Pushkin. T. Binyon J.

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1821, at Galata – the principal port of Moldavia, on the left bank of the Danube – the small Turkish garrison and a number of Turkish merchants were massacred by Greeks; the following day Alexander Ypsilanti, accompanied by his brothers, George and Nicholas, Prince Cantacuzen, and several other Greek officers in Russian service, crossed the Prut. At Iaşi on the twenty-third, in proclamations addressed to the Greeks and Moldavians, he called on them to rise against the Turks, declaring that his enterprise had the support of a ‘great power’. Though Michael Souzzo, the hospodar, threw in his lot with the uprising, it enjoyed no popular support, and Ypsilanti condemned it to failure by his irresolute leadership, condoning, in addition, the massacre at Galata and a subsequent similar incident at Iaşi. A final blow to the revolt was a letter from Alexander I, signed by Capo d’Istrias, which denounced Ypsilanti’s actions as ‘shameful and criminal’, upbraided him for misusing the tsar’s name, struck him from the Russian army list, and called upon him to lay down his arms immediately.³² Though Ypsilanti endeavoured to brave matters out, he was abandoned by many of the revolutionary leaders, and, retreating slowly northwards towards the Austrian frontier, underwent a series of humiliating defeats, culminating in that of Dragashan on 7 June, after which he escaped into Austria. Here he was kept in close confinement for over seven years, and, when eventually released at the instance of Nicholas I, died in Vienna in extreme poverty in 1828. A simultaneous revolt in Greece itself, led, among others, by Ypsilanti’s brother Demetrios, proved more successful: in 1833, after the intervention of the Great Powers, it eventually resulted in the establishment of an independent Greece.

Ypsilanti’s insurrection had been in progress for just over a week when Pushkin returned to Kishinev. The boldness of this exploit in the cause of Greek independence could not fail to arouse his enthusiasm. He dashed off a letter to Vasily Davydov, telling him of the progress of the revolt, speculating on Russia’s policy – ‘Will we occupy Moldavia and Wallachia in the guise of peace-loving mediators; will we cross the Danube as the allies of the Greeks and the enemies of their enemies?’ – and quoting from an insurgent’s letter on events at Iaşi: ‘He describes with ardour the ceremony of consecrating the banners and Prince Ypsilanti’s sword – the rapture of the clergy and laity – and the sublime moments of Hope and Freedom.’ Ypsilanti, whom Pushkin had met the previous year, is mentioned with admiration: ‘Alexander Ypsilanti’s first step is splendid and brilliant. He has begun luckily – from now on, whether dead or a victor he belongs to history – 28 years old, one arm missing, a magnanimous goal! – an enviable lot.’³³ ‘We spoke about A. Ypsilanti,’ he records in his diary of an evening at the house of a ‘charming Greek lady’. ‘Among five Greeks I alone spoke like a Greek – they all despair of the success of the Hetaireia enterprise. I am firmly convinced that Greece will triumph, and that 25,000,000^* Turks will leave the flowering land of Hellas to the rightful heirs of Homer and Themistocles.’³⁴ Indeed, his enthusiasm was such that it became rumoured that he – as Byron was to do two years later – had joined the revolt. ‘I have heard from trustworthy people that he has slipped away to the Greeks,’ the journalist and historian Pogodin wrote to a friend from Moscow.³⁵ But his participation was only vicarious.

      The question of Russia’s attitude to the insurrection, which Pushkin raises in his letter to Davydov, was one which preoccupied both the government and the Decembrists. Both were not averse to striking a blow against Russia’s old enemy, Turkey. ‘If the 16th division,’ Orlov remarked of his command, ‘were to be sent to the liberation [of Greece], that would not be at all bad. I have sixteen thousand men under arms, thirty-six cannon, and six Cossack regiments. With that one can have some fun. The regiments are splendid, all Siberian flints. They would blunt the Turkish swords.’³⁶ Alexander, however, did not wish to back revolutionary activity in Greece, while the Decembrists, though supporters of Greek independence, were not eager to have an illiberal tsar gain kudos by posing as a liberator abroad. And, curiously, they had the opportunity of influencing events. At the beginning of April Kiselev was requested by the government to send an officer to Kishinev to report on the insurrection. His choice fell on Pestel, whose report may have been instrumental in persuading the government not to support the revolt: Pushkin certainly believed this to be the case. In November 1833, at a rout at the Austrian ambassador’s in St Petersburg, he met Michael Souzzo, the former hospodar of Moldavia. ‘He reminded me,’ Pushkin wrote in his diary, ‘that in 1821 I called on him in Kishinev together with Pestel. I told him how Pestel had deceived him, and betrayed the Hetaireia – by representing it to the Emperor Alexander as a branch of Carbonarism. Souzzo could conceal neither his astonishment nor his vexation – the subtlety of a Phanariot had been conquered by the cunning of a Russian officer! This wounded his vanity.’³⁷

      Pushkin’s confidence in the success of the revolt soon proved unjustified – at least as far as Moldavia was concerned, where the uprising was quickly suppressed by the Turks. After a final, bloody engagement at Sculeni, on the west bank of the Prut, in June, the few survivors escaped by swimming the river. Gorchakov, who had been sent to observe events from the Russian side, gave Pushkin an account of this incident, which he later made use of in the short story ‘Kirdzhali’. Though he remained constant in his support for Greek independence, he was disappointed by this ‘crowd of cowardly beggars, thieves and vagabonds who could not even withstand the first fire of the worthless Turkish musketry’. ‘As for the officers, they are worse than the soldiers. We have seen these new Leonidases in the streets of Odessa and Kishinev – we are personally acquainted with a number of them, we can attest to their complete uselessness – they have discovered the art of being boring, even at the moment when their conversation ought to interest every European – no idea of the military art, no concept of honour, no enthusiasm – the French and Russians who are here show them a contempt of which they are only too worthy, they put up with anything, even blows of a cane, with a sangfroid worthy of Themistocles. I am neither a barbarian nor an apostle of the Koran, the cause of Greece interests me keenly, that is just why I become indignant when I see these wretches invested with the sacred office of defenders of liberty.’³⁸

      As the failure of the insurrection became apparent, refugees began to flood into Bessarabia: Moldavian nobles, Phanariot Greeks from the Turkish territories and Constantinople, Albanians and others. Their presence certainly made Kishinev a more lively place, and Pushkin’s circle of acquaintances was widened by a number of the new arrivals. Among these was Todoraki Balsch, a Moldavian hatman – military commander – who had fled from Iaşi with his wife Mariya – ‘a woman in her late twenties, reasonably comely, extremely witty and loquacious’³⁹ – and daughter Anika. For some time Mariya was the sole object of Pushkin’s attentions; they held long, uninhibited conversations in French together, and she became convinced that he was in love with her. However, he suddenly transferred his allegiance to another refugee from Iaşi, Ekaterina Albrecht, ‘two years older than Balsch, but more attractive, with unconstrained European manners; she had read much, experienced much, and in civility consigned Balsch to the background’.⁴⁰ Ekaterina came from an old Moldavian noble family, the Basotas, and was separated from her third husband, the commander of the Life Guards Uhlans: qualities which attracted Pushkin – he remarked that she was ‘historical and of ardent passions’.⁴¹ As a result, Mariya’s feelings turned to virulent dislike, which the following year was to give rise to a notable scandal.

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