ' m a N. I. Turgeneva, vol. 3 (Petrograd, 1921), 308; l e t t e r of February 1819. (14) See S . J a . Gessen and M. S. Kogan, Dekabrist Lunin i ego v r e m j a (L., 1926), 23. On the Karamzin purchase, CGIAL, fond 1409, d. 1408e, paket 4. (15) S. V. Skalon, "Vospominanija o dvadcatyx godax", Istoriffeskij vestnik, 1891, no. 6, 608. (16) The authority is Hippolyte Auger (02e), "Vospominanija o Lunine", Russkij arxiv, 1877, no. 4, 519-41; no. 5, 55-68; see esp. no. 4, 522. For details of Auger's MS and its a r r i v a l in the hands of P . I . Bartenev, see N. Ejdel'man, Lunin (M. , MolodajaGvardija, 1970), 34-35. (17) See V. Nabokov, op. cit. , vol. 2, 123. (18) See my article, "Eight Unpublished L e t t e r s of E. A. Baratynsky", Canadian Slavonic P a p e r s , XI (1969), I, 117-8. (19) A. JatseviC, Pugkinskij P e t e r b u r g (L., 1935), 173. The house, f o r m e r l y 18 Torgovaja, dom Dubeckogo, still stands as 14, Ul. Sojuza pefiatnikov. (20) See pp. 25-26. (21) A . N . Pypin, Russkoe masonstvo XVIII-ogo veka i pervoj ffetverti XIX-ogo veka (Petrograd, 1916), Chaps. 2-3. (22) A.N. Pypin, op. cit. , 522-3. (23) Masonstvo v ego proglom i nastojaSgem, ed. S. P . Mel'gunov (M. , 1914), vol. 2, 167; also A.N. Pypin, ObSgestvennyje dviSenija v Rossii p r i Aleksandre I (St. P . , 1885), 297-8. (24) Iz pisem i pokazanij dekabristov, ed. A . K . Borozdin (St. P. , 1906), 67. On the banning of Lodges, in mid-August, 1822, see Poln. sob, zakonov Rossijskoj Imperii s 1649 po 1825 gg., 45 vols. (St. P . , 1830), No. 29151. (25) Materialy, vol. 3, 20; vol. I, 23-4. (26) Anonymous paper in Russkaja starina, XI (1874), no. I, 466. (27) For a concise survey of Liberalism in its political context, see I. Collins, Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe (London, Historical Association P r e s s , 1956), 5-12. It is illuminating to compare this survey with the contents of J . Anderson's The Constitutions of F r e e - M a s o n s (London, 1723), 53-6. (28) See A. Mazour, The F i r s t Russian Revolution, 1825 (Stanford, 1963). (29) Cited by T. Sokolovskaja, Russkoe masonstvo i ego znaffenie v istorii obggestvennogo dviZenija (St. P . , w. d . ) , 178. (30) P . N . Svistunov, "Iz vospominanij P . N . Svistunova", Russkij arxiv, 1870, nos. 8-9, 1633-47. (31) See S. Okun', Dekabrist M. S. Lunin (M., 1962), 1-4, f o r example. (32) Letter to Uvarova of June, 1838; see ¡•Strajx, 4.

19 (33) The phrase was A. A. BestuZev's; see Vospominanija Bestufevyx, ed. M.K. Azadovskij ( M . - L . , 1931), 199. (34) See I. Collins, op. cit. , 3 - 5 . (35) Letter of 16. 6. 38; Strajx, 40. (36) Letter of 9. 6. 38; ibid. (37) Oxford English Dictionary, 5th ed. , 1964. (38) CVIA, fond 25, d. I, 1. 3-5. (39) Ibid., 11.6-7. (40) See M.V. NeCkina, Griboedov i dekabristy (M., 1951), 128. (41) CVIAL (1805), d. I, 1.20. (42) A brief note on Nikita Lunin may be found in a Sbornik biografij kavalergardov, 1801-1826, by anonymous authors (St. P . , 1906). (43) N.A. Belogolovyj, Vospominanija i drugie stat'i (M. , 1898), 70. (44) Reported by H. Auger, op. cit. , no. 4, 533-34. S. Le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707), appointed Commissaire général des fortifications by Louis XIV in 1678. (45) For arguments concerning the date, see M.V. NeCkina, op. cit., 258. On the incident of the loose baggage, D. I. Zavalisin, "Dekabrist M. S. Lunin", Istoriifeskij vestnik, 1880, no. I, 147-8. Zavaliâïn's memoirs appeared in full only in 1904 (Munich). (46) See A. E. Rozen, Zapiski (St. P . , 1907), 30. (47) Kolokol for February 15, 1859 (no. 36), 293-4. (48) Another account of the non-duel, which at least has the merit of mentioning the Kavalergardskij Regiment specifically, is that of I. Ul'janov, "M.S. Lunin i Velikij Knjaz' Konstantin Pavloviô1', (Russkij arxiv, 1868, no. 6, 1033-8). Ul'janov made use of the r e collections of General V. Berdjaev, who knew Lunin slightly. A. E. Rozen offers his version also (op. cit. , 30-31), while, for the connoisseur, there is the variant of P . P . Lanskoj, editor of the Guards' biographies (note 43), written no later than 1906 ! (49) A. S. Pu Skin, Poln. sob, sog., 16 vols., vol. 6 (M. , 1937-49), 524. (50) Letter of 22.11.59. (51) But Jakuâkin borrowed the phrase; see note 33. (52) I.D. Jakuâkin, Zapiski, stat'i, pis'ma dekabrista I. D. Jakuâkina (M. , 1951), 285-6. (53) Jakuâkin was writing to I. PuâCïn from Jalutorovsk in June 1841; he had not been in close contact with Lunin for five years, yet had no hesitation in stating that "Lunin acted out of vanity, of course, and in order to make others talk about him... "; ibid., 285. (54) N.N. Murav'ev, "Zapiski", Russkij arxiv, 1885, bk. 3, no. 10, 234. On the crooked dagger with which Lunin proposed to assassinate Napoleon, ibid. , 225-7. (55) Mérimée, Mélanges historiques et littéraires (Paris, 1855), 63; see also my article, "Prosper Mérimée and E.A. Baratynsky", Romance Notes, XI (1969), no. 2. (56) K. Waliszewski, Le règne d'Alexandre Premier (Paris, 1924), 246. (57) N. N. Murav'ev, op. cit., 227. (58) N. V. Basargin, Zapiski (St.P., 1872), 133. Basargin had more to say of Lunin, who impressed him deeply; see Devjatnadcatyj vek

20

(M., 1872), Pt. I, 145 and 173. (59) Hippolyte Auger (OZe), op. cit. , 526-7. (60) CGIAL, fond 1409, d. 1408e, paket 4. Lunin senior's income was 64, 770 roubles in the year 1816-17, of which Mixail Sergeeviff r e ceived a paltry 21 roubles 10 kopeks. For further figures and details, see B.D. Grekov's excellent study, "Tambovskoe imenie M.S. Lunina v pervoj ffetverti XIX-ogo veka", Izvestija Akademii Nauk SSSR, 7th series (1932), nos. 6-7. (61) Auger, op. cit., no, 4, 531. (62) CGVIAL, fond 124, d. 1687. (63) Ibid. Permission to retire dated as from September 14, signed personally by Alexander. (64) See pp. 55-9. (65) D.I. ZavaliSln, op. cit., 143. (66) Kolokol, 1859, no. 36, 294. (67) See P . N . Svistunov, "Otpoved"', Russkij arxiv, 1877, no. 2, 345 - reprinted in Vospominanija i rasskazy dejatelej tajnyx obgffestv 1820-yx godov, 2 vols., vol. 2 (M., 1931-3), 294. On Uvarova's explanation of events, Dekabristy: letopisi Gosudarstvennogo Literaturnogo Muzeja (M., w. d. ), bk. 3, 195-6. (68) On the assassination projects of JakuboviÖ", Jakuäkin and Kaxovskij, see A. Mazour, op. cit., by index and 131-6.

2

RADICAL READJUSTMENT AND BELIEF

Lunin sailed for France from Kronstadt between 2 and 3 pm on September 10, 1816. (1) The day was fine, the Gulf of Finland calm. With him aboard the Fidélité of Dieppe, bound for Le Havre with a full cargo of tallow, was a young Frenchman whom he had met some eighteen months before in Vil'no, and had come to like. The personal history of Hippolyte Auger (1797-1881), soldier of fortune, poetaster and future author of a string of successful melodramas, one alone of which survives, Pauvre Mère ! (1838), is not so well known that its bare essentials do not bear restating. Auger was a youth of seventeen when Russian forces occupied Paris. Like Mérimée, then a boy of twelve, he was greatly moved by the sight of Cossacks camping on the Champs Elysées. He was conscious, too, that no future awaited him as an officer of Bonaparte; but he was also, like Mérimée, strangely attracted by "ces hommes à grande barbe noire, vêtus à l'orientale " (2) His curiosity strengthened by the friendly welcome given him by several Russian officers, most of whom spoke fluent French, he thought of entering the Russian service. In St. Petersburg, perhaps, a brilliant career might yet be made. So, in the summer of 1814, he 'offered his sword to the T s a r ' , and was immediately granted a commission in the p r e s tigious Izmajlovskij Regiment. He served with no particular distinction, fell ill of a fever in Polock, recovered, failed to catch the eye of any dignitary, decided that his fortune did not after all lie in the North and, having grown attached to, and succumbed to the strong influence of Lunin, was discharged in January, 1816. (3) During the 1820s and 1830s, seeing that military glory would elude him, he turned to literature, wrote several novels, many melodramas and, in 1839-40, a history of Parisian theatres, Physiologie du théâtre. Thirty years having elapsed since he had left it, he returned to St. Petersburg, discussed Lunin with an ageing Benkendorf and once again thought of attempting to emulate the triumphs of so many of his fellow-countrymen who had sought wealth in that city. But again he returned to France, this time, however, having been most courteously treated as a writer of some note. Finally, in 1877, he published his memoirs in the Russian periodical Russkij arxiv. They dealt, in large measure, with his friendship of a half century before with Lunin; the time was right - interest in the Decembrists was increasing, memoirs were appearing by the year (many in that same publication), and fame came to Auger in Russia at last. Within four years he was dead. What was it that attached Lunin to him - Lunin a man almost ten

22

years his senior and a Lieutenant-Colonel - to the point of suggesting that they travel to France together, there to become "citizens of the world", seekers of the "freedom of the mind"? (4) For answers we must turn to Auger's memoirs; Lunin does not enlighten us. For Lunin, first, Auger seems to have been an object of intrinsic interest; he was a Frenchman, and when Lunin was in P a r i s in 1814, so we learn, (5) he had studied the French, their habits, attitudes and institutions, while others had enjoyed them. Auger was most conscious of this scrutiny, friendly though it might be; to Lunin, he felt, his least gesture was as worthy of attention as any major trait. Second, Auger had literary interests. So, too, did Lunin - and spent hours discussing with him the superiority (in his view) of prose over all poetry. (Why should one twist and crimp ideas merely to keep a rhyme?) Auger wrote poems; Lunin heard them with indulgence then critized the works of Parny and Corneille, Racine and, for good measure, Chateaubriand. Third, Auger was an amiable youth, and temperamentally a foil to the splenetic, often quarreling LieutenantColonel. More, Auger was open in his admiration and respect for Lunin; emotionally, intellectually, even in point of physical appearance , the Frenchman was drawn to him - and Lunin knew it. For our part, we may be grateful that Auger found Lunin so engrossing: from him alone we learn such details as that Lunin's was "a small, fine, even aristocratic hand", his eyes grey and shrewd, his voice "sharp and penetrating". (6) It is a fourth factor, however, that perhaps goes furthest to explain the speed of the rapprochment that took place between Auger and Lunin in the summer and autumn of 1815. Certainly Lunin appreciated being gazed upon as on a mighty warrior. (When Auger first met him, in fact, his "features were still pallid" because - unlofty cause - he had but recently had a bullet removed from his groin.) Certainly, too, Lunin found him amusing and a good companion. But there were other, subtler but stronger bonds than these between the pair - bonds formed by common contact with the Jesuits in Russia. Auger, it has been seen, fell ill in Polock in the winter of 1814; his unit left him there and, feverish, he sought the hospitality of local Jesuits. They cared for him. He was invited to call on the Petersburg fathers, in particular on the superior, Father Grivel. Arriving in the capital in 1815, he did so, only to learn that the entire community had recently been driven from both St. P e t e r s burg and Moscow. (7) The Jesuit boarding school, it was alleged, had been attempting to seduce its students from the Greek Orthodox faith. Lunin's own interest in Roman Catholicism, earlier roused by the abbé Vouvillier, was quickened by Auger's experience. In 181516, the two did not discuss religious questions in anything but general terms; later, in Paris, matters would change and Auger would p r e sent Lunin to the Society of Jesus. Fidélité, three-masted and square-rigged, was slow. She was not built to carry passengers, and Lunin's and Auger's cabin was close and cramped. Still, it was bearable, and for food they had provisions given them by Lunin's sister; the galley, at least, they were spared. The first evening out, after a perfect sunset that tinged both sea and sky a sombre red, the crew knelt on the deck in prayer. Lunin looked

23

on, moved but unready to participate. The next day, the weather changed; a storm blew up, and the Fidélité first luffed, then, rocking violently, hove to under the lee of Denmark. Lunin's humour departed. Next morning, he painted what he saw - a low coastline. But such amusements could not speed the ship. Progress was slow. Finally, they hove to again. Lunin characteristically demanded, and was given, a small boat in which to reach the shore. Having landed, he and Auger briskly inspected the Castle of Elsinore. (8) At last, they reached Le Havre, and traveled on to Paris overland. To settle by the Seine, there to write satires, had been Auger's plan. Lunin, fired by the thought of entering on 'a career de libertade', had thought of South America, then North America. Auger had even urged him to depart for North America, leaving the Old World to old men and feebler intellects. Why did Lunin decide to go to Paris? The city of the reinstated Bourbons could hardly have appeared to would-be regicides as a happy land - though Louis XVIII did present a generous target - and the republicans were in disorder. He went, it may be said, for four main reasons: Uvarova, his sister, begged him not to leave for the New World which was so far from Russia; Auger was going there, and they had planned their break with regimented life together; Paris was the centre of that literature and culture that had so deeply influenced Russia for a century or more ; and Nikita Murav'ev spoke of it as a place where much was happening. (Basing his words on his example, Murav'ev had twice delayed his own return to St. Petersburg after the occupation, finally leaving Paris, with reluctance, in the last days of 1815.) There were other reasons, too, why Lunin was quite happy at the prospect of spending some time (how much he did not know and did not care to guess) in Paris: it was a centre of music, publishers and Jesuits; it was a place of endless intellectual activity - and now French thinkers wrote in prose, so could be understood; finally, it was the scene of an intense political struggle between the king and the chambre introuvable, between the Church and an emergent bourgeoisie, free-thinkers and monarchists, adherents to a dozen different orders, cults and dogmas. And was it possible to live there on a modest income (for Lunin intended to be no one's debtor)? Auger said so; and, at his suggestion, the pair took two large furnished rooms on Rue Gaillon, 2e. arrondissement, just off the Avenue de l'Opéra, near where Auger had lived from 1810 to 1814. A quiet street, it was not in a fashionable quarter, but that suited Lunin well; it was not exorbitant, either 5,000 roubles had to last him indefinitely, or until his income could support him. The two ex-officers, one anxious to make contact with his family in Auxerre, the other striving to forget his, led an industrious and unpretentious life. While Auger painted and wrote, Lunin took lessons in both French and English, his command of which had grown uncertain, so little had he used it for ten years. (9) Auger visited friends; Lunin took more lessons, in piano and algebra. Auger bought food and Lunin cooked it. Auger frequented salons, Lunin wrote; what more appropriate than that he write a novel by the Seine, so passing time agreeably but also making an investment in the future? In the

24

event, the future loomed before him in an unexpectedly alarming way. Soon, his supply of ready cash had dwindled to a mere 500 roubles. Auger left for Auxerre; Lunin found it impossible to reduce his rate of spending. By November 5, he was in serious straits. Added to all his difficulties was a physical malaise - he took to his bed, having exhausted his supply of candles and almost all his funds. He wrote to Auger; it was a bitter letter. To benefit the State by taking work, he wrote, (10) was no disgrace; even Epaminodas was once inspector of the drains in Thebes; but he could find no work in Paris. He thought wistfully of Russia, where could be found "friendship unknown in France, that inhospitable land settled by Vandals and rude Gauls... " Nor did his attitude towards potential helpers improve the situation, which was bleak: not only had he no acquaintances or contacts in the city - he declined to make any, scorning the Russians settled p e r m a nently or semi-permanently there as well-born idlers. The Russian Embassy, and Count Pozzo di Borgo, he avoided; Princess Natal'ja Kurakina he slighted; those who visited him he failed to call on in his turn. Soon he was known to Russians on the Boulevard St. - Germain as Lunin-negodj aj (Lunin the scoundrel). But matters, having reached this early nadir, (11) improved as winter wore on and Auger formed a circle or, more accurately, broke into a circle, some representatives of which amused and interested Lunin. The circle was that of Baroness Lidia Roger, recently divorced and now, after a life of luxury, struggling to live on 15,000 francs a year. The baroness was young and, Auger claims, attractive. (12) To her salon came writers, churchmen and mystics, musicians and philosophers - but never, with the r a r e exception, women. One such exception was the pianist and composer Sophie Gail (1775-1819), then working on the happiest of her several light operas, Les deux jaloux. Lunin enjoyed his visits to the baroness's circle. There he met the abbé Thirias, a connoisseur of heresies and expert on magnetism. There, too, he met the Duc de Saint-Simon, with whom he thought of corresponding but apparently did not. There, f i nally, he took part in rambling discussions on "mysticism, martinism, swedenborgism... " and, because the baroness was drawn by the doctrines of Antoine Fabre d'Olivet (1768-1825), philosophy tout court. Meanwhile, he also wrote. The outline of his novel, he informed Auger, he had thought out while still on the Fidélité; the title and the theme were LZe-Dmitrij - the False Dmitrij of the Time of Troubles of the early seventeenth century. ' I t was, " Auger records tersely, "to be an historical novel of the time of the interregnum. " "This", the hopeful author is said to have remarked, "is the most interesting period in our annals, and I set myself the task of elucidating it. " One need hardly comment on the wonderful retentiveness of Auger's memory: to be able to recall lengthy remarks verbatim, after an interval of thirty years, forty years, fifty years, is indeed no small achievement. The fact remains, however, that his is the sole moderately detailed record of this confused period of Lunin's life. It cannot, therefore, be ignored. Lunin worked at his novel steadily. Auger took the completed manuscript, which he had had read to him and thought superb, to an a c -

25

quaintance, Charles Brifaud (1781-1857), a minor poet and the author of a tragedy, Ninus II, which had two years before enjoyed a great success in Paris. As the author of that work, Auger seems to have calculated, Brifaud was certainly well qualified to pass judgement on Lunin's historical novel. To his pleasure, Brifaud was impressed. "I think", he exclaimed, by courtesy of Auger, "your False Dmitrij is a wonder ! Not even Chateaubriand could have written better. " In spite of his apparently enthusiastic reception of the work, however, Brifaud was neither willing nor, he claimed, able to find a publisher for Lunin. He did, however, take it to a countrywoman of the author, Princess Natal'ja Kurakina. Alas, Lunin had aggravated that exalted personage. The novel, she declared, was unremarkable in the extreme, and its author a villain. Lunin's first book was not destined for popular acclaim. Only by the remarks of Auger and Brifaud, indeed, can we even gauge the style or nature of that novel which, most probably because the author himself later destroyed it, has not survived. That a time of interregnum should be taken, and a time of civil war at that, is of obvious interest, suggesting as it does that the ideas which troubled Lunin earlier and which would trouble him again in 1825 were running through his mind during his stay in France also. Most prominent of those ideas were, axiomatically, the illegality and undesirability of absolute kingship - the moral aspects of autocracy. The themes, it may be noted, had dramatic promise that did not escape the eye of other writers of the time: PuSkin's Boris Godunov, K. F. Ryleev's duma of the same title as Lunin's work and A. A. BestuZev-Marlinskij's Gedeon spring first to mind. As might have been foreseen by Auger, Lunin lost interest in fiction altogether on suffering this first reversal. If success would not be swift and brilliant, he would have none of it. For weeks now, in the early part of 1817, he returned to Rue Gaillon only to sleep. He began to lock his work in drawers on leaving, too, and confided less in Auger than before. What he did and where he went, Auger could only guess; but it had been agreed, when the pair first took their rooms on Rue Gaillon, that both were to be free to lead absolutely independent lives; only in that way, Lunin foresaw, could friendship be preserved. At this time, a certain air of mystery creeps into Auger's memoirs. It occurred to him, writes Auger, that Lunin might have joined some secret society. Had Lunin in fact joined a society? It would seem not. He was, however, in direct contact with the agents of an international institution - and Auger had made the introduction for him. That institution was the Society of Jesus, the link between its hierarchy and Lunin, Father Fidèle de Grivel (1769-1842). Grivel, like Lunin, had a life and a career out of the ordinary. (13) Lunin had left the army at the age of twenty-nine for an uncertain, even insecure future; Grivel entered the Society of Jesus at the age of thirty-three, in August 1803, whereupon he left for the provincial Russian town of Polock, where Auger came to hear of him almost twelve years later. Lunin was to be driven out of European Russia because of his alleged complicity in the rising of December 1825 and his earlier plans to kill a Tsar; Grivel was driven out of St. Peters-

26

burg a decade earlier, in 1815. Lunin was to be sent, by an authority that he could not question, first to Siberia, then to the frontiers of Mongolia; Grivel would soon be sent to North America, to become Master of Novices at White Marsh, Maryland. Both men died far from home, Lunin in Akatui, Grivel in Georgetown, District of Columbia. Both men had fine, regular features, grey hair, quizzical expressions; both were idealists, impatient of the mediocre; both passed their lives striving to place ideas at the immediate service of ideals that they had chosen. Both served the Roman Church where Roman Catholics formed a minority that wielded little influence and no visible power. Auger presented Lunin to Grivel, early in 1817, as an outcast and expatriate. Grivel received him warmly. The two met frequently. With Thirias, too, he was in regular contact by February 1817. The pair met in the former's rooms and, though, like Grivel, the abbé failed to make a change in Lunin's outward way of life, he influenced him deeply in another and more private fashion. The work begun by Vouvillier came to fruition in France. This, perhaps, is the greatest significance of Lunin's foreign sojourn of 1816-17. To be sure, his life in Paris played a part in the development of various skills and interests, many of which would be of service to him later. He made a study, for example, of the Church Fathers, prosody and English grammar, and pursued his love of music: for him, Auger was told, the pianoforte was "an instrument of expression, like a pen". (14) Sometimes he improvised, sometimes he put verses to music. Auger, we read, composed a romance of three couplets, each ending with the line: "I am too old; I'm 17. " Lunin put it to music, and called the romance, "A Russian in 1815". Again, he kept the company of writers: Brifaud, Saint-Simon, and Auger himself wrote regularly, several of Lidia Roger's relations did the same: Jean-François Roger (1776-1842), for example, imprisoned during the Terror for composing counter-revolutionary songs, was the author of the comedies L'Avocat (1806) and La Revanche (1809). In Petersburg, he had already met both Karamzin and Batjuâkov. Yet all these things were superficial when compared with the results of his long conversations with Thirias, Grivel and, no doubt, other Catholic priests and thinkers. (15) Lunin returned to St. Petersburg an altered man. Still he was bold, despising les crachats, as he called stars and decorations; and there was nothing new in his contempt for those who held sinecures or struggled to achieve high office in the government of his own country. But one thing had changed: he no longer made a secret of his admiration for and personal adherence to the Church of Rome. It is time to consider briefly his acceptance of the Roman Catholic dogma and authority, not merely in these post-Napoleonic years but all his life; for that acceptance, it will be suggested here, both stemmed from and complemented his adoption, and adaption, of Liberal political beliefs. Certain questions were put to the majority of prisoners held in the damp casemates of Peter and Paul Fortress, opposite the Winter Palace, during the investigation of 1825-26. Lunin, as one not per-

27

sonally present on Senate Square during the rising, had many weeks of leisure in his cell before being interrogated by General A. I. CernySev of the Supreme Commission of Enquiry. Though required to give immediate answers to all questions, he had had time enough in which to steel himself and pray. One of CernySev's questions concerned religious faith. In reply, Lunin declared himself "of the Graeco-Russian creed" adding, however, that he had not confessed every year of his life. (16) There is nothing curious about the answer, at first glance. The first, main part of the reply, indeed, was precisely what the members of the Commission were expecting, and what they had already read and heard some eighty times. It was also, therefore, what Lunin might have been expected, in the circumstances, to provide. The rider to his answer indicates, perhaps, that he knew that the Commission, or some members of it, were aware of his Catholic persuasions. And, of course, "of the Graeco-Russian creed" is a broad phrase, susceptible of various interpretations. Perhaps Lunin was, indeed, baptised by an Orthodox priest, (although elsewhere he implies that he was not). But whatever may have been his reasons for answering in this fashion in May 1826, all claims of truth apart, the statement stands in stark contrast to his subsequent assertion, made in exile, that he "was baptised and educated in the Catholic faith". (17) There has been controversy over this whole question for 100 years, but no final solution. Certain critics and historians have boldly claimed that Lunin was converted to Catholicism in Paris in the winter months of 1816-17, while he shared two shabby rooms with Hippolyte Auger. Of Soviet commentators, S. Ya. Gessen and M. Kogan have perhaps been the most forthright. (18) Lunin, they argue in their study of 1926, was not a Roman Catholic until he went to France after a disagreement with his father; Paris was alive with priests; therefore he became a Roman Catholic while there. Regrettably, as S. B. Okun' made so plain in 1962, (19) the question is less simple than this attitude allows. In the first place, there is not one shred of evidence that Lunin passed through a religious crisis while in Paris (where, one would have thought, a novel, magnetism, Saint-Simon, and Lidia Roger's cold champagne provided him with ample occupation). If he had there undergone intense religious or spiritual experiences, they would surely have been mentioned by the perspicacious Auger; but Auger does not claim to have been conscious of such turmoil. Okun"s case is sound: given his intellectual temper, Lunin cannot have become a Roman Catholic almost spontaneously, but must have pondered the grave matter for weeks, probably months. Why, indeed, should Lunin not have pondered on it years before his leaving P a r i s ? On what grounds must we accept the statement made by D. I. ZavaliSin and others no less suspect, that "Lunin... had no interest in religious questions before going to France"? (20) ZavaliSin, as one moment of reflection clearly shows, could not possibly have known of Lunin's inner life in 1816; nor did the latter share his confidences with him in any later period of their lives. Even disregarding Zavaligin's claimed insight or recollection, it

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seems curious to assert that Vouvillier's work of years did not bear fruit of any kind - until Lunin breathed the air of Paris (whereupon, apparently divested of all doubt, he saw the light of truth). In fact, it must be concluded, matters were simpler and more mundane: Paris saw the conclusion of a long process, begun by Vouvillier, matured by Lunin's sojourn in the West with the Imperial Army, hastened, perhaps, by contact with Auger and other Catholics. It was a climax, not a dream of grace - an ending, not a vision. Catholic teaching, as reflection shows, was well-suited to his temperament which, although placid in his childhood, had ceased to be so in his adolescence. The order and stability imposed and represented by the Catholic Church served suitably as necessary checks to his increasing tendency towards extremes of conduct (his plans to murder first Napoleon, then the Tsar have both been mentioned). Lunin himself came to acknowledge that those checks were necessary, some time after his premature retirement as a consequence of duelling. One other point is clear, and becomes still clearer as one reads through Lunin's private notebook (Zapisnaja knigka), happily published in entirety by S. Ja. Strajx in 1926. (21) This is that on both an emotional and an intellectual plane, the would-be convert had little choice but to embrace the Catholic faith - or to seek out some non-Christian Religion. Atheism was entirely alien to his frame of mind; Orthodoxy he regarded as both shameful and debased, as is apparent from these blunt remarks of 1836: "In the Russian Empire as in that of Byzantium in ancient time, religion, drawn away from its divine origins, is one of the means by which the people are governed. Those changes to which the Eastern Church has been subjected have all derived from earthly power, or have been approved by it." (22) There could be no more concise, or pertinent, condemnation. And Protestantism? "The basis of Protestantism is the preponderance of human reason in the sphere of faith Faith, which comprehends the infinite, is thus subjected to reason, which is finite. Herein lies an internal contradiction. Protestantism is the religion of limited minds. " (23) Nor would even a mystic cult have answered Lunin's needs fully, for, having duly contemplated, he liked to take brisk action. In itself, contemplation of the infinite could not have satisfied him. Lunin adopted the faith that best answered his spiritual and temperamental needs. The fact implies a practicality in his religious life, and that implication, we shall see, was well borne out in his Siberian exile (Chapter Five). From his willing adherence to Catholicism sprang his defence of systematic law, j of stability and regularity in all spheres. From it sprang also his personal sympathy with Catholic peoples everywhere, and with the Polish people in particular. (24) From it, finally, he drew support for his struggle with autocracy in Russia. Lunin's reason for not accepting Moscow as the third Rome was very simple - for him the first had never fallen. Lunin1 s notebook contains the seeds of many thoughts developed

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elsewhere, notably in his later articles and 'letters' to his sister; (in fact, they were lightly disguised pamphlets of an aggressively political nature). For this reason alone, it cannot be ignored by students of Lunin or of the Decembrists' time of exile (1827-56). But for those hoping to learn something of its author's religious attitude, and of the link between that attitude and his political radicalism, it is of special value. For only in that torn notebook did Lunin record his views on such diverse matters as birth and r e s u r rection, sin and the papacy; and even here, it must be said, one is obliged to cope with an obliqueness, a tendency to leave thoughts half-expressed, a range of cryptic comments, hints and aphorisms such as are found nowhere else in his writings. Always, moreover, one is conscious that the booklet, many of the 154 pages of which Lunin himself tore out, was not intended for the public gaze; unlike so many 'personal journals', it was not written with one eye to posterity. All this is constraining; and more frustrating still than any number of wry aphorisms is the fact that statements of a personal, subjective kind are few. There are balanced, objective statements on a wide range of topics - on the schism between Eastern and Western Churches, for example, on liturgy, on the nature of the Catholic Church ('indestructible and divine'), even on the desirability of 'elegant vestments' for the clergy. Interspersed among these statements one finds a great assortment of well-phrased remarks, on law and legal practice past and present, on literature and ancient Greece, slave trading and forgery; and all is in the same, detached, reasonable tone. But where are the intimate revelations, the subjective outbursts? One looks in vain. So well controlled is Lunin's passion, in his notebook, that modern eyes do not at once perceive it. Here there is no confiding tone nor, indeed, despite its detailed date headings, is it a diary in the common sense; there are few admissions, and no foibles are revealed. On the other hand, there are remarkable and beautiful lyrical passages, of which this short extract in praise of Catholic women is not untypical: "The Catholic religion is, so to speak, embodied in women. It adds to the charm of their natures, embellishing the beautiful and plain alike as dew embellishes all flowers. One may recognize a Catholic woman at first glance among a thousand women, by her poise, her glance, her conversation... " (25) Towards women, Lunin's attitude remained consistently idealistic. Mar'ja Volkonskaja, who inspired this p a s s age, moved him to sing her praises in another, earlier letter to Uvarova (June 27, 1837), who is herself treated with chivalrous, tender respect. (26) Lunin died a bachelor. Faith, we read in the notebook under August I, 1837, exalts reason; but the reasons that prompt men to believe must themselves be very clear. (27) It cannot be said, alas, that the reasons which prompted Lunin are clear - his arguments defending Roman Catholicism are no less intellectually banal than those of Chateaubriand in his Génie du christianisme. In supporting his faith, indeed, he commits himself to statements both dogmatic and self-contradictory. Never, before or after, did Lunin's logical powers leave him so totally as in his efforts to justify the ways of popes to men. The fact suggests he

30 was emotionally rather than intellectuallly the happy captive of the Church of Rome. "Only among Catholic women could Raphael find the type of the Madonna", he assures us; again, "Catholic countries have a picturesque appearance and poetic shades that one seeks in vain in states where Protestantism reigns"! (28) Are such utterances to be taken seriously? Or the praises that follow these lines, praises of ruined monasteries, of distant bells promising hospitality to weary (Catholic) wayfarers, to be taken as supporting a serious argument? (29) The answer is apparent: of course such utterances, like the extraordinary assertion that whereas in 'poor Poland' Sunday is 'a day of festival', in 'wealthy England' (in which Lunin had never set foot) it is 'a day of sadness and constraint', cannot be taken as a serious defence of Catholicism. Like Chateaubriand, Lunin chose to confuse the intellectual justification of a credo with praise of that credo's power to evoke the best in man - with its aesthetic and emotional appeal. The emphasis must fall on 'chose'; and, since confusion was deliberate, as we may surely think, all further argument is pointless. How can apologists be blamed for not a c complishing what they did not set out to do ? For Lunin it was enough to enumerate the Church's many glories. Those who had eyes would see. Lunin's defence of Catholicism, such as it is, may be summarized in few words. The Catholic Church is the true Church. "The Church was made by God, stainless... Catholic. " (30) Members and priests of other sects, it follows, are rebels - no Church but the Church of Rome has vested in it 'divine authority'. No bishop, therefore, can vie with the Pope. No other Church is so united or so strong. So far the argument is clear, although simplistic. Only too soon, however, the thread becomes harder to follow as the argument loses itself in minor issues, so weakening and finally destroying the dialectic thrust. Here, for example, is Lunin's approach to all sectarians: The Greeks and Armenians, having removed one word from the Symbol of Faith (a reference to the so-called 'Filioque dispute' - GB), (31) have only three liturgies and one monastic order. Their temples are not animated by the sighs of organs or the harmonies of musical instruments, which voices alone cannot replace. The dress of their priests does not answer the demands of elegance (32) One might cite more, but the point is clear enough. It is undoubtedly true, of course, that large issues between different branches of the Christian Church have generally been fought in the name of seemingly trivial matters. Complex questions of morale, organization and intent - things not easily put into words - are conveniently crystallized in such banalities as were discussed at, for example, Whitby in 664. But Lunin was intelligent, and had no need of formulae. It is pathetic that considerations of the differences between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches should degenerate into a chain of loosely linked remarks on organs, choirs and vestments. Matters do not improve elsewhere in Lunin's notebook, on which we must depend for data on

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his religious views as a grown man,(his more youthful attitudes p r e sent worse problems). "The schism of the Greeks", we read, "was political, not religious, in nature. Religion was a pretext." (33) Again, "The Greeks wished to acquire power. " The vital grain of truth in both these sweeping statements can hardly be denied, Catholic critics may object; but Lunin claims to base these statements "on the views of St. Augustine and Popes Leo and Gregory, whose authority even the fallen Greeks acknowledge"! To which Greeks and to which century does he r e f e r , one wonders? The Schism occurred in the eleventh century; but other lines in the same passage suggest that he was thinking of the fourth. That same lust for power, Lunin continues, accounts for the events of the Reformation. Here, however, those who led the rebels showed more cunning, for "they understood their own illegality, foresaw the impossibility of maintaining power which they had taken on themselves a n d . . . so resolved to share it with the temporal authorities". The crisp blows are those of the professional tactician or pamphleteer; and yet, there is something wholly unsatisfactory about these arguments. "At the very moment of falling away from legal power", it seems, the unhappy Greeks "fell into a debasing servitude. Their house was divided. Patriarchs now squabble among themselves... Some bend under the rod of the Mussulman, others are subjugated by secret police, others again introduce new schisms - they are lost forever. " This has a splendid energy, and flows as oratory should, yet somehow one learns nothing either of Lunin's own convictions or of his specific objections to the Greeks and others 'lost forever'. He approves of the solidity and unity of Rome, deplores the feuds between other Christian groups there is nothing new here. But why did the house of the Greeks fall apart? No explanation is offered. All their troubles, we infer, stem from their having deserted the Pope and 'legal power', that is, from lack of proper respect and obedience. Reasons of a far more immediate kind which prompted the Eastern Church to break with the Popes - issues of power, prestige, alien threat and the desire to increase Byzantine (or Roman) territory - are not touched upon. The poverty of Lunin's 'explanations' of the Tightness of Rome's supremacy stands in bold contrast to the fervour and stability of his religious practice. Imprisoned in Vyborg Castle in 1826 while awaiting transportation to Siberia, his reading would be limited to the New Testament in the Russian and the Old Slavonic texts. (34) Not downcast, he studied the Bible systematically each morning. Later still, in Petrovskij Zavod, a prison-fortress that welcomed some ninety Decembrists and other radicals in the summer of 1830, he would build a small chapel where, it is recorded, he spent long hours on his knees. (35) Released in 1836 and permitted to settle in the hamlet of Urik, near Irkutsk, he built another chapel, this time in his log cabin, and was constant in his devotions. Prince Sergej Volkonskij (1788-1865) lived nearby and saw him often, once being moved to describe his religious observance as "not unworthy of a hermit". (36) It was in Siberia, too, that Lunin extended his command of Greek, not to read Homer, but the better to understand the Scriptures in original. Yet for all his erudition (and there were 397

32 volumes in his private library, covering twenty subjects, by the time of his re-arrest in 1843), (37) he ensured that no doubt crept in to undermine his faith. As was seen, he held no brief for thinking Christians, and it is noteworthy that although he studied history and philosophy, law, foreign literature and even the Church Fathers in Siberia, he found no time for theology. Uvarova received many requests for books and pamphlets, some of which were ordered from the West; but she was never asked to send a work of commentary. The Acta Sanctorum (1643-1794), one of the jewels of Lunin's library, sufficed. (38) Lunin chose to adopt from Vouvillier and the Jesuits in Paris a set of succinct and simple rules, and to those rules he confined his religious philosophy. Never did he openly theorize on his beliefs, remaining, theoretically speaking, one of the Innocents. The rules seem to have been these: that the purpose of this life is the salvation of souls; that one must act so as to save them; that this is best achieved by private prayer and through contrition; but that the Christian should concern oneself also with mens' needs on other levels, the chief of which is freedom in its many forms, political as well as moral, social as well as spiritual and intellectual. To save the soul, that was the vital, liberating issue. It was vital because only the life to come was of eternal worth, liberating because, having entrusted one's soul to the earthy experts, priests, one might pursue temporal occupations as one chose! (39) So it was that Lunin, confident in his faith and its inviolability, could tease the autocratic bear, untroubled by his conscience. Firm in his faith, he could calmly set light to his copy of Hugo's immoral work, NotreDame de Paris, not troubling to wait until that title should appear on the list of proscribed fiction. His faith in himself, as well as in St. Peter's, was remarkable. Remarkable, too, was the precision of his views on benefits brought to mankind by the Catholic Church, and, by direct extension, on reasons why all men should submit themselves to its authority. To take a prime example, "all would have been lost in the days when Europe was plunged in endless war" (which century was this, one wonders?) were it not for the constant efforts of successive popes to bring peace. They contained the overweening pretensions of kings. Their rank of Father of All Christians gave such weight to their pronouncements that no other man could vie with them. And their legates complained of neither journeys nor hardships, if they could settle the disputes of courts, extending the olive branch between the sabres of opposing a r m i e s . . . (40) All this is very well; but it is hard to think that Lunin had indeed such an impression of the history of the Church. It is striking that one well versed in European history, (the notebook and several letters to Uvarova are replete with references to kings, clashes and schisms - even Gibbon is mentioned, slightingly), should truly have held, if he did, that the mediaeval popes had no terrestrial ambitions, that their lives passed in deliberation of how best to soothe

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the quarrels of kings and princes, and that their legates, humble and impartial men, were happy merely to extend the timely olive branch. What, one wonders, of the Popes of Avignon? Again one is reduced to the conclusion that Lunin did not seriously attempt, in his most private notes and perhaps to himself, to justify the Catholic Church, but simply accepted what he found. Had he wished to make an intellectually coherent defence of the papacy, no doubt he would have cited theological authorities. He did not, because he could not; and he could not because the matter had no interest for him. For Lunin, to conclude, the issue of the Catholic Church's rights and unique authority was simple. He made no intellectual defence because he had no need to; he believed. In the notebook the pretence of arguing, where the Church is concerned, is half-heartedly maintained. Logic is reserved for other, legal and political questions - questions which Lunin clearly thought deserving of an intellectually complete and sound appraisal. No less intense than this pretended admiration for the conduct of the papal nuncios and legates "in times of endless war" was Lunin's scorn of mediaeval chivalry. The fact is interesting for he was himself, in modern terms, an officer and gentleman. His own accomplishments with sword and horse were knightly and, like Launcelot, he prided himself on his word - a word that the Grand Duke Konstantin trusted implicitly. (41) Lunin's objections to the chivalric code of behaviour may be reduced to one: that it did nothing to control men's passions. His attitude casts light on his own character. He was a passionate man. In part, at least, the Catholic Church constituted a defence that he might use against himself. And, in this same connection, closer inspection of the seemingly haphazard fragments that combine to make the notebook, and Lunin's apologia, reveals a consistent pattern. Lunin is on his guard against the passions. When they appear, he is swift to denounce them. Entries speak for themselves: "Storms of thought blow up suddenly, like storms on the ocean... We may evoke them, but cannot ourselves calm them. Only on the ship of the Catholic faith are we safe." (42) The Mysterious Helmsman, we learn, is ever present to protect us from ourselves. Other entries and comments of a similar tone support the supposition that, however unabashed his outward shows of gay bravado both before and during exile, Lunin was anxious to control his own passionate nature. It is a paradox, in view of this anxiety, that his articles and letter-pamphlets - writings in which he came to see the sole justification of his life in exile (see Chapter Six) - should draw their force precisely from the passion that provoked them. Such letters as those that deal with the questions of peasant emancipation and the fate of Polish prisoners in Irkutsk give a distinct impression of holding latent heat. (43) They bristle with indignation. Concise, tightly a r gued, they somehow pass a current of anger onto the reader. No longer static, Lunin's anger is released. There are, it has been said, few subjective statements in his notebook or his letters. But there are some, and these cast welcome light

34 on Lunin's actions, not only in Siberia but also in the pre-Decembrist years. First, there is his private view of death. Lunin believed implicitly in the eternal fires of Hell. "Death", he remarked (Winter, 1836), "eradicates the root of sin, which lives in us always although it does not always show itself. It is therefore both necessary and desirable... Death is the greatest proof of love. " (44) Presumably, he also believed that he himself would not descend into Hell, and that the force of love is stronger than the force of sin, its enemy. Yet he was not outwardly a loving man, and in sixty years formed few intimate friendships. Except for his cousin Nikita and, at an enormous physical distance, his sister, no one was closer to him in the hamlet of Urik than his own servant VasilicT, a former serf of more than seventy years, once exchanged for a borzoi hound, lost at cards and sold under the hammer. "Notwithstanding certain differences of habit and inclination", wrote Lunin in July 1838, "we get along perfectly. " (45) Love affairs played no part in his earlier life, nor have we reason to suppose that he regretted for a moment not having married. Indeed he claimed, not altogether laughingly, that one of the three fates awaiting each of his fellow-prisoners on their release from Petrovskij Zavod was - The Marriage Bed. The other two, which in his view equalled it as risks for serious agitators, were the bottle and the monastery cloister. (46) By inference, his fellow-prisoners took revolution and its planning less seriously than he. While forming close attachments to few men and fewer women, one must add immediately in Lunin's defence, he loved, or tried to love, all men. It is a common enough experience, perhaps, to meet those who, although little gifted to love individual men, yet feel a generous love for all mankind. Many of these, no doubt, resemble Lunin in their lack of tolerance for persons intellectually less gifted than themselves. Lunin was doubly affronted: first, by the obstinacy of those into whose company he was thrown, second, and no less painfully, by awareness of his pride, which he regarded as a mighty sin. No entry in his notebook is plainer or, in its way, more moving than this, under "The Feast of Easter" (1837): "We have been given the ability to love and must direct it towards our Maker, and through Him to His creations. Otherwise the more able we are to feel, the more unhappy... If a man could understand an angel, he would weep; he would love him, and so become unhappy." (47) Nor is this the sole expression of such feelings. One thinks of the particularly poignant letter to long-suffering Elizaveta Uvarova of July 21, 1840, written as Lunin entered on the last phase of his life. "Experience", he a s sures her, "has not changed but has rather emphasized my feelings. Now I love friends and enemies with equal warmth. The idea of the salvation of the State (that is, of Russia - GB) once troubled friends and enemies alike; and blinded by the sudden light, they did not notice that their common good is hidden in i t . " 'The salvation' was, of course, the removal of autocracy. Loving all men, and combining extreme Liberalism with no less intense religious faith, Lunin naturally did what he could to sustain the flagging spirits of his fellow-prisoners. Not that practicality

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meant proselyting - it did not; only once, in Peter and Paul Fortress, succumbing to emotional and physical oppression, did he enter an argument over religious matters. Annenkov records the incident in general terms. (48) Having spent hours in solitary prayer in his cell in Petrovskij Zavod, Lunin would come out cheerful and joking, ready to laugh at his alleged fanaticism. (49) It was in other and more concrete ways that he strove to help himself and others in their struggle with the agents of autocracy. The building of the Cita Cross, in 1829, both typified his enterprise and stood as a. monument to his extraordinary perseverance. The cross, a massive wooden structure twenty feet high, roughhewn and visible for miles around, was built by prisoners in fiita at Lunin's instigation. It stood on a hillock, two miles from the fortress from which the prisoners, noble, base-born and non-Russian alike, were conducted under escort every day during the summer to bathe in the nearby river Ingoda. (50) It was a curiously shaped hillock - a barrow, to be more precise, and contained, besides the dust of Siberian chieftains, bones of more recent vintage, belonging to a Russian private. The soldier, punished for his part in the revolt of the Semenovskij Regiment against the infamous Colonel Schwartz, (the 'Schwartz Incident' of October 17, 1820), had hanged himself after a bloody scourging. Also buried in the barrow, according to the resident Orthodox priest in