Official for special assignments. Some forgotten positions The official of special assignments had a legal education

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Pavel Alekseevich Zasetsky

Pavel Alekseevich Zasetsky was born in the village of Kovyrin in 1780. From the form list, written in his own hand in 1828 in a clear, beautiful, legible handwriting, we learn that he received a very good education for a nobleman of that time. Pavel Alekseevich had an excellent command of German and French, studied mathematics, geography, and history.

From early childhood, according to the custom of his time, Pavel Alekseevich was enrolled in the Life Guards Preobrazhensky Regiment. As we would say now, to one of the elite guards regiments. In 1791, as an eleven-year-old boy, he was listed as a sergeant there. But due to the reorganization of the Guards regiments in 1803, he began to serve in 1804 as a lieutenant officer in the new Peter the Great Musketeer Regiment (also a Guards regiment, the companies of which were assigned, among other things, from the Preobrazhensky Regiment). Six years later, in 1810, with the rank of staff captain, he retired due to illness and returned to Vologda, to Kovyrino. This ends his military career.

Soon he marries the daughter of the Gryazovets district judge, artillery second lieutenant Alexander Andreevich Gryazev. In 1812, P.A. Zasetsky was appointed honorary caretaker of the Veliky Ustyug School, and in 1816 he began serving in the Vologda provincial government. For his service as an honorary caretaker, he was promoted to the rank of titular councilor.

In Vologda, P.A. Zasetsky was repeatedly noted as a capable and efficient official. But he also could not avoid troubles in his career. Whether through the machinations of ill-wishers or the will of evil chance, Pavel Alekseevich found himself under investigation three times. For the first time, allegedly for abuses when concluding contracts for the transportation of Admiralty cargo to the city of Arkhangelsk. The second time, and for a completely trivial reason - for not declaring that he was supposedly in the service of the Ministry of Education. The third time the charge was more serious. In 1827, Zasetsky was accused of embezzling money in the amount of up to 24 thousand rubles in the Vologda provincial government. A considerable amount of money at that time, however, as Zasetsky points out in his formal list, he was found innocent in all cases, and for incorrectly accusing him in the last embezzlement case, the Vologda Chamber of Criminal Court and the civil governor even received punishment from high authorities.

It should be noted that this did not interfere with the further successful career of Pavel Alekseevich. The reason for this, perhaps, lies in the following: the Kovyrinsky Zasetskys had extensive family ties with famous and significant people: they were related to the Ostolopovs, one of whom was the Vologda vice-governor from 1814 to 1819, as well as to Count Pavel Vasilyevich Golenishchev-Kutuzov , member of the State Council, St. Petersburg Governor-General. P.A. Zasetsky and Count Golenishchev-Kutuzov, figuratively speaking, were fourth cousins ​​through their great-great-grandfather Vasily Ivanovich Zhidovinov.

The relationship with the Vologda vice-governor Ostolopov was worth a lot, and the fact that the Kovyrin Zasetskys and Nikolai Fedorovich Ostolopov (depicted in the figure) had a very close relationship is evidenced by the fact that in 1803 an epitaph on death appeared in Karamzin’s journal “Bulletin of Europe” young Vasily Alekseevich Zasetsky, the younger brother of Pavel Alekseevich, with whom Ostolopov was the same age.

IN Ѣ STNIK
EUROPE
published
Nikolai Karamzin.
MOSCOW, 1803
Epitaph to V. A. Zasitsky.

To the ground ѣ - only his ashes; the soul is in heaven.
He is dead - at rest; we are alive - but in tears.

In 1827, Zasetsky was appointed as an official of special assignments to the Moscow Civil Governor, and then continued to serve as an official of special assignments to the St. Petersburg Military Governor (who was then precisely his distant relative Count Pavel Vasilyevich Golenishchev-Kutuzov - depicted in the figure).

We all remember well the official for special assignments Fandorin. So what was this position? It turns out that this was an employee who worked under a high-ranking person (governor, governor-general, minister) and carried out assignments that were not part of the duties of regular officials. Often these were secret assignments. Often, officials for special assignments were classified as supernumerary in institutions, that is, they did not receive a salary, but were awarded from special sums and received ranks for their length of service. This service was considered honorable, close to the authorities and not too burdensome.

Pavel Alekseevich Zasetsky was a wealthy landowner. In the alphabet book for the years 1829-1832, 1023 souls in more than 50 villages are recorded behind him. In addition, the Zasetskys had houses in Vologda and St. Petersburg. Unlike his predecessors, Pavel Zasetsky spent considerable money on charity and made generous donations to churches. For example, it is known that it was with the funds of the Zasetskys that the new stone building of the Govorovsko-Virgin Church was built. Pavel Alekseevich was undoubtedly a very religious person. If his grandfather, retired captain Vasily Zasetsky, dragged the priest by the beard, and his ancestor, according to legend, crucified the monk Nicodemus who had bothered him in the Ustyug lands, then retired captain Pavel Zasetsky was elected church warden in the parish of the church he built.

P.A. Zasetsky also generously donated to charitable causes.

In the “Gubernskie Gazette” dated April 23, 1838 (No. 17 p. 143), a detailed report was published on how the funds received as interest were distributed from the capital donated by the late staff captain Pavel Alekseevich Zasetsky in the amount of 10,000 rubles . According to the will of the donor, this money was transferred on the day of Holy Easter to prisoners of a Vologda prison (50 rubles), residents of several Vologda almshouses (150 rubles), and also went to ransom people held in a workhouse for government debts (200 rubles) . In addition, two “poor girls of the rank of chief officer” received 50 rubles each as a dowry.

P.A. Zasetsky had five children: three sons and two daughters. The sons were raised in a Moscow boarding school, and daughter Ekaterina was raised in the Moscow Catherine Institute, a very prestigious educational institution.

Pavel Alekseevich Zasetsky died suddenly, as indicated in the registry book “from paralysis,” on November 17, 1833, and was buried in the cemetery at the Govorovo-Virgin Church.

Memories of Russian service Alfred Keyserling

“OFFICIAL FOR SPECIAL ASSIGNMENTS” (EDITOR’S AFTERWORD)

"OFFICIAL FOR SPECIAL ASSIGNMENTS"

(EDITOR'S AFTERWORD)

“As an official for special assignments, I am constantly on the move”

A. Keyserling.

“I have lived a turbulent life, full of sorrow and joy, success and failure. My carefree childhood was spent in my parents' house in Stanniun, my father's large Lithuanian estate, in Mitau and in various German schools, then there were years of study in Dorpat, and after university - service in St. Petersburg, in the Ministry of Finance. By a happy coincidence, back in 1886 - I was then 25 years old - the Amur Governor-General Baron Andrei Nikolaevich Korf called me to his place in Khabarovsk, in the far east of Siberia, to the position of an official for special assignments...” - this is how Alfred Keyserling began “ its section" in the "Book of Keyserlings" - a publication of family chronicles, published in Berlin in 1944 (Das Buch der Keyserlinge. An der Grenze zweier Welten. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1944). His memoirs supplemented and continued the previously published book “Count Alfred Keyserling tells...” (Graf Alfred Keyserling erz?hlt... Kaunas-Leipzig: Ostverlag der Buch-hand-lung Pribacis, 1937). Only today, at the beginning of the new century, the memoirs of a Courland nobleman, who devoted several decades of his stormy life to fulfilling the duties of an official of the Russian Empire, contained in these two books, are becoming accessible to the Russian reader.

In one work, the reader is offered an autobiography, memoirs, ethnographic notes, a historical source (materials for literary portraits of Russian statesmen and the history of Russian hard labor), and fragments of a documentary detective story. The facts, entertaining descriptions, strong characters and unexpected plot twists contained in Count Keyserling's memoirs would be enough to create a fascinating historical novel. The characters in the story, in addition to the “extras” - convicts, Amur Cossacks, Buryat horse breeders, Mongolian lamas, Siberian “foreigners”, etc., are real historical figures, statesmen who influenced not only the fate of Alfred Keyserling, but also on the fate of Russia: heir to the throne, and then Emperor Nicholas II, ex-minister Bulygin, minister Maklakov and future prime minister Lvov, Governor General Korf and Governor Adlerberg, Prince of Oldenburg... These are only those whose intervention had a direct, positive or negative, influence on the author's life. In addition to them, Keyserling casually mentions or recalls in more detail many famous people with whom fate brought him together - the philanthropist Sibiryakov, the orientalist Ukhtomsky, Admiral Alekseev, the publisher Boris Suvorin, not to mention those more modest heroes of the story who are identified by the author only by name, surnames or nicknames (“convict Orlov”, “cook Rupert”, “Ahasfer”, “Pers”), or - whether due to some secrets that the count did not consider possible to reveal, but rather due to weakened memory or the seeming insignificance of them names - hidden under the initials L., S., N., N.N., or designated by position, nationality or social status - “Buryat student”, “hutukhta”, “adjutant”, “young prince-prisoner”...

In addition to the heroes of this “autobiographical novel,” attention is drawn to the circumstances in which they - the heroes - have to act. The “scenery” of most of the book is the Amur hard labor of the late 80s - early 90s. XIX century The genre of prison stories in Russian literature is not new (starting with “Notes from the House of the Dead” by Dostoevsky, the stories of Korolenko and the now little-known “In the World of the Rejected” by L. Melshin), and even a single Transbaikal hard labor can be considered quite documented (primarily thanks to the book “Siberia and Exile” by the American George Kennan, who visited these places in 1885–1886). Dostoevsky was an eyewitness, but he wrote about penal servitude from an earlier period; Kennan was primarily interested in political prisoners; Chekhov visited Sakhalin in 1890, but he had completely different tasks and was forbidden to communicate with political figures. In relation to Chekhov, Keyserling is an eyewitness from the inside, not a metropolitan correspondent with limited capabilities (Chekhov himself wrote that in the eyes of the security officers, “I have no right to come close to hard labor and the colony, since I am not in the public service”), but a person for whom hard labor is part of work and everyday life; Unlike Dostoevsky, Keyserling is an observer from the outside, for he found himself in hard labor not as a prisoner, but, in his words (though somewhat exaggerated), “the authorized manager of the prison department.” And it is even more paradoxical to read that part of the memoirs where the old count recalls his own short imprisonment in the Peter and Paul Fortress and admires the expediency of the prison structure there (in the Bolshevik prison in Siberia, comparisons with past experience are already powerless).

This part of the book - “Imprisonment in the Peter and Paul Fortress” - is the only one where the author not only reproduces events, but also tries (albeit very restrainedly and laconically) to restore his impressions, emotions, and hallucinations. This page of life is fresh in Keyserling’s memory even twenty years later, and it is not surprising that the detailed account of these few weeks in solitary confinement is brighter, more emotional and detailed than, for example, memories of the subsequent years of the World War. This is a real spy detective story, which, by the way, is based on a typical semiotic error, defined as the decryption of a message based on an incorrect code. However, if Keyserling had known the word “semiotics,” then methodological problems at that moment would have interested him least of all...

When characterizing Alfred Keyserling as a memoirist, it is necessary to remember the significant chronological gap between the facts described, their assessment and their recording. As follows from the foreword by Otto von Grunewaldt, the recording of memories is as about the Amur penal servitude inspected by Keyserling in the 80s. XIX century and the trip through Transbaikalia of the heir to the throne Nikolai Alexandrovich (future Emperor Nicholas II) in 1891, and about the revolution and post-revolutionary events - was made only in 1935; thus, the gap ranges from 15 to 40-plus years. One can only envy the memory of the count, who was already over seventy at the time of writing his memoirs! In addition, the recording was made by the same von Grunewaldt, who “had a good command of the pen” and, obviously, subjected the story of his already poorly seen relative to some literary processing (however, he managed to avoid “romanization”). Nevertheless, the content and style of presentation allow us to form an impression of the author and the main character.

Alfred Keyserling throughout almost his entire narrative tries to remain exclusively an observer, and an objective observer at that. Of course, chronological distance from the events described made this task easier, but he, being a witness to both personal tragedies and historical turning points, tries to avoid emotional outbursts, categorical assessments and global generalizations, but describes his subjective reaction. However, his reaction is rather restrained - one often gets the impression that the count considers it necessary to simply express the feelings appropriate to the moment. He remains an almost impassive witness, a detached observer, and even regarding political events he delicately expresses only his private opinion. Yes, these political events, in the assessment of which historians have broken so many copies, interest him only to the extent that they influenced his own life. It is difficult to even create a political portrait of Keyserling - he is a monarchist, strictly observing court subordination, but aware of the weakness of Nicholas II (as opposed to the respectful assessment of Alexander III); in no way a revolutionary, although he pays tribute to political prisoners; not a reactionary, not a “patriot” (or rather, being German by blood, he turns out to be more attached to Siberia than to European Russia) - he is simply an official recording his observations. “Communication with “political” people in Siberia taught me that personal decency and honesty do not depend on political beliefs. I was guided by the rule: a zemstvo official must be a decent person and honestly fulfill his duties in the service of the zemstvo; he has no need to get involved in politics.” This is an ordinary person who lived in turbulent times and, due to the nature of his service, found himself in extraordinary circumstances, striving to fulfill his official duties with the utmost precision (characterizing himself, he notes only his “ability to understand complex matters and quickly carry them out”). He is an “official for special assignments.” It seems that this position, with which his service record began, left an imprint on the rest of his life, and the qualities and skills acquired in the service under the command of Baron Korff later determined Keyserling’s actions, attitudes and assessments.

The uniqueness of his time, his own destiny, the opportunity to witness unique events, the value of meeting the most interesting people are well understood by the author of the memoirs. But at the same time, he himself tries, as far as possible within the framework of the memoir genre, to remain aloof: he is only a witness, the heroes are different. It is unlikely that this is a conscious author’s position; rather, it is a consequence of natural modesty, noble upbringing and court school (in part, perhaps, of literary style). It is difficult to blame him for familiarity - not “Baron Korff and I,” but respectfully “Baron Korff and I.” Describing Mr. Moetus, he credits him with “a thorough acquaintance with these territories, acquired during our long joint travels,” but he never calls himself an expert on local history. Talking about his stay in Germany, he does not talk about his relationship with the local elite, but only writes that he is familiar with several families related to the highest East Prussian society (but before that he mentions that these families are his brother and cousins). And the main result of his many years of stay in Transbaikalia, in Keyserling’s assessment, is not the exemplary performance of official duties, not the colorful impressions of Buryatia, Mongolia, Sakhalin, not the circle of acquaintances, not the recommendations of the authorities and not the favor of the emperor, but, above all, the acquired life experience: “There I learned to stand on my own two feet.”

True, being in the zemstvo service is a different matter. Here the author speaks directly about his services for the benefit of the zemstvo, his acquaintances in high circles, about envy, and about his enemies. For him personally, this service, these successes are more important. But successes seem to be a natural result of previous activities: Keyserling, both in the zemstvo service and subsequently at work in Zemgora, remains an “official for special assignments” - he receives an assignment or takes on the type of activity offered to him, and interest in these assignments or new activities is developed in the process execution; His characteristic honesty, prudence, practicality and obvious entrepreneurial spirit allow him to adapt to circumstances and fulfill his obligations in an exemplary manner, be it rescuing documents from besieged Port Arthur, building a holiday village near St. Petersburg, organizing food supplies from Siberia on the instructions of the Prince of Oldenburg, creating a “foreign labor commune” in a Bolshevik concentration camp or growing tomatoes near Novgorod.

Meanwhile, the author writes not only about correcting other people’s mistakes (this is where, in his words, the service of “official for special assignments” began), but does not hesitate to talk about his own mistakes - in cases where these mistakes had an impact on others people (“Subsequently, this decision of mine turned out to be a mistake, which I bitterly regretted”). He tries to be objective in relation to everyone: if his official powers allow, he restores prisoners’ families and transfers convicts to “domestic work”, uses his house as an infirmary for a dying arrested prince, rightly relies on the prisoner’s word and political guarantees, but at the same time does not stops before the need to use corporal punishment. He proceeds from the fact that every person - from an official to a convict - must strictly fulfill his duties, and at the same time is ready to respect their rights. Evidence of this is the case with the coachman Orlov: “I didn’t want to force Orlov, I (...) knew that I had to let him go his own way.” In the same way, the count monitors the observance of the rights of the indigenous peoples of Siberia and the fulfillment of government obligations in relation to them.

These chapters of the book, dedicated to meetings with the peoples of Transbaikalia, the Ussuri region, the Amur region, Mongolia, receptions from a Chinese mandarin, and a trip to the Khutukta in Urga, are a most valuable ethnographic source. Alfred Keyserling understands that a clash with civilization - at least in the form of gangsters who rob and drive the aborigines from their territories, corrupt police officials and Orthodox missionaries fighting Lamaism without bothering to penetrate its essence - is destructive for the natives. True, for him this is, first of all, a failure to comply with the guarantees given by the government and a violation of job descriptions, but he tries to impartially, carefully and accurately record the features of their life, clothing, household, food, rituals, realizing that all these original features inevitably smooth out and disappear . It is characteristic that at the same time the government official took the point of view of an ethnographer or anthropologist - to look at an alien culture from the inside, again becoming a witness and realizing the value of his observations: “In order to truly fulfill my task, it was necessary to spend a certain time among foreigners, living with them life. Everything that I saw and experienced then is already a thing of the past...”

Keyserling falls in love with Siberia (however, it should be taken into account that the author interprets the concept of “Siberia” very narrowly - for him, at least in the first part, it is primarily Transbaikalia, and the history of the annexation of Siberia was limited to Ermak’s campaign). He is confident that the annexation of this richest region to Russia, the intensification of its development and integration into the Russian economy will lead to negative consequences, and that Siberia, which has natural resources, human resources, and a unique tradition of land use, has also developed its own, different from the Eurocentric ones. , geopolitical landmarks, it would be much better to develop independently. What is good for European Russia is disastrous for Siberia, and this is especially true for Bolshevism. Not accepting the Bolshevik revolution, Keyserling “emigrates” to his now native Siberia, he is inspired by the possibility of Siberia’s separation from Soviet Russia, but further events lead to deep disappointment, family tragedies, loss of property (including archives, diaries, photographic documents), endless escape... And only a decade and a half later, succumbing to persuasion, Alfred Keyserling decides to entrust the “chronicle of special assignments” to paper and, secluded with his brother-in-law in the Estonian Haapsalu, remember and dictate.

Keyserling’s book is a historical source practically unknown in the author’s homeland, and as such it needs its own meticulous researcher who will appreciate the importance and uniqueness of the memories of the “official for special assignments” and take the trouble to compare them with other documents and check the facts , compose detailed comments, restore in some cases the sequence of events and biographies of the mentioned “minor” characters, establish the identities of anonymous “adjutants”, “Buryat students”, N., S... In the meantime, the “return of Keyserling” itself to Russia, to the Russian reader is important , for whom, in fact, these memoirs were written.

In this edition, the reader is offered both books of A.G.’s memoir heritage. Keyserling - Parts I–IV (as well as the “Final Word”) are taken from the book “Count Alfred Keyserling Tells...”, their continuation Parts V–VI and the chapter “Gold Mines of the Kwantung Region”, placed for the purpose of restoring the sequence of events in Part III of this edition - from the “Book of Keyserlings”. When preparing such a publication, it was necessary to constantly keep in mind that the translation and first publication of a historical source in a number of cases has the rights of the original, and its changes and distortions are equivalent to unauthorized “co-authorship.” Editorial work has been reduced to minor reductions due to repetitions (mention of the same events in different places of the text), consolidation of excessively fractional initial headings due to the merging of unjustifiably small paragraphs (in these cases, as a rule, “double” chapter titles are given) or vice versa , mechanical isolation of independent chronological and semantic parts, making it easier to navigate the text (thus, the single part in the German version “On Siberian hard labor” in this edition is divided into three: “On Amur hard labor”, “Accompanying the crown prince” and “Transbaikalia and Siberia” ). All cuts, changes in composition and rubrication of the author's text are made without prejudice to the content.

It is clear that personal archives, documents and photographs relating to Count Keyserling's Russian service were lost during the Civil War. For this reason, the illustrations in the book are of a compensatory nature: in particular, photographs from the archives of the State Central Museum of Contemporary History of Russia, the Tsarskoye Selo Museum-Reserve, and documents from the Russian State Historical Archive were used. The Appendix contains a genealogical excursion “Counts of Keyserlings”, comments and indexes. Although I might meet some boy Oseika or convict N.N. the author of memoirs often pays much more attention than the casually mentioned princes, governors or fellow ministers; the publishers decided not to abandon the name index, traditional for publishing memoirs.

The translation of the book into Russian was made from the German edition by N. Fedorova and provided by K. Eckstein, the great-grandson of Count A. Keyserling, whose deepest interest in returning the heritage of his ancestor to Russia made this publication possible.

It is necessary to note the great assistance of Yu. Berestneva, A. Bychkova, I. Iseli and M. Ivanova in searching and selecting illustrative and reference materials and preparing the text. The authors of the comments express gratitude to the Deputy Head of the Department of the State Archives of the Russian Federation I.S. Tikhonov, director of the Pushkin Museum of Local Lore N.A. Davydova and the staff of M.A. Moschenikova and N.A. Kornilova, head Sector of Art of Central Asia of the State Museum of Oriental T.V. Sergeeva, employees of the State Museum-Reserve “Tsarskoe Selo” T.Z. Zharkova and V. Plauda, ​​employees of the Russian State Historical Archive.