Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

art—along with the Wanderers’ paintings, Tchaikovsky’s music, and the works of Chekhov. Here the tastes of Nicholas and Lenin were identical: for both of them it was the same mainstream cultural paradigm.

Nemirovich-Danchenko’s archives contain a draft of his letter dated April 19, 1906, to Count Sergei Witte, then chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers, with a request to inform Nicholas II that the Art Theater was on the brink of financial collapse and needed a state subsidy. Nemirovich-Danchenko “most respectfully” pointed out that the theater’s recent tour in Europe was a great artistic success and was seen as evidence “of the power of Russia’s spiritual strengths.”¹⁹

The Art Theater was saved then by an eccentric Moscow millionaire, and the letter to Count Witte was never sent. But after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, when Lenin became leader of the new Russia, the Art Theater faced financial disaster again and applied to Lenin for help. Lenin agreed instantly to give them money. “How else? If there is a theater that we must rescue and preserve from the past at any cost, then it is of course the Art Theater.”²⁰ (As we know, Lenin was not so generous toward opera and ballet.)

This was part of Lenin’s cultural strategy: he felt that in Communist Russia the place of religion as “opium for the masses” should be taken by theater, and in his opinion, the Art Theater was best suited for that role. But precisely because Lenin understood the theater’s importance in the political and cultural upbringing of the people, he reacted so aggressively to its “errors.”

For Lenin, one such “error” was the Art Theater’s production in 1913 of a stage version of Dostoevsky’s The Devils. A scandal broke out over the play, elicited by an open letter in the popular newspaper The Russian Word from Maxim Gorky, the most famous Russian writer of the time, calling Dostoevsky the “evil genius” of Russian literature and The Devils a slanderous mockery of the revolution.

Gorky maintained that staging Dostoevsky in the current tense political situation was “a dubious idea aesthetically and certainly harmful socially” and called on “everyone who sees the need for healing Russian life to protest against the production of Dostoevsky’s novels in theaters.”²¹

Gorky’s anti-Dostoevsky letter created a sensation. Dostoevsky’s name was taking on the status of cultural symbol then. His rejection of revolution, expressed with such anger in The Devils, made the late writer a topical and controversial political figure whom conservative forces were pushing into the national cultural canon, against the fierce resistance of the progressive camp. For the Romanov family, Dostoevsky was “their” author, having expressed vividly their innermost thoughts on the Orthodox Church and autocracy being organic for Russia and on the harm of atheistic and socialistic ideas, spread by revolutionary “devils.”

Many noted writers of the period attacked Gorky, blaming him for daring to defame Dostoevsky, the new “literary saint.” Only Lenin and the Bolsheviks defended Gorky. Their newspaper accused the writers ganging up on Gorky of “going with the reactionaries against the proletariat—that is the main reason for the forgiveness of Dostoevsky and his reactionary writing and of the anger against Gorky.”²²

Lenin called The Devils genius but “disgusting.” When angry, Lenin called Dostoevsky “archterrible,” but in other moments admitted that his novels had “lively pictures of reality,”²³ a rare example of his ambivalence. Lenin would remind people that Nicholas I had condemned Dostoevsky to death, “pardoned” him only after a humiliating preparation for hanging, and then exiled him to hard labor. Lenin considered The House of the Dead Dostoevsky’s best book; as we remember, so did Tolstoy.

It is telling that Nicholas II never met a single great Russian writer, which he could have easily done. One of Nicholas’s favorite ways to relax was to read aloud in the evening from a novel (in Russian, English, or French) to his wife and children. He read them Tolstoy and Chekhov, but never tried to talk to the authors. Why? Maybe because of his famous reticence, which some attributed to his shyness and others characterized as secretiveness, hypocrisy, and slyness?

Apparently, Nicholas II did not like to argue and did not know how to do it. In conversations, he never contradicted others, but invariably remained true to his own convictions. It is clear that a meeting with Tolstoy would inevitably lead to confrontation. But Nicholas II preferred not to meet even with Chekhov, known for his delicacy and tact.

He certainly would not have wanted to meet Gorky, even though the writer was very popular, not only in Russia, but in the West. Gorky declared himself a socialist early on—yet his works continued to be published in mass printings. He had a romantic biography, working numerous exotic jobs (dishwasher on ships, student in an icon-painting studio, night watchman at a railroad station, extra in the theater), and walking all around Russia— which made him the idol of the public.

The paradox is that Gorky’s grandfather had been a wealthy man (who went bankrupt) while Chekhov’s grandfather had been a serf. Still, the literary roots of both writers were in the mass literature of the times.

Chekhov started out in pulp fiction magazines of the 1880s with names like Grasshopper, Alarm Clock, and Shards, where he was paid a few kopecks a line and published not only short stories but also jokes, parodies, theater reviews, and courtroom reports.

His early, “funny” pieces were Nicholas II’s favorites. The tsar was also a great fan of Chekhov’s early comedies, like The Bear and The Marriage Proposal. Lenin was more interested in the late, “serious” Chekhov.

Gorky also had a “lowbrow” literary ancestry. One of the most popular heroes of mass literature in Russia then was the fearless “bandit Churkin,” the local Robin Hood. The stories of his adventures were read until the ink wore off. The protagonists of Gorky’s early stories were tramps and rebels, similar to the heroes of the “bandit” stories. But Gorky, unlike Chekhov, was a political radical. By 1889, when he was twenty-one, Gorky was arrested for revolutionary activity.

A writer like that naturally would not find approval from Nicholas II, and the tsar was upset to learn in March 1902 that Gorky was elected an honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Nicholas II learned about it in The Citizen, Prince Meshchersky’s conservative publication (he read every issue from front page to last), where the selection—which took place under the aegis of Nicholas’s uncle, Grand Duke Konstantin (the poet K.R.), president of the academy—was described as “a challenge directed at all educated Russia of Pushkin and Karamzin, all of loyal Russia.”²⁴

Nicholas II demanded an explanation from the minister of internal affairs and wrote “More than original” on his memorandum. He was outraged by the fact that they made an honorary academician of a writer under investigation: “In today’s confused times, the Academy of Sciences permits itself to elect such a man into its milieu.”²⁵

The academy backtracked immediately, declaring Gorky’s election “invalid.” This must have put Grand Duke Konstantin in an awkward position, yet he could not disobey the sovereign.

Nicholas intended “to sober up at least a bit the state of the minds in the Academy.” But what he got instead, as it often happens, was a greater scandal. Among the protests, his favorite writer Chekhov, who previously avoided political gestures, refused his title as honorary academician, which had been awarded him earlier.

Chekhov’s letter to the academy was characteristic of the new situation, when public reputation and independence were more important to a writer, artist, or actor than the government’s approval. In his letter, Chekhov recalled that he was the first to congratulate Gorky on his honorary title: “I congratulated him sincerely,