Kelly Laurence, Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran

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have done his diplomatic career no good had they been intercepted.

the other hand, he may not have been unwilling for Kakhovsky to pass

on his comments to his uncle: ‘All without exception respect Alexis

Petrovich [Yermolov],’ he wrote on one occasion, ‘and regard the slightest

word from him as a reward’.

Griboyedov returned to Tabriz with mixed feelings, at one moment

seeing his future there as a desert of boredom, at another as an

opportunity to distinguish himself by his zeal in furthering Russian

interests. He was no longer acting head of the Russian mission there, for

Mazarovich had arrived from Tehran while he was away. An imposing

new residence had been built for him at great expense; Griboyedov con-

trasted the splendours of this ‘palais de Russie’ with his own small

house nearby. It was large enough, however, for him to give card parties;

with his books and piano lost somewhere en route from St Petersburg,

vingt et un was one of his chief distractions.

Apart from the various diplomatic missions accredited to Abbas

Mirza, there was a fair-sized European community in Tabriz: soldiers,

military instructors, traders, adventurous travellers like Ker Porter. One

of the most interesting figures from Griboyedov’s point of view was

Madame de la Marinière, governess to the Crown Prince’s children. The

wife of a doctor in Tabriz, she had served in the mini-court of Napoleon’s

sister, the Duchess of Piombino, in Lucca, had travelled widely in

Europe, and known Madame de Staël. There were other more accessible

ladies, among them a certain Mademoiselle de la Fosse, the daughter of

the former military doctor there. Griboyedov, displaying something of

that specifically Russian quality known as vranyo – or outrageous

boasting – claimed that she was on the brink of granting him her

favours, though Mazarovich was competing for them too.

A tone of disrespect was creeping into Griboyedov’s references to

Mazarovich.

He owed him a debt of gratitude for following Yermolov’s

lead in overlooking his duel with Yakubovich; had Mazarovich made an

issue of it, his career would have ended before it began. He had found

him genial and good company to start with, not given to standing on his

dignity, and with a gaiety that had lightened the hardships of their

journeys. Disenchantment had probably begun with the question of the

deserters, and Mazarovich’s failure to honour his promises about their

treatment, but there were basic differences in attitude between them.

Fiercely patriotic, Griboyedov was far more hawkish in his outlook than

Mazarovich. He was influenced perhaps by Yermolov’s aggressive atti-

tudes; Mazarovich’s milder approach was closer to that of the Foreign

Ministry in St Petersburg, which wanted no trouble with the British,

more interested in peaceful relations with Persia than in asserting

Russia’s military supremacy. The Russian mission in Persia had a

Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran

difficult brief in following the contradictory policies emanating from St

Petersburg and Tiflis.

Mazarovich’s foreign background – he did not become a naturalised

Russian till 1836 – and fervent Catholicism were further sticks for

Griboyedov to beat him with. As an Orthodox believer, for whom the

Russian church was synonymous with Russian patriotism, he was

irritated by Mazarovich’s ostentatious parade of Catholic piety. ‘A priest

has appeared as a house magician alongside Mazarovich, a certain Kaplan,

a Catholic bishop from the Chaldees…’ he complained to Kakhovsky.

‘The Crown Prince appears to have given him to Mazarovich. He and his

brother Osip go jointly to confess to him.’ Griboyedov had been forced

to escape from the influence of Mazarovich’s Latin missals by galloping

off into the plains.

Even Griboyedov was not tactless enough to show his feelings about

Mazarovich openly, confining himself to disloyal remarks in his letters

to Kakhovsky and other friends. Mazarovich was his official superior, and

it was in his interest to work with him, especially in the all-important

area of trade. The Russo–Persian War, by interrupting British trade

routes from India, had done much to take away commercial advantages

that country had previously enjoyed. The Treaty of Gulistan, following

on the Russian annexation of Georgia, had opened up new opportunities

for Russian trade with Persia, the balance of profit being very much on

the Russian side. Exports of cotton, furs, raw silk and brocades from

Persia fell far short of the quantities of paper, glass, leather and cloth

coming from Tiflis and Astrakhan. Mazarovich, as head of the mission,

was officially in charge of furthering commercial relations with Persia, but

he and his brother Osip were also busily engaged in trading on their own

account. Amburgherr accused them sourly of abusing their privileged

status by ‘dragging themselves around the bazaars’.

Griboyedov might have criticised them too, but he had his own

hopes of cashing in on any trading opportunities available. His financial

situation was as dire as ever. His civil servant’s salary scarcely covered

his expenses, his mother’s unsavoury dealings at Kostroma had left her

with little to spare. Soon after his return to Tabriz, he had made the

acquaintance of a former French army officer, Théodore Ettier,

who had

come to seek his fortune in Persia, and had just been enrolled as an

instructor in Abbas Mirza’s army. Ettier, who had lived in England, was

immediately welcomed by the French and English colonies in Tabriz,

and it was at the house of Dr de la Fosse that he first met Griboyedov.

He described him in his memoirs as a young man full of talents and

amiability; ‘from then on,’ he wrote, ‘we became very close’. Their friend-

ship was based on mutual interest. Ettier’s position as a member of

Abbas Mirza’s military staff made him a useful informant professionally.

Diplomatic Diversions

It seems likely that Griboyedov recruited Ettier as an unofficial agent;

this was perfectly normal at the time, when almost all fortune-seeking

Europeans in Persia had a secondary activity, working either for the

British or the Russians as well as their Persian employers. More impor-

tant for both of them, however, was the idea of setting up in business

together, and of making their fortunes, as the nabobs of the British

East India Company had done the previous century.

Neither Ettier nor Griboyedov had any capital to float the venture,

but Griboyedov was able to call in the help of his rich friends Alexander

and Nikita Vsevolozhsky, whom he had first met at Moscow University.

(Alexander, the elder, was the founder of the Green Lamp Society.) The

Vsevolozhsky brothers had a wide variety of financial and trading

interests: iron smelting in the province of Perm, river transport on the

Volga, fish smoking in Astrakhan. Griboyedov put Ettier in touch with

Alexander, and in the summer of 1823, when Griboyedov was on leave

in Moscow, the three young men met to set up their plan for a ‘trading

enterprise between Russia and Persia’. Griboyedov’s mother, surprisingly,

was to be another partner in the enterprise. Financed by Vsevolozhsky,

Ettier set out on a fact-finding mission round Persia to gather intelligence

on prices, notably of arms, and potential business, armed with intro-

ductory letters to local governors and grandees from Griboyedov and

Mazarovich. Mazarovich saw no conflict of interest between the roles of

diplomat and entrepreneur.

By early 1825, the arrangements for the trading company were in

place, but Vsevolozhsky, when the moment came, found himself unable

to realise sufficient capital without damaging his existing business. The

project had to be temporarily shelved, and before it could be revived the

twin blows of the Decembrist catastrophe and the second Russo–

Persian War of 1826 put an end to the whole idea. By the time the war

was over, Griboyedov’s aims had changed, and another company was

proposed in place of the one he and Ettier had been unable to develop.

Griboyedov’s hopes of finding a Persian Eldorado had failed, but he

had learnt from the experience. Vsevolozhsky had lost money in financing

what was in practice a feasibility study of trading conditions between

Russia and Persia. But it had been a study with a difference, in that the

Russian Government, through Griboyedov and Mazarovich, had extended

protection to it. For Griboyedov, it had provided a wealth of useful infor-

mation, holding out hopes of a far more ambitious project in the future.

It had also taught him that private finance was unreliable. Someone

else should take the risk of launching a trading venture, on a suitably

colossal scale. Should this not be the Russian Government itself? His

restless intelligence now turned to the problem of making his own

financial interests coincide with those of the state.

Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran

Griboyedov’s plans to form what would be in essence a Russian

version of the East India Company belong to another chapter. In 1820 and

1821, he was still marooned in Tabriz, involved in the first stages of his

unsuccessful joint venture with Ettier, and bemoaning the boredom of

his exile. ‘What a life!’ he wrote to a friend, A.I. Rykhlevsky, on 25 June

1820, ‘ … Perish the day when I first donned the uniform of a diplomat!’

Despite his complaints, however, there were diplomatic excitements

afoot, in which he would play a leading part. The Greek movement for

independence, leading to a general insurrection in 1821, had placed the

Tsar in a difficult position. On the one hand, as an upholder of the status

quo in Europe, he was bound to treat the Sultan as the legitimate

sovereign of the Greeks. On the other, opinion in Russia demanded that

fellow Orthodox Christians should be supported in their struggle

against the Turks. Military common sense dictated that any distraction

that would tie up the Turkish army away from the Balkans would not

only help the Greek cause, but also further Russian interests of an

expansionist character in northern Persia. Would Russia launch a ‘just

war’ against the Sultan? Would Yermolov, as the Russian Commander-

in-Chief become the ‘saviour of Hellas’?

Tsar Alexander vacillated about these grave questions, and weakly

recalled his envoy from Constantinople. Yermolov, who had accompanied

him to the Congress of Laibach, was aware of his doubts, but saw no

harm in fomenting trouble between the Persians and the Turks. The

excuses for conflict were already there. A high-ranking Turk from

Baghdad, who had been persecuted by the government there, had fled

to Persia for refuge. He had been kidnapped back across the border by

the Turks, together with a number of Abbas Mirza’s officers, and had

later been beheaded. There had also been complaints that a number of

Persian (Shiite) pilgrims to Mecca had been insulted by the (Sunni)

Turks, and that their women had been mistreated. Encouraged by

Russian assurances that the Tsar would turn a blind eye if the Persians

acquired a few extra provinces from the Turks, Abbas Mirza decided

that he had sufficient pretext for launching a campaign against Turkey.

Crossing the frontier with an army of 40,000 men, he attacked the town

of Yeni Bayazid. The Turks responded by seizing all Persian property in

Turkey, and by besieging a former Turkish fortress in Erivan, which had

been captured by the Persians some years previously.

The war continued for two years, pursued with only moderate

enthusiasm by both sides. Abbas Mirza was chronically short of money,

and his appeals to the Shah for help rebounded when the Shah

responded by ordering 15,000 men, under one of his chief officers, Allah

Yar Khan, to march to his assistance. ‘This was a species of aid by no

means to the Prince’s taste,’ wrote James Baillie Fraser, an English

Diplomatic Diversions

traveller returning from Bombay who witnessed the campaign, ‘and he

is said to have inveighed bitterly against his royal father, for making use

of such a ruse de guerre, and choosing a moment of so great necessity

to quarter upon him a large body of worthless troops, who would only

plunder and impoverish the country.’

The Russians, spurred on by Yermolov, paid the British the supreme

compliment of copying their policies of financial leverage. An order from

the Russian Finance Minister, Guryev, countersigned by Nesselrode

himself, transferred the sum of 1,000,000 silver roubles to Abbas Mirza

towards the costs of the campaign. Meanwhile, Griboyedov, who despite

his earlier differences with Abbas Mirza seems to have to got back on good

terms with him, did his best to strengthen his resolve with assurances

of Russia’s sympathy, even suggesting that the Tsar himself might go to

war with the Turks if their persecution of the Greeks continued. In this

he was echoing Yermolov, who had written to Mazarovich in August

1821, saying that the Russian Government ‘might be compelled to resort

to force in order to curb the violent and bestial frenzies of the Turks,

who were slaughtering innocent Christians for no reason whatsoever’.

Griboyedov’s active encouragement of Abbas Mirza during the

Turkish–Persian War earned him the gratitude of the Persians,

who

awarded him the Order of the Lion and the Sun, second class. Mazarovich,

who had played a more passive role throughout, received no such

award. To some extent the two men’s positions reflected the differing

policies of the Foreign Ministry in St Petersburg and Yermolov in Tiflis.

In 1828, describing the part he had played during the war, Griboyedov

wrote to a friend, ‘I prosecuted this very successfully, receiving a

reprimand from Nesselrode, though I was fully supported by Yermolov’.

The war ended in June 1823, in what was virtually a stalemate.

The frontiers remained unchanged, though there were a few minor

concessions on each side. Abbas Mirza’s army had been ravaged by

cholera in the last stages of the campaign, but he chose to regard the

operation as worthwhile. Persian honour, he told Yermolov, had been

vindicated, which had been his only aim in going to war. From the

Russians’ point of view, the episode had been highly satisfactory, tying

down the Turks in an important eastern diversion from the Greek war

of independence. It had also helped to counter the influence of the

British, disrupting their trade and undermining their position as Abbas

Mirza’s chief paymaster.

For Griboyedov, the war had been a chance to distinguish himself in

Yermolov’s eyes. In November 1821, he had come to Tiflis on leave to have

treatment for a broken arm, and had so impressed the Commander-in-

Chief by his grasp of the Persian situation that Yermolov had intervened

with Nesselrode to have Griboyedov seconded from the Persian mission:

Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran

‘Knowing as I do his splendid capabilities, and wishing to make use of

his knowledge of the Persian language, I have the honour to request that

he should be transferred to me as a secretary for my diplomatic

chancery’.

From Tiflis, Griboyedov continued to carry out Yermolov’s

hawkish policies, keeping in close touch with Abbas Mirza, the Georgian

Prince Sevarsamidze, the Russians’ liaison officer with the Persian

army, and provincial governors like the Sardar of Erivan.

Mazarovich had been happy to let Griboyedov go to Tiflis, seeing the

advantages of having a spokesman who could report directly to

Yermolov. In fact, far from being a loyal supporter, Griboyedov may well

have been part of a whispering campaign against him for failing to

uphold Russian dignity and for being too subservient to Abbas Mirza. It

was headed by the belligerent Muravyov-Karsky (the witness at

Griboyedov’s duel with Yakubovich), who had been specially indignant

at a story that Mazarovich had kissed Abbas Mirza’s hand in gratitude

for his decision to go to war. ‘Good God!’ he exclaimed. ‘What an act

worthy of a foreigner, a hireling in our service!’ As Muravyov could not

have been present at this interview, it is likely that Griboyedov was its

source. If so, it was a shabby ending to Griboyedov’s relationship

with a kindly and tolerant superior who had not only overlooked his

indiscretions, but given him the opportunity to shine in his first

diplomatic post.

Griboyedov’s two years in Persia, ‘this gloomy kingdom where one

learns nothing and worse still, loses the very memory of what one

knew’,

had done much to further his career. He had arrived in Georgia

under a serious cloud because of his role in the Sheremet’yev duel, and

had promptly engaged in another. Yermolov had ignored this officially

criminal act, but it had needed hard work to live down the two duels. In

Tabriz, as Mazarovich’s second-in-command, he had been able to deal

directly with the Crown Prince and had felt the intoxication of power

politics in tempting him into the war. The affair of the deserters had

perhaps caused him moral suffering, but had done him good in his

superiors’ eyes. Few diplomats at such a young age had enjoyed so

much responsibility, or achieved their objectives so successfully. His

recall to Yermolov’s staff was a sign that he had worked his passage

back, as it were, and that the follies of the past were forgotten.

On a deeper level, the years of exile had been invaluable too.

Drawing up the balance sheet in his notes on Griboyedov (as taken

down by D.A. Smirnov), Beguichov commented on the benefits of his

enforced isolation.

His character had been tested and strengthened by

the challenges he had encountered, and his long periods of leisure had

given him the opportunity to study deeply, in particular to add to his

already dazzling array of languages. He had learnt Persian thoroughly,

Diplomatic Diversions

and studied Persian poetry, even attempting some Persian verses of his

own, and had also begun to learn Arabic, Sanskrit and Turkish. Above

all, it was in Persia that Woe from Wit began to take shape.

According to Beguichov, Griboyedov first conceived the plot of the

play in St Petersburg in about 1816. ‘But I know,’ he wrote, ‘that he

changed many scenes in Persia and Georgia, excluding for instance

the provision of a wife for Famusov, a grande dame with a sentimental

manner (false sentimentality was very much the fashion amongst Moscow

ladies of the time).’ There is no such character in any existing manu-

script of the play, so Beguichov must have seen a draft which has now

been lost.

Another friend who heard some early extracts from the play was the

Georgian Cornet Prince Bebutov of the Narva Dragoons. A sympathetic,

liberal-minded figure who had abolished the instruments of corporal

punishment in his squadron, he was a friend of Griboyedov’s from his

time on Kologrivov’s staff in Brest-Litovsk. In 1819, on his way home to

Georgia, he met Griboyedov, who had just left Yermolov in Grozny,

where Bebutov’s brother was stationed. Griboyedov was able to give him

news about him, and the two young men rode from Mozdok to Tiflis

together, pausing to call on Bebutov’s parents; since Bebutov’s father

could not speak Russian, he and Griboyedov communicated ‘quite

freely’ in Persian. Bebutov claimed that Griboyedov read him his verses

during their journey, including some from Woe from Wit, which was then

only in a preliminary stage.

Beguichov and Bebutov provide the only evidence about the early

sketches of the play, but it was in Persia that Griboyedov’s ideas for

it took final shape. He was inspired, so it is said, by a prophetic

dream. There are two versions of what happened. Bulgarin, in his

Memoir of our Unforgettable Friend, A.S. Griboyedov, describes how

Griboyedov, alone one evening, was thinking sadly of the theatre and

his absent family and friends, and fell asleep in a kiosk in his garden.

He dreamed that he was once more back among the people he loved

best, and that he was describing to them a comedy that he was going to

write, and even reading extracts from it to them. On waking he seized a

pencil and wrote down some scenes from the first act, and the concept

of the whole play.

Griboyedov’s own version of the story, in a letter to an unknown

prince (probably Shakhovskoy) dated 20 November 1820, is longer and

more detailed. He dreamed, he wrote, that he was entering a house

where he had never been before, where a grand party was in full swing.

The host and hostess received him at the door. Going through a number

of brilliantly lit rooms, he saw a number of familiar faces, including that

of his uncle. In the last room, the guests were conversing and dining.

Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran

You [Shakhovskoy] were sitting in a corner leaning towards someone

and whispering; your lady was next to you. A delightful feeling overcame

me. Somebody came towards me and said, ‘Is that you Alexander

Sergeyevich? How you have changed!’ It was impossible to recognise

him. You came with me into a long adjoining gallery and put your head

so close to my cheek that I blushed. You bent over to touch my face …

and asked me questions for a long time. ‘Was I writing anything?’ You

forced out of me a confession that I had no inspiration and no wit, and no

desire to write. I was avoiding the challenge; my heart was not in it. You

bewailed this state of things: ‘Make me a promise that you will write?’

‘What would you like?’

‘You know yourself. When will it be ready?’

‘Within a year. I solemnly promise.’

At this moment a small person, whom short-sightedly I had not noticed,

said very distinctly, ‘Idleness destroys talent.’ You said, ‘Look who is

here’. I looked round and who was it? His head jerked up and he threw

himself round my neck with a cry, hugging me warmly. It was Katenin.

I then woke up and tried to forget such a pleasing dream. I went out to

refresh myself; what a splendid night! Nowhere do the stars shine so

brightly as in this dreary Persia. As the hour was just after midnight the

muezzin began to chant the dawn prayer from the nearest minaret. All

the other mosques picked up the chant; a cool night breeze blew and

vividly recalling my promise I sat down to write. What was given in a

dream must be achieved in the cold light of day.

It would be nearly four years, not one, before the promise in the dream

was fulfilled. But the commitment had been made. By the time that

Griboyedov left Tabriz, he had already begun a new draft of the play.

Diplomatic Diversions

On returning to Tiflis,

Griboyedov found his intellectual solitude light-

ened by the presence of a St Petersburg friend and colleague, Wilhelm

Küchelbecker. Küchelbecker (nicknamed Kukliya), who had joined the

Foreign Ministry on the same day as Griboyedov, and was now attached

to Yermolov’s staff, belonged to the same literary world as Griboyedov

and his friends; his name appears in almost all the literary memoirs of

the time. A classmate and close friend of Pushkin’s, he had studied at

the Lycée at Tsarskoye Selo, where he had imbibed the free thinking of

the period. His radical views had been strengthened when in 1820 he

went abroad as secretary to A.L. Naryshkin, and witnessed the turbulent

liberalism of Italy in Naples and Sicily, and, from Nice, the revolution

in Piedmont. These experiences, together with the growing call for the

liberation of Greece, led him inevitably to consider the state of Russia.

In November 1820, he met Goethe in Weimar; they had several

meetings devoted to poetry and its state in Russia. In Paris, still crusading

for Russian literature, he met Benjamin Constant, who arranged for him

to lecture at the Athenée Royale des Arts. His lectures, addressed to high-

minded progressives in France on behalf of their Russian counterparts,

struck such a radical note that the French police forbade them and the

Russian embassy took alarm. He returned to Russia in semi-disgrace,

and to get him away from St Petersburg was sent to Tiflis as a member

of Yermolov’s staff.

Küchelbecker stayed in Tiflis only a few months before being dismissed

by Yermolov as the result of a foolish and unnecessary duel.

But before

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Tiflis

their intimacy was broken off, he and Griboyedov had ample time

to establish a lifelong friendship. Küchelbecker was twenty-three, two

years younger than Griboyedov, ungainly and myopic, with a drooping

moustache and heavy German accent – his father, a Saxon noblemen,

had been in the service of Tsar Paul and been rewarded with a property

in Estonia. Already a rising literary figure, Küchelbecker hero-worshipped

Griboyedov, addressing several perfervid poems to him. Two typical

stanzas give their tone:

Ah, but you …you will soar above the singing of the crowd!

The hand of fate has accorded you, Troubadour,

A lively spirit, the flame of feeling,

A sparkling gaiety, the quietude of love,

The golden mysteries of art

And blood that leaps within your veins!

Oh! when I descend to the dim shores of Lethe

A mute and nameless shade,

Then let my image, illumined by your soul,

Glimpse the day one final time!

Obedient to your call I shall fly from the grave,

Unfold my pinioned wings,

Rise to the gilded sun –

And ardently plunge into the eternal dawn!

Recalling their friendship later, Küchelbecker wrote how Griboyedov

had opened his eyes to Shakespeare (who, he insisted, should only be

read in the original); how he detested ridicule or sarcasm about the

beliefs of other races, while remaining devoted to his own deep Orthodox

faith; how he had inspired him with love for the beauties of the Slavonic

bible: ‘

I read today the first thirty chapters of the prophet Isaiah,’ he wrote

in 1832:

the fiery strength of his writing is unequalled by any other prophet. The

first five chapters are so inspired they amount to an ode, and were loved

as such by my dear departed Griboyedov. He read them to me in Tiflis

in 1821, and literally forced me to read them too, which is how I came

to know them.

For Griboyedov, after the intellectual starvation of Tabriz, it was a joy to

find a friend who could share his interests and ideals. At last he had a

committed listener, someone from his own literary circle, on whom he

could test out his verses. He gained inspiration from his audience.

According to Küchelbecker, ‘Griboyedov wrote Woe from Wit almost before

my eyes; at the very least he read each separate scene directly after its

composition’. However, he may not have heard the play in its entirety,

at least not in its final version. Beguichov claims that only the first two

Return to Tiflis