Charlotte Hobson - The Vanishing Futurist

‘No, no, I don’t take offence,’ Fyodor answered quietly. ‘I know you all think me pompous. It’s just that I’m no good at this sort of banter, you know – I never have been. As a child I was brought up alone, and my parents were always rather melancholy… I don’t see the point of taking up painting or sculpture; frankly, that would just be a waste of materials. But I do have one very meagre gift, which I’ve been working on a little this week’ – he looked embarrassed – ‘although you must forgive me if I am not terribly skilled…’ Fyodor glanced around at us, hesitating, and began to sing: ‘Alone I go out on to the road; the flinty path is sparkling with mist…’

We stopped, electrified by his fine, sweet tenor voice. He sang all five verses of Lermontov’s poem, standing up straight like a little boy in the choir. Simple and unadorned, they seemed to express the essence of human isolation.

When he finished, he just stood there, motionless. I turned away to hide my face; I was so moved.

‘Well,’ said Slavkin at last, beaming, delighted. ‘Now we see the whole Fedya. Wonderful! This is genuine progress.’

‘Fyodor, that’s beautiful,’ exclaimed Pasha.

Fyodor was embarrassed and puffed his chest out in a particularly irritating way he had. ‘Yes, Nikita, you see I will do anything you ask of me, as best as I can. I don’t mind making myself look foolish for the sake of the commune. But…’

‘But what?’

‘Don’t you think you’re getting distracted from the real work? Frankly, these “self-improving” ideas are all very well, Slavkin, but singing isn’t going to make the factory wheels turn.’

None of us was at all convinced by these remarks. Fyodor laughed in a pleased way when we begged him to sing something else. Later on, Nikita commented that we shouldn’t forget that our goal was to be transformed, that is to change form, not content – to change how we are, not who we are. ‘It’s very clear to me, if not to you, that all of you already possess the qualities of true communards. It’s just that some of them may have been obscured by the different priorities of the Old World.’

I received these words of encouragement as if they were spoken only to me, drips of balm to my soul.

Autumn painted Moscow every shade of red, as though for a vast performance. ‘The streets are our brushes, the squares our palate,’ announced the poet Mayakovsky, who planned to revolutionise nature permanently by giving the trees in the Aleksandrovsky Gardens a coat of scarlet paint. Each day more avant-garde decorations appeared, plastered awkwardly over Moscow’s crumbling set. There was neither money nor materials for the radical changes the artists longed for, but here and there Constructivist monuments to Revolutionary heroes, hastily cast in concrete, went up. To educate the public, abstract art was hung out on the street, causing consternation: ‘They’ll be telling us to worship the devil next!’ wailed one old babushka at the sight of a Malevich. The vast head of Alexander III was toppled from his statue outside the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and little children amused themselves by sliding down his nose.

Everywhere, fluttering from every fence post, were slogans and tattered decrees:

‘Go to sleep quickly – your comrade needs your pillow!’

‘24 August. Nationalisation of Clothing – any person in possession of more than one overcoat to come and hand it in to their district Soviet, on pain of imprisonment.’

‘All ropes on church bells to be cut.’

‘Tax: On Hats – 30 roubles per item. On Pianos – 50 roubles. On Armchairs – 40 roubles.’

‘We must crush the Hydra of Counter-Revolution with Red Terror!’

‘Smash the Imperialist Bourgeoisie!’

‘Push the Bourgeoisie out of their nests!’

Scribbled all over these official announcements were appeals for missing people: Valentina Yurievna Yukova, aged sixty-four; Oleg Borisov, aged six; Georgy Alexandrov, aged four.

Pasha’s account of his Revolutionary Development was really the story of his love affair with the avant-garde. He began with the lectures on Cézanne where he and Nikita had first met, then broke off and recited the poetry of Mayakovsky to us, leaping about with excitement. I couldn’t quite believe in Pasha’s commitment to the Revolution – his dandyism seemed to undermine it, his moustache that he couldn’t resist trimming and curling even when it could have got him beaten up on the street, his (to my mind) ridiculously affected Scottish accent when he spoke English; above all his constant, ironic commentary on life. Yet he was entirely serious about art and the theatre. He insisted on dragging us to the theatre several times a week, to dramatic groups in factories and hospitals, barracks and converted churches, to performances that never had props and often lacked scripts or plots.

‘Don’t you understand, Gerty, you Galliffet, here you can see the new world as it’s summoned into being, one performance at a time.’

I often just wished I could have stayed at home in Gagarinsky Lane, rather than in these large, draughty halls full of rowdy workers, who heckled and occasionally stormed the stage if they felt the villains weren’t getting their comeuppance quickly enough.

Slavkin’s talks were more enjoyable, even though the Futurist revues in which he participated always ended in commotion. I remember one evening at the Café Pittoresk on Kuznetsky Bridge, decorated with abstract reliefs that jutted out from the walls and threatened to poke you in the eye. Slavkin’s lecture on the PropMash was followed by an act in which all the performers wore machine costumes made out of cardboard, eight or nine foot tall. They looked imposing but their voices were inaudible. After a while, tired of listening to muffled and incomprehensible fragments of poetry, the audience began to shout and throw things at the tiny stage.

‘Call yourselves men of the Future?’ yelled someone. ‘You’re not Futurists, you’re packets of biscuits!’

He leapt up on the stage and took a swing at the tallest robot. The Futurists threw off their cardboard tubes and a brawl ensued.

‘You pineapple-munchers! You donkeys! You… you… talcum powder!’ the poets shouted, enjoying themselves.

Through the crowd I suddenly caught sight of Emil Pelyagin, my student from the Hotel National. He looked out of place and panicky. I pushed my way through to him.

‘Comrade Pelyagin! What brings you here?’

We had talked about the event, I remembered. Pelyagin was having three hours of lessons a week, spread over two days, during which we discussed all sorts of subjects – politics and history as well as our childhoods (both spent in small towns), the IRT and Slavkin’s inventions. I had become quite fond of him.

He turned, and smiled – an awkward little closed-mouthed grimace – and immediately solemnised his face. ‘Comrade Freely,’ he said, with a bow. ‘Well, as a government official I try to keep myself abreast of developments in culture.’

I felt myself blushing, ridiculously. ‘Well, it’s… it’s very kind of you to come. Would you like to meet Slavkin, now you’re here?’

‘Certainly.’

I forced my way over to Slavkin, but Pelyagin was stuck behind a group of boys who were rather the worse for alcohol.

‘Oh, Nikita, my pupil wants to meet you – go and rescue him, won’t you?’ I gasped.

Slavkin, a foot taller than anyone else, passed through the crowd with ease, occasionally lifting tussling boys out of his way. With an amiable smile he arrived at Pelyagin’s side. Slavkin spoke civilly to him. The episode, framed by the flailing arms, yells and yodels of the crowd, played out like a scene in a silent film. ‘No, no, I’m quite all right,’ I saw Pelyagin answer, pulling himself upright, craning his neck back to meet Slavkin’s eye. Slavkin put a hand on his shoulder to guide him through the mêlée. Pelyagin shook his hand off, a mulish look on his face. Slavkin tried again. Pelyagin shrugged him aside, quite violently this time.