* The name given by Vladimir Stasov in 1867 to a group of national composers. Five composers adhered to the group: Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin.
* Named after Pyotr Lesgaft (1837–1908), founder of modern physical education. In 1896 Lesgaft founded free courses for women to train as teachers of physical education.
* See Avril Pyman’s biography of Florensky for more detailed information.
* For more detailed information on the Bakhtin Circle, see Clark and Holquist’s exemplary biography of Mikhail Bakhtin.
* A zemski doctor, appointed by local administrations or zemstvos, typically came from the intelligentsia and fostered a high moral work ethos.
2
1919–1927
BAPTISM, UNIVERSITY STUDIES, PHILOSOPHICAL CIRCLES
How often we weep, me and you
Over life’s pitiful malaise –
My friends, if only you knew,
The darkness and gloom of coming days.
Alexander Blok1
We were all in a way Flying Dutchmen – We the Russian intelligentsia [. . .] united in seeking the Truth.
Maria Yudina2
Yudina’s return to Petrograd in mid-1919 initiated an intensely rich and formative phase in her life, lasting for the next eleven years. Soon she found herself leading three disconnected parallel lives. From September she was studying conducting and composition at the Conservatoire – her piano studies being suspended due to the inflammation of her hands. Additionally, she frequented courses of philology and philosophy at Petrograd University, following the interests cultivated within the Bakhtin Circle in Nevel’. And thirdly, as a member of the Orthodox Church, she became part of a close-knit community fighting for survival.
Even before embarking on her studies in the capital city, Yudina formalized her conversion to the Russian Orthodox faith. On 2 May 1919 she was baptized at the Petrograd missionary Church of the Protecting Veil of the Holy Virgin on Borovaya Street, at a service officiated by Father Nikolai Chepurin. It was a highly personal affair attended only by a few close friends. Lev Pumpyansky, her appointed godfather, was not present, but the evening beforehand he reputedly prepared Yudina for the event by reading aloud extracts from Pavel Florensky’s writings. Yevgeniya Tilicheyeva, Yudina’s friend from Nevel’, stood as godmother, and left a telling description: ‘Underneath the temple’s great cupola stood a large font [. . .] and over the font were two or three smallish windows. The day was overcast, but when the rite of holy baptism began the clouds parted, and the sunlight poured through the windows. I vividly recall Maria Veniaminovna at that moment, her head surrounded by a golden aura of light.’3
Vera, Maria’s half-sister, recorded that their father was much angered by his daughter’s conversion, holding Tilicheyeva and Pumpyansky responsible. Vera was born in 1926, so the events she spoke of happened well before her birth, and had become part of family legend. ‘One couldn’t mention [Tilicheyeva’s] name in front of Father [. . .] Papa was an atheist and couldn’t stand any kind of religious sentiment, whether Orthodox or Jewish. He drove off Marusya’s fiancés very quickly. As for Pumpyansky, he threw him down the stairs.’4 Yet Vera sensed that ‘Father loved and valued Marusya, although he was offended by her “ties with priests”. He called her “my pearl”, and attended her concerts when he came to Leningrad. Yet they avoided any closeness in their relationship, even when she returned to the family home in Nevel’.’5
Yudina’s friend, Yelena Skrzhinskaya, had similar observations:
Dr Yudin was a severe, unbending man. He simply couldn’t bear Marusya’s milieu, and Tilicheyeva in particular, whom, as her godmother, Maria Veniaminovna revered until death [. . .] In her room, Marusya had a small religious corner, some pictures in oils of holy images, probably painted by Tilicheyeva, and leaning against them little icons, hung with small chains, rosaries and crosses. On seeing this, her father took the inkwell and hurled it with all his might at these objects. The ink stains remained on the wall, although Marusya did her best to rub them out. When she saw what her father had done, she didn’t start arguing with him, she was very meek. I witnessed their occasional quarrel, but Marusya never did anything to inflame the situation.6
While Veniamin Yudin never accepted her religious beliefs, she wisely learnt to avoid this provocative theme with him. Church-going became a way of life for Yudina during the 1920s, but this was no anomaly amongst her contemporaries. The spirit of religious revival that was prevalent amongst the intelligentsia in the decade before the Revolution was compatible both with personal beliefs and the conviction that social and political reform were urgently needed. For Yudina the quest for Christian faith was a way to enrich her inner world and transform her performances into a spiritual act. Years later she recalled how ‘our youth was elevated by selflessness, poverty and the distant rumble of civil war. At the centre of everything was the need to discover the Truth. We could each in our own way claim as our own Alexander Blok’s wonderful words, “I hear the noise of the pages of history being turned.”’7
Yet this sudden change from relative economic well-being before the Revolution to the uncertainty and poverty that followed was difficult to accept. Yudina’s friend Lyubov Shaporina, the first wife of the composer Yuri Shaporin, recorded in her diary: ‘Famine started here in Petrograd. Having lived through the siege of Leningrad I realize it wasn’t that authentic hunger from which two and half million people perished. But the transition from complete abundance and plenty to the disappearance of bread, meat, milk and many other products was a misery and torment.’8
In Nevel’, Yudina had been protected from the food and fuel shortages. Not that this alarmed her when she returned to Petrograd:
We weren’t looking for material comfort, security or possessions. We were quite content eating pancakes made from potato peelings, wearing clothes concocted out of string and tattered rags. We lived our lives through poetry and music from sunrise to sundown. We despised the upstarts of NEP.* In 1921 there remained one horse-drawn carriage in Petrograd. A young lady of extraordinary beauty rode in it, and we all openly laughed at her.9
Certainly the haggard faces and shattered nerves of much of the population told a different tale. Nevertheless it transpired that material hardship was less of an evil than Bolshevik Terror. As Shaporina recalled, ‘Firewood was nowhere to be found for love nor money. Everybody sawed up cupboards and tables to burn, and we huddled together in one room. Getting hold of firewood was seventh heaven! The city was almost without electricity – it came on at best for one or two hours a day. But if the lights came on all evening and night, then our hearts froze in deathly terror – the authorities were carrying out searches and arrests.’10
The Cheka,* the dreaded Secret Police, created in December 1918 within weeks of the Bolshevik takeover, was the first of a series of Soviet repressive security organs founded to combat ‘counter-revolutionary’ activity. From the start the Cheka was given extra-juridical power to make arbitrary arrests and shoot people on the scantiest of evidence, and consequently did not have to answer for its actions. Already from 1918 the country was subjected to a first taste of Terror, which escalated dramatically, completely engulfing the country under Stalin’s rule.
Immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution, the state structured its administration through a series of Commissariats (Narkomat), headed by a Council of People’s Commissars. The Commissariat for Enlightenment (Narkompros), under the supervision of Anatoli Lunacharsky, was responsible for cultural and educational matters, and promoted progressive policies to educate the proletariat and introduce social reforms. The prestigious old universities of Moscow and Petrograd did not conceal their hostility to the new regime. Narkompros wished to keep them functioning initially, despite the general conditions of cold and hunger.11 During 1920–1 Petrograd University nearly ceased to function, being emptied of teachers and students alike. Olga Freidenberg, a student of classics, wrote to her cousin Boris Pasternak on 25 May 1921: ‘Petersburg is beautiful in its abandonment with its empty streets, with grass and wild flowers springing up in the cracks in the sidewalks. Prolonged misery has made an optimist of me. How odd that desolation should bring freedom, allowing flowers to grow wild in city streets.’12