Solovyov and Larionov Page 5
The general remembered carriage connections (the office
was located on the first floor of the Oreanda Hotel) perfectly, just as he remembered carriages with rubber tires and the
changing of horses in Alushta. He did not immediately
grasp why the trolleybus had become a replacement for all
that. He was soberly aware that, unlike the railroad, a trolleybus line was not suitable for transferring heavy armaments or any significant number of troops. Even so, despite the
absence of strategic significance for the trolleybus line, the general began regarding the innovation fairly positively after all and rode the trolleybus to Gurzuf one spring.
After the trolleybus had driven up, Solovyov settled into
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a window seat in the back row, in keeping with the ticket
he had purchased. Passengers entered through the front
door and heaped their luggage up on the back platform,
resting it against a door that was not open for boarding.
The passengers on the trollybus were almost entirely vaca-
tioners. They reclined noisily in their seats and wiped away sweat with the edges of their T-shirts. The only exception, by all indications, was a workingman with a girl who was
about ten. They sat near Solovyov and had almost no belongings.
Despite the rain, the stuffiness had not subsided. It eased only when the trolleybus left the city and worked up a speed that was unexpected for such a vehicle. As if on command,
the florid nylon curtains were pulled out the windows and
knocked against the glass from the other side. This synchronized flapping lent the trolleybus a festive, somehow even nuptial, look. As the trolleybus climbed Chongarsky Pass,
the workingman’s daughter began feeling nauseous. Her
father took a match out of a box and suggested she put it
in her mouth. This folk remedy proved ineffective. The little girl looked at the match, then at the calloused fingers
extracting it from the box, and vomited.
The weather changed completely after Chongarsky Pass.
The rain clouds remained beyond the northern side of the
ridge and the sun beat through the windshield of the trolley -
bus as it began its careful descent along the winding mountain road. Nature did everything it could to stun Solovyov that day. The sun, which replaced the rain so suddenly, was not simply shining in a flawlessly blue sky. Both the sun and the sky were reflected, mirror-like, somewhere far below,
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trees floating in the windows. That was how Solovyov saw
the sea for the first time.
Needless to say, General Larionov’s childhood reminis-
cences—which were found in an émigré’s archives and
published by the very same Dupont—were already known
to Solovyov by this time. Despite the fragmentariness of
the text and the author’s stated intention to touch on his more mature years—this was the basis for Dupont’s confidence that the subsequent chapters which had been lost still existed—it is here that a description of the general’s first encounter with the sea is preserved. It follows from that
description that the future commander’s family also traveled from Simferopol, although even then the opportunity
existed to arrive in Sevastopol by rail and ride from there along the coast to Yalta.
Five-year-old Larionov managed to remember that his
family was traveling in carriages with two springs. He
remembered the word springs very well because he repeated it the whole way (as has been noted already, the child did not speak until he was three and a half years old, but he
vigorously made up for lost time afterwards). The younger
Larionov’s carriage was driven by an elderly Tatar, a handsome, smartly dressed man whose mastery of Russian was,
without exception, inferior to all his passengers. Being
sociable by nature, he reacted animatedly to the word springs and leaned on the coach box each time, showing the location of the spring with his whip handle. The coachman remained
like that in the memoirist’s consciousness: inclined to the side with fine drops of sweat on his forehead and a benevolent smile.
Like Solovyov, the future general was surprised by the
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sharp change in the weather at Chongarsky Pass. The
published notes also reference flecks of sunlight playing on the waves and viewed through the slow motion of cypresses.
Special mention was given to the freshness of a wind,
blowing not from dusty roadside groves but from that chilly turquoise expanse where the sky imperceptibly came
together with the water. His mother’s light dress, locks of his English governess’s fair hair, and multicolored ribbons braided into the horse’s mane fluttered in the wind.
The general’s associative memory also forces him to speak
of a piercing wind on Chongarsky Pass on November 1,
1920, when Crimea’s remaining defenders retreated to the
ports, worn out after one-sided battles. According to
Dupont’s supposition, a more detailed description of the
evacuation was located in the part of the reminiscences that has not reached us. A faint hint cast by the general in passing, which may be seen as an intention to return to a theme he
had broached superficially, speaks in favor of that. The
general touches on those November events only because
when watching from blizzardy Chongar as the White Army
retreated (it was whiter than ever at that moment), by
Larionov’s own admission he saw nothing but two landaus
descending, in a leisurely fashion, toward the sea.
The trolleybus turned along the shore. Now the passen-
gers not only saw the sea but sensed its briny freshness, too.
At the request of the police, all cars on the highway stopped twice to let government motorcades through. The preoccupied faces of those government ministers were more likely guessed at than seen in cars rushing past at vast speeds.
They were riding to their holidays and thinking about the
significant decline of the peninsula’s funding. This mani-
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fested itself most of all in the condition of the palaces of the Russian aristocracy. The condition of the roads was no better, though. The summer sun and winter rain, coupled
with the process of erosion, had produced a multitude of
ruts and cracks in the Crimean roads. If the cracks had been patched up anywhere, it was on the government highway,
though even that repair was only partial, or so Solovyov
surmised, jolting in his seat every now and then.
The sun was already hiding behind Mount Ai-Petri when
they pulled in to Yalta. A cloud had drifted across the mountain’s peak, where it was mingling with rays that shone so unusually straight that they appeared to be beams from a
spotlight. Mountains clustered around the station from three sides, leaving open only a boulevard that ran toward the
sea. An evening freshness was already beginning to make
itself felt in Yalta, along with a restlessness that touched Solovyov’s heart. A sense of light alarm. The ancient feeling of a person about to spend the night in an unfamiliar place.<
br />
Solovyov stepped off the trolleybus and found himself
surrounded by women. They vied with one another to offer
him lodging and there were so many possibilities that the
young historian felt lost. He could choose between a bed,
a private room, or a cottage. He was invited to stay near
the Spartacus movie theater, by the Chekhov museum, and
even on Leningrad Street. Solovyov did not know the city.
Pressured by the agitated landladies, he agonized over the location of his future lodging. The Petersburg graduate
student’s soul leaned toward being Chekhov’s neighbor, but that offer was for an entire cottage that even his whole
stipend would not cover. ‘Leningrad Street’ sounded unac-
ceptable given that the city’s original name had been
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returned. After some wavering, he settled on the Spartacus movie theater: the proposed apartment was right next door, on Palmiro Togliatti Street.
Solovyov remembered how Nadezhda Nikiforovna had
solemnly taken Giovagnoli’s novel Spartacus from a shelf that her cameo ring had touched and presented the book
to him. In the course of subsequent discussion of the book, it emerged that Nadezhda Nikiforovna—like the adolescent
Solovyov—had shed tears over make-believe, too, and turned out to sympathize with the gladiator very much. This had
decisively strengthened Solovyov’s decision to enter into
marriage with her. As far as Palmiro Togliatti went, Solovyov appreciated his lovely name despite suspecting him of
communist ties.
Solovyov and the woman rode to the Spartacus by trolley -
bus. They crossed the road and ended up on Togliatti Street, which was narrow, quiet, and green. Solovyov liked the
courtyard where his lodging was located. Just like the street name, everything about it was Italian: the terraces that had been added on and the intricate stairs that led up to them, the clotheslines hanging between the windows, and the
branchy plane tree that was over everything. This, at any
rate, was how Solovyov imagined Italy to be.
As he walked up a steep wooden staircase behind his
hostess, he examined her unshaven legs. Those legs (like
Solovyov’s legs, too) elicited from the steps a knocking,
creaking, and squeaking of unbelievable force. The deaf-
ening stairs spawned in the young man’s mind the image
of a huge out-of-tune instrument. After walking along a
terrace covered with flower pots, Solovyov and his guide
ended up in a dusky hallway. Once Solovyov’s eyes had
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adjusted to the darkness, he discerned several gas burners and thought he had landed in a communal apartment. It
truly had once been a communal apartment but it had
managed to separate itself from Solovyov’s lodgings through complex architectural solutions. The entry was hidden
behind a small ledge in the wall, making it invisible at first glance. The woman took a key from her purse, winked at
Solovyov, and opened the door.
The apartment consisted of two connected rooms and a
glassed-in veranda. The door to the far room turned out to be locked. Solovyov was told there were things in there that the owners did not intend for lodgers to use. The first room, which led to the veranda, was at his full disposal. The
veranda was also the kitchen, with a stove, counter, and
cabinet containing dishes. In the far corner of the veranda was a structure reminiscent of a telephone booth covered
with plywood.
‘It’s the bathroom,’ said his escort, flushing the water to prove her point.
She wrote down Solovyov’s passport information, took
money for two weeks in advance, and disappeared through
the door, winking just as enigmatically as she had earlier.
When her clomping footsteps had faded, Solovyov flicked
the door lock from the inside and began unpacking his
things. He took his swimsuit out of his travel bag right away and put it on. Then he pulled out a towel and neatly placed it in a small rucksack. He shoved the key he had received
into his shorts pocket and looked around. He was completely prepared for his first encounter with the sea.
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3
As we know, Crimea was transferred from Russia to Ukraine
in 1954, under an order from Nikita Khrushchev. It should
be noted that this circumstance drew General Larionov’s
attention in its day. The unexpected addition to Ukraine
made no less of an impression on him than the launch of
the trolleybus line. And yet the aged general was not at all inclined to dramatize this circumstance.
‘Russians, do not regret Crimea,’ he announced, sitting
on the jetty one May day in 1955.
Public statements were a great rarity for the general and
a crowd quickly gathered around him. Flashing his erudition, the general reminded the listeners that Crimea had belonged to the Greeks, Genovese, Tatars, Turks, etcetera, at various times. And though their dominion was fleeting in historical terms, they had all left their own cultural traces here. In touching on Russia’s traces, the general sketched out, in brief energetic strokes, an impressive panorama, from elegant parks and palaces to the lady with the lapdog. His speech concluded with military clarity: ‘As a person who has defended these places, I am telling you: it is impossible to hold your ground here. For anyone. That is characteristic of the peninsula.’
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The general knew what he was talking about. He had
needed to hold the line in Crimea twice in 1920, in January and November. The events of October and November ended
up being the final collapse of the White Movement. He was
unable to hold on to Crimea.
Even so, the first defense (which nobody considered
possible at the time) in January ended up being successful.
It was this defense that held off the Reds’ capture of the peninsula for nearly a year. Researchers assess the situation that took shape toward the beginning of 1920 more or less
identically. The decline of the White Movement was
becoming more obvious at this time.
‘After all, we’re not going to the fair, we’re coming back from the fair,’ is what General Larionov whispered in his
horse’s ear one sunny January morning.
For everyone observing that scene, the general’s words
took the form of a small cloud of steam. In the absence of witnesses, it remains a mystery how that phrase could have reached the public domain. There is no denying the multiple references in the historical literature to the trusting, nearly human relationship between the horse and General Larionov, who called the animal my friend and addressed lines specifically to the horse. And yet it would be ridiculous to imagine that the horse could respond to the general in kind, even
more so that the horse was chatting right and left about
what had been whispered in her ear.
The general, however, addressed the exact same words
to a British envoy in November of that same year. The text arrived by telegraph because the general himself was
securing his army’s evacuation from Crimea and heading
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to the British envoy (it has been preserved) there is not a word about the phrase not being addressed to him alone.
Be that as it may, in scholarship—as, for example, in Vitaly Romanchuk’s In Decline—the text in question is quoted with a reference to January. What is more, it is quoted fairly
frequently in scholarship, yielding in popularity only to the well-known explanation of the reasons for the Whites’
defeat. This explanation, which the general formulated with disheartening directness, is in the introduction to the reminiscences that Dupont discovered. It reads, ‘A clod of dung, of medium size, began rolling through Russia. It grew with incredible speed due to the adherence of similar material, of which, alas, there turned out to be very much in Russia.
We were crushed by that clod.’
And so the situation that had taken shape by January
1920 was anything but simple. The lethal clod depicted so
elegantly by the general was rolling through Northern
Taurida, which was the threshold to Crimea, and no one
envisioned a force capable of impeding it. In fact, the
supreme command of the White Army did not intend to
defend Crimea. The Whites’ primary forces were retreating
and there were battles in those two directions, the Caucasus and Odessa, from where a counterattack was subsequently
planned, after respite and regrouping of forces. If events developed favorably, they intended to force the Reds from
Crimea with the return of troops that were encircling the
peninsula in two streams rushing north. But that was a
matter for the future. In January 1920, Crimea was tacitly destined for surrender. The limited forces sent to defend it shattered everyone’s last doubts about that. Everyone’s but General Larionov’s.
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As we know, Dupont’s article, ‘Leonidas and His Children’, presents a rigorous enumeration of troops at the general’s disposal during the defense of Crimea. So as not to force
the reader to chase down this work, which is generally
difficult to find, we will reiterate, in brief, the data cited in the article: