A Gentleman in Moscow

The Bolshevik Party, a faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, was led by Vladimir Lenin. It later became the Communist Party. The Bolsheviks seized power in the Revolution of 1917 and later executed Tsar Nicholas II and his family. In the aftermath, many aristocrats were killed, arrested, exiled, or thrown from their homes. Many, like the Count’s grandmother, left Russia. The Count is a “Former Person”—a Bolshevik term for an aristocrat who remained. In theory, the Bolsheviks stood for the equality of the classes—the elimination of serfdom and the elevation of the worker. A Gentleman in Moscow shows that the Bolshevik regime, in an attempt to stand for workers and the common man, ultimately became as oppressive as the Tsarist rule they overturned. The novel depicts various and differing examples of those who supported the Bolshevik party. Some Bolshevik sympathizers are earnest in their desire to help the people, while others seek power. The novel suggests the Party deviated from its ideals as its power grew.

Early in the novel, Bolsheviks are derisive or mocking of the Count, showing the disdain of the Bolsheviks for “Former People.” During his trial, the prosecutor comments on the number of buttons on the Count’s jacket, saying “[i]t was not meant as a compliment” (3).The captain who escorts the Count to his room in the belfry hides a smile as he tells the Count he will no longer live in his suite. The Count’s reflections as he assesses his many possessions—he considers how difficult a time we have “bid[ding] our dearest possessions adieu” (14)—illustrates how the Count’s lifestyle is at odds with the Bolshevik ideal.

The Bolsheviks are restrictive, rejecting anything that appears to center the individual over the collective whole or allows one person an advantage over another. The Count notes that the florist is now gone from the Metropol, as are the hotel’s elaborate Christmas decorations. The mayor of Moscow, after thanking architects for “their dedication to the Party” (330),ushers in an era when “prefabricated, cement-walled, five-story apartment building[s]” (330) housed apartments so similar “you could mistakenly enter” (330) any one of them “and feel immediately at home” (330). Anna’s movies lose popularity when people begin criticizing the lack of “historical immediacy” and “collective struggle” as well as the focus on the “triumphs of the individual” (193). After a complaint is brought to the Commissar of Food, the labels are removed from the wine in the Boyarsky: the expensive wine list “runs Counter to the ideals of the Revolution” (142).

The Count comes to the conclusion that the Bolsheviks “would not rest until every last vestige of his Russia had been uprooted, shattered, or erased” (144). That the Bolsheviks are “intent upon recasting a future from a mold of their own making” (144) is confirmed years later by Osip, who states that Russia and America “will lead the rest of this century because [they] are the only nations who have learned to brush the past aside instead of bowing before it” (298). However, as America does so for “individualism,” Russia does it for “the common good” (298).

This wiping out of the past must be done at all costs—“the greatest cost” (297), exclaims Osip—for no achievement, even those of the Americans, which are “envied the world over” (297), comes without great cost. Mishka and Nina, both at first enthusiastic members of the Party, become disillusioned by the Party’s cruelty until ultimately becoming victims of it themselves. Infuriated by the censorship and silencing of his poet heroes, Mishka bursts in on his editor, decrying his subservience to Stalin; he is sent to Siberia as a result. Nina’s husband, once a loyal Party member, is arrested and sentenced to hard labor; in following him, Nina herself disappears, never to be heard from again. The Party thus seeks to “efface the Enemies of the People” (289), and those in its path are collateral damage. The Count’s returning to Idlehour at the end of the novel, only to find it burned to the ground, is symbolic of the Bolsheviks’ desire to eliminate all vestiges of Tsarist rule. Indeed, at his trial, the Count is told that as a “Former Person,” he himself would have been executed had not the poem inspired members of the Party to spare him.

The Bolsheviks show themselves to be no less cruel, power hungry, or drawn by luxury than those who came before. Watching the Bolshevik Assembly in the ballroom with Nina, the Count observes “that despite the Revolution, the room had barely changed at all” (66). Young Bolsheviks, for example, pay their respects to an old revolutionary who is “sitting in the very chair from which the grand Duchess Anapova had received the greetings of dutiful young princes” (67). In the storeroom, pondering why the Bolsheviks had not gotten rid of the silver services and luxurious dishes and utensils, the Count realizes that “pomp is a tenacious force” (59), that “[t]he soldiers of the common man may toss the banners of the old regime on the victory pyre, but soon enough trumpets will blare and pomp will take its place at the side of the throne” (59-60). The Bolsheviks manage to “countenance the idea of gilded chairs and Louis Quatorze dressers” (192) by numbering each piece of furniture in order to indicate it comes from “the vast inventory of the People” (192). In this way, they are able to enjoy these furnishings while claiming to have “fewer possessions than a pauper” (192).

Ironically, while Party leaders enjoy fine foods and other luxuries, the people’s circumstances do not improve under the Bolsheviks. Readers are offered a glimpse of deteriorating conditions as early as “An Anglican Ashore,” when we are told that “[i]n the Revolution’s aftermath—with its economic declines, failed crops, and halted trade—refined ingredients became as scarce in Moscow as butterflies at sea” (27), forcing Boyarsky chef Emile to become creative in his dishes. Young Bolsheviks like Nina “have their faith in the Party tested” (227) when, due to “increased quotas and requisitions” (227), millions of peasants starve to death. Similarly, the people are no more free than they were under Tsarist rule: the constitution ensures freedom of “conscience” and “expression”—unless these freedoms are “utilized to the detriment of the socialist revolution” (15).

At the Metropol, the Count meets idealistic young Bolsheviks like Nina; staunch, passionate officers like Osip; and seasoned, manipulative leaders like those at the joint dinner of the Presidium and Council of Ministers. Still other Bolsheviks, like the Bishop, are drawn to the Party because they see it as an opportunity to gain personal power. The novel portrays the Bolshevik Party not as a monolith but as having a complex structure that supporters view differently depending on where in the hierarchy they fall.