A Russian Merchant's Tale: The Life and Adventures of Ivan Alekseevich Tolchënov, Based on His Diary

7 Moscow Townsman

7 Moscow Townsman THE CORONATION OF TSAR PAUL [1797, March] 17th At 8 o’clock in the morning I rode away to Moscow in the company of my cousin Grigorii Petrovich. We had dinner in Sholokhovo and arrived at my apartment in Zaikin house at 7 in the evening. 18th In the morning I strolled along Tverskaia Street up to the Triumphal Arch and had the pleasure of seeing for the first time my most august monarch riding into Moscow on horseback from the Petrovskii Palace, and the grand prince and heir was riding with him. From there I walked down to the Kremlin and viewed the changing of the guard. 19th I spent the day in the apartment. At 11 o’clock in the morning our emperor and ruler accompanied by a numerous suite came riding down Nikitskaia St. past the apartment. In the evening I visited my relative Goroshkov. Ivan mentioned ‘‘the abundance of new things that happened’’ in Moscow during his first year there as helpful in distracting him from his troubles. The most important of these new things were the entry into the city and coronation of Emperor Paul. The interplay between Ivan’s immediate reaction to the events of the coronation reported in the diary and his later evaluation of this ruler in his year-end summaries is instructive and tells us something more about his identity and values. His initial response recorded his instinctive respect for authority and fascination with the pomp of power. His later evaluations re- flected, on the one hand, the broader societal view of this failed monarch, and on the other, Ivan’s horror and revulsion for the act of regicide. First the diary. In the excerpt starting this section Ivan reported that the very next morning after moving to Moscow he took a walk along Tverskaia Street, the main artery for arrival into the city from the northwest. He strolled up to the Triumphal Arch at the top of the street and got his first view of Paul as emperor, riding on 191 moscow townsman horseback accompanied by his son and heir Alexander.∞ The following day, March 19, Ivan did not even have to leave home to see the tsar, for he passed right down Nikitskaia Street underneath Ivan’s window. A few days later, after making a short trip to Dmitrov, Ivan was back in Moscow arranging for the family to view the coronation pageantry. A measure of how far Ivan’s financial collapse had displaced him from proximity to power can be seen in the distance between his family’s position for viewing the entry to the city of Empress Catherine and the imperial family in June of 1787 and the place they now occupied for viewing Paul’s o≈cial entry. Ten years earlier they had stood at the very steps of the Dormition Cathedral inside the Kremlin. This time they viewed the entry from specially built stands opposite the Kazan Cathedral on Red Square, outside the walls of the Kremlin. The entry took place on March 28. For the next few days Ivan could not deny himself the pleasure of seeing whatever else was available to the general public of pageantry associated with the forthcoming coronation. On the twenty-ninth, a Sunday, he took the family for an evening carriage ride to see the fireworks and other illuminations at the court and along the main streets, a feature of imperial visits to Moscow that Paul had raised to a new height. The next afternoon he visited various Kremlin churches and stopped in at the Synodal Palace to see the preparation of the holy oils for the coronation. Also ‘‘out of curiosity’’ he went into the Kremlin’s Palace of Facets and Golden Tsarina’s Chamber. A day later he was at the Slobodskii Palace on the city’s northeast side to see the changing of the guard in the presence of the emperor and the grand princes. Ivan’s diary entry for the day of the coronation itself, August 5, was composed in a kind of o≈cial, unctuous tone that he undoubtedly borrowed from the rhetoric and ritual of the coronation. It was saturated with religious language and compared Paul’s accession to the coming of Christ.≤ Ivan wrote: ‘‘This was a joyful day for Christians, just like the day our Redeemer rose from the grave, and especially for Russia, the day in which Paul the First, who had been chosen by God to...