Peter the Great died in 1725. For two years after him, his beloved wife Catherine I reigned. For another three years, his young grandson, Peter II, ruled the country. He was 11 years old when he ascended the Russian throne, and only 14 years old when he died in Moscow after contracting smallpox. And in 1730, a second woman appeared on the Russian throne - Empress Anna Ioannovna. Daughter of Peter I's elder brother, Ioann. Reviews from contemporaries about her are contradictory. But everyone agrees that she is cruel, treacherous and extravagant. Her favorite and confidant is the Duke of Courland, Ernst Biron, an equally cruel, power-hungry and cunning man.

The queen's appearance evoked harsh assessments - mainly from women. Here's what her contemporary Princess Ksenia Dolgorukova wrote about her: “... She was terrible to look at. She had a disgusting face. She was so big when she walks among gentlemen - head taller than everyone and extremely fat!” And indeed, the two-meter tall, eight-pound niece of Peter the Great, with traces of pockmarks on her face (pockmarked!), could be “disgusting to the eye!”

Anna Ioannovna, together with her favorite Biron, incited fear with denunciations, executions, torture, exile and brutal extravagant entertainment. One of the historians writes: “Dashing winds rocked the great country, took thousands of lives, raised and overthrew cheerful favorites.”

The Russian court under Peter I, distinguished by its small number and simplicity of customs, was completely transformed under Anna Ioannovna. But only five or six years have passed since Peter’s death! The thirty-seven-year-old empress wanted her court to be equal in pomp and splendor to other European courts. Ceremonial receptions, celebrations, balls, masquerades, performances, fireworks, and entertainment continuously took place at court. The queen loved to spend a lot of time with her favorite Biron and among her hangers-on and jesters. And among Anna Ioannovna’s friends there was one middle-aged and very ugly Kalmyk woman. Her name was Avdotya Ivanovna. She enjoyed special favor and bore the surname Buzheninova in honor of her favorite dish. One day she told the empress that she would willingly marry. The Empress wished to find a groom for the Kalmyk woman herself. And since Buzheninova played the role of a cracker for the queen, Anna Ioannovna decided to marry her to one of the jesters - six jesters “worked” at court to entertain the queen. An extraordinary jester was chosen as the groom!

This was Prince Mikhail Alekseevich Golitsyn, demoted for misconduct. Grandson of the famous boyar of Peter's time. The prince's wife died in 1729, and the fifty-year-old prince, in order to dispel his grief, asked permission to travel abroad. But in Florence he fell in love with an Italian woman of low birth and married her. At her insistence, he converted to the Catholic faith.

Returning to Moscow, the prince carefully hid his Italian identity and change of faith from everyone. But soon rumors reached the empress. Golitsyn was brought to St. Petersburg and put in a secret office, where he was “interrogated with partiality.” By order of the empress, the marriage was dissolved and the wife was sent abroad. And the prince himself was demoted to “pages”, despite his age, and appointed court jester. His duties included entertaining the queen with jokes, serving her kvass (the courtiers nicknamed him “the kvassnik”), and sitting in a basket near the king’s office.

So, it was decided to marry the Kalmyk joker to the former prince, and now a jester, Golitsyn. The empress's idea of ​​marrying a jester to a firecracker met with complete sympathy among her circle of associates. On the advice of her frivolous friends, Anna Ioannovna ordered to celebrate the wedding of the “young couple” in the most “curious way.”

A special “masquerade commission” was immediately created. It was decided to build a house of ice on the Neva and marry a jester and a firecracker in it. Fortunately, there was a terrible cold outside: the thermometer showed minus 35 degrees, severe frosts began in November 1739 and lasted until March 1740. And the wedding was scheduled for February 1740. We had to rush to build mansions on the ice.

The commission chose a place on the Neva for the construction of the Ice House - between the Admiralty and the Winter Palace, approximately where the Palace Bridge is now. The only material to build the house was ice! They cut it into large slabs, placed them one on top of the other and poured water on them for bonding, which immediately froze, soldering the slabs tightly.

The house was assembled with grace - this can be seen from the engravings of those times. Its facade was about 16 meters long, about five meters wide and about six meters high. All around the roof was a gallery decorated with pillars and statues. A porch with a carved pediment divided the building into two large halves. Each has two rooms: one has a living room and a buffet, the other has a toilet and a bedroom. Light entered the rooms through windows with glass made of the thinnest ice! Behind the ice-cold glass stood “funny paintings” written on canvas. They were lit from the inside at night by many candles.

In front of the house were six three-pound ice cannons and two two-pound mortars, from which they fired more than once! All this is made of ice. At the gate, also made of ice, there were two ice dolphins, using pumps to eject fire from ignited oil from their jaws.

There were pots with ice branches and leaves on the gate. Ice birds sat on the icy branches. On the sides of the house rose two pointed quadrangular pyramids. Large octagonal lanterns hung inside the pyramids. At night, people climbed into the pyramids and turned the glowing lanterns in front of the windows - to the delight of the constantly crowded spectators.

On the right side of the house stood a life-size ice elephant. With an icy Persian sitting astride him. And next to him on the ground stood two icy Persian women. An eyewitness says: “This elephant was empty inside and so cunningly made that during the day it let out water almost four meters high. And at night, to great surprise, it threw out burning oil.”

And in the Ice House in one of the rooms there were two mirrors, a dressing table, several candlesticks (candlesticks), a large double bed, a stool and a fireplace with ice-cold wood. In the second room there was a carved table, two sofas, two armchairs and a carved stand that contained teaware - glasses, glasses and dishes. In the corners of this room there were two statues depicting Cupids. And on the table there was a large clock and cards. All these things are very skillfully made from ice and “painted with decent natural colors.” Ice-cold firewood and candles were smeared with oil and burned.

In addition, an ice bath was built at the Ice House according to Russian custom! It was drowned several times and hunters could steam in it!

By personal order of the highest order, for the “curious wedding” of Buzheninova and Golitsyn, two people of both sexes of all tribes and peoples were brought to St. Petersburg from different parts of Russia. There were three hundred people in total! On February 6, 1740, the marriage of the illustrious jester with a firecracker took place - a common procedure in the church. After which the “wedding train,” driven by Chancellor Tatishchev, drove past the palace along all the main streets of the city.

The procession was opened by the “young people”, who showed off in a large iron cage placed on an elephant. And the “poezzhans”, that is, the visiting guests, followed the elephant: there were Abkhazians, Ostyaks, Mordovians, Chuvash, Cheremis, Vyatichi, Samoyeds, Kamchadals, Kirghiz, Kalmyks and others. Some rode camels, others rode deer, others rode dogs, others rode oxen, others rode goats, still others rode pigs, and so on. All the guests are “multi-lingual” in their national costumes, with “music and toys belonging to each family,” in sleighs made like the animals and fish of the sea.

After a hearty lunch, dancing began: each couple danced their national dance to their national music. The amusing spectacle greatly amused the empress and the noble spectators.

After the end of the ball, the young couple, accompanied by the still long “train” of guests of different tribes, went to their Ice Palace.

There they were placed in an ice bed with various ceremonies. And a guard was posted at the house - out of fear that the happy couple would not decide to leave their not entirely warm and comfortable bed before the morning.

One of his contemporaries vividly describes the further fate of the Ice House as follows: “Since the severe cold from the beginning of January until March was almost continuous, this house stood without any damage until that time. At the end of March 1740, it began to decline and little by little, especially on the midday side, to fall."

Legends circulated all over the world about the Ice House, myths and fairy tales were created. People were surprised that it was possible to build from ice “in severe cold.” By pouring water on the ice floes you can “unite” them. That ice can be sharpened, drilled, chopped, painted, and by the “method of anointing with oil” - fire can be produced, and at the same time fired from “it”.

But reasonable, mournful, condemning words were also heard. This is how one of the enlightened people of that time describes the “stupid disgrace.” “In the story of the Ice House, I see the height of extravagance! Is it permissible to use human hands for work so vain and insignificant? Is it permissible to humiliate and mock humanity in such a shameful way? Is it permissible to waste state support on whims and absurd fun?! Amusing the people, There’s no need to corrupt people’s morals!”

These words, full of anger and truth, are true not only for the monstrous “fun” with the Ice House, but, unfortunately, for many other facts in the history of the Russian State!
I. Metter
The story was published in the magazine

Since ancient times, ice slides and snow fortresses have been the amusement of the Russian people in winter. But in the winter of 1740, the All-Russian Empress Anna Ioannovna outdid herself. It was this winter that the ice house was built. On this occasion, the writer Lozhechnikov wrote a novel of the same name, which provides an accurate description of the house of academician Georg Kraft, who supervised the construction of the ice miracle.

The winter of 1740 was the most severe in the 18th century. Frosts of 30 degrees lasted until mid-March.

The slabs for the house were cut with one-handed saws from the natural ice of the Neva. It was transparent, with a blue tint.

The ice house was built as a palace for a fictitious wedding. Anna Ioannovna had a particularly close and beloved hanger-on, Avdotya, no longer a young and ugly Kalmyk woman. Her surname was given after the Empress’s favorite dish - Buzheninova.

Avdotya really wanted to get married and the Empress promised to make her beloved cracker happy. The 50-year-old Prince Mikhail Golitsyn was chosen as the groom - demoted to jester because of his secret wedding to a Catholic woman.

A nobleman from an ancient family served kvass to the empress, for which Golitsyn was called Kvasnik.

An unprecedented construction project on the square between the Winter Palace and the Main Admiralty, according to some sources, the construction of the Ice House lasted from January 1 (12) to February 6 (17), 1740, and according to others, it was completed by January 1.

No expense was spared for the wedding. Everything was done on a grand scale. The house was real and was 2.5 fathoms wide, 8 fathoms long and 3 fathoms high, by our standards it was 5.5 meters wide, 17 meters long and more than 6 meters high. They polished the walls with coal irons, which cooled very quickly, but this made the walls completely transparent. The whole house was painted like marble. This house had everything that a house should have. And a fireplace in which wood was burning, and a clock on the mantelpiece, and a table, chairs, a bed, windows, sculptures, there was even a bathhouse in which they steamed and even ice cards for a pleasant pastime.

Below I give a very abbreviated description of the house by a member of the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences, professor of physics GEORG WOLFGANG KRAFT.

GENUINE AND COMPLETE

ABOUT P I S A H AND E

built in SAINTPETERSBURG

in the month of Genvar 1740

ICE HOUSE

and ALL HOUSEHOLD ITEMS AND DURINGS IN IT c

with gridded figures attached, as well as some notes about what happened in 1740 throughout

E V P O P E

severe cold

written for hunters of natural science

via GEORG WOLFGANG KRAFT

St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences Member and Physics Professor.

PRINTED AT THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

174 1.

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The Neva River supplied the materials required for construction in sufficient quantities, and it was only necessary to choose a place that would cThis memorable structure could have been more capable of supporting. It was found in the most noble part of this capital, and between two very memorable buildings, namely, between the Admiralite Fortress, created from the blessed and Eternally worthy memory of Emperor PETER PETER I, and the new Winter House, built from the blessed and Eternally worthy memory of Empress ANNA, which for its The beauty is worthy of every surprise. At this place the building began again; The purest ice was cut into the likeness of large square slabs, removed with architectural decorations, measured using compasses and a ruler, one ice slab was placed on another with levers, and each row was watered with water, which immediately froze and served as strong cement instead. Thus, in a short time, a house was built, which was 8 fathoms long, or 56 London feet, 2 fathoms and a half wide, and 3 fathoms high including the roof, and seemed much more magnificent than if it had been made of the best Marmora was built so that it would rock and be made from one piece, and for its icy transparency and blue color it would look much more like a precious stone than marmora would resemble.

But every day everyone was allowed to walk into this building and look at it, but this resulted in constant crowding, so that soon a guard had to be placed there, so that during the extraordinary meeting of the people, who came there to look, some order would be maintained.

For the same reason, wooden pegs were stuck near the entire ice structure and connected with bars. In front of the house there were 6 chiseled ice cannons, which had wheels and ice machines. The aforementioned cannons, the size and size of the three-pound copper ones, were made and drilled. These cannons were fired more than once, in which case a quarter pound of gunpowder was placed in them, and a bone or iron core was pumped into them. Such a cannonball once, in the presence of the entire Imperial court staff, pierced through a two-inch thick board at a distance of 6o steps.

They were still standing inmoThere are two mortars next to the cannons. These mortars were made to the size of fashionable mortars against two-pound bombs, from which bombs were thrown repeatedly, and a quarter pound of gunpowder was placed per charge in the socket. Finally, in the same row at the gate, two dolphins stood. These dolphins, using pumps, threw the fire from the burning oil out of their jaws, which was pleasant fun at night. Behind the aforementioned row of cannons and mortars, large railings were made from ice balusters around the house, between which quadrangular pillars stood at equal distances. When they looked at this house from nearby, they were surprised to see a gallery decorated with quadrangular pillars and chiseled statues at the top of the roof, and above the entrance a very large frontage in different places decorated with statues. The house itself had door and window jambs and painted pilasters ; paint like green marmor. In the same house there was a porch and two doors, at the entrance to the house there was a canopy, and on both sides there were chambers without a ceiling with only one lid. There were four windows in the entryway, and in each chamber there were five windows, in which both the frames and the glass were made of thin, pure ice. At night, many candles burned in these windows more than once, and on almost every window funny pictures were painted on the canvas, and the light penetrating through the windows and walls showed an extraordinary and very surprising appearance. In addition to the main entrance, there were two more side gates in the railings and on them were pots of flowers and orange trees; and next to them there were simple ice trees, with leaves and branches of ice, on which birds sat, all of which had been created with considerable skill.

Now let's see how the chambers were decorated. Half peace. There was a dressing table on which there was a mirror, several candles with candles that burned at night when they were smeared with oil, a pocket watch, and all sorts of utensils, and a mirror hung on the wall. In the other half, one could see a large bed with a curtain, a sheet, pillows and a blanket, two shoes, two caps, a stool and a carved butt, in which the ice-cold firewood smeared with oil burned repeatedly. Half of the other chamber - There stood a table, and on it lay a table clock, in which the wheels were visible through the light ice. In addition, frozen authentic cards with stamps lay on the table in different places for playing. Near the table on both sides there were two long carved chairs, and in the corners there were two statues. In another chamber stood on the right hand a carved charcoal stand with various small figures; and inside the onago there were turned tea utensils, glasses, glasses and dishes with food. All things were made by Isolde, and were painted with decent natural paints.

The exterior and other decorations of this house consisted of the following things. Firstly, a quadrangular pyramid was placed on each side of the pedestal with a frontal pin. The aforementioned pyramids were empty inside, which had an entrance behind the house. On each side there was a round window cut out, near which there were painted clock boards on the outside, and inside there was an octagonal paper lantern hanging, with all sorts of funny figures painted on each side, and in which candles burned at night. The man turned the lantern that was inside the secret place around it, so that through each window the above-mentioned figures could be seen one by one by the caretakers.

Second, on the right side of the house was depicted an elephant in its proper size, on which sat a Persian with a coin in his hand, and next to it two more Persians in ordinary human size stood. This elephant was empty inside, and so cunningly constructed that during the day it let out water 24 feet high, which was brought through pipes from the nearby canal of the Admiralite Fortress, and at night, with the great surprise of all the caretakers, it threw out burning oil. Moreover, he could scream like a living elephant, with which the voice of a man hidden within him was produced through a trumpet. Third, on the left side of the house, according to the custom of the northern countries, Isolde built a bathhouse, which seemed as if it had been made from simple logs, and which was heated several times, and indeed people steamed in it.

This was the state of this ice house; and since the severe cold from the beginning of the month of January until March itself continued almost continuously, then the house stood until that time, without any damage. At the end of the month of March, he began to tend to fall, and little by little to fall, especially from the midday side; Moreover, the largest of the collapsed ice floes were taken to the Imperial Glacier.

On February 6 (17), 1740, the famous St. Petersburg amusing wedding of the jester Prince Golitsyn-Kvasnik with the firecracker Buzheninova took place. The unique ice fun, which had no equal in luxury, was played according to all the rules and traditions, with all the ceremonies observed in the arena of the Duke of Courland.
The guests at the wedding were two representatives of each tribe then inhabiting the Russian Empire. The wedding procession was led by the newlyweds, who rode in a cage on the back of an elephant, followed by Ukrainians on oxen, Finns on ponies, Tatars on pigs, Yakuts on dogs, Kalmyks on camels and others. There were 150 pairs in total.

The then first celebrant, Vasily Trediakovsky, read his ode dedicated to the holiday. It started like this

"HELLO, YOU'RE MARRIED, FOOL AND FOOL ,

STILL AN ASS AND A FIGURE!

NOW IS THE TIME WE'LL HAVE FUN,

NOW YOU SHOULD BE PISSED IN ANY WAY."

After the holiday, the newlyweds were left in an icy bedchamber, on an icy bed, under the supervision of guards. They were released only in the morning, barely alive from the cold.

Count Panin subsequently said about this:

“In this whole matter, I see the height of extravagance. Is it permissible to humiliate and mock humanity in such a shameful way.”

Never and nowhere else will there be such fabulous barbarity and such wild amusements as in that last year of the life of Empress Anna Ioannovna.

The attachment:

How Anna Ioannovna arranged the wedding of a dwarf and a prince in an ice chamber

V. Jacobi. “Ice House”, 1878. State Russian Museum.

As you know, before his death, Peter I did not leave clear instructions regarding the successor to the throne. After a series of palace intrigues and coups, the niece of the late sovereign ended up on the throne Anna Ioannovna. The Dowager Duchess never expected to receive the crown of the Russian Empire. But after the happiness that suddenly fell on her, the woman, first of all, took up not the affairs of the state, but the organization of countless entertainment events. Some of these games turned out to be quite cruel.

Russian Empress Anna Ioannovna.

Few people speak flatteringly about Anna Ioannovna’s 10-year stay on the Russian throne. She went down in history not as a prudent politician, but as a crazy empress. The Empress loved to surround herself with numerous dwarfs and hunchbacks. It was believed that Anna Ioannovna did not at all shine with beauty, but against the backdrop of the ugly people she looked very advantageous. Most of all, she sympathized with the Kalmyk dwarf Avdotya Ivanovna. The bow-legged, ugly firecracker had a sharp mind and amused the empress from the bottom of her heart.

One day the dwarf became sad. When the empress asked what was the matter, Avdotya replied that she was no longer young and wanted to get married. Anna Ioannovna became obsessed with the idea of ​​marrying the dwarf, so much so that she was no longer happy.

Jesters at the court of Empress Anna Ioannovna.
V. Jacobi, 1872.

The high-born groom was Mikhail Alekseevich Golitsyn. At that time, the prince was on the staff of the empress's jesters. He ended up there as a result of great disgrace. While abroad, Golitsyn married and converted to Catholicism. By changing his faith, he incurred the wrath of Anna Ioannovna. In the palace he had his own basket, where the man “hatched” the eggs. At feasts, the prince’s duties included pouring kvass to everyone, for which he was nicknamed Kvasnik.

The French historian Gazo outlined his observations about Golitsyn as follows:“He amused the empress with his impenetrable stupidity. All the courtiers seemed to consider it their duty to laugh at the unfortunate man; he did not dare to offend anyone, he did not even dare to say any impolite word to those who mocked him...”

The morally destroyed prince, naturally, could not object to the empress and began to dutifully prepare for the wedding with the dwarf.

Anna Ioannovna herself was so imbued with the new fun that she ordered an Ice House on the Neva to be built for the wedding. The winter that year was very severe, the temperature did not rise above minus 30 degrees. The building reached 16 meters in length, 5 meters in width, and 6 meters in height. The façade was decorated with ice sculptures. The house itself had a living room, a cupboard, a bedroom and a toilet. Ice dolphins stood at the gate with their mouths open, from which burning oil was thrown out.

Along the perimeter of the ice house, ice figures of birds and animals were decorated. The most impressive creation was a life-size ice elephant. During the day, jets of water were released from the trunk, and at night, jets of burning oil were released.

Petr Mikhailovich Eropkin

Georg Wolfgang Kraft

The best engineers of that time were brought in to build the Ice House - architect Pyotr Mikhailovich Eropkin and academician Georg Wolfgang Kraft. To implement all the empress’s ideas, they had to find many unique solutions.

For the holiday, Anna Ioannovna ordered a pair of representatives of all nationalities of the Russian Empire to be delivered in national costumes. On February 6, 1740, 300 people arrived from different parts of the country for the clownish wedding.

The wedding procession was a powerful spectacle. The newlyweds were locked in a cage, which was placed on an elephant. Behind them followed others on camels, deer, and dogs. After the wedding there was a feast, and in the evening Kvasnik and Avdotya were sent to their palace for an icy wedding bed. Guards were stationed at the exit so that the young people could not get out. As if in mockery, ice firewood doused with oil “burned” in the ice prison.

As planned, the newly-made spouses were supposed to freeze at minus forty degrees, but they managed to survive. According to legend, the dwarf bribed the guards and brought warm clothes in advance, but in the morning they were almost frozen.

Wedding in the Ice House. V. Jacobi, 1878. | Photo: itd3.mycdn.me.

It so happened that the clownish wedding became Anna Ioannovna’s last entertainment. Six months later she was gone. As for the perpetrators of the “triumph,” the dwarf Avdotya gave birth to two children for Kvasnik. But two years after the wedding, the woman died due to the effects of hypothermia.

And Mikhail Golitsyn had his humiliating position canceled and part of his lands and property was returned. After the death of the dwarf, he married again, having fully recovered from the humiliations he had experienced.

Ice house. | Photo: mir.radosthrist.ru.

Ice mountains and ice snow fortresses were built in Russia every winter. But in 1740 they started a special—the Empress’s—fun. The Ice House will immortalize the novel of the same name by the writer Lazhechnikov. It mixes true stories and fables, but there are also accurate descriptions in German of academician Georg Kraft, who supervised the work.

The winter of 1740 was the harshest in the 18th century. Thirty-degree frosts remained until mid-March.

Ice House - a palace for a “curious wedding”

Ice house built as a palace for a “curious wedding.” U Anna Ioannovna there was a particularly close hanger-on - Avdotya Buzheninova. An elderly and ugly Kalmyk woman, who received her surname from the Empress’s favorite dish, wanted to get married. The Empress promised to find her a groom and chose 50-year-old Prince Mikhail Golitsyn, demoted to jester because of his secret wedding to a Catholic woman. A nobleman of the most distinguished family, the prince served the empress kvass and was called Golitsyn - a kvass-maker.

The idea of ​​marrying a jester to a firecracker delighted the empress, and no expense was spared for the wedding.

The ice house was a real house: 2.5 fathoms wide, 8 fathoms long, or 5.5 x 17 m. And the height of the walls was even greater than the width - 3 fathoms, i.e. more than 6 m.

How Anna Ioannovna's Ice House was built

Geometrically correct ice cubes were cut out of the ice on the Neva and used to make walls. Then the walls were ironed with a hot iron. They turned out polished, and most importantly, transparent through and through. There were ice trees around the house. And there was even an ice bath in which they managed to take a steam bath.

The door was all tinted to resemble marble, but, as contemporaries assured, it looked “much more charming.” The color passed through the ice, and the painted huge ice slabs seemed magically transparent.

Wedding procession

Guests for the sweaty wedding were brought from all over the country: two representatives from each tribe inhabiting the Russian Empire.

The wedding procession was led by the young people: they rode in a cage standing on the back of an elephant. Behind them are Ukrainians on vases, Finns on ponies, Tatars for some reason on pigs, Yakuts on dogs, Kalmyks on camels - a total of 150 pairs of national minorities.

Miracles of Anna Ioannovna's Ice House

Hello, having gotten married, you are a fool and a fool, Still a figurine!
Now is the time to have some brazen fun, Now is the time to rage in every possible way.
From an ode by Vasily Tredyakovsky

Wonderful divas were waiting for them in front of the Ice House. To the right stood a huge, life-size ice elephant. It was fire-breathing: fountains of burning oil erupted from its trunk. The elephant also blew a trumpet: there was a trumpeter sitting inside. In front of the entrance there were also ice cannons - short-barreled mortars. They were actually loaded and they fired. There were also fire-breathing dolphins and fish.

Among all this bacchanalia, the first poet of the then Russia, Vasily Tredyakovsky, reads the appropriate ode in honor of the newlyweds:

Ice House Interior

But I see this whole thing as the height of extravagance. Is it permissible to humiliate and mock humanity in such a shameful way?
Count Panin

The house had an ice living room, an ice bedroom, and an ice pantry. All furniture and utensils were made of ice and painted to match the color of the real ones. There was an ice clock on the icy mantelpiece. The wood in the fireplace was also ice-cold, but it burned because it was smeared with crude oil.

After the celebrations, the newlyweds were left in an icy bedroom on an icy bed under guard, who released them only in the morning, barely alive.

Ice House - unsurpassed fun of Russian autocrats

In its own way, the Ice House will remain unsurpassed. Nothing like this will ever happen again either in Russia or in Europe. Fabulous barbarism, wild fun, the most cruel fun and the most luxurious holiday of the Russian Empire during the time of our most dissolute empress.

The Ice House was published in August 1835. He was born, as they say, in a shirt: the success of the book among the reading public exceeded all expectations, and the sober judgments of critics and the ironic mockery of literary competitors were drowned in the chorus of praise. Pushkin himself, welcoming Lazhechnikov’s growing talent, predicted that over time, when important historical sources were made public, the glory of his creation would fade. And what? Historical sources gradually penetrated the press, the deviations of The Ice House from the truth became more and more obvious, Lazhechnikov’s younger friend and admirer of his talent - Belinsky addressed him with bitter words of well-deserved reproach, but the reader remained faithful to The Ice House. Interest in it has experienced its ebbs and flows, but for almost a century and a half one generation has been replaced by another, and the novel is alive and retains its attractive power. What is the secret of its viability?

Anyone who once, in his youth (and youth is especially susceptible to the romantic pathos and patriotic heroism of Lazhechnikov), read “The Ice House”, will forever retain in his memory the oppressive atmosphere, the physically tangible cold of a gloomy, bygone era and the ardent passion beating in the snares of timelessness Marioritsa and Volynsky, a passion that is overpowered in Volynsky’s soul by an even more powerful feeling - love for the suffering homeland. From the first pages of the novel, pictures of the winter cold are intertwined with others - with descriptions of moral numbness, deadening fear and constraint in which young Petersburg resides, until recently, under Peter, full of life and fun, now, during the reign of a foreign country and people of Anna Ioannovna, betrayed to the will of her minions - a clique of hated foreigners. The man dared to think about protest - and there was no man: he was captured by the minions of Biron, the all-powerful favorite of the empress, tortured, frozen alive. There is no longer a truth-seeker, he has become an ugly ice statue. And, as if in mockery of the tragedy of human fate, the sight of this statue gives rise to the Russian empress’s idea of ​​building an amusing ice palace, of a clownish wedding celebration. The image of the ice house runs through the entire novel, is woven into the vicissitudes of romantic intrigue, and develops into the personification of a gloomy and inhuman reign, over which the author administers his historical judgment.

The miscalculations of Lazhechnikov the historian are redeemed by the talent of Lazhechnikov the artist. This talent allowed the author of “The Ice House” to fascinatingly and impressively recreate the atmosphere, features of everyday life and customs of one of the most dramatic eras of Russian history of the 18th century, imparting brightness and symbolic significance to the characters of the main characters. “The Ice House” still conveys to us the living patriotic inspiration of its author, and the heroic image of Volynsky, who rebelled for justice and human dignity against a cruel and gloomy despotism, retains an attractive force, captivates and infects with its civic pathos.

The creator of the Ice House, Ivan Ivanovich Lazhechnikov (1792-1869), was born in Kolomna into a wealthy merchant family. His father was distinguished by a craving for enlightenment, strengthened and directed by chance, which brought the young merchant together with the largest figure of Russian culture of the 18th century, the educator N.I. Novikov. To Novikov, on whose recommendation a truly educated French tutor was invited to the boy, the future novelist owed the excellent upbringing he received in his father’s house. Having become addicted to reading early, Lazhechnikov first became acquainted with Russian, then French and German literature, and soon tried his own hand in the field of literature. Since 1807, his works appear either in the “Bulletin of Europe” by M. T. Kachenovsky, then in the “Russian Bulletin” by S. N. Glinka, or in “Aglaya” by P. I. Shalikov. Already in Lazhechnikov’s first experiments, with all their imitation and artistic imperfection, the connection with his literary era is clearly noticeable. In them one can also discern echoes of anti-despotic and patriotic sentiments, which later turned out to be a defining feature of the ideological structure of his historical novels.

The turbulent years of the Napoleonic wars, when national self-awareness took shape and strengthened, and with it the ideology of social protest, completed the formation of Lazhechnikov’s personality. Carried away by a patriotic impulse, the young man secretly fled from his parents' home in 1812 and joined the Russian army. A participant in the last stage of the Patriotic War and the European campaigns of 1813-1814 and 1815, the young writer observed “the deeds of his compatriots”, “raising the name and spirit of the Russian” [I. I. Lazhechnikov. Travel notes of a Russian officer. – M., 1836, p. 34], the life and customs of Poland, Germany, France, compared his impressions with pictures of Russian life. The Marching Notes of a Russian Officer, published by him in 1817-1818, are remarkable in many respects. If before Lazhechnikov tested himself in the small prose genres of philosophical fragments, meditations or in a sentimental story, subject to strict literary canons, now he acted in the large narrative form of a “journey”, free from genre regulation and open to living impressions and trends in the mental life of the era. In “Marching Notes,” Lazhechnikov’s interest in history was first identified, his desire to connect it with modernity by similarity and contrast, his involvement in the wave of ideological movement that carried the Decembrists to its crest.

At the end of 1819, Lazhechnikov, an enthusiastic admirer of the young Pushkin, had the opportunity to meet the poet and prevent his duel with Major Denisevich. This incident left a deep imprint in the writer’s memory, and subsequently served as the reason for the beginning of correspondence between Pushkin and Lazhechnikov, although they were not destined to meet at the time of this late acquaintance. In the same 1819, Lazhechnikov retired, and a year later began serving in the Ministry of Public Education, which he continued intermittently until 1837, first in Penza, Saratov, Kazan, then in Tver. When he was the director of schools in the Penza province, during a tour of the institutions under his control, he drew attention to a twelve-year-old student of the Chembar school, who attracted him with his extraordinary liveliness and confident accuracy of answers. This student was Vissarion Belinsky, a connection with whom, which later turned into friendship, Lazhechnikov retained until the last days of the great critic’s life.

In 1826, the writer conceived his first historical novel. Back in 1815, when Lazhechnikov’s regiment was stationed in Dorpat, he worked on the history of this city, and later included an excerpt that was the result of his studies in “Marching Notes of a Russian Officer.” Lazhechnikov also turned to Livonia, to the history of its conquest by Peter I, in “The Last Novik,” which was published in parts in 1831-1833. The novel was a resounding success among the public and immediately put the author's name among the first Russian novelists. Inspired by success, Lazhechnikov, following his first novel, releases his second, “The Ice House.” The reception he received contributed to the fact that the author realized historical romance as his true calling. From the 18th century it goes back into the depths of Russian history, to the 15th century, when a new centralized sovereign state was strengthened under the firm hand of Ivan III. However, “Basurman” (1838) turned out to be Lazhechnikov’s last completed historical novel. After the publication in 1840 of the initial chapters of “The Sorcerer on the Sukharev Tower,” where he again returned to the post-Petrine era, the writer abandoned its continuation. The time of the first takeoff of Russian historical narrative, with which Lazhechnikov’s work as a novelist was mainly associated, was behind.

Since 1842, Lazhechnikov served again. This time, first as Tver, then Vitebsk vice-governor, and in 1856-1858 as censor of the St. Petersburg Censorship Committee. He tries his hand at being a playwright, writing tragedies and comedies. Of Lazhechnikov’s dramatic works, the most famous is the poetic tragedy “The Oprichnik” (1843). Delayed by censorship, it was published only in 1859 and subsequently served as the basis for the libretto of P. I. Tchaikovsky’s opera of the same name. Lazhechnikov’s autobiographical and memoir essays “My Acquaintance with Pushkin”, “Notes for the Biography of V. Belinsky”, etc. are also of significant historical and cultural interest. The writer’s last two novels are “A Few Years Ago” (1862) and “The Granddaughter of the Armored Boyar” ( 1868), where he turned from historical themes to modern ones, testified to the decline of his talent and the conservatism that Lazhechnikov’s social position acquired in new historical conditions. The time of his highest creative rise will forever remain the 1830s, and his best work is “The Ice House” - a novel by Ap. Grigoriev considered “the complete expression of Russian romanticism” [Ap. Grigoriev. Literary criticism. – M., 1967, p. 228].

The 20-30s of the 19th century were a time when the genres of the historical novel and story, which emerged in the previous decade, gained a central place in all European literature. Moreover, in the historical novel and story of this era, for the first time, the foundations of that artistic historicism are laid, which, starting from the 1830s, becomes one of the necessary elements of any narrative, a story not only about the historical past, but also about the present.

In the West, this was the era of greatest success for Walter Scott's historical novels, which sparked a wave of imitations. The Scott tradition was fruitfully developed by the American F. Cooper, the Italian A. Manzoni, and later in France by the young Balzac. But in the mid-1820s, French romantics, represented by V. Hugo, also started talking about the fact that after the picturesque but prosaic novel of V. Scott, it remained to create another, more beautiful and perfect novel, a “poetic” and “ideal” novel. “Saint-Map” by A. de Vigny, published in 1826, was the first attempt to implement the aesthetic program of the French romantics in the genre of the historical novel, a significantly new interpretation of this genre.

In Russia, the historical novel also became the focus of attention of both readers and participants in the literary process, be it writers or critics, in the second half of the 1820s and 1830s. It is no coincidence that in 1827 Pushkin took on “Arap Peter the Great”, and in 1832-1836 he worked on “The Captain’s Daughter”. Lermontov begins his journey in prose with a historical novel from the Pugachev era. In 1834, Gogol created Taras Bulba. Since the late 1820s, a galaxy of historical novelists of the second rank has appeared in Russia, of whom, along with Lazhechnikov, special success fell to M. N. Zagoskin, despite the frank conservatism of the author of Yuri Miloslavsky (1829).

Two reasons determined the promotion of historical genres to a central place in the literature of this time. The first of them is a huge acceleration in the pace of historical life, which was brought with them by the Great French Revolution, the years of the Napoleonic Empire, national liberation wars against Napoleonic rule, and in Russia - the Patriotic War of 1812, European campaigns, and the uprising on Senate Square. Historical changes followed one after another, taking place with a speed that was unknown in previous, less turbulent eras. Another reason was that people involved in the course of historical events as witnesses and participants felt from their own experience the intrusion of history into everyday life, the intersection and interaction of the world of big life and the world of small life, which until then seemed separated by an impassable line.

The connection between the special character of the era and the prevailing direction in the development of literature was well understood by contemporaries. “We live in a historical century... in terms of superiority,” emphasized the Decembrist writer A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky. – History has always been, it has always happened. But at first she walked silently, like a cat, sneaking up by chance, like a thief. She raged before, smashed kingdoms, destroyed nations, threw heroes into the dust, brought riches out of the mud; but the peoples, after a severe hangover, forgot yesterday’s bloody drinking bouts, and soon history turned into a fairy tale. Now it's different. Now history is not in one thing, but also in the memory, in the mind, in the hearts of peoples. We see it, hear it, touch it every minute; it penetrates us with all the senses. She... the whole people, she is history, our history, created by us, living for us. We married her willy-nilly, and there is no divorce. History is half of ours, in all the gravity of this word” [Literary-critical works of the Decembrists. – M., 1978, p. 88].

The wave of historical feeling awakened by turbulent times contributed to both the birth of the historical novel and its popularity. It is significant that the first glimpses of a historical worldview were born to the officer-writer Lazhechnikov during the Patriotic War of 1812, and he began working on his first historical novel soon after the December uprising.

During these years, Russian narrative prose took its first steps along the path of its rapid formation and development. "The Ice House" was written when "Belkin's Tales" and "The Queen of Spades" already existed, but "The Captain's Daughter" was in the future, when Gogol - the author of the famous stories - had not yet begun to write "Dead Souls", when Lermontov's prose was exhausted by the unfinished and the unknown “Vadim”. True, at the end of the 1820s the chapters of “Arap Peter the Great” appeared - a brilliant start to the creation of a Russian historical novel, but the chapters are not yet a novel, and the era demanded precisely a novel, complete, with a developed plot and characters, with a vivid reproduction of morals and events of the Russian past. Since 1829, novels began to appear - works by the above-mentioned M. N. Zagoskin, F. V. Bulgarin, N. A. Polevoy, K. P. Masalsky. These were, however, at best, half-successes, and contemporaries gave preference to the first-born of the same Lazhechnikov, finding that the author of “The Last New Artist” did not quite “master” the form: despite the obvious merits, his work lacked internal integrity and unity of interest. “The Ice House” was rightfully perceived as a step forward not only in the artistic development of Lazhechnikov, but also in the formation of the Russian novel in general.

In the prologue to “Basurman,” Lazhechnikov formulated his understanding of the tasks of a historical novelist as follows: “He must follow the poetry of history rather than its chronology. His job is not to be a slave to numbers: he must only be faithful to the character of the era and its engine, which he undertook to depict. It’s not his job to go through all the details, to laboriously count all the links in the chain of this era and the life of this engine: that’s what historians and biographers are for. The mission of the historical novelist is to select from them the most brilliant, most entertaining events that fit with the main character of his story, and combine them into one poetic moment of his novel. Is it necessary to say that this moment should be imbued with an idea?..” [I. I. Lazhechnikov. Works: In 2 volumes - M., 1963, vol. II, p. 322] Lazhechnikov’s program, outlined in these words, is the program of a romantic novelist.

When conceiving a novel, Lazhechnikov first of all developed the “idea” of the historical era as a whole, individual characters and episodes. In accordance with the “idea,” he selected historical realities, built images and paintings, trying to give them symbolic capacity and high poetic expressiveness. On this path, the novelist Lazhechnikov makes his main discoveries. “The Ice House” vividly captures the gloomy atmosphere of Bironov’s Petersburg, the ghostliness of fun at the court of Anna Ioannovna, the ominous farces of jesters against the backdrop of the horrors of the Secret Chancellery. However, the romantic program not only laid the foundations for Lazhechnikov’s successes, but also delineated the boundaries of his historicism.

Like Lazhechnikov’s other novels, “The Ice House” is based on a serious study of historical sources, life and customs of the era. The novel takes place in the last year of Anna Ioannovna's reign (1730-1740). The daughter of Peter I's elder brother, Ivan Alekseevich, Anna ascended the Russian throne under circumstances that could not but affect the nature of her reign. She, the Dowager Duchess of Courland, was called to the throne by the so-called supreme leaders, members of the Supreme Privy Council, which acquired exceptional power under the minor Emperor Peter II. Wanting to consolidate the power of the aristocratic oligarchy and limit the growing absolutism, the “rulers” bound Anna Ioannovna with restrictive “conditions.” The support of the middle circles of the nobility and the guard allowed the empress to regain the reins of autocratic rule, and yet Anna Ioannovna forever harbored distrust of the restless and independent Russian nobility and surrounded herself with obedient foreign mercenaries, in whose hands most of the important government positions were concentrated. Among all these “Germans,” as the Russians removed from the throne and control indiscriminately called foreign newcomers, the favorite who was taken by the Empress from Courland earned special hatred. Although Biron did not hold any specific government position, he invisibly influenced the course of all any serious matters. All the horrors of the dark decade were associated in the people's memory with the figure of the temporary worker who stood between the weak empress and the country, and it was at this time that it received the nickname Bironovism.

Even in the last years of the reign of Peter I, who sought funds for wars and construction by establishing more and more new taxes, a financial crisis was growing in the power exhausted by the era of rapid transformations. In the second quarter of the 18th century, as the luxury of court life increased and the institution of temporary workers became stronger, expenses increasingly exceeded the income, and state arrears continued to grow. Anna Ioannovna established the Milking Order, which used military measures to exact “tearful and bloody taxes” from the impoverished peasants. Year after year, the country was tormented by crop failures and famine; entire villages fled abroad to escape the excesses of milking teams and starvation.

The picture was completed by the failures and semi-successes of a mediocre foreign policy. The more obvious the unpopularity of the reign became, the more harshly any “word” and “deed” that opposed themselves to the existing order were persecuted. Anna Ioannovna restored the Secret Chancellery, which was in charge of investigation and carried out business through a back-to-back search. Exiles and executions became an ordinary everyday occurrence. They not only accompanied the completion of any act of political struggle; given the Empress’s suspicion, an empty slander was enough to irrevocably destroy a person, even if he were a noble person, with connections and high kinship. The morals of the court, which harshly dealt with the shadow of the opposition, resonated in all layers of society with espionage, denunciations, and even arbitrary reprisals against real or imaginary opponents.

By the time the action of Lazhechnikov’s novel begins - the winter of 1739/40 - the illness of the empress, the uncertainty in the absence of direct heirs about the question of who would succeed her on the Russian throne, had extremely aggravated the situation in court and government circles. Biron, accustomed to playing the role of the first person in the state, felt a threat to his power and his future coming from numerous opponents of the temporary worker. Among them, in terms of position, intelligence, and the characteristics of his position, the cabinet minister Artemy Petrovich Volynsky seemed the most dangerous. Biron, in alliance with Vice-Chancellor Osterman, managed to secure Volynsky's trial and conviction. But their success turned out to be short-lived. The victory over Volynsky only delayed the fall of Biron: after a short regency under the infant Emperor John Antonovich, he was removed from power and exiled to Berezov.

This is the historical era, the image of which emerges from the pages of “The Ice House” “... A system of denunciations and espionage, refined to the point that looks and movements have their own learned interpreters, which has made of every house a Secret Chancellery, of every person a moving coffin where they are nailed up feelings, his thoughts; broken ties of friendship, kinship, to the point that the brother sees in his brother an eavesdropper, the father is afraid of meeting a slanderer in his son; a nation that is violated every day; Petrov's Russia, broad, sovereign, mighty - Russia, oh my God! oppressed now by a native” (Part I, Chapter V) - this is how Lazhechnikov’s hero sees his fatherland with patriotic bitterness and indignation.

Among the characters in “The Ice House” there are many historical figures and real events, although complexly transformed by the author’s imagination. In addition to Empress Anna, Biron, Volynsky, the Vice-Chancellor and de facto head of the Cabinet of Ministers Osterman, Field Marshal Minikh, and the poet Tredyakovsky appear on the pages of The Ice House. The names of people who once lived are borne by people from the environment of the temporary worker and his antagonist - such as Lipman or Eichler. Volynsky’s “confidants” also had historical prototypes, and the bizarre “nicknames” given to them by Lazhechnikov were derived from their actual names: de la Suda became Zuda in the novel, Eropkin became Perokin, Khrushchev became Shchurkhov, Musin-Pushkin became Sumin-Kupshin.

In reality, there was also an “ice house” - a central, cross-cutting image of the novel, a core image for both its plot and its poetic system. In the winter of 1740, a funny holiday was organized at court: the empress decided to marry her jester, a descendant of an ancient noble family, Prince M. A. Golitsyn, to a Kalmyk woman, Buzheninova. It must be assumed that both the clownish position and this, the last royal “favor,” fell to Rurikovich’s lot due to his relationship with the “supreme rulers” hated by the queen. Between the Admiralty and the Winter Palace a miracle was built that amazed contemporaries - a palace made of ice. St. Petersburg academician G.V. Kraft left an accurate description of this architectural curiosity, its sculptural decoration and interior decoration. Lazhechnikov knew and used Kraft's book. To give the celebration a special scope and splendor, a couple of representatives of all the peoples living in Russia were sent to the capital. The ethnographic diversity of costumes, national songs and dances were not only supposed to decorate and diversify the fun: they were designed to demonstrate to the empress and her foreign guests the enormity of the powerful empire and the prosperity of all its diverse inhabitants. The organization of the holiday was entrusted to the Cabinet Minister Volynsky.

Lazhechnikov was able to vividly sense the possibilities that the concentration of action around such an extraordinary event, rich in colors, opened up for the historical novelist. The ice house becomes a powerful symbol in the novel, casting a shadow on all the vicissitudes of both political and romantic intrigue. Coldness and trampled humanity are hidden behind its sparkling façade. And another thing: no matter how beautiful and cruel the ice house is, this building is ephemeral, its days are numbered. No matter how magnificent the empress's amusements, paid for with the sweat and blood of the suffering people, are, it is no coincidence that during the opening ceremony of the palace the empress sees funeral torches. The amusing palace of Anna Ioannovna is a symbol of her reign, as well as of any despotic power. Miraculously, the frozen Little Russian Gordenko was revived to life and stood like a statue in the peace of the ice house with his complaint, but the cry of the exhausted people was again intercepted by Biron’s minions, and again did not reach the ears of the Russian autocrat. The impulse of the truth-seeking Volynsky crumbled into icy fragments, the battlefield remained with the temporary worker - a symbolic harbinger of the outcome of their struggle. The low buffoon Kulkovsky and the dirty traitor Podachkina - characters deprived by Lazhechnikov of even a shadow of the reader's participation - are doomed to spend their “wedding” night in the ice palace, and even these vile half-humans momentarily gained our compassion with their suffering. The ruins of the ice house shelter the last outbreak of passion of Biron, who has already become a victim, carrying within himself the death of Marioritsa and Volynsky, tormented by the intricacies of his tragic fate. Upon exiting the fatal ruins, Marioritsa will face a deathbed, and Volynsky will face a scaffold. Lazhechnikov skillfully combines the history of the construction and destruction of the ice house with the main political conflict of the novel - the struggle between the Russian and German parties. The plea of ​​an exhausted country, conveyed to St. Petersburg by the Little Russian Gordenko, the death of a truth-seeker who raised his hand against a temporary worker, overflows Volynsky’s patience and encourages him to take active action. And the same execution of Gordenka turns out to be an omen of the tragic fate - the fall and execution - of Volynsky himself.

The Ice House is a personified contrast. The house, by its very name intended to be a repository of the hearth and human warmth, meets with cold and kills all living things that come into contact with it. And this is the main, but not the only symbol in the poetics of the novel. A romantic artist, Lazhechnikov reveals the contradictions of the era in an extensive system of symbolic contrasts: life - death, love - hatred, captivating beauty - repulsive ugliness, lordly amusements - folk tears, a brilliant princess - a beggar gypsy, a palace - an unclean kennel, the fiery passions of the south - northern cold

Anna Ioannovna’s incurable illness, her fear of death, turns into an unquenchable thirst for entertainment and pleasure, gives the wasteful court festivities a shade of convulsive fun involuntarily, leaves a stamp of doom on the fun, the life of the empress, on the whole picture of her inglorious reign. And wherever the empress amuses herself, a man and his dignity suffer.

The more these joys without true gaiety remind us of decline and destruction, the more the youthful ardor of Volynsky, romantically sublime, unrestrained in love and in the cause of patriotic service to Russia, contrasts with them.

It is the system of symbols that permeate The Ice House, connecting in its own way historical descriptions with romantic action, that contributes to the creation of a painful atmosphere of timelessness in the novel. This atmosphere thickens and covers the most dissimilar moments of the narrative thanks to the intensity of the lyrical coloring that enters the novel along with the personality of the author. An active, progressive-minded person, a contemporary of the Decembrists (although he did not share their revolutionary aspirations), an inspired romantic and educator, he pronounces his judgment on the “unreasonable” and inhumane era. Not a single element of the story, even the most modest, escapes the author’s activity: Lazhechnikov is either branded with contempt, condemned and condemned, or sympathized with, admired and instills delight in the reader. This lyrical expansion fills “The Ice House,” leaving no room for a calm, epic picture of things and events.

Is it possible, after reading the novel, to be imbued with enthusiastic sympathy for Volynsky, hatred and contempt for his opponents?

In the interpretation of the image of Volynsky, the romantic method of Lazhechnikov the novelist was especially pronounced.

Unlike Pushkin and Gogol (but like the Decembrist narrators). Lazhechnikov chooses for his historical novels such moments of the past when ardent, exalted loners act, and the people in whose name they sacrifice themselves play a suffering role in events. Accordingly, Lazhechnikov’s favorite hero is a fictional or historical person, but in any case, endowed with a complex inner world and an exceptional, tragic fate.

This is the latest newcomer - Vladimir, the illegitimate son of Princess Sophia and Prince Vasily Golitsyn. Since childhood, he is doomed to the role of Peter's antagonist. Having eaten the attempt on the life of the young Tsar, Vladimir flees to a foreign land. Over time, he realizes the historical significance of Peter's reforms and considers the goal of life to atone for his guilt before Russia and take revenge on those who instilled in him hatred of the new order. Rejected by his native country, he secretly serves it, contributing, like providence, to the victories of the Russian troops in Livonia, he earns Peter's forgiveness and hides in a monastery, where he dies in obscurity. Such are the heroes of “Basurman” - representatives of the Western Renaissance, architect Aristotle Fioraventi and doctor Anton Ehrenstein, attracted to distant Muscovy by the vain hope of finding application for their humanistic aspirations.

Volynsky in “The Ice House” also belongs to the same type of romantic chosen heroes.

The historical Volynsky was a complex and contradictory figure. Having begun his activities under Peter I, he soon attracted the attention of the reformer with his intelligence and energy. But it was not for nothing that he had a chance to taste the royal club. Both the first steps and Volynsky’s entire later career reveal a chain of ups and downs. A type of nobleman of the transitional era, he combined in himself a true “chick of Petrov’s nest,” a patriot who dreamed of the good of Russia, with indomitable pride and ambition, with cruelty and unscrupulousness in means. More than once he was threatened with trial for outright bribery, arbitrariness, and torture of people under his control. Before becoming a cabinet minister and coming up with projects for state reforms, Volynsky for a long time ascended the levels of the service hierarchy, relying either on family ties, then on Minich, who was at odds with the temporary worker, or on Biron, an opponent of his recent patron. As Biron’s protege (the temporary worker hoped to find in him a submissive instrument for belittling Osterman’s role, but was deceived in his expectations), Volynsky was introduced to the Cabinet of Ministers. Long before the new cabinet minister decided to speak out against Osterman and affect the interests of Biron, he had made irreconcilable enemies among the Russians, and among his opponents were such influential nobles as P. I. Yaguzhinsky, A. B. Kurakin, N. F. Golovin.

Lazhechnikov, without a doubt, knew of sources who had different assessments of Volynsky’s personality, his merits and demerits as a statesman. But from written evidence and from oral tradition, the author of “The Ice House” chose only what corresponded to his social and aesthetic ideal. At the same time, the interpretation of the image of Volynsky, which was contained in Ryleev’s “Thoughts,” acquired special significance for Lazhechnikov.

Ryleev dedicated two thoughts to Volynsky. One of them - “The Vision of Anna Ioannovna” - was not passed by the censors and was published for the first time in Herzen’s “Polar Star” in 1859. It is difficult to judge whether this thought was known to Lazhechnikov in the mid-1830s. Anna Ioannovna, tormented by remorse, appears in her with the head of the executed Volynsky and calls the queen to account for the death of the “sufferer of the glorious fatherland.” Another thought - “Volynsky” - was quoted in “The Ice House” and largely determined the image of the main character of the novel. Volynsky appears in the depiction of the Decembrist poet as a “faithful son of the fatherland”, and his struggle with the “foreign alien”, the culprit of “national disasters” Biron, as “a fiery impulse of a beautiful and free Soul” [K. F. Ryleev. Poems. Articles. Essays. Reports. Letters. – M., 1956, p. 141 – 143, 145] Lazhechnikov’s expression “true son of the fatherland” directly goes back to the above words of Ryleev - a stable formula of Decembrist ideology.

In Lazhechnikov’s novel, the image of Volynsky takes on additional colors that were not present in Ryleev’s poem. This is no longer exclusively a statesman, confined to the sphere of patriotic feat. Volynsky is a man, and nothing human is alien to him. “In his soul, good and bad passions, violent and noble, reigned alternately; everything in him was unstable, except honor and love for the fatherland” (Part I, Chapter I), says Lazhechnikov about his hero. And further, the novelist attributes to the smartest politician Osterman an insightful assessment of the historical situation, expressing it in words that could not have been accidental in the mouth of a contemporary of the Decembrists and the tragic collapse of their hopes: “He saw the resurgent struggle of the people against the despotism of the temporary worker, but knew that its representatives were several ardent, selfless heads, and not a people animated by the knowledge of their human dignity” (Part II, Chapter VII). Lazhechnikov conveys to his hero the traits that prepare his downfall, but Volynsky’s portrayal is invariably dominated by the heroic-romantic tonality that goes back to Ryleev’s Duma.

A characteristic collision of Decembrist poetry and prose is the contradiction between the duty of a patriotic citizen, which requires complete self-denial from the hero, up to the renunciation of personal happiness, and the natural inclinations of the soul and heart. This collision is also present in The Ice House. Not only Volynsky, but also Empress Anna, and Marioritsa, and Perokin, sooner or later must choose between loyalty to duty (as each of these so dissimilar characters understands it) and their human, earthly attachments. However, this motif appears to be the most plot-effective and ramified in the story about Volynsky, contrapuntally connecting both plot lines of “The Ice House” - love and political. The “lawless” passion for the Moldavian princess not only distracts the hero’s spiritual strength from the work of civil service and disarms him in the face of a cold, calculating enemy. This passion makes Volynsky a victim of internal discord. His soul is tragically troubled by the consciousness of guilt before his beautiful, loving wife. The thought that he is destroying the seductive and devoted Marioritsa is also painful for him. And at the same time, the struggle of the feelings of a citizen, a loving husband and father and a passionate lover gives the image of Volynsky a special attractiveness, and his fatal fate a vital dimension.

Volynsky has something of a romantic poet-creator. Even if his human nature is imperfect, even if in everyday life he is subject to irrepressible passions that involve the hero in fatal errors: all this “until Apollo demands the poet to the sacred sacrifice.” As soon as Volynsky hears the call of his homeland, he turns into a hero-fighter who, having shaken off all earthly attachments from his shoulders, does not weigh or calculate either his own strengths or the capabilities of Biron and his supporters, with his characteristic directness and ardor he goes into the fight for the good of the people to the end, the unconquered ascends the scaffold to become in posterity an imperishable example of civil service. And his passion for Marioritsa! Volynsky’s lawless love is also an act of struggle, a struggle for the freedom of human feeling, striving through all obstacles and becoming a victim of the cold mechanical calculation of those for whom passion itself is just a means of political intrigue.

In his love for Marioritsa, the breadth of Volynsky’s Russian nature, its prowess and scope are revealed; the poetic string that unites Volynsky the lover with Volynsky the patriot sounds in it. Lazhechnikov introduces his beloved hero to the Russian national element, and it is not without reason that in one of the most poetic and sanctified by the Russian literary tradition episodes of the novel - in the Yuletide fortune-telling scene - Volynsky appears as a daring Russian youth, a coachman with a lyrical and riotous song on his lips. “This is purely Russian nature, this is a Russian gentleman, a Russian nobleman of old times!” [IN. G. Belinsky. Full collection Op. – M., 1953, vol. III, p. 13] – Belinsky admired.

An ardent romantic both in love and in politics, Volynsky is the direct antipode of the sober and soulless pragmatist Biron. According to the same laws of romantic poetics of contrasts, already familiar to us, in “The Ice House” the frail, “fat, gloomy” Anna Ioannovna and “a real Russian maiden, blood and milk, and the look and greetings of the queen... the daughter of Peter the Great, Elizabeth” confront each other. (Part IV, Chapter V), the mediocre "scribbler", the pedant Tredyakovsky and the inspired singer of the capture of Khotin Lomonosov. Neither Elizaveta Petrovna nor Lomonosov act in the novel, they only emerge in the thoughts of the author and his characters as a kind of “starting point” - a sign indicating the existence of healthy national forces that are destined to dispel the darkness of the “unreasonable” era that oppresses and kills all living things and human.

To the greatest extent, Lazhechnikov’s historicism revealed its limits in the image of Tredyakovsky. Tredyakovsky played an outstanding role in the history of Russian culture and Russian versification. However, for a long time his name served as a synonym for poetic mediocrity, a target for undeserved ridicule. And although Radishchev, in “Monument to the Dactylo-Chorean Knight,” made an attempt to revise Tredyakovsky’s traditional reputation, an objective historical assessment of his activities in the 1830s remained a matter of the future.

Romantic poetics demanded the combination of high poetic elements in the novel with the elements of grotesque and caricature. The image of Tredyakovsky (as well as Kulkovsky) is a tribute to this programmatic requirement of the romantics. Uncritically relying on biased anecdotes about Tredyakovsky, conveyed to him by oral tradition, Lazhechnikov endowed his hero with the traditional comic traits of a pedant and hanger-on, equally repulsive spiritually and physically. It is not surprising that all critics of The Ice House, from Senkovsky to Pushkin, agreed in their rejection of this image.

In the era of classicism and Enlightenment, historical figures performed on the stage of tragic theater, but the highest achievements of the 18th century novel are associated with the depiction of the sphere of private life. The historical novel of the early 19th century was the first to combine a story about famous historical figures with a story about the fates of their unknown contemporaries, and included a narration about the facts of historical life within the framework of a fictional plot.

The combination of history and fiction in the historical novel made this genre lawless in the eyes of its opponents. On the contrary, Belinsky, in the controversy surrounding the Russian historical novel of the 1830s, defended fiction as a necessary condition for the artistic recreation of the past. But in different types of historical narration of that time, history and fiction are intertwined differently. And the poetic load that falls to the share of fictional characters in the general movement of the plot is determined by the aesthetic attitudes of the novelist.

For W. Scott it was essential to show that history in its movement, along with figures known to historians, involves many ordinary, unknown people in the cycle of events. Major historical conflicts and changes invade the private life of a private person. And on the contrary, V. Scott conveys the specific, unique features of ancient times to the reader precisely through their refraction in the destinies, morals, life, and psychology of his fictional heroes. It was the fictional hero of W. Scott who was given the opportunity to experience the clash of contending historical forces from his own experience, to see the true face of each of them, to understand their power and their weakness. Pushkin follows the same path of knowledge and reproduction of the past in The Captain's Daughter.

Unlike W. Scott, A. de Vigny in “Saint-Mars” - a novel whose plot, arrangement and type of characters are repeatedly echoed in the development of action and grouping of characters in “The Ice House” - puts the non-fictional at the center of his narrative , but a historical figure. He transforms the true scale and motives of Saint-Mars’ speech against Richelieu in accordance with his historical “idea,” while modernizing the moral and psychological image of the hero. Another French romantic, V. Hugo, in “Notre Dame Cathedral” (1831) brings the genre of the historical novel closer to the romantic poem and drama. He raises his fictional heroes high above the prose of everyday life, giving them symbolic scale and deep poetic expressiveness. The complex drama of love and jealousy leads Hugo's readers to comprehend the general contradictions of existence, perceived through the prism of the romantic philosophy of history.

Lazhechnikov’s “Ice House” is typologically closer to the French romantics than to W. Scott. Like the author of Saint-Mars, Lazhechnikov makes the focus of the story a fictional “average” person, atypical for W. Scott, and a historical person, rethinking the moral and psychological image of Volynsky in the spirit of his civic, patriotic and educational ideals. At the same time, what is decisive for the poetics of “The Ice House” is that the historical characters of the novel and its fictional persons - the gypsy Mariula and Princess Lelemiko, mother and daughter, similar to the old swindler and Esmeralda of “Notre Dame Cathedral” - belong, if I may say so so to speak, to two different worlds: the first - to the world of historical reality, as its author understands, the second - newcomers from the land of romantic poetry. Lazhechnikov does not set out, like V. Scott or Pushkin, to capture in the appearance of his romantic heroines specific features of the psychology of people of a certain era. The source of the power of these aesthetically far from equivalent images is the same: both Mariula and Marioritsa appear in the novel as bearers of a poetic idea. Mariula is the embodiment of boundless maternal love, Marioritsa is the personified idea of ​​a loving woman who believes in selfless service to the chosen one of her heart the purpose of existence, and in death for his good - her life purpose. Belinsky, who judged the romantic Lazhechnikov according to the laws he had recognized above himself, found that Marioritsa was “definitely the best person in the entire novel... the most beautiful, most fragrant flower in the poetic wreath of your gifted novelist” [V. G. Belinsky. Full collection Op. – M., 1953, vol. III, p. 14].

The images of Princess Lelemiko, Mariula and her gypsy companion Vasily, the old doctor and her granddaughter lead the novel away from political intrigue and form a special, “supra-historical” plot line. But they also give “The Ice House” additional entertainment, bringing it closer to a novel of secrets, to an old adventure novel. Lazhechnikov extracts a special effect from the traditional motif of two rivals - those who love the hero and the women he loves. The beauty of the north and the guria of the south, unwavering marital devotion and free passion, which finds justification in its depth and selflessness, incline Volynsky’s ardent and fickle soul first in one direction or the other. The educational collision of the struggle between passion and duty spreads, capturing both spheres of action of the novel - both political and love. The death of Volynsky is presented in “The Ice House” as an expiatory sacrifice in a double struggle: for the freedom of the fatherland and for personal moral purification.

And at the same time, Volynsky of the “Ice House” is not just an individual person, one way or another correlated with his real-historical prototype. In him Lazhechnikov poured all the strength of national protest against the dominance of foreigners tormenting the exhausted country, exhausted by extortions and extortions. If in love Marioritsa, with her feminine charm and boundless self-denial, is higher than Volynsky, split between feeling and duty, then in the field of citizenship Volynsky has no equal. Like a lonely oak tree, he rises above the growth of his “confidants” - friends and comrades in the struggle who shared his daring and his fate. As for Volynsky’s opponents, the baseness of goals and means, spiritual narrowness, base self-interested calculation make them the complete opposite of a generous and honest patriot. If Biron’s minions remain faithful to him out of fear and self-interest, the enemy of the temporary worker attracts him with the purity of his goal, the nobility of his soul and actions.

Entering into single combat with Biron, Volynsky poses a daring challenge not only to the clique of aliens who have arrogated to themselves the right to “rob, execute and pardon Russians.” He denounces court caresses seeking rank and profit, and speaks out against the “oppressors of their fatherland,” whoever they may be. But an even wider range of phenomena is drawn into the sphere of what the author-narrator himself unconditionally denies. Here is the power of the lordly whim, free to turn into amusement any person living at any end of the despotic state; and the immoral right to “have your own people”; and power based on a system of espionage and detection; and the entire mediocre and bloody reign of Anna Ioannovna as a whole. Moreover: not limiting himself to criticizing the “unreasonable” era, Lazhechnikov, through transparent hints, builds a bridge from it to modernity. The episode of the political struggle of the 18th century turns out to be a harbinger of the speech on Senate Square, and the posthumous acquittal and civic glory of Volynsky is a prophecy of the inevitable recognition of the cause of the noble revolutionaries. All this was resolutely opposed to the doctrine of the “official nationality”.

The “Ice House” appeared at a time when the tenth year of the reign of Nicholas I was nearing its end, and a decade had passed since the December uprising. Society was waiting for this date, hoping for “mercy for the fallen”, for easing the fate of the exiles. Lazhechnikov’s novel reflected and embodied these sentiments in his own way. The ideological atmosphere that prepared the events of December 14, the very speech of the Decembrists, their tragically inevitable defeat and execution echoed in the “Ice House” in a number of signs. Among them is a chain of maxims causing inevitable illusions, and the connection of the central image of the novel - the image of a hero-citizen - with the tradition of Decembrist literature and journalism, and the epigraph (Part IV, Chapter XIII) from Ryleev's thought, which sounded in the 1830s as a prophetic prediction of the Decembrist poet’s own fate. But perhaps the most striking proof that, by creating the “Ice House,” Lazhechnikov was creating a monument to the heroic aspirations of his generation, was the interpretation that an episode of real Russian history received on the pages of the novel. The author of “The Ice House” looks for an incident in the country’s recent past that he perceives as a historical precedent for the December uprising, as the indignation of a handful of fighters for the people’s good against despotism. Another characteristic is also characteristic. The execution of the heroes turned into their posthumous triumph. History crushed their seemingly invincible enemy, and they themselves acquired in the eyes of their descendants the aura of innocent sufferers for the truth and became examples of “the holy zeal of a citizen.” These are the origins of the feeling of historical optimism that emanates from the epilogue of The Ice House.

Upon the release of The Ice House, Pushkin wrote to Lazhechnikov: “Perhaps, artistically, The Ice House is superior to The Last Novik, but the historical truth is not respected in it, and this will, of course, harm over time, when the Volynsky case is made public.” your creation; but poetry will always remain poetry, and many pages of your novel will live until the Russian language is forgotten.

For Vasily Tredyakovsky, I admit, I’m ready to argue with you. You insult a person worthy in many respects of our respect and gratitude. In Volynsky’s case, he plays the face of a martyr. His report to the Academy is extremely touching. It is impossible to read it without indignation at his tormentor. We could also talk about Biron" [A.S. Pushkin. Complete collected works. – M. – L., 1949, vol. XVI, p. 62].

Lazhechnikov did not accept the poet’s reproaches, insisting that the historical characters of his novel are faithful to their real prototypes, and thus formulated his main creative principle: “... I tried to preserve the historical fidelity of the main persons of my novel, as much as my poetic creation allowed me, because in a historical novel truth must always give way to poetry if it interferes with this. This is an axiom" [A. S. Pushkin. Full collection Op. – M. – L., 1949, vol. XVI, p. 67]. An axiom of romantic aesthetics, we would add.

The author of “Boris Godunov” believed that a historical writer, “impartial as Fate,” when recreating a dramatic era of the past, should not “cunning and leaning to one side, sacrificing the other. It is not he, not his political opinion, not his secret or obvious bias that should ... speak in the tragedy - but the people of bygone days, their minds, their prejudices ... His job is to resurrect the past century in all its truth" [A. S. Pushkin. Full collection Op. – M. – L., 1949, vol. XI, p. 181].

In Pushkin's historical tragedy, Boris is presented as a man on whose conscience lies a serious crime. But Pushkin's hero is not only a clever and cunning self-interested politician. This is both an intelligent, far-sighted ruler, hatching plans for state reforms, and a gentle, caring father. If in nobility he is inferior to many Rurik boyars, then he surpasses them in intelligence and energy. Moreover, experiencing pangs of conscience, tormented by repentance, Boris bears his moral punishment not as an ordinary criminal, but as a man of remarkable inner strength. Before breaking under the blows of fate, he judges and condemns himself. Pushkin’s image of the Pretender is just as voluminous and internally complex. The monk languishing in his monastery cell harbors within himself a youthful impulse for freedom, a desire to know the big world, to experience its joys and pleasures. In his love for Marina, the Pretender is a kind of poet, and in general the actions that lead him towards crime and death are marked with the stamp of chivalry and artistry. Lazhechnikov the novelist remained alien to such a complex understanding of historical characters; he was not interested in the contradictory combination of historical good and evil in a person. In The Ice House, light and shadow form two elements, sharply and irreconcilably opposed to each other. And although Lazhechnikov, through a number of external, everyday details, imparts a certain vitality to the images of his positive and negative heroes, this is not enough for his characters to become genuine living people of flesh and blood, and for the world of their feelings and their ideas to acquire internal self-motion.

The dispute between Pushkin and Lazhechnikov about the historical novel and its relationship to reality was a dispute between a realist and a romantic. The images of Biron, Volynsky, and Tredyakovsky created by Lazhechnikov could not meet the sympathy of the realist Pushkin: with their one-linearity, they opposed Pushkin’s ideal of a broad, multifaceted portrayal of characters.

Pushkin himself went through a period of traditionally unambiguous perception of Tredyakovsky: for Pushkin the lyceum student, his name is a symbol of mediocre and meaningless metromania, the personification of clumsy literary Old Belief. However, already from the beginning of the 1820s, Pushkin’s acquaintance with Tredyakovsky’s works on the Russian language and versification undermined the ideas about him that existed in circles close to Arzamas, and in the 1830s his interest in Tredyakovsky intensified and acquired an individual shade. Historical studies of Pushkin, and the associated deepening of his historical and literary views, contribute to the formation of the poet’s view of Tredyakovsky’s place in Russian literary development. In connection with the increasingly complicated position of Pushkin at court, which he perceived as humiliation by the award of the rank of chamber cadet and a number of other facts of his personal biography, the poet is increasingly thinking about the position of the writer in Russia. Long-known anecdotes about the constant humiliations and beatings that Tredyakovsky endured appear in a new light.

Pushkin’s view of Tredyakovsky’s theoretical works is most fully expressed in “Journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg” (1834). “His philological and grammatical research is very remarkable,” we read here in Tredyakovsky. “He had a more extensive understanding of Russian versification than Lomonosov and Sumarokov. His love for Fenelon’s epic does him honor, and the idea of ​​​​translating it in verse and the very choice of verse prove an extraordinary feeling elegant... In general, the study of Tredyakovsky is more useful than the study of our other old writers. Sumarokov and Kheraskov are certainly not worth Tredyakovsky "[A. S. Pushkin. Full collection Op. – M. – L., 1949, vol. XI, p. 253-254].

A synthetic assessment of the role of Tredyakovsky, a philologist and poet, in the development of Russian science and literature was then expressed in the plans of Pushkin’s article “On the insignificance of Russian literature.” In one of the plans, Pushkin again puts Tredyakovsky, a poet and linguist, above Lomonosov and Sumarokov (“At this time Tredyakovsky is the only one who understands his business”), in another he notes that Tredyakovsky’s influence is “destroyed by his mediocrity” [A. S. Pushkin. Full collection Op. – M. – L., 1949, vol. XI, p. 495].

A new facet in Pushkin’s view of Tredyakovsky is revealed by his letter to Lazhechnikov, where the poet defended the trampled dignity of the Russian writer and scientist in the person of Tredyakovsky. Tredyakovsky’s report to the Academy, which, according to Pushkin, is “extremely touching,” is his report to the Imperial Academy of Sciences dated February 10, 1740, complaining about the “dishonor and injury” inflicted on him by Volynsky. The investigative case of Volynsky, the second historical source mentioned by Pushkin in a letter to the author of The Ice House, is connected with the fall of the cabinet minister that soon followed. Both of these sources had not yet been published in the 1830s and, as can be seen from Lazhechnikov’s memoirs “My Acquaintance with Pushkin,” remained unknown to him at the time of work on “The Ice House.”

Pushkin’s letter to Lazhechnikov is evidence of his very strict assessment of Volynsky, which ran counter not only to the portrayal of this historical figure in Lazhechnikov’s novel, but also in general to the most common view of him at that time. The formation of his opinion was facilitated by an in-depth study of archival materials on Russian history of the 18th century, which revealed to Pushkin a number of tonal aspects of Volynsky’s personality and activities, and finally strengthened the poet’s familiarity with the presentation of the “case” of the cabinet minister. Connected with Pushkin’s restrained attitude towards the “tormentor” Tredyakovsky is the characterization he expressed in the same letter of Biron, about whom Pushkin wrote that “all the horror of Anna’s reign, which was in the spirit of his time and in the morals of the people,” was blamed on him [A. S. Pushkin. Full collection Op. – M. – L., 1949, vol. XVI, p. 62]. This characteristic was perceived by Lazhechnikov as “an incomprehensible... slip of the tongue of a great poet” [A. S. Pushkin in the memoirs of his contemporaries: In 2 volumes - M., 1974, vol. I, p. 180-181]. Meanwhile, the meaning of Pushkin’s judgment was not at all to elevate the figure of the temporary worker at the expense of Volynsky.

In “Notes on Russian History of the 18th Century” (1822), Pushkin described Biron as a “bloody villain.” Thus, in assessing Biron’s personality, he did not disagree with Lazhechnikov. But Pushkin could not be satisfied with the point of view of official historiography, which contrasted the villainous temporary worker with the virtuous empress and transferred the blame for all the horrors of Bironovism to him alone. Pushkin was aware that their reasons were deeper, rooted in the “spirit of the times”, which brought to life the despotic monarchy of the 18th century, in the peculiarities of national development, which imparted to Russian absolutism before the death of Peter the features of “Asian ignorance” [A. S. Pushkin. Full collection Op. – M. – L., 1949, vol. XI, p. 14]. As for the historical meaning of Biron’s activities, Pushkin saw it in the despotically inflexible suppression of all attempts by the Russian aristocracy to establish an oligarchic form of government, which seemed to the poet the main conservative tendency of Russian history of the 18th century. As we see, one can argue with Pushkin (especially from the point of view of our current knowledge of the past) on the essence of his historical views, but there can be no talk of any “slip of the tongue” in his dispute with Lazhechnikov.

Pushkin considered different eras of Russian life in their historical interconnection, perceiving each of them as a link in a single, complex historical movement. Therefore, for him, the specific features of historical figures, their psychology, the true scale and proportions inherent in the depicted moment acquired such significance.

The key to unraveling the character of any of the figures of the era, be it history or modernity, for Pushkin was the knowledge of its social and cultural-historical forces, understood simultaneously in their historical uniqueness and in their deep connections with the past and future. The “guessed” era, resurrected in its vital reality, should, according to the ideal of Pushkin - the artist and historian, shine with its own, objectively inherent poetry, and not serve as an obedient expression of the author’s poetic idea.

I perceived Lazhechnikov’s story differently, in the light of romantic and at the same time educationally colored ideas. In history, he was interested not so much in its vital chiaroscuro and deep cause-and-effect relationships, as in bright dramatic pictures and analogies with modernity. The leaden shadows of Nicholas's reign, the tragedy of the heroic and romantically active generation of noble youth, the Baltic Seamen who closed around the imperial throne - all this sharpened Lazhechnikov's artistic sensitivity and his civil intransigence to the deadening cold and the German dominance of Bironovism. Bright romantic talent clothed the living civic and patriotic pathos of “The Ice House” in images that were understandable for readers of the 1830s and for subsequent generations. And Pushkin, who rightly disputed the accuracy of the historical picture drawn by Lazhechnikov, was also right when he predicted to the creator of “The Ice House”: “... poetry will always remain poetry, and many pages ... of the novel will live until the Russian language is forgotten.”