The History of a Town Read online

  It is, though, in the final three chapters of the book that Saltykov makes most evident use of actual historical material – in the careers of the governors Benevolensky, Grustilov, and Ugryum-Burcheev. The inspiration of Benevolensky, the lawmaker, can be clearly seen in Alexander I’s adviser M. M. Speransky (mentioned in the book as Benevolensky’s schoolfellow), who was responsible for drafting legal and constitutional reforms in the early years of Alexander’s reign. In the character and career of Grustilov there is a damaging parallel to Alexander I himself. In particular, the transformation of Alexander from a liberal-minded ruler into a reactionary mystic is reflected in Grustilov’s turning from light-hearted pleasure-seeking to religious fanaticism and mystical orgies. Ugryum-Burcheev, the last governor described in the book, can also be readily related to an historical prototype, in this case Count Arakcheev, the minister who played a dominant part in the reactionary policies which characterized the last years of Alexander I’s reign. The lunatic scheme of Ugryum-Burcheev to turn Glupov into a military camp recalls the ill-famed settlements introduced under Arakcheev’s direction, in which certain areas of Russia were turned into military colonies with the peasants organized as army units.

  Such are a few of the major historical references suggested by The History of a Town. Saltykov’s purpose, however, was not to indulge in historical portrait-painting. He did not intend Benevolensky to be Speransky, nor Grustilov to be Alexander I. He was simply making use of material provided by such historical figures as ammunition in his attack on the whole state system of Russia.

  We are fortunate in having Saltykov’s own account of his aims in writing the satire. With few exceptions, contemporary critics saw the work merely as a parody of Russian history of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and failed to see its implications for the situation of Russia in their own time. A. S. Suvorin took this line in his review of the satire in Vestnik Europy (The European Herald). He criticized Saltykov for ‘omitting’ certain events of the period in question and also condemned him for his mocking denigration of the Russian people in the work. In answer to Suvorin’s review, Saltykov wrote two letters (to the editors of The European Herald and to A. N. Pypin), in which he stated the purpose of the satire. His intention, he explained, was not to write a parody of Russian history, but to point out the basic evils of the Russian state system, evils which had existed in the past and continued in his own day. It was with their contemporary manifestation that he was concerned. The past was incidental; the Glupov chronicle with its description of events in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was merely a convenient form,* in which to express his view of the Russian situation in the time he wrote. ‘What I had in mind’, he explained, ‘was not an “historical” satire, but a perfectly ordinary satire aimed at those features of Russian life which make it not altogether comfortable.’ At the same time he rejected Suvorin’s criticism of his treatment of the Russian people, indicating that his account of their passivity was historically accurate, though little blame could be attached to them, if one took into account the unrelenting repressiveness of those who governed them (he referred to his sympathetic justification of the Glupovites at the beginning of the chapter ‘The Worship of Mammon – and Repentance’).

  Saltykov’s target then was Russia, not Russia’s past, and indeed it took an insensitive and unsympathetic critic to view it narrowly as an attack on a distant period of history, for Saltykov treats the purported period of the chronicle with extravagant elasticity, incongruously mixing material from different epochs: references to the eighteenth century stand side by side with references to Saltykov’s own day – revolutionary émigrés in London, the telegraph, the railway boom, restaurants and entertainers in St Petersburg, journals and works of literary opponents, and so on – all of which, besides being part of the comic fantasy of the book, emphasize that Saltykov was seeing across the span of Russian history and presenting a distillation of the whole modern period. If in the hundred years since The History of a Town was written it has dated, then it has dated only in the details of its composition, not in its substance. Particularly in the culminating chapter, which describes Ugryum-Burcheev’s reorganization of Glupov and his dehumanization of man for the sake of an administrative ideal, there is an all too close relation to the development of the totalitarian state in the twentieth century. In this prescient sketch of humanity being destroyed by the power of the state one can see a direct forerunner of such modern fantasies on this theme as those of Orwell and Zamyatin.

  Since its publication, The History of a Town has remained one of the most popular of Saltykov’s works. Interest in his works, which were so much concerned with contemporary events, declined after his death in 1889, and it was only seriously revived with the celebration of the centenary of his birth in 1926. From the 1930s, when Saltykov was identified by Soviet literary historians as a representative of ‘revolutionary democracy’, he has been the object of much detailed and valuable research and his works have been frequently republished. There have been many editions of The History of a Town. It is highly regarded as a masterly denunciation of tsarist Russia – its twentieth-century implications have, perhaps not surprisingly, been overlooked (though not necessarily by its readers). The only serious disagreement about the work itself has centred on the ending, and a word might be said about this. In the final chapter, Ugryum-Burcheev forces the inhabitants to destroy the old town of Glupov and build a new one according to his ideal of the straight line; at last, in a moment of dimly awakening consciousness, even the long-suffering Glupovites are moved to revolt – or so we are led to presume by the sketchy details of the, at this point, ‘fragmentary’ chronicle. A period of confusion ensues, which is finally resolved by an awesome ‘storm’, which descends on the town and carries off Ugryum-Burcheev before the eyes of the terrified Glupovites. Saltykov quotes the chronicler as saying that at this point ‘history ceased its course’. Two interpretations of this have been put forward: one, that in the ‘storm’ Saltykov was presenting a symbol of revolution or some other cleansing force, which would one day end the history of the old order represented by Glupov; the other, continuing the historical parallels of the final chapters, suggests that the dread ‘it’, which removes the town-governor and strikes terror into the Glupovites, is a symbolic representation of Nicholas I, whose accession in 1825 (the stated period of Ugryum-Burcheev’s rule) coincided with the abortive revolt of the Decembrists.† The first interpretation has been urged by the majority of Soviet commentators on the satire, but not by all, and recently support for the alternative interpretation has been more evident. No final answer to this question can be given, though in the opinion of the present writer, evidence in the text points rather to the second explanation than to the first. In either case, the ending is effective – and, in its elusive ambiguity, typically Saltykovian.

  Saltykov is one of the great humorous writers of Russia. Significantly, his humour, for all its exuberance, is never gratuitous, but always directed at some clear target. The History of a Town is full of extravagant comic effects. There are the paradoxes of the town-governors whose most brilliant successes are achieved against the town itself – Urus-Kugush-Kildibaev, who takes Glupov by storm, and Borodavkin, who wages ‘wars of enlightenment’ (against the Glupovites) to bring about the introduction of mustard. The wild anachronisms that occur have been mentioned already: typically, they make a point – of the timelessness of the satire – while at the same time being funny. Instances of authorial irony and sarcasm abound. Parody figures prominently: the chronicle of Glupov imitates the Russian chronicles, Saltykov’s commentary parodies the manner of learned editors, Russian legal and official documents are parodied in statutes and memoranda concerning ‘the proper baking of pies’, ‘the agreeable outward aspect of town-governors’, and so on. In particular, fantasy is used as a major device to demonstrate the absurdity and frivolity of the Russian state system: there is a governor who flies in the air, another so tall that h
e snaps in two during a gale, there is the automaton governor, whose head contains a music-box, and the lax governor Pryshch, whose head (stuffed with truffles) is devoured by a colleague. These and other fantastic events are not mere grotesque exaggerations. Saltykov pointed out elsewhere that life is no less fantastic than invention, and that fantasy is capable of exposing the actual nature of things, which is normally concealed beneath the semblances of everyday life: his picture of Glupov is, he would claim, no distortion of reality, but merely a revelation of its essential quality.

  However engaging his humour, it cannot be denied that Saltykov is by ordinary standards a difficult writer, and though, in comparison with most of his writings, The History of a Town is one of his easier works, it is written in a style and idiom which may well seem heavy to modern readers. Because of the restrictions imposed by the censorship, in his satirical works Saltykov cultivated a style that was deliberately obscure in which to express his unpalatable truths. This ‘aesopic’ style involved the use of heavy, complex, and allusive prose and a whole system of innocent-sounding formulae used in place of words which were taboo as far as the censors were concerned. The reader of Saltykov has to break through this barrier, and the task is obviously much more difficult for a modern foreign reader than for Saltykov’s Russian contemporary, who was schooled in the conventions of his style and equipped to understand the local and topical references in which his works abound. The problem of how best to present a translation of The History of a Town for a non-specialist foreign reader is considerable. A full commentary clarifying all the hints and allusions contained in the book, however desirable, would be so long that it would be more likely to act as a deterrent than an aid to the reader (the best Russian edition of the text, in the recent Collected Works of Saltykov, has a commentary of sixty pages). I have followed what seems to me the most practical course in the circumstances and have provided notes explaining the more important historical and literary references and giving help where it seems most needed.

  Although this is the first English translation of The History of a Town, the book has already, in a small way, an English ‘past’. Soon after its publication, Turgenev wrote a review of it (in English) for the London journal The Academy (issue of 1 March 1871). Turgenev greatly admired Saltykov and in his review paid tribute to his satirical genius and, particularly, to his profound knowledge of Russian life, declaring that ‘he knows his own country better than any man living’. He strongly recommended the book to ‘lovers of humour and satirical verve’ and, significantly, to future historians of Russia. For the prospective English translator – or reader – Turgenev offered not much comfort: his view was that the book ‘could not well be translated in its entirety..., nor... be understood or appreciated by a Western public’. The present translator would have little quarrel with Turgenev’s statement on the difficulties of translation, and although an entire translation has been done the resulting English version is readily acknowledged as a pale shadow of the Russian. In part, this paleness is the result of a deliberate attempt to ease and clarify for the modern reader the style of the original, but much more is it due to the practical difficulties of matching in English Saltykov’s robust, idiomatic, and richly allusive language. As for Turgenev’s claim of the work’s incomprehensibility to a Western public – one can only hope that the reader will put it to the test and find Turgenev wrong.

  I. P. Foote, 1980

  Notes printed at the foot of the page are the author’s; the translator’s notes (which have number references) are printed at the end of the book.

  * ‘Convenient’, that is, not only for the material it offered, but chiefly as a means to avoid objections from the censors. The device succeeded very well and in publishing the work no serious difficulty from the censor was encountered. The report on the early chapters by the censor N. E. Lebedev states: ‘In this satirical sketch the provincial administration is ridiculed; its failures, weaknesses, and ineptitude are exposed in rather general terms, so that it is difficult to relate it to any particular place... The fabulous nature of the descriptions offer still less ground for taking proceedings against the author for any intention to insult authority or its representatives...’

  † The Decembrist rising took place in St. Petersburg on 14 December 1825 in the confused situation following the death of Alexander I. The conspirators – mostly young army officers – sought to secure major constitutional and social changes and they and the troops under their command refused to take the oath of loyalty to the new tsar (Nicholas I). The conspiracy was promptly crushed, and of the conspirators five were hanged and over 100 exiled to Siberia.

  Preface

  I have long had the intention of writing the history of some town or district in a particular period of its development, but various circumstances have prevented me. The main difficulty has been the lack of any material which might be regarded as at all reliable or convincing. But recently, while browsing in the archives of the town of Glupov, I came across a sizeable bundle of copy-books, tied together, and entitled ‘The Chronicle of Glupov’. When I examined them, I saw that they could help me considerably in the fulfilment of my intention. The contents of the chronicle are all much of a sort, consisting of biographies of the town-governors who, for the greater part of a century, ruled over the destinies of Glupov, and of a description of their most notable actions – such as their furious driving of the post-horses, their energy in collecting arrears of taxes, their campaigns against the town’s inhabitants, the construction and destruction of roads, the exaction of tribute from the tax-contractors,1 and so on. Still, even from these few facts one can obtain a picture of the town’s character and trace how its history has reflected the various changes in higher spheres. For example, the town-governors in the time of Biron2 were distinguished by their recklessness, those in the time of Potemkin3 by their zealous efficiency, and those in the time of Razumovsky4 by their unknown provenance and knightly valour. They all flogged the inhabitants, but the first flogged them pure and simple, the second explained their zeal by referring to the needs of civilization, and the third asked only that in all matters the inhabitants should trust in their valour. This variety of measures could not, of course, fail to have an effect on the inhabitants themselves. In the first instance, they trembled unconsciously; in the second, they trembled in consciousness of the benefit they were receiving; and in the third, they attained to a state of trembling filled with trust. Even the town-governors’ furious driving of the post-horses had some measure of influence on the inhabitants, since it fortified their spirits by the example of vigour and indefatigability provided by the horses.

  The chronicle was written in turn by four of the town archivists and covers the period from 1731 to 1825. In the latter year literary activity evidently ceased to be permissible even for archivists.5 The chronicle looks perfectly genuine and there can be no doubt as to its authenticity: its pages are as yellow and covered with spidery writing, as nibbled by mice and spotted by flies as any manuscript in the Pogodin Museum. One can just see some Pimen of the archives6 sitting over it, working in the trembling flame of a tallow candle, and concealing it as best he can from the inevitable curiosity of Messrs. Shubinsky, Mordovtsev and Melnikov.7 The chronicle is prefaced by a separate compilation or ‘schedule’, evidently written by the last chronicler. There are also a few school copy-books which form a supplement of supporting documents. These contain a number of original exercises on various themes relating to administrative theory. For example, there are discourses ‘On the administrative unanimity of town-governors’, ‘On the agreeable outward aspect of town-governors’ , ‘On the salutary quality of punitive expeditions’ (illustrated), ‘Thoughts on collecting arrears of taxes’, ‘The perverse trend of the times’, and, finally, a fairly long dissertation ‘On severity’. One can say with certainty that these exercises belong to the pen of the various town-governors (several of them are actually signed) and they have great value in that, first, they present a fait
hful picture of the state of Russian orthography at the time they were written, and, secondly, they provide a far more complete, convincing and colourful portrait of their authors than the narratives of the ‘Chronicle’ itself.

  The contents of the ‘Chronicle’ are largely of a fantastic nature and in parts must strain the credulity of anyone living in our enlightened age. There is, for example, the quite unaccountable story of the town-governor who had a music-box inside him. In one place the ‘Chronicle’ tells of a town-governor who flew in the air, and in another of a governor whose feet pointed backwards and who nearly ran out of his own gubernatorial territory. However, the editor felt he would not be justified in suppressing these details. On the contrary, he considers the fact that such happenings were possible in the past will demonstrate to the reader even more clearly what a gulf separates us from those times. Moreover, the editor was influenced by the fact that the fantastic nature of these stories detracts nothing from their significance as an instruction in administrative principles, and that those administrators of our own time who wish to avoid premature dismissal can take warning from the governor who flew in the air.