In all the preserved photographs (see the insets in Dupont’s book), there appears before us a carefully shaven person with his hair cut short and parted. The part is so even and the quality of the shaving so flawless that one unwittingly detects the scent of eau du toilette when contemplating the photographs. With regard to his appearance, General Larionov made the only possible valid decision, just as he did in most other situations. Thinking that his ideally proportioned facial features needed no framing, he did not style himself after Alexander III, as did the officers around him. What is interesting is that his face did not look handsome, despite its proportions. His face became livelier at a mature age, particularly in elderliness. It is not uncommon to contemplate a photograph of a person in his youth, marveling at its blatant insufficiencies and almost embryonic look when compared to what came later. In cases of this sort, one experiences regret regarding the existence of that stage in the life of the person portrayed. Needless to say, feelings of this sort are very highly ahistorical. As far as the general goes, his face looked more chiseled thanks to wrinkles that appeared, with age, under his eyes, and the bump that emerged on his nose. During one period of his life, between the ages of thirty-five and forty, his appearance was reminiscent of Cardinal Richelieu because of his facial expression and that bump, though not because of all his features. The peak of the general’s activity—as well as the mysteries connected with him—dates back to this period. Perhaps his resemblance to Richelieu was the resemblance of people possessing mysteries? Whatever the reason, that resemblance departed with time, too.
Even a fleeting glance at Dupont’s illustrative material attests to the undeniable prevalence of photographs from the final period of General Larionov’s life. The old man never made a point of having his picture taken but he also never put on airs by turning away from any cameras that greeted him: he regarded them with utmost indifference. That regard gave portraits of the general a naturalness rare for the genre. Perhaps the triumph of two photographic portraits of the general in international competitions at various times should be ascribed, above all, to that naturalness?
There is no doubt that even those who are not at all familiar with the general’s activity and have not heard his name would recall the black-and-white photograph of the old man sitting on a folding chair at the very edge of a jetty (Yalta, 1964). It became a classic of world photography, rather like the locomotive falling out the window of a Paris train station, rather like the lighthouse among raging waves, etcetera. Despite the summer heat, the old man is dressed in a white service jacket. He is sitting under a partially transparent awning, his legs crossed. The toe of a light-colored shoe is stretched before him, parallel to the ground, and almost blends in with the jetty, making it seem as if the lighthouse standing close by is balanced on the toe of that elegant shoe. The old man’s gaze is directed into the distance and filled with the particular attention of one not interested in anything closer than the horizon. That old man is General Larionov. One cannot deny that all previous photographs pale in comparison with that shot of the general, that they have grown to feel inexpressive and, to some extent, unworthy of this outstanding person. That the general remained in his descendants’ memory in his most, so to speak, mature form, could be considered his indisputable success. However, the biggest success of his life was, most likely, simply that he was not shot at the conclusion of the Civil War. This has always been considered inexplicable.
What is consequential, though, is that historian Solovyov decided to concentrate on that very enigma. Here, one might foresee objections of the sort that question whether historian Solovyov is, say, a figure capable of untangling this very complex historical snarl. And is it even worth placing hope on a very recent graduate who is, moreover, a self-made man? These objections do not seem well founded. It is sufficient to point out—and Dupont was the first to establish this fact—that Arkady Gaidar was commanding a regiment at the age of sixteen and a half. As far as self-made man goes, well, under a broad understanding of the term, anyone who has ever succeeded at accomplishing anything in life should be considered one.
It is sufficient to mention just one detail with regard to Solovyov’s work on self-improvement: he was able to change his Southern Russian pronunciation to aristocratic Petersburg pronunciation. Needless to say, there is nothing about the Southern Russian pronunciation, in and of itself, that is shameful or belittles the dignity of its speakers (just as, say, deficient Moscow speech is incapable of discrediting residents of the capital). Mikhail Gorbachev, after all, led perestroika in Russia using Southern Russian pronunciation. Unlike Solovyov, Gorbachev was not a historian—he himself made history without taking particular care about the orthoepic side of matters, a tendency that continued even after he left his post and retired. As far as Solovyov goes, when he murmured Russian tongue twisters in the dormitory kitchen, he was working on something that went beyond simply training himself in pronunciation: he was, as he characterized it, eliminating the provincialism within himself. Solovyov’s thesis advisor, the eminent Professor Nikolsky, played an important role in Solovyov’s development. After reading his student’s first important paper, which was devoted to Russia’s conquest of the Far East, the professor invited Solovyov to his office, where he said nothing for a long time, blowing on the paper tube of a Belomorkanal cigarette all the while (he had taken a liking to those cigarettes while working at the forced labor site bearing the same name).
‘My friend,’ said the professor after lighting the cigarette, ‘scholarship is dull. If you don’t get used to that notion, it will not be easy for you to pursue it.’
The professor requested that Solovyov delete from his paper the words great, triumphant, and only possible. He also asked his student if he was familiar with the theory according to which Russians squandered the energy granted to them by conquering expanses of inhuman dimensions. His student was not. Prior to acquainting Solovyov with this theory, Prof. Nikolsky requested that he delete the phrase phenomenon indicating progress, too. The author of the paper was asked to pay special attention to the formatting of bibliographical and persuasive footnotes. A careful look at this aspect of the paper revealed that the only properly formatted footnote was ‘Ibid., 12.’
To be utterly candid, the majority of what Prof. Nikolsky said seemed like nitpicking to Solovyov, yet it was this very discussion that formed the basis of a friendship between professor and student. The professor was at that age when his quibbles could no longer be offensive to the young man and Solovyov’s own history, which was anything but simple, did its part in forcing his advisor to show more leniency toward his student.