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Warning: The scene I am about to describe contains material of a fictional nature; some readers, especially professional historians, may find it disturbing.
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One day in the first half of the 20th century, when Stalin was in dreary flower and Gorbachev just a boy pitching hay on his father's collective farm, a class of Russian children took a trip to the countryside near Moscow. They came to see the famous Sheremetev estate at Kuskovo, where Count Nicholas had once made the gardens and waterways glitter with torches for the Empress Catherine. Unlike so many of the great houses of Russia, Kuskovo hadn't been ripped down to make way for some cataclysmic piece of Soviet architecture. It remained as a museum for the people of the Revolution, and on this day the people's children would see it for themselves.
They followed their teacher through the fir trees and across the lawns, past the ruins of the outdoor theater, around the rambling seventy-acre garden and the Italian-style theater built by Nicholas after a tour of Europe. Before they could enter the Big House, they were taken for an obligatory visit to the Old Quarter. Here were no palaces or gardens. Here the Sheremetev serfs had once lived and worked. A thousand serfs on this one vast estate! 100,000 on the count's lands all over Russia!
"Look," said the teacher, "and see for yourselves how the workers lived, compared to their masters. They had no palaces, no theaters. By the honest labor of their hands, they made their lazy master wealthy. Somewhere in this quarter lived a poor blacksmith, Ivan Kovalyov, who had his daughter Praskovia stolen from him and taken to the palace when she was only eight. There she was forced with the other serfs to sing in Count Nicholas' fashionable opera—to sing like a canary in a cage. When she grew up, Praskovia became the bride of this decadent man, who always took what he wanted without producing anything. Only by her devotion to her people did she rise above her situation and become a heroine for every Russian."
The children accepted the story. They abhorred the lascivious Count Nicholas, who stole little Praskovia from her serf family and caged her like a songbird. However, when they entered the palace, their conviction wavered. Even in its reduced state, the scale and beauty of the house stunned them. Oh to be a decadent imperialist—or even a slave!—in a place like this. One romantically inclined child studied the portraits on the walls. Here, she saw a beautiful young woman in a blue-feathered helmet. This was Praskovia, painted in her costume for Gretry's The Marriage of the Samnites. After that triumphant performance, the Empress Catherine sent her a diamond ring in appreciation. In another portrait, an older, thinner Praskovia gazed peacefully upon the world that had made her a countess. Beside her breast hung a miniature portrait of the master who had become her lover.
The girl struggled to remember the story as she'd heard it from her teacher: that Praskovia was a captive in this house, a victim of a Bluebeard husband. She couldn't help thinking of an old song she'd heard about a count riding home from a hunt, meeting a pretty servant girl as she led the cows home, and falling in love with her. "The churchbells are calling, our sweet Parasha is to be married to the master."
If it's easier to be a lazy aristocrat than a hard-working serf, then it's also easier to be a lazy storyteller than a scholarly biographer, who has to append the words "possibly" and "may have" to nearly every interesting description of human behavior. I can dream of Soviet children wandering through Praskovia's house, but in his biography of Praskovia, The Pearl, Douglas Smith only hints at such a scene. Under the Soviets, he says, Praskovia became a quasi-socialist heroine, her life "crudely politicized" for the edification of schoolchildren, a version of her story even appearing on state TV. This 20th-century Praskovia stood in contrast to the romantic version that had swept over Russia on the wings of a 19th-century ballad. That song, originating with the serfs at Kuskovo, had Nicholas say to Praskovia (with the cows bearing witness), "Tho' born a peasant, tomorrow you're to become a lady." The girl may not have been thrilled about marrying the count, but she didn't question his politics.
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