A Tournament Of Shadows: Andrei Mikhailovich Fadeev

A Tournament Of Shadows

II. Andrei Mikhailovich Fadeev

Andrei Mikhailovich Fadeev, from his youngest, one might say, his teenage years, was already in the service of Russia. He was born on December 31, 1789, in Yamburg, St. Petersburg Province, where his father, Mikhail Ilyich Fadeev, was quartered with his regiment. Having entered military service in 1762, in the Pskov Dragoon Regiment, Mikhail Ilyich served in it throughout his thirty-two years of service, He was considered a good officer, and retired with the rank of Major, but under the pretensions of the regimental commander, Count Dmitry Aleksandrovich Tolstoy (who was known in his time for his obstinate character.) In 1795 he entered the Civil Service of the Department of Communications, which was then called the Water Communications Department, and continued his work there in various positions. He was the head of the Borovets and Volkhov rapids, and he was the Director of the Orginski Canal in the Minsk Province until 1816.[1] Andrei Mikhailovich’s mother, Ekaterina Andreevna (née Von Krause,) was a true Christian woman from Livonia who was both kind and careful. (“Andre-evna” being the Russian style of patronymic, i.e., “daughter of” Andre. The Mikhail-ovich in Andrei Mikhailovich indicated he was “son of” Mikhail. First names in Russia were typically Christian names, almost invariably the name of a saint.)

Soldiers, the midwives of empire, were tending to contractions on the frontier. When Andrei Mikhailovich was born, the latest Russo-Turkish War had been waging for two years and had another three years remaining. The war began as an attempt by the Ottomans to regain land that they had lost during the previous Russo-Turkish War (1768-1774,) but they ended up losing even more territory. Russia formally gained possession of the Sanjak of Özi in 1792, which they renamed Ochakov, and it became a part of Ekaterinoslav Viceroyalty. Russia also won control of Crimea, finally achieving their long sought-after warm water port. The British Prime Minister, William Pitt, opposed the Tsarist annexation of Ochakov, fearing that Russia might upset the existing balance of power. This would mark the beginning of “The Great Game,” in Asia between Britain and Russia, or “The Tournament of Shadows,” in the parlance of the latter. (This conflict would have to wait, however, as both countries would soon enough fight for their lives during the Napoleonic Wars.)[2]

He had seven brothers and two sisters. The eldest brothers (Ivan and Alexander) were part of the Cadet Corps, four brothers (Pavel, Konstantin, Peter, and Mikhail) were in the Artillery Corp. The latter four entered military service at the same time (a special favor by Prince Platon Alexandrovich Zubov,) as Mikhail Ilyich, upon his leaving military service, had found it difficult to educate them. The last of the brothers was Nikolai, who died while young. His two sisters were Ekaterina and Maria, the former married the engineer, Colonel Slivitsky, the latter married an official named Yedalov.

Of all the brothers, only Andrei Mikhailovich was not brought up in any educational institute. Due to his parents’s special affection for him, his parents did not wish to be separated from him. (He likewise did not wish to be separated from them.) Private education in Russia was, indeed, a lucrative profession, and therefore an object of speculation of all kinds. Here the place of a private tutor was considered to be a convenient step to all classes of honorable posts (and by many as an office for life.)[3] Given the family’s small means, especially for home education, however, the education that Andrei Mikhailovich received was, to put it gently, “insufficient.” His mother taught him German, and for French, he studied under an old Frenchman named Virtmann (who was once the valet of Prince Radziwiłł of Poland.) Virtmann was an effective pedagogue, as he did not speak any Russian, and constantly chatted with Andrei Mikhailovich in French, thereby forcing him to practice. He would later learn more correctly from his father’s former assistant, an official named Makarov. Who knew French quite well. Fortunately, Andrei Mikhailovich had a good memory, an inclination to read, and was interested in conversations with people who had some knowledge.

As for his memories, the furthest back he could recall was 1794, when his father retired from military service. He remembered living in Petersburg for a year, and how his brother, Mikhail, who was a year older than him, nearly shot him with a pistol when they were playing in the carriage house. He took the pistol from the carrying case, and thinking that it was not loaded, pulled the trigger. The bullet whirled past Andrei Mikhailovich’s head, grazing his temple.

He remembered 1795. That was the year that Ivan Fedorovich Mamonov, his father’s former regimental commander, recommended his father for work at the Water Communications Department. They stayed in Tver Province, fifty miles from the new city of  Vyshny Volochok, on the great road from St. Petersburg to Moscow, at the conflux of the Volga, Tvertsa, and Tmaka Rivers. There were many landowners in the neighborhood, not elegantly intelligent, but sharp enough, and more importantly, kind. He remembered the man named Choglokov whom his father often took him to visit. Although he was a chamberlain, Choglokov was incredibly superstitious, and ran from priests in houses, as if it were a sign of plague. He remembered when the landowner Tyrtov brought news of Empress Catherine’s death at the end of 1796, and how much talk and anxiety that event generated.

Catherine’s son, Pavel Petrovich, was the new Romanov Tsar. His pro-German sentiments, however, and mercurial temperament, made him unpopular among the Russian nobility. There was also the matter of his controversial handling of the new conflict on the frontier. Despite vowing to defend Eastern Georgia, Russia rendered no assistance when Aga Mohammed Khan (of the Persian Qajar Dynasty,) sought to reestablish its traditional suzerainty in the region by invading in 1795.[4] Thousands of Georgians were massacred, and 15,000 citizens were taken into captivity and sent to Persia as slaves. Catherine began a campaign to overthrow Agha Mohammed Khan. 20,000 Russian soldiers began their trek from Kizlyar in April 1896. By June, Russian troops occupied Talesh, Salyan, Derbent, Baku, Shamakhi, and Ganja. Following the death of his mother, however, Pavel Petrovich recalled all troops from the Caucasus.

Tsar Pavel Petrovich Romanov.

In 1797, Count Jacob von Sievers, Governor of Novgorod, Tver, and Pskov, was named head of the Water Communications Department. Mikhail Ilyich was subsequently transferred to the Volkhov Rapids with the assignment of staying at the Gostinopol Pier, above the rapids. Here the nine-year-old Andrei Mikhailovich met Count von Sievers, who came for an inspection. He was a tall, thin, gray-haired old man, and wore a sand-colored tailcoat, with a blue ribbon across his camisole, burdened with stars. He was a remarkable Russian statesman, but being of Baltic German extraction, he did not hide his belief that every German official was more honorable than a Russian.

“Kannst du Deutsch?” Count von Sievers asked Andrei Mikhailovich.

“Ja, Yakov Efimovich,” he replied. “Ich verstehe und spreche Deutsch.”

This was enough to please Count von Sievers, and he tenderly patted the boy on the head.

The Russian word for German, “Nemetz,” meant “mute,” as in the sense of not speaking Russian. It was also broadly applied to foreigners, particularly Northern Europeans, many of whom were laborers and merchants and had colonies in the empire.[5] They were instrumental in building up the seafaring infrastructure that Peter the Great had envisioned for the nation.

Count von Sievers had a passion for his compatriots. He created a huge staff for his Water Communications Department at Volkhov and assigned them the task of ensuring that coastal pilots did not harass ship captains when they passed through the rapids. It was a matter of corruption. There was a dishonorable trend among these pilots to escort ships who paid them money rather than observing the queues of those who arrived first. Mikhail Ilyich was one of three officials who worked under a man named Svenson, who Count von Sievers named as director. It was commonly believed (among the Russians at least) that Svenson only got the position because he, like Count von Sievers, was a German. He was certainly an unlikely candidate.

(Left) Count Jacob von Sievers. (Right) Pella Palace c. 1796.

Svenson was a brilliant locksmith, but in this role, no technical skill was required. The whole point was to prevent the pilots from being willful, and as Svenson was over seventy years old, it seemed rather doubtful that he could impose his will with any credible dominance. His whole occupation consisted of skillfully cutting a bunch of lacquered boxes, which he sent as gifts to his St. Petersburg patrons, and signed the papers his clerk gave him without ever having read them. His active service was hardly active. Three or four times a summer, when the quarantine passed, he came out of his apartment and walked to the shore. Wearing a chintz robe and donning a tri-fold hat (complete with plume,) he showed off like a peacock as he joked with the pilots who mocked him behind his back. Far from respecting his authority, the pilots did not cease their extortion scheme, far from it, their corrupt activities flourished under the Svenson’s watch. Perhaps this would be tolerable at least, if Svenson was a gracious man. Svenson was not. He was a stubborn, strong-willed, petty, bureaucratic-Tsar, who refused to listen to anyone else. Mikhail Ilyich asked to be transferred, and Count von Sievers kindly obliged, sending him to clean the Nevsky Thresholds near St. Petersburg.

Though it only replaced Moscow as the capital of Russia in 1712, the site of Petersburg belonged, from time immemorial, to the Russians—if one regarded the Republic of Novgorod as a rebel power that sprang up in times of tumult. This was when Ivan III, in the fifteenth century, gathered together the divided provinces of Russia under his sway. The Neva was then (as it had been for several centuries) the grand highway of the external commerce of Novgorod. Ingria on the left bank, and Carelia on the right, had been more than once a debatable land. Blood was shed between the forces of the republic and those of the invading Swedes; the latter, taking advantage of the distracted state of Russia in the beginning of the seventeenth century, obtained firm possession of Ingria and Carelia in 1617. The Swedes made good use of their conquest, building a town called Nyen, at the confluence of the Okhta with the Neva which became a famous point of commerce. Peter the Great, however, was not keen on having the maritime frontiers of his kingdom remain in the possession of a foreign power. He directed all of his resources to the re-conquest of the Neva. In 1703 the fortress of Nyen fell and at the same time, a Swedish fleet was destroyed, thus Peter the Great became master of the Neva, the grand avenue of commerce. The question naturally arose: How to secure the conquests Russia had gained? The whole country around was a marshy forest or a marsh. The Tsar was determined to found magnificent city, however, and set to work terraforming the land near that part of the Neva that fell into the Gulf of Finland. Here he set to work with an enthusiasm a regia animositas which had few parallels in history. The number of laborers required was therefore immense. These consisted of Swedish prisoners, Cossacks, Tatars, and Kalmyks brought from their distant solitudes of the burgeoning empire. To build a city between the Baltic and the White Sea, forty thousand men were employed at one time, races, tongues, and creeds were intermixed, and the young women of the Neva, the mothers of the future capital, received husbands from the banks of the Don and the Volga. The building of St. Petersburg was calculated to cost the lives of upwards of three hundred thousand men, but in four months the fortress was completed, and named in honor of the apostle. It contained a wooden church dedicated to the apostles Peter and Paul, on the three spires of which a ship’s flag was hoisted on Sundays and festivals. In the one-hundred-and-thirty-something years since its founding, it had grown to its present cosmopolitan state.^[6] There was a saying in Russia that Moscow was a “feminine” city, while Petersburg was a “masculine” city. Firstly, owing to the gendered aspects of the Russian language, Moskva had a feminine ending, while Petersburg had a masculine ending. Beyond that, the structured, orderly, grid of Petersburg was European, and modern, indicating the metaphysical masculine. Moscow, with its winding streets had grown organically, was imbued with an ancient magic, and considered cheerful and bright when compared with the new capital. In this respect, it was regarded as metaphysically feminine.

During his assignment at the Nevsky Thresholds, Mikhail Ilyich had to stay in the Pella Palace, and he took Andrei Mikhailovich with him. Located on the left bank of the Neva River, nineteen miles east of St. Petersburg, Pella Palace was the summer residence built during the reign of Catherine the Great for her grandson, Alexander Pavlovich. The foundations for the magnificent palace were laid at the time of his birth (1777,) but it was never completed, and lack of funds prevented the “ruins” from being cleared away. Andrei Mikhailovich spent two summers with his father here, and the memories of the scenery along the Volkhov would remain with him throughout his entire life.[7]

SOURCES:

[1] Zhelihovskaya, Vera Petrovna. My Childhood. A. F. Devrien. St. Petersburg, Russia. (1893.) [Preparation of the text and comments by A.D. Tyurikov. Bahmut Roerich Center; Zhelihovskaya, Vera Petrovna. “Helena Andreyevna Hahn, Zeneida R-va.” (1885.) [Preparation of the text and comments by A.D. Tyurikov. Bahmut Roerich Center.

[2] Fromkin, David. “The Great Game In Asia.” Foreign Affairs. Vol. LVIII, No. 4 (Spring 1980): 936-951.

[3] Kohl, J. G. Russia And The Russians In 1842. Carey And Hart. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (1843):132.

[4] Ledonne, John. “Building An Infrastructure Of Empire In Russia’s Eastern Theater, 1650s-1840s.” Cahiers Du Monde Russe. Vol. XLVII, No. 3. (July-September 2006): 581-608.

[5] Schmemann, Serge. Echoes Of A Native Land: Two Centuries Of A Russian Village. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. New York, New York. (2011): 70.

[6] Ritchie, Leitch. A Journey To St. Petersburg And Moscow Through Courland And Livonia. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown. Green, And Longman. London, England. (1836): 48-52

[7] Fadeyev, Andrei Mikhailovich. Vospominaniia: 1790-1867. Vysochaishe Utverzhd. Yuzhno-Russkago. Odessa, Ukraine. [Russian Empire.] (1897): Part I: 7-12.