Roman Borisovich Gul

Roman Borisovich Gul, a famous emigre writer, who can be called a symbol of Russian emigration, “taken Russia along with him,” a man with amazing life.

For many years until the 1960s and 1970s Soviet Russia did not know anything about Roman Gul and his literary heritage. It happened for one reason only: Gul’s books were simply banned as those of a counter-revolutionary, a former member of the old regime. Meanwhile living in alienation from his motherland Gul collected an invaluable store of his memories which was intended to dispel the darkness, to open people’s eyes, to reach out to unaware Russian man. The role of Gul’s activity in preservation of historical truth for future generations could be compared to that of an airborne recorder which, after the crash had happened, reported the circumstances of the tragedy.

By his mother’s side Roman Gul was descended from the noble family of the Vysheslavtsevs ascending to the times of Ivan IV and maybe even earlier. His grandfather Sergei Petrovich Vysheslavtsev was an actual state councilor appointed as a district leader of the nobility by Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky (a key political figure in the Russian Revolution of 1917).

The writer’s mother Olga Sergeevna was a wife of Boris Karlovich Gul, a famous Penza notary officer, a hereditary honorary freeman. They got married on October 1, 1893 at the bride’s homeland in the ancient Assumption Cathedral in the town of Kerensk (now Vadinsk), which once stood the siege of the Pugachev’s troop. As for the birth of the writer, it has been recently found out by the staff of the State Archive of Penza region that Roman Borisovich was born on January 1, 1896 in Penza and on January 6 was baptized in the Advent Church then located on Troitskaya Street (now Kirova street).

Roman Gul’s grandfather Sergei Petrovich Vysheslavtsev lived in the ancient patriarchal town of Kerensk so his grandson, as a child, came to see him from Penza in the summer. All the writer’s childhood and youth was lit up by those trips experiences and it might be there, in that provincial remoteness where the personality traits of this remarkable person and outstanding Russian writer were formed and shaped.

Gul often mentions Kerensk, which he tenderly loved, in his memoirs and thoroughly depicts its atmosphere to the smallest detail, taking notice of smells and shades of color. “This abandoned town,” he says, “evokes wonderful childhood memories: an old house, a big overgrown garden, traditional Russian way of life. After the Bolshevik revolution, the authorities lowered the status of Kerensk from the town to the village and renamed it Vad (after the Vad River on which it lies). It was done so that people did not associate the name of the town with the name of Kerensky who held a position of the prime-minister during the February Revolution even though it was not related to him (the only fact could be mentioned that his grandfather, the archpriest, was originally from Kerensk). So the town of my childhood disappeared from the geographical map of Russia.”

In his novel named “Red the Horse” Gul remembers his grandfather with great warmth and love: “Here he is, a short gray-haired man sitting at the window with binoculars in his hands, watching the city. He sees a cathedral with blue domes, a walled prison with a striped sentry box and a red Vedenyapin’s inn with variegated zinnias grown in its front garden. Further on the steep slope there is a white-walled monastery and farther there are fields, forests, wind, a sad-darkening sky, all wonderful Russia. Here, in the depths of it my grandfather grew up, worked, and lived and here he will die.

Watching Kerensky Square is my grandfather’s continual favorite recreation. He looks at everything and curses everything. <…> In the sleepy atmosphere of Kerensk my grandfather is “autocratic power”. For more than thirty years he has been a permanent chairman of the Kerensk uezd (district) council, often the leader of the nobility, even though he does not like it. <…> My grandfather Sergei Petrovich has nothing authoritative in character. Although he is, indeed, a violent swearer, a hot-tempered screamer, but this is due to his noble characteristics inheritance. Thin, brown-eyed, shovel-bearded, with a very Russian face Sergei Petrovich is a soft-hearted man, and at home with children he is very gentle; here he can get upset and even shed a few tears through trifles. In his habits, manners and dialect there is a lot from old times and I love him … Sunny quietness, grandfather, balcony, Kerensk Square – that is my childhood. ”

The father of the writer, Boris Karlovich was one of three most successful notary officers in Penza. The family lived in 53, Moskovskaya Street, in a big house with nine rooms. They had servants and a large household. Boris Karlovich ran an office employing about ten people. In addition, Boris Karlovich was a public representative of the City Duma, the chairman of parents panel of the 1st Penza men’s gymnasium, where his sons studied, the chairman of a dormitory named after A. S. Pushkin for the rural teachers’ children, a member of the board of a mutual loan society and a member of the board of the Drama club. Unfortunately, he died suddenly in December 1913 that got both local and national coverage.

In 1914 Roman graduated from the Penza Gymnasium and continued his studies at the Faculty of Law of Moscow University. His exam results were as he himself put it “up to the mark”, but it was not jurisprudence that he had a keen interest in. The only thing he really enjoyed at that time was talking with the university teacher Ivan Ilyin, a well-known Russophile and thinker, under whose guidance Roman immersed in the depths of classical philosophy. Describing the fate of the intelligentsia known to him Roman Borisovich wrote that most of those great minds after the coming of the Soviets tried to leave Russia, but many failed to escape. “A brilliant publicist and scholar N. Ustryalov,” says Gul, “was strangled with a cord by security officers (under the guise of robbers) in the Siberian express when, following Stalin’s ‘friendly invitation in keeping with eastern traditions’, Ustryalov was coming from the Far East through Soviet Russia”.

In 1916, Roman became a third year student of the university, but as the First World War was going on he was called up for military service and, returning from vacation, he found himself in the Moscow school of warrant officers. Having received the officer’s rank after an accelerated course of training, Gul was given a choice of a regiment, but in his effort to be close to a widow mother he joined the 140th infantry reserve regiment in Penza.

Then he went to the front. Participating in campaigns against Austria-Hungary Gul commanded a company of the 457th Kinburn regiment of the 117th division. At that time he saw the spreading of bolshevik’s attitudes in his regiment, which he tried to stop. After the collapse of the old army, Colonel Simanovsky let him go home. Gul was going to his native places in a soldiers’ heated goods van packed with brutal, clothes in disorder, drunken deserters. In Penza, a writer was caught by a revolution. Here he witnessed monstrous disorders: pogroms and brutal murders that he wrote about in his memoirs.

“In these December days of 1917, Russia was in the midst of its “wretchedness”. People crowds released previously unseen and unknown demon of total destruction and extermination, savage hatred of law, order, peaceful and customary existence. Quite like in ‘Besy (Demons)’ by Dostoyevsky: “The very bases were trampled.” “We must turn everything over and put it upside down…”, “…it is necessary to unleash the lowest, most evil passions, so that nothing can restrain the people in their hatred and thirst for destruction and extermination…”, all these delusion-like fantasies of Bakunin (a Russian revolutionary anarchist and founder of collectivist anarchism) were put into action in everyday life of Russia. It was precisely this national revolt which Pushkin described as “senseless and ruthless.” We lived in it, in this disgusting riot. “Steal the loot!”- and they are senselessly robbing all the shops on Moskovskaya Street in Penza. “Burn down the landed estates!”, “Kill the bourgeois!”- and they are burning and they kill everyone who ‘is subject to destruction’. “No wonder! There are no courts, no judges, no prisons, and no police any longer.”

“In Penza on the station square some Captain passing through the city was murdered through mob law for failing to take off his shoulder boards. Having stripped their dead victim of all his clothes, people are dragging a large white body on the snow up and down Moskovskaya Street with whooping and laughter. And some drunken frenzied soldier is yelling: “Now we have the power! We, the people!” A notary officer Grushetsky was burnt alive in his estate, not allowed to run out of the burning house. The landlord Kerensky from Skripkin uezd (district) was killed in his estate and his naked corpse was pushed into a barrel of sauerkraut just for fun. And all that was done with laughter: “Now there came our power – power of people!” Blinded with hatred and passion of extermination they killed not only people but also animals (those which belonged to “wrong” non- proletarian owners). On a stud farm in one estate I knew they chined all the trotters’ with iron crowbars, because they belonged to the masters. When our estate was being devastated some “revolutionary bumpkin” who had received our racing mare Volga after sharing the swag yoked it to a plow and began to whip violently keeping saying: “Let it die, I don’t need anything from the master’s table … Masters needed trotters. But there are no masters anymore.” In another estate, a stallion had its tongue off… <…> In the neighboring village of Yevlashevo an elderly landowner Maria Vladimirovna Lukin was killed. Her friends fearing for her tried to persuade her to leave the village and move to the city. But the stubborn old woman kept replying: “In Yevlashevo I was born, in Yevlashevo I will die.” And so it really happened. Her murder was carried out according to all the rules of so-called revolutionary democracy. Evlashevo peasants discussed this wet work at the gathering. Everyone could speak freely. A certain veteran-deserter hooligan-Bolshevik named Budkin instigated people to murder. But some peasants were against it. And when the majority stirred up by Budkin voted to kill the old woman the disagreeing demanded from those present to give them a resolution that they were not participants in this matter. The gathering passed “a sentence”, which was to kill the old woman and to give to the disagreeing the resolution they wanted. And right from the gathering, stakes in hands, the crowd rushed to Lakin’s estate. They intended to kill not only the old woman but also her daughter, who had been known to the people in the village since her childhood and who, both quizzically and grandmotherly, was called “the chick” by everybody. Someone from peasants warned Lukin that they are going to be killed. But the old woman did not even manage to reach the shed to hide there. “Revolutionary people” stabbed her with stakes in the yard… A real miracle happened to “the chick”. The next day at daybreak she woke up by the carriage-house, when their Irish setter was licking her face. The dog followed her when she was crawling to the nearby farmstead of the Sbitnevs who took her to the Saransk hospital.”

Being an eyewitness of all that lawlessness and worse, of the dying Russia, Gul was seized with a contradictory feeling: on the one hand he felt like going to the Don River the first and joining the White Army so that to restrain nationwide revolt and chaos by force of arms, on the other hand he felt the situation was hopeless, Russia was perishing irretrievably, falling into the abyss which is inevitable as this is the course of history itself. And yet in December 1917 Gul together with his brother, and some like-minded people Boris Ivanov, N. Pokrovsky, Erast Vashenko and Dmitry Yagodin had the courage to go to the Don to General Kornilov’s army to take part in the struggle against Bolshevism. Having reached Novocherkassk with forged documents, they joined the Volunteer Army. Judging by the admission to this army it was bound to be defeated. Dmitry Yagodin immediately decided to return to Penza, but Gul “cut off all ways to retreat for himself.” The former seminarian Yagodin came back to Penza and lived there quite well from the 1920s to 1930s but then he ended up in a concentration camp and never returned.

Gul participated in the so-called “ice campaign” as a private soldier of the Kornilov officer shock regiment. When attacking the ‘red’ armored train in the Kuban both he and his brother Sergei were wounded, not very seriously though and were taken onto the carts with wounded. Kornilov’s army had neither rear area nor hospitals so if a bullet got somewhat to the right into the bone Roman would have been left in a darkening evening field. When the brothers returned to the Novocherkassk taken from the Bolsheviks they were surprised to meet their mother Olga Sergeevna who, in search of her children, made her way across the Volga and the North Caucasus to the Don. Realizing the tragedy of the civil war Roman Gul left the Volunteer Army. There were two specific reasons for this: first, he realized that the army was facing an inevitable defeat and second, he could not shoot at Russian people even though they were strangers in the wrong. Anyway it were not the ‘red’ soldiers, yesterday’s workers and peasants, that Gul was settling scores with but with “pseudonyms,” as he called the revolution top men. This unfortunate war road Gul will describe later in his book “The Ice Campaign”.

As the Guls (mother and sons) did not have the opportunity to return to Penza they decided to go to Kiev to their father’s sister Lena Byssochanskaya. The Ukraine was in chaos: there were the German troops waiting for departure and warring ataman gangs commiting robberies. And the Bolsheviks were about to invade from the north. Gul brothers were called up to the troops of Hetman Skoropadsky to protect Kiev from Petliura. The situation in Kiev at that time could be described as complete degradation so most of the young recruits were killed on the outskirts of the city. But Gul brothers survived having been captured by the Petliura troop. Then they were locked in the building of the Pedagogical Museum where the captives occupied all the rooms, corridors and stairs. Later Gul will remember that as a disgusting episode of the Civil War. The violence to the captives were prevented by the Germans so the massacre failed, but atnight the building of the museum was shaken by the explosion of an explosive timing device, a glass dome collapsed as a result of which about 200 prisoners were wounded. Gul learned from his mother who came to the museum that in Kerensk, among eight hostages, his uncle Mikhail Sergeyevich Vysheslavtsev was killed by the Chekists. Before long he learned about the murder of the regiment commander V. L. Simanovsky. It was in those days that hatred for the whole Russia arose in Gul’s soul so he no longer saw a place for himself in that country. When there were 500 captives left in the museum (the rest were released due to connections they had or for money) and there was no hope of rescue ( Cheka (All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Corruption) led by Latsis was going to Kiev) a miracle of deliverance from captivity happened to them. Some German general was concerned about the fate of the unfortunate 500 people, and Gul together his brother were taken to Germany at night. Again by some miracle the train crossed the border of Ukraine and Gul brothers were rescued. So January 3, 1919 was the beginning of emigration of the writer.

In 1919-1920, Roman and his brother Sergei were detained in the camps for prisoners of war, the last of which was Helmstedt in the province of Braunschweig. The train which brought the Guls was the first fruit, followed by others carrying Russian officers, who finally numbered in several thousands. Afterwards the Russian military mission started to send the officers, willy-nilly, back to Russia to help the White Army. And suddenly, Roman Gul refused to participate in the Civil War, writing an explanatory note, to surprise and indignation of the authorities. Soon he gave an oral explanation for his actions in Berlin. Standing his ground Gul stayed in Germany as a worker at the logging site outside the camp of Helmstedt.

At that time the idea of ​​describing the horrors of the Civil War in Russia came to his mind. So he began his writings in his spare time.  His brother as well as his companions in misfortune supported his attempt of writing. That is how his first work “The Ice Campaign” was written. That promoted the connections with the Russian writers’ world, and Roman Gul moved to Berlin in the same 1920, where he began to work in “Life and Peace” and “Work” magazines belonged to a person called Stankevich. These publications soon ceased to exist, but in those years Gul got acquainted with a variety of interesting people from the emigrant world. He learned that there were Russian poets and prose writers in Germany and there were Russian libraries and German publishers interested in publishing Russian literature. At that time Gul, undoubtedly, experienced difficulties with creative activity and languished in poverty. Nevertheless, these circumstances gave him hope for the future. His works were published in “Golos Rossii” and “Vremya” magazines. And finally, “The Ice Campaign” was published, which produced a great resonance in society and received a positive evaluation of Maxim Gorky himself, who read the book while on a Berlin trip. Moreover, Gorky replied to Gul’s letter. Besides, and that was the most important thing, the book was put on the table to the “pseudonym” No. 1, to Lenin and apparently was read by him. This was Gul’s first victory that brought him recognition and a tangible fee, which was then a fortune for Roman.

While Gul brothers were living in Germany and Roman’s literary career was in the making, their mother remained in hungry, terror-torn Kiev. Living by her relatives in a small house in Lukyanovka Street, she had no income, just like everyone living in this house. Every day Olga Sergeyevna went to the Jewish market to exchange some of their belongings or household things for food. At that time all the ancient city of Kiev and the whole Soviet Russia were living like this. But when the things in the house on Lukyanovka were over and there was nothing to exchange all the households dispersed around finding shelter in other people’s houses in exchange for tough work. The mother was taken into service by a certain old woman who still possessed some junk for exchange and, which was the main thing, a garden with some vegetable patches. Apart from them eight people from Budenny horse cavalry were boarding in the house. During the fierce winter they got firewood by cutting down fences and crosses in the cemetery. The sons in Germany did not know whether their mother was alive and what had happened to her. They only knew that Kiev changed hands about six times through fighting. But luckily the mother got her sons’ letter which they had sent with a convenient opportunity through Sweden as early as their staying in Gelmshtedt.

Olga Sergeyevna got to know from the newspapers that her sons had been taken out of the Pedagogical Museum and away to Germany. And then their first letter became a source of vitality and hope for her. But the thought of her children’s returning to Kiev plunged Olga into horror and she decided to find them before that might happen. But being destitute, how could this woman start on a journey to Germany? Nevertheless, this idea became her obsession and life purpose. After hatching the plan of a flight from Kiev for some time she finally chose the direction to the Polish border through Pochaev Lavra (monastery), partly affected by her religious beliefs.

“In May evening, when all trees and plants in Lukyanovka grew green and nightingales having turned up from nowhere were singing in overgrown gardens my old nanny Anna Buldakova unexpectedly came in through the garden gate. Despite the warmth she was wearing felt boots. When my mother’s letter reached the homeland Vyrypaev village (near Penza) Anna Grigoryevna quickly guessed mother’s plans reading between the lines and against all odds, with a stick and a knapsack, managed to get to Kiev.

After the first words of joyful greeting Anna said at once she would not let mother to make that way alone and would accompany her. Right away she began taking off her felt boots to rip off the soles as she got money quilted in there. Unfortunately, the money (called ‘kerenki’) was so wet and even rotten that both mother and nanny immediately started making fire to dry it and iron out. Apart from the money the nanny brought the “some remnant of their bourgeois past”: some rings (one with emerald and diamonds, another with opal and diamonds, a platinum one with diamond and some others), brooches (a golden antique one among them way back in time belonged to the grandmother Maria Petrovna) and quite a large diamond pendant. The nanny kept all those things in a hut in Vyrypaev village.

And finally in 1921 we received the most joyful and most alarming letter of our mother: “… my dear precious children, on Saturday 15, old style, I’m setting off to you accompanied by Anna Grigorievna. My only request to you is do not do anything. If something happens to me on the road do not grieve: your mother saw a lot of happiness. I start on a journey with hope and faith in God. When you receive this letter, I’ll be on the way <…> my heart is overflowed with hope to see you … ” Afterwards for about nine or ten weeks we had no letters from the mother.”

Mother and nanny made a hard journey four hundred miles long. On the way they had to hide themselves from suspicious people and seek lodging for the night from strangers. While crossing the border the women were robbed and nearly killed. They marched through the country engulfed by revolution, where change of power occurred continually, and the locals often made a living by robbery. But being miraculously protected by their deep faith and continuous prayer Olga and the nanny managed to reach Berlin. Here two important facts need to be mentioned. While getting into Germany the women received support from some of Roman’s powerful friends in Berlin. If it had not been for that help who knows what their journey would have ended up with? And here is one more circumstance. When starting on a journey Olga was seriously ill: she suffered from heavy bleedings that made such a long travelling next to impossible. However, during the journey the bleeding stopped and resumed and became really bad only in Berlin where she was operated and astonished doctors removed a big benign tumor.

In 1926 in Berlin, Roman Borisovich Gul got married. One could say that the marriage was nothing but divine providence as his wife, a Russian emigrant, Olga Andreyevna Novohatskaya appeared to be a native of Penza district.

She was two years younger than the spouse and of noble origin. Her grandfather Iosif Tarasovich Novohatskiy state councilor and a chairman of the Penza Exchequer owned several estates. Her father Andrey Iosifovich (1868-1904) graduated from the Medical Faculty of the Moscow Imperial University. Then he was asked to remain at the university to prepare for an appointment to a chair but Andrey, following his vocation, preferred a position of a zemsky doctor ( the one appointed by a local elected council) so that to help people. Working at first in Saransk and then in Ramsai he was generally recognised in the province. Andrey Novohatskiy married to Sophia Fedorovna Kamenskaya, who was a granddaughter of a Count Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy, the president of the Academy of Arts. They lived together in the estate of Danilevsky in Ramzai. Their daughter Olga Andreyevna became an inspector in the Nicholayevsky Institute in Saratov. Roman Gul and Olga Novohatskaya got acquainted and knew each other very well but were scattered by the revolution and Civil War and lost all contacts. Revolution caught the Novohatskiys in Moscow and they fled to the Caucasus having abandoned all the property. Later after they found that the children of zemsky doctors are not considered “socially dangerous” they returned to Moscow. On the way Olga contracted a serious illness and when arrived in Moscow required extensive surgery. During the operation part of the liver had to be removed. It was performed by Dr. Kholin, her father’s fellow student. Social security as well as food supply were so unstable in Moscow was that the doctor urged Olga to move abroad. At that time, a certain Moksha landowner Olga Lvovna Lazarevihc, who loved Olga like a daughter, had been already living in Germany. Soon all the troubles were over and Olga even got a passport signed by Genrikh Yagoda. But since the Lazarevich family had moved to Italian Tyrol, Olga traveled through Germany to Italy. In 1926 she came to Berlin where in the same year married Roman.

In 1933 the National Socialists led by Hitler came to power in Germany and life in the capital became impossible. But before Gul managed to leave Germany he suffered a terrible thing. As part of a struggle against literature “harmful” to the German race Roman Borisovich was arrested and put in a concentration camp in Oranienburg, later Sachsenhausen. After a month of being here he was released on a certain request and was able to get to France almost without a penny in his pocket.

But we would better stop here our description of an artistic career and the life of the writer as it is readily available to people who are interested in it. Our aim was only to talk about the fate of one emigrant from Penza, based on the autobiographical works and his memoirs. Indeed, this man played a consolidating role in Russian emigration. He left his homeland among many Russians extruded from bleeding morally crippled Russia. Well, they had a right to it. What is at issue is the relationship of the émigré from Russia and his small homeland Penza. But let us allow Roman Borisovich Gul to solve this question himself.

“And now in old age, after living in exile for most of my adult life (for what was it in Russia – the youth?) I understand how true, good and deep were the words said by Alexander Herzen:”Emigration is a terrible thing “. But it is not only terrible, of course, but also a fascinating experience. Emigration, and therein lies its charm and allure, always attracts a person (if it is a man, not just a middlebrow) by its freedom. And here I am, after living in exile for almost sixty-five years, would not I have wanted to be  an immigrant?! Oh, yes, I would. There were, of course, the weak moments in life in exile, in the beginning, when I wanted to “stick my soles” to my native land again. But they were very rare and barely perceptible. And this feeling of homeland always got outweighed in me by a sense of freedom. What do I love most in the world? Freedom. What is freedom? That is very simple. Physical freedom of movement and travel, which they do not have at home. Spiritual freedom of choice that is ” to think and suffer,” which they do not have at home. <…> And yet for some reason I just happen to like this terrible implication of my emigrant status. It might be due to fact that somewhere deep inside, I want it to be “out of society,” “out of state”, but to go on the eternal journey. And so no matter how difficult this “terrible thing”, emigration could be, and sometimes is, it is the very thing I eulogize. It is this freedom of poverty, freedom of being a human that gave me happiness of “being myself”.

Did the writer remember and continue to love his Penza? Yes, he remembered and loved it. But as it was unthinkable to return, the memories became painful and gloomy for him. Moreover, it was unlikely he saw the city as his own one. He could only preserve what he took away from their native land in his memory and in his heart. He could only communicate to descendants his pain and distress which he lived with for many years. “And I, too, would have died of “exhaustion of bliss, “if I saw my Penza. But no one can see her anymore. During the years of the revolution, my Penza disappeared. Once I got an album of photographs of the Soviet Penza. How mutilated and disfigured it was by power of that “internationalist” party. Terrible subhuman beings, riffraff without kith or kin having seized power in Russia, blew up Orthodox churches in Penza. And there were many, about thirty, and they somehow gave Penza its face. On Cathedral Square there stood majestic towering cathedral, white, with a golden dome and high luminous cross. The Cathedral was blown up and razed to the ground. But it was the head of the entire city. It stood on the enclosed green area towering on a hilltop. The whole city stretched on a big hill. Two monasteries (male and female) were destroyed. And instead of the old times beauty and splendor “the party” has built some a la “Penza Corbusier” ugly “constructive” barracks-house-boxes for robots. The charm of the city and its style were killed. But they do not feel. ”

Roman Borisovich never returned to Russia, but all his efforts were focused on Russian theme and warmed by love for the motherland. He tried to make an encyclopedia of Russian emigration and described its cultural life in different countries he had been to. He wrote about cultural institutions and libraries, the fate of people and their decease. Doing this, he collected a huge number of names, events, and information about various relationships of famous people abroad, for instance, his memories of Sergei Yesenin. What is more, Roman Borisovich recorded in his memoirs the dialogues of great men and his conversation with the great. It is this life that we did not know anything about, which was not spoken about in Soviet schools. This reverse of Soviet reality is the legacy of the great Gul.

The writer died on June 30, 1986 in New York, where he was buried in the Assumption Cemetery of Novodiveevskiy convent.