Kelly Laurence, Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran
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List of Illustrations
The Griboyedov family crest, courtesy of N. Volkov-Muromtsov. p.6
Plan of house and estate of Khmelita, courtesy of N. Volkov-Muromtsov. p.8
Plates
1. Pushkin meeting Griboyedov’s corpse at Gergery between Tehran and
Tiflis, 1829. Lithograph, P. Borel, 1892.
2. Sketch of Griboyedov by Pushkin which appears on one of Pushkin’s
drafts for Eugene Onegin. R.G. Juikova, The Portrait Drawings of Pushkin,
Petropolis, St Petersburg, 1996.
3. Lt General A.P. Yermolov (1777–1861). George Dawe, after 1812. Military
Gallery, the Hermitage, St Petersburg.
4. A.I Yakubovich (1792–1845). N.A. Bestuzhev, 1831.
5. Nina Chavchavadze before marriage. Watercolour, artist unknown. Palace
Museum, Zugdidi.
6. Griboyedov’s mother’s house on the Novinsky Boulevard, Moscow. Photo
early twentieth century.
7. Khmelita. Priscilla Roosevelt, Life on the Russian Country Estate, courtesy
of Yale University Press, 1995, and Professor Roosevelt.
8. N.M. Karamzin (1766–1826). Engraving, N. Utkin, 1819.
9. P.Ya. Chaadayev (1794–1856). The Major Works of P.Ya. Chaadayev, tr.
R.T. McNally, London, 1969.
10. General A.S. Kologrivov (1776–1818).
11. S.N. Beguichov (1785–1859).
12. A.V.I. Istomina (1799–1848). Gouache on bone, Winterhalder. Courtesy of
Pushkin Museum, Moscow.
13. Prince A.A. Shakhovskoy (1777–1846). Sketch by Pushkin, 1821,
showing him with donkey ears. R.G. Juikova, The Portrait Drawings of
Pushkin, Petropolis, St Petersburg, 1996.
14. P.A. Karatygin (1805–79). Courtesy of Pushkin Museum, Moscow.
15. V.A. Karatygin (1802–53). Courtesy of Pushkin Museum, Moscow.
16. F.F. Kokoshkin (1773–1838). Watercolour caricature, Dmitrovsky
Provincial Museum. Portraits of Pushkin’s Contemporaries, Representative
Art, Moscow, 1975.
xii
List of Illustrations
xiii
17. P.A. Katenin (1792–1853).
18. A.A. Zhandr (1789–1873). Photograph, Piksanov Collection, Pushkin House.
19. W. Küchelbecker (1797–1846). Caricature, P.L. Yakovlev, 1820.
20. Count K.V. Nesselrode (1780–1862). Caricature, N. Boranov, courtesy of
Pushkin Museum, Moscow.
21. K.K. Rodofinikin (1760–1838). Caricature, P.J. Tchelitshchev, 1820s.
Courtesy of A.V. Kornilova.
22. I.A. Krylov (1768–1844). Alexander Pushkin and His Time in the Fine Arts of
the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, Khudojnik, RSFSR, Leningrad, 1985.
23. N.V. Vsevolozhsky (1799–1862). Oil, Desearno, courtesy of Pushkin
Museum, Moscow.
24. S.I. Muravyov-Apostol (1796–1886). Watercolour, N. Utkin.
25. P.I. Pestel’ (1793–1826). Watercolour, N. Bestuzhev.
26. I.D. Yakushkin (1793–1857). Drawing, Sokolov after Utkin.
27. A.A. Bestuzhev (1797–1837). Watercolour, 1823–4.
28 K.F. Ryleyev (1795–1826).
29. Arrival in the Caucasus through the mountains: the Daryal Gorge.
N.G. Tchernetsov, c.1832. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
30. The Georgian military highway, between Lars and Vladikavkaz.
N.G. Tchernetsov, 1805. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
31. N.N. Muravyov (1792–1866).
32. General A.A. Velyaminov (1771–1837). George Dawe, courtesy of
Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.
33. Metekhi Church, Tiflis. N.G. Tchernetsov, 1839. Rumyantsev Museum.
Alexander Pushkin and His Time in the Fine Arts of the First Half of the
Nineteenth Century, Khudojnik, RSFSR, Leningrad, 1985. Courtesy of the
State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.
34. Tiflis. M.Yu. Lermontov, 1837. Pushkin Literary Museum, St Petersburg.
35. Scenes of Georgian life, near the Sioni Cathedral, Tiflis. Georgian girls
dancing the ‘Lesginka’. Prince G. Gagarin, pub. 1840.
36. Mirza Abul Hassan Khan (1776–1846). Sir William Beechey, 1810,
commissioned by the East India Company. Courtesy of Oriental and
India Office Library.
37. Crown Prince Abbas Mirza (1792–1833). Sir Robert Ker Porter, from
Travels in Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia During the Years 1817–1820
(2 vols, 1821).
38. Persian meal inside a caravansaray. From G. Drouville, Voyage en Perse
faite en 1812 et 1813, Paris, 1825.
39. Persian in court dress. From G. Drouville, Voyage en Perse faite en 1812
et 1813, Paris, 1825.
Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran
xiv
40. Persian musicians. From James Morier, A Second Journey Through
Persia, Armenia and Asia Minor to Constantinople (1818).
41. Fath Ali Shah (1762–1834). Mihr Ali, 1809–10. Hermitage Museum, St
Petersburg. A.T. Adamova (ed.), Persian Paintings in the Hermitage,
Slaviya, St Petersburg, 1996. Courtesy of Hermitage Museum, St
Petersburg.
42. Fath Ali Shah receiving the homage of his son, Abbas Mirza. Oil. Picture
Gallery, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. A.T. Adamova (ed.), Persian
Paintings in the Hermitage, Slaviya, St Petersburg, 1996. Courtesy of
Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.
43. Prince P.A. Vyazemsky (1792–1878). Oil, O.A. Kiprensky. Alexander
Pushkin and His Time in the Fine Arts of the First Half of the Nineteenth
Century, Khudojnik, RSFSR, Leningrad, 1985.
44. F.V. Bulgarin. Caricature, Stepanov.
45. N.I. Grech (1787–1847). Profile, Thomas Wright, 1820s.
46. A.I. Odoyevsky (1802–39). Watercolour, N.A. Bestuzhev. I.S. Zilbershtein,
The Artist Decembrist, Nicholas Bestuzhev, Representative Art, Moscow, 1977.
47. E.A. Teleshova (1804–57) as Luisa in the ballet The Deserter. Oil,
Kiprensky. Courtesy of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
48. Bear Promontory, near Gursuf, Yalta, Black Sea. Oil on canvas,
Boglyubov Collection. Courtesy of G. Putnikov, Moscow.
49. Griboyedov explores the ancient Crimean palace of the Khans at Bakchi-
Saray Emelyan. M. Korneyev. Courtesy of Pushkin Museum, Moscow.
50. Tsar Nicholas I (1796–1855). Oil on canvas, F. Krüger. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
51 ‘The Rising on 14 December 1825’. Watercolour, K.I. Kollman. State
History Museum. Alexander Pushkin and His Time in the Fine Arts of the
First Half of the Nineteenth Century, Khudojnik, RSFSR, Leningrad, 1985.
52. The interrogation of Decembrists at the Peter and Paul Fortress. Sketch,
A.A. Ivanovsky, 1826. Courtesy of Pushkin House, St Petersburg.
53. Field Marshal General I. Paskievich (1782–1856). Oil, F. Krüger. Courtesy
of Sotheby’s.
54. Paskievich halts Abbas Mirza’s drive to Tiflis at Elizavetpol, early 1826.
Original, V.I. Moshkov (Paskievich’s war artist); engraving, K. Beggrov.
55. The Russians cross the Araxes. Original, V.I. Moshkov; engraving,
K. Beggrov.
56. Paskievich arrives at Tabriz to consolidate the victory of Generals Eristov
and Muravyov, 1827. R. Fraehn, 1843. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
57. Peace treaty talks at Turkmanchai. Original, V.I. Moshkov; engraving,
K. Beggrov.
58. Russian guards watch the mule train carrying the Shah’s indemnity
winding through the Kaflan-Ku passes between Tehran to Qazvin.
Original, V.I. Moshkov; engraving, K. Beggrov.
List of Illustrations
xv
59. Griboyedov casually watches the weighing of the idemnity bullion at
Turkmanchai. Original, V.I. Moshkov; engraving, K. Beggrov.
60. Sir John McNeill (1795–1883).
61. Abbas Mirza and Paskievich signing the Treaty of Turkmanchai. Original,
V.I. Moshkov; engraving, K. Beggrov.
62. I. Mal’tzev (1807–80).
63. The enforced repatriation of up to 40,000 Armenians from Azherbaijan in
1828 under the Treaty of Turkmanchai. Original, V.I. Moshkov;
engraving, K. Beggrov.
64. A.S. Griboyedov. Drawing, A.S. Pushkin.
65. Cover of catalogue of State Literary Museum exhibition celebrating the
two-hundredth anniversary of Griboyedov’s birth, 1995. Silhouette of
Griboyedov, N.Ya. Simanovitch, 1929.
In the spring of 1829, Alexander Pushkin was travelling to the Caucasus,
on his way to see his brother, who was serving on the Russo–Turkish
front. On his journey through the mountains, he met with an extra-
ordinary sight:
Two oxen harnessed to a cart were descending the steep road. Some
Georgians were accompanying the cart. ‘Where do you come from?’ I
asked them. ‘From Teheran.’ ‘What do you have on your cart?’
‘Griboyed.’ This was the body of the slain Griboyedov, which they were
taking to Tiflis.
1
Two months earlier, Alexander Sergeyevich Griboyedov, the Russian
Minister Plenipotentiary to Tehran, had been murdered with most of his
embassy by an infuriated Persian mob. It was the culmination of the
second Russo–Persian War, and its ensuing peace treaty, the Treaty of
Turkmanchai, whose humiliating terms Griboyedov had been sent to
Persia to impose. Although he had been largely responsible for drafting
the treaty, he had been full of foreboding about his mission.
I did not believe I would ever meet our Griboyedov again!’ wrote
Pushkin. ‘I parted with him last year, in Petersburg, before his depar-
ture for Persia. He was sad, and had strange forebodings. I thought of
reassuring him; he said to me: ‘Vous ne connaissez pas ces gens-là:
vous verrez qu’il faudra jouer des couteaux.’ He assumed that blood-
shed would result at the death of the Shah and the ensuing feuds
among his seventy sons. But the aged Shah is still alive, and yet
Griboyedov’s prophecy came true.
Pushkin had first become acquainted with Griboyedov in 1817, when he
and Griboyedov, aged eighteen and twenty-two, had been among the
rising stars of literary and theatrical St Petersburg. Everything about
him, wrote Pushkin,
his melancholy character, his caustic wit, his good nature, his very
weaknesses and vices, those inevitable companions of mankind – every-
thing in him was unusually appealing. Although born with ambition
equal to his talents, he was long trapped by petty needs and obscurity.
The abilities of the statesman remained unapplied; the talent of the poet
1
Introduction
was not recognised; even his cold and brilliant courage were for a time
under suspicion. Some friends recognised his value and encountered
that distrustful smile, that inane, unbearable smile – every time they
would speak of him as an unusual person.
Griboyedov was forced to leave the capital two years later, following a
duel, to serve in semi-exile as a diplomat in Persia and Georgia.
Pushkin, writing of his life, described it as being ‘darkened by certain
clouds: a consequence of fiery passions and powerful circumstances’:
the duel in question was certainly one of these. From then on he would
lead a double existence, on the one hand as an increasingly important
player in the game of Russo–Persian relations, on the other as a writer
of genius whose verse comedy Gore ot Uma, variously translated as
Woe from Wit or The Misfortune of Being Clever, is one of the greatest
masterpieces of Russian theatre.
On leaving St Petersburg Griboyedov spent five years in Persia and
Georgia, first as Chargé in the Persian diplomatic capital of Tabriz, then
in Tiflis as diplomatic adviser to General Yermolov, a legendary figure in
the history of the area, dominating its unruly tribes with his policy of
terror and scorched earth. They were years of honing his diplomatic
skills, of perfecting his knowledge of the Persian language, of travelling in
gruelling conditions in the wild and awesome mountains of the Caucasus.
His letters describing his experiences place him among Russia’s great
letter writers; a collected edition in English is long overdue. Above all, it
was during this period that Woe from Wit took shape.
On leave in Moscow in the spring of 1823, Griboyedov was able to
refresh his memory of the intrigues and hypocrisies of upper-class society
which he was to satirise so brilliantly in Woe from Wit; he completed
the play that summer. Almost immediately, it began to circulate in
manuscript, and at readings at which Griboyedov would ‘scatter its sparks’
to chosen audiences. But its denunciations of society were too near the
bone, too subversive, to pass the censors in St Petersburg; only after eight
months of effort were a few scenes allowed to be printed in Bulgarin’s
magazine The Russian Thalia. Meanwhile his friends had taken matters
into their own hands, as teams of young officers and students set about
making copies of the play. In an early form of samizdat, the copies were
copied and re-copied, so that by 1830 it was reckoned that more than
40,000 manuscript versions were in circulation, and that there was
scarcely a town in Russia where the play had not been read.
The play, wrote Pushkin, had an ‘indescribable effect’, immediately
placing Griboyedov on a level with Russia’s foremost poets. Written in
rhyming couplets of irregular length, its verses rapidly acquired the
status of popular sayings; Pushkin, at first reading, predicted that more
than half of them would become proverbs. The subtlety, wit and precision
Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran
2
of the language are almost impossible to convey in translation – one
reason perhaps why the play is comparatively little known outside
Russia, though a recent stage version by Anthony Burgess at the
Almeida Theatre in Islington did something to improve the situation.
In Russia, scores of phrases and aphorisms from the play have
passed into everyday speech; according to a recent estimate, it is the
most quoted single work in the language. References to Woe from Wit
permeate Russian literature. Pushkin, quoting from it in Eugene
Onegin, was the first of a long line of writers for whom it has been a
touchstone. Here is Goncharov:
The salt, the epigrams, the satire, the colloquial verse one feels will
never die, any more than the sharp, biting, lively Russian intelligence
which is sprinkled throughout them and which Griboyedov locked up,
as a wizard might some spirit in his castle, where it bursts into peals of
malicious laughter. It is impossible that speech should ever be more
natural, more simple, more completely derived from life.
Appearing a year before the failed Decembrist uprising of 1825, Woe
from Wit has been taken as the manifesto of the doomed generation of
liberal aristocrats to which Griboyedov belonged, notably by Herzen.
Arguments as to how far the play was political, how far the protest of
any young idealist against the corruption of his elders, have raged ever
since, culminating in the claims of Soviet historians that Griboyedov
was an honorary Marxist. The failure of the conspiracy, ending in death
or long years of exile for many of Griboyedov’s greatest friends, was
undoubtedly another of the dark clouds which overshadowed his life.
Arrested himself, he escaped unscathed after three months of questioning,
but the fate of his friends would always haunt him, driving him on to
his own very different martyrdom.
In the post-Decembrist blight which marked the opening years of
Nicholas I’s reign, literary protest was stifled, political conformity rigidly
imposed. For Griboyedov, escape lay in the Caucasus and the civilised
warmth of Georgia. Always intensely nationalistic, his patriotism could
find an outlet in his diplomatic career, and expanding Russia’s territory
at the expense of her Persian and Turkish neighbours. In the context of
Russian imperialism, he was a maker of history; the Treaty of Turkmanchai
was as important to the area as the Congress of Vienna was to Europe,
and (unlike the Congress of Vienna’s) the borders then established still
hold good today.
Griboyedov’s life, with its immensely varied backdrops, ranging from
the literary salons of St Petersburg to the snowy peaks of the Caucasus,
has never been the subject of a full-length biography in English. The
only literary biography in France, Professor Jean Bonamour’s A.S.
Griboyedov et la vie littéraire de son temps, concentrates almost entirely
Introduction
3