Travels in Siberia (76 page)

as the poet Anna Gorenko did: Akhmatova’s mother was said to be descended from Khan Akhmat, assassinated in 1481; he is known as the last khan to receive tribute from Russian rulers. Another reason for Akhmatova’s change of name was her father’s fear that her poetry would disgrace her family. See Reeder,
Anna Akhmatova
, pp. 4, 17.

Even Vladimir Nabokov: Nabokov,
Strong Opinions
, p. 119.

completely surrounded by a brick wall: Baddeley,
Russia, Mongolia, China
, 2:68.

accomplished little besides annoying the Chinese emperor: After much waiting for an audience with the emperor, Spathary would not kowtow to him, and he gave rude answers back. A subsequent unsatisfactory meeting ended with the emperor (called the khan) ordering Spathary to leave Peking that day (ibid., 2:387ff).

“Soops and pottages”: Ides,
Three Years’ Travels
, p. 62.

“the best model perhaps”: Bell,
Journey from St. Petersburg
, p. v.

K’ang-hsi: See Baddeley,
Russia, Mongolia, China
, pp. xciii, 218. Of K’ang-hsi’s personal qualities, an observer reported that the emperor had “great Strength, of Body as well as Mind. He abstained from Wine, Women and Sloth, and though according to the national Custom he took many Wives, yet he was hardly ever observed to go among them in the Day time” (quoted in Mancall,
Russia and China
, p. 203).

the first-ever treaty between China and a European power: Bobrick,
East of the Sun
, p. 93.

“Office for the Regulation of the Barbarians”: Bell,
Journey from St. Petersburg
, p. 15.

“It seemed somewhat strange to a Briton”: Ibid, p. 161.

“From what I have said concerning it”: Ibid., p. 209.

Avvakum Petrovich: For more on him, see Fennell and Stokes,
Early Russian Literature
, pp. 231ff.

In 1978, a team of Soviet geologists: Peskov,
Lost in the Taiga
.

crossed themselves defiantly with two fingers: In the Old Believer way of crossing oneself, the thumb and ring finger were joined, with the little finger beside them, and the first and the middle fingers were held straight. The thumb, ring finger, and little finger represented the Holy Trinity; the first two fingers signified Christ’s double nature as God and Man (Strahlenberg,
Russia, Siberia, and Great Tartary
, p. 284).

George Steller: See Müller,
Bering’s Voyages
, pp. 174ff.; also Bobrick,
East of the Sun
, pp. 207–208.

Sven Waxell: Waxell,
The American Expedition
.

Müller published this scoop: Müller’s description of his remarkable find is quoted in Fisher,
The Voyage of Semen Dezhnev
, p. 32. For Müller to come upon this information in an archive in Yakutsk is as if the Lewis and Clark expedition had discovered, in an archive in Spokane, that the nonexistence of the Northwest Passage had already been confirmed by an earlier expedition they’d never heard of.

Benyowsky: See Bancroft,
History of Alaska
, pp. 179ff. The unreliable account is
Memoirs and Travels of Mauritius Augustus Count de Benyowsky
.

“their eyes were the color of sharks”: Müller,
Bering’s Voyages
, p. 172.

In 1789, Japanese sailors:
Imago Mundi
, v. 9 (1952), pp. 103–105.

the famous John Ledyard: See Ian Frazier,
Great Plains
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989), pp. 185ff.

a young sea captain named John D’Wolf: D’Wolf,
A Voyage to the North Pacific
.

Captain John Smith: A comprehensive bibliography of Russian travel narratives is Nerhood,
To Russia and Return
. See also Babey,
Americans in Russia
.

Buchanan was shocked: “Although I am far from believing that a puritanical observation of Sunday is required of us; yet I confess I have been shocked with its profanation in this Country. The Emperor & Empress who are models of correct moral deportment in other respects give their balls & grand fetes on Sunday evening; & I am confident it has never entered their thoughts that in this respect they were acting incorrectly.”
The Works of James Buchanan
, 2:218.

Alexander Herzen: Herzen,
My Past and Thoughts
, p. 480.

Cochrane tied the waistcoat around his middle: Cochrane,
Narrative of a Pedestrian Journey
, p. 71.

German-speaking scientists in Siberia: Besides Humboldt, the list includes Müller, Steller, and Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt, of the Bering expedition; also, Strahlenberg, Adolph Erman, and Peter Simon Pallas; Pallas wrote the classic study of Siberian rodents.

American aggressiveness in trade: John Foster Fraser, an Englishman who traveled Siberia in 1901, expressed his displeasure at the great number of American products sold there in comparison to the scarcity of English ones: “That my country should purvey to Siberia little else but sauce—I felt like smashing the bottle!” (
The Real Siberia
, p. 127).

the long ride of Captain Fukushima Yasumasa: Stephan,
The Russian Far East
, p. 78.

Another timely idea of Count Muraviev’s: Lengyel,
Siberia
, p. 117.

pushed a wheelbarrow of dirt: Bobrick,
East of the Sun
, p. 353.

“intelligently comments”: Nerhood,
To Russia and Return
, p. 105.

“extremely superficial”: Babey,
Americans in Russia
, p. 164.

“
Tovarish soldiers
”: Williams,
Through the Russian Revolution
, p. 67.

whom the low ceilings had knocked off: Lengyel,
Siberia
, p. 208.

were held in Tobolsk: Florinsky,
Russia
, 2:1436.

including a Colt .45: Alekseev,
The Last Act of a Tragedy
, p. 152.

about fifty thousand Czech soldiers: Many histories of the period talk about the Czech Legion and its adventures. See Stephan,
The Russian Far East
, pp. 122ff.; Bobrick,
East of the Sun
, pp. 393ff.; Figes,
Natasha’s Dance
, pp. 530–31.

unless he had killed someone that day: Graves,
America’s Siberian Adventure
, p. 241.

playing the “Internationale”: Stephan,
The Russian Far East
, p. 137.

referring to the Russian peasants as “swine”: Graves,
America’s Siberian Adventure
, p. 19.

through a hole in the ice: Bobrick,
East of the Sun
, p. 411.

poured molten lead down his throat: Mayakovsky,
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: A Poem
.

friendship mission to Siberia: Wallace,
Soviet Asia Mission
.

“Where I Was Wrong”: Culver and Hyde,
American Dreamer
, pp. 339, 474.

Ivan Fedorovich Nikishov: Ivan Nikishov is mentioned, for example, in Ginzburg’s memoir,
Within the Whirlwind
, where a boy in the camp says, “When I grow up I’m going to be Nikishov. And everyone will be afraid of me” (p. 225). Solzhenitsyn, in
The Gulag Archipelago
, tells of a performance in Magadan when Nikishov interrupted Vadim Kozin, a widely known singer of that time: “All right, Kozin, stop the bowing and get out!” Kozin subsequently tried to hang himself but was taken down from the noose (2:498).

“The larch were just putting out their first leaves”: Wallace,
Soviet Asia Mission
, p. 35.

“drenched with the blood of Russian ‘common men’ ”: Dallin and Nicolaevsky,
Forced Labor in Soviet Russia
, pp. xiii, xiv.

“We visited gold mines”: Owen Lattimore, “New Road to Asia,”
National Geographic
, December 1944, p. 64.

Lattimore later conceded: Stephan,
The Russian Far East
, p. 232.

Morskoi Kabinet: In
The Empire of the Czar
(pp. 255ff.), Custine describes a tour of the Cottage Palace in which his guide was the Grand Duke (the future Alexander II): “I had earnestly begged Madame —— to procure for me admission to the English cottage of the emperor and empress. It is a small house which they have built in the midst of the noble park of Peterhof, in the new Gothic style so much in vogue in England.”

Custine found the Cottage Palace to be much like the houses of the English rich but without any outstanding pictures or sculpture to indicate a love of the arts, and “too servile” in its following of English fashion in its furnishings. On the stairs, partway into the tour, the Grand Duke excused himself and left, but in such a manner that Custine was charmed: “To know how to leave a guest without wounding his feelings is the height of urbanity.”

Custine proceeded upstairs to the Morskoi Kabinet, which he said was “a tolerably large and very simply ornamented library, opening on a balcony which overlooks the sea. Without leaving this watch-tower, the emperor can give his orders to his fleet. For this purpose he has a spy-glass, a speaking-trumpet, and a little telegraph which he can work himself.”

“Depending on the wind”: Brodsky,
On Grief and Reason
, p. 59.

Cape Smythe Air: This company name no longer exists; Cape Smythe Air merged with Frontier Flying Service in 2005.

Eric Penttila: Eric is now the manager of Evergreen Helicopter in Nome. He is no longer the pilot.

a tale of heroism: The rescue took place on Friday, August 13, 1993. A number of news stories and articles told of Eric Penttila’s heroism; for example, “Plane Down in the Bering Sea,”
Today’s Christian
, September–October 1996, p. 28.

“The weather becoming clear”: Bobrick,
East of the Sun
, p. 223. This quote appears to be a revision of the entry of July 6, 1779, in the journal kept by Captain Charles Clerke, who took command after Cook was killed in the Hawaiian Islands in February of the same year. The quote in Clerke’s journal is: “At 10 the Weather becoming somewhat clearer we saw the peak’d Hill upon the American Shore bearing s 64 e, this is the only remarkable Hill about this part of the Country and is therefore an excellent Landmark, its Lat[itude] is 65 33 n & its Longitude 191 34 e. The East Cape of Asia at the same time bore s 40 w distant 5 Leagues, there is a great deal of Ice adhering to the shores of this part of Asia we are running by and the Hills are totally immers’d in Snow. The Weather continued throughout Mod: & hazy, we pass’d in the Night many small pieces of Ice . . .” Cook,
Journals
, vol. 3, part 1, pp. 688–89. The revised version of the quote does give the gist of the original accurately; the sailors did see both continents at the same time, and from their position they would also have seen the Diomedes, which the journal notes elsewhere.

absolute quiet in your soul: Rytkheu,
Stories from Chukotka
, p. 118.

sixty-six satellites in low-earth orbit: For details of the Iridium system, I thank Liz DeCastro, public information officer at Iridium headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland.

driving too fast: Russians have always had a love for driving fast. The Russian nobility of the eighteenth century called it
“le vertige de la vitesse”
(the vertigo of speed). Countess Maria Volkonsky, hurrying across Siberia to join her husband in exile, sped along in “the ‘bird troika,’ as Gogol was to call it, driven by Russian horses ‘with the whirlwind sitting upon their manes’ ” (Sutherland,
The Princess of Siberia
, p. 136). Rattled by the fast driving of Russian coachmen, Custine learned to say “
Tikho!
” (Take it easy! or, Calm yourself!) (
Empire of the Czar
, pp. 362–63). That’s still what you say today.

from Vologda to Velikii Ustyug by sled: Ides,
Three Years’ Travels
, pp. 1–2.

a village on the Pinega River: Fisher,
Voyage of Semen Dezhnev
, p. 120.

the blankness of the place: Since I visited, a church has been built on the site of the Ipatiev House.

In the early 1970s: Information about the discovery, analysis, and reburial of the bodies can be found in the
Los Angeles Times
, March 11, 2004, p. A22, and
The New York Times
, July 18, 1998, p. A1.

“When we passed through the gate of Ekaterinburg”: Kennan,
Siberia and the Exile System
, 1:49.

1,445 freight wagons: Ibid.

tea caravans: On the subject of what a nuisance the tea caravans were, see Gowing,
Five Thousand Miles in a Sledge
, pp. 195–96.

Tea that came overland: Custine mentioned “this famous tea of the caravans, so delicate, as is said, because it comes overland” (
Empire of the Czar
, p. 518). About sixty years later, John Foster Fraser wrote, “There are old-fashioned Russians who declare that tea loses its flavour if it gets within breath of sea air.” The better, non-sea-air-contaminated tea was called “overland tea” (
The Real Siberia
, p. 84).

“No other spot”: Kennan,
Siberia and the Exile System
, 2:52.

In a document dated 1592: Müller,
Istoriia Sibiri
, 1:343. The author is the scientist of the Bering expedition.

sent the bell to Siberia, too: Kennan,
Siberia and the Exile System
, 1:421.

may have melted there in a fire: Rasputin,
Siberia, Siberia
, p. 86.

the Code of Laws of 1648: Solzhenitsyn,
The Gulag Archipelago
, 3:355–56.

seven thousand four hundred exiles in Siberia: Wood,
The History of Siberia
, pp. 117–18.

removing the disfigured from public view: Kennan,
Siberia and the Exile System
, 1:75.

Empress Elizabeth: Wood,
The History of Siberia
, p. 7.

four classes of exiles: Kennan,
Siberia and the Exile System
, 1:79–80.

“The memory of this torture”: Dostoyevsky,
The House of the Dead
, p. 126.

Pokoinik: Kennan,
Siberia and the Exile System
, 1:143.