Giving us the perspective of a colonizing power, Bolotov's memoirs differ from the Prussian evidence that reveal the hidden transcripts of the colonized (Scott 1990). A major event of the occupation was a fire panic during a service in the Schlosskirche, which was memorable because it was mysterious; there was panic but there was no fire. Months earlier, the preacher Daniel Heinrich Arnoldt, who was also a professor of theology, gave a sermon there that the Russians perceived as slandering Empress Elizabeth. He quoted from Micah
Figure 15: Andrei Bolotov's self-portrait. The caption reads, "Precise depiction of the room and place where this book was written in 1789-90."
Source: Zhizn' i prikliucheniia Bolotova, opisannye samim im dlia svoikh potomkov. vol. 2, Moscow-Leningrad 1931
7:8 about the inner light: "Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me." Bolotov remembered though that this pastor spelled out some "indecencies about our Empress." Arnoldt was arrested and spent six months under investigation; Bolotov remembered that he "suffered very greatly" in jail. In order to avoid Siberia, Arnoldt promised to retract. But when he started the assigned sermon, a group of students yelled "Fire!" and created panic, so that he was spared his apology. We know this from Prussian sources (Kuehn 2001: 113; Kuehn and Klemme, n.d.). Bolotov also described a church panic, with "many" citizens wounded or mutilated and one killed when she jumped out of the Gothic windows. Depicting both events contiguously - the arrest of the "most beloved" pastor because of his sermon and the fire panic in his church - Bolotov saw them as unrelated. He explained the panic as a result of the little heaters that ladies of Konigsberg used to bring to the service. In his rendering of the episode, he was much concerned about the gunpowder magazines that were located nearby, a detail that led to panic on the Russian side as well (Bolotov 1931: 1/518). "Seeing like the state" meant objectifying the event so that its physical course was depicted correctly, while its meaning and context were ignored. In contrast, the perspective of the colonized emphasized agency and the hidden intention of those involved.
Despite Bolotov's German, he soon learned that the natives did not accept him as their peer. In the governor's office he worked together with the Prussians and felt alien:
I could not even think about engaging these Germans in conversation. Not only these colleagues but, in general, all the best dwellers of Konigsberg felt some kind of disgust towards all of us Russians. . . . Though I was courteous with them in all possible ways so that I would become somehow closer to them, all my efforts were in vain. They were as polite as I was, and that was all that I got. (Bolotov 1986: 221)
Hurt by this attitude and ever interested in the Germans, Bolotov mused upon their rejection of him more than once. With Kantian clarity, he distinguished between his own stereotype of the Germans and their specific response to the Russian occupants:
My surprise disappeared when I learned to know the Prussians and the Konigsbergians better. I did not ascribe their responses to their unsociabil- ity but discerned their general indisposition towards Russians, for whom they expressed respect but, internally, deemed to be their enemies. (Bolotov 1986: 221)
Bolotov spent every Sunday in Prussian cafes and beer gardens, which he loved for their "order, quietness, and decency." Shy and defensive when with his Russian peers, he was never bored in Prussian company. Everything there was "polite," "courteous," and even "timid"; these were all the features of character that Bolotov presented to his readers as his own. He also realized that these cafes and beer gardens, all entirely new to him, worked as the centers of local community life and popular information; some of his observations resemble the idea of the public sphere, which historians articulated, with reference to the same German cafes, some 200 years later.
The Prussians were right to be wary. Desperately wishing to become one of them, Bolotov was forever concerned about Russian interests. He worked hard and, gradually, his cultural skills improved. He was a good spy.
At first, the Prussian gentlemen shunned and avoided me as a Russian officer, but as soon as I talked to them in German with all tenderness, they treated me as a natural German and became totally tender. They eagerly brought me into their company and entered into various speculations with me, even political conversations sometimes. And as I eagerly allowed them to be deceived and to think that I was a German, and sometimes purposefully encouraged them in this error, so it happened not rarely that I learned much of what one could not find out and learn otherwise, particularly in those matters that concerned the current military events. They were all very well informed in those matters, which greatly surprised me; . . . often I learned things from them two or three weeks before the newspapers wrote about them. (Bolotov 1931: 1/462)
Once, the governor asked Bolotov to arrest a Prussian aristocrat who had been denounced by his servant because of his anti-Russian sentiment. Armed with his knowledge of German and a team of Cossacks, Bolotov accomplished the mission. The count had to go to a trial in St. Petersburg together with his denouncer (Bolotov 1986: 370). At the same time, Bolotov frequented a bookstore in Konigsberg, maybe the same one in which Herder started to work a little later. Bolotov loved German books and believed that they improved his character:
By reading novels, I formed an idea about the customs and mores of various peoples and about everything that they have there, good and bad. . . . I developed an understanding of the life of different classes, from the masters of the earth to the very lowest. . . . I started to look at all events in the world through different, nobler eyes. (1986: 280)
Bolotov believed that personal aggression was a character flaw. He did not like to see it manifested either in himself or in others; his boss, Governor von Korf, was particularly aggressive and Bolotov detested his explosions. After reading novels, Bolotov became more reserved and felt he had mastered himself. Now, he could control his response even when a servant stole his money. With pride, he attributed this civilizing process to his reading of German novels and philosophy: "I tried to observe those very rules that were prescribed in my books and I should say that I succeeded in refashioning myself during that one summer so much that I ceased to look like myself and many were truly surprised about that" (1986: 304).
This refashioning under the influence of the culture that Bolotov was supposed to control is still surprising. It was an essential fact of his life; having acknowledged it during that summer in Prussia, Bolotov did not fail to mention it many decades later back on his Russian estate, when he wrote his memoirs. While exercising political power over the Prussians, he found himself to be deeply dependent on them. Domination was his; hegemony was theirs. Both sides were out of balance.
Camera Obscura and Fireworks
In an occupied Prussian village, Bolotov saw an optical instrument that was essentially a box with a little hole. The light reflected on the internal side of the box and produced a picture, which was upside down. This instrument was also called a perspective box or, more poetically, camera obscura. Bolotov was enchanted:
I just loved this perspective box and could not stop thinking about it and I would give I do not know what for such a box. . . . Prisms and other optical instruments excited me enormously, but my fascination with the camera obscura was such that I cannot describe it. (1986: 208)
He made a camera obscura for himself; it was portable, so that he could take it with him wherever he went with his regiment. It allowed to him to project "natural pictures" onto the canvas and then to paint them. He used this device for looking at Konigsberg. He also could project pictures into the box and show them to his friends, Russian officers, who came in large groups to enjoy the new amusement. These pictures "represented the best street views of Venice and other noblest European cities" (Bolotov 1986: 212). With the help of this magic lantern, Bolotov took his Europe back to Russia. Decades later, when he was writing his memoir at his estate, his camera was still with him, as "a kind of monument for a time bygone." Buying a camera, making another one, improving them, showing them to his friends - these stories mark the happiest pages of Bolotov's memoir.