Leda realized this as well, it seemed. A month passed before I went around to the Uvarovs again, and when I did, Leda was there with her new boyfriend. Her flirtation with the secret services had come to nothing, although judging by appearances, there was no lack of interest on the part of the CIA. No, Leda was true to her word.
“Meet Sasha,” she drawled. “He’s a volleyball champion.” Sasha smiled sweetly. He was sitting four-square in the corner, hands crossed tidily in his lap, and keeping quiet. He had clear brown eyes and shiny hair and a healthy sportsman’s complexion. He certainly looked straightforward, although who, I thought, smiling back at him, could ever really tell?
8
Dmitri Donskoy and the Borders of Russia
You have your millions. We are numberless, numberless, numberless. Try doing battle with us!
Strange things had been happening on the train to Kiev. In class one day, our teacher Rita Yurievna told us about the trip she had just made to visit her family. She was shocked.
“The police went straight through the carriage demanding money,” she said. “Those Ukrainians! It’s just pure greed, this nonsense about visas.”
“But, Rita Yurievna, the Ukraine has declared its independence.”
“How can they be independent? It’s absurd! They’re Russians, just like us. Kiev was the first capital of Russia. And what they call a language, well, it’s more like a dialect. You know how they say, ‘Workers of the world, unite’ in Ukrainian? You used to see it on the banners: ‘Workers of the world, jump in a heap!’ In any case, in East Ukraine everyone’s Russian, like my relatives.”
Rita Yurievna was not alone in holding these views. To Russians, Ukrainians are their jolly, dim-witted country cousins. Their accent, with its gutturals and rounded vowels, is the equivalent of Thomas Hardy’s rustic burr and will reduce a roomful of the most liberal Russians to giggles. Khrushchev, who had the habit of wearing his embroidered Ukrainian shirt when he acted the buffoon for Stalin, personified this image. Photographs of him banging his shoe on the podium at the United Nations and grinning toothily over a basketful of corn did nothing to raise the intellectual profile of his country.
Many Russians were faintly surprised, therefore, when the Ukraine declared itself an independent state almost immediately after the coup was resolved, not to say astonished when it became one of the largest countries in Europe. Governed from its ancient capital Kiev, it included the mining region of the Donbass, most of the Soviet navy, and a huge number of nuclear missiles. On paper, the Ukraine had the capacity to become a major European power. And thus Voronezh suddenly found itself on an international border.
“It doesn’t have the atmosphere of a border town,” Emily commented.
She was right; Voronezh had the sleepy, defenseless air of a city deep in the provinces.
“Absurd!” Rita Yurievna repeated, frowning. “Although, of course, Voronezh began its life as an outpost, to strengthen the Russian line. And the Battle of Kulikovo took place only a few kilometers north of here.”
We looked blank.
“You know the story of the Battle of Kulikovo?”
Our textbooks, open to the chapter concerning the declension of numerals in Russian—a tedious business—were quietly closed. Rita Yurievna was not often distracted, but we recognized this solemn look of hers. She began to describe the battle in the reverent, dramatic tone otherwise reserved for Pushkin. This was more than history: it was sacred myth.
In 1379, the Mongol khan Mamai vowed to crush the Russian princes utterly. Almost 150 years had passed since the Golden Horde had bloodily subdued the Russians, but the Mongols had never ruled over them directly. Instead they exacted tribute from the Russian princes. In the late fourteenth century, however, Prince Dmitri of Moscow, later known as Donskoy, began to exert his authority over the other Russian princes and to resist paying up. It was this insubordination that enraged Mamai.
A whole year was spent mustering the Mongol troops. Half a million men gathered under Mamai’s colors, included hired Armenians, Turks, and a whole regiment of Genoese from Kaffa. Mamai was jubilant. “We are going to eat Russian bread and grow rich on Russian treasure,” he crowed. “The terror of me will crush Moscow.”
On September 7, 1380, Dmitri of Moscow’s men crossed the river Don not far north of the future site of Voronezh. They ranged themselves on a wide, almost flat piece of ground bordered on each side by steep-banked rivers, known as Kulikovo Field. That evening Bobrok of Volhynia took Prince Dmitri out onto the field and showed him how to judge his enemy’s size by putting his ear to the ground. Dmitri listened and knew that the Russians were outnumbered by almost three to one. Bobrok and Vladimir the Brave were therefore ordered to lie back in the woods with their men and wait for the right moment to ambush the Mongols.
It was a bold plan. The Golden Horde was accustomed to fighting on the steppe where it could surround and engulf enemy armies. For this reason, the Russians had chosen an enclosed space, where the Mongols’ great number would be of limited use. But Dmitri and his men were aware that Kulikovo could just as easily become a trap for the Russians. If the ambush worked, they had a chance, they agreed. But if it failed, their destruction was certain.
The morning of September 8, the Virgin’s Nativity, dawned misty, but by eleven o’clock the fog lifted and the shout went up: “The Mongols are coming!”
The battle began. At two o‘clock the Mongols almost broke through the center of the Russian troops. By three the center and the left wing were in confusion. It was a massacre: thousands, tens of thousands of Russians were killed. Bobrok and Vladimir the Brave, hidden in the woods, received petitions from their men demanding to go to the assistance of their comrades. But Bobrok simply said, “Wait a little longer.” By four o’clock Mamai was triumphant. Prince Dmitri’s standard had fallen and Brenko of Bryansk was dead.
Only then did Bobrok and Vladimir lead their men onto the field. They struck the Mongols in the rear and flank with great fury, and the Mongols were filled with terror. They fled, pursued by Bobrok and his fresh troops throughout the night.
“It was a resounding victory for the Russians,” Rita Yurievna concluded. “From then on they knew the Mongols were not invincible.”
For centuries Russian folklore had described battles with attackers from the east, enemies possessed of such terrible powers that even when sliced clean in half, they did not die but sprang back as two warriors. On Kulikovo Field, however, Dmitri Donskoy recognized a truth known to every successful Russian ruler. To be victorious, the Russians had to match and outdo their enemies’ taste for blood; to be prepared to lose not only countless lives but riches, peace, and freedom to the fight. And this relentless sacrifice was demanded not only of soldiers on the front line but of all Russians, who must be ready to give up everything for their country. This was necessary, Russians understood, simply in order to protect themselves. All Russia’s expansionism, all the ruthless oppression of its own people sprang, arguably, from this basic desire: to establish borders of such impregnable strength that its people could at last feel secure.
Rita Yurievna led us briskly back to Russian grammar, and only at the end of the hour did she return, obliquely, to the subject of the border.
“All one wants,” she said, “is to sleep easy in one’s bed. Isn’t that right? And one’s children to grow up peacefully. That’s all. That’s why we lived so well under Brezhnev. We were simply so relieved to be safe.”