Peter the Great (68 page)

It was not just the common people who hated St. Petersburg. Russian noblemen and foreign ambassadors grumbled and wondered how long the city would survive its founder. Tsarevna Maria declared, "Petersburg will not endure after our time. May it remain a desert." Only a few saw more clearly. It was Menshikov who said that St. Petersburg would become another Venice, and that the day would come when foreigners would travel there purely out of curiosity and to enjoy its beauty.

The Swedes never understood Peter's fierce attachment to this marshy site. The Tsar's determination to keep the new city became the chief obstacle to making peace. When Russian fortunes in the war were low, Peter was willing to give up all he had conquered in Livonia and Estonia, but he would never agree to yield St. Petersburg and the mouth of the Neva. Few in Sweden understood that the Tsar had split the Swedish Baltic empire permanendy, that the wedge driven between Sweden's northern and southern Baltic provinces, interrupting the lines of communication across the Neva delta, presaged their eventual total loss. Most Swedes considered the loss to be relatively minor and only temporary and thought Peter a fool. Knowing how the winds driving up the gulf piled water into the Neva delta and flooded many of the marshy islands, they assumed that wind and water would quickly destroy the fledgling town. The new settlement became the butt of jokes. The attitude of Sweden was that of its supremely confident King: "Let the Tsar tire himself with founding new towns. We will keep for ourselves the honor of taking them."

Peter called the new city St. Petersburg after his patr
on saint,
and it became the glory of his rei
gn, his "paradise," his "Eden,"
his "darling." In April 1706, he
began a letter to Menshikov, "I
cannot help writing you from this
paradise; truly we live here in
heaven." The city came to represent in brick and
stone everything
important in his life: his escape
from the shadowy intrigue, the
tiny windows and vaulted chamber
s of Moscow; his arrival on the
sea; the opening to the technology and culture of Western Europe. Peter loved his new creation. He found endless pleasure in the great river flowing out to the Gulf, in the waves lapping under the fortress walls, in the salty breeze that filled the sails of his new ships. Construction of the city became his passion. No obstacle was great enough to prevent his carrying out his design. On it he lavished his energy, millions of roubles and thousands of lives. At first, fortification and defense were his highest considerations, but within less than a year he was writing to Tikhon Streshnev in Moscow asking for flowers to be sent from Ismailovo near Moscow, "especially those with scent. The peony plants have arrived in very good condition, but no balsam or mint. Send them." By 1708, he had built an aviary and sent to Moscow for "8,000 singing birds of various sorts."

After Peter, a succession of empresses and emperors would transform the early settlement of logs and mud into a dazzling city, its architecture more European than Russian, its culture and thought a blend of Russia and the West. A long line of majestic palaces and public buildings, yellow, light blue, pale green and red, would rise along the three-mile granite quay which fronted the south bank of the Neva. With its merging of wind and water and cloud, its 150 arching bridges linking the nineteen islands, its golden spires and domes, its granite columns and marble obelisks, St. Petersburg would be called the Babylon of the Snows and the Venice of the North. It would become a fountainhead of Russian literature, music and art, the home of Pushkin, Gogol and Dostoevsky, of Borodin, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov, of Petipa, Diaghilev, Pavlova and Nijinsky. For two centuries, the city would also be the stage on which the political destinies of Russia were enacted as Russia's sovereigns struggled to rule the empire from the city Peter had created. And in this city was played the final act of the drama in which Peter's dynasty was overthrown. Even the name of the city would change as the new regime, seeking to honor its founder, decided to give Lenin "the best we had." The new name, however, still sticks in the throats of many of the city's citizens. To them, it remains simply "Peter."

28

MENSHIKOV AND CATHERINE

During
these early years of war, two people emerged who were to become the closest companio
ns of Peter's life, Alexander Me
nshikov and Martha Skavronskaya. There were remarkable parallels between them: Both rose from obscurity; they met each other before she met Peter; they rose together, he from stable boy to mighty prince, she from orphaned peasant girl to be crowned as empress, Peter's heir and successor as Russia's sovereign. Both survived the
giant
Tsar who had created them, but not for
long
.
After Peter died, the Empress Catherine quickly followed, and then the ambitious stable boy who had scaled the heights toppled dizzyingly back to earth.

The great Prince Menshikov, the empire's mightiest satrap, Peter's "Herzenkind" (child of the heart), the human whom after Catherine he loved most, the one man who could absolutely "speak for the Tsar," who became a field marshal, First Senator, a "Serene Highness" and a Prince of Russia, as well as a Prince of the Holy "Roman Empire! The best-known portrait of Menshikov shows a man with a high-domed forehead, intelligent blue-green eyes, a strong nose and a pencil-thin brown mustache. His smile is as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa's. At first, it appears blandly open and pleasant; on second glance, it seems cooler, more distant. As one considers the mouth and eyes, the smile and the general visage become decidedly calculating and unpleasant. Menshikov is dressed as the Westernized "almost sovereign potentate" which Pushkin called him. He wears a curled white wig like a grandee of Louis XIV; an armored breastplate is covered with a white robe edged in gilt, with golden tassels. Around his neck is a red silk scarf, and across his chest the wide blue ribbon of the Order of St. Andrew. The star of the order, along with the stars of the Polish Order of the White Eagle and another order, are pinned to the robe. One can tell, looking at this painting, that here is an exceedingly clever, enormously powerful, unforgiving man.

The name and career of Alexander Danilovich Menshikov are inextricably entwined with the life of Peter the Great, yet the origins of Peter's famous lieutenant are shrouded in legend. Some have said that his father was a Lithuanian peasant who sent his son as an apprentice to a pastry cook in Moscow, where young Alexashka sold small cakes and pirozhki. In the city streets one day, so the story goes, the clever lad's perky cries as he hawked his wares attracted the attention of Lefort, who stopped to talk to him, was charmed and immediately took the boy into his personal service. Thereafter, although Menshikov could barely write his name, his wit and bold repartee sparkled so brightly that he soon was noticed by Peter. The Tsar, too, was intrigued by the intelligent, good-humored boy so near his own age, and, persuading Lefort to part with him, made Alexashka his own private servant. From this position, low in rank but at the elbow of the autocrat, Menshikov employed his great charm and his variety of useful talents to make himself one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in eighteenth-century Europe. His saucy boldness never deserted him. It led him to steal exorbitantly from the state funds entrusted to him, and then helped to shield him from the wrath of an outraged sovereign. Eventually, it is said, Peter threatened to send the mighty Prince back to selling pies in the Moscow streets. That same evening, Menshikov appeared before Peter dressed in an apron with a tray of pirozhki attached to his shoulders, calling out, "Hot pies! Hot pies! I sell
fresh-baked pirozhki!" Peter shook his head in disbelief, burst out laughing and once again forgave his erring favorite.

The likelier story of the beginnings of Alexander Menshikov is only a shade less co
lorful. It is almost certain th
at Menshikov's father was a soldier who served under Tsar Alexis and became a corporal-clerk stationed at Preobrazhenskoe. Probably, the family's origins were Lithuanian: The diploma creating Menshikov a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire declared that the new Prince was descended from an ancient and noble Lithuanian family. "Ancient" and "noble" may have been added to make it easier for the rigidly conservative Hapsburg Emperor to bestow the title, but there is evidence that relatives of Menshikov were landed proprietors in the neighborhood of Minsk, at that time a part of Lithuania.

Whatever his antecedents, Menshikov was born in November 1673, a year and a half after Peter himself, and spent his childhood as a stable boy on the
imperial estate of Proebrazhens
koe. From his earliest youth, he understood the value of proximity to Peter. He was one of the first boys to enroll as a play soldier in Peter's youthful military company. By 1693, he was listed as a bombardier—Peter's favorite branch of the army—in the Preobrazhensky Guards. As a sergeant, he stood next to the Tsar under the walls of Azov, and when Peter was making up his Great Embassy to Western Europe, Menshikov was one of the first to volunteer and be chosen. By this time he had been appointed as a dentchik, one of the young men assigned as personal orderlies to the Tsar. A dentchik's duty was to attend the sovereign day and night, taking his turn sleeping in the next room or, when the Tsar was traveling, sleeping on the floor at the foot of the royal bed. At Peter's side, Menshikov worked in the shipyards of Amsterdam and Deptford. He was almost Peter's equal in ship's carpentry and the only Russian besides the Tsar who showed real aptitude for the trade. In Peter's company,
Menshikov
visited Western workshops and laboratories, learned to speak a smattering of Dutch and German and acquired a surface polish of polite society. Adaptable and quick to learn, he still remained a thorough Russian and, as such, was almost a prototype of the kind of man Peter wanted to create in Russia. Here was at least one subject who tried to grasp Peter's new ideas, who was willing to break with old Russian customs and who was not only intelligent enough and talented enough but actually eager to help.

On returning from Europe, Menshikov was included in the revels of Peter's Jolly Company. Six feet tall, robust, agile and good at the sports Peter liked, he became a prominent figure at Preobrazhenskoe, where he
was known by his nickname, Alex
ashka, or his patronymic, Danilovich. He appeared in the "great company of singers who sang carols over Christmas at General Gordon's house," and he played an enthusiastic part in the execution of the Streltsy. Peter gave him a house, and on February 2, 1699, in the presence of the Tsar, it was consecrated according to the "rites of Bacchus."

Inevitably, the young man's rapid rise stirred sneers behind his back at his obscure origins and lack of education. "By birth," said Prince Boris Kurakin, "Menshikov is lower than a Pole." Korb wrote disparagingly of "that Alexander who is so conspicuous at court through the Tsar's graces" and reported that the young favorite already was selling his influence to merchants and others in need of help -with various branches of the government. Whitworth, the English minister, reported in 1706, "I am credibly informed that Menshikov can neither read nor write," a charge that was only partially true. Menshikov had learned to read, but always wrote through a secretary, signing his own name in a labored and shaky hand.

Yet, despite his detractors, Menshikov continued to ascend. His tact, his optimism, his uncanny way of understanding and almost anticipating all of Peter's commands and personal moods, his acceptance and endurance of the Tsar's anger and even violent blows, made him unique. When Peter, on returning from Europe, accused General Shein of selling army commissions and at a banquet drew his sword to strike the offender, it was Lefort who deflected the blow and saved Shein's life, but it was Menshikov who grappled with and calmed the Tsar. Not long after, at a christening party for the son of the Danish ambassador, Peter saw Menshikov wearing a sword on the dance floor. Appalled at this breach of etiquette committed in the presence of foreigners, Peter struck the offender in the face with his fist, bringing blood spurting from Menshikov's nose. The following spring in Voronezh, Menshikov bent forward to whisper something in Peter's ear and was rewarded with a burst of anger and another blow in the face, this one so powerful that it stretched the victim on the ground. Menshikov accepted this abuse not simply with resignation but with unfailing good humor. In time, his understanding of Peter's moods and his willingness to accept whatever Peter offered, be it favor or blow, made him indispensable to the Tsar. He had ceased to be a servant and become a friend.

In 1700, at the outbreak of the war, Menshikov was still attached to Peter's private household—a letter to him from Peter in that year indicates that he had special charge of the Tsar's wardrobe. But when the war began, Menshikov plunged into it, displaying a talent for military command as great as his talent for everything else. He was with Peter at Narva and left with the Tsar before the disastrous battle began. During the operations in Ingria in 1701, which Peter conducted personally, Menshikov distinguished himself as Peter's lieutenant. After the siege and capture of Noteborg (now Schlusselburg), Menshikov was named governor of the fortress. He participated in the advance down the Neva, the taking of Nyenskans and the ambush and capture of the Swedish flotilla at the mouth of the river. With the founding of St. Petersburg in 1703 and the building of the Peter and Paul Fortress, Menshikov was assigned responsibility for construction of the one of the six great bastions which subsequently bore his name. That same year, he became Governor General of Karelia, Ingria and Estonia. In 1703, to please the Tsar, Peter Golitsyn, envoy to the imperial court at Vienna, arranged to have Menshikov named a Count of Hungary. In 1705, the
Emperor Joseph created Alexash
ka a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. Two years later, after Menshikov's victory over the Swedes at Kalisz in Poland, Peter gave him the Russian title of Prince of Izhora, with large estates. Significantly, only two weeks after receiving these lands, the new Prince wrote to ascertain the number of parishes and people therein, what revenue could be collected from them, and to command that in religious services in churches in the district his name be mentioned with that of the Tsar.