Four Russian Serf Narratives

"Autobiography" (1785)

Nikolai Smirnov Autobiography A mong the documents of the Saint Petersburg Secret Investigation Office is a file from 1785 on the attempted flight across the western Russian border of the serf Nikolai Smirnov (1767– 1800).1 The file contains his deposition, in which he recounts how he came to decide upon flight and how he attempted to realize his plan. Other documents in the file show that, after being captured, Smirnov was tried in the lower and upper courts and in the chamber of the criminal court. The first two courts maintained that for some of his crimes he deserved the death penalty, while the other courts asserted that the penalty should be public flogging with a knout, accompanied by the slicing-off of his left ear and exile to his masters’ estate. The chamber of the criminal court pronounced hanging as its initial verdict. But in response to an old decree (of September 30, 1754) regarding abolition of the death penalty, they decided that Smirnov should be given ten blows with the knout, have his nostrils ripped open, be branded (presumably on the forehead), and sent in shackles to hard labor in Riga. It was at this point that Smirnov composed his narrative as both an explanation of his deeds and as a desperate if ambivalent expression of penitence. 23 X 1. This original text is in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Documents, Moscow, section 7, file 2679, pp. 66–67 recto and verso, from the year 1785. It was published under the editorship of K. V. Sivkov under the title “Avtobiografiia krespostnogo intelligenta kontsa 18-ogo veka” in Istoricheskii arkhiv 5 (Leningrad: Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1950), 288–299. X July 15, 1785—the deposition of the serf Nikolai Smirnov, arrested for attempting to flee across the border and other offences: On July 15, 1785, a certain Nikolai Smirnov, a man belonging to the Princes Golitsyn and sent from the local Governor General Major Kanovitsyn, on being asked while in the premises of the general prosecutor about all his crimes and with what intentions he did them, asked to be allowed to write his account of them himself. This was permitted, and with his own hand he wrote first a draft, then a clean, final copy of the following: My father and all my family are serfs belonging to the deceased Major General Prince Andrei Mikhailovich Golitsyn.2 At the time of his death in 1770, his three young sons and all his property were entrusted, by order of her Royal Highness,3 to the guardianship of his brother (the likewise now-deceased General Field Marshal Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Golitsyn ),4 the General in Chief Ivan Mikhailovich Izmailov,5 Brigadier Nikolai Grigorievich Naumov, and Colonel Prince Dmitri Vasilievich Golitsyn.6 Because Prince Dmitri Vasilievich had already died seven years earlier, the head chamberlain Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Golitsyn was appointed to his place by order of the Government Senate. In 1778 the young princes went abroad to foreign lands for their education , and my father’s brother went there with them. My father is the manager of all the estates and property of my masters, just as he was during the lifetime of the deceased princes. 24 Nikolai Smirnov 2. Andrei Mikhailovich Golitsyn (b. August 15, 1729–d. February 23, 1770) was married to Princess Elizaveta Borisovna Yusupova (b. April 27, 1743–d. August 29, 1770). He served in the army as major general. His three sons were Mikhail Andreevich (1765–1812), Boris (1766–1822), and Aleksei (1767–1800). 3. Catherine II (the Great). 4. Alexander Mikhailovich Golitsyn (b. November 17, 1718–d. October 8, 1783) was married to Daria Alekseevna Gagarina (1724–98); the couple had no children. A. M. Golitsyn was a famous field marshal who fought against the Turks and was later a favorite of Catherine. 5. Ivan Mikhailovich Izmailov (d. 1787), member of the Section of Secret Affairs [Prikaz Tainykh Del ], an important administrative unit answerable only to the tsar. He was married to Aleksandra Borisovna Yusupova (sister of Elisaveta). 6. Dmitri Vasilievich Golitsyn (1708–78). 25 Autobiography I was raised in my father’s house, and with his own funds he paid for my education in various sciences. At first I was educated in Russian grammar and spelling, and afterward was brought into the home of my teacher and taught the basic rudiments of the French and Italian languages. Later I...