Kelly Laurence, Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

cards was the fact that her brother’s daughter, Elizaveta Alekseyevna,

was married to General Paskievich, one of Nicholas’s most trusted

generals and a member of the commission. Another circumstance in

Griboyedov’s favour was the fact that Nicholas, though suspicious of

Yermolov, was reluctant to move against him openly. He knew him to be

popular with his troops, and had no wish to precipitate a mutiny by

removing him from his post; Griboyedov, as Yermolov’s diplomatic

adviser, was to some extent protected by Nicholas’s cautious attitude

towards his chief.

Griboyedov was lucky not to be imprisoned in the grim Fortress

of St Peter and St Paul, where most of the leading Decembrists were

incarcerated. The fortress was gravely overcrowded,

and the head-

quarters of the general staff was being used as a kind of holding pen for

surplus prisoners. Here conditions were far better than in the gloomy,

dripping cells of the fortress, where darkness and loneliness played their

part in breaking down the resistance of the accused. In the guard-room

of the staff headquarters, Griboyedov could mix with other prisoners, and

receive books and newspapers from friends outside.

Security was com-

paratively relaxed. He was allowed to visit Laredo’s tearooms, adjoining

the general staff building on the corner of Admiralty Square, a fashionable

establishment deservedly famous for its ices, where customers could

peruse the latest newspapers at leisure. There was a piano in a separate

room. Here Griboyedov entertained his security officer, Captain

Zhukovsky – a passionate musical amateur – by playing the piano; his

fellow prisoner Zavalyshin would read the papers while Griboyedov

beguiled his attentive listener with Mozart and Rossini.

Griboyedov was the two-hundred-and-twenty-fourth person to be

cross-examined by the commission. The first session took place shortly

after his arrival on 11 February, in the cellars of the Hermitage.

Zavalyshin recalls how a fellow prisoner, a certain Colonel Lyubimov,

came up to Griboyedov in the guard-house while he was preparing his

defence. ‘Whatever you are writing has nothing to do with me,’ said

Lyubimov. ‘I have no contacts at all with you, so please accept that

advice as utterly impersonal and unbiased.’ He warned him to say as

little as possible about himself and his friends. ‘Much better stick to the

old Russian saying: “I have absolutely no idea, I know nothing”.’

It was sound advice. During his first interrogation, conducted by

Adjutant-General Levashov, Griboyedov denied any knowledge of the

conspiracy. Levashov noted down his answer:

I did not belong to the secret society and I did not suspect its existence.

When I came back from Persia to St Petersburg, I became acquainted

with Bestuzhev, Ryleyev and Odoyevsky through the literary interests

we shared; I was already linked with Küchelbecker from our time

Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran

134

together in Georgia. From all these people I heard nothing which could

have given me the slightest idea about the secret society. In conversation

with them we often exchanged bold judgements about the government

in which I took part. Where I thought things were harmful, I wished for

improvements. There were no other acts on my part which could possibly

have brought me into suspicion. As to why such suspicion has fallen on

me, I can neither comment nor elaborate.

Levashov was impressed by Griboyedov’s seeming frankness, and led

him to understand that he would soon be released. But the commission

did not intend to let him get away so easily. On 14 February, some of the

leading figures of the conspiracy, including Ryleyev, Nikita Muravyov,

Odoyevsky, Bestuzhev, Trubetskoy and Obolensky, were formally asked

whether Griboyedov had ever been enrolled in the Northern Society. All

but the last two denied that he had ever been a member, and did their

best to minimise his involvement. Trubetskoy, backtracking, admitted that

his evidence was only based on hearsay. The most damning statement

came from Obolensky, who claimed that Griboyedov had been received

as a member a few days before leaving St Petersburg, though he himself

had not been present. Two other minor figures, Briggen and Orzhritsky,

also claimed that they had heard him mentioned as a member.

Griboyedov, probably unaware of these interviews, wrote a personal

appeal to the Tsar the following day.

He pleaded his innocence, the

injustice of the suspicions which had led to his being dragged 3000 versts

from Grozny, and the effect which the news of his tragic situation would

have on his mother, who might well lose her reason on hearing it. He

had been totally frank with Levashov, who had promised him a speedy

release, but the days had gone by and he was still incarcerated. ‘All-

merciful Sovereign … be good enough to give me back my freedom, the

loss of which my conduct in no way deserves, or allow me to confront

my accusers face to face, so that I may refute their lies and slanders.’

The letter, with its tone of injured innocence, did nothing to advance

his cause: ‘One does not write to the Sovereign in such a manner,’ noted

Dibich drily. On the evening of 24 February, his eyes blindfolded,

Griboyedov was led across the ice of the Neva to the Fortress of St Peter

and St Paul for a full-scale interrogation. This time he faced the whole

commission, including his cousin by marriage Paskievich, the War

Minister, Tatishchev, Grand Duke Michael and the Tsar’s new head of

security, Count Benckendorff. Unlike his fellow prisoners, broken down

by questioning and the prospect of death or forced labour in Siberia,

he remained cool-headed and composed throughout the interview. His

attitude was typified in a note to Bulgarin (to whom he wrote a note from

prison, asking for a copy of Childe Harold): ‘To fear people is to indulge

them or to flatter them’.

135

The Decembrist Débacle

Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran

136

He freely admitted his acquaintance with five of the most active

figures of the December uprising, Bestuzhev, Ryleyev, Obolensky,

Küchelbecker and Odoyevsky; their role on the fateful day he already

knew through chance conversations in the Caucasus, Moscow and the

Guard House. He agreed that he had discussed general questions of

reform with them, but denied that he had any knowledge of the con-

spiracy. Trubetskoy and others were mistaken in believing that he shared

their views. ‘Just because I agreed with them in certain judgements about

morals, literature and new ideas, it does not prove that I agreed with

them politically.’

As for Obolensky’s allegation that he had joined the

Northern Society just before leaving St Petersburg in May 1825, he dis-

missed it completely. The Prince must have confused it with the fact that

he had joined the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, a few days

before leaving the capital; he had always considered his membership of

the society, which enjoyed imperial patronage, as one of the consolations

of his life.

In this, as in many of his answers, Griboyedov was dealing in half-

truths. In fact, as the records of the Academy of Sciences show, he

joined the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature five months, not two

or three days, before leaving St Petersburg, so it was hardly likely that

such a confusion would have arisen. His interrogators never cross-

checked this, or other statements. A group of well-bred, sometimes

bumbling, senior military men, they were scarcely the stuff of which

Fouquier-Tinvilles or Vyshinskys are made.

Griboyedov had made a good impression on the commission, who

recommended his release the following day. The Tsar refused. He was

still suspicious of Griboyedov’s intimacy with Yermolov, and the possi-

bility that he might have joined the Southern Society, with the aim of

recruiting in the Caucasus. The question of possible subversion, even a

branch of the society, existing in the Caucasian corps of Yermolov’s

army was not yet settled in his mind: he wanted further exploration of

the possibility. As with the Northern Society, some leading members

of the Southern Society, Bestuzhev-Ryumin and the Muravyovs, were

formally interrogated on Griboyedov’s involvement with the rising. All

made it clear that he had not been asked to join them, that they did

not know him well enough, and that there had been no intention of

creating a splinter movement in the Caucasus.

The Tsar remained

unconvinced, still brooding over Yermolov’s possible disloyalty. It was

not until the end of May, when he had received a report from his

special envoy to the Shah, Prince Menshikov, stating positively that

there was no evidence of any disaffection amongst Yermolov’s officers,

and that his troops were overwhelmingly loyal, that he was forced to

abandon his suspicions.

In the interval, Griboyedov had undergone a series of further inter-

rogations, through which he had managed not only to evade or deflect

difficult questions, but also to avoid drawing anyone else into trouble.

For instance, in describing his educational influences, he refrained from

mentioning his tutor Dr John, but concentrated on Bühle, who was

already dead. He was never confronted with his friends from the

Northern Society who, with the exception of Trubetskoy and Obolensky,

had always played down his relations with them, nor did the commission

follow up the inconsistencies in their evidence. He was fortunate in the

support of General Tatishchev, to whom Yermolov had written interceding

for him, and of Paskievich, whom he later called ‘my benefactor’. He was

also helped by the civil servant in charge of the committee’s paper work,

a certain A.A. Ivanovsky, who admired him as one of the hopes of

Russian literature, and may well have adapted or omitted unfavourable

evidence. On 31 May 1826, on the advice of the commission, his file

was finally minuted by the Tsar: ‘Release him with a certificate of

innocence’.

On the same day, Tatishchev sent a formal note to

Yermolov to tell him that Griboyedov was freed of all suspicion, and had

been granted the necessary funds to rejoin his post, namely the

chancery of the GOC in Tiflis, where he had the honour to serve as

diplomatic secretary.

The Decembrist Débacle

137

Griboyedov was officially released on 2 June 1826. A week later, he was

promoted to the rank of College Counsellor, seventh class (equivalent to

Lieutenant-Colonel), with a corresponding rise in salary. As a further mark

of favour, he was granted an audience with the Tsar, together with a

number of other well-connected prisoners who had also been exonerated.

The Tsar was ‘most affable to us,’ Griboyedov told Varvara Miklashevich;

‘he was clever, wise and kind, and spoke with an adroitness and skill

only equalled in my experience by Yermolov’.

Still reeling from his narrow escape, Griboyedov could only express

gratitude to the imperial autocrat whose towering presence and terrifying

‘pewter eyes’

had reduced so many of the Decembrists to grovelling

remorse. The Tsar had insisted on interrogating the major conspirators

himself. Far more punitive and vengeful than the commission, he was

determined to make an example of the plotters, ignoring the advice of

those who pleaded for a more lenient approach. The conspiracy, after

all, had failed; its tentacles had reached into almost all the country’s

leading families. It might have been politic as well as generous for the

emperor to propitiate them by beginning his reign in a spirit of magna-

nimity. It was not in his character to do so.

There was no death penalty as such in Russia, though the punish-

ment of flogging in the army came to the same. But the guilt of the

leading five conspirators was considered so great that they were

sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. In the spirit of modern

enlightenment, the Tsar had commuted the sentence to hanging only.

138

XVII

The Persian

Campaign

On 12 July, Ryleyev, Nikita Muravyov, Kakhovsky, Pestel’ and Bestuzhev-

Ryumin were hanged on a common gallows in the courtyard of the

Fortress of St Peter and St Paul. At two in the morning the following day,

more than 100 former officers were led from their cells into the same

courtyard, where detachments from all the regiments in St Petersburg

to which they belonged were gathered. One by one they were made to

kneel down before their respective regiments, while their epaulettes and

decorations were stripped from them, and their swords broken over

their heads. They were then led back to their cells, to await the long

journey in chains to forced labour in Siberia, or to serve in the ranks in

the ‘warm Siberia’ of the Caucasus.

Almost all of Griboyedov’s circle had been gathered up. Obolensky

and Trubetskoy were sentenced to hard labour for life, Küchelbecker

and Odoyevsky to 12 years, Bestuzhev to five; all were deprived of their

nobility and rank. Pushkin, still exiled on his country estate, was one of

the few who escaped the frightful reckoning, but his grim sketch of the

five hanged men, scribbled in one of his notebooks, summed up the

horror of the situation. Of the soldiers who had blindly followed their

officers onto Senate Square, more than 200 had been killed, others

would be flogged to death or reassigned to the front line in the

Caucasus, where the chance of surviving the tribesmen’s bullets was

very small.

Griboyedov had been extraordinarily lucky to escape. Even if it was

true that he had never joined either of the societies, it is inconceivable

that he had not been aware of their aims. To have had foreknowledge of

the conspiracy without revealing it was an offence in itself. He had

survived thanks to his own coolness under questioning and the support

of influential friends. But the psychological toll must have been very

great. Granted leave before returning to the Caucasus, he spent two

months recovering in the country with Bulgarin.

Since 1825, Bulgarin and Grech had been editors of a new literary

journal, the Northern Bee. Even before the Decembrist catastrophe, it

had been notably conservative in its outlook, and for the next 30 years

the paper would be one of the leading upholders of government policy.

Bulgarin himself was on close terms with Count Benckendorff, the new

head of government security, and was a political informer on occasion.

However, he had only narrowly escaped arrest that winter owing to the

malice of a journalistic rival, and he had shown considerable courage in

sending books to Griboyedov while he was in prison. He was an ardent

admirer of Griboyedov, whom he had first met in St Petersburg two

years before. ‘I was fonder of Griboyedov than any other human

being … perhaps I even loved him more than my children; this was

something holier and more precious than anything else in the world. His

The Persian Campaign

139

spirit was paradise, his mind was the sun.’ One is reminded of the

passionate devotion Griboyedov inspired in Küchelbecker, and indeed in

other friends, such as Beguichov and Bestuzhev.

Griboyedov’s mood during his stay with Bulgarin was sombre in the

extreme.

‘He only saw those close to him, passing his time in reading,

conversation, walking and playing the piano … his improvisations were

impregnated with a deep feeling of melancholy.’ Two poems probably

dating from this time were found in his notebook after his death. The

first, entitled ‘Liberation’, was a lyrical evocation of the woods, blue skies

and silken lawns to which he had been restored. But freedom was

meaningless – he was alone. ‘Our lips are sealed with grief, our hands

bear heavy chains.’ The second, dedicated to ‘O’, almost certainly

Alexander Odoyevsky, was a lament for their friendship:

Your gifts inspired my verses and my thoughts.

I loved you with my very soul.

O God, my Creator, I reproach you

For so pitilessly cutting short our dawning century.

The world as Griboyedov had known it before 1826 had been shattered

irretrievably, and he had to come to terms with the new one being

fashioned under Nicholas I. His association with Bulgarin, a compara-

tively venal figure when contrasted with the blazing idealism of his

martyred friends, was a sign of things to come.

Henceforth he must

conform to the suffocating ideals of the new regime: Orthodoxy, autocracy

and nationalism. Under Alexander I there had been no official ideology

as such. With the suppression of the Decembrists, and the very different

character of Nicholas I, a military autocrat rather than a civilian

Hamlet, it could truly be said that the rules of the game had been

changed. Confirmed in his hatred of everything that threatened the

status quo, the Tsar saw his mission as an absolute ruler as a sacred

obligation. A rigid bureaucracy would replace the nobility as a ruling

class; free speech and the expression of political opinions would become

taboo. Romantic liberalism, even the heedless babble of drawing-room

radicals like Repetilov, had no place in the new order. Griboyedov’s

university contemporary Chaadayev, who had been abroad during the

Decembrist tragedy,

would sound a solitary note of protest when he

published the first of his Philosophical Letters, with its drastic indictment

of Russian history and culture, in 1836. The Government’s response

was to declare him officially insane; Chatsky’s fate in Woe from Wit,

where his diatribes against society are taken as a sign of madness, had

been prophetic.

For Griboyedov, there was no longer any room for the Chatsky side

of his character or the luxury of denouncing society’s hypocrisies. The

Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran

140

time had come for survival. As a newly promoted Counsellor, it was the

role of Molchalin, the assiduous civil servant, that he must now adopt.

Beset by chronic financial problems, he required his miserable state

salary. He had none of the ‘arrogance of riches’ enjoyed by those of

independent means; he knew he had no choice but to conform. (In fact,

as he admitted to Bulgarin,

he was broke: ‘I haven’t a single kopeck.’)

Reflecting his new-found resignation, he advised Beguichov to read

Plutarch, since history at least was safe. Republican heroes were

unthinkable in the new present. ‘I have stopped being clever,’

he confided.

Friends of the past, now exiled or in prison, would always acknowledge

that Chatsky, through his fiery eloquence, had expressed his generation’s

aspirations and ideals. No Decembrist ever accused Griboyedov – who

had not only escaped a prison sentence, but been promoted on release

– of being traitor to their cause. Only Griboyedov could ask himself, in

his innermost conscience, whether in escaping the martyrdom of so

many of his friends he had played an ignoble role. For the rest of his life

he would do his utmost to mitigate the fate of his friends, borrowing

money to help Küchelbecker, pleading with Paskievich for Odoyevsky

and Bestuzhev, as former officers, to be transferred from Siberia to the

Caucasus. But the knowledge that he had survived where others had

not, must have always been with him, driving him on perhaps towards

a different kind of expiation.

For the time being, his duties in Georgia called him, and in the middle

of August, after a short stay with Beguichov and a farewell visit to his

mother, he set out on the long dusty ride towards the Caucasus.

At Vladikavkaz he met up with his old friend General Davydov, now

re-appointed to active service commanding a cavalry brigade on

Yermolov’s staff. The two men travelled to Tiflis together, riding ahead

of the slow-moving convoy in a light two-wheeled droshky; during their

conversations together Griboyedov was able to recount the story of

Yermolov’s generosity in forewarning him.

They arrived in Georgia to find the country at war.

In July 1826,

exasperated by Yermolov’s failure to make concessions over disputed

border areas (Balikloo and Lake Gokcheh), and urged on by his Shiite

clerics, Abbas Mirza had launched an attack on Karabakh. War had

been brewing for some time. Abbas Mirza had long resented the refusal

of the Russians to accept him as the Shah’s official heir; the Russians

favoured the claims of one of his brothers, who was more likely to go

along with their demands. The news of the Decembrist rising had at first

spread the idea that Russia was on the brink of a civil war, and thus in

a poor position to defend itself. Even when it was dispelled by Nicholas’s

official envoy, Prince Menshikov, who had arrived in Persia to bring the

The Persian Campaign

141

news of his accession as Tsar, the situation between the two countries

did not improve.

Menshikov, although the official envoy, was not

allowed to override Yermolov’s policies.

Yermolov was spoiling for a

fight. Not only did he refuse to discuss disputed borders, but he had also

moved Russian troops into two tracts of Persian territory at Gokcheh

and Balikloo firmly believed by the Shah and the British to be Persian

according to the Treaty of Gulistan. This violation was supposedly to

prevent incursions from Muslim tribes. Despite this, he was taken by

surprise by Abbas Mirza’s attack, and the subsequent invasion of

Georgia’s southwestern border provinces by troops from Erivan. The

Russian army, thinly spread over vast areas of country, was unable to

stem the Persian advance; Karabakh was devastated, and only the

gallant defence of Shusha, during a six-week siege, saved Georgia itself

from being overrun.

At this moment of crisis, Yermolov, the man of action, played a

curiously passive role. Disregarding orders from the Tsar that he should

use the 15,000 troops already in Georgia to occupy Erivan, he insisted

that it was impossible to do so until Karabakh, and the safety of

Georgia itself, had been secured. His call for reinforcements had only

been partially met. Neither the Tsar nor Foreign Minister Nesselrode –

Capodistrias had retired in 1820 – had wished for war with Persia, and

Menshikov had still been in Persia when Abbas Mirza had invaded

Karabakh. Yermolov was offered a compromise involving concessions

near Talish against the Gokcheh/Balikloo infringements, but killed it

off. (Prince Menshikov had only been able to get home thanks to the

good offices of the British.) Having done everything to provoke the war

by his intransigent attitudes, Yermolov now seemed incapable of dealing

with it;

he later claimed that his energies had been paralysed by the

knowledge of the Tsar’s distrust. For the Tsar, who did indeed suspect

him, it was a further confirmation of his views. He still did not dare to

dismiss him, but he appointed the loyal Adjutant-General Paskievich

as his commander in the field, under direct orders from himself, thus

effectively bypassing Yermolov’s authority as Commander-in-Chief.

Arriving in Tiflis at the end of August, Paskievich rapidly justified the

Emperor’s faith in him by routing the main Persian army on the banks

of the Akistafa near Elizavetpol on 14 September; the tide of Russian

defeats had been turned.

Paskievich had won the battle in the teeth of furious opposition from

Yermolov and Madatov, even to the extent of denying him troops and

supplies. Griboyedov, on his return to Tiflis, found the two men at

daggers drawn. ‘My life here is miserable!’ he complained to Beguichov.

I did not get to the seat of war as Alexis Petrovich [Yermolov] did not get

there and now we have another war [between the generals]. If two elderly

Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran

142

generals fight, the feathers fly from the coats of their subordinates; my

former friendship with A.P. [Yermolov] has rather chilled.

Griboyedov was in an embarrassing position.

Before leaving Moscow,

his mother had extorted a promise from him that he should do his

utmost to serve under Paskievich, seeing the appointment of a powerful

kinsman as an ideal opportunity to re-establish his career. At the same

time Griboyedov was deeply indebted to Yermolov, and there were those,

such as Davydov and Muravyov-Karsky, who did not hesitate to accuse

him of ingratitude. In his memoirs, Muravyov reminds us how much

Griboyedov owed to Yermolov: he had turned a blind eye to his second

duel, he had recommended him (unsuccessfully) for a decoration for

repatriating the deserters, he had promoted him to his diplomatic

chancery, above all he had given him an opportunity to destroy any

compromising papers before his arrest in 1825, and had written to

Dibich on his behalf.

Griboyedov had still been fascinated and impressed by Yermolov in

the months before his arrest, but his poem ‘The Brigands of the

Chegem’ showed that he was beginning to have doubts about Russia’s

‘civilising’ mission in the Caucasus as preached by Yermolov; his

conversations with enlightened figures like Prince Vyazemsky may also

have helped to change his perspectives. There had been too many

hangings and floggings, too many bodies swinging in the wind. On a

pragmatic basis too, it was becoming clear that Yermolov’s policies of

terror were not working. His oppressive treatment of the Muslims in the

former Persian provinces had been one of the factors in inflaming

religious opinion against the Russians; when the war came, his punitive

campaigns against the tribesmen of Chechnya and Daghestan proved to

have been counterproductive, tying down so many troops on garrison

duty that he had not enough to fight elsewhere.

The process of detachment started slowly.

In private, Griboyedov’s

first reactions to Paskievich were disrespectful, even hostile. Davydov

reports him as saying to him and Shimanovsky, one of Yermolov’s ADCs,

‘How could you wish to see this idiot triumph over one of the cleverest

and best intentioned men in Russia? Be sure, our man will prevail, and

Paskievich who has crept into this situation, will remove himself in a

hurry.’ He added that Paskievich was ‘an unbearable ass, gifted only

with the cunning of a Ukrainian’, and that all his successes were due

to the excellence of Yermolov’s soldiers, and the skills of Generals

Velyaminov and Madatov.

Paskievich, in fact, was an experienced soldier who had fought in all

the main campaigns of the war of 1812, and later commanded the Guards

Infantry Division, in which the Tsar, then Grand Duke Nicholas, had

served under him. As a result, the Tsar referred to him affectionately as

The Persian Campaign

143