Kelly Laurence, Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran

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hospitable, she was the mother of eight children, for whom she enter-

tained and intrigued endlessly: there were daughters to be married,

sons to be placed in smart regiments. Her house on the Gazetny

Pereulok was large and spacious, on two floors, with two dozen rooms

and a ballroom large enough for theatricals and masquerades and

concerts; service wings behind housed the multitude of servants who

kept the household going. For the young, there was a round of balls and

dinners, impromptu breakfast parties, sleigh rides in the winter and

trips to the country in summer, while for Maria Ivanovna, who had her

serious side, there were church visits and charitable duties to be fitted

in as well. Her diary, perhaps, was not dissimilar from Famusov’s in

Woe from Wit:

Get me the diary …

Wait just a moment – in the space

Where it says ‘next week’, write out

‘To Praskovya’s place

Next Thursday to eat trout’ …

Note down that on that day – no wait!

On Thursday I’m invited to a lying in state …

On Friday or even Saturday, there’s nothing in it

I’m due at the doctor’s widow to give her child a name

She’s not yet given birth, but she should do any minute.

In common with most of her contemporaries, Marya Ivanovna habitually

lived beyond her means. The income from her husband’s estates was

never quite enough; her sons had expensive tastes; she was always

behind with tradesmen’s bills. It was rumoured that she owed money to

the whole of Moscow. But this did not affect her position in society, above

all as a directress of the Assembly of the Nobility, to which Griboyedov,

like any young man of his background, would naturally belong.

Founded by Catherine II, the Assembly’s main feature was an

enormous ballroom, with columns in mock marble and a bronze statue

of the Empress. The hall (much frequented by the Soviet establishment:

Stalin lay in state there in 1953) held 3000 people, and there was an

upper gallery to allow great numbers of spectators; in lateral halls there

could also be gaming tables, or dancing if the main hall was full.

Membership was strictly confined to the aristocracy, subscription rates

were 50 roubles for men, 25 for ladies, and 10 for unmarried girls. Every

Tuesday in winter was an assembly day, when there would also be a

ball, except in Lent, when there were evening concerts instead. For

matchmaking parents and aunts, the Assembly was a kind of marriage

market. Readers will remember how in Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin

Tatiana, still dreaming of Onegin and the Russian countryside, is taken

there to find a husband.

Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran

They take her too to the Assembly

The crush, the heat as music blares

the blaze of candles, and the

trembly flicker of swiftly twirling pairs

the beauties in their flimsy dresses,

the swarm, the glittering mob that presses

the ring of marriageable girls –

bludgeon the sense; it faints and whirls.

Here insolent prize dandies wither

all others with a waistcoat’s set

and an insouciant lorgnette

Hussars on leave are racing hither

to boom, to flash across the sky

to captivate them to fly …

As a directress of the Assembly, Maria Ivanovna was one of the leaders

of Moscow society. It was her daughter who opened the ball with the

ADC General Trubetskoy when the Tsar came to Moscow, and with the

other autocrats of the assembly she received the imperial family. On

this occasion the King of Prussia was present, an episode recalled by

Famusov in Woe from Wit.

His Highness the Prussian King came to visit us one day.

On seeing the Muscovite young ladies he was mightily astounded,

Not at the beauty of their faces but at their arrogance unbounded…

In the winter of 1811–12, the mazurka, which allows the dancer to kiss

his partner’s hand while on bended knee, made its first appearance in

the Moscow ballrooms. There were dancing classes to practice the new

steps, presided over by the famous dancing master I.A. Yogel (Natasha

in War and Peace was said to be his favourite pupil). Amongst the various

private houses where Yogel taught the mazurka was that of

Griboyedov’s mother, and the seventeen-year-old Alexander, his sister

and cousins must have twirled and galloped to its intoxicating strains.

The new craze was still at its height when in the spring of 1812 the

cheerful rituals of Moscow life, with its balls, its gossip and its visits,

were thrown into confusion by the threat of war. The uneasy peace

between Russia and France, established at the Treaty of Tilsit five years

before, was coming to an end. Napoleon was gathering his forces on the

Russian border. On 24 June 1812, with no official declaration of war,

the Grande Armée crossed the Niemen onto Russian soil.

A Moscow Education

The recently discovered diaries of Erik Gustav Erström, a Swedish

student at Moscow University, published in Stockholm in 1981 under

the title Moscow is Burning, give a vivid picture of the crisis of 1812 as

seen through a student’s eyes.

They come as close as we are likely to get

to what Griboyedov’s own experiences during the months of uncertainty

leading up to the burning of Moscow must have been.

Erström’s father was a modest clergyman in Finland, part of the king-

dom of Sweden till 1809, when by the terms of the Treaty of Friedrichmans,

Alexander I annexed the country and proclaimed himself Grand Duke of

Finland. Erström, having become a Russian citizen, was able to enrol at

Moscow University, where he arrived in January 1812.

By the spring of that year, the calm of student life was already

disturbed by fears of the coming invasion. Erström’s diary for 11 April

1812 notes prosaically that there were no university orderlies, as they

had all been dragged off to the army; instead the soldiers’ wives kept

house for the students, receiving a meagre salary of 10 roubles a month.

On the evening of 12 July, the Tsar arrived in Moscow to appeal

for troops, officers and funds from his loyal merchants there. His

proclamation to the Russian people, declaring that he would defend

the empire come what may, had reached the city 10 days earlier,

plunging its citizens into great emotion. Erström was among the crowds

awaiting him.

Every road near the Kremlin was packed with people. I stood by the

famous stairs leading up to the Imperial Palace; by 5p.m. excitement

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of 1812

was at fever pitch. All the senior aristocracy and members of the court

in formal dress and wearing orders and stars were there, together with

a group of long bearded merchants in their kaftans … At 8 p.m. there

was a sudden rumour in the crowd. ‘He is coming, he is coming,’ cried

a thousand voices. In effect a small carriage appeared and from it

emerged the chief of police! The Emperor only arrived at l a.m. He

immediately entered the Uspensky Cathedral for a service under the

Metropolitan Augustin. The people greeted him with great enthusiasm

and threw themselves onto the ground, and tried to kiss his feet. All

foreigners on this day were told to evacuate Moscow by barge.

Amongst the Tsar’s entourage on this occasion was the former Prussian

Minister, Baron Shtein, a vociferous anti-Napoleonic intellectual in the

mould of Madame de Staël, and an old friend of Griboyedov’s tutor

Professor Bühle. It was a sign of Bühle’s regard for his young pupil that

he introduced him to Shtein during his brief visit. Griboyedov, who

recalled the meeting with pleasure, would certainly have agreed with

Shtein’s views on the importance of preserving Russia’s national

characteristics. ‘Russia,’ wrote Shtein, ‘should keep her original customs,

way of life, and sartorial appearances … She has no need of French clothes

nor cuisine, nor of any foreign social model.’

The Tsar stayed in Moscow for eight days, before setting out for St

Petersburg, leaving the eccentric Governor Rostopchin to prepare for

the coming invasion. Urged on by an almost hysterical patriotism, he

plastered the streets with posters calling on Moscow to defend itself; the

Muscovites would cross themselves as they read them. Searches and

arrests followed the posters. To be taken for a Frenchman was to risk

summary execution. Any German in Moscow was told to wear a distin-

guishing sign in his hat to show that he was not French. At the theatre,

plays were put on commemorating former Russian victories. Newspaper

articles sought to stimulate the mood of national resistance. Glinka, the

journalist, led the outcry against French as an aristocratic language

and denounced the Russian gentry for employing French tutors. He was

rewarded by the Tsar with the Order of St Vladimir, and joined the

militia as a major.

On 2 August, the miracle-working ikon of the Smolensk Mother of

God was brought in great state to the Kremlin to be placed in the

Uspensky Cathedral. On 11 August, however, came the announcement

that Smolensk had fallen to the enemy, and the Kremlin’s treasures

were evacuated by barge. The news sent shivers through Moscow society.

The churches were full; every mother was pulling strings with any

general she knew to find places for her sons in a good regiment. By early

September, most of those who could afford to had left for Nizhny

Novgorod or Saratov, the grand hostesses of yesterday now scurrying

The War of 1812

Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran

round to look for flats and houses, followed helter skelter by their

French or German governors and tutors.

In the university everything took on a martial aspect. Students

fashioned wooden rifles for themselves. A regiment was created, and

they all drilled from dawn to dusk, and took turns at sentry duty.

Already there was talk of evacuating the university to the east. The

Rector told Erström to be prepared to leave with him, first to Vladimir

or Nizhny Novgorod, or eventually to Kazan.

The chests of the university’s treasures had already gone. We had no

horses …The Rector announced he could not commandeer them any-

where. The Governor-General has forgotten us… By 4 September [four

days after Borodino] there was panic and terror in the capital. For a

whole week after the battle we saw the wounded, though the French had

ordered no prisoners should be taken. At ten o’clock on 14 September

we saw our first French troops … Finally the university was allocated

fifteen horses. Once they arrived the cry resounded, ‘Faster, faster!’ On

18 September our student group reached Nizhny Novgorod.

Griboyedov did not leave Moscow with the university. Instead, like most of

the young aristocrats of his vintage, he had responded to the Tsar’s appeal

for volunteers for the army. A number of Griboyedov’s closest friends,

among them the Chaadayev brothers, Yakushkin and Rayevsky, were

accepted in the elite Guards regiments and saw action almost imme-

diately in the bloody slaughterhouses of Borodino and Shevardino.

Griboyedov himself, through no fault of his own, remained in the

comparative safety of the Moscow Reserve, obtaining a commission as a

Cornet in the newly formed Moscow Hussars. He proudly ordered his

newly designed uniform:

The shako to be yellow with yellow tufted rosettes and bronze trims and

froggings, bronze trimmed pelisses, dolmans and sabretaches in black

with yellow laces and braid, with bronze buttons; cherry boots with

yellow facings and yellow embroidery; black saddlecloths with cherry

toothed edgings and yellow laces.

The Moscow Hussars had been created by the immensely wealthy Count

P.I. Saltykov, a retired cavalry officer who had served in the Guards, and

who from motives of pure patriotism had demanded the Tsar’s permission

to raise a regiment at his own expense. He had originally intended to

raise ten squadrons, but recruitment was slow, and most of the men,

many of them serfs donated to the regiment by their owners, had no

military experience. The Tsar had intended to strengthen the regiment by

allocating 40 NCOs from the Nizhegorodsky, Narva and Borisoglebsky

Dragoons, but as the regiments in question were hundreds of miles

away, the order was changed, and only 12 NCOs could be spared from

another cavalry squadron.

Saltykov, as Colonel, tried valiantly to equip and train his men, with

the help of Rostopchin, who issued them with firearms and sabres from

the Moscow Arsenal, and gave them the Khamovnitchesky Barracks for

their use. But despite anxious enquiries from the Commander-in-Chief,

Kutuzov, as to whether the regiment was fit to fight, the Governor

General was forced to admit that the regiment was ‘lost’ for the time

being. The junior ranks were quite untrained, and would be useless in

the defence of Moscow; moreover, they were unruly and had been causing

disturbances in the city. On 21 August, Saltykov recommended to

Rostopchin that the regiment should finish its training near Kazan, sev-

eral hundred miles away. Not only would this give him a chance to

instill some order into his troops, now numbering nearly a thousand,

but he would be better able to find them horses. Rostopchin agreed, and

forwarded his recommendation to the Tsar, but permission in those

chaotic times was slow in coming, and the choice of Kazan was neither

approved nor disapproved.

On 13 September, with the terrified population already streaming

from the city, Kutuzov made his momentous decision not to defend

Moscow. The costly battle of Borodino had failed to stem Napoleon’s

advance; Kutuzov dared not risk his weakened troops in a second con-

frontation. In the confusion of the evacuation, Saltykov found himself in

dispute with Rostopchin, who first ordered him to escort a party of French

prisoners-of-war to Orenburg, then told him to use his own judgement as

to when and where to withdraw. The regiment eventually left for Kazan

a few hours before the first French troops entered Moscow. The following

evening, clearly in view to the withdrawing Russians, the first flames

from the burning city lit the sky.

Griboyedov was delayed on the journey to Kazan. En route through

the province of Vladimir he fell ill, and was granted sick leave on 21

September. His mother and sister hurried to nurse him, renting a house

from a local priest, where he spent a month in bed, coughing blood

and with a high fever and rheumatic pains. Later, because of the great

number of sick and wounded evacuated to the provincial hospitals,

he was allowed to convalesce on his parents’ estate, complaining of

‘nervous sleeplessness’ and ‘continuous colds’, hardly the most martial

of complaints.

Meanwhile, the Moscow Hussars had reached Kazan, where serious

efforts were made to instil some order into the regiment, and to remedy

their worst deficiencies, especially their lack of horses.

In December

1812, their Colonel and founder, Saltykov, died, but despite his death

the regiment was not disbanded. The Irkutsk Dragoons had suffered

severe losses in the ferocious fighting of the early months of the war and

then at Borodino, while the Moscow Hussars were still untrained and

The War of 1812

incomplete. It was decided that the two regiments should be amalga-

mated and renamed the Irkutsk Hussars. They were to fall under the

orders of the experienced cavalry General Andrey Semyonovich

Kologrivov, who had been recalled from retirement by the Tsar and

made GOC (General Officer Commanding) of the cavalry reserves. In

May 1813, Griboyedov, finally recovered, joined the Irkutsk Dragoons at

Kobrin with the rest of his regiment, and was inscribed onto its roll the

following month.

Having failed to see active service, Griboyedov was now able to hear

at first hand of the exploits of those who had fought at Smolensk and

Borodino. In the last battle especially, the Irkutsk Dragoons had been

in the thick of the fighting in the defence of the Rayevsky Heights, and,

as well as many individual awards for gallantry, had collectively been

awarded the Medal of 1812. In such company any mettlesome young

man, with the war still thundering about his ears, might easily develop an

inferiority complex, or at least a burning desire to distinguish himself in

one way or another. We may imagine Griboyedov felt the same.

Griboyedov served for only a few months in the routine duties of a

regimental officer, and seems to have missed any action during this

time. He was then offered the more interesting post of Adjutant or private

secretary to General Kologrivov, stationed in Brest-Litovsk in western

Russia. Perhaps strings had been pulled for him in Moscow, but he had

probably also been recognised as a clever young man with a pen. By

November 1813 his secondment had gone through.

His new chief, Kologrivov, belonged to a large and influential family,

with links to the court, and friends and relations amongst the leading

figures of the time. He himself had been a protégé of Tsar Paul I. He

was a humane and civilised man, popular with his officers and men.

The following year, when the Tsar awarded him the Order of St

Vladimir, with star and ribbon, they arranged a banquet, attended with

trumpets, fireworks and triumphant salvos of artillery, to celebrate

the honour. Griboyedov’s account of the occasion, ‘Letter from Brest-

Litovsk’,

was published in the Herald of Europe, a well-known Moscow

magazine, in June 1814. Written in the name of all his brother officers,

it was a panegyric to the General, half in rhyme, half in somewhat

sycophantic prose, and was noteworthy above all as being his first

published work.

The cavalry reserves constituted a kind of phantom army, spread

out over a wide territory stretching from Grodno to Minsk and

Ostrolenkov.

Their task was to recruit and train fresh squadrons for the

depleted regiments of the serving army on active service. The whole

exercise was on an enormous scale, with 12,000 troopers and 90,000

horses to be foraged and provided for. Kologrivov’s Adjutants would have

Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran

accompanied their commander in the course of his inspections of units,

remounts and scattered squadrons. They would also have acted as

couriers, bearing secret orders to destinations as varied as Minsk and

Grodno and Warsaw, and perhaps as recruiting officers too; Griboyedov’s

own parents, inspired by patriotic feeling, were among those who

contributed serfs to the reserves.

In a second article for the Herald of Europe, published in October

1814, Griboyedov described the role of these reserves, praising the

far-sighted attitude of the Government in setting up the operation, and

Kologrivov’s efficiency in carrying out his orders; out of a target of 130

new squadrons, 56 had already been provided for active service. We may

assume that Kologrivov, who would have checked the article in draft,

was well pleased with his hyperactive private secretary.

Taking Griboyedov’s two articles together, it is easy to see them as

naive, if not obsequious, in their enthusiasm for the authorities, and

Kologrivov in particular. It is true that as a young officer, under the very

eyes of his commander, he could do little else than stand to attention,

as it were, in print. The curiosity is that, psychologically, he felt impelled

to do so. Perhaps he was preparing the ground for the kind of brilliant

conformist career his mother desired for him, in strong contrast to his

father’s failures. Perhaps he was simply inspired by wartime patriotism,

and pride in his country’s achievements. The Tsar’s entry into Paris, as

the ‘Liberator of Europe’ in the spring of 1814, had seemed to herald

a new age. ‘Strange destiny of the Slavonic race!’

wrote one of his

Generals, A. Mikhailovsky Danilevsky, as the Russian army approached

Paris. ‘The united forces of Europe, led by a Slavonic Tsar, were now

approaching to attack that capital, the conquest of which re-established

universal peace.’

The active and dedicated role which the Tsar had played in the

French campaign of 1814, his magnanimity of spirit in setting the

liberal tone for the Russian occupation of Paris, the generosity of his

announcement to the French Senate that all French prisoners-of-war in

Russia were to be released, were tributes to Alexander’s lofty principles

and enlightened outlook. Such indeed seemed the noble and heroic

figure to whom Griboyedov and his generation – the generation of 1812

– looked for the salvation of Russia.

It soon became clear that the Emperor’s liberal attitudes were not

for home consumption. The first military change which affected

Griboyedov’s generation was the death of the heroic architect of Russia’s

victory, Marshal Kutuzov, in 1813, and his replacement by the sinister

martinet General Arakcheyev, who while the Tsar was enjoying the

plaudits of his allies in Paris was ruthlessly tightening discipline at

home. Under Arakcheyev, service in the army gradually lost all glamour;

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the thrill of fighting a great patriotic war to liberate the motherland, and of

riding through the kingdoms of Europe, whose social structures seemed

to work reasonably well without serfdom or an absolute autocracy,

would become an emotion of the past. There was nothing left for

idealistic young officers in the army but soulless drill work and parades,

and the senseless brutality of public knoutings and floggings. The

wide-scale creation of so-called military colonies, a disastrous piece of

social engineering in which farming was carried out under army

discipline, added a new dimension of horror to military service: ‘the

blood was never dry on the floors of the rural offices,’ wrote Herzen in

My Past and Thoughts.

For Griboyedov, on the periphery of events, disillusion would come

slowly. He seems to have enjoyed the camaraderie of his army years,

and taken pleasure in the routines of cavalry life. There are echoes of

his feelings in Woe from Wit, as Chatsky reminisces with his old army

friend Platon Mikhailovich.

Do you remember how it used to be …

When I knew you in the regiment at the end of last year,

Your foot was in the stirrup as soon as it was dawn

And off you went on your sprightly steed,

Paying the autumn wind not the slightest heed,

Whether it blew from the front or from the rear.

Yes, friend, that was the life to lead.

He also made a number of new acquaintances, most importantly his

fellow adjutant, Kologrivov’s nephew Stepan Beguichov.

Beguichov,

who would become his closest friend, was eight years older than

Griboyedov, well-read, warm-hearted and open-handed, all appealing

qualities for an aspiring intellectual stranded in the backwater of Brest-

Litovsk. ‘Beguichov,’ said Griboyedov later, ‘was the first person who

respected me’. The young officers found what amusements they could

in local society. On one occasion, according to his friend A.A. Zhandr,

Griboyedov arrived on horseback in a first-floor ballroom.

On another,

having offered to play the organ at a service in the local Jesuit church,

he broke into a spirited version of the ‘Kamarinskaya’, a popular

Russian folk dance.

By the end of 1815, the war was won and over; it was time for Cornet

Griboyedov to plan his return to civilian life. He had already spent some

time on sick leave, following a recurrence of his rheumatic fevers, visiting

St Petersburg for an extended ‘cure’ at the beginning of the year. He had

also suffered from a riding accident, which had left him with chest

injuries, and now sought permission from the Tsar to retire from the

Irkutsk Hussars on grounds of ill health.

He invoked the help of

Kologrivov to support his application, and his commanding officer, in

Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran

his covering letter, stressed how zealously and well Griboyedov had

carried out his duties. He also requested that Griboyedov should be

allowed to enter the civil service with a higher rank than that to which

he would have been entitled had he left university with a doctorate three

years before.

The point was important. For a young man of Griboyedov’s back-

ground, without a sufficient income to survive independently, the civil

service was the only alternative to a career in the army, and both

salaries and prospects were determined by the level at which he entered

it. Under the so-called Table of Ranks (see Appendix II), comprising

fourteen grades which governed the military and civil hierarchy,

Griboyedov’s doctorate would have entitled him to enter the service at

the level of ‘guberniya secretary’, tenth class. Kologrivov argued that his

patriotism in volunteering for the army in his country’s hour of peril had

put him at a disadvantage with his civilian contemporaries, and that he

should therefore be allowed to jump two ranks to the eighth class.

In the event, the promotion was refused and Griboyedov was credited

with only tenth-class rank; however, since he had not actually taken his

doctorate, he had at least been given some credit for his military service.

On 25 March 1816, he received his official release from the army. His

four years there had helped to form his character in many ways. As

secretary to Kologrivov, he had polished his administrative skills and

learned the rudiments of working within an autocratic system, under a

chief he could respect and admire. He had made a number of new friends,

one of whom, Stepan Beguichov, would be a lifelong confidant and ally.

Above all, he had been thrown out of his studies and his mother’s social

values into a world of real activity and responsibilities, and had enor-

mously widened his experience of life.

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