Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
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INTRODUCTION
The famous old Kazák, Taras Bulba, is one of the great character-creations which speak for themselves, and require no extraneous comment or "interpretation." Indeed, his overflowing vitality embraces not only his sons, but all his comrades, with their typical Little Russian nomenclature ending in ko, and the reader's interest in Kazakdom in general and the Zaporozhtzi in particular, is kindled to a very unusual degree. He immediately wishes to know: Where was—and is—the Ukraina? Where was Zaporozhe? Where—and what—was its capital. The Syech? Where did the Kazáks get their name, and what does it mean?
Complete answers to these questions can be found only in Russian authorities. Historians and specialists have interested themselves so deeply and so long in these and allied questions, that the data available are confusingly abundant. I shall not bewilder the reader by giving him a choice of numerous theories: I shall autocratically select the one which appears to me to be most rational, best founded, most satisfactory for all practical purposes, and offer it for his consideration if not his adoption.
The Ukraina, briefly stated, is—the Border Marches. Naturally it has varied, in different epochs, just as our Western Frontier (pretty nearly its exact equivalent) varied at different periods in the briefer history of the United States, and was pushed further and further away from the Eastern centre of civilisation. In the case of Russia, Moscow represented that centre.
The line was never fixed, never definite. At one period it ran not very far south of Moscow, although the region beyond a line beginning two or three hundred miles south of Moscow—Southwest Russia, with Kiev as its centre—contains, roughly stated, its variations and general location, so far as the "Ukraina" of Gogol's delightful Tales, and the exquisite poetry and music of The Ukraina are concerned.
When I was visiting the late Count L. N. Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana, the young men of the family often played on their balalaikas (among other Russian folk-songs) a dance-song which irresistibly incited one to laughter, and set one's feet to patting. When I inquired the words to this "Bárynya-Sudárynya" (Lady-Madam) I was told that they were not only fragmentary but really quite shocking.
No one, it appears, had ever cared much for the words of "Bárynya-Sudárynya," and the four or five couplets generally known of the other reprehensible tune, the famous "Kamarynskaya," had been so badly damaged by careless repetition and reproduction that even the learned had come to look upon both songs as purely scandalous, useless, unworthy of notice. But one day it was discovered that "Bárynya-Sudárynya" i a sequel to the "Kamarynskaya,"—and that the words are scandalous in part only, while the two combined chronicle an interesting epoch of that strenuous life of the Border Marches—the Ukraina—which, for many centuries, was the chronic condition of the Tzardom of Muscovy as it evolved triumphantly to the present Empire of Russia.
The heroes of both songs are strictly historical personages, and their abode was the Southern Frontier—the Ukraina of Moscow—which, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries meant the present Government of Orel (pronounced Aryól), and so continued, with the addition of an unflattering adjective, until Little Russia, the Cradle of the Empire, temporarily conquered by Poland, was reunited to Moscow. During this second period a prominent place was occupied by the District of Kamaritzkaya (also known as Kamarnitzkaya, or Kamarynskaya, from the word, komár, a mousquito or gnat. Whether the region derived its appellation from the fact that it was mousquito-ridden, or because of the stinging powers of its inhabitants, I am unable to state). During this epoch, the district in question was teeming with the germs of many important historical events, and offered a favourable field for the development of the foolhardy, dissolute scapegrace of a peasant who acquired the name of the region and became immortalised with it in the most famous of Russian folk-songs, whose air was first arranged for orchestra by Glinka, the father of modern Russian secular Music, and to whom, in great measure, it is indebted for its present world-wide fame.
The Ukraina of that day may be said to have extended to the Caucasus (Kavkaz) on the east, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov on the south, and into present Poland and Galicia on the west—in fact, it occupied the region which the present-day "Ukrainians" (a political, semi-German-Austrian party into whose quarrels and aspirations I cannot enter) would like to see erected into a separate kingdom, alien to Russia. The Kamarynskaya District became the property of Moscow in 1508, having previously, for a long time, belonged to Lithuania; and for many years it was the most dangerous spot in the whole vast Border Marches, subject to raids and deeds of violence from both its former and its present owners, as well as from the Tatárs of the Crimea, and the Poles. The inhabitants lived a semi-savage life, and were famed for the roughness of their ways—even in that rough age. They were few in number, and the situation grew so acute after the conquest of Kazán from the Tatárs (1552), that it became an imperative necessity to populate the district, in order to protect Moscow from the Tatárs of the Crimea, who were enraged by the overthrow of their brethren on the Volga.
Moscow decided that strong towns must be founded, at any cost; and, at last, Tzar Ivan the Terrible (Grózny is the Russian word which is always, by custom, translated, "terrible"; but, in connection with Ivan IV, it really signified, as always when applied to Tzars, "daring, august, imperious, one who inspires his enemies with terror and holds his people in obedience"), who accomplished such incalculable work for the unification of Russia, set about the task. All the colonists who could be collected, by hook or by crook, were despatched thither, without regard to their moral character, fighting qualities alone being taken into consideration. Young men were chosen, the more reckless and enterprising the better. In fact, the Ukraina of that age played the part taken by Siberia at a later day, and received all criminals and undesirable persons banished to protect the rights of others, to save the peace, and to settle the Border Marches: the "bad men" were given a chance to rehabilitate themselves in a prison whose roof was the sky, whose walls were the horizon. With modifications, the description of conditions applies, with much accuracy to our own Western frontier, save that residence there was not compulsory. The local authorities were strictly forbidden to tamper with these wild colonists.
Then, when Tzar Boris Godunov, after usurping the throne, instituted serfdom (about 1592)—almost, under prevailing conditions, justifiable as a measure of state—every peasant who rebelled against being bound to the glebe fled to the Kamarynskaya. The Great Famine of 1601–3 sent more recruits. The district was conveniently near home for the immigrants, and fell into the category of "Crown Lands," so that serfdom was not established there. Naturally, also, no one was particularly anxious to own the sort of people who belonged there. In this throng, which comprised all sorts and conditions of men, the criminal element predominated. The scum came to the surface in the form of robber-bands, before whom the few peaceful inhabitants of the Ukraina—and even of Moscow itself—quaked with fear. It was a clear case of sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind! In the end Moscow sent armed expeditions against these bandits—to little effect, so well had she weeded out her black sheep into this rich border pasture—although many men were caught and hanged, as a certain Bandit Ballad narrates.
The smouldering fires broke out into a disastrous conflagration when the first False Dmitry —the Pretender—laid claim to the throne. These dare-devils pricked up their ears: their nostrils scented a fine feast, exactly to their taste:—and when the False Dmitry, the renegade monk, Grigory Otrepiev, made his appearance among them, they acknowledged him as their Tzar, in the face of positive proof that the lad Dmitry was dead and buried; and they settled the domestic question by throwing their forces against Moscow in his favour. In like manner, after Otreplev's death, they supported another pretender, "The Bandit of Tushino," as he is called. No one derived any advantage from this—except the False Dmitry. Truth to tell, the course of these desperadoes was not so mad as it appears on first sight. If they had pronounced against this Pretender, the Poles, who were pushing his claims and prowling about the Ukraina, would have annihilated them. Moscow was too far away, and powerless to protect them. So, with keen instinct for politics and for self-preservation, the lowest classes, brigands, fugitive serfs and peasants—the "thews and sinews" of the Ukraina—flocked to the standard of the Bandit of Tushino, robbing and murdering