And then, starting in 1839, came the famine.
There had not been a crop failure for a number of years. Now the crops failed two years running. Alexis was away, down in the Ukraine. Though she was nearly seventy, the burden fell upon Tatiana.
For Russka, the two failures and the resulting famine were grim indeed. ‘The Riazan estate’s a complete wash-out,’ Ilya moaned. ‘The steward writes they’ve been slaughtering the livestock because there’s no winter feed.’ Numerous attempts were made to buy grain from other areas. ‘But even if we do find some,’ Tatiana remarked, ‘it gets lost on the way.’ By the winter of 1840 the situation was desperate.
Each day Tatiana would go down into the village and move from house to house. There were still some reserve supplies at the manor, though only enough to help the worst cases, and she used her judgement as best she could. She had two particular calls she always made. One was to the Romanovs, because their son Timofei had always been the playmate of little Misha; the second was to the izba where young Arina now lived with her husband and children. She owed it to old Arina, who had died five years before, to help her niece. It was a wretched business. Except for the eldest, a homely girl called Varya, the children were sickly. In the space of four weeks, she saw three of them die. And almost worse, she could not persuade Arina to eat. Anything she gave her finished up with Varya. Desperate to preserve at least one child, the mother was sacrificing herself. For a long time, Tatiana was certain, Arina had subsisted off a single turnip. And if these deprivations hurt the peasants, her sharing in their pain, she was sure, had damaged the health of Tatiana herself. In the summer of 1841 when, thank God, the crop did not fail, she said sadly to Ilya: ‘Something has happened inside me. I don’t think I shall make old bones.’
It was in the early spring of 1840, when things were at their worst, that the curious rumour started. It was Ivan Romanov who told her about it when she came to the izba one morning. Both he and all his sons were looking excited. ‘It’s the Tsar,’ he said. ‘The Tsar is coming here.’ He smiled. ‘Then everything will be all right.’
‘You mean Tsar Nicholas is coming?’
‘Oh no,’ he said with a smile. ‘The last Tsar. Tsar Alexander. The Angel.’
It was one of the many strange rumours in Russian history that Tsar Alexander I did not die in 1825, but instead went wandering, as a monk – usually by the name of Fedor Kuzmich. No one knows quite when it began. It is even claimed to this day that a certain English private family have papers to prove that this was true.
Each morning now, when she went down to the village, Tatiana saw people hopefully looking out for the former Tsar, in the belief that somehow he would bring food. And on one occasion, a monk from the monastery was stopped and carefully examined to make sure he was not the Tsar in disguise.
While she smiled sadly at all this, it also offended Tatiana’s practical nature. And it was this hopeful waiting for Tsar Alexander, as much as anything, that gave her a new idea. She summoned Savva Suvorin. ‘What we need here in future,’ she told that practical man, ‘is not a Tsar, but an alternative crop. I want you to make enquiries and see what you can find.’
It was not until three months later that Suvorin reported to her, but when he did, it was, for once, with a faint grin. In his hand he held a small sack, from which he now drew out a dirty grey-brown object. ‘This is your answer,’ he said. ‘The German colonists have been growing these down in the south for a long time, but we haven’t any up here.’
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘A potato, my lady,’ he replied.
And so it was, some time before it became usual on the private estates in the province, that one of modern Russia’s most important crops was first planted at Russka.
But for Savva Suvorin, though he regretted the suffering, it was hard not to take a grim pleasure in the failures of 1839 and ’40. For they gave him his chance.
‘That’s two years of income he has lost,’ he said to his wife and son. ‘That damned Alexis Bobrov can’t hold out much longer.’ He nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s time to make them an offer they cannot refuse.’ And in the spring of the following year, he requested a passport from Tatiana, to visit Moscow.
And now, in May 1844, Savva Suvorin stood before Alexis Bobrov and made his astonishing offer.
‘Fifty thousand roubles.’
Even Alexis was struck dumb. It was a fortune. How the devil had Savva found it?
‘I will return tomorrow, lord, in order that you may consider the matter.’ And he discreetly withdrew, while Alexis could only stare after him. This time, the serf thought, I have him.
The plan of Savva Suvorin was hugely ambitious. It centred on the gigantic loan he had negotiated, free of interest for five years, from the Theodosians. This loan would allow him to buy his freedom and also to make a single, enormous investment which would transfer the Suvorin enterprises into his own hands for ever.
There was at this time no more booming business in Russia than the manufacture of cotton from the imported raw material – so much so that the area above Vladimir was becoming known as ‘Calico country’. Savva’s plan was not only to convert his wooden plant over to cotton, but also to speed production hugely by the purchase of a large, steam-driven jenny from England. One or two of the more powerful Russian entrepreneurs had already done this a few years before and the results, he knew, had been spectacular. ‘But I won’t do it unless I’m free,’ he told his family. ‘I’m not setting up a big enterprise like that just to have those accursed Bobrovs steal it all on some pretext like they did before.’
Fifty thousand roubles. It was an extraordinary offer that the landlord had to consider.
Alexis Bobrov, at the age of fifty-one, was an impressive figure who looked rather older. His body was heavyset. His grey hair was cut short; his cheeks had filled out with age so that his long, hawkish face had become squarer, more massive. His nose had thickened at the bottom and curved down over his mouth so that, with his long, drooping grey moustache, he put one in mind of some Turkish pasha of unshakable authority. Upon his uniform were numerous medals and orders including that of Alexander Nevsky.
Having been widowed a second time, and suffering from an old wound acquired in the Polish rising, which gave him a slight limp, he had taken an honourable retirement that year and had come to live permanently on the Bobrovo estate.
When he told his mother and brother Ilya about the offer, they were both adamant: he should take it. In Tatiana’s case, the argument was simple. As well as her private sympathy for Savva, it was clear to her that the money was needed. ‘With that,’ she reasoned, ‘you could clear all the debts we’ve incurred from the crop failures, make the necessary improvements in the estate, and have plenty to spare.’ For a generation at least, the Bobrovs would be out of trouble.
Ilya’s argument was slightly different. Though he had never realized his mistake over the stolen money, he had always a vaguely guilty feeling over the way his family had treated the Suvorins. But even aside from that, there was another consideration. ‘For the fact is – forgive me putting it like this, my dear brother – but every civilized man in Russia finds serfdom repulsive. Even our Tsar, who most people think of as reactionary, is known to think that serfdom should be abolished. A major committee has already sat on the subject for years, and each season there’s a new rumour from the capital that something is going to be done. One day, I think that rumour will be true. A proposal, at least, will be made. And what will Suvorin offer you then, if he believes that in a year or two he may get his freedom anyway? Quite apart from my own feelings about serfdom, I say your own self-interest should make you take his offer.’