BEFORE I WENT AWAY Count Strogonov told me that the military governor of Novgorod, Elpidifor Antiokhovich Zurov, was in Petersburg; he said that he had spoken to him about my appointment, and advised me to call upon him. I found him a rather simple and good-natured general, short, middle-aged and with a very military exterior. \Ve talked for half an hour, he graciously escorted me to the door and there we parted.
VVhen I arrived in Novgorod I went to see him, and the change of decor was amazing. In Petersburg the governor had been a visitor, here he was at home ; he actually seemed to me to be taller in Novgorod. \Vithout any provocation on my part, he thought it necessary to inform me that he did not permit councillors to voice their opinions, or put them in writing; that it delayed business, and that, if anything were not right, they could talk it over, but that if it came to giving opinions, one or another would have to take his discharge. I observed with a smile that it was hard to frighten me with a threat of discharge, since the sole object of my service was to get my discharge from it; and I added that while bitter necessity forced me to serve in Novgorod I should probably have no occasion for giving my opinion.
This conversation was quite enough for both of us. As I went away I made up my mind to avoid coming into close contact with him. So far as I could observe, the impression I made on the governor was much the same as that which he made uron me, that is, we could not bear each other, so far as this was possible on so brief and superficial an acquaintance.
\Vhen I looked a little into the work of the provincial government I saw that my position \vas not only very disagreeable bnt also extraordinarily dangerous. Every councillor was responsible for his own department and shared the responsibility for all the rest. To rear! the papers concerning all the departments was 11 Perun was the god of sky and of thunder. the chief god of the ancient Slavs. ( Tr.)
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absolutely impossible, so one had to sign them on trust. The governor, in accordance with his theory that a councillor should never give counsel, put his signature, contrary to the law and good sense, next after that of the councillor whose department the file concerned. For me personally this was excellent; in his signature I found something of a safeguard, since he shared the responsibility, and also because he often, with a peculiar expression, talked of his lofty honesty and Robespierre-like incornlptibility. As for the signatures of the other councillors, they were very little comfort to me. They were case-hardened old clerks who by dozens of years of service had worked their way up to being councillors, and lived only by the service, that is, only by bribes. There wa s nothing to blame them for in this; a councillor, I think, received one thousand two hundred paper roubles a year: a man with a family could not possibly live on that.
When they understood that I was not going to share with them in dividing the common spoil, nor to plunder on my own account, they began to look upon me as an uninvited guest and a dangerous witness. They did not become very intimate with me, especially
they had discovered tha t there was very slight friendship between the governor and myself. They stood by one another and watched over one another's interests, but they did not care about me.
l\1oreover, my worthy colleagues were> not afraid of big monetary penalties or of dt>ficiencies in their accounts, because they had nothing. They could risk it, and the more readily the more important the affair \Vas; whether the deficit was of five hundred roubles or of five hundred thousand, it was all the same to them.
In case of a deficit a fraction of their salary went to the reimbursement of the Treasury, and this might last for two or three hundred years, if the official lasted so long. Usually either the official died or the Tsar did, and then in his rejoicing the heir forgave the debts. Such manift:>stoes are also published during the life-time of the same Tsar, bv reason of a royal b irth or coming of age, and odds and ends like that; the offi�ials counted on them. In my case, on the contrary, the part of the family estate and the capital which my father had assignt:>d to me would have bet:>n seized.
If I could have relied on my own head-clerks, things wuuld have hPC'n PasiPr. I did a grPat dC'al to gain thPir attachment, treated them politely and helped them vd th money, but my efforts only restdtPd in thPir ceasing to obey me. They feared only thosP councillors who treated them as though they were schoolboys; and they took to coming to the office half-dn1nk.
Moscow, Petersburg and Novgorod
2 7 1
They were very poor men with no education and no expectations. All the imaginative side of their lives was confined to little pot-houses and strong drink, so I had to be on my guard in my own department, too.
At first the governor gave me Department Four, in which all business dealing with contracts and money matters was dealt with. I asked him to exchange me ; he would not, saying that he had no right to make an exchange without the consent of the other councillor. In the governor's presence I asked the councillor in charge of Department Two: he consented and we exchanged. My new department was less attractive; its work was concerned with passports, circulars of all sorts, cases of the abuse of power by landowners, schismatics, counterfeiters and people under the supervision of the police.
Anything sillier and more absurd cannot be imagined ; I am certain that three-quarters of the people who read this will not believe it,I and yet it is the downright truth that I, as a councillor in the provincial government, head of the Second Department, counter-signed every three months the politsmeyster's report on myself, as a man under police supervision. The politsmeyster from politeness made no entry in the column for
'behaviour,' and in the column for 'occupation' wrote: 'Engaged in the government service.' Such are the Hercules' pillars of insanity that can be reached \vhen there are two or three police forces antagonistic to one another, official forms instead of laws, and a sergeant-major's conception of discipline in place of a governing intelligence.
This absurdity reminds me of an incident that occurred a t Tobolsk some years ago. The civil gowrnor was o n bad terms
\vith the vice-governor. The quarrel was carried on on paper, and they wrote each other all sorts of biting and sarcastic things in official form. The vice-governor was a ponderous pedant, a formalist. a good-natured specimen of the divinity student; he composed his caustic answers himself with immense labour and, of comst>, made this quarrel his aim in life. It happened that the governor went to Petersburg for a time. The vice-governor took over his duties and, as governor, recrived an insolPnt document from himsPlf, sent the day before. \Vithout hesitation he ordered the secretary to answe1· it, signed the answer and, receiving it as 1 This is so true that a German who has ahus!'d me a dov:•n times in the Mornin{! Ad1·ertisrr I of 1\:ovembpr 29 and DC'cember 6. 1 8'5'51 adduced as proof that I had never hePn exiled the fact that I had the post of councillor in a prO\·incial government.