Birds of Heaven, and Other Stories

by Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko

It began, according to tradition, in the days of Stepan Timofeyevich Razin.... The workmen of Stenka robbed even in Arzamas. They fled from here to the north of Nizhny Novgorod, nested for a while in the village of Bolshoye Murashkino, and then passed on to Lyskovo and Makary. At their heels came the generals of the tsar and the bloody vengeance of the followers of Razin was followed by the not less bloody vengeance of the tsar.

During Peter’s reign in 1708, Kondrashka Bulavin sent from the free Don his “pleasant letters.” “Young atamans, lovers of travel, free people of every class, thieves and robbers! He who wishes to go with the military campaigning ataman Kondraty Afanasyevich Bulavin, he who wishes to raid with him, to travel gloriously, drink and eat as he will, ride over the open fields on fine horses, let him come to the black mountains of Samara.” ... So wrote the rebellious ataman to the Cossacks of the Don, to the Ukraine, and the Zaporozhian Syech. Along the Volga, through cities north and south, to worthy commanders, flew the message and also to the villages and towns. In long and business-like letters, carefully composed with a view to their political effect, he set forth all the oppressions of nobles and magnates, all the wrongs and injustice under which the land had long been suffering. The appeals of Kondrashka inflamed the whole land, more blood was shed, and savage was the vengeance of the people.... Again from Moscow advanced the regiments of troops in accordance with the terrible order of Tsar Peter:

“ ... Go through the cities and villages which have joined the robbers, burn them to the last straw, slay the people and torture the leaders on wheel and stake.... For this plague cannot be removed, except by sternness....”

In those days there was no lack of sternness and after the pacification even the cruel tsar wrote to Dolgoruky, not to execute the brother of the slain Bulavin, for many had joined the revolt from misapprehension or “from compulsion.”

The rebels were carried to Arzamas. Scaffolds, stakes, and wheels were erected along the roads and the city during one of these periods of vengeance was, in the words of an eye-witness quoted by Solovyev, “like hell”; for more than a week the groans of the victims of the terrible tortures filled the air and birds of prey hung over the places of execution.

After this pacification arose on the mountainside houses of the “Village of God,” and the people began to sing the requiems on the hillside....

Ere long the bone of the followers of Razin and of Bulavin were joined by the bones of the banished Stryeltsi (Guards).... Defiantly and in disobedience to the tsar’s order, they left Vekikiya Luki, whither they had been sent, and they stoutly resisted the tsar’s General, Shein, with a large force, but they were defeated in a desperate hand-to-hand encounter, as they were trying to cut their way through to Moscow to the Stryeltsi villages where their wives and children were living. The victorious general filled the prisons and dungeons of Arzamas with the men who had disobeyed the tsar’s orders. The ring-leaders were punished. The tsar returning from abroad was dissatisfied with the weakness and the mildness shown by Shein to the rebels. A judge was sent from Moscow to make a new investigation.... There were not enough executioners in the city to administer the new tortures and punishments and more had to be summoned from Moscow for the occasion....

New houses were added to the “Village of God.” ...

Drenched with blood, the naïve and rebellious dream of the people for a free life died away until new outbreaks commenced, a dream closely connected with the old cross and the beard, with Cossack bands, and with confused memories of the freedom of the steppes. The old injustice weighed more and more heavily upon them and hardened and increased their century-old suffering. The memory of the people involuntarily returned to those who promised freedom and who sealed this promise with their own and others’ blood.... Time and time again, like stones washed down to the shore by the raging torrent, new groups of “houses of God” appeared on the slopes of the mountain of Arzamas.

At first, perhaps, each grave preserved the memory of a definite man, his name, and his saint on an ikon. Some one would bring these ikons and sprinkle the tombs of shame with passionate tears of love and sympathy. These mourners died.... The wind, the rains, and the sun faded the faces on the ikons, and along with these there perished the living personal memory of the people buried here. There remained hanging above the mountain only a vague tradition and a vague popular feeling, ... a feeling of sad inability to comprehend, which dared not pronounce its own judgment and presented this to heaven.... And down the centuries, from year to year, even to our own times, sounds the solemn prayer for all those who had been put to death, be they innocent or guilty, and for all those who died an unknown death....