Destruction of Arsenyev
Why did the author of Dersu Uzala wish to follow his hero into exile?
Author: Sergey Tashevsky
In the 19th century, a movement emerged in global belles lettres that scholars later dubbed "colonial literature" (though it would be more accurate to say "colonialist"). This included Mayne Reid, Fenimore Cooper, Kipling, and so on. This prose primarily depicted ideal, if sometimes dramatic, relationships between the colonizers, the bringers of civilization, and the natives, who were "also people." And, of course, such literature was bound to appear in Russia. It did appear—albeit a little later, at the beginning of the 20th century, when a young officer named Vladimir Arsenyev arrived in the Far East. His military career (perhaps unexpectedly for him) turned into fame as a scholar, traveler, and popular writer. However, he became an officer almost by accident.
The story of Arsenyev's male ancestors seems simple and brief. Vladimir's grandfather, a Tver tradesman named Fyodor Ivanovich Goppmayer, was, as legend has it, a Dutchman who came to Russia "as a chemist." What that means, God only knows—perhaps he was simply a chemistry graduate who was hired as a tutor. Or perhaps he truly was a chemistry professor. Who knows? He somehow settled in Russia and even acquired an estate and wealth, which he spent on booze and the "easy life." But nothing is easy in Russia; everything must be paid for with fate. And so the Dutchman happened to meet a servant girl named Agafena, a serf of his neighbor, a certain Major General Lodygin. It was then that the "chemistry" between them, as they would say today, took place, and very soon Agafena gave birth to his child. The details of this story are unknown, but the chronology and facts point to a passionate and long-lasting romance: apparently, the aging Hoppmeier spent many years persuading his neighbor to grant his beloved, Agafena, freedom. He saved money for her. Meanwhile, she gave birth to a son, and in the absence of an official father, he was given the surname of his godfather—Arsenyev. The first name "Claudius" was assigned so that it would be immediately obvious that one of the parents had read Shakespeare (or perhaps so the child would be less likely to hide behind curtains). And in 1855, when Claudius turned seven, freedom was finally granted, the loving hearts were united, married, and departed for St. Petersburg. Overjoyed, Hoppmeier forgot about such trivial matters as formalizing his paternity; he rejoiced in every new moment of life with his beautiful beloved. Restaurants, champagne, hotel rooms... And he quickly became overjoyed, so much so that at the most unexpected moment he was struck with apoplexy. As a result, Agafena was left a widow, with the last name Goppmayer, but with a certain Claudius Arsenyev on her hands, and almost no means of support. She had to go back to work. The same fate awaited Claudius, who grew up, finished school, and joined the railway department as a low-ranking official. He inherited nothing from his father, except a small but varied library and a love of reading, which he in turn passed on to his children, especially his second son, Vladimir Arsenyev, who was born in August 1872.
The library, which contained both fashionable adventure novels and Bram's works on biology, played a crucial role in Vladimir's life. He devoured books by Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Reid, studied animal habits, and dreamed of adventure and travel. Volodya embarked on his first voyages on a homemade sailboat at the age of 12, while visiting his uncle in a village near Tver, and from then on, his passion for "pioneering" and geography never left him. But alas, he was not a shining example of academic achievement; he was an ordinary teenager, unencumbered by discipline and diligence, and so he never made it to university. Worse, he was expelled from high school for some infraction in his penultimate year, and to continue his education, at his father's insistence, he enrolled in the St. Petersburg Infantry Cadet School. As it soon turned out, it wasn't the worst choice. The best professors in St. Petersburg taught natural and exact sciences to future officers, and geography was taught by the renowned explorer Mikhail Efimovich Grum-Grzhimailo, who "infected" the young man with his tales of the then-barely explored territories of the Far East. Moreover, army discipline unexpectedly benefited Vladimir—he quickly developed into an independent, focused, and goal-oriented individual. He actively pursued self-education, reading books recommended by Grum-Grzhimailo at night. He eventually graduated with honors.
He didn't want to tie his life to the army anyway. He and his father had decided early on that after college, Vladimir would study to become a naval engineer. However, the Russian state has always had a knack for surprising its subjects—in ways both small and large. In this case, it threw a curveball that would completely change Arsenyev's life: while he was studying at the college, an order was issued requiring all graduates (including those, like Vladimir, who had studied at their own expense) to "serve" for exactly the same number of years as their training required. In other words, in modern terms, a "distribution" was introduced for cadets. Arsenyev, who was awarded the rank of second lieutenant for the occasion, was sent to serve in the 14th Infantry Regiment, then stationed in the city of Łomża, in the Kingdom of Poland, annexed by Russia. Thus began his "adult life."
To make things even more "grown-up," on his first vacation, he married his sisters' 17-year-old friend, Anna Kadashevich, to whom he had been engaged almost since childhood, and the day after the wedding they returned together to the Polish garrison.
The place was charming, cozy, and European, but there was absolutely nothing to discover there. The only kind of expedition practiced by Russian officers there was bar crawling. And so, remembering the stories of his teacher, Grum-Grzhimailo, Mikhail submitted a petition for a transfer to the Far East, to the Amur Military District.
Anna found the idea a bit outlandish. She was surprised to learn what kind of man her husband was: "He brought home all sorts of nasty things: he set up a terrarium with toads and lizards in it. He also fussed with little animals—beetles, butterflies, all sorts of insects, pinning them all up—and he'd say to me, 'Nyura, look how adorable! How beautiful!' I didn't understand that kind of beauty." It's no surprise that, upon learning of her pregnancy, she left for her parents in St. Petersburg. And Vladimir, literally that same month, departed for Vladivostok.
But all this happened in the summer of 1900, at the height of the Boxer Rebellion in China, which was suppressed not only by England but also by a coalition of numerous countries (including Russia). The Chinese border was in turmoil, so Arsenyev was mobilized near Blagoveshchensk, en route to his new destination, and sent to active duty. He even had the chance to participate in a couple of combat clashes with the Chinese, later receiving a commemorative medal for this. So he didn't reach Vladivostok until autumn. He immediately began exploring the city's immediate and distant environs.
In fact, this wasn't part of his officer duties—it was enough to "sit" in the garrison and carry out his superiors' orders. Arsenyev organized his trips in his free time, and of course, at his own expense. However, several inquisitive friends, keen on local history (or simply adventurous spirits), often accompanied him on these short "forays." They sketched landscapes, compiled maps, kept diaries, collected minerals, and studied the flora and fauna. In short, they conducted mini-expeditions, after each of which Arsenyev compiled a brief but comprehensive report. These reports soon caught the attention of the fortress command, and in 1902, Lieutenant Arsenyev was appointed head of the regiment's hunting team. "Hunting" wasn't so much in the sense of hunting game, but rather consisting of "hunters"—that is, officers and volunteer soldiers willing to take risks of their own free will ("hunt"). In modern terms, this was a reconnaissance group, with which Arsenyev traveled ever greater distances from the fortress, exploring almost the entire southeastern Ussuri region in just a couple of years. He mapped the area, collected herbariums and minerals, and even conducted archaeological excavations. This was quite a dangerous undertaking. He drowned many times, froze to death, and found himself under fire from both Chinese bandits, the "Honghuzi," and "his own people," escaped Russian convicts. Nevertheless, these expeditions gradually erased the "blank spots" on the map between Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, and Arsenyev earned a reputation not only as a brave explorer but also as a talented naturalist. His notes and expedition reports, written in a lively and figurative style, increasingly appeared in scientific journals. He quickly fell in love with the Far East, became acquainted with the simple way of life of the local inhabitants, and increasingly became a "taiga man," feeling at home in the forest and the hills.
He did have a house in Vladivostok, however, and quite a cozy one, though it was located on a street called "Rotten Corner," which constantly frustrated his wife, who had come from St. Petersburg with their child. Nevertheless, she contributed to Arsenyev's work as best she could, organizing his expeditions and taking notes from his dictation. Even his eldest son, Volya, helped him; Arsenyev took him on short trips from the age of three and accustomed him to expedition life. Soon, Vladimir and Anna had a second child.
But this idyll didn't last long: the Russo-Japanese War broke out. Vladivostok prepared for a siege (which, incidentally, never came), and all the families of the military were evacuated to the rear. On the way to St. Petersburg, Arsenyev's youngest son, not yet two years old, caught a cold and died. Vladimir himself couldn't even attend his funeral; he was now fully under command, conducting reconnaissance with small detachments in several directions. In 1905, he was appointed commander of the "flying detachment," which included all four mounted hunting teams of the Vladivostok fortress. He never saw serious combat, but he participated in numerous minor skirmishes with bands of Chinese bandits, for which, a year later, he received several military orders (the Anna, the Stanislav, and so on—the "gentleman's set" of a Russian officer). However, his superiors recognized his achievements with more than just iron trinkets. Arsenyev attracted the attention of the intelligence services.
The decisively lost war with Japan exposed the Russian generals' complete ignorance of the "theater of military operations." No one knew which roads and trails to retreat along (or, God willing, advance on), where which tribes lived, or where danger might loom. It was the newly promoted Staff Captain Arsenyev who was tasked with finding out all this in the event of a new war with Japan or China, while also empowering him to exterminate the bandits of the Honghuzi. Thus began the series of famous Sikhote-Alin expeditions, which readers know about from his books.
Arsenyev's detachment, however, was quite modest—twenty or thirty men, albeit armed with good rifles. It was easy to defeat them, so contact with the locals was crucial to the success of the undertaking. Fortunately, Arsenyev was a charming man, possessed a personable presence, and, most importantly, was genuinely interested in the lives of the local tribes. He quickly established contact with the Orochols, Udege, and other local peoples (including the peaceful Chinese living in the Ussuri region), and even befriended many of the hunters. As we know from his novels, his most important encounter was with the elderly Gold (Nanai) Dersu Uzala, which occurred on August 3, 1906, in the upper reaches of the Tadushi River. Dersu became Arsenyev's permanent guide for two expedition seasons, and a different side of taiga life was revealed to him. In Dersu, he saw not only a naturally talented hunter and tracker, but also a guardian of pristine moral values, a profound philosopher, and a visionary. Their friendship lasted until Dersu's death in 1908. But even after his death, he continued to occupy Arsenyev's thoughts, as is evident, for example, from the entries in his later diaries...
Meanwhile, the success of the Sikhote-Alin expeditions, which continued until 1910, elevated Arsenyev's career to a new level. For the first time in many years, he managed to reach St. Petersburg, where he delivered part of his collections for donation to museums. Due to numerous requests, he gave numerous reports on the state of affairs in the Ussuri region, and these were so resoundingly successful that a year later, Arsenyev was awarded a medal by the Russian Geographical Society. Finally, in early 1911, he was summoned to Khabarovsk and offered a job at the Main Directorate of Land Management, along with a release from military service.
Civilian position!
After nearly 20 years of military service, Arsenyev had no illusions about the army. He tolerated military service, with all its "officer codes of honor," as an unavoidable evil that helped organize expeditions. But he often felt caught between a rock and a hard place—he was so displeased with the way the Russians treated the natural environment of Primorye and the local inhabitants. He harbored absolutely no illusions about how the Russian state and its subjects treated the "natives" in practice. In his ethnographic essays, he wrote bluntly that the Russian settlers who arrived in the region made drunk and robbed the locals, and ravaged the environment wherever they went. They behaved like "temporary workers," and not only the industrialists and gold prospectors, but even the peasants and Russian settlers, including the Old Believers. To say nothing of the soldiers! Arsenyev had until now had to turn a blind eye to this, always "on the side of Russian arms." Therefore, having been freed from his officer duties, he initially breathed more freely.
But what a surprise! It soon became clear that his civilian service was just a disguise. The expeditions that Arsenyev was to lead under the guise of "research" were supervised by intelligence service, and their goal was to combat the numerous Chinese gangs in Primorye. The expedition's routes were strictly classified, and its participants were armed with more than just theodolites. Arsenyev was to send all bandits and poachers apprehended in the taiga to designated points on the coast, where they would be picked up by passing ships. However, the opportunities for research greatly increased.
In Russia, it's almost always like this: science is best funded if it's in any way connected to war or police surveillance. However, the result of the first of these expeditions, in addition to 204 burned poaching fanzas and a huge number of detained poachers and Honghuzi, was still a multitude of archaeological finds and new collections, which Arsenyev later sent to St. Petersburg. This continued for several years, year after year. With one hand, he conducted reconnaissance and fought Chinese bandits, while with the other, he pursued science. And eventually, he became completely accustomed to this dual position.
But in 1914, World War I began, and the emphasis shifted. Russia now spent all its money and military strength in the West, and Arsenyev's expeditions were left without funding. Although he had already been promoted to lieutenant colonel, he was now forced to remain permanently in Khabarovsk, processing the collected materials, writing reports and scientific papers. It was during these years that Arsenyev began to create his own unique prose, which combined ethnological observations, adventure plots, and philosophical reflections on man's place in nature. Many of his short stories and essays had been published previously, but his major novels, "Across the Ussuri Region" and "Dersu Uzala," were completed only in 1917, a time when their publication seemed out of the question.
Indeed! Prose written from the perspective of a tsarist officer—what could be more inappropriate in the era of the victorious proletariat? But unexpectedly, both Arsenyev himself and his books turned out to be quite appropriate for Soviet power.
There were several reasons for this. Firstly, the pure adventure genre—with its chases, hunger strikes, and clashes with tigers and bandits—was a perfect fit for the educational goals of Soviet children's literature, which was supposed to write about survival and courage in an engaging and uninhibited manner. Secondly, Arsenyev's books perfectly addressed the pressing Soviet task of developing and settling the Far East: they portrayed this harsh land as enticing, explorable, and suitable for the life of a Soviet pioneer. Thirdly, the image of Dersu Uzala fit perfectly with the Soviet rhetoric of friendship between peoples: Russians and the "small people" of the North walk shoulder to shoulder through the taiga, each learning much from the other. True, this required considerable cleaning of the books: Soviet editions of "Across the Ussuri Region" and especially the later compiled version "In the Wilds of the Ussuri Region" were published in heavily abridged, in places halved, and re-edited by censors—religious discussions, some less-than-favorable passages about the state, and unnecessary character complexities were removed from the text. Be that as it may, "Across the Ussuri Region" and "Dersu Uzala" were first published in the early 20s by a Vladivostok publishing house and went through numerous editions throughout the USSR's existence.
Arsenyev's books received a particularly positive boost from Gorky, who had returned to the USSR and who by then had been overfed by the monstrous output of Soviet writers and was delighted with any book written with any real merit: "I read your book with great pleasure. Apart from its scholarly value—certainly significant and undeniable—I was captivated and enchanted by its visual power. You have managed to combine in yourself both Brehm and Fenimore Cooper."
Soviet power, it seems, hardly interfered with Arsenyev's life. Moreover, he was constantly appointed to various positions, and as a representative of the Far Eastern Revolutionary Committee, he periodically traveled to Moscow to oversee and organize new expeditions. This Soviet bureaucratic hustle and bustle in his life increased year after year, so much so that he didn't even have time to finish his main book, "The Land of Udege," which he wrote over nearly thirty years, almost from the very first days of his arrival in the Far East. But the atmosphere in which he began the book was irrevocably gone. During this time, he became an orphan (his entire family—his father, mother, and sisters—perished in Petrograd in the autumn of 1918, at the height of the revolutionary turmoil, at the hands of bandits raiding apartments in search of loot). The people with whom he began his expeditionary life were also gone. Some perished in the Civil War, others emigrated. There were now others around him on the expedition—also Russian, it seemed, but whose language he sometimes didn't understand at all. "I left the tent and saw strangers again. I tried to catch at least one feature in their faces, at least a gesture, at least something in their ethos that would remind me of the past. In vain! All strange faces all around. I quickly drank some tea, got into the boat, and ordered it to cast off. I was running away from these people. I realized that I would find peace only in solitude. Everything is in the past!" So he wrote in 1927.
Around the same year, the GPU finally took an interest in him and summoned him for a talk. What was he saying? Like, "A lot of energy is wasted, loans are indispensable, people lack a broad outlook, the streets of Germany are clean, while Khabarovsk is dirty..." He had to make a long, tedious defense. It all gradually became almost routine—assignment after assignment, job after job, denunciation after denunciation. For Arsenyev, it was unbearable.
"I've grown tired of people and don't understand much about what they want and why they're so angry with each other... My desire is to finish processing my scientific work and leave, go far away, go away completely—to Dersu!" he wrote shortly before his death. But he had to live the life of a Soviet employee, as before. And what would Dersu Uzala have told him?
That Arsenyev concealed something in his book? He practically hurriedly recounted Dersu's death in the taiga, by the campfire—saying some wicked men had passed by and killed the old man. For what? Why? After all, Arsenyev himself may have been the accidental cause of his death. Dersu died from the knife of a scoundrel willing to do anything to get his hands on something precious—the brand-new rifle Arsenyev had given him. Ah, he shouldn't have given him that expensive Winchester rifle; he didn't need it (Dersu would have refused, but you can't hurt a friend).
However, half a century later, Akira Kurosawa told this very story in his film "Dersu Uzala." In it, Dersu, the "Chingachgook of the taiga," doesn't simply die at the hands of random bandits; he leaves behind the pristine and beautiful world of Primorye, destroyed by man. And one of these destroyers—unwittingly—was Arsenyev himself.
"Civilization breeds criminals. Build your own well-being at the expense of others—that's the motto of the twentieth century. Deception begins with trade, then, in sequential order, usury, slavery, theft, robbery, murder, and, finally, war and revolution with all their horrors. Is that civilization?!"
Watching clearings, fires, and railroad tracks spread across the pristine taiga, Arsenyev felt complicit in this destruction. After all, his job now called for him to conduct reconnaissance for future industrialization, to plan the "conquest" of nature. But his own nature couldn't accept this.
He died on September 4, 1930, just a week before his 58th birthday. His death was somewhat absurd and unexpected. He had returned from an inspection trip during which he had caught a slight cold. They called a doctor, who said there was no danger. Two hours later, Arsenyev's heart suddenly stopped. Acute pneumonia, a complication. But perhaps he simply didn't want to live anymore.
The entire city attended his funeral in Vladivostok (where he lived for the last 12 years with his second wife). Orchestras and an honor guard accompanied him. The entire road to the cemetery was covered in flowers. Thousands of people followed the coffin. They say no one had ever been buried like this in Vladivostok before. A few months later, the city's party newspaper, Krasnoye Znamya, published an article about him. derogatory article "V.K. Arsenyev as an Exponent of Great Power Chauvinism." Had he lived, it would have been clear what fate awaited him. And then, more. The writer's widow, Margarita Arsenyeva, was arrested. She was briefly released and then re-arrested, as the NKVD liked to do, interrogated about Arsenyev's reports on Japanese expansion into Primorye. And then, somehow, it emerged that he was a Japanese spy, and she, his assistant. In 1938, she was executed, and Arsenyev's daughter, Natalya, was exiled as the daughter of an enemy. Her father's entire archive, which she had kept, disappeared during the war, including the manuscript of "The Country of Udege," on which he had worked for 27 years. Meanwhile, Arsenyev's books continued to be published and reprinted in the USSR.
What a crazy situation! The family was repressed, but the books that Gorky praised (and which Stalin was rumored to have liked) continued to be published in hundreds of thousands of copies. Eventually, the fact that Arsenyev was a Japanese spy was somehow forgotten, and in 1957, even his children's book, "Life and Adventures in the Taiga," was published. And the Young Pioneers went to visit... Arsenyev's widow!
Yes! Arsenyev's first wife, Anna, outlived them all. Perhaps her simple, "proletarian" background helped (unlike Margarita, who was half-French and studied in Switzerland before the revolution). Or perhaps she was simply forgotten. But now they've remembered. And now she's rightfully considered a survivor. told, how she participated in her husband's literary work, and how "Volodya more than once emptied my coffers with his expeditions..." "...I, too, am a piece of Arsenyev's books," she said in an interview with Soviet journalists. And who can prove otherwise? After all, it's more convenient than recalling the fate of his second family. Meanwhile, it was Margarita, executed in 1938, who for 11 years managed Arsenyev's correspondence in several languages, edited his manuscripts, became his secretary, and helped with the publication of his books...
But she was finally remembered recently, in 2022, when a mural by Moscow artist Natalia Denisova, "Margarita, the Window is Open!", appeared in the very center of Vladivostok. It's supposedly about two Margaritas—Arsenyev's wife and the heroine of Bulgakov's novel. After all, there's a popular theory in Vladivostok that Margarita Arsenyeva could have been the inspiration for Bulgakov's "Master's Friend." It probably sounds absurd (although they did indeed know Bulgakov—Arsenyev's widow met him in Moscow in 1931). But since the mural appeared, something truly bizarre has been happening in the city.
First, Memorial installed a "Last Address" plaque on the wall of the Arsenyev House Museum (where, as is known, he lived with his second family, Margarita and Natalie, for over a decade). It was the first "memorial" plaque in Vladivostok—and it was dedicated to Margarita, who was taken from here in 1937 for interrogation and death. But on June 13 of this year, this plaque was removed. took off, as "not agreed upon." It's as if everything is starting over.
Of course! Arsenyev's books (again reworked—all the "God" stuff has been reinstated, of course), extolling the Far East, are once again needed by the current regime. "Colonial literature" reminds us of imperial might. But of course, they need widows who are alive, not executed. And Dersu Uzala, not murdered by Russian bandits. They need everything to be fine.
