Soon after his admission to the masonic Brotherhood, Pierre went to the Kiev province, where he had the greatest number of serfs, taking with him full directions which he had written down for his own guidance as to what he should do on his estates.
Almost immediately the Bolsheviki won a majority in the Petrograd Soviet, and the Soviets of Moscow, Kiev, Odessa and other cities followed suit.
The pilgrim woman was appeased and, being encouraged to talk, gave a long account of Father Amphilochus, who led so holy a life that his hands smelled of incense, and how on her last visit to Kiev some monks she knew let her have the keys of the catacombs, and how she, taking some dried bread with her, had spent two days in the catacombs with the saints. "I'd pray awhile to one, ponder awhile, then go on to another. I'd sleep a bit and then again go and kiss the relics, and there was such peace all around, such blessedness, that one don't want to come out, even into the light of heaven again."
"Where have you been? To Kiev?" Prince Andrew asked the old woman.
There remained several centres of dangerous opposition, such as the “republics” of Ukraine and Finland, which were showing definitely anti-Soviet tendencies. Both at Helsingfors and at Kiev the Governments were gathering troops which could be depended upon, and entering upon campaigns of crushing Bolshevism, and of disarming and expelling Russian troops. The Ukrainean Rada had taken command of all southern Russia, and was furnishing Kaledin reinforcements and supplies. Both Finland and Ukraine were beginning secret negotiations with the Germans, and were promptly recognised by the Allied Governments, which loaned them huge sums of money, joining with the propertied classes to create counter-revolutionary centres of attack upon Soviet Russia. In the end, when Bolshevism had conquered in both these countries, the defeated bourgeoisie called in the Germans to restore them to power....
"Second line... have you written it?" he continued dictating to the clerk. "The Kiev Grenadiers, Podolian..."
Old Russia was rapidly breaking up. In Ukraine, in Finland, Poland, White Russia, the nationalist movements gathered strength and became bolder. The local Governments, controlled by the propertied classes, claimed autonomy, refusing to obey orders from Petrograd. At Helsingfors the Finnish Senate declined to loan money to the Provisional Government, declared Finland autonomous, and demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops. The bourgeois Rada at Kiev extended the boundaries of Ukraine until they included all the richest agricultural lands of South Russia, as far east as the Urals, and began the formation of a national army. Premier Vinnitchenko hinted at a separate peace with Germany--and the Provisional Government was helpless. Siberia, the Caucasus, demanded separate Constituent Assemblies. And in all these countries there was the beginning of a bitter struggle between the authorities and the local Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies....
The Central Rada at Kiev immediately declared Ukraine an independent Republic, as did the Government of Finland, through the Senate at Helsingfors. Independent “Governments” spring up in Siberia and the Caucasus. The Polish Chief Military Committee swiftly gathered together the Polish troops in the Russian army, abolished their Committees and established an iron discipline....
As generally happens, Pierre did not feel the full effects of the physical privation and strain he had suffered as prisoner until after they were over. After his liberation he reached Orel, and on the third day there, when preparing to go to Kiev, he fell ill and was laid up for three months. He had what the doctors termed "bilious fever." But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink, he recovered.
No one had given Tushin orders where and at what to fire, but after consulting his sergeant major, Zakharchenko, for whom he had great respect, he had decided that it would be a good thing to set fire to the village. "Very good!" said Bagration in reply to the officer's report, and began deliberately to examine the whole battlefield extended before him. The French had advanced nearest on our right. Below the height on which the Kiev regiment was stationed, in the hollow where the rivulet flowed, the soul-stirring rolling and crackling of musketry was heard, and much farther to the right beyond the dragoons, the officer of the suite pointed out to Bagration a French column that was outflanking us. To the left the horizon bounded by the adjacent wood. Prince Bagration ordered two battalions from the center to be sent to reinforce the right flank. The officer of the suite ventured to remark to the prince that if these battalions went away, the guns would remain without support. Prince Bagration turned to the officer and with his dull eyes looked at him in silence. It seemed to Prince Andrew that the officer's remark was just and that really no answer could be made to it. But at that moment an adjutant galloped up with a message from the commander of the regiment in the hollow and news that immense masses of the French were coming down upon them and that his regiment was in disorder and was retreating upon the Kiev grenadiers. Prince Bagration bowed his head in sign of assent and approval. He rode off at a walk to the right and sent an adjutant to the dragoons with orders to attack the French. But this adjutant returned half an hour later with the news that the commander of the dragoons had already retreated beyond the dip in the ground, as a heavy fire had been opened on him and he was losing men uselessly, and so had hastened to throw some sharpshooters into the wood.
September 18th. The Cadet Shulgin, writing in a Kiev newspaper, said that the Provisional Government’s declaration that Russia was a Republic constituted a gross abuse of its powers. “We cannot admit either a Republic, or the present Republican Government.... And we are not sure that we want a Republic in Russia....”
But the eddies of insurrection were spreading through Russia with a swiftness surpassing any human agency. Helsingfors Soviet passed resolutions of support; Kiev Bolsheviki captured the arsenal and the telegraph station, only to be driven out by delegates to the Congress of Cossacks, which happened to be meeting there; in Kazan, a Military Revolutionary Committee arrested the local garrison staff and the Commissar of the Provisional Government; from far Krasnoyarsk, in Siberia, came news that the Soviets were in control of the Municipal institutions; at Moscow, where the situation was aggravated by a great strike of leather-workers on one side, and a threat of general lock-out on the other, the Soviets had voted overwhelmingly to support the action of the Bolsheviki in Petrograd.... Already a Military Revolutionary Committee was functioning.
"This is from Kiev, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," she went on reverently, "from the relics of the Holy Martyr, Varvara. Let me put it on your neck myself, and with it dedicate you to a new life, to a new career."
"No... why not, my dear, why shouldn't I? I like him. He is kind, he is one of God's chosen, he's a benefactor, he once gave me ten rubles, I remember. When I was in Kiev, Crazy Cyril says to me (he's one of God's own and goes barefoot summer and winter), he says, 'Why are you not going to the right place? Go to Kolyazin where a wonder-working icon of the Holy Mother of God has been revealed.' On hearing those words I said good-by to the holy folk and went."
"But that's just the same as myself--they are not others," explained Prince Andrew. "The others, one's neighbors, le prochain, as you and Princess Mary call it, are the chief source of all error and evil. Le prochain--your Kiev peasants to whom you want to do good."
When he reached Kiev he sent for all his stewards to the head office and explained to them his intentions and wishes. He told them that steps would be taken immediately to free his serfs--and that till then they were not to be overburdened with labor, women while nursing their babies were not to be sent to work, assistance was to be given to the serfs, punishments were to be admonitory and not corporal, and hospitals, asylums, and schools were to be established on all the estates. Some of the stewards (there were semiliterate foremen among them) listened with alarm, supposing these words to mean that the young count was displeased with their management and embezzlement of money, some after their first fright were amused by Pierre's lisp and the new words they had not heard before, others simply enjoyed hearing how the master talked, while the cleverest among them, including the chief steward, understood from this speech how they could best handle the master for their own ends.
During the first half of the journey--from Kremenchug to Kiev--all Rostov's thoughts, as is usual in such cases, were behind him, with the squadron; but when he had gone more than halfway he began to forget his three roans and Dozhoyveyko, his quartermaster, and to wonder anxiously how things would be at Otradnoe and what he would find there. Thoughts of home grew stronger the nearer he approached it--far stronger, as though this feeling of his was subject to the law by which the force of attraction is in inverse proportion to the square of the distance. At the last post station before Otradnoe he gave the driver a three-ruble tip, and on arriving he ran breathlessly, like a boy, up the steps of his home.
Another company, a lucky one for not all the companies had vodka, crowded round a pockmarked, broad-shouldered sergeant major who, tilting a keg, filled one after another the canteen lids held out to him. The soldiers lifted the canteen lids to their lips with reverential faces, emptied them, rolling the vodka in their mouths, and walked away from the sergeant major with brightened expressions, licking their lips and wiping them on the sleeves of their greatcoats. All their faces were as serene as if all this were happening at home awaiting peaceful encampment, and not within sight of the enemy before an action in which at least half of them would be left on the field. After passing a chasseur regiment and in the lines of the Kiev grenadiers--fine fellows busy with similar peaceful affairs--near the shelter of the regimental commander, higher than and different from the others, Prince Andrew came out in front of a platoon of grenadiers before whom lay a naked man. Two soldiers held him while two others were flourishing their switches and striking him regularly on his bare back. The man shrieked unnaturally. A stout major was pacing up and down the line, and regardless of the screams kept repeating:
"Oh, wait, please!" And Natasha began rapidly and deftly sorting out the things. "These aren't needed," said she, putting aside some plates of Kiev ware. "These--yes, these must go among the carpets," she said, referring to the Saxony china dishes.
In Kiev Pierre found some people he knew, and strangers hastened to make his acquaintance and joyfully welcomed the rich newcomer, the largest landowner of the province. Temptations to Pierre's greatest weakness-- the one to which he had confessed when admitted to the Lodge--were so strong that he could not resist them. Again whole days, weeks, and months of his life passed in as great a rush and were as much occupied with evening parties, dinners, lunches, and balls, giving him no time for reflection, as in Petersburg. Instead of the new life he had hoped to lead he still lived the old life, only in new surroundings.
News from the provinces. Moghilev had declared against the Bolsheviki. At Kiev the Cossacks had overthrown the Soviets and arrested all the insurrectionary leaders. The Soviet and garrison of Luga, thirty thousand strong, affirmed its loyalty to the Provisional Government, and appealed to all Russia to rally around it. Kaledin had dispersed all Soviets and Unions in the Don Basin, and his forces were moving north....
Suddenly and simultaneously a crowd of memories awoke in his fancy--of the look Platon had given him as he sat under the tree, of the shot heard from that spot, of the dog's howl, of the guilty faces of the two Frenchmen as they ran past him, of the lowered and smoking gun, and of Karataev's absence at this halt--and he was on the point of realizing that Karataev had been killed, but just at that instant, he knew not why, the recollection came to his mind of a summer evening he had spent with a beautiful Polish lady on the veranda of his house in Kiev. And without linking up the events of the day or drawing a conclusion from them, Pierre closed his eyes, seeing a vision of the country in summertime mingled with memories of bathing and of the liquid, vibrating globe, and he sank into water so that it closed over his head.
A week later, Pierre, having taken leave of his new friends, the Masons, and leaving large sums of money with them for alms, went away to his estates. His new brethren gave him letters to the Kiev and Odessa Masons and promised to write to him and guide him in his new activity.
"Lord Jesus Christ!" exclaimed the pilgrim woman, crossing herself. "Oh, don't speak so, master! There was a general who did not believe, and said, 'The monks cheat,' and as soon as he'd said it he went blind. And he dreamed that the Holy Virgin Mother of the Kiev catacombs came to him and said, 'Believe in me and I will make you whole.' So he begged: 'Take me to her, take me to her.' It's the real truth I'm telling you, I saw it myself. So he was brought, quite blind, straight to her, and he goes up to her and falls down and says, 'Make me whole,' says he, 'and I'll give thee what the Tsar bestowed on me.' I saw it myself, master, the star is fixed into the icon. Well, and what do you think? He received his sight! It's a sin to speak so. God will punish you," she said admonishingly, turning to Pierre.
The Old Town, or Old Kiev quarter (Starokievskaya Chast), occupies the highest of the range of hills. Here the houses are most closely built, and stone structures most abundant. In some of the principal streets are buildings of three to five storeys, a comparatively rare thing in Russia, indeed in the main street (Kreshchatik) fine structures have been erected since 1896. In the 11th century the area was enclosed by earthen ramparts, with bastions and gateways; but of these the only surviving remnant is the Golden Gate. In the centre of the Old Town stands the cathedral of St Sophia, the oldest cathedral in the Russian empire. Its external walls are of a pale green and white colour, and it has ten cupolas, four spangled with stars and six surmounted each with a cross. The golden cupola of the four-storeyed campanile is visible for many miles across the steppes. The statement frequently made that the church was a copy of St Sophia's in Constantinople has been shown to be a mistake. The building measures in length 177 ft., while its breadth is 118 ft. But though the plan shows no imitation of the great Byzantine church, the decorations of the interior (mosaics, frescoes, &c.) do indicate direct Byzantine influence. During the occupation of the church by the Uniats or United Greek Church in the 17th century these were covered with whitewash, and were only discovered in 1842, after which the cathedral was internally restored; but the chapel of the Three Pontiffs has been left untouched to show how carefully the old style has been preserved or copied. Among the mosaics is a colossal representation of the Virgin, 15 ft. in height, which, like the so-called "indestructible wall" in which it is inlaid, dates from the time (1019-1054) of Prince Yaroslav. This prince founded the church in 1037 in gratitude for his victory over the Petchenegs, a Turkish race then settled in the Dnieper valley. His sarcophagus, curiously sculptured with palms, fishes, &c., is preserved. The church of St Andrew the Apostle occupies the spot where, according to Russian tradition, that apostle stood when as yet Kiev was not, and declared that the hill would become the site of a great city. The present building, in florid rococo style, dates from 1744-1767. The church of the Tithes, rebuilt in 1828-1842, was founded in the close of the 10th century by Prince Vladimir in honour of two martyrs whom he had put to death; and the monastery of St Michael (or of the Golden Heads--so called from the fifteen gilded cupolas of the original church) claims to have been built in 1108 by Svyatopolk II., and was restored in 1655 by the Cossack chieftain Bogdan Chmielnicki. On a plateau above the river, the favourite promenade of the citizens, stands the Vladimir monument (1853) in bronze. In this quarter, some distance back from the river, is the new and richly decorated Vladimir cathedral (1862-1896), in the Byzantine style, distinguished for the beauty and richness of its paintings. Entry: KIEV
KURSK, a town of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, at the junction of the railways from Moscow, Kiev and Kharkov, 330 m. S.S.W. from Moscow. Pop. (1897), 52,896. It is built on two hills (750 ft.), the slopes of which are planted with orchards. The environs all round are well wooded and the woods are famous for their nightingales. Among the public buildings the more noticeable are a monastery with an image of the Virgin, greatly venerated since 1295; the Orthodox Greek cathedral (18th century); and the episcopal palace, Kursk being a bishopric of the national church. It is essentially a provincial town, and is revered as the birthplace of Theodosius, one of the most venerated of Russian saints. It has a public garden, and has become the seat of several societies (medical, musical, educational and for sport). Its factories include steam flour-mills, distilleries, tobacco-works, hemp-crushing mills, tanneries, soap-works and iron-works. It has a great yearly fair (_Korennaya_), and an active trade in cereals, linen, leather, fruit, horses, cattle, hides, sheepskins, furs, down, bristles, wax, tallow and manufactured goods. Entry: KURSK
BORIS FEDOROVICH GODUNOV, tsar of Muscovy (c. 1551-1605), the most famous member of an ancient, now extinct, Russian family of Tatar origin, which migrated from the Horde to Muscovy in the 14th century. Boris' career of service began at the court of Ivan the Terrible. He is mentioned in 1570 as taking part in the Serpeisk campaign as one of the archers of the guard. In 1571 he strengthened his position at court by his marriage with Maria, the daughter of Ivan's abominable favourite Malyuta Skuratov. In 1580 the tsar chose Irene, the sister of Boris, to be the bride of the tsarevich Theodore, on which occasion Boris was promoted to the rank of _boyar_. On his deathbed Ivan appointed Boris one of the guardians of his son and successor; for Theodore, despite his seven-and-twenty years, was of somewhat weak intellect. The reign of Theodore began with a rebellion in favour of the infant tsarevich Demetrius, the son of Ivan's fifth wife Marie Nagaya, a rebellion resulting in the banishment of Demetrius, with his mother and her relations, to their appanage at Uglich. On the occasion of the tsar's coronation (May 31, 1584), Boris was loaded with honours and riches, yet he held but the second place in the regency during the lifetime of his co-guardian Nikita Romanovich, on whose death, in August, he was left without any serious rival. A conspiracy against him of all the other great boyars and the metropolitan Dionysy, which sought to break Boris' power by divorcing the tsar from Godunov's childless sister, only ended in the banishment or tonsuring of the malcontents. Henceforth Godunov was omnipotent. The direction of affairs passed entirely into his hands, and he corresponded with foreign princes as their equal. His policy was generally pacific, but always most prudent. In 1595 he recovered from Sweden the towns lost during the former reign. Five years previously he had defeated a Tatar raid upon Moscow, for which service he received the title of _sluga_, an obsolete dignity even higher than that of boyar. Towards Turkey he maintained an independent attitude, supporting an anti-Turkish faction in the Crimea, and furnishing the emperor with subsidies in his war against the sultan. Godunov encouraged English merchants to trade with Russia by exempting them from tolls. He civilized the north-eastern and south-eastern borders of Muscovy by building numerous towns and fortresses to keep the Tatar and Finnic tribes in order. Samara, Saratov, and Tsaritsyn and a whole series of lesser towns derive from him. He also re-colonized Siberia, which had been slipping from the grasp of Muscovy, and formed scores of new settlements, including Tobolsk and other large centres. It was during his government that the Muscovite church received its patriarchate, which placed it on an equality with the other Eastern churches and emancipated it from the influence of the metropolitan of Kiev. Boris' most important domestic reform was the _ukaz_ (1587) forbidding the peasantry to transfer themselves from one landowner to another, thus binding them to the soil. The object of this ordinance was to secure revenue, but it led to the institution of serfdom in its most grinding form. The sudden death of the tsarevich Demetrius at Uglich (May 15, 1591) has commonly been attributed to Boris, because it cleared his way to the throne; but this is no clear proof that he was personally concerned in that tragedy. The same may be said of the many, often absurd, accusations subsequently brought against him by jealous rivals or ignorant contemporaries who hated Godunov's reforms as novelties. Entry: BORIS