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A Memoir of Natalia Bogdanovna Korsak.pdf


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A Memoir of Natalia Bogdanovna Korsak.pdf

A Memoir of Natalia Bogdanovna Korsak.pdf

A Memoir of Natalia Bogdanovna Korsak (Malinovskaia) Translated and with an introduction by John Biggart and James D. White The document presented below is the sole surviving fragment of the memoirs of Natalia Bogdanovna Korsak (1865—1945), revolutionary, and wife of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Malinovskii-Bogdanov (1873—1928).1 The remainder of the memoirs were lost in a fire at the apartment of Bogdanov’s son in Moscow in January 1990. Natalia Bogdanovna would appear to have begun writing this instalment before June 1928, approximately two months after the death of her husband on 7 April 1928. This excerpt ends in February 1929, in an outpouring of grief at her bereavement. In this part of her memoirs, Natalia Bogdanovna provides an intimate portrait of the life of a circle of Russian revolutionaries at the end of the nineteenth century. Her narrative covers the years 1894 to 1901 which she shared with Aleksandr Malinovskii, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Rudnev (Bazarov)2 and Ivan Ivanovich Skvortsov-Stepanov.3 Whereas at the beginning of their period of exile in Tula all 1 This is a translation of an original Russian manuscript that was held in the Bogdanov Family Archive. In the introduction and in the text, we have employed round brackets where brackets were used in the original. Square brackets indicate editorial insertions, usually of the original Russian vocabulary where terms were either unusual or specific to the period. Dr. Georgii Gloveli of the State University, Higher School of Economics (Moscow) provided invaluable support in the preparation of the text. 2 Bogdanov and Bazarov were arrested in December 1894 as members of the ‘Union Council of United Zemliachestva’ for alleged involvement in a student demonstration provoked by a eulogy delivered by Vasilii Kliuchevskii, in honour of the recently deceased Aleksandr III. In 1895 the two were expelled from Moscow University. See James D. White, ‘Bogdanov in Tula’, Studies in Soviet Thought, 22, 1981, 1, pp.62—64; Petr Petr Pliutto, ‘Bogdanov: A Biographical Chronicle’ in John Biggart, Georgii Gloveli, Avraham Yassour, Bogdanov and His Work, Aldershot, 1998, p.460 (hereafter, Bogdanov and His Work); and A.A. Belykh and V. Mau, ‘Bezotvetestvennyi kritik v predelakh tsenzurnykh vozmozhnostei’, in V.A. Bazarov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, Tom 1—2, Moscow, 2014, 1, pp.13—89. 3 Ivan Ivanovich Skvortsov-Stepanov (1870—1928) had graduated from a Moscow Teachers’ College in 1890. In 1894 he was attending classes in Moscow University and played a leading part in the protest against Kliuchevskii’s eulogy of Aleksandr III. Suspected of association with a bomb—making factory organized by one Ivan S. Rasputin, he had been arrested in May 1895 and in February 1896 exiled to Tula. SkvortsovStepanov co-authored with Bazarov the anthology Obshchestvennye dvizheniia v srednie veka i epokhu Reformatsii, St.Petersburg, 1901; and Obshchestvennye otnosheniia vo Frantsii XVII i XVIII veka, St. Petersburg, 1902. He was the co-translator into Russian, with Bazarov, and under the editorship of Bogdanov, of a three-volume edition of Marx’s Kapital, Moscow, 1907—1908. Republished by Gosizdat in 1923, this was to become the standard edition used in Soviet Russia during the 1920s. By 1910 1 three, whilst they were acquainted with Marx’s economic ideas, had a residual commitment to the ideas of the ‘People’s Will’ (Narodnaia Volia), and considered that that the peasant commune would provide the basis of a new social order,4 by the time they left Tula all three had transferred their commitment to the industrial working class and to social democracy.5 According to Bogdanov, the stimulus for their conversion was their experience of teaching in workers’ study circles, to which they were introduced by Ivan Ivanovich Savelev, a 24 year old worker of the Armaments and Ammunitions Factories in Tula.6 It seems safe to assume, although she does not address the subject directly, that the political development of Natalia Bogdanovna followed a similar course. 7 Of particular interest to intellectual historians is the light shed by Natalia Bogdanovna on collaboration within the group in preparing the first edition of Bogdanov’s Short Course of Economic Science. It was with the publication of this work in 1897 that Aleksandr Malinovskii for the first time employed the alias ‘Bogdanov’ that Skvortsov-Stepanov and Bogdanov had coauthored the first volume of Kurs politicheskoi ekonomii, St.Petersburg, 1910, and they continued to collaborate on this work after 1917. Skvortsov-Stepanov has described his experiences in Moscow and Tula in ‘Iz vospominanii’, in Na zare rabochego dvizheniia v Moskve, Sbornik 2, Moscow, 1919. See also St. Krivtsov, ‘I.I. Skvortsov-Stepanov 1870—1928’, in Pod znamenem Marksizma, 1928, 11; B.N. Tikhomirov, ‘Ivan Ivanovich Skvortsov-Stepanov. Biograficheskii ocherk’, in I. I. Skvortsov-Stepanov Izbrannye proizvedeniia, I (Moscow, 1930), pp.VI—VII; and James D. White, ‘Bogdanov in Tula’, pp.64—65. 4See V.A. Bazarov, ‘A.A.Bogdanov (Malinovskii) kak myslitel’(i populiarizator)’ (1873—1928)’ in V.S. Klebaner (ed.), ‘K vozvrashcheniiu Vladimira Bazarova’, Voprosy filosofii, 2004, 6, p.106. 5 Skvortsov-Stepanov had already studied Marx in the seminars of Leonid Petrovich Radin in Moscow in 1894. See V. Viktorov and V. Kumanev, Skvortsov-Stepanov, Moscow, 1986, pp.24—25. According to Bazarov, the ‘residual’ elements of populism in Bogdanov’s thought at the beginning of the period were an acceptance of the peasant commune as the basis of a socialist economy, and of terror as an auxiliary means of destabilizing the established order. See Bazarov in V.S. Klebaner (ed.), ‘K vozvrashcheniiu Vladimira Bazarova’, Voprosy filosofii, 2004, 6, p.106. However, on the common ground between Populist and Marxist thinking in Russia during the 1890s, and on the specific character of Bogdanov’s interest in Marx, see J. D. White, ‘Bogdanov in Tula’, pp.72 passim. 6 On Savelev (he died of tuberculosis in 1901), see A. Bogdanov, ‘Moe prebyvanie v Tule’ (dated 5 May 1923), Revoliutsionnoe byloe, Tula, 1923, 2 p.17; ‘Avtobiografiia A.A.Bogdanova (1925)’ in N.S. Antonova and N.V. Drozdova (eds.), Neizvestnyi Bogdanov, Kn. I: A. A. Bogdanov (Malinovskii) Stat’i, doklady, pis’ma i vospominaniia 1901–1928 gg., Moscow, 1995,p.18; and James D. White, ‘Bogdanov in Tula’, pp.57—82. 7 In a Curriculum Vitae [Anketa] that he completed for the Socialist Academy on 30 August 1923, Bogdanov stated that he had been ‘in the RSDRP from 1895 to 1917 (and a Bolshevik from 1903)’. See Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences [Arkhiv RAN], f.350, op.3, d.190, l.1. However, in an autobiography of 1925, Bogdanov gave the date 1896. See N.S. Antonova and N.V. Drozdova (eds.), Neizvestnyi Bogdanov, I, pp.19—21. The First Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party was held in Minsk on 1 March 1898. 2 derived from the patronymic of his future wife.8 As we see from the memoir, and as Bazarov also recalled, this work had its origin in the summaries Bogdanov prepared for the study circles, and reflected his wish to ‘democratize’ the thinking of Marx, in other words, to present the subject in such a way that Marx’s thought would be widely accessible without simplifications or distortions.9 Popularization was assisted by the fact that, whereas the first volume of Marx’s Capital dealt with the concept of value using Hegelian dialectics, Bogdanov considered that it was unnecessary to convey Marx’s ideas in Hegelian terms.10 In 1899 a second edition of the Short Course was published in which Bogdanov incorporated ideas from Bazarov’s Productive Labour and Value-Creating Labour, also published in that year.11 The Short Course of Economic Science was a remarkably successful economics textbook that was published in nine editions between 1897 and 1906. In Soviet Russia, further editions appeared between 1919 and 1924. The book was translated into several languages, including English. In the narrative of Natalia Bogdanovna we also encounter Bogdanov at a time when he was writing his first philosophical work, The Basic Elements of an Historical View of Nature, in which, again eschewing Hegelian dialectics, he introduced the concept of a ‘moving equilibrium’ of countervailing forces that could be observed in all spheres of existence.12 It is not only for the light that it sheds on the life and work of Bogdanov, Bazarov and Skvortsov-Stepanov that the memoir of Natalia Bogdanovna is valuable. Her recollections provide valuable insight into the political and everyday life of the 8 A. Bogdanov, Kratkii kurs ekonomicheskoi nauki, Moscow, 1897. The inside title page bears the date ‘1897 and the cover ‘1898’. For further information on the writing and publication of this work, see A. Bogdanov, ‘Proletarskii universitet’ (1918), in: O proletarskoi kul’ture (Leningrad & Moscow, 1924), pp.239—241; and Bazarov, in V.S. Klebaner (ed.), ‘K vozvrashcheniiu Vladimira Bazarova’, Voprosy filosofii, 2004, 6, pp.106—123. 9 See Bazarov, in V.S. Klebaner (ed.), ‘K vozvrashcheniiu Vladimira Bazarova’, Voprosy filosofii, 2004, 6, p. 106. 10 The version of Das Kapital that Bogdanov and his friends had at their disposal was a translation (Kapital, Sankt Peterburg, 1872) by Nikolai Danielson and German Lopatin (who are not named in the publication) of the first volume of the German edition of 1867. This reproduced faithfully all the Hegelian terminology of the original. This terminology was later eliminated by Marx himself in the second German edition and in the French edition of his work. 11 A. A. Bogdanov, Kratkii kurs ekonomicheskoi nauki, St Petersburg, 1899; V. Bazarov, Trud proizvoditel’nyi i trud, obrazuiushchii tsennost’, St. Petersburg, 1899, re—published in V.A. Bazarov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, T.I, Moscow, 2014, pp.109—163. 12 A. A. Bogdanov, Osnovnye elementy istoricheskogo vzgliada na prirodu, St Petersburg, 1899. 3 revolutionary circle to which she belonged, into her family life, and into the working life of a woman, who, like many of her contemporaries, aspired to enter the medical profession as a physician but was retricted by the legal, social and professional norms of her time to the roles of midwife and hospital auxiliary. Readers of this document will encounter attitudes, experiences and career patterns that have been discerned in many studies of the history of Russian revolutionary women. But no individual memoir ever fits seamlessly into the categories devised by political, social or cultural scholarship. The voice of Natalia Bogdanovna is distinctive. In her account of her experiences and in her portrait of Aleksandr Malinovskii, she describes a relationship that combined dedication to a cause with mutual respect and affection that in many respects transcended the traditional social and gender roles of their time. Natalia Bogdanovna Korsak was born on 24 January 1865, in the Efremov Uezd of the Guberniia of Orel, the second of four daughters of Bogdan Ignatev Korsak, a Podporuchik, or Second Lieutenant, in the Russian Table of Ranks, one of the lower military grades which nevertheless conferred the status of nobility.13 Whilst Bogdanov Ignatev was a Catholic, his wife, Anna Petrova Trukhacheva, was Orthodox, and it was into the Orthodox faith that Natalia Bogdanovna was christened on 27 January 1865.14 Natalia Bogdanovna received a ‘domestic education’ and in 1882 she was granted a licence to teach as a domestic teacher [domashniaia uchitel’nitsa] by the Moscow District Educational Authority.15 According to the son of Aleksandr Bogdanov, ‘Natalia Bogdanovna was born into a cultured family and wanted to be a doctor but at the time she reached the age of maturity medical education for women was not available...’.16 It was for this reason that Natalia 13 We do not know whether Korsak was an officer of the Infantry, Cavalry, Corps of Engineers or the Guard. All of these services had the rank of Podporuchik. Natalia’s elder sister was Aleksandra (married name — Zavistovskaia). Her other sisters were Klavdia and Anna. 14Svidetel’stvo v Orlovskoi Dukhovnoi Konsistorii po otnosheniiu Eletskogo Uezdnogo Predvoditelia Dvorianstva, dated 26 June 1872. On the birth certificate of Natalia Bogdanovna her mother’s name is given only as ‘Anna Petrova’. The surname Trukhacheva is given in memoir notes of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Malinovskii, Bogdanov’s son, in the Bogdanov Family Archive (hereafter, BFA). 15 Svidetel’stvo, No.4200 issued by the Moscow Uchebny Okrug, dated Moscow, 3 June 1882. BFA. 16 A.A. Malinovskii, ‘Vo izbezhanii oshibok v stat’iakh o A.A.Bogdanove’, BFA, Typescript, pp.10—11 (hereafter, Malinovskii, ‘Vo izbezhanii oshibok’). Between 1872 and 1881, 796 women attended the Women’s Medical Courses in St. Petersburg, but in 1881 these courses stopped accepting students and in 1887 they ceased to operate. See Barbara Alpern Engel, Mothers and Daughters. Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth—Century Russia, Cambridge, 1983, pp.156—171. Ekaterina Slanskaia (b.1853), who did graduate from the Women’s Medical Courses, in her memoirs ‘implicitly criticized opponents of 4 enrolled in courses provided by the Zemstvo Hospital of the Tula Guberniia, qualifying as a medical auxiliary [fel’dsher] in 1891.17 In 1892, having passed an examination set by ‘members of the medical division of the Tula Guberniia Administration and by the Director of the Maternity Department, she became licensed as a midwife or povival’naia babka. She then delivered four years of ‘outstanding service’ as a Medical Assistant and Midwife [fel’dsher-akusherka] under the auspices of the Zemstvo Hospital and in private practice.18 In her memoirs Natalia Bogdanovna makes no mention of the ‘Woman Question’, which had been taken up by some members of the Russian intelligentsia by this time, but she could well have permitted herself a wry comment on the contrast between her own educational history and that of her future husband, who enrolled in the Medical Faculty of the University of Khar’kov in 1895.19 Natalia Bogdanovna’s account of the early period of her life ends with the release of Aleksandr Malinovskii from the Taganka Prison in Moscow in May 1900, and with her move from Tula to Kaluga, which Malinovskii had chosen as his place of exile. She, too, was by this time under police surveillance.20 On 2 July 1900 she and Malinovskii were married in the church of the village of Pokrov on the Kaluzhka river.21 Information on the life of Natalia Bogdanovna from this moment on is very scarce. She and Malinovskii moved to Vologda on 7 February 1901 and it would women’s medical education who urged that women be trained only as midwives ...and be restricted to treating women and children.’ See Toby W. Clyman and Judith Vowles, Russia through Women’s Eyes. Autobiographies from Tsarist Russia, New Haven and London, 1996, pp.36—38, 187, 384. See also Christine Johanson, Women’s Struggle for Higher Education in Russia, 1855—1900, Kingston, 1987. 17 According to a reference [Attestat] provided by the Medical Inspector of Semipalatinsk oblast’ on 14 December 1896. BFA. 18According to a Certificate [Udostoverenie] № 1104 issued to her by the Kontora Bol’nitsy i Bogougodnykh Zavedenii Obshchestvennogo Prizreniia Gubernskogo Zemstva in Tula, dated 20 March 1896; and Certificate [Udostoverenie] №.44 issued by the Kontora Bol’nitsy i Bogougodnykh Zavedenii Obshchestvennogo Prizreniia Gubernskogo Zemstva, dated 19 February 1901. BFA. 19 See Petr Pliutto, in Bogdanov and His Work, p.461, citing Gosudarstveny Arkhiv Vologodskoi Oblasti (GAVO), f.108, d.363, l.59 and Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), f.482, op.42, d.590, l.1. 20 Petr Pliutto, in Bogdanov and His Work, p.462, citing Gosudarstvenyi Arkhiv Kaluzhskoi Oblasti (GAKO), f.783, op.1, d.214, l.1.4—5. 21 Marriage certificate of Natalia Bogdanovna and Aleksandr Malinovskii, BFA; and Petr Pliutto, in Bogdanov and His Work, citing GAKO, f.33, d.367, ll.247—258. The Kaluzhka is the tributary of the river Oka upon which Kaluga was founded. 5 appear that the two lived there, or in Kuvshinovo where Malinovskii (and perhaps she, too) obtained employment in the local mental hospital.22 We know that on 5 January 1904 Malinovskii left Vologda for Tver’. Two photographs of the couple taken during this period have come down to us, as well as a group photograph with neighbours or fellow exiles. Between 3 February and 7 March 1903 Malinovskii and Natalia Bogdanovna lived temporarily in Moscow, where Natalia underwent an operation that left her unable to bear children.23 On 11 July 1903 the couple arrived in the village of Okunevy Gory in the Guberniia of Orel, where they resided on the estate of Zavistovskii, the husband of Natalia’s eldest sister, Aleksandra Bogdanovna.24 A photograph of the couple, taken in Okunevy Gory at this time, conveys a mood of despondency. It is clear that during years before the First World War Natalia Bogdanovna continued to be as actively involved in political work as she had been in Tula. We have no information on her whereabouts or activities during the revolution of 1905, but we do know that during the period of reaction that followed she and Bogdanov shared accommodation with Lenin and Krupskaia in the Villa Vasa in Kuokkala in the Grand Duchy of Finland which served as the headquarters of the Bolshevik fraction. Towards the end of 1907 we find her, on the eve of the emigration of the Bolshevik leadership, together with Nadezhda Krupskaia, burning documentation in the grounds of the Villa Vasa that would have been of interest to the ever-threatening Gendarmerie.25 From late 1907 until 1913 Natalia and Aleksandr resided mainly in Geneva, Paris and Brussels. Occasionally they visited Maxim Gorky on the island of Capri.26 Natalia Bogdanovna appears in several of the well-known photographs of chess 22For the reminiscences of Bogdanov and Lunacharskii on this period, see John Biggart, ‘Bogdanov and Lunacharskii in Vologda,’ Sbornik (Newsletter of the Study Group on the Russian Revolution), 1980, 5. 23Petr Pliutto, in Bogdanov and His Work, p. 464, citing (GAVO), f.130, op.2, d.546, l.27—27 ob. Bogdanov gives details of this operation in Bor’ba za zhiznesposobnost’ (Moscow, 1927). See Douglas W. Huestis (Translator and Editor), The Struggle for Viability. Collectivism through Blood Exchange. Alexander Bogdanov (Tucson, Arizona, 2001), p.179 (hereafter, Douglas W. Huestis, The Struggle for Viability). 24 Petr Pliutto, in Bogdanov and His Work, citing GAVO, f.130, op.2, d.546, l.27—27ob., l.33—33 ob. 25Nadezhda Krupskaia, Memories of Lenin (translation of the Russian edition of 1930), London, 1970, Chapter Eleven, p.145. 26 Petr Pliutto, in Bogdanov and His Work, p.473, citing GARF, f.482, op.42, d.590, ll.1. 6 matches between Bogdanov and Lenin, taken at Gorky’s Villa Blaesus in April 1908 by Iury Andreevich Zheliabuzhsky, the son of Mariia Fedorovna Andreeva.27 Alongside Bogdanov’s sister, Anna Aleksandrovna Lunacharskaia, Natalia worked as an assistant and organizer for the first Social Democratic Party School for Workers organized by the Vpered group of the RSDRP on Capri from August to December 1909. In the words of one of the worker-pupils of the School ‘During our studies, Natalia Bogdanovna looked after us like a mother [‘kak dobraia mat’’]’.28 According to a police report of 3 May 1911, she and Anna Aleksandrovna also contributed to the second Party School organized by Vpered in Bologna from November 1910 to March 1911.29 Some time after mid-November 1911 Natalia Bogdanovna began work on a translation into Russian of Marie Donadieu, a naturalistic novel by Charles-Louis Philippe that had been published in Paris in 1904.30 In October 1913 Bogdanov was allowed returned to Russia under the terms of an amnesty granted on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty.31 Natalia Bogdanovna returned with him in that same month from Brussels, via Warsaw. In an episode that Bogdanov intended to cover in a projected autobiography, she was arrested in the town of Aleksandrov, ‘in view of her undoubted membership of the RSDRP’, despite the couple being in possession of a 27 These photographs have been reproduced in Vitttorio Strada, L’Altra Rivoluzione. Gor’kij— Lunacharskij—Bogdanov. La ‘Scuola di Capri’ e la ‘Construzione di Dio’, Capri, 1994. 28 V. Kosarev, ‘Partiinaia shkola na ostrove Kapri’, Sibirskie ogni , 1922, 2, p.71; and A. Lunacharskii, Vospominaniia iz revoliutsionnogo proshlogo, Moscow, 1925, p 51. cited in V. Samoilov (Klebaner), ‘Svet i teni Kapri (po materialam arkhiva i predaniiam sem’i A.Bogdanova)’, BFA, Typescript, no date, p.3. 29According to M.A. Tsiavlovskii, Natalia Bogdanovna was by this time regarded by the Department of Police as being ‘a member of the Bolshevik Centre and a prominent propagandist’. See M.A. Tsiavlovskii, Bol’sheviki. Dokumenty po istorii bol’shevizma s 1903 po 1916 god byvsh. Moskovskogo Okhrannogo Otdeleniia, 3rd edition, Moscow, 1990 (reprint of first edition of 1918), pp.107, 293 (hereafter, Tsiavlovskii, Bol’sheviki). 30 Charles-Louis Philippe (b.1874) died in Paris on 21 December 1909. In a letter to Anatolii Lunacharskii of 15 November 1911, Bogdanov requested a copy of Maria Donadieu for translation by Natalia Bogdanovna. He referred to this work again in a letter to his sister, Anna Lunacharskaia, of 18 February 1912. See Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi informatsii (RGASPI), f.142, op.1, d.398, ll.11 and 14—15. The manuscript of Natalia Bogdanovna’s translation is located in RGASPI, f.259, op.1, d.51. 31 Petr Petr Pliutto, in Bogdanov and His Work, p.473, citing GARF, f.482, op.42, d.590, ll.1—2. 7 letter from the Director of the Department of Police that they could return to Russia without impediment. She was subsequently released.32 The years 1903 to 1914 must have been years of considerable anguish in the personal life of Natalia Bogdanovna. Insisting, in the aftermath of her operation of 1903, that Bogdanov should have children, she had given her consent to his entering into a relationship with Anfusia Ivanovna Smirnova, ‘a revolutionary who had experienced prison and exile’ and whom Bogdanov had met in Vologda in 1903.33 The only condition set by Natalia was that in any town where she and Bogdanov happened to be living, Anfusia Ivanovna would not also reside.34 According to the protocol of an interrogation conducted by the Moscow Gendarmerie in June 1895 (during which she denied being ‘a member of any revolutionary society having as its aim the overthrow of the established state order’), Anfusia Smirnova was of Russian origin and had been born into the clergy in the village of Anisimovsk in the Tomsk Guberniia in August 1873. She had been educated in the Diocesan School [Eparkhial’noe Uchilishche] of Tomsk between 1884 and 1890, after which, from 1892 to 1894, she had trained as a mid-wife in the Moscow Educational Home [Moskovskii Vospitatel’nyi Dom] She then completed a further year of specialist study in the so-called ‘Pospelov Courses’ [Pospelovskie Kursy] for midwives.35 At the time of her interrogation, her education was being publicly funded and she 32See Tsiavlovskii, Bol’sheviki, p.293. Bogdanov describes this episode in a letter sent from Aleksandrov to I.I. Skvortsov-Stepanov of 23 October 1913, in GARF, f.63 (1913 g.), d.237, l.2 In an outline plan for an autobiography, ‘Istoriia odnogo rabotnika’, held in the BFA, he noted: ‘The arrest of Natasha and the episode with Kr. Zv.’ [‘Arest Natashi i episod s Kr. Zv.’]. The connection between this arrest and Bogdanov’s Krasnaia zvezda, which had been published in 1908, is not clear and these may have been two separate ‘episodes’. 33 Vladimir Samoilovich Klebaner, ‘A.Bogdanov i A.A. Malinovskii’. BFA, Typescript. An edited version of this essay was published by Klebaner under the same title in a collection of the works of Bogdanov’s son: A.A. Malinovskii. Tektologiia. Teoriia. Teoreticheskaia Biologiia, Moscow, 2000, pp.28—43 34 Memoir notes of Bogdanov’s son, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Malinovskii, BFA. Postcards sent by Bogdanov to Anfusia Smirnova held in the BFA included one (dated 2 January 1909) sent from Paris to Geneva; another (dated 10 August 1909) from Capri to Paris; and two others (dated 2 and 15 March 1911) from Bologna to Paris. According to the notes of Aleksandr Malinovskii, when he and his mother lived in Paris, Natalia Bogdanovna and Bogdanov would live in Brussels. 35 The Imperatorskii Moskovskii Vospitatel’nyi Dom, originally a home for foundling children and orphans, later also provided a wide range of educational courses. The ‘Pospelov Courses’ were courses on syphilis organized for midwives in 1883 by the distinguished physician, Aleksei Ivanovich Pospelov (1846—1916), in the Dolgorukii School attached to the Miasnitskaia Hospital. In 1887 Pospelov presided over a reform of the system of supervision of prostitution in Moscow, and in 1891 he founded the Moscow Venereological and Dermatological Society. See https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Поспелов, Алексей Иванович 8 was, additionally, receiving a stipend of 23 roubles per month from the ‘Siberian Committee’.36 Some time between 1904 and 1907 Anfusia Ivanovna gave birth to a son, who died. On 12 July 1909 she gave birth to a second son, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Malinovskii, who was to be Bogdanov’s only child. On 11 May 1914, his birth was registered in the Aleksandr Nevskii Cathedral in Paris. Witnesses to the registration [Vospriemniki] were the ‘Hereditary Nobleman, Anatolii Lunacharskii’; the ‘Hereditary Noblewoman, Aleksandra Valerianovna Mechnikova’;37 and, in absentia, one ‘Elena Antonovna Sokolova, the wife of a State Secretary’.38 During Bogdanov’s years in Western Europe, between 1907 and 1913, he and Anfusia Smirnova lived together only intermittently. Anfusia brought up Aleksandr Aleksandrovich and the two returned to Russia in 1914, almost a year after Bogdanov and Natalia Bogdanovna. At the time of Anfusia’s death from tuberculosis on 25 December 1915, she was living in Barnaul with the family of one of her sisters. Before she died she entrusted Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, by this time six years old, to the care of a friend and fellow revolutionary, Lidia Pavlovna Pavlova. Lidia Pavlovna brought Aleksandr Aleksandrovich to Moscow and with the support of Bogdanov and Natalia Bogdanovna looked after him until he attained adulthood.39 36 Anfusia’s late father had been a psalomchik or ‘Psalm reader’. Her registered place of residence was the ‘Spiritual Consistory of Tomsk’. Her brothers Mikhail (40) and Ivan (30) were priests and she knew nothing of the occupation of a third. One sister (39 years of age) lived in Tomsk and had no occupation; a second Aleksandra (28), was married to a deacon in the village of Medvedskii in the Okrug of Barnaul; a third, Klavdia (also 28) was married to a priest in Tomsk; and a fourth, Pavla (23), was a village schoolteacher in the Barnaul Okrug. Anfusia’s mother had no financial means of support and lived with one of her sons. See ‘Protocol No.116 of the Moscow Gendarmerie’ of 21 June 1895, BFA. 37 Born in Orenburg in 1875, the daughter of an military officer, Aleksandra Valerianovna Mechnikova (party alias, ‘Elena’), became a revolutionary when a student, and had been sentenced to four years exile in Eastern Siberia in 1902. Amnestied, she had worked for the RSDRP in Tver’ in 1903 and suffered several arrests and periods of imprisonment around the time of the revolution of 1905. After a period of exile in the Enisei Guberniia from November 1909, she emigrated in March 1910 and lived in France, Switzerland and England until 1918. A close friend of the Bogdanovs, Aleksandra Valerianovna had been a student at the Party School organized by the Vpered group in Bologna. See Otchet Vtoroi Vysshei Sotsialdemokraticheskoi Propagandistsko-Agitatorskoi Shkoly dlia Rabochikh (RSDRP, Izdanie gruppy ‘Vpered’, 1911). p.12; Tsiavlovskii, Bol’sheviki, p.107; and Politicheskaia Katorga i Ssylka, Moscow, 1934, p.350. 38 Excerpt from the Register of Births [Metricheskaia Kniga] of the Aleksandr Nevskii Sobor in Paris, BFA. 39 Letters in the BFA for the years 1922—1925 show that Bogdanov kept in constant touch with his son’s progress, provided material help, and made frequent visits from Znamenskii Pereulok (where he lived and worked in the Socialist Academy) to Zamorenova Ulitsa in the Presnia district where Lidiia Pavlovna lived with her sister and Aleksandr Aleksandrovich. In 1926, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich matriculated as a student in the Medical Faculty of Moscow State University. See Vladimir Samoilovich Klebaner, ‘A. Bogdanov i A.A. Malinovskii’, pp.4—7. 9 Whatever feelings Natalia Bogdanovna might have had about the relationship between Bogdanov and Anfusia Smirnova, they did not weaken the bond between her and her husband. Their relationship survived this crisis, as it did their period of separation which began with Aleksandr’s mobilization in July 1914 and service on the North Western Front, and continued until the summer of 1915.40 In a letter to Natalia Bogdanovna, written from the Lubianka prison on 10 October 1923, Bogdanov would write: ‘We had to wait much longer when I was at the front, when letters took weeks and months to arrive and most often did not arrive at all...’ 41 We have no information on the life of Natalia Bogdanovna during the first years of the Soviet régime, when Bogdanov worked in the Socialist Academy and in the Proletkult. We do know that she accompanied Bogdanov during his visit to England between December 1921 and January 1922, when in all probability, she assisted with his efforts (as did Aleksandra Valerianovna Mechnikova) to obtain chemical and laboratory equipment for his growing interest in blood-transfusion.42 During Bogdanov’s imprisonment by the GPU from 8 September—13 October 1923 she maintained a correspondence with him, sent him books and provisions, and sustained his morale.43 Throughout her life, Natalia Bogdanovna was beset by ill-health. In 1911 she had undergone a second major operation, this time for the removal of stones from her liver.44 In a Curriculum Vitae (Anketa) that he completed for the Socialist Academy on 30 August 1923, Bogdanov described his wife as follows: ‘Natalia Bogdanovna, 40 Bogdanov returned to Moscow in the summer of 1915, following what would appear to have been a nervous breakdown. He recovered sufficiently to be able to work in military hospitals in the rear. See Andrei Rogachevskii, ‘‘Life makes no sense’: Aleksandr Bogdanov’s Experiences in the First World War’, in Richard Berry (ed.), Proceedings of the Scottish Society for Russian and East European Studies, Glasgow, 1995. 41 Correspondence in BFA. See also Petr Pliutto, in Bogdanov and His Work, p.474. 42 Natalia Bogdanovna’s presence in London is attested by Bogdanov’s son in his memoir ,‘Vo izbezhanii oshibok’, p.13.Mechnikova was in England during Bogdanov’s visit and correspondence between the two for the period 1920—1925 indicates that she assisted him in his research into blood transfusion, specifically in obtaining medical supplies. 43 A number of letters in this correspondence were preserved in the BFA. 44 See Douglas W. Huestis, The Struggle for Viability, p.179. where Bogdanov describes the condition of patient ‘Y’. 10 maiden name Korsak, 58 years old, unable to work’.45 In a letter written to her from prison, on 12 September 1923, he wrote ‘Above all, I’m worried about your health - your weak heart. Don’t tire yourself out.’ On 13 September he wrote: ‘I can’t help worrying about your weak heart. Please, don’t do any running around if you can avoid it and take a cab [izvozchik] whenever possible; we can afford this.’46 On 2 November 1924, at the age of 59, Natalia Bogdanovna became one of Bogdanov’s first patients in his experiments in exchange blood transfusion. In his report on the condition of patient ‘Y’ on the eve of her transfusion, Bogdanov wrote: ‘Little mobility and capacity for work; depressed status.’47 The effects of this first transfusion having been, on balance, beneficial,48 Natalia received two further transfusions, this time in the Institute for Blood Transfusion, in 1926.49 Following these, Bogdanov reported: ‘The patient’s condition is now as good as it was during the best period following her first procedure.’ 50 Upon the death of Bogdanov, Natalia Bogdanovna became the custodian of his personal archive, which included not only private papers, but also, in some cases, duplicates of works and other material that Bogdanov had entrusted to his friend, Vasilii Vasil’evich Glagolev.51 She embarked upon an inventory of the materials in her possession, making handwritten copies of key items.52 During the 1930s, as collections of Lenin’s works began to be published, she meticulously copied into a 45 Arkhiv RAN, f.350, op.3, d.190, l.1. Paragraph 8 of the ‘Anketa’ enquired about ‘Family situation: who are the family members and how many are unfit for work?’ [‘skol’ko nerabotosposobnykh chlenov?’]. 46 Bogdanov, letters of 12 and 13 September 1923, BFA. 47 Douglas W. Huestis, The Struggle for Viability, p.179. 48 For Bogdanov’s report on the effects of the first transfusion, see Douglas W. Huestis, The Struggle for Viability, pp.180—181 and 256—257. Leonid Krasin commented on what he considered to be a remarkable improvement in the health of Natalia Bogdanovna in a letter to his wife, Liubov’ Milovidova, of 4 December 1925. See Nikolai Krementsov, A Martian Stranded on Earth. Aleksandr Bogdanov, Blood Transfusions, and Proletarian Science, Chicago and London, 2011, pp.59—60. 49 See ‘The First Year’s Work of the Institute of Blood Transfusion (1926—1927)’, in Douglas W. Huestis, The Struggle for Viability, pp.256—257. This is a translation of Bogdanov’s report, God raboty Instituta Perelivaniia Krovi, Moscow, 1927. 50 Douglas W. Huestis, The Struggle for Viability, p.257. 51See Nina S. Antonova and Natalia V. Drozdova, ‘Collection of the Central Party Archive’, in Bogdanov and His Work, pp.60—77 and, on the materials entrusted to Glagolev, pp.73—75. 52 Notably, Natalia Bogdanovna produced her own handwritten copy of Bogdanov’s ‘Iubileinyi sbornik. Desiatiletie otlucheniia ot Marksizma 1904—1914’. 11 notebook items by Lenin that related to his conflicts with Bogdanov, co-relating these with writings of Bogdanov for the same period. During the Second World War, as the German armies approached Moscow, she destroyed a number of documents and photographs. Some photographs she preserved, but with the images of certain figures, for example, of Lenin, cut out.53 Nadezhda Konstaninovna Krupskaia, who renewed relations with Natalia after Bogdanov’s death, appears to have given her support during the last years of her own life (Krupskaia died in 1939). There is no evidence that Natalia Bogdanovna came under threat during the repressions of the 1930s, despite her late husband’s notoriety as a political and ideological adversary of Lenin and the fact of his arrest in 1923. There had, after all, been no conflict between Bogdanov and Stalin during Bogdanov’s lifetime. Indeed, when Bogdanov had put his proposal for an Institute of Blood Transfusion to Stalin in late 1924 or early 1925, Stalin, together with Bukharin and Semashko, had supported this initiative. 54 In 1926, when the Institute of Blood Transfusion opened, the Bogdanovs moved from the accommodation provided by the Socialist Academy to a flat in the premises allocated to the Institute in the Igumnov House (Dom Igumnova) on Bolshaia Iakimanka. Natalia Bogdanovna worked as a medical assistant in the Igumnov House, and in other premises occupied by the Institute, until her death in 1945. Following Bogdanov’s death, Natalia invited his son, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, to live with her in her flat in the Institute.55 When, in 1937, the Igumnov House was handed over to the French Embassy, the couple moved into a two-bedroom flat provided by the Institute on Koniushovskaia Street, in the Krasnaia Presnia district, Natalia allocating the larger, sunny room to Bogdanov’s son and his wife, Elena Dmitrievna Smirnova, taking the smaller, colder, and darker room for herself. This was the home of the family when, in 1938, Bogdanov’s grand-daughter, Natalia Aleksandrovna 53Memoir of Natalia Aleksandrovna Smirnova, BFA, Typescript, no date. Upon the death of Natalia Bogdanovna, Aleksandr Malinovskii became the custodian of his father’s personal archive. 54 See Malinovskii, ‘Vo izbezhanii oshibok’, p.14. There, of course, no way of knowing what Bogdanov’s fate might have been had he lived longer. In the event of his being targeted for ‘repression’, Natalia Bogdanovna would have been as much at risk as her husband, given that the Stalinist terror did not stop at individuals but frequently extended to their families. 55From this time on, Lidiia Pavlovna Pavlova lived separately, visiting the Bogdanovs regularly. When she died in 1952 she left all of her belongings to her ‘foster child’ (‘vospitannik’), A.A. Malinovskii, and his family. 12 Malinovskaia, was born. In the autumn of 1941, when Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Malinovskii was mobilized, Elena Dmitrievna and Natalia Aleksandrovna were evacuated to Ufa. They returned to Moscow in the spring of 1943 to rejoin Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, who had been demobilized in the autumn of 1942.56 During the war years Natalia Bogdanovna refused to leave Moscow, and continued to work in the Institute as a medical assistant. During bombing raids, she would never take refuge in a bomb-shelter.57 She now lived alone and had few visitors. In the words of Natalia Aleksandrovna, she ‘dressed very modestly, in full, dark, dresses made of the cheapest material. In sunny weather she would protect her eyes with a celluloid shade held around her head by a rubber band. She had poor eyesight. She wore her hair short without any styling. Everything in her room was old and of poor quality. In winter her room was very cold, but she never complained and she rejected all offers of help. After her death it was found that a draught was entering her room through a crack in the wall under the window and that she had filled it with rags... Natalia Bogdanovna was very attentive to me during those years of hunger. I shall always remember the wonderful taste of white bread sprinkled with fine sugar that she would prepare for me.’ 58 Natalia Bogdanovna died in early March 1945, following a stroke that she suffered on her way to work, at the entrance of the Institute of Blood Transfusion. Following Bogdanov’s death, his ashes, which had at first been immured in the Igumnov House, had been transferred to successive premises occupied by the Institute. With the support of a number of influential individuals, Natalia Bogdanovna had eventually succeeded in having them transferred to the Novodevichii Cemetery in Moscow. Upon her own death, her ashes were immured alongside his.59 In the absence of the complete memoirs of Natalia Bogdanovna an appraisal of her life as a member of the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia can only be tentative. However, even the fragment that has come down to us, and the 56 Memoir of Natalia Aleksandrovna Smirnova; and V.V. Babkov and V.N. Sadovskii, ‘Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Malinovskii (1909—1996): Vekhi zhizni i tvorchestva’, in A.A. Malinovskii. Tektologiia. Teoriia. Teoreticheskaia Biologiia, Moscow, 2000, p.11. 57Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Malinovskii, ‘Vo izbezhanii oshibok’, p.16; and Memoir of Natalia Aleksandrovna Smirnova. 58 Memoir of Natalia Aleksandrovna Smirnova. 59 Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Malinovskii, ‘Vo izbezhanii oshibok’, p.25. 13 reminiscences of members of the Bogdanov family, enable us to recognize in her the traits of fortitude and self-sacrifice that Aleksandr Herzen had extolled when writing of the wives and female relatives of the Decembrists.60 It has been argued that the sense of identity of some revolutionary women oscillated ‘between the “masculine” pole of equality-independence and the “feminine” pole of supportiveness-nurturing- dependency’, but not all will have experienced this as a dilemma.61 The biography of Natalia Bogdanov would seem to be a case-study in the realization of aspirations, and the attainment of identity, through symbiosis with the life of a partner. Her life demonstrates the continuation of the notion of ‘companionate marriage’ into the Soviet period.62 Bogdanov, for his part, was in no doubt as to the importance of Natalia Bogdanovna in his life: in two poems that he dedicated ‘To Natasha’, written on 13 August 1914 and on 9 March 1915, he described her as his ‘Dear, true comrade, wife and mother’.63 To his son he confided that, without her, ‘he would have achieved only half of what he did achieve in life’.64 © Introduction copyright John Biggart and James D. White 60 See ‘Byloe i dumy, Chast’ pervaia: Detskaiia i universitet (1812—1834)’, in A.I. Gertsen, Sochineniia v deviati tomakh, Moscow, 1955—1958, 4, pp.57—58. 61 On this question, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘Life and Times’, in Sheila Fitzpatrick and Yuri Slezkine (eds.), In the shadow of revolution. Life stories of Russian women from 1917 to the Second World War, Princeton, New Jersey, 2000, p.3. 62Elisabeth Wood has noted the emergence in Russia as early as the mid-eighteenth century of the idea of ‘companionate marriage’ as a model for male-female relations. See The Baba and the Comrade. Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia, Bloomington, Indiana, 1997, p.19. 63 Bogdanov’s poem ‘Natashe’, of 14 August 1914 (o.s.), begins: ‘Tovarishch milyi, vernyi moi, moia zhena i mat’’. For the text of this poem, see Andrei Rogachevskii, ‘“Life makes no sense”’, pp.115—116; for the poem of 9 March 1915, with the same title, see G.D. Gloveli, ‘Liricheskie remarki’, Vestnik Mezhdunarodnogo Instituta Bogdanova, 2000, 4, p.58. 64 Bogdanov to his son, reported in Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Malinovskii, ‘Vo izbezhanii oshibok’, pp.10—11. 14 Memoir ...Since his family was very hard up, Malinovskii had very few clothes, especially outer garments. I remember him once telling me, during the late autumn, that the students in his study circle used to joke that ‘Sergei Vasil’evich has an overcoat made of fish-fur that would only keep a coat-hanger warm.’65 In between spells of hard work there were many times when we would enjoy ourselves and play tricks. I remember one occasion when Liuda Rudneva, who was at that time very young and had just enrolled as a student in the Bestuzhevskii66 courses, criticized Malinovskii and her brother67 for being vain and stuck-up, for thinking they were cleverer than anyone else and even ‘great men’. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich replied with great seriousness that this was indeed the case and to prove how great Liuda’s brother was he told her how he had once had such a massive cold that he had run out of handkerchiefs and had to wash them in a basin and dry them on the stove. ‘Surely this is proof’, he concluded, ‘that Voldemar is a great man. He can’t even have a cold without it being a great cold!’ This made Liuda furious and even when everyone had calmed her down, and assured her that this was just a joke, she protested with great indignation: ‘But don’t you understand? They really do consider themselves to be great men!’ 65 ‘Sergei Vasil’evich’ was one of the nicknames of Aleksandr Bogdanov. 66 The ‘Bestuzhev Courses’ [Bestuzhevskie kursy], named after their first Director, the historian, K.N.Bestuzhev-Riumin, were taught in a private higher educational institute for women that opened in the Aleksandr High School in Gorokhovaia Street, St.Petersburg, in 1878. In 1883 the courses relocated to the Vasil’evskii Island. See Richard Stites, The Women’s Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism and Bolshevism 1860—1930, Princeton, New Jersey, 1978, pp.82—83; Barbara Evans Clements, A History of Women in Russia, Bloomington, Indiana, 2012, p.118; and http://www.prlib.ru/en-us/History/Pages/Item.aspx?itemid=679. 67 Vladimir Aleksandrovich Rudnev (Bazarov). 15 After this onslaught by “Liudka”, or “Liuda” as we called her, Malinovskii composed the following verse: For Liudka’s Album I swear by the scorn of my enemies I swear by the derision of my friends By all my ‘brazen self-importance’ and self-admiration, I swear - That I’m extremely vexed to find You want to wound me Or even tell me off But since I value benefactors I will not take offence Constant as I am in love and hate My feelings for you will remain unchanged So rest assured, your constant scolding Will never turn my deep affection Into base hostility! He signed this poem ‘A.N. Unrequited.’68 The ‘Great’ Vladimir Aleksandrovich, when he was a young man, had the habit of biting his nails. I would frequently reprimand him for this and remember once asking him whether, if he didn’t have enough nails of his own, he would like to bite mine. To my horror he took my offer seriously, grabbed hold of my hands, and, before I could escape, began biting my fingernails, one hand after the other! The nephew of A.P. Rudneva, a twelve year old gymnasium student, lived with the Rudnevs. He was very interested in our students, in what they got up to and talked about, and he also liked to imitate Malinovskii. He was very impressed by Malinovskii’s conspiratorial methods and I once saw him pacing up and down the room, deep in thought, sometimes stopping at the table to make notes that he would then tear up into small pieces and put into the stove, all in the manner of Aleksandr 68 In Russian: ‘A.N.Nepriznannyi’. 16 Aleksandrovich. But on this occasion he seemed to have forgotten that it was summer and that there was no fire in the stove. He had also dropped a few bits of paper along the way. I picked them up and found one fairly large piece that had remained intact and included a drawing. To this day I can’t be sure that he hadn’t dropped it on purpose, so that I would find it. He had drawn a small bird with cat’s paws and underneath, again emulating Malinovskii, who often used the printed alphabet in order to disguise his handwriting, he had provided a caption in faint capital letters: ‘The cat has eaten the sparrow’. He knew that my nickname was ‘Sparrow’ and that Malinovskii’s was ‘Cat’. This twelve-year old youngster, Sashurka Pokrovskii, was, it seems, observant beyond his years, although, who knows, perhaps the adults, too, had noticed how my relations with Malinovskii were developing? In any case, Sashurka’s intuition was correct, for by mid-August Aleksandr Aleksandrovich and I had already become man and wife.69 On 23 August, at the age of 22, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich began to write up the notes he had prepared for the study circle into what was to become his Short Course in Economic Science. 2 June: Taking into account the reaction of the students to his lectures and the comments and suggestions of Vladimir Aleksandrovich Rudnev,70 Malinovskii would constantly revise and develop his notes on political economy. He was only ever satisfied when he felt that the students had understood his lectures. Frequently I, too, had to re-write his works on political economy. On one occasion a student lost one of his lecture notebooks on political economy. Malinovskii wrote his lecture notes on blue student notebooks. One of these got lost and Aleksandr Aleksandrovich had to reconstruct it from memory, which was no easy matter. From this episode he drew the conclusion that his manuscript had better be produced in two copies at least, and from then on I copied everything he wrote. Unless I am mistaken, I re-wrote the Short Course in Economic Science no fewer than eight times (only the parts that he revised, of course), until the point was reached where he felt it was ready for publication. Sabina Ernastovna Presprikh also helped a lot with copying. Later on, Aleksandr 69 Natalia Bogdanovna is here referring to the beginning of her close relationship with Aleksandr Malinovskii; the couple did not marry until 1900. 70 Vladimir Aleksandrovich Rudnev (Bazarov), 1884—1939. 17 Aleksandrovich would himself produce two copies at once, using blue carbon paper. Later still (when we were in exile in Vologda)71 he made use of a copying printer but soon gave that up since it made so much noise and because it was easier to use carbon paper. Though it was not always particularly enjoyable or convenient to use a pencil, he was so accustomed to this method that he practically gave up writing in ink. We gave Malinovskii two nicknames - ‘Cat’ [Kot] and ‘Señor’. We began to use ‘Cat’ following one occasion when Anastasia Petrovna Rudneva joked that his frequent disappearances must be due to the fact that he spent his time at night prowling over the roof-tops like a cat, instead of sleeping. One amusing incident comes to mind in connection with this nickname. The Rudnevs were visited by the niece of Aleksandr Matveevich, Maria Stepanovna Daniel, and her husband and their two children, four-year old Boris and two-year old Liudmila. Liudmila was a sweet child and everyone called her ‘Misha’, ‘Mishka’, or ‘Mishenka’, which was short for ‘Ludmisha’, ‘Ludmishka’, ‘Ludmishenka’. She was very shy and retiring, and at first would only acknowledge her mother. Gradually she became used to the women about the house but she remained very shy of the men, and was mistrustful even of Malinovskii. But one day I visited the Rudnevs and was astonished to find Malinovskii sitting at the dining room table with ‘Mishka’ beside him on a high stool. ‘Señor’ was full of smiles and serving her porridge. Next to them stood Anastasia Petrovna Rudneva, the grandmother, laughing and smoking a cigarette. ‘Mishka’ was supping her porridge and babbling something or other. Later they told me that when Anastasia Petrovna Rudneva had taken ‘Mishka’ to the dining room to give her breakfast, ‘Señor’ who was in the next room had suddenly heard a child’s small voice solemnly enquiring ‘And where is our Cat, then?’ Needless to say, ‘our Cat’ was suitably flattered by this sign of attention. He immediately presented himself in the dining room and carefully sat down at the table next to ‘Mishka’. Anastasia Petrovna handed him a spoon and he assumed her responsibilities. ‘Mishenka’ graciously accepted his attention and from that time on they were firm friends. 71The Bogdanovs arrived in Vologda on 7 February 1901, following the sentencing of Aleksandr Bogdanov to exile under open surveillance [glasnyi nadzor] in the Vologda Gubernia on 31 December 1900. They left Vologda on 31 December 1902. Thereafter, until 10 January 1904, Bogdanov continued to serve his sentence under covert surveillance [neglasnyi nadzor]. See Petr Pliutto, in Bogdanov And His Work, pp. 462, 464. 18 Malinovskii acquired the nickname ‘Señor’ because he was in the habit of addressing people as ‘Señor’ or ‘Señora’. Over time, people began to address him as ‘Señor’, at which point he abandoned the habit of using the term. People would address him as ‘Señor’ in conversation and in correspondence. In the summer of 1895 Aleksandr Aleksandrovich left for around two weeks to visit his relatives in Poshekhone72 and from there he sent Vladimir Aleksandrovich Rudnev a letter written entirely in Latin. It ended with a greeting to all friends and acquaintances and the last words preceding his signature were ‘praesertim passeri’, in other words ‘especially to Sparrow’. Our group did not immediately understand to whom this referred, but of course I understood that this special greeting was for me. From that time on I acquired the nickname ‘Sparrow’ [Vorobei] and five years later, when Vladimir Aleksandrovich Rudnev sent us a postcard in Vologda where we were in exile he addressed it to “My Dear Sparrows!” From that time on ‘the Vorobievs’, or the ‘Vorobs’, became one of our many nicknames. I should add that from his very first year in the Faculty of Natural Sciences in Moscow Malinovskii was himself called ‘Sparrow’ or ‘Carrier Pigeon” [pochtovyi golub’] because of the rapidity with which he carried out his tasks for the student fraternity,73 and the revolutionary assignments that he had already accepted by this time. He always went on foot, and at great speed, since he never had enough money for the horse-tram. Though some members of our group were extremely busy with the study circles, and others with their work, we found time to play croquet, go on walks, meet up for a chat and in general make the most of our young years. Whenever Malinovskii played croquet he became very animated. If he lost he would never let the matter rest and would want to keep on playing. Once I managed to win twelve games in a row (only the two of us were playing ) and he threw an enormous tantrum and announced that the game was over, since he was not having any luck. He then hammered the metal croquet hoops into the ground with his mallet and wrote in the sand: ‘Here lies the venerable game of croquet!’ And gave me a defiant stare. In bad weather, when we had to remain indoors, exhausted by the lectures and by our work in general, I would try to invent other amusements. On one occasion, for some reason, I was late in turning up to the Rudnevs when suddenly a 72Poshekhone, north of Yaroslavl’, is located on the estuary of the Rogozha river, where it flows into the Rybinsk Basin of the Volga river. 73 Presumably the Union Council of United Zemliachestva of Moscow University. 19 courier arrived with an envelope addressed (in capitals): ‘To our Noblewoman, and, despite this fact, our dear friend, Natalia Bogdanovna Korsak’ (my maiden name). The envelope contained a large sheet of paper with the message: ‘We look forward to your arrival’, but instead of signatures there were six portraits in pencil of 1) N.P. Rudnev; 2) S.E. Presprikh; 3) V.A. Rudnev; 4) Liudochka;74 5) A pig on its hind legs (the nickname of Sashurka Pokrovskii was ‘Poros’75; and 6) Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, who was represented by a cat on its hind legs. Attached to each portrait was a lock of that person’s hair, tied up in coloured thread. Each portrait bore a close resemblance to the individual in question. The author of these portraits, V.F. Pushkin, was a school friend of Vladimir Aleksandrovich Rudnev and of Malinovskii, but had been in a younger class. They had all addressed me as ‘Noblewoman’ [Dvoryanka] since that was indeed my status. Aleksandr on one occasion grumbled about this circumstance, but when I pointed out that I was hardly to blame he agreed and assured me that he had not been criticising, only expressing regret. Another artistic talent in our group, in addition to V.F Pushkin, was Maria Stepanovna Daniel and on one occasion these two competed against each other. They were given an object to draw and competed to see who would be first to finish. It was Maria Stepanovna who was the first to complete her still-life. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich decided that he would submit an application to study in Khar’kov University (since there was no question of his being allowed to study in Moscow), in order to complete his studies in the Faculty of Natural Sciences or of Medicine. He was admitted to the second year in the Faculty of Medicine and in the autumn (September) of 1895 he left for Khar’kov.76 P.G.Smidovich left for Belgium (for Liège, as I recall) where he became an engineer and then found work in a factory, possibly even as a manual worker at first.77 I don’t remember what became of Stavrovskii, except that he also went to university.78 74 Liudmila Rudneva, the sister of Vladimir Bazarov. 75 An abbreviation of ‘porosenok’ — a pig or piglet. 76Bogdanov enrolled in medical faculty of Khar’kov University in October 1895. He spent only 3—4 months of the year in Khar’kov, and the rest of the time in Tula, teaching in the workers’ study circles. See Bogdanov, ‘Moe prebyvanie v Tule’, p. 17; and Petr Pliutto, in Bogdanov and His Work, p.461. 77 Petr Germogenovich Smidovich (1874—1935). Born in the Tula district, he had been a pupil in the Tula Gymnasium alongside Bogdanov and Bazarov, and had also studied in Moscow University. Exiled to Tula in 1895, Smidovich had also become involved in the workers’ circles, but at the end of 20 In October I had some leave from my work and decided go to the Crimea (to Sebastopol and Theodosia) and on my way there and back I visited Aleksandr Aleksandrovich in Khar’kov. On my way to the Crimea, I found him in a sorry state - short of money, since the little he did have was barely enough to cover the rent of a room, and also short of food. Fortunately, I had a little money and we spent a few days together. I shared this money with him when I left. By November, when I revisited Khar’kov on my way back to Tula, he had obtained a different room, a poorly lit cellar, but he had found some teaching and had free dinners. Even so, when he came home after these dinners and found me having my own meal he would despatch a second dinner with great gusto. In 1895 and 1896 there was a social-democratic organization in Khar’kov led by Nezhdanov (Lipkin, ‘General’)79 and which included L.L. Nikiforov (‘Slon’),80 B.V. Avilov,81 ‘Prince’ (Levin), Muza and others amongst its members. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich fell out with this organization in the course of a dispute over ethics. This group attached particular importance to ethics and Nezhdanov was at the time working on his book on the subject.82 When I asked him why he had left the organization, Malinovskii replied, half in jest: ‘I decided to leave before they expelled me for immorality’. When I asked him to explain in what sense he was ‘immoral’, he replied that the group had interpreted his stance of ‘a-moralism’ as equivalent to 1895 he emigrated to Paris where he graduated from the Higher Electrotechnical School. As a worker in the Pieper company in Liège, he was active in the trade union movement and in the Belgian Socialist Party. Smidovich returned to Russia with a Belgian passport in 1899. A member of the RSDRP, he became an agent of Iskra and a Bolshevik. He was a second cousin [troiurodny brat] of the writer, Vikentii Vikent’evich Veresaev [real name, Smidovich], another native of Tula. See Deiateli SSSR i Revoliutsionnogo Dvizheniia v Rossii, Moscow, 1989, Part III, pp.674—675; columns 59—62. 78P.G. Smidovich and Sergei Nikolaevich Stavrovskii had been amongst those arrested in Moscow in the case of the Union Council of United Zemliachestva and exiled to Tula. See A. Bogdanov, ‘Moe prebyvanie v Tule’, pp.16—18. 79 ‘Nezhdanov’ and ‘Cherevanin’ were two of the pseudonyms of Fedor Andreevich Lipkin. 80 Lev L’vovich Nikiforov (1873—1907) had been an active member of the ‘Moscow Workers’ Union’. 81Boris Vasil’evich Avilov (1874—1938) had been expelled from Moscow University at the same time as Bogdanov. He later joined Bogdanov, Bazarov and Skvortsov-Stepanov in Kaluga. In 1905 he was one of the organizers of the insurrection in Khar’kov. In 1917 he joined the Novaia zhizn’ group but in 1918 he abandoned politics. See A.V. Lunacharskii. Neizdannye materialy, Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 82, Moscow, 1970, p.554. 82 See P. Nezhdanov, Nravstvennost’, Moscow, 1898, pp.148–49. 21 ‘immorality’.83 Years later, in 1909—1910, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich would frequently remind me of the time he had left the Khar’kov organization.84 Whenever he spoke of his expulsion from the Bolshevik Centre he would comment: ‘Ever since 1896 I’ve been thrown out of organizations. There must be some good reason!’85 On my return to Tula from Khar’kov, I became convinced that I was pregnant (I had begun to suspect this while I was in the Crimea) and I wrote to Aleksandr Aleksandrovich informing him of the fact. He became very agitated and came to Tula for several days (in the middle of November) to discuss getting married. We were not yet married, of course, and we had kept quiet about the nature of our relationship. My relatives, especially my elderly mother, would have considered it an everlasting shame if their daughter had given birth to an illegitimate child and I dreaded the thought of offending her. She had already suffered one terrible misfortune - the suicide of her husband (my father) following his financial ruin. As soon as Aleksandr Aleksandrovich arrived, we confided in Sabina Ernastovna Presprikh and began to discuss arrangements for the wedding, but the Christmas fast [Rozhdestvenskii post] was already upon us and Christmas-tide [Svyatki] would soon follow, which meant that the wedding would have to be put on hold for about two months. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich expected to be back in Tula again in December for the holidays so the entire question was postponed until his next visit. I was experiencing a very difficult pregnancy and I began to be increasingly worried that my child would not survive and that I would be tying Malinovskii down, given that he was very young and that I was much older than he.86 In those days, for whatever reason, it was considered that marriage, particularly a church marriage, would ‘tie one down’. When Aleksandr Aleksandrovich arrived for Christmas-tide I explained my thinking 83 For Bogdanov’s argument that ethical norms, like other ‘norms of compulsion’, exercize in developing societies the regulatory function that in primitive communities was exercized by custom, see his ‘Tseli i normy zhizni’ of 1905, republished in the collection A.A. Bogdanov, Voprosy sotsializma. Raboty raznykh let. Moscow, 1990, pp.46—76. 84 Bogdanov mentions this episode in Kul’turnye zadachi nashego vremeni, Moscow, 1911, pp.81—82: he had antagonized the Nezhdanov group by treating ethical norms as ‘social fetishism conditioned by the relations of production’. 85 The Bolshevik fraction of the RSDRP divided when Bogdanov and a number of his supporters were effectively expelled by a Leninist majority at a meeting of the ‘Extended Editorial Board’ of Proletarii in June 1909. See John Biggart, ‘“Anti-Leninist Bolshevism”. The Forward group of the RSDRP’, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 1981, 21, No.2, pp.134—153. 86 Natalia Bogdanovna was born on 24 January 1865 and Aleksandr Malinovskii on 10 August 1873. 22 to him, which was that we should put the question of marriage to one side, and then, when it became impossible for me to conceal my pregnancy, I would go to Livny87 and live with my elder sister, Zavistovskaia, and stay there, without seeing anyone, until I had given birth. My mother lived with my third sister, Anna, in Elets and wouldn’t be able to come to Livny until the autumn. In Tula, I was due to leave my job around March to take up a similar position in Semipalatinsk that I had been offered in August. In addition to Sabina Ernastovna, my sister Claudia, who had come from Livny and was living with me, had also been taken into our confidence. After lengthy discussions and hesitations, we agreed on this course of action. Claudia returned to Livny and explained everything to my sister, Sasha. It was agreed that I would arrange my affairs so as to be able to leave for Livny in March and that is what I eventually did. After Christmas, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich returned to Khar’kov and I informed the Tula hospital that I would be going to Semipalatinsk at the end of the summer to take up a position there; but since I wanted to spend some time with my relatives before setting off, I would leave my job at the end of March. In spring I travelled from Livny to visit Aleksandr Aleksandrovich in Khar’kov, where I found him living in even worse conditions than before. Now he was living in an almost completely dark, damp, and cramped cellar that was worse than a prison cell. I stayed with him for only a week, since he was preparing for exams, following which he had to go to Tula. We agreed that when my time came to give birth I would return to Tula to a flat that our friends would find for me. Then, after the delivery, and after I had had some rest, I would go to Semipalatinsk with the child. I stayed in Livny until the beginning of June and returned to Tula early in the morning of 10 June. Stepping down from the train I looked around the platform for the sight of a student cap, since Malinovskii was supposed to meet me at the station and take me to the rented flat. There wasn’t a student cap in sight and I had come to the conclusion that Malinovskii was late, when all of a sudden I heard his voice and there he was standing in front of me in a completely faded and colourless student cap. At that time he often wore caps that that he had acquired from one of his comrades, or that, as he put it, had been ‘handed down’ to him, and second-hand coats that he had bought in the market for one and a half roubles. 87 Livny, in the Guberniia of Orel. 23 I moved into the flat that had been rented for me by Sabina Ernestovna and on 22 June 1896 I gave birth to my son. He was small, and weighed only two and one third pounds.88 He was so weak that he was unable to feed either from the breast or from the bottle and I had to feed him milk from a pipette. I wrapped him in large sheets of cotton wool and then in swaddling clothes and a blanket. In this way I managed to keep him alive for about two months. He died on 20 August. In July 1896 Maria Vikent’evna Smidovich (the sister of Veresaev) arrived from Zurich where she had been studying in the Medical Faculty.89 She had brought with her a double-lined suitcase containing a large quantity of illegal literature and had left the suitcase at the railway station. She informed Aleksandr Aleksandrovich of this and he, in turn, passed the information on to Savelev (‘Sashurka’),90 who set off to the station and succeeded in grabbing the suitcase from under the nose of the Gendarme (who was already suspicious) and brought it to my place by cab. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, Sashurka Savelev and I, tore away the false linings and extracted all of the literature. Then the first two ‘padded themselves out’, which is to say concealed the literature in their clothing and in their pockets, and then, with the appearance of having put on a great deal of weight, set off for the study circles to distribute the precious goods. This took place late in the evening and I was left with the task of removing overnight all signs of our activity, which meant disposing of all the remnants of the inside of the suitcase. This was no easy matter, since everything had to be cut up into small pieces and flushed down the lavatory. This kept me busy until the next morning but I managed to complete the task successfully. Since, after the death of my child, there was no longer any need for me to hide, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich tried to persuade me not to go to Siberia and remain 88Natalia Bogdanovna uses the old Russian measure ‘funt’, which is equivalent to a metric weight of 410 grams and is usually translated as one ‘pound’. It would appear that the weight of her child at birth was approximately one kilogram. 89 Smidovich was the true family name of the writer Vikentii Vikent’evich Veresaev (1867—1945). Maria Vikentievna Smidovich married Vladimir Miliutin and she is referred to later in the text as Smidovich-Miliutina. After 1917 she worked in the Soviet system of health care. Vladimir Miliutin became Commissar for Agriculture in Lenin’s first government. 90‘In the mid 1890s of the last century in Tula, a young worker by the name of Ivan Ivanovich Savelev set about organising workers’ study circles at the Armaments and Ammunition Factories...In this provincial town he had searched for a long time and without success for intelligenty who could do propaganda work until he found me...’ See A. A. Bogdanov, ‘Proletarskii universitet,’ Proletarskaia kul’tura, 1918, 5 (November), p.10. 24 instead in Tula but I had already given my word and I did not want to break it. So we decided that Aleksandr Aleksandrovich would come and visit me in Semipalatinsk during the Christmas break. In attendance during my confinement, in addition to Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, there had been my sister Claudia, Sabina Ernestovna, and the midwife who had helped to deliver my child, Sofia Pavlovna Novikova, a very fine person and my good friend. After I had given birth, and as soon as I was up and about, my sister Aleksandra Bogdanovna Zavistovskaia came to Tula and stayed with me, accompanied by my mother. I had been my intention no longer to conceal the birth of my child from her, but in order to make things easier for her, to take him away with me. On 22 August I left to take up my position in Siberia. 91 Aleksandr Aleksandrovich accompanied me from Tula to Rozhok. 8 June: The journey as far as Omsk was by rail. It was an uneventful journey with the exception of one amusing incident. Seated beside me on the bench was a young man of about 24—25. At first, he made no attempt to strike up a conversation with me, though he very rapidly made the acquaintance of everyone else in the compartment. However, I was able to overhear the conversation he was having with someone on the next bench. Answering a question that had been put by his neighbour, he announced that he was heading for the Urals to serve as an engineer, that he was French by origin, that his name was Pomerau, that he had been brought to Russia as a small child by his parents, and that until very recently he had never been out of the country. However, he had recently been obliged to go to Paris to discharge his military service and was now on his way back to take up an appointment. I was interested in his story and when he returned to his seat we struck up a conversation. I began to ask him about Paris and so forth. We travelled together for three days and then, three stops before my destination, this young man attempted to persuade me to abandon my plans for going to Semipalatinsk - ‘What’s the point in going to God-forsaken Siberia - look at how beautiful it is here!’ (we were travelling through the Ural mountains). Would I join him on his appointment in the Urals? Needless to say, I gave him short shrift! 91‘By order No.45 of the Military Governor of Semipalatinsk Oblast [Natalia Bogdanovna Korsak] was appointed District Midwife [Uezdnaia povival’naia babka] on 3 June 1896...She was paid an annual salary of 500 roubles.’ Certificate [Attestat] issued by the Medical Inspector of Semipalatinsk Oblast, dated 14 December 1896. BFA. 25 At Omsk I boarded the steamer that was supposed to take us to Semipalatinsk but this was not to be. The river Irtysh had fallen to such a level that the steamer continually ran aground. Some 155 versty92 from Semipalatinsk it got stuck and could proceed no further. With all of our belongings, we were all dumped onto the river bank. There was no landing-stage or accommodation, and all we could do was admire the spectacle of the steamer setting off on its return journey. I was completely dismayed but I was assured by a teacher from Semipalatinsk whose acquaintance I had made on the steamer, that local people would soon arrive with horses. They would have heard the whistle of the steamer, knew that there was no landing-stage and understood that the passengers would have to be taken on their way. She proved to be right, for about an hour later people began turning up on foot or in horse-driven wagons [telezhki], with provisions and offers to deliver passengers wherever they needed to go. Passengers with nearby destinations were quickly put onto these carts [povozki] and departed. Only four of us remained - I with my basket and pillow, the teacher with her luggage, an old lady who was the mother of a police officer [okolotochnyi] in Semipalatinsk and a soldier on his way back from military service whose home was somewhere short of Semipalatinsk. We were surrounded by a number of women and adolescents with provisions who informed us that we would soon be collected by a number of larger carriages since we had a lot of luggage and had further to go (155 versts). It was still early morning and we settled down to wait, but soon the company that had surrounded us dispersed and we were left alone with our belongings. We had to wait about an hour and a half but it seemed much longer. Of course, I am speaking for myself. I was inexperienced and filled with anxiety. The others calmly had a bite to eat, and since the weather was fine the old lady even lay down on her bundles [meshki] and took a nap. At long last, with an enormous din, a large cart, or, more precisely a covered wagon [telega s kabitkoi] rolled up, drawn by a troika. Our luggage was duly loaded into the bottom of the wagon and all our pillows and soft things were piled on top. We three women then made ourselves as comfortable as we could. The soldier - our travelling-companion, sat on the front bench with the driver [vozchik] and off we went. Our journey lay across the bare steppe lands and there was no road of any kind to be seen. There was a fierce amount of dust, since the entire steppe was arid and burnt out. After we had passed one station 92 A verst was equivalent to 1.07 kilometres. 26 (I only learned later that the place had been a ‘station’), our driver handed us over to his ‘mate’ [druzhok] who harnessed his own horses to our carriage, took us a bit further on our way and at the next station handed us over to his own ‘mate’. This mode of travel is known as travelling ‘by haulier’ [po bechevochke] or ‘by mates’ [po druzhkam]. At the terminus, the driver tries to find passengers for the return journey and along the way again he hands them and the carriage over to various ‘mates’, the last of whom delivers the ‘equipage’ to the first driver at the point it had started from. This kind of travel is much quicker than the postal relay which sometimes suffers long delays until horses become available and it is a bit cheaper since there is no stamp duty [gerbovoi sbor] to pay. 13 June: We arrived in Semipalatinsk towards the evening of the following day and I took a room in an hotel. In the morning I called on the governing body to take up my appointment. According to the conditions of my employment, I was to serve in Semipalatinsk for a minimum of three years and in the event of my wishing to leave earlier I would be required to repay all my travel costs [pod”emnye i progonnye], a huge sum, owing to the distance involved. From my very first days at work I realized I had landed in a really grim backwater [dikaia dyra] - gossip, drunkenness (the women were every bit as capable as the men), squabbling and tedium - suffocating tedium. There was a library where one could read journals; there were even books. I enrolled and began to borrow books and journals but as soon as it was noticed that I had taken out a ‘thick journal’ (I think it was Russkoe Bogatstvo), this was brought to the attention of Dr. Orlik, my superior at the time (he had replaced Dr. Vladimirskii who had offered me the position and who was on leave). Orlik took it upon himself to ‘give me some sound advice’, insisting that I should not waste time on ‘trivialities’. Already, ‘people were beginning to talk’. I would only get into trouble and it would be better if I made the acquaintance of people that mattered in the city, called upon the Governor, the Deputy-Governor and so on. He offered to introduce me into society and felt it necessary during our conversation to put his arm round my waist. I declined his embrace, rejected the idea of calling on anyone, and informed him that if I was going to be prevented even from reading I would simply resign my position and return to Russia. Orlik’s response was to roar with laughter: ‘Do you really think that you can get out of here? Everyone thinks that for the first 2—3 months, then they get used to things, get to know people, make friends and start having affairs [romany]. In any 27 case, where are you going to find 400 roubles to repay your travelling expenses? How will you get back during the winter? Forget it. After you have lived here for three years you won’t even think of going back home. Here you can make contacts, but in Russia you’ll end up in poverty or even destitution!’ I found this speech so terrifying, especially the last part, that I firmly resolved to return home. Malinovskii and I kept up a regular correspondence. I wrote to him twice a week (in time for each outgoing post) and received his own news twice a week (with each incoming post), sometime 2—3 letters at once. I greatly regret that for conspiratorial reasons we had to destroy our letters. I do not have a single one of the letters that I received from Aleksandr Aleksandrovich. His letters of that time were very interesting. Sometimes they amounted to entire articles or lectures, but since various other topics were interspersed, which referred not only to ourselves but to others as well, we could not possibly hold on to them. Of course I also maintained a lively correspondence with my relatives and friends. I began frantically to save money. I already had some small savings, a sum of money left over from my travel. I had been able, on leaving Tula, to obtain a gift voucher for rail travel (thanks to a friend) and this would save me some money. I was receiving a generous salary and since my expenditures were minimal I was able to build up my account with the Savings Bank. I also had some private work as a midwife and as a medical assistant [fel’dsher] and everything that I earned I put into my savings account, in the hope of being able to return home. By the terms of my appointment I was required to provide midwifery services in the district, and work in the out-patient department in the town, but other kinds of work, for example when citizens asked me personally to provide midwifery or medical services, fell outside of my contractual obligations. In Semipalatinsk there were military personnel of one kind or another (possibly attached to the garrison), clergy, merchants, civil servants, and rich Tatars and Kirghiz, and there would be occasions when I provided them with medical services in return for a fee. I had left Tula on 22 August, by the old style dates, and by the end of November I had already saved up enough to repay my travel expenses, but I had no very clear idea of how much I would need to make the return journey. Over and above the cost of the travel by horse and by rail, I had to think of buying food to last 9—10 days and, most importantly, warm clothing since it was already the end of November and I would not be able to leave before 10 December if I was to arrive in 28 Tula in time for Christmas (all of these dates, old style). I called on the schoolteacher who had shared my journey by steamer and wagon and she informed me that the cost of the horse-drawn stage could be very substantially reduced if I advertised in various places that on a particular date I was travelling to Omsk and seeking travelling companions. There was also an easy solution to the question of warm clothing. As soon as my advertisement appeared I would be approached by people who would ask me to deliver a variety of warm items that someone had worn on the journey from Omsk to Semipalatinsk and that they wished to return to their owner. So, of course, I put up my advertisement and within two days one person had brought me a huge raccoon fur coat [enotovaia shuba] and another a Barnaul coat (made of black sheep’s wool). In the market I bought a sheepskin coat [baranii tulup] for 4 roubles 50 kopecks (I was able to sell it on the train for the same price) and I already had my own down- padded jacket [shubka na pukhu] that I wore about town. For my feet I bought felt boots [valenki] or ‘pimy’ as they were known locally) and I made a set of hose from hare skins that I sewed together. For my head, in addition to a fur hat, I fabricated something resembling a hood [kapor] out of a down shawl [pukhovy platok]. I then bought some mittens and sat back to wait for travelling companions. I wrote to Aleksandr Aleksandrovich telling him about my savings and of my plans to be back in Tula by Christmas. In due course, I notified my employer that I wished to resign from my post and that I was ready to pay back everything that I owed. The same Dr. Orlik simply smiled and remarked that ‘people who are constantly reaching for their hat, always remain at home’ [‘kto chasto za shapku beretsya - vsegda doma ostaetsya’]. I didn’t reply but went above his head and got as far as the Deputy Governor (he was standing in for the Governor, who was on leave). It transpired that this Deputy-Governor - his name was Ladyzhenskii or something like that - came from Tula. His wife, who had been a pupil of the Tula Classical Gymnasium ( for women, of course), also came from Tula. She visited me at my flat and turned out to be a likeable, intelligent young women. At her request, I took a letter and some Kirghizian fabric to her mother in Tula. By this time we had reached the first days of December and I had not yet been approached by prospective travelling companions. I was very concerned that I would be left on my own and not have enough money for the journey. Finally, on 8 December, a very handsome young beau turned up - a priest in a wine-coloured cassock, who introduced himself as the arch-priest [nastoyatel’] of a parish church 29 school [tserkovno-prikhodskaya shkola]. I have forgotten his name. He told me that his official duties required him to depart on 15 December for Pavlodar (this was half way to Omsk), and that he would accompany me that distance at no cost to myself if I agreed to take him from there on to Omsk, where he had personal business. Needless to say, I agreed, for not only did this reduce by half the cost of the horse-drawn stage of my journey, but he also took it upon himself to handle all of the travel arrangements, the hiring of coachmen and so on. 15 June: On 15 December (old style) my handsome travelling companion turned up with a coach and three, with a Kirghiz at the reins [na kozlakh]. There were 38 degrees of frost, but the weather was clear and calm. My companion had only one travel bag. I had a bit more luggage than that, notwithstanding all the efforts I had made to sell things off to boost my savings. While my belongings were being loaded onto the sleigh [kosheva], I donned my array of fur coats. Then I wrapped up my head and feet. By the time I had put on my felt jacket and sheepskin coat I could hardly move. Somehow or other I said goodbye to my landladies, to several colleagues who had come to see me off, and to my schoolteacher friend. Then I dragged myself towards the sledge where my raccoon coat, with the Barnaul coat on top, were already spread out. I was then wrapped up inside them and turned into a shapeless lump. Only my face remained exposed and I had a view of the troika of horses that were harnessed to our sleigh and waiting in front of the locked gates. A couple of Kirghiz who were clinging to the harness were obviously having great difficulty restraining the horses. On the coach box sat a third Kirghiz, bare-chested, but clad in his malakhai (a Kirghizian fur hat). Finally, my companion climbed up beside me and all of a sudden I was engulfed in darkness. A white felt covering had been thrown over us and battened down on each side. This didn’t suit me at all and I immediately made a hole in the felt to let the air in and enable me to see what was going on outside. The felt was thin and soft and so it let in some air and even some light. Making a gap was not difficult, even with hands in mittens, and removing the mittens would have been more trouble. We sat there cramped into one position. It was almost impossible to move. Then, suddenly, I noticed through my little window that someone had opened the gates and then leapt quickly to one side, landing on the snow. The two Kirkhgiz who 30 had been hanging on to the harness were also thrown sideways onto the snow. The horses dashed forward and hurtled down the street.93 Although Malinovskii was enrolled as a student in the second year of the Medical Faculty he spent almost all of his time in Tula rather than Khar’kov. He only travelled to Khar’kov to sit his exams and for similar matters. For conspiratorial reasons he now lived not with the Rudnevs, but on his own. At first, we did not live together, or at least not all of the time. We each had a room in different places. During my spell in Siberia Ivan Ivanovich Skvortsov (later known as Stepanov) came to Tula, after having been banished from Moscow for three years (I think it was for the Rasputin case).94 He was a teacher and a graduate of the Moscow Teachers’ College. I knew from Aleksandr Aleksandrovich that Ivan Ivanovich edited the journal Vestnik vospitaniia. Malinovskii got to know Skvortsov through the schoolteacher Lidia Antonovna Basova, who was close to the workers’ circles. In turn, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich introduced Ivan Ivanovich to Vladimir Aleksandrovich Rudnev, and then to the workers who studied in the circles, in the first instance to Ivan Ivanovich Savelev. From this time both Ivan Ivanoviches acquired nicknames: Skvortsov began to be called ‘Lofty’ or ‘Lanky’ on account of his height, and Savelev, ‘Shorty’ - by comparison with Skvortsov he certainly was small. It was the custom, however, among ourselves - Malinovskii, the Rudnevs and myself - to continue calling Savelev ‘Sashurka’. Ivan Ivanovich Skvortsov also started teaching in the workers’ circles, using Malinovskii’s summaries, as did Rudnev and the author himself. Later they were joined by Maria Pavlovna Poliakova, who had come from Moscow, and by Ol’ga Illiodorovna Iznoskova (later the wife of Ivan Ivanovich Skvortsov) from Kazan’. Later still, the staff of lecturers was joined by Fomin,95 who came from Khar’kov but who didn’t remain for very long in Tula. 93‘By order No.106 of the Military Governor of Semipalatinsk Oblast [Natalia Bogdanovna Korsak] was released from her appointment as District Midwife, following her request of 14 December 1896. She has not been the subject of fines, trials or investigations.’ Certificate [Attestat] issued by the Medical Inspector of Semipalatinsk Oblast, dated 14 December 1896 (BFA). 94 On the Rasputin case and the exile of Skvortsov-Stepanov, see note 3. 95 On Petr Ivanovich Fomin (1873—1936), who had been a member of the Nezhdanov circle in Khar’kov. See Bogdanov, ‘Moe prebyvanie v Tule’, p.17. At this time Fomin was a student in the Faculty of Law of the University of Khar’kov. From 1899 he worked for the Council of Congresses of the Mining Industries of the South of Russia. During the Soviet period he became a Professor of Law in the University of Khar’kov. See https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Фомин,_Пётр_Иванович. 31 At that time the Short Course was already nearing completion and was receiving its first editing by Vladimir Aleksandrovich Rudnev. When Ivan Ivanovich Skvortsov arrived he was given the job of editing the ‘Course’ a second time, mainly for the benefit of the censor. As Ivan Ivanovich explained, while editing Vestnik vospitaniia he had acquired the knack of using ‘Aesopian language’. This was the first time I had heard of this expression, and it became engraved in my memory especially since later on I was to hear it often. So, if one doesn’t count the audience of the workers’ circles, the Short Course had two editors: the first was Vladimir Aleksandrovich Rudnev, and the second was Ivan Ivanovich Skvortsov. 25 June: From the spring of 1896 we began to search for a publisher for the ‘Course’, which had by now been completed, and it was also at this time that Aleksandr Aleksandrovich conceived the idea of a new work, which was eventually given the title The Basic Elements of the Historical View of Nature.96 As more lecturers appeared, the number of workers’ circles increased. The first workers’ circle, which became known as the central one, organized new circles, selecting suitable members in factories, workshops and from amongst the handicraft workers. I won’t write about the work of the circles, because I think that the people who should talk and write about this are the comrades who were directly involved, the lecturers and the students. Unfortunately, of the lecturers at that time, and of the indirect participants in events, there are very few who can say anything, since many are no longer with us. In 1900 we lost the founder of the Tula Social-Democratic organizations, the Armaments Factory worker, Ivan Ivanovich Savelev (‘Sashurka’) or ‘Shorty’. Less than a year ago (on 7 April 1928) the first ‘student’ or ‘intelligent’ recruited by Savelev died - Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Malinovskii (‘Bogdanov’, ‘Sergei Vasil’evich’, ‘Señor’, ‘Cat’ and a whole host of other pseudonyms). Ivan Ivanovich Skvortsov (‘Stepanov’, ‘Lofty’, ‘Lanky’), died quite recently, on 8 October 1928. The schoolteacher Lidia Antonovna Basova died in 1918 or 1919 in Tula, in the municipal school where she had taught for many years. She died in great poverty, in cold and in hunger, in the tiny store-room of the school kitchen. Working in the Sunday school, she had been able to keep all of the members of the organization in touch with each other, and, of course, she shared the risk with all its members. Maria Vikent’evna Smidovich-Miliutina has died. She became an active member of the 96 See note 12. 32 organization after arriving in Tula from Zurich, where she had studied medicine. She used to bring illegal literature to Tula (I have already mentioned this when explaining how we unloaded the suitcase with false lining). In all probability other members of the first Tula organization have also died, but many remain alive, and they would have much to tell. Personally, I was on the sidelines. I bore the burden of the hard struggle for my husband’s and my own existence, and additionally I carried out a range of technical, conspiratorial tasks. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich went to great lengths to shield me from arrest, arguing that whilst his work in the organization was more important than mine, it was essential that I should avoid arrest, so that I could attend to the needs of those who would sooner or later find themselves in prison, himself included ... I agreed with this completely and did not aspire to more direct involvement in the workers’ circles. Besides, to tell the truth, I was never cut out for teaching. I had given teaching a try before I met Malinovskii. 29 June: The question arose what name should be given to the author of the Short Course of Political Economy. It was decided that a pseudonym was needed, since the very subject of the book, and above all its ‘popular’ character, exposed the author to the suspicion of the Gendarmes.97 The fact of the matter was that the book was actually a course of lectures, and moreover of popular lectures, that is, of lectures intended (hopefully) for workers, and such a project was of course ‘criminal’ and, therefore, dangerous. We first thought of ‘Ivanov’, but, then, on reflection, we realized that in the circumstances, this was too obviously a pseudonym, and so we finally decided to publish the book under the name ‘A. Bogdanov.’ Aleksandr Aleksandrovich adopted my patronymic and it became his pseudonym. A publisher was found with the help of a relative or an acquaintance of Ol’ga Illiodorovna Iznoskova, one Agrafena Iakovlevna Smelova. The publishers were Alevtina Nikolaevna Murinova and her husband (I don’t know his name). 1 July: Our life was often very difficult in material terms. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich had very few classes, and even then he couldn’t always attract enough students, because from time to time he had to travel to Khar’kov for his exams and 97Here and elsewhere, Natalia Bogdanovna is referring to the Otdelnyi Korpus Zhandarmov, the Special Corps of Gendarmes, which had sub-divisions in most of the Gubernii and oblasts of the Russian Empire, and special responsibility for political surveillance. As of 1880 it was accountable to the Ministry of the Interior, through the Department of State Police. See Z.I. Peregudova, Politicheskii sysk Rossii 1880—1917, 2nd edition, Moscow, 2013, pp. 38—72. 33 then, over and above his medical studies, he was preoccupied, on the one hand, with his literary work, and, on the other, with his revolutionary activities. My midwifery practice was also on a shaky footing. My visits to patients in other towns and on landowners’ estates would sometimes bring in a tidy lump sum, but these trips and absences from Tula often meant that I missed out on work at home. We lived in complete doubt and uncertainty from one day to the next. To earn a bit more I decided to take on a summer job of midwife for the railways. I had to travel up and down the railway line, often alongside the engine driver or in a wagon attached to the engine, sometimes on a goods train, or on a push-trolley and very seldom on a proper train. However, (if I had not been called out on the line) I would travel on a normal train every morning to Tula’s neighbouring Protopopovo station on the Syzrano- Viazma line. There I would assist in the doctor’s surgery. I changed dressings, worked in the pharmacy and in general carry out the work of a medical orderly alongside the local medical orderly. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich had to live almost all this time on his own and it was difficult for him to organize his meals. Often he would go and have a meal at the Rudnevs, often he would have uncooked meals, but this was a depressing, hungry, inconvenient and expensive way of life, and things got so bad that, for the sake of economy, we gave up the flat for two months and I moved into the maternity home to stay with the midwife Sofia Pavlovna Novikova (who delivered my baby). From there I would set off on my railway duties, while Aleksandr Aleksandrovich went to visit his parents in Poshekhone in Yaroslavl’ Guiberniia, where he continued to work on The Basic Elements of an Historical View of Nature. In August I returned to my private practice and Malinovskii came back from Poshekhone and resumed teaching in the workers’ circles. It was at this time, in the autumn of 1897, that the Short Course of Economic Science was finally published. Our joy was not as great as it might have been. Despite the use of ‘Aesopian language’, the censor had mutilated it quite a bit, excising, for example, a whole chapter on religion, and a lengthy note on village kulaks, despite the fact that they were deliberately dealt with in note form rather than in the main body of the text, precisely in order to accommodate the censor. There were many cuts, of course, and deletions of individual words, phrases, lines and paragraphs. The publishers had saved one complete copy and I set about restoring some of the mutilated copies, turning them in this way into illegal copies and passing them on 34 from hand to hand.98 We no longer have any copies of the version restored by me, and the single surviving original copy was lost at Aleksandr Aleksandrovich’s parents’ place in Sokolka in the Grodno Guberniia during the imperialist war, when his parents had to flee from Sokolka to Gomel’.99 Early in 1898 (I don’t remember in which month), the journal Mir Bozhii published a very favourable review of the Short Course in which the author was referred to as ‘the venerable author’ [pochtennyi avtor]. We were all delighted with this review, especially Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, of course. From this time on, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Bazarov, Stepanov, and I would often address Aleksandr Aleksandrovich in conversation as ‘the venerale author’. Our author was 24 years old and somehow the word ‘venerable’ didn’t quite fit. The review was unsigned and it was only several years later, in 1904, that we learnt from Nadezhda Konstantinovna Ulianova that the author of the review was Lenin.100 Materially, things did not get much better for us with the publication of the Short Course, because, bit by bit, the royalties we had received in the form of advances had already been spent. To repair our finances I decided to return to work. At the end of September, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich and I once again went our different ways – he to Khar’kov, and I to work in the Sushchevskii Hospital, 30 versts from Moscow. However, I only stayed there until the Christmas holidays; then we both returned 98 According to Bazarov, a chapter on ‘surplus value’ was excised entirely (though many reference to surplus value remain in the text). It was only in 1906, after the 1905 revolution, that the Short Course was published in a complete version, together with a chapter on ‘The Socialist Society’ that previously it would have been futile to include. See Bazarov, ‘A.A.Bogdanov (Malinovskii) kak myslitel’(i populiarizator) (1873—1928)’, in V.S. Klebaner (ed.), ‘K vozvrashcheniiu Vladimira Bazarova’, Voprosy filosofii, 2004, 6, p.108. 99 Natalia Bogdanovna uses the Russian spelling of what is now, once again, ‘Sokółka’. In the Third Partition of Poland (1795) this small town was acquired by Prussia. It became part of the Russian Empire in 1807. Between 1915 and 1918 it was occupied at various times by the German and by the Polish armies. It also became part of the battlefield between the Red Army and the Poles. Following the Treaty of Riga (1921), Sokółka became part of the Białystok Voevodstvo of Poland. It was occupied by Soviet forces in 1940 and by German forces in 1941, but reverted to Poland after 1945. The town of Grodno (Hrodna) was acquired by Russia during the Third Partition of Poland and in 1801 it became the capital of the Grodno Guberniia. By the Treaty of Riga the town was acquired by Poland, and by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (1939) it was transferred to the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. See http://www.jewishgen.org/Belarus/borders_timeline.htm. 100Lenin’s review was published in Mir Bozhii, No.4 (April 1898). His judgement was that the Short Course would be of great benefit to both teachers and students of political economy. He did not in this review deplore Bogdanov’s decision not to expound Marx’s economics in terms of Hegelian dialectics. See V.I. Lenin, Pol’noe Sobranie Sochinenii, 5th edition, 55 volumes, 1967—1975, 4, Moscow, 1967, pp.35—43. 35 once again to Tula, which I never left until Aleksandr Aleksandrovich was arrested in November 1899. I worked in the surgical hospital of Dr. Batashev, as a midwife, looking after the patients and helping Aleksandr Aleksandrovich in whatever way I could. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich was working on The Basic Elements and on his other usual business. I began to earn a bit more and things started to get a little bit easier for us. 27 July: In 1898 our activities expanded considerably. It was about that time that Nikolai Mikhailovich and Klavdiia Mikhailovna Velichkin (brother and sister), Boikov, and, I think, some other individual, were exiled to Tula. They didn’t go along with our group’s way of working and began to operate independently. They were arrested very soon thereafter and disappeared from the Tula horizon. Some of the students from the workers’ circles left for other places (Moscow, St Petersburg, later to the Caucasus) and new people were constantly arriving to replace them. As I have said, let those comrades who were directly involved in the Tula organization write about this. I want to write about things that only I can write about – about the life of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich in the years of his youth. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich was now working on The Basic Elements. When he wrote, he was very tense and at night he slept very badly and restlessly, and had dreams connected with the thoughts that preoccupied him completely during his waking hours. He would sometimes jump out of bed in the middle of the night and note down something that he had not succeeded in formulating during the day and that had come to him while he was asleep. He would be in a kind of hallucinatory state. Sometimes I became very worried by his agitated state of mind. I was quite convinced that he was ill. After all, in addition to his work with the study circles and to his writing, he was also studying for his degree in medicine. I remember that at that time, too, he was very much taken with Hauptmann’s The Sunken Bell 101 and wrote a poem about it which he called ‘Poesy’. Here is the poem: 101 Gerhart Hauptmann’s allegorical play The Sunken Bell. A German Fairy—Tale Drama (Die versunkene Glocke. Ein deutsches Märchendrama) was published in 1896. Hauptmann’s play has been interpreted as the eternal effort of all artists (represented by the central character, Heinrich) to attain their aesthetic ideals, or as the aspirations of the reformer to remodel human society, while hampered by existing conditions. Heinrich can also be seen as a symbol of humanity struggling towards the realization of its ideals of truth, freedom and justice (as represented by Rautendelein). See Gerhart Hauptmann, The Sunken Bell; A Fairy Play in Five Acts, freely rendered into English verse by Charles Henry Meltzer, New York, Doubleday & McClure, 1900.This last interpretation would be the one most in keeping with the sense of Bogdanov's poem. 36 Poesy From a thousand bright and brilliant thoughts That swarm in the maelstrom of your mind, Choose the one that’s fairest of all And gift it flesh and gift it blood. Let with the blinding light of truth All the power, the thrust of ideal passions That rule the warrior and poet of truth Let them fuse in your radiant dream. In full harmony with its beauty, With its strict heavenly purity, Wrap it in the transparent cloth of words Embroidered with the pattern of enchanting dreams. Like the first caress of the spring sun The noble fairy-tale will spread among people, Scattering the darkness of their hearts It will bring an awakening to those who sleep. Minutes of oblivion to those who are sick at heart And strength to warriors wearied by battle.102 Aleksandr Aleksandrovich always took to writing poetry when there was something he was not clear about in his head, something that he had been unable to formulate, or when he was weary. It wasn’t that writing poetry was a relaxation for him, it’s just that he thought that by engaging in some unaccustomed activity the solution or the formulation would come to him by itself. That is how he explained to me his ‘excursions into versification’. From the beginning of 1899 the search began for a publisher for The Basic Elements, which was nearing completion. I think it was in early summer 1899 that the 102The poem ‘Poeziia’, dated 1898, was included by Bogdanov in his ‘Poetry Notebook’, a manuscript collection of his poems. In a footnote, Bogdanov states that the poem was inspired by Hauptmann’s The Sunken Bell. For the Russian text, see G.D. Gloveli, ‘Liricheskie remarki’, Vestnik Mezhdunarodnogo Instituta Bogdanova, 2000, 4, p.57. 37 book was finished, and he calmed down right away. When, through the mediation of Rubakin103, the ‘Shareholding Publishing Company ‘Izdatel’’104 took on The Basic Elements he quite cheered up and got down to preparing for his final examinations, which he passed ‘with distinction.’ In the late autumn he returned definitively to Tula and devoted himself entirely to revolutionary work. But he didn’t manage to work there for long because on 4 November 1899 he was arrested on orders from Moscow.105 The problem was that some of the ‘intelligenty’ from Nezhdanov’s organization (Nezhdanov himself [Cherevanin], L.L. Nikiforov, B. V. Avilov, I. Vaneev, the engineer Kirillov, the statistician Vsevolod Kvintilianovich Rudnev and a few others) had come from Khar’kov to Moscow. There they had made contact with some people from Tula, former students of the workers’ circles (Denisov, Morozov), who had also moved to Moscow, but very soon they were arrested. The case would probably have been closed before long and everyone released, because the Okhrana had practically nothing on them, but the statistician V. K. Rudnev and the engineer Kirillov began to give things away (Kirillov was said to be mentally ill). As a consequence of these betrayals the case dragged on, and on 4 November A. A. Malinovskii was arrested, followed in January 1900, by I. I. Skvortsov (he was not long in prison, about two months). When the Gendarmes turned up to search Aleksandr Aleksandrovich’s place I was at work. That same night, after he had been arrested a student came from our flat (he was lodging there) and told me that Aleksandr Aleksandrovich had been taken to prison. I at once took leave of my patient and his wife and got ready to go home, not giving a thought to the fact that I had only 45 kopecks in my pocket. But my patient’s wife, N. S. Ivanova, did my thinking for me. She was herself from a family of revolutionaries (her sisters, the Karasevs, had repeatedly been in prison) and she knew that a prisoner might need money. She loaned me 20 roubles and off I went. 103 Nikolai Aleksandrovich Rubakin (1862—1946), the famous bibliographer and founder of two large libraries of Russian books. Before 1907, when he emigrated to Switzerland, he was involved with illegal student organizations. 104 Aktsionernoe Obshestvo Pechatnogo Dela ‘Izdatel’’. 105 Bogdanov was detained by the Gendarmes of Moscow Province and charged with ‘conducting social propaganda among workers’. See Petr Pliutto, in Bogdanov and His Work, p.462, citing GARF, f.102, op.253m l.45—45 ob. For Bogdanov’s own account of his arrest, see Bogdanov, ‘Moe prebyvanie v Tule’, pp.17—18. 38 At home my room was in complete chaos. Out on the street, even though it was dark (it was four in the morning) there was a crowd of onlookers by the gates who fell silent when I started unlocking the entrance door. In our room everything had been rummaged through, the bed was messed up, clean linen from the chest of drawers had been thrown all over it, there wasn’t a handkerchief that hadn’t been unfolded. But I was not at all upset by the search, because I knew that they wouldn’t find anything incriminating in our place. We were ready for a police raid at any time and there had already been rumours that ‘some people were hanging about’ (in Savelev’s expression) and so we were prepared. I was told that Malinovskii himself had met the Gendarmes who had come to do the search. He had recently come back from a meeting and although he was lying in bed, he was not yet asleep and he got up when he heard the bell, wearing nothing but an overcoat over his underwear. Seeing him in the overcoat, they asked: ‘Where have you been?’. He said nothing and opened his coat. In the morning I had just got ready to go out and make enquiries, when a prison guard turned up with a note from Aleksandr Aleksandrovich in which he asked me to send him a spoon, a mug, a comb and things like that. Once I had provided these items, I set off to see Miller, the Colonel of the Gendarmes. He received me cordially, sat me down in an armchair, offered me a cigarette from his cigarette-case, praised me for not smoking and then inquired how he might be of assistance. I replied that I had come to find out on what grounds my fiancé, or rather my husband (that is what I said to him), the medical doctor, Malinovskii, who had just passed his final examinations, had been arrested. Miller informed me that he was himself curious to know this, that the arrest had been carried out on the orders of the Moscow Department of the Okhrana, and that Malinovskii would be sent to Moscow, if he had not already been sent there. When he asked whether Malinovskii had any acquaintances among the workers in Tula or in Moscow I tried to answer naively that since Malinovskii had only recently become a student and since he lived in Khar’kov, he would hardly be acquainted with workers either in Moscow or in Tula, and that obviously there must have been some kind of misunderstanding. Miller began to explain to me that the crime in question was a political one, that students often had links with workers for political purposes, and that a political crime was a crime of views and convictions. I heard him out, told him that I didn’t understand what was going on, and that I wanted to see Malinovskii before he 39 was sent to Moscow. I was given permission to do this, but I didn’t manage to see him, because Aleksandr Aleksandrovich was already on the train on the way to Moscow, and I saw him again only 5½ months later. I managed to travel from Tula to Moscow only three weeks later, because in addition to my assignment with the Ivanovs, I had promised to help Dr. Strezhelskii’s wife deliver her baby. I couldn’t turn my back on my work, since that would have left me with nothing to live on, and money was needed now more than ever. This impossibility of going immediately to Moscow depressed me greatly. I didn’t sleep for nights on end, because the thought of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich was with me constantly. Looking after my patients also deprived me of sleep, and so I became extremely worn out. While the wife of Dr. Strezhelskii was giving birth I twice fell down in a faint during her contractions! The first time this happened I very quickly came to. Apart from the nurse, nobody even saw me lying on the floor next to the bath tub in the room adjoining the birthing room. Because I had banged my head on the bath, making a metallic sound, they thought that I had simply bumped against the tin bath. The second time (1½ hours later) I fell down right in the birthing room, where Dr. Strezhelskii himself had turned up. I was carried into his study and placed on a couch and only then did I come to. I was given some wine or something similar and I was then able to get up and attend to the woman who was giving birth. Just as well that her husband was a doctor! Any other woman would have got really scared. Dr. Strezhelskii questioned me closely after the birth, and I had to tell him about my state of mind. They turned out to be very kind people and they showed me a lot of sympathy. Correspondence between Aleksandr Aleksandrovich and myself began almost immediately. He was in the Taganka Prison and the number of his cell was 195, as far as I can remember. After every case of maternity work, I travelled to Moscow and called on the Okhrana (twice in all), and when the case was handed over to the Gendarmes I started to call on them and finally obtained permission for a meeting. I obtained this permission just three weeks before Aleksandr Aleksandrovich was released from prison. By contrast, his brothers had begun to visit him a month after his arrest.106 What depressed me even more was that Aleksandr Aleksandrovich’s 106 Aleksandr Bogdanov had two brothers: Nikolai (b.186?) and Sergei (b.1878). Nikolai had studied medicine and engineering. He lived for a time in Poland, but in 1928, when Bogdanov died, the Bogdanov family were unable to contact him. Sergei had also studied medicine. 40 brother, Nikolai, persistently tried to persuade me that I shouldn’t try to obtain a meeting with Sasha, since, in his opinion, my visits to the Gendarmes and requests to see him would make the Gendarmes hold Sasha longer in prison. I was at a loss to comprehend what grounds he had for this conviction, and, naturally, I began to assume that his behaviour was simply evidence of his ill-will towards me. This surprised and upset me a great deal, because until Aleksandr Aleksandrovich’s arrest I had been on very good terms with Nikolai Aleksandrovich. Of course, I couldn’t give in to his arguments and continued with my own policy, knowing as I did that Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, for his part, insisted on us being able to see each other. All this was very difficult, especially since I lived in Tula and had to travel to Moscow for negotiations with the Gendarmes and the public prosecutor. It was agonising, tiring and very expensive, and all the more costly given the fact that, owing to my frequent absences, I began to lose work. I had hoped that Aleksandr Aleksandrovich’s case would soon be closed and judged to be trivial, because the Tula Gendarmes obviously had nothing to go on and the Moscow Gendarmes very little. There was no reason to believe that someone would provide evidence or betray people. But quite unexpectedly among the Khar’kov people who had been arrested in Moscow, two individuals began to name names. The engineer Kirillov fell into hallucinatory psychosis, and the statistician, Vsevolod Kvintilianovich Rudnev, simply decided to repent for his sins. Fortunately, it was not established that Malinovskii and Bogdanov were the same person. The testimony of those two individuals in January 1900 led to the arrest of Ivan Ivanovich Skvortsov. All of the time that Aleksandr Aleksandrovich was in prison he was very worried that I, too, would be arrested, and that we would then be sent to different locations. His apprehension on this account was strengthened by a suspicion that I was not being allowed to visit him because it was believed that I, too, was implicated in the affair. Malinovskii applied to the Board of the Gendarmerie requesting permission for us to be married in prison, but he received the reply that it would soon be Advent, and then it would be Christmas, when weddings weren’t conducted, and so we would have to wait. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich protested that since he would still be in prison after the wedding and that we would be living apart, the marriage should 41 be allowed and that there were precedents for this. But everything was in vain: permission to marry in prison was denied. When Nikolai Aleksandrovich found out that Sasha had applied for permission for us to get married in prison, he (that is, Nikolai Aleksandrovich) became very agitated and tried to persuade me that if I were to agree to marry it would mean that I did not love Sasha, that Sasha was probably going to be a scholar and scholars should live alone, and the fact that I was older than Sasha was also a great obstacle to our marriage. In a word, he tormented me for about two hours and drove me almost to hysterics (for the first and last time in my life), but of course, he didn’t manage to sway me. I explained to him that I regarded Sasha as a grown-up person, whereas he, Nikolai Aleksandrovich, obviously seemed to look upon him as a child, and wanted to arrange his life for him. I asked him if he could imagine how Sasha would feel in prison if the Gendarmes told him, or if I myself were to write to him, that I didn’t want to marry him? I told him that we were for all practical purposes man and wife and that marriage would add nothing new to our lives and would actually free us from some inconvenience and unpleasantness. On this occasion Nikolai Aleksandrovich and I parted on bad terms and relations between us were frosty for several years. On parting, I told him that I would prefer not to see him for the time being, because now I had to keep up my mental equilibrium, and he was depriving me of this possibility; but if we did have to meet he should categorically refrain from giving me his advice. In rebuttal he said that Sasha would of course be upset, even offended, if I refused to marry him, but ‘with time all of this would be forgotten and it would be all the better for him’. I left without saying goodbye. Sergei Aleksandrovich, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich’s second brother was present during this conversation of ours, but he didn’t take any part in it, he was silent for almost the whole time and only when I burst into tears did he say to Nikolai ‘Kolia, how can you say that Natalia Bogdanovna doesn’t love Sasha, can’t you see how offensive it is?’ But Kolia just waved him away. I bring up this story about marrying Aleksandr Aleksandrovich in prison because we knew of one example when a student was sent to Tula, and his wife to Narva, and no amount of pleading could persuade the Gendarmes to bring the couple together in one town; their response was that they weren’t lawfully married, and they wouldn’t let them travel for a wedding. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich fretted a great deal 42 and all of the time expected that I, too, would land up in jail. Every trifling thing made him think that I had been arrested, as, for example, when he asked his brothers to tell me that he needed socks. To speed things up (because I was in Tula), the brothers simply bought some socks and passed them on to him in prison. When he discovered that the socks were completely new, Malinovskii understood that it wasn’t I who had sent them, because I would have given him his usual worn socks, and he concluded that I had ended up not far from him, that is, in prison. I very much regret that we had to destroy our letters, and much else in those times, partly for conspiratorial reasons, and partly because of our wandering way of life: the extensive correspondence that we maintained during Aleksandr Aleksandrovich’s six months in prison has not been preserved. We managed to keep Aleksandr Aleksandrovich’s arrest and term of imprisonment secret from his parents and sisters. This turned out to be possible because the correspondence of the Malinovskii brothers with their parents was very irregular and letters were written only in cases of necessity, so that months went by without any letters being sent by either side. Even after Aleksandr Aleksandrovich’s arrest everything went smoothly, but suddenly in January 1900 a telegram arrived, addressed to Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, from his father. In the telegram his father asked him to send 100 roubles, as a matter of urgency, and if Sasha didn’t have the money, then to borrow it from someone. By good luck I had just received exactly 100 roubles from some maternity work in the district and I immediately sent them off, and on the remittance I wrote: ‘I am sending the money on behalf of your son, who had to leave urgently for Kaluga to see V. A. Rudnev.’ and I signed it with my own surname, Korsak. Everything went all right. 28 July: While in prison Aleksandr Aleksandrovich began work on his third book, Perception from the Historical Point of View, and, upon release in May 1900, he continued this work and finished the book at the end of 1900.107 Then began the worrying over how to get it published. The end result was that we published it ourselves out of our meagre resources. At that time my mother had given me a lottery ticket, purchased by her when I was very young ‘for my happiness’, as she put it. We sold this ticket and used the money for printing the book in Leifert’s printing works in 107 Poznanie s istoricheskoi tochki zreniya, Saint Petersburg, Tipografiia A. Leiferta, 1901. Bogdanov’s foreword is dated ‘31 December 1900’. 43 St. Petersburg. The book came out in 1901. In May 1900 Aleksandr Aleksandrovich was released from prison under ‘special surveillance’ until sentence was passed. He was given the choice of where to live, with the exception of the capitals, university towns and factory towns.108 He chose Kaluga, because he knew that there he would meet up with some or other of his comrades and friends. Ivan Ivanovich Skvortsov, who had already been released, had been sent to Kaluga. That was also the place of residence that had been chosen by Vladimir Aleksandrovich Rudnev-Bazarov, who had just completed his two years of exile in Kaluga in connection with the case of the Moscow Committee. He decided to spend the summer together with his comrades, and in the autumn he intended to go abroad. Ivan Ivanovich Skvortsov lived there with his wife, Ol’ga Illiodorovna Iznoskova. Vladimir Rudnev was joined by his mother and sister. A. V. Lunacharskii was sent there too, as were B. V. Avilov-Iosif, Al. Davydov and others. 21 February 1929: I haven’t written anything for over six months. My mood has been so gloomy, I have become so infirm that I just haven’t been able to concentrate and ‘write’ anything. I am surrounded by so many squabbles and so much unpleasantness, and the hard, intolerable struggle with all of this makes it impossible to do anything. In the summer (up to November) I had the job of maintaining contact with the VTsSPS printing works, which was printing the first volume of the ‘Proceedings’ of the Institute for Blood Transfusion, dedicated to the memory of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich.109 The constant visits to the printing works, keeping in touch with the authors of the articles and the part reading of proofs took up time and distracted me from my dark thoughts. I did manage to read through what I had written and to fill in some things, but when the ‘Proceedings’ and Volume III of Tektologiia110 were 108According to police records, A.A. Malinovskii left Moscow ‘accompanied by the medical assistant and midwife, N.B. Korsak, who is under secret surveillance’. See Petr Pliutto, in Bogdanov and His Work, p.462, citing GAKO, f.783, op.1, d.214, ll.4—5. 109 See Na novom pole (Trudy Gosudarstvennogo Nauchnogo Instituta perelivaniya krovi imeni A.A.Bogdanova, I, Moscow, 1928. Bogdanov is listed, posthumously, as one of the editors of this compilation, which includes his report ‘Pervy god raboty Instituta perelivaniya krovi’ and obituaries by N. Semashko, N.I. Bukharin and A.A. Bogomolets. Although this volume bears the date ‘1928’, it seems that it did not become available until 1929. An English translation is included in Douglas W. Huestis, The Struggle for Viability. 110 Vseobshchaia organizatsionnaia nauka. Tektologiia [III] (2nd edition, further augmented and revised, Moscow, 1929. 44 published (they came out almost simultaneously) I felt my loneliness acutely and an onset of emptiness, and this, despite the fact that my friends – Lidia Pavlovna Pavlova111, Aleksandra Valerianovna Mechnikova,112 the son and the sister of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, ‘Kotik’,113 and Maria Aleksandrovna Zander114, my nieces and my sister Aleksandra Bogdanovna Zavistovskaia, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Bazarov, Vasiliy Vasil’evich Glagolev,115 Iosif Abramovich Kan,116 Ivan Efimovich Ermolaev 117 and many others tried very hard not to leave me by myself, for which I am infinitely grateful. Very touching was the attitude of the doctors of our Institute, not to mention the colleagues of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich who had worked with him for 2½ years before the opening of the Institute - our ‘initiative group’, as Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin called it in a conversation with me. Semen L’vovich Maloletkov118, Izmail Il’ich Sobolev,119 and Dmitrii Aleksandrovich Gudim- 111 On Lidia Pavlona Pavlova, see the Introduction. 112 On Aleksandra Valerianovna Mechnikova, see the Introduction. 113 ‘Kotik’ (‘Little Cat’) was the nickname of Bogdanov’s son, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Malinovskii (1909—1996). 114 Aleksandr Bogdanov had three sisters: Maria Aleksandrovna (b.1882) [who married Sergei Ivanovich Zander]; Anna Aleksandrovna (b.1883) [who married Anatolii Vasil’evich Lunacharskii]; and Ol’ga (b.1885 or 1886). 115 Vasilii Vasil’evich Glagolev (the alias of Nikolai Mikhailovich Grubov, b.1889), a close friend of the Bogdanovs, was born in Tula. In his will, Bogdanov bequeathed his archive to Glagolev and in 1928, not long before Bogdanov’s death, the archive was handed over to him for classification. Glagolev- Grubov was on 28 May 1937 sentenced to 5 years in a labour camp for counter-revolutionary activity. He died in 1954 and was rehabilitated in 1956. See Nina S. Antonova and Natalia V. Drozdova, ‘Collection of the Central Party Archive, in Bogdanov and His Work, pp.73—74. 116 Iosif Abramovich Kan (1884—1945), a former member of the Bund, worked, as of 1921, in the Workers’-Peasants’ Inspectorate and in Gosplan. From 1921—1922 he was a member of the Scientific Section of the Proletkult. Kan’s interests included the education of the working class and the scientific organization of labour. 117 Ivan Efimovich Ermolaev had been born into a peasant family in Vologda province in 1879. Trained as a medical orderly, he had worked with Bogdanov in the Kuvshinovo Mental Hospital and renewed acquaintance with him in Moscow in 1913. A close friend of Bogdanov, he assisted him during his first experiments in blood transfusion and was one of Bogdanov’s first volunteer patients. 118 Semen L’vovich Maloletkov. A fellow doctor of Bogdanov during his period of military service and a member of the initiative group which convened in the autumn of 1922 to discuss experiments in exchange blood transfusion, Maloletkov participated in three exchange blood transfusions. He was Deputy Director for Scientific and Educational Affairs in the Institute of Blood Transfusion under Bogdanov (the position was later taken over by Bogomolets). See Nikolai Krementsov, A Martian Stranded on Earth, pp.68—69, 91, 97. 119 Izmail Il’ich Sobolev had been a student and boarder in the Tula Gymnasium, contemporaneously with Bogdanov. A member of the Bogdanov’s ‘initiative group’ of 1922, he had introduced D.A. 45 Levkovich120 visited me regularly. I cannot but recall with gratitude the touching attitude towards me of Professor Bogomolets (the Director of the Institute after the death of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich)121 who visited me almost every day. I was visited by many other doctors, among them Gamburger, Iazvitskii, Emel’ianov, Bagdasarov,122 Vlados, Fedorov, Iakovlev and many others. Very kind to me were other colleagues at the Institute – nurses, carers, technical and other staff, and to all of them I shall be forever grateful. But no amount of kindness could relieve me of my sadness. The unpleasantness and squabbles continued and prevented me from writing, because my thoughts were fixed on the mundane and the intolerably tedious. My health began to give way. I felt immeasurably tired all of the time, I kept wanting to lie down, to lie down and not to think of anything, and when my thoughts overcame me all the same, I did not have the energy to get up and write. Today, in spite of my illness – I have had flu that has lingered on for a month – I have found the strength to take up my pen. I have decided to write what I remember, without system and without order, just to get started, perhaps I will be drawn into it, and the work will go all right. In my notes or ‘memoirs’ I left off at the point when we travelled to Kaluga, where Aleksandr Aleksandrovich was sent under special surveillance while awaiting his sentence. But before going further I want to tell ... [Here the manuscript ends.] © Translation copyright John Biggart and James D. White Gudin-Levkovich to the group, and assisted with the first experiments. With the founding in 1926 of the Institute of Blood Transfusion, he was appointed by Bogdanov to be head of the ‘therapeutic department’. See Nikolai Krementsov, A Martian Stranded on Earth, pp. 68—69. 120Dmitrii Aleksandrovich Gudim-Levkovich, a gynaecologist and researcher in blood transfusion, was a member of Bogdanov’s ‘initiative group’ in 1922. 121 Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Bogomolets brought the policies of the Institute of Blood Transfusion into line with more orthodox thinking. Later he became President of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. 122Andrei Arkad’evich Bagdasarov. According to A.A. Malinovskii, Natalia Bogdanovna interceded with Krupskaia and Aleksei Rykov in support of the candidacy of Bagdasarov to succeed Bogomolets as Director of the Institute of Blood Transfusion. In 1937, at the height of the Purges, Bagdarasov removed Bogdanov’s name from the title of the Institute. See Aleksander Aleksandrovich Malinovskii, ‘Vo izbezhanii oshibok’, pp.16, 25, 31. 46
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