The King of Vodka (5 page)

Industrialization topped the state's agenda, along with another crucial matter: the abolition of serfdom. The tsar acknowledged his intentions when he spoke passionately to a leading group of the aristocracy in Moscow on March 30, 1856. He hoped to win the nobility's approval and support by famously stating the inevitable: “It is much better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait for the time when it will begin to abolish itself from below.” Freedom, finally, was in the air.

All of this had been on the mind of Pyotr's father, Arseniy. It had been some time since he had amassed enough reserves to pay off his master, but he had hesitated. Although Arseniy lacked the keen business mind that had served his brothers so well, he understood the art of good timing. Arseniy enjoyed a decent, productive relationship with his landowners and found little reason to uproot what remained of his family without a clear purpose. For him, as for many of the older generation, living under a master was secure and uncomplicated.

Patience served Arseniy well. His sons were flourishing in Moscow, and the money they contributed to the family coffers made it possible, now, for Arseniy to be free. He could pay off his master, go to Moscow, and still have enough money left to join the merchant ranks himself. Plus, his landowner, wary of the government's reformist tendencies, was in the mood to pocket a payout from his serfs before the tsar could impose restrictions.

In 1857 Arseniy dipped into his savings, paid off his ransom, and said goodbye to the lands of Yaroslavl. The Smirnovs were free, now no longer anybody's property. And soon, thanks to the new tsar's enlightened agenda and the Smirnovs' own tenacity, they would be much more than that.

A
rseniy could hardly wait to get a taste of the merchant life. He was a proud man who surely had felt more than a twinge of jealousy that his younger brothers had prospered years before him as free men while he, at age fifty-eight, was only now leaving behind his provincial roots and the burdens of serfdom.

The first order of business for Arseniy was to prove to officials in Moscow, beyond a doubt, his devotion to Christian Orthodoxy. It was a requirement for becoming a merchant. This would not be difficult since Arseniy had attended church throughout his life, according to historical church records, confessing his sins and taking communion as often as his religion demanded. He socialized with local clergy, maintaining close ties to them even after leaving his village. And he dressed and acted the part of a conservative, pious Christian. Arseniy always embraced traditional Russian thinking and adhered to the church's interpretations of societal norms, while maintaining patriarchal communities. He, like many others, shunned the
blasphemous influences blowing in from Western and Central Europe to modernize.

In the cool spring of 1858, Arseniy most likely headed to the parish his sons and brother Ivan attended on Varvarka Street to obtain a letter from the resident priest that would demonstrate his devotion. Perhaps he brought with him a succinct letter from his own village clergy, attesting to his allegiances. Among other things, it made clear that Arseniy would have no trouble swearing, in writing, that he was neither Jew nor eunuch nor a member of a variety of other “insidious” religious sects, as the law required.
¹

Arseniy had not expected the church to be a stumbling block, but it was an entrenched institution and a notorious bureaucracy. Whether it would be weeks or months to process his request, nobody knows. But any delay must have weighed heavily on Arseniy. He was no longer a young man. True, he was in good health and had easily surpassed his country's life expectancy for men of forty-four years, but he still had so much to do.

Arseniy was worried about Pyotr. His other children were well down the road toward comfortable, pleasant lives. Yakov was entrenched in Uncle Ivan's business, happily married, already the father of three daughters. Arseniy's daughter Glafira had married well and presented no concerns. Although little is known about Aleksandra, his other daughter, it appears that she was also married and focused on her own family. But Pyotr was another matter. He had always adapted to his environment. Silently, however, he was never altogether comfortable. He kept waiting for something to happen, like a runner at the starting line listening for the one unmistakable pop that would thrust him into the race. Pyotr seemed to be simply biding his time, listening. Arseniy fervently hoped he could hasten the quest.

By late April, the days had grown longer and warmer, typical for that time of year. Neither too hot nor too cold, the air was dry, the sky clear. It was during one of those tranquil days that
he finally collected the church's recommendation. Now came the most challenging tasks.

Becoming a merchant was arduous, almost Byzantine: The procedure itself dated back to the reign of Catherine the Great. Three guilds had been set up in 1775 and they were structured, like everything else in Russia, by class. Merchants were ranked from the wealthiest and most influential to the poorest and least consequential. Members of the prestigious, tightly knit first guild received special privileges and titles while those in the second and third guilds were restricted in which businesses they could enter and in the number of employees they could hire. Only first-guild merchants, for instance, could work in banking, export to foreign countries, and trade without limit with the Russian government. By contrast, third-guild merchants could not enter finance or heavy industry and had to limit the size of their companies to no more than thirty-two workers.
²

The strict three-guild hierarchy also allowed the state treasury to tax merchants according to their incomes and resources. When applying to one of the guilds, merchants were required to disclose their capital. Applicants routinely underreported what they had in order to pay the minimum tax. In addition, merchants were strongly encouraged to contribute to a fund purportedly dedicated to helping the poor. The idea was to absolve decent merchants of the guilt they harbored for being so rich, and, hopefully, improve their standing throughout society.

It did not work. Merchants were Russia's pariahs, a largely mistrusted class. Russian playwright Aleksander Ostrovskiy described the world merchants inhabited as “the land of darkness.” Ostrovskiy, a child of one of Moscow's main business districts, believed that cultural ignorance, limitless greed, immoral conduct, and sheer stupidity ruled the entire class. He wrote about it repeatedly in his plays, beginning in 1849 with
It's A Family Affair
, a tale of Bolshov the merchant, who pretends to be bankrupt to escape his sizable debts. He transfers his assets to his
daughter and son-in-law only to have them run off with the money. The betrayal leaves Bolshov penniless and ultimately in “the pit” or debtors' prison, which the writer contends, is exactly where such cheats belong.

Literary giants from Tolstoy to Nikolay Gogol to Anton Chekhov to Ivan Turgenev joined Ostrovskiy in his ridicule. They, too, created the shadiest of characters out of rotten merchant cloth. Fyodor Dostoevskiy wrote: “A merchant is ready to join any Jew, to betray everyone and everything, for the sake of income.”
³

Russia's general contempt for its merchantry echoed similar though less strident sentiments from other parts of Europe. But it was in Moscow, more than any other place, that the antagonism worked like a translucent fence, isolating the country's future business leaders. This fledgling community occupied a veritable no-man's land, cloistered behind heavy walls and bolted gates that were more like fortresses than homes. For the most part, merchants avoided social gatherings and public events that took them away from their routines and insular lives. They had no place in the schools and little involvement in civic affairs. Even peasants considered them baldly corrupt, happy to have them confined to their capitalist ghettos. “A merchant in Russia occupied a rather low rank in the social hierarchy,” explained Dostoevskiy. “And, being frank, he didn't deserve more.”
⁴

Nor did the merchants seem to want more—at least not yet. They were not particularly interested in challenging the gentry, whom they dubbed lazy and unjustifiably snobbish. Years later, many of the wealthiest and most successful merchants concluded that it was the merchants—not the nobility—who represented the future pinnacle of society. Pavel Tretyakov, one of Moscow's premiere textile merchants and a leading philanthropist for whom the Tretyakov Museum in Moscow is named, strongly opposed his daughter Vera's marriage to pianist—and nobleman—Aleksander Ziloti. Tretyakov objected to Ziloti's frivo
lous artistic profession, convinced that the musician was after his money. He would have much preferred his daughter to choose a fellow merchant—aristocrat or not. Tretyakov failed to dissuade his daughter from her choice, but he did structure her wedding settlement in a way that prevented anyone he found “distasteful” from getting it. Tretyakov's contemporaries seemed to have come to the same conclusions. “Have you heard that this young boy, Ziloti, already a bright pianist…made a brilliant match in the sense of fortune: 400,000 rubles in her dowry?” composer Pyotr Tchaikovskiy was asked in a letter.
⁵
Tchaikovskiy, a distant relative by marriage, attended Vera's wedding.

To Arseniy, though, becoming a merchant had nothing to do with politics or class warfare. It was about liberty and free enterprise. It was, quite unashamedly, about Pyotr.

 

Arseniy, the aging ex-serf, set out early on April 30, 1858, hoping to beat the long lines he expected to encounter on the way to obtaining his merchant license.
^*
Pyotr, sensing the import of his father's mission, joined him. They both wore long, dark frock coats atop trousers tucked into long boots, aiming to look decent and traditional. The duo made small talk as they walked. Even though they were both giddy about their business prospects, neither spoke a word about it. Like so many others in Russia, they were superstitious and did not want to jinx their prospects.

It was just a fifteen-minute walk from Ivan's home, down noisy Varvarka and through Red Square to the Moscow State Chamber. There Arseniy would proclaim his finances, pay his taxes, and buy the necessary licenses and tickets required to operate a business. The building was a maze of bureaucratic agencies. It housed the state treasury department, tax collection agen
cies, and some military offices. Arseniy headed to the “Second Census Department,” which handled merchant affairs.

Despite its important official functions, nothing about the building was plain or governmental. The Moscow State Chamber was located in a grand classical mansion that once belonged, ironically, to a wealthy noble family. The rooms still dripped with the riches usually reserved for the highest echelon of the upper crust; there were ornate marble interiors and extravagantly painted ceilings. Pushkin and other leading intellectuals had visited there before the home was sold to the state in 1845.

Now Arseniy and Pyotr stood inside, awed by the building's majesty. Little else, however, felt intimidating. Low-level civil servants scurried from office to office like the cogs they were. Peasants, merchants, and aristocrats with various matters that needed attending shuffled about, rarely taking the time to ingest their impressive surroundings. For Arseniy, this moment was a means to an end: He needed the proof that he paid city and social taxes; he needed certificates that would allow him to open a wine shop. And he also needed a few extra rubles to “tip” the men as he made his way through the bureaucracy. The entire process took the better part of a day, but Arseniy got what he came for.

Things were not as easy two weeks later when Arseniy made his way to the Moscow City Society's house—the Merchant Department. This organization managed the merchant guilds themselves. It was an excessive, hierarchical bureaucracy, which operated more like an exclusive country club than a professional organization—and not just anyone could become a member.

Arseniy got an early start again on May 14. The sky was clear and it was already warm by the time he walked down Varvarka Street toward the Moscow City Society. It took Arseniy only about seven minutes to reach Yushkov Lane, a nondescript speck of a street with little to boast about except for a rather lovely church that stood directly in front of the municipal building.
Arseniy, walking alone this time as Pyotr needed to work, instinctively paused before this church, crossed himself and softly mumbled a prayer that God would help him succeed on this momentous day. Then he walked through the iron gates and entered the building.

Arseniy needed an officially stamped application, the guild certificate, to obtain a merchant license. He cleared his throat, stood up as straight as a pencil, and made the inquiry. The man behind the wooden counter looked every bit the part of the clerical worker he was, hair slightly disheveled, eyes bloodshot from too much booze, and a face like a road map. Menial pay and sheer boredom had turned him indifferent to his job and to the people he addressed. The clerk looked up, almost sneering.
Great
, he thought, wiping the beads of sweat from his brow with a dingy kerchief,
another village nobody come to Moscow to seek his fortune.
^*

It was indeed a trend. The number of serfs and ex-serfs filing into Moscow had grown exponentially after the end of the Crimean War. Some, like Arseniy, were looking to jumpstart the freedoms they saw unfolding. Others sought better seasonal work in the factories and industries that had begun to sprout up all over Russia.

That will be 1.80 rubles,
the gatekeeper said.
^†
Arseniy was ready. The application was supposed to cost 90 kopecks—the sign said as much. But everyone knew you had to pay double, and no one ever asked where the money went or why. Arseniy tugged at his wallet and handed over the money; in return, he received the application. Arseniy smiled and nodded his thanks. The man pointed up and Arseniy headed to the second floor.

Unlike the décor of the Moscow State Chamber, the cast-
iron stairs and the iron railing looked overused. Everything in the building did, including the people. Arseniy, however, boyish in his quest, was the exception. He climbed the stairs, turned the corner, and walked into a waiting area outside the chancellery. Arseniy's fate would be determined here.

He took a seat on a worn bench against the wall, glad to sit down and rest his legs. He did not even bother to try to fill out his application in his rudimentary scratch, preferring like everyone else in the room to rely on officials to do the writing.

The chancellery was decidedly more pleasant than the downstairs had been. The room was quite large with wood floors and wooden tables covered by nondescript broadcloth. On the walls hung several portraits of unnamed officials in gilded frames. Five immense windows sucked in the outside breeze.

Arseniy had to wait his turn to see the most senior official here, known as a table head, a common title that stemmed from the fact that he literally sat at the head of a table. This man was clean-shaven, according to the law, and wore the state uniform. He commanded authority within the small army of bureaucrats that pecked away around him. This man could single-handedly determine how pleasant—or unpleasant—to make the day's procedures. His decisions were often sound and reasonable, but they could also seem arbitrary and casual.

As each man made his way to the front of the line, the table head dictated his answers and then signed his name at the bottom of the application. In this way, Arseniy was no different from the others that day, putting his barely legible signature to paper when it was his turn. But he did have an edge over the other men because he had important family ties to the guilds. By this time, Ivan was one of only 1,916 merchants in the first guild and knew exactly how to work the system. He had revealed everything to Arseniy.