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 BEHEMOTH
T H E ST R U C T U R E AN D PRACTICE OF

NA TIO NAL SOCIALISM

1933-1944

FRANZ N E U M A N N

W ith an Introduction by Peter- Hayes

Ivan R. Dee ■ Chicago • 2009

P U B L I S H E D IN A S SO C IA T IO N W I T H T H E
UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM
B E H E M O T H . C o p y rig h t © 1 9 4 2 , 1 9 4 4 b y O x fo rd U n iv e rs ity P re ss. C o p y r ig h t re n e w e d
1 9 7 0 , 1 9 7 2 b y M rs. In g e S. M a rc u s e . I n tr o d u c tio n c o p y r ig h t © 2 0 0 9 b y P e te r H a y e s .
Behem oth w a s f irs t p u b li s h e d in 1 9 4 2 a n d is h e r e r e p r i n t e d b y a r r a n g e m e n t w i t h M ic h a e l
N e u m a n n . A ll r ig h t s r e s e r v e d , i n c l u d i n g t h e r i g h t t o r e p r o d u c e t h i s b o o k o r p o r t i o n s
t h e r e o f in a n y f o r m . F o r i n f o r m a t i o n , a d d r e s s : I v a n R . D e e , P u b l i s h e r , 1 3 3 2 N o r t h
H a ls te d S tr e e t, C h i c a g o 6 0 6 4 2 , a m e m b e r o f t h e R o w m a n & L i t t l e f i e l d P u b l i s h i n g
G r o u p . M a n u f a c t u r e d in t h e U n i t e d S ta t e s o f A m e r i c a a n d p r i n t e d o n a c i d - f r t e p a p e r .

w w w .iv a n r d e e .c o m

PUBLISHED IN A S SO C IA TI O N W I T H T H E
UN IT ED STATES HO LOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSE UM

T h e a s s e r tio n s , a r g u m e n t s , a n d c o n c lu s io n s c o n t a i n e d h e r e i n a r e t h o s e o f t h e a u t h o r o r
o t h e r c o n t r i b u t o r s . T h e y d o n o t n e c e s s a r i ly r e f l e c t t h e o p i n i o n s o f t h e U n i t e d S ta t e s
H o lo c a u s t M e m o ria l M u s e u m .

L ib ra ry o f C o n g re s s C o n tr o l N u m b e r: 2 0 0 9 9 2 3 4 6 6

I S B N : 1 - 5 6 6 6 3 - 8 1 9 - 7 ( p b k : a lk . p a p e r )
TO MY WIFE
 INTRODUCTION
by Peter H a y es

Behemoth is one o f the classics of m odem political

F r a n z N e u m a n n ’s
analysis. Recognized upon publication during W orld W ar II as the first
thoroughly researched unmasking of what the subtitle promised— the
structure and practice o f Nazism — the book has remained a stimulus to
inquiry and debate to this day. T h e provocative and controversial cen­
tral argum ent, telegraphed by the choice of title, is that the T h ird Reich
neither expressed a consistent ideology nor possessed a coherent struc­
ture. Like the Behem oth in Jewish m ythology and the writings o f
T h o m as H obbes, H itle r’s regime was a chaotic, lawless, and amorphous
monster. Its policies expressed the sometimes overlapping and som e­
times contending drives o f the four symbiotic but separate power cen­
ters (the N azi party, the G erm an state bureaucracy, the armed forces,
and big business) that composed it. Both the enorm ous might and the
inherent vulnerability of N azi G erm any stemmed, according to N eu ­
m ann, from its very nature as a conspiracy am ong these four self-
interested groups, each o f which sought to expand G erm an power and
territory w ithout ceding authority or status to any of the other parties.
T h is thesis, backed by the au th o r’s at the time unrivaled command
o f evidence culled from G erm an newspapers, periodicals, and official
publications, quickly made Behemoth into a book that had consequences.
In 1943-1945, while N eum ann was serving in W ashington, D.C., in the
Office o f Strategic Services, the forerunner o f the Central Intelligence
Agency, his work strongly influenced the form ulation o f A m erica’s
goals for postwar G erm any as the “ four Ds,” each directed at one o f the
colluding groups he had highlighted: denazification, democratization
(including the recruitm ent and training of civil servants), demilitariza­
tion, and decartelization. Immediately after the war, when N eum ann
was a m em ber o f the prosecution staff preparing the N urem berg Trials
o f m ajor war criminals, Behemoth stamped both the conception of the
American case and the organization o f its supporting documents.
“ Conspiracy” to com m it crimes against peace and humanity was the
centerpiece o f the American charges against not only the 22 principal
vii
Vlll INTRODUCTION BY PETER HAYES
war crim inals bro u g h t before the International M ilitary Tribunal in
1945-1946 but also against the 185 lesser figures from the Nazi party,
the state bureaucracy, the armed forces, and industry and banking who
were arraigned before American judges in the twelve N urem berg M ili­
tary Tribunals o f 1947-1949. A lthough this approach had multiple ori­
gins, n ot least in the Sherm an A nti-T rust Act and the prosecution of
m obsters in the U nited States, the conspiracy charge also reflected the
impact o f N e u m a n n ’s depiction of H itle r’s regime. So did the way the
U n ited States categorized captured G erm an records for use as evidence
in both sets o f proceedings. Before being assigned numbers, relevant
papers were sorted am ong four groups, each with a distinct prefix that
referred to one of N e u m a n n ’s quadrum virate o f power structures (N O
= N azi organization, th at is, the party; N G = N azi governm ent;
N O K W = Nazi M ilitary H igh C om m and; and N I = Nazi industry).
Significant as these responses to Behemoth were, they proved fleeting.
As the Cold W ar froze on a line through G erm any, the U nited States
steadily backed away from the “ four D s,” turning denazification over
to the G erm ans, abandoning attem pts at civil service reform, urging
the creation o f a new W est G erm an army, and accepting the reconsol­
idation o f the c o u n try ’s largest banks and industrial enterprises. By
19 5 5 , w hen the Federal Republic o f G erm any recovered full sover­
eignty from the W estern occupying powers, the U n ited States had
com pleted a “ retreat to victory” that forsook the specific objectives for
which Behemoth had pleaded in order to obtain G erm an cooperation in
the larger purpose o f building a nonaggressive and nonauthoritarian
governm ent and society. Along the way, the legal notion o f “conspir­
acy,” along with the in terp retation o f N azi rule that it summarized, had
won little acceptance as a tool o f international law. Indeed, the charge
was the least successful o f the counts against the defendants at both
sets o f N u rem b e rg trials: the International Tribunal found only eight
defendants guilty o f conspiracy to com m it crimes against peace or hu­
manity, all o f them high-ranking people closely associated with H itler
in m aking national policy; upon final review o f all cases, the N urem berg
Tribunals did no t convict a single individual so charged.
I f the rulings at N u rem b erg offered an early and shrewd indication
o f where and how Behemoth came to seem unpersuasive, a nearly simul­
taneous and far less dram atic developm ent elsewhere provided an ironic
harbinger o f the book’s lasting value. In 1948, Franz N eum ann joined
the faculty at Colum bia U niversity in N ew York and encountered a
 IN TRODUCTION BY PETER HAYES ix
young graduate student named Raul Hilberg, who had been impressed
by Behemoth's focus on the machinery of Nazi rule and the ways in
which preexisting structures had put their talent and experience to the
service o f criminality. After he completed a m aster’s thesis under N e u ­
m an n ’s direction on the role of the G erm an bureaucracy in the m urder
o f the European Jews, H ilberg approached N eum ann about supervising
a doctoral dissertation that would extend the story to cover the involve­
m en t o f the Nazi party, business, and the military as well. T h e professor
assented, but added the w arning that tackling this topic would am ount
to com m itting professional suicide since few people were interested.
N eu m an n died in an autom obile accident in 1954, a year before H il­
berg com pleted the dissertation, and thus never knew that Behemoth
had inspired what became The Destruction o f the European Jews, the m o n ­
um ental work, first published in 1961, that ultimately emerged as the
foundational text for the study o f the Holocaust. N eith er did N eum ann
live to see the o th er enduring intellectual spin-offs of his work, such as
T im M aso n ’s dem onstration o f “ the primacy o f politics” in Nazism (a
phrase that N eu m an n was am ong the first to highlight), W illiam Sheri­
dan Allen’s deploym ent o f N eu m an n ’s concept o f “ atomization” to ex­
plain the Nazification of G erm an society, M artin Broszat’s elaboration
o f the incoherence of N azi ideology, H ans M om m sen’s development
o f the “ functionalist” explanation o f Nazi policymaking, P eter H u e t-
ten b erg er’s emphasis on the “polycratic” nature of Nazi governance,
and countless o ther examples.
Both the fertility o f Behemoth, its capacity to generate new explora­
tion and perception, and the b o o k ’s inclination to ideological over­
reach, which the N u re m b e rg trial judgm ents highlighted, had their
origins in Franz N e u m a n n ’s intellectual biography. B om in 1900 to a
lower-middle-class Jewish family in Kattowitz, near G erm any’s eastern
border, N eu m an n becam e an active Social D em ocrat as a teenager,
earned a doctorate in law in 1923, and embarked on a career as a labor
attorney, primarily representing unions, first in Frankfurt and then in
Berlin. As a supporter of the W eim ar Republic and a Marxist, he was a
target o f persecution almost from the m om ent H itler came to power in
January 1933. A m o n th ’s im prisonm ent was enough to persuade him to
flee to England, where he took up graduate studies in political science
at the London School of Economics. T h e re he completed a second
doctorate in 1936 under the direction of Professor Harold Laski, a cele­
brated figure on the British intellectual left, with a dissertation on the
X INTRODUCTION BY PETER HAYES
rise and fall o f the rule o f law. Laski thereupon recom m ended N eu ­
mann to the Institute for Social Research, a collection of heterodox
Marxist thinkers that Max H orkheim er presciently had moved from
Frankfurt to N ew York on the eve of the Nazi takeover in Germany.
This was N eu m a n n ’s intellectual hom e until 1942, during the period in
which he w rote the first edition o f Behemoth.
In short, N eu m ann was shaped by his G erm an upbringing, his train­
ing as a lawyer and political scientist, not a historian, and his virtually
uninterrupted im m ersion in the political imagination of European so­
cialism. From these sprang the distinguishing formal characteristics of
Behemoth , for both good and ill— its nearly exclusive reliance on con­
tem porary G erm an source material; its preoccupation with legal philos­
ophy and with regulations, institutions, and lines o f authority; its
inclination to fit empirical data into the framework o f M arxist theory;
and its sometimes dauntingly dry and discursive prose style— as well as
the principal interpretive assertions, b oth sound and otherwise, in each
o f the three parts into which N eu m ann organized the book: N azi poli­
tics, economics, and society.
T h e greatest o f N e u m an n ’s insights in to the political side of Nazi
rule concerned how policy was effected and popular compliance ob­
tained, and his take on these issues was unmistakably th at o f a G erm an
lawyer and leftist. H is legal training was indispensable to his capacity
to see through the N azi facade o f dictatorial unity and to perceive that
“ the legal and administrative forms tell us very little” about the real
distribution o f pow er in N azi G erm any (p. 227). N eu m an n recognized
that the Nazi regime, unlike m ost m o d em governing systems, became
from its outset ever less vertically and hierarchically organized, with
competencies apportioned am ong agencies and degrees o f control over
policy indicated by rank. Instead the T h ird Reich developed into a
“task state,” in which specific goals were entrusted to prized individuals
outfitted with special authority in a fashion that cut across bureaucratic
domains and the lines o f organization charts and gave rise to constant
tu rf battles, usually won by the officeholder with the strongest will and
web o f allies, n o t necessarily the highest title. A sort o f institutional
Darwinism was created on purpose, both because H itler and his chief
lieutenants relished the rhetoric o f “leadership” over th at o f “adm ini­
stration” and because in the N azi drive for expansion, time always was
o f the essence, shortcuts always in demand. T h u s plenipotentiaries pro ­
liferated and became m ore im portant than cabinet members, special
 INTRODU CTION BY PETER HAYES xi
offices m ultiplied and overrode ministries. And, thought N eum ann, this
constant im provisation and infighting worked, at least in the short run,
because the energies unleashed m ore than offset the confusion caused
(p. 524). O nly som eone with a taste for institutional study and the pa­
tience to parse the regim e’s countless decrees and formal regulations
could perceive, from afar and before the postwar testim ony and m em ­
oirs o f num erous Nazi insiders along with tons o f captured documents
confirm ed the point, the essentially haphazard and impulsive nature of
m uch o f N azi governm ent.
Similarly, N e u m a n n ’s leftism fostered his attentiveness to the range
o f techniques by which the N azi regime m aintained the loyalty o f the
G erm an populace. H is attachm ent to the G erm an w orking class and to
the positive aspects of G erm an culture, backed by his awareness that
H itle r never received a m ajority o f the vote in G erm any before the
abolition o f all o th e r political parties, barred N eu m ann from seeing
N azism as a manifestation o f G erm ans’ deepest longings. H itler came
to power, N e u m a n n believed, because o f the m achinations o f elites and
the feckless leadership o f the Nazi Führer's chief political rivals (pp.
31-34). G erm ans did his bidding thereafter for a com bination o f rea­
sons o th e r than straightforward enthusiasm for his ideas. Some of these
reasons fall under the heading o f seduction, for example, N azism ’s skill
at “ surrounding every perfidy with the halo o f idealism” (p. 379) and
adroit use o f “ magical cerem onies” (p. 439). Above all, H itle r’s party
was diabolically adept at stealing the ideological clothes o f Marxism (p.
193), especially as Nazi propaganda draped G erm an expansionism in
the language of class warfare by depicting the Allies as plutocrats d eter­
m ined to suppress the proletarian Axis powers (p. 187). O th e r forces
inducing subordination o f the people included corruption and terror.
O n the one hand, the acceptance o f property and jobs despoiled from
Jews and the involvement in their persecution, along with that o f occu­
pied nations, created a sense o f complicity that produced obedience.
O n the other hand, the destruction of social groupings n o t permeated
by Nazism (atomization) and the om nipresent fear o f provoking a polit­
ical system characterized “ by the absence o f any institutional limita­
tions upon . . . arbitrary pow er” generated conformism (p. 524; see also
pp. 365, 400, and 552). Nowadays, when a “voluntarist tu rn ” in the
historiography o f Nazi G erm any is in vogue, underlining G erm ans’
widespread and “willing” participation in Nazi tyranny, N eum an n ’s de-
X ll IN TRO DU CTIO N BY PETER HAYES
piction o f the role o f violence in the relationship between regime and
populace remains a useful corrective.
Behemoth's analysis o f the N azi econom y also benefited in key re­
spects from his legal and leftist cast o f m ind. M arxist interpretations o f
fascism and N azism treated them , above all, as “ im perialist” m ove­
ments, seeing their expansionism as an expression o f large-scale capital­
ism ’s needs for markets and resources. If, as discussed below, the latter
part of this form ula led N eu m an n astray, the form er assuredly did not.
It concentrated his attention on war, conquest, and the dem and for the
wherewithal to make them possible as n ot only the driving but also the
organizing principle o f econom ic life in the T h ird Reich (p. 228). T h is
single-mindedness is what underlay the regim e’s pursuit o f autarky, that
is, m axim um feasible econom ic self-sufficiency, w hich N eu m an n
rightly recognized (w ithout having access to H itle r’s secret remarks to
this effect) as a “ transitory” m easure (pp. 329-331). And that pursuit is
what set off the unplanned but inexorable interventionist spiral th at was
the hallm ark o f N azi econom ic policy and th at increasingly “ regi­
m en ted” private enterprises (p. 261), im pelling them to seek greater
influence in Berlin, not least by satisfying its dem ands (pp. 314-315).
Conversely, the regim e’s endless appetite for outp u t m ade the Reich
increasingly dependent on the largest, usually m ost efficient m anufac­
turers, which led to increasing c o n ce n tra tio n o f p ro duction in their
hands as contracts flowed th eir way and dispensable com petitors were
shut down (pp. 267, 633). In this fashion, N eu m an n m ade clear, a proc­
ess o f m utual cooptation characterized relations betw een big business
and the state in N azi G erm any, as each adapted to the o th e r wherever
a com m on interest in maximizing o u tp u t was present. In perceiving all
o f this, N eum ann anticipated tw o generations o f research and debate
about the econom y o f N azi G erm any and laid bare m any o f the reasons
why it has proved so resistant to clear-cut categorization as either capi­
talist o r state controlled.
N eu m a n n ’s treatm ent o f G erm an society under N azism carefully ex­
amines assorted strata, institutions, and practices, but the level o f de­
scriptive detail should n o t obscure the unconventional central
contentions on which his discussion rests, contentions that also reflect
his intellectual heritage. As a G erm an M arxist, he simply would n o t and
could n o t believe th at N azism had cultural, ra th er than structural,
causes and impact. U nlike m ost British and French, and some Am eri­
can, observers in the 1940s, he saw the T h ird Reich as imposed on
 IN TRO DU CTIO N BY PETER HAYES xiii
G erm ans by powerful social structures (his conspiratorial quadrum vi
rate), n o t as a m anifestation o f deeper historical o r cultural patterns. In
consequence he th o u g h t the elaborate apparatus o f Nazi social policy
had not penetrated G erm an society very deeply; certainly it had not
overcom e class distinctions. T hus, as he confidently stated in the pref­
ace to the first edition o f Behemoth, “a com plete military defeat will
u p ro o t N ational Socialism from the mind o f the G erm an people” (p.
xiii). So quick a change would occur, N eu m ann insisted, because “there
is no specific G erm an trait responsible for aggression and imperialism
but that im perialism is in heren t in the structure o f the G erm an m onop­
olist econom y, the one-party system, the army, and the bureaucracy”
(pp. 475-476). It followed logically that the reform o f these retrograde
in stitutions th ro u g h decartelization, denazification, dem ilitarization,
and dem ocratization would transform E uro pe’s m ost restless nation­
state into a norm al and progressive one. Arguably, N eu m a n n ’s p rogno­
sis was rem arkably astute, even though the degree of structural change
required turned out to be less than he tho ugh t necessary.
Productive o f insight as N e u m a n n ’s formative influences were, they
also had downsides. Behemoth abounds with unquestioned and doctri­
naire M arxist cliches about m atters such as the history o f Imperial G e r­
m any (pp. 4 -1 1 ), the origins o f its naval building program (pp.
203-106), and especially the forces that drove G erm an imperialism
(“ m onopoly capitalism ,” p. 14; “ the policies o f [G erm any’s] industrial
leadership,” p. 202) and brought on W orld W ar II (“the internal antag­
onisms o f the G erm an econom y,” p. 202), and readers should be wary
o f these. Am ong the notable accomplishments o f intense academic re­
search and debate since 1945 on G erm any’s role in the onset o f both
world wars has been the thorough discrediting of the notion that G e r­
m an industry and finance played major parts in pushing their nation
toward conflict, however instrum ental they were in fitting G erm any to
fight. In this connection, as in others, both N eu m ann ’s Marxism and
his training as a political scientist blinded him, since tog ether they
urged him to see history as made not by diverse individuals or contin­
gent events but by the rather mechanical interaction o f m onolithic
blocs o f actors— in a word, by "structures.” Abstraction, reification, and
oversimplification were the frequent results, particularly when N e u ­
m ann purported to be providing historical explanations.
Even m ore serious were the effects of his angle of vision as a Germ an,
a lawyer cum political scientist, and a leftist in skewing his account
XIV INTRODUCTION BY PETER HAYES
of three significant aspects o f the “structure and practice of N ational
Socialism” : the existence and im portance of Nazi ideology, the impulse
behind Nazi anti-Semitism, and the role of big business in the Nazi
economic system. In all three instances N eum ann contributed som e­
thing indispensable, and then overreached. T h e m atter o f Nazi ideol­
ogy is em blem atic. Surely N eu m an n was correct and instructive in
stressing the opportunism of Nazi doctrine (p. 37), its “versatility” on
specific points o f policy (p. 438), and the blurry contours o f its central
racist concepts (G erm an, N ordic, Aryan); but his claims that Nazism
lacked a “ basic” (p. 39) “ political or social” (p. 437) theory and thus
consisted of nothing but shifting aims and goals seems highly dubious.
H itler had a theory o f society, namely that it followed the law o f the
jungle, and his biological materialism— the view that all history pivots
around the contest am ong races for space, on the basis o f which they
can feed and breed their way to new rounds o f grow th— may have been
an imitation o f M arx’s dialectical materialism, but that did not make it
any less theoretically fundamental. L e n in ’s policies to stabilize the Rus­
sian Revolution in the 1920s show th at bolshevism, contrary to what
N eum ann implies, was no less willing than Nazism to adapt its social
and econom ic policies to sh o rt-te rm considerations or to prioritize
ideological principles. T h e egocentrism o f class and the egocentrism of
nation or race were different in the key respect that the form er had a
broader audience, but otherwise they had much in com m on, no t least a
claim that anything done in their nam e was morally right. N eum ann ’s
labored insistence that N azi ideology did not measure up to that label
attests to both his unease with the similarity and the illusions o f many
leftist intellectuals in the 1930s and 1940s. So does his specious and—
even at the time, after the U krainian famine and the G reat Purges—
scandalous claim that only Nazism , and not bolshevism, engaged in
“ the extermination o f helpless individuals” (p. 112).
In treating the N azi regim e’s anti-Semitism, N eum ann got far more
right than wrong, as measured by the present state o f research, but
he mixed sage observation with convenient surm ising nonetheless. H e
understood that popular anti-Semitism in G erm any owed m ore to re­
lentless N azi propaganda after 1933 than to deep-seated hatred (pp.
h i , 121), and he cautioned that “ anti-Semitism . . . is . . . m ore than a
m ere device” (p. 123) for m anipulating the G erm an public; but he
could no t bring him self to treat persecution as the product o f an obses­
sion, rather than o f opportunism . T h u s Aryanization, th at is, the take­
 IN TROD UCTIO N by PETER HAYES XV

over of Jew s’ jobs and their property, was launched to please non-Jewish
capitalists and largely redounded to the benefit o f big business (p. 117);
thus the pogrom o f N ovem ber 1938 was instigated as a “diversion”
from N azi econom ic actions that am ounted to a betrayal o f promises to
help the middle class (p. 116). In both these examples, detailed histori­
cal research has shown, N eu m ann mistook effect for cause, in the proc­
ess ignoring m ore powerful motivations that fit less conveniently with
his overall interpretation o f Nazi policymaking. T h e driving impulse
behind both Aryanization and the tim ing o f the pogrom , historians now
largely agree, was H itler's conviction that Jews had represented a sub­
versive elem ent during W orld W ar I and would do so again during its
sequel, which he regarded as increasingly im m inent. T herefo re Jews
had to be subjected to ever m ore intense pressure to leave the country.
T o be sure, N eu m an n lacked access to the docum entation that since
1945 has m ade this clear. T h e point is no t that he erred but rather that
he provided a certain sort o f explanation that fit com fortably into his
overall interpretation, and readers should be attentive to the difference
between w hat N eu m an n could know and what he could only guess at
w hen Behemoth was w ritten.
O ne field in which knowledge has advanced particularly far and fast
in recent years is the study o f the place of big business in the Nazi
regime. T h e results suggest that on this topic N eum ann was inclined
n o t only to conflate outcom es and causes but also on occasion to mis­
represent even the evidence he had. H istorians now generally concur
th a t G erm an corporate leaders played little part in bringing H itler to
pow er except insofar as they helped create and prolong the economic
catastrophe from which he profited politically. Specialists also agree
that G erm an industry and finance adapted their business strategies to
the goals o f H itle r’s foreign policy, rather than vice versa; the pursuit
o f living space was his, not their, idea. T hus, though N eu m ann was no
doubt right to emphasize that the productive power o f G erm an indus­
try became one of the pillars o f the T h ird Reich, and that the im por­
tance of that power gave business a strong bargaining position on some
m atters of policy, he goes too far when he depicts business as an equal
partn er o f the N azi state and party. C orporations in fact became en­
meshed in a tight web of controls that severely circumscribed their ac­
tions and channeled their investments and energies in particular, state-
serving directions. N eum ann acknowledged this with the rem ark that
“ the state has indeed absolute suprem acy” over the allocation of credit
XVI INTRODUCTION BY PETER HAYES
(p. 325) bur blurred the point by erroneously claming on the following
page that “self-financing [that is, the deploym ent of a firm’s own earn­
ings and reserves] is completely free from regim entation.” O n the con­
trary7, elaborate allocation arrangem ents governing access to building
materials and labor assured that firms were barred from following their
own production strategies rather than the regim e’s.
A telling example of N e u m a n n ’s eagerness to exaggerate corporate
parity in Nazi G erm any is provided by his discussion o f the Continental
Oil Corporation. T h is was a holding company formed in M arch 1941
to control the stock in fuel-producing firms in occupied Europe, shares
that had been or were about to be bought or seized from owners in
enem y or occupied states. In N e u m a n n ’s telling, the distribution of
multiple-vote shares in C ontinental was “ an absolute guarantee of the
power o f the capitalistic prom oters” (p. 277). In reality, as N eu m ann ’s
source made clear but he om its from his account, the state-owned
Borussia G m b H held 60 percent of the shares that carried fiftyfold vot­
ing rights and thus a com m anding and virtually perm anent majority
over the seven private enterprises that bought the rem aining preferred
and common stock. C ontinental was, in accord with N eu m a n n ’s overall
conception of Nazi rule, a “ bargain” in which the state offered private
firms a share of the spoils of conquest in return for their financial and
technical help in exploiting those spoils. But it was not an equal bargain;
the initiative for the project, as well as the preponderance o f the profits
and voting rights and a plurality o f the seats (nine o f nineteen) on C on­
tinental’s board all lay with the G erm an state. N eum ann compounds
this distortion some pages later by selectively quoting an article about
C ontinental in a G erm an journal to the effect that the governm ent’s
role in the firm represented no threat to private enterprise (pp. 356—
358). H e leaves out, however, the passages that described C ontinental
as a means of preventing excessive corporate influence over politics and
of giving private business an opportunity to provide “p ro o f o f its justi­
fication for existence.”
Despite such lapses, the remarkable point about Behemoth is how well
the book stands up to scrutiny today, even though the first edition,
containing four-fifths o f the total text, was com pleted only two weeks
after the U nited States entered W orld W a r II, and the second edition,
which added the final fifth as an appendix, was finished nine m onths
before G erm any surrendered. Even now, m ore than sixty years after
that second edition, substantial new studies continue to appear o f topics
 IN TRO D U C TIO N BY PETER HAYES xvii
N eum ann was am ong the first to consider, such as racial proletarianism
as a N azi propaganda them e (p. 188), the incoherence o f N azi planning
for occupied E urope (p. 178), how the regime financed its w ar (pp.
349-35°), and even sexuality and reproductive policy in N azi G erm any
(p. 401).
M uch else could be said about the originality that ornam ents this
book and the dogm atism that mars it. T h e form er quality makes Behe­
moth essential reading for anyone interested in grasping the nature of
H itle r’s regime, and the latter quality makes the book a significant his­
torical source in itself, a window onto a particular phase o f E uropean
intellectual history. In 1943 the American Historical Review included a
review o f Behemoth that began with the words, “T h is is no t just another
book about Nazi G erm any.” Indeed.

Evanston, Illinois
February 2009
 PREFACE

T h e m a n u s c r i p t w as finished w hen G erm an y attacked Russia; the

book w as being set u p w h en G erm an y , to save h er face, declared
w ar o n the U n ited States. Since the a u th o r never believed in the
possibility o f R ussian-G erm an collaboration, and since w a r w ith the
U n ited States—w h e th e r declared o r n o t—had been a fact since 1939,
the tw o events did n o t affect his book.
Y et even at th e presen t w ritin g the tw o events have deeply af­
fec te d G e rm a n y ’s dom estic situation, b o th m ilitary and psycho­
logical.
D u rin g the F irst W o rld W a r, G e rm a n y had to fight o n tw o fronts
n o t o n ly o n the battlefield, bu t, since 1917, psychologically as well:
th e tw o enemies w ere Bolshevism and W ilsonianism . H e r defeat in
1918 signified th e v ic to ry o f these tw o doctrines ov er th e semi­
absolutism o f th e E m pire, and, in the final co m p etitio n betw een
dem o cracy and Bolshevism, W ilso n ’s N e w F reedom rem ained vic­
torious. T o d a y ’s constellation is alm ost identical. N atio n al Socialism
is again fig h tin g a psychological tw o -fro n t w ar. F o r the older gen­
eration o f the G e rm a n people, A m erica still is the land o f unlim ited
industrial possibilities; it represents a m ode o f life infinitely superior
to a m anipulated and terro rized culture. T o large g roups o f w orkers,
w h e th e r com m unist o r no t, Soviet Russia is th e realization o f old
dream s—this tim e com bined w ith a m ilitary efficiency as high and
perhaps even hig h er than th a t o f N ational Socialism.
A m ilitary defeat o f G e rm a n y is necessary. W h e th e r N ational
Socialism can be crushed w ith o u t a m ilitary defeat, I do n o t know .
B u t o f this I am certain: a m ilitary defeat will w ipe it out. T h e
m ilitary su p e rio rity o f the dem ocracies and o f Soviet Russia m ust
be dem o n strated to the G erm an people. T h e philosophy o f N ational
Socialism stands and falls w ith its alleged ‘efficiency.’ T h is m ust be
pro v ed u n tru e . T h e stab-in-the-back legend o f 1918 m ust n o t be
allow ed to arise again. M ore and b e tte r planes, tanks, and guns and
a com plete m ilitary defeat w ill u p ro o t N atio n al Socialism fro m the
m ind o f the G e rm a n people.
xix
XX PREFACE

But that is not enough. The war must be shortened by dividing

Germany and divorcing the large masses of the people from National
Socialism. This is the task of psychological warfare, which cannot be
disassociated from the domestic and foreign policies of Germany’s
opponents. Psychological warfare is not propaganda. It is politics.
It consists in demonstrating to the German people that military
superiority can be achieved by a democracy which does not claim
to be perfect but which rather admits its imperfections, and does
not shun the long and arduous task of overcoming them.
I have endeavored throughout the book to use only original Ger­
man sources for my analyses, which frequently differ sharply from
current interpretations of National Socialism. The Introduction is
not intended as a history or full critical analysis of the Weimar
Republic; it seeks merely to bring out the structural defects of
the system. I hope before long to publish a social history of the
Republic.
The idea for the present book came from studies made at the
London School of Economics and Political Science, where I had
the great pleasure of working for three years. I am deeply indebted
to many suggestions I received from my friend Harold J. Laslci
and from Professor Morris Ginsberg.
I am obligated to many friends, above all to my colleagues in the
Institute of Social Research and to its directors, Dr. Max Hork-
heimer and Dr. Frederick Pollock. My friend Herbert Marcuse went
through some parts of the manuscript; Dr. Otto Kirchheimer gave
me valuable suggestions on questions of criminal law; Dr. A. R. L.
Gurland placed his comprehensive knowledge of German industry
at my disposal. My friend D. V. Glass helped me in the section on
population problems. My former assistant, Dr. O. K. Flechtheim,
now an instructor at Atlanta University, spent much time in re­
search on the history of the Weimar Republic. Professor E. J.
Gumbel, now at the New School for Social Research, lent to me
his many publications on republican justice.
The Honorable Thurman W. Arnold, Assistant Attorney General
of the United States, kindly permitted me to use a memorandum
originally prepared for him and the lectures on the German cartel
system which I delivered before the members of die Anti-Trust
division in 1938 and 1939.
The Research Institute on Peace and Post-War Problems of the
 PREFACE Xxi

American Jewish Committee kindly permitted me to incorporate

my memorandum on Germany’s New Order. Professor Robert M.
Maclver went through the final chapter and made a number of
valuable suggestions.
Professor Alfred E. Cohn of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical
Research was kind enough to place at my disposal a sum for editing
expenses. The editing was done by Messrs. D. V. Glass, M. I. Finkel-
stein, and Norbert Guterman, who, together with Dr. Felix Weil,
also assisted me in reading the proofs.
Acknowledgments are gratefully made to the following pub­
lishers for permission to reprint:
Little, Brown &Company, Boston, from Douglas Miller, You Can't
Do Business w ith Hitler.
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, from Adolf Hitler, Mein
K am pf (published by Reynal and Hitchcock).
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, from William L. Langer, The Diplo­
macy of Imperialism.
The Brookings Institution, Washington, from Cleona Lewis, Nazi
Europe and W orld Trade.
The Viking Press, New York, from Thorstein Veblen, Imperial
Germany and the Industrial Revolution.
W. W. Norton, New York, from Alfred Vagts, A History of Mili­
tarism, and Emil Lederer, State of the Masses. The Threat of a
Classless Society.
Columbia University Press, New York, from Mildred Wertheimer,
The Pan-German League.
A. J. Holman Company, Philadelphia, from their edition of Martin
Luther’s W orks, Vol. i, from pp. 750 and 271, Vol. iv from pp.
240, 249, and 272.
F ranz N eum ann
23 December 1941

PREFACE TO TH E SECOND EDITION

U n d e r n o r m a l c o n d i t i o n s , the author would have written a new

book. This would have made early publication impossible, as would
also the present difficulties of manufacture. For these reasons, pub­
lisher and author decided to add to the first edition a comprehen­
XXÜ PREFACE
sive appendix. The appendix brings the development of National
Socialism up to date. It also fills certain omissions of the first edition,
especially in four major fields:
German administration, especially the Police
the structure of the Party
the German theory and practice of military government
the structure of economic controls
The appendix is thus a small book in itself and only the courage
of the Oxford University Press made it possible to publish a much
enlarged book at the old price.
Each chapter of the appendix is prefaced by a note indicating
which major chapter of the book it supplements. Since, in addition,
the new material is listed in detail in the table of contents and the
index, it should be fairly easy to correlate the book and the appendix.
After the appendix had been completed, German generals plotted
Hitler’s assassination. The attempt of 20 July 1944 failed, but it led
to the complete concentration of political, legislative, and admin­
istrative powers in the hands of Goring and Goebbels under the
direction of Himmler, who also controls the home (reserve) army.
Himmler is thus not only the undisputed master of the home front,
but through his control of the home army and of the Combat S.S.,
reaches deep into the fighting front.
The Hitler Edict of 25 July 1944 by which Goring was charged
with the adaptation of the home front to total war and Goebbels
made his deputy may lead to the disappearance of the still existing
dualism of State and Party. The Party would then altogether destroy
the remnants of the rational and administrative state and substitute
for it the amorphous, shapeless Movement, thus transforming the
little that remains of the state into more or less organized anarchy.
F. N.
i August 1944
Washington, D. C.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
boy, that you know as much about political and civic affairs as a bear
does of a hand-organ.”
And turning aside Peter signed to the fools to resume their
shouting. Ménshikoff with other nobles, all drunk, began to dance.
The Tsarevitch continued to speak in a high-pitched voice. But his
father, paying him no attention, was stamping, clapping and
whistling to the dancers:—

“Tare-bare, rastobare!
White snow was falling,
Grey hares were running,
Hurry! hurry up!”

His face was that of a soldier, unrefined, the rugged face of him
who wrote: “The enemy received such good treatment from us that
only a few infants survived.”
Suddenly Prince Ménshikoff, breathless with dancing, stopped
short before the Tsarevitch, his hands on his hips and on his lips an
impertinent smile—a reflection of the Tsar’s.
“Tsarevitch,” he cried, pronouncing the word, so that it meant an
insult, “Tsarevitch, why are you melancholy? Come, join our dance!”
Alexis grew pale and seized his sword, then bethought himself,
and turned aside ejaculating:—
“Rapscallion!”
“What? What did you say, puppet?”
Alexis turned round and, looking him straight in the face, said in a
loud voice:—
“I said, ‘Rapscallion!’ A rascal’s look is worse than defilement!”
At the same moment his father’s face, contorted, flashed before
him. He struck his son so hard in the face that the blood gushed
from mouth and nose; then he caught him by the throat, threw him
on the ground and began to strangle him. The senior nobles,
Romodanovsky, Sheremetieff, Dolgorúki, who were authorized by the
Tsar himself to restrain him in his attacks of madness, fell upon
Peter, seized him, and dragged him away from his son, lest he
should murder him.
“In order to give satisfaction” to Ménshikoff, the Tsarevitch was
sent from the hall and placed on sentry duty at the doors like a
naughty schoolboy who is sent into the corner. It was a cold winter’s
night, frosty and snowing; he had only his kaftan on, and no fur
coat. Tears and blood froze on his face. The wind moaned and
whirled round and round, like a drunkard dancing and singing. And
behind the lighted windows, in the room he had left, that old
buffoon, the drunken princess-abbess Rjévskaya was also dancing
and singing. The wild moans of the storm mingled with the wild
strains of the song:—

My mother bore me while she danced,

She christened me in the Tsar’s tavern,
And bathed me in the headiest wine.

Such anguish filled Alexis that he felt like braining himself against
the wall.
Suddenly some one crept up to him in the dark and, throwing a
fur-lined coat round his shoulder, fell on his knees before Alexis and
began to kiss his hands like some affectionate dog; it was an old
soldier of the Preobrazhensky regiment, who happened to be on the
same watch—a secret Raskolnik.
The old man looked up with such love to Alexis as though he
would sacrifice his soul for him; he cried and whispered to him as in
adoration:—
“Lord Tsarevitch, our light and sunshine, poor orphan, no father
nor mother! May the Heavenly Father and the pure Virgin protect
and keep thee!”
Alexis had often been beaten, with or without ceremony, with fist
or cane. In everything else the Tsar followed the new ideas. Only his
son he beat according to the old tradition, following the advice of
Father Sylvester, author of the Domostroi, councillor to the Tsar Ivan
the Terrible, (who killed his son, you remember).
“Do not let your son gain mastery in his youth, but beat him as he
grows. Strike him with a stick, it won’t kill, but make a man of him!”
Alexis shrank in bodily fear from the blows, “He will kill, maim
me”; but the moral suffering and shame he had grown used to. At
times a hard joy kindled within him, “Well! what of it! Strike me, it is
you who are shamed, not I,” he seemed to say to his father, fixing
on him a look at once infinitely submissive and infinitely insolent.
His father probably divined this, for he ceased beating him and
devised another punishment. He broke off all intercourse with him.
When Alexis addressed him, he remained silent, pretended not to
hear, looked past him, as into space. The silence would last weeks,
months, years. Alexis was conscious of it at all times and wherever
he went. It grew more intolerable, more insulting than scolding,
more terrible than blows. He felt it to be slow murder, a cruelty
which neither man nor God could wipe out.
This sheer silence was the end of everything. Beyond, there was
nothing but darkness, and through the darkness he saw the
immovable face of his father, motionless as a stone mask, as it had
appeared at their last interview. And the terrible words coming from
lips that were dead to him: “I’ll cut you off like a gangrenous limb!”

The thread of reminiscence snapped; he opened his eyes The

night was as quiet as ever; the white church towers were still
wrapped in a bluish haze. The golden domes shone silvery in
heaven’s dark blue vault, studded with stars; the Milky Way
glimmered but faintly; and the fresh breezes of heaven, even as the
breathing of a slumberer, seemed to bring with them from the
heavens a foreboding of eternal rest, infinite quietude.
 Alexis seemed to experience in this moment the weariness of his
whole life. His back, hands, legs, his whole body was an ache, his
bones were full of pain.
He wanted to get up but had no strength left. He could but raise
his hands to heaven and moan, as if calling to Him who could
respond:
“My God, my God!”
But no one answered. Silence reigned on earth as in heaven, it
seemed his Heavenly Father had forsaken him, like his earthly one.
He hid his face in his hands and leaning with his head against the
stone bench he began to weep, first quietly, plaintively, as do
neglected children, then louder and louder, more poignantly. He
sobbed, beat his head against the stone, crying from the insult,
indignation and terror. He cried because he had no father now, and
in that cry was the cry from Golgotha—the eternal cry of the Son to
the Father:—
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Suddenly he felt, just as that night when posted as sentry, some
one approach in the darkness, stoop over and embrace him. It was
Father John, the old sacristan of the Annunciation.
“What ails you, my lord? The Lord be with you. Who has grieved
you?”
“Father! Father!” was all that Alexis could utter.
The old man understood it all. He sighed heavily, remained silent
for a while, and then began to whisper in the spirit of hopeless
resignation. The time-worn wisdom of the past was speaking
through him.
“What can be done, Alexis? Submit yourself my child. The whip
cannot outdo the axe, neither can you vie with the Tsar. God is in
the heavens, the Tsar on earth. The Tsar’s will must not be
questioned. He is responsible to God alone. And to you he is not
only the Tsar but our parent ordained by God.”
 “Not a father but a villain, a torturer, a murderer,” cried Alexis,
“curse him, curse him, the monster!”
“Lord Tsarevitch, your Highness! Invoke not God’s wrath, use not
such violent language. Great is a father’s power. It is written: Honour
thy father——”
Alexis suddenly stopped weeping, turned round abruptly and fixed
on the old man a searching look.
“But something else too, is written: ‘Think not that I am come to
send peace on earth; I came not to send peace but a sword. For I
am come to set a man at variance against his father.’ Do you heed,
old man? God it is who turned me against my father; I have been
sent from God as a sword, an enemy, to pierce the heart of my
parent, I am his heaven-sent judgment and execution. I stood up
not for my own sake, but for the sake of the Church, the Empire, the
whole Christian people. Zealous, I was zealous for the Lord. No! I
will not humble myself, nor submit, not even if it should mean my
death. The world cannot hold us both. Either he or I!”
The face distorted by convulsions, the trembling jaw, the fierce
fire in the eyes, suddenly bore an unsuspected likeness to his father.
The old man gazed at him in terror, as at one possessed, he made
the sign of the cross, shook his head and with his time-worn lips
mumbled the words of time-worn wisdom:—
“Submit! submit! bow before your father’s will”
And it seemed as if the ancient Kremlin walls, the palaces,
churches, yea the very ground itself, together with the tombs of the
patriarchs, echoed the words: “Submit! Submit!”
When the Tsarevitch entered the house of the sacristan, the
latter’s sister, who had been nurse to Alexis, Martha by name,
glancing at his face thought him ill. Her anxiety only increased when
he refused to share their supper, but went straight to his chamber.
The old soul offered to give him lime-tea and to rub him with
camphorated spirit. To pacify her he was obliged to take some
brandy. With her own hands she put him to bed, on a couch softer,
with its mountain of eiderdown and pillows, than any he had slept
on for an age. The holy lamps burned peacefully before the images;
the air was saturated with the familiar scent of dried herbs, cypress
and myrrh. So soothing was the monotonous babbling of his nurse,
while relating the old tales about the Tsar John and the grey wolf,
about the Cock with the golden comb, about the Bast shoe, the
baboon and the wisp of straw, who wanted to cross the river
together—the straw broke, the bast shoe sank, and the baboon
swelled until it burst—that it seemed to Alexis in his half-sleep he
was only a little boy and was lying in his tiny bed in his
grandmother’s terem, and that all which had been was not; that it
was not Martha, but his granny, bending over him, covering him up,
tucking him in, blessing him and whispering, “Sleep darling, sleep,
may God watch over thee.” And all is still and peaceful. Only the
siren bird, denizen of Eden, is again singing its royal songs, and as
he listens to its melodious strains, he seems to die, to sink into an
eternal, dreamless slumber.
But just before the break of day he dreamt he was walking inside
the Kremlin, across the Red Square, through the throng of people.
It was Palm Sunday and Christ’s entry into Jerusalem was being
solemnised. Arrayed in regal robes, with the golden mantle and
crown and barma of Monomachus, he leads by the reins the ass on
which sits the patriarch, a white-bearded old man, all in white and
radiant in his whiteness. But looking more closely, Alexis perceives
that the figure is no longer an old man, but a youth, in robes whiter
than snow, with a face luminous as the sun—Christ Himself. The
crowd does not see or cannot recognise Him. They all have terrible,
lurid, corpse-like faces. All are silent, so silent that Alexis can hear
his own heart beat. And the sky is also terrible, a livid grey, as if
before an eclipse of the sun. At his feet there lolls a hunchback, in a
three-cornered hat and a clay pipe in his mouth, who puffs straight
into his face stinking Dutch tobacco. He babbles something, grins
insolently, and points with his finger to a place whence comes a
noise growing nearer and louder, like the rumbling of an approaching
storm. And Alexis perceives that it comes from a procession. The
Archdeacon of the ‘Most Drunken Convocation of Tsar Peter’ leads by
the reins not an ass but some outlandish beast. Some one with a
dark face rides on the beast. Alexis cannot distinguish it but it seems
to resemble, only more terrible and repulsive than they, the
scoundrel Theodosius and Peter the thief. Before them walks a
shameless wench, naked; it might be Afrossinia or else the
Petersburg Venus. All the bells are ringing, including the great bell of
the John tower, called the Roarer, and the people shout as they had
done some time before at the wedding of the Kniaz-Pope:—
“The Patriarch is married! The Patriarch is married!” Falling on
their knees, they worshipped the beast, the wench and the low
scoundrel.
“Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is he that cometh!”
Abandoned by every one, Alexis remains alone with Christ, alone
amidst the maddened throng. The wild procession hurries straight
upon them, with shouts, shrieks, bringing with it smoke and stench,
which tarnish the gold of the royal robes and even dims the very
sunlight of Christ’s face. Now the roysterers will be upon them,
trampling, crushing, sweeping all before them, and great will be the
abomination of desolation in the holy place.
And all disappears. He stands on the banks of a wide dreary river,
it seems to be the highway from Poland to the Ukraine. It is late in a
mid-autumn day. Wet snow and black mud. The wind sweeps the
last leaves from the trembling aspens. A beggar in tattered rags,
blue with the cold, plaintively asks a kopeck for Christ’s sake; some
branded one too, thinks Alexis, as he notices his hands and feet
covered with bloody wounds, probably a recruit who has deserted.
He pities the youth and decides to give him, not merely a kopeck but
a seven gulden piece. And he remembers in his dream, how he had
entered in his diary along with other expenses: “November 22. For
transport across the river three gulden, for quarters at a Jewish
tavern five gulden, for a young lad starving seven gulden.” Already
he is holding out the coins to the beggar when suddenly a rough
hand is laid on his shoulder and a gruff voice, probably that of the
sentinel, speaks, “For bestowing alms, a fine of five roubles; the
beggar after due castigation and torture to be sent off to the
Rogerwick.”
“Have pity!” pleads Alexis. “Foxes have holes, the birds of the air
have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head.” And
looking closer at the deserter, the shivering lad, he perceived that his
face is like the sun. The lad he dreamed was Christ Himself.

CHAPTER IV

“My Son,—When I said good-bye to you, and asked

about your resolution concerning a certain matter, on
which you always gave me the reply that owing to
your weakness you were not fit for the throne, but
would prefer the monastery, I again told you to think it
well over, and communicate to me your decision. I
have waited for it these seven months, but to this day
you have written me nothing. Now, therefore, as you
have had ample time for consideration, on receipt of
this letter, decide at once one way or the other. Should
you choose the throne, do not tarry longer than a
week, but come to me here, for you will yet be in time
to take part in the campaign. But should you choose
the monastery, write me when and where and what
day, so that knowing what I may have to expect from
you, my heart may be at rest. To this messenger
entrust the final answer. Should it be the first, state
the day of your departure from Petersburg; should it
be the second, the date of your entry into the cloister.
And again we emphasize that this choice must be final,
 for I perceive that, as usual, you are spending your
time to no purpose.”

The courier Saphnov brought this letter to Roshdestveno, where

Alexis had returned on leaving Moscow. The Tsarevitch sent his
father word that he was coming to him at once, but in reality
decided nothing. To him the two alternatives, either to become a
monk or to prepare himself for the duties of the throne, were but a
double trap. To become a monk with the idea that the hood was not
“nailed to the head” would mean to lose his soul before God by a
false vow. And as to fitting himself for the duties of a future
monarch in the sense his father demanded, it was like asking him to
enter his mother’s womb and be born anew.
The letter neither frightened nor grieved Alexis. It found him in
that senseless, listless torpor which had of late repeatedly laid hold
of him. When in that condition he spoke and did everything as in a
dream, never knowing a moment beforehand what he would say or
do next. His heart was light and empty; whether from reckless
cowardice or despairing insolence, it was difficult to say.
He went to Petersburg and put up at his house near the church
dedicated to the Virgin of all the Sorrowing. He ordered his valet,
Ivan Afanássieff, to pack what he needed for the journey like the last
time he went abroad.
“Are you going to join your father?”
“I am going, the Lord knows best, either to him or somewhere
else,” Alexis said drowsily.
“Tsarevitch! How somewhere else?” The valet was frightened, or
else feigned to be so.
“I should like to see Venice,” began Alexis smiling, but in the next
moment he added in a mournful voice, as if to himself, “I only do
this to save myself. Yet, mind you keep silence. There is no one else
besides you and Kikin who know anything about it.”
 “I will keep your secret,” answered the old man in his usual gruff
manner, though at this moment his eyes lit up with devotion. “Only
we’ll have a rough time of it when you have left. Bethink yourself
what you intend doing——”
“I did not expect any message from my father,” continued the
Tsarevitch in the same drowsy tone, “and it never came to my mind;
but now I see it is God who guides me. I dreamt last night that I
was building churches, which means I have a journey to take——”
He yawned.
“Many in your station have sought refuge in flight,” remarked
Afanássieff, “but it has never happened in Russia within the memory
of man.”
From his house Alexis went straight to Ménshikoff and informed
him that he was going to join his father. The Prince spoke amiably,
and before parting asked:—
“And where will you leave Afrossinia?”
“I’ll take her as far as Riga and then send her back to Petersburg,”
answered Alexis at random, hardly realising what he said; afterwards
he marvelled at his instinctive cunning.
“Why send her back?” said Ménshikoff looking him straight in the
face, “better take her with you.”
Had Alexis been more attentive he would have been surprised.
Ménshikoff must have known that a son “desirous of fitting himself
for the throne,” could not appear in his father’s camp, “to study
military duties” with his mistress Afrossinia. What did the advice
mean? When in the course of time Kikin heard about it, he
suggested that Alexis should thank the prince by letter for his
advice: “Your father might chance to find the letter at the prince’s
house, and suspicion at his having been an accomplice in your flight
might be aroused.”
Ménshikoff told him to come to the Senate for the passport and
money for the journey before leaving.
 In the Senate all vied with one another in trying to render a
service to the Tsarevitch, as if they wanted to show secretly a
sympathy for him, which they did not dare to confess openly.
Ménshikoff provided him with 2,000 gold roubles; the Senate
another 1,000, and at the same time arranged with the High
Commissioner of Riga for a loan of 5,000 in gold, and 2,000 in small
money. No one asked awkward questions; they all seemed to have
agreed not to inquire why Alexis should need so much money. After
the meeting was over, Prince Basil Dolgorúki took him aside: “Are
you going to your father?”
“Where else, Prince?”
Dolgorúki looked carefully round, and then bringing his aged
effeminate lips close to Alexis’s ear, he whispered:—
“What else? Come, I’ll tell thee”—— and after a short silence he
added, still in a whisper, “Had I considered only the Tsar’s temper,
and had there been no Tsaritsa, I would have been the first to
desert at Stettin myself.”
He pressed Alexis’ hand, and tears stood in his sly, kindly eyes.
“Could I serve thee in any way later on, I would gladly lay down my
life for thee.”
“Don’t forget me,” murmured Alexis quite mechanically, prompted
by no thought or feeling.
He learnt in the evening that Jacob Dolgorúki, one of the Tsar’s
most devoted servants, had indirectly sent him word not to join his
father: “a bad reception awaits him there.”
The next morning, September 26, 1706, Alexis left Petersburg, in
a mail coach, together with Afrossinia and her brother Ivan, a freed
serf. He had not yet decided where he was going. On leaving Riga
he still took Afrossinia with him, saying that he “had orders to
proceed incognito to Vienna in order that he might arrange an
alliance against the Turks.”
In Libau he was met by Kikin, who was returning from Vienna.
 “Have you found me a refuge?” inquired the Tsarevitch.
“I have. Go straight to the Emperor, they will not betray you there.
The Emperor himself told the Vice-Chancellor, Schönborn, that he
will receive you like a son.”
“Should envoys from my father meet me at Dantzic, what shall I
do then?”
“Escape at night,” answered Kikin, “with one of the lads, leaving
the luggage and other servants behind. If two envoys are sent,
pretend to be ill, send back one in advance and run away from the
other.”
Observing his indecision, Kikin continued:—
“Remember, Tsarevitch, your father will not let you become a
monk now, even if you should want to. Your friends, the Senators,
have persuaded him to keep you always near him, and to make you
accompany him everywhere, hoping thus to kill you by overtaxing
your strength, and your father said it was well thought of. Further,
Prince Ménshikoff reasoned with him, saying that you would have
too much peace in the monastery and might live too long. Knowing
these plans I am surprised they have not laid violent hands on you
before now. They might, however, do this, get you on to Danish soil
and then your father, under pretext of instruction, will put you on
board a man of war, the captain of which will have orders to engage
with a Swedish vessel standing by, and thus get you shot—this
rumour comes from Copenhagen, and it will explain why you are
now wanted. Nothing but flight can save you. To voluntarily run your
head into a noose would be the height of idiocy,” continued Kikin,
gazing intently at Alexis.
“What’s the matter with you? You look so sleepy! Do you not feel
well?”
“I am very tired,” Alexis replied simply.
They had already taken leave of one another, when Kikin suddenly
turned and ran back to Alexis, stopped him, and looking him straight
in the face, said slowly, accentuating every word, and so great was
the conviction behind them that the Tsarevitch, notwithstanding his
indifference, shuddered:—
“Should your father send some one to try and persuade you to
come back, and promise you absolute pardon, do not, on any
account, listen to him. He will publicly behead you.”
On quitting Libau, Alexis was as undecided where to go as on
leaving Petersburg. Besides, he had hoped that there would be no
need to come to a decision, since he expected to find envoys from
his father at Dantzic.
In Dantzic the road branched out, one led to Copenhagen, one
across Breslau to Vienna. No envoys were there. It was impossible to
waver any longer. When the landlord at the hostel where Alexis had
put up for the night, came in to ask where the horses had to be
ordered for on the morrow, the Tsarevitch looked at him for a
moment with an absent gaze, as if he were thinking about
something else, and then said, hardly conscious of what it was,
“For Breslau.”
The next moment this word, decisive of his fate, frightened him.
Yet he thought there would be time to cancel the order on the
morrow. In the morning the horses were ready, nothing remained
but to enter the coach and be off. He postponed altering his decision
till the next station, at the next station till Frankfort on the Oder, at
Frankfort till Tübingen, at Tübingen till Grossen and so on. He went
on and on, and already it was beyond his power to stop; he seemed
to have broken loose and was now rolling down a slippery slope. The
same sense of fear which before had kept him back now seemed to
drive him on and on, and the fear increased with the travelling. He
realized that his fright was groundless, that his father could as yet
know nothing about his flight, yet his blind, senseless fear he could
not quell. Kikin had supplied him with false passes. Alexis gave out
that he was now a Polish cavalier Kremenétzky, now the Lieutenant
Colonel Kochánsky, now the Lieutenant Bálka, now a Russian
merchant. Yet it seemed to him that all the innkeepers, coachmen,
drivers, and post-masters knew that he was the Russian Tsarevitch,
escaping, escaping from his father! When sleeping at night in an inn
he would start and jump out of bed alarmed at the least sound,
noise of steps or creaking of the floor. Once, when a man of about
the same height as his father, dressed in a grey coat such as Peter
was wont to wear, entered the dusky dining room where Alexis was
just having his supper, he nearly fainted. He saw spies everywhere.
The liberality with which he spent his money made the careful
Germans suspect, indeed, that they were dealing with a person of
royal blood; he was given the best horses on the extra posts, and
the coachmen went at their fullest speed. Once in the twilight,
noticing a coach driving behind them, he fancied it was in pursuit.
He promised the driver ten gulden; the latter went at a mad pace.
On turning a corner the axle was caught on a stone, and the wheel
flew off. They were obliged to stop and get out. The people driving
behind caught them up. Alexis was frightened to such an extent,
that he wanted to leave everything and alone with Afrossinia run on
foot to hide in the wood. He was already dragging her, and it was
only after considerable effort that she succeeded in holding him
back.
After Breslau he hardly stopped anywhere. He travelled night and
day without rest. He could neither eat nor sleep. Every morsel he
tried to swallow seemed to choke him. No sooner did he doze off
than the next moment he awoke, shuddering all over, bathed in cold
sweat. He would rather have died or be at once caught, anything to
escape this torture.
At last, after five sleepless nights, he fell into a deep slumber.
He woke in the coach; it was early; dawn had not yet broken. The
sleep had refreshed him, he felt almost vigorous.
Afrossinia lay sleeping next to him. It was cold, he wrapped her up
and kissed her sleeping face. They were passing through some small
unknown city, with tall narrow houses, and streets which echoed
noisily the rattle of the wheels. The shutters were closed, all seemed
asleep. In the middle of the market place before the town hall,
bubbled a fountain which flowed over the edges of a moss-grown
stone shell, supported by stooping tritons. A holy lamp was burning
in the niche before a Madonna.
On leaving the town they ascended the hill, thence the road led
down into a wide, gently sloping plain. The coach was driven by six
horses as swift as an arrow; the wheels softly rustled through the
damp dust, the mists of night were still clouding the valleys; yet
round the slopes the shroud had already began to grow less and less
dense; the mist lifted slowly like a curtain, leaving behind it the dry
grass and the sticky threads of cobweb beaded with sparkling
dewdrops. A gleam of blue sky pierced the wafted vault. A flock of
cranes passed across it, caught by the rays of the rising sun not yet
visible from below; through the autumnal air rang their gathering
cry. Hills appeared on the borders of the plain wrapped in a bluish
haze; these were the mountains of Bohemia. Suddenly a dazzling ray
flashed from behind them straight into Alexis’ eyes, the sun was
rising, and joy rose within his breast like the sun. It was God who
had saved him, no one but God!
He laughed and wept for joy, as if it was for the first time he saw
earth and sky and mountains. He watched the cranes, and it seemed
to him that he too had wings, he too was flying. He breathed deep,
again and again.
“Freedom, Freedom!”

CHAPTER V
The Courier Saphnov, who had been sent in advance from
Petersburg, informed the Tsar that the Tsarevitch was following
immediately after him, yet two months passed by and he did not
appear. The Tsar would not believe for some time that his son had
run away: “How can he? he would not dare.” But in the end he
believed, and sent detectives along all roads and gave his Resident,
Abraham Vesselóvsky, in Vienna, the following order: “It lies with
you to make inquiries in Vienna, Rome, Naples, Milan, Sardinia, and
Switzerland; whenever you get information of our son’s abode, after
having carefully made investigations, go thither and follow him up;
at the same time inform us at once by special messenger; yourself
remaining incognito.”
Vesselóvsky, after a long search, at last came across his track. “We
can trace him so far,” he wrote to the Tsar from Vienna—“A certain
Lieutenant Kochánsky stayed at the Black Eagle outside the town.
The waiter tells me that he took him to be some distinguished
person, as he spent his money very freely, was not unlike the Tsar of
Moscow, possibly his son—the which Tsar he had seen in Vienna.”
Peter was surprised; to him there was something strange and
terrible in these words, “not unlike the Tsar.” It had never occurred
to him that Alexis could resemble him.
“After a stay of only twenty-four hours at the inn,” continued
Vesselóvsky, “he had his things taken away by a hired driver, and
himself went on foot, after paying his bill, so that they do not know
whether he has gone further or not. During his stay at the inn he
bought his wife a man’s suit of brown colour which she put on. All
further traces have disappeared. I have inquired in all the local inns,
taverns, in private and public houses, but to no purpose. I have also
engaged the help of detectives. I went myself along two mail roads
which lead from here into Italy, the Tyrolese and the Carinthian
Road, but nobody could supply me with the needed information.”
The Tsar, divining that the Emperor had welcomed the fugitive and
was hiding him in his dominions, sent him a letter from Amsterdam.

“Most Serene and most mighty Emperor,

“I am compelled to announce to your Imperial
Majesty, in fraternal confidence with heartfelt sorrow, a
 calamity which has unexpectedly befallen us. It
concerns our son Alexis. We have grounds for believing
that your Majesty is not unaware that his past
behaviour was always in opposition to our fatherly will,
to our greatest discomfort, and that his conduct in
wedded life with your relative left much to be desired.
Some time ago we ordered him to join us here, hoping
by this means to sever him from his useless life and
companions. Taking none of his servants appointed by
us, but in the company of several young people, he
abandoned the road to ourselves, and disappeared no
one knows where, and to this day we remain in
ignorance of his whereabouts. And we, convinced that
he has taken this blameworthy decision on the advice
of certain people, have fatherly compassion upon him,
and, afraid lest he should bring eternal destruction
upon himself by this insubordinate act, and still more,
to prevent his falling into the hands of our enemies,
have given a command to our Resident Vesselóvsky at
your court, to find him and bring him hither. Therefore
we pray your Imperial Majesty, should he be in hiding
in your dominions, secretly or openly, to give orders
that he be sent to us with our Resident, and under the
safe convoy of several officers, in order that we may
fatherly chide him for his well-being. And we shall
eternally feel obliged to you for this service and mark
of friendship.
“We remain,
“Your Imperial Majesty’s faithful brother,
“Peter.”

At the same time it was intimated to the Emperor, that if he

refused to deliver Alexis up of his own goodwill, the Tsar would seek
his son out like a traitor, with armed force.
 Each piece of new information that reached the Tsar was a fresh
insult to him. Under the feigned sympathy of Europe lurked a secret
enmity. “A certain major-general, on his return from Hanover,”
Vesselóvsky reported, “meeting me at court, spoke with me in the
presence of the Ambassador of Mecklenburg; he sympathized with
your Majesty’s illness, which he presumed had been caused by grief,
from the fact that your Crown Prince ‘had become invisible,’ using
the French phrase, ‘Il est éclipsé.’ I asked him where he got this
false information from. He answered me that this information was
true and authentic, and he had it from the Hanoverian ministers. To
which I replied that it was a calumny, owing its existence to the ill-
will of the Hanoverian Court.”
“The Emperor has good reason to support the Crown Prince,”
reported Vesselóvsky, as an opinion which is current at the foreign
court, “because the aforesaid Crown Prince is in the right as against
his father, and had cause for escaping from his father’s dominions.
Quite in the beginning, soon after the birth of the Tsarevitch Peter,
your Majesty is supposed to have forced Alexis to abdicate the
throne and to retire for the rest of his life to a hermitage. And when
your Majesty was in Pomerania, seeing that the Crown Prince did not
attempt to retire, you were supposed to have devised a new plan.
This, was to lure him to Holland and, under the pretext of
instruction, to place him on one of your war vessels, give the
Captain orders to engage in a fight with a Swedish vessel, which it
was arranged should stand close by, and thus cause the Tsarevitch
to be killed. This was the reason for his flight.”
The Tsar was informed at the same time about the secret
negotiations between the Emperor and King George the First of
England. “The Emperor, prompted by ties of relationship, as well as
by compassion for the sufferings of the Tsarevitch, and by the
generosity of the imperial house towards all innocently persecuted
persons, had granted shelter and protection to the Tsar’s son. He
asked the King of England whether he, too, felt disposed as an
Elector and relative of the house of Braunschweig, to protect the
Tsarevitch. Attention was called to his miserable condition
—‘Miseranda conditio’—the father’s evident and unrelenting tyranny
—‘clara et continua paterna tyrannidas’—also suspicion of poisoning
and such like Russian ‘galanterien.’”
The son became a judge, an accuser of the father.
And what more might happen? The Tsarevitch might become a
weapon in the enemy’s hand—might kindle an insurrection in the
heart of Russia, entangle the whole of Europe in the war, and God
alone knows how this would end. “To kill him were too little!” mused
the maddened Tsar.
Yet another feeling overpowered him, a new feeling. The father
had become afraid of the son.
 Book VI
THE FUGITIVE TSAREVITCH

CHAPTER I
The Tsarevitch and Afrossinia were boating one summer moonlight
night, on the Gulf of Naples.
The very soul of Alexis was thrilled by the harmony around him;
harmony in the tremor of the moon’s golden train which fell upon
the water, a blazing path reaching from Posilippo across to the very
brink of the horizon; harmony in the murmur of the sea, and the
light breeze which carried, together with the salt freshness of the
sea air, sweet perfume from the shores of Sorrento, clad in lemon
and orange groves; harmony in the silvery azure outlines of Mount
Vesuvius, wrapped in luminous mist, emitting a white smoke and,
from time to time, flaring up like dying embers on an altar
consecrated to the gods; the gods who had died, who had risen
again, and again had expired.
“Dearest one, see how lovely this is,” whispered the Tsarevitch.
Afrossinia looked round her with the same placid indifference as if
the scene were the Neva and the Peter and Paul fortress.
“Yes, it is warm; though we are on the water we don’t seem to
feel the damp,” she replied with a suppressed yawn.
He closed his eyes, and before him rose a vision of a room in
Viasemski’s house in Petersburg; it was a spring evening, slanting
rays of the setting sun flooded the room; the servant girl Afrossinia,
in a well tucked-up skirt and barefooted, bending low over her work,
scrubbing the floor. She is a simple peasant girl, one of those whom
village lads call as “firm, plump and white as a well-washed turnip.”
Yet sometimes looking at her he would recall an ancient Dutch
picture he had seen in his father’s collection at Peterhof, “The
Temptation of St. Anthony,” a naked red-haired witch, goat-legged
with split hoofs like a faun. In the face of Afrossinia with its too full
lips, its slightly turned up nose, its large, lucid, languishing, almond-
shaped eyes, there was something wild, innocently shameless,
almost goat-like. To his mind would come the sayings of old writers
about the fatal fascination of women: Sin began with woman, and
through her we all die; to fall into her arms in love is to fall into the
fire. He could not tell how it happened, but he loved her almost at
first sight with a rude tender love, strong as death.
Here, on the Gulf of Naples she had remained the same Afrossinia
as of old; here she was cracking with her teeth little nuts and
spitting the shells in the silvered waves, just as she used to crack
sunflower seeds in Petersburg, sitting in the kitchen among her
fellow-servants on feast-days. Only now, dressed in the French
fashion with beauty spots, and “robe ronde,” she appeared yet more
alluring and innocently shameless. No wonder she was stared at by
the two soldiers and even by the elegant Count Esterhazy himself,
who always escorted the Tsarevitch on all his expeditions from the
St. Elmo fortress. Alexis loathed these leers of men, ever drawn to
her like flies to honey.
“How now, Æsop, are you tired of this life, and longing to get
home?” she asked in a drawling sing-song voice, turning to her
neighbour, a tiny, ugly creature, a naval apprentice, Alexis Yourov—
Æsop was only his nickname.
“Ah, Mistress Afrossinia, I find life here very hard. The instruction
is so difficult that we might well spend all the rest of our life in trying
to master it, and then without success. One is really baffled to know
where to begin first, the language or the sciences. In Venice our
lads, my messmates, are positively starving to death; their allowance
is only three kopecks a day; and really they have been so neglected
that they have neither drink nor meat, nor any clothes left, but walk
about the streets in disgusting fashion, half in rags! We are left here
like mere cattle. But my chief complaint is, that I can’t stand the sea,
it makes me sick. I am not a seafaring man. It will be my death,
unless some one takes pity on me. I would gladly walk back to
Petersburg to escape the sea. I would rather beg my way than go by
water—may it please his Majesty!”
“Ah, my friend, you will only drop from the frying pan into the fire.
You won’t escape your dose of the lash at Petersburg for deserting
your apprenticeship,” remarked the Tsarevitch.
“A bad job, Æsop. What will become of you, poor orphan? Where
will you go?” asked Afrossinia.
“What choice is left for me? I must either go hang myself, or
become a monk on Mount Athos!”
Alexis gazed at him with compassion; he involuntarily compared
his own lot with that of the sailor deserter.
“Never mind, friend, we may yet, with God’s help, happily return
to old Russia,” he said with a kindly smile.
They had now passed out of the golden stream of moonlight and
were returning to the dark shore. Here at the foot of a hill stood an
abandoned villa, built during the Renaissance period, on the ruins of
an ancient Venus temple.
Along both sides of the half-ruined steps, which led down to the
sea, gigantic cypresses were ranged like torch-bearers at a funeral.
Their entwined tips, continually caught by the wind from the sea,
remained bent like heads drooping in sorrow. White statues of gods
gleamed spectre-like in the dark shade. And the fountain jet seemed
also a pale spectre. In the laurel thickets were shining glow-worms,
like funeral tapers. The heavy scent of the magnolias recalled the
smell of balsam used for anointing dead bodies. A peacock in the
villa, roused by the voices and splashing of oars, strutted out on the
steps, opening his tail, and shimmered in the moonlight with dim
iridescence, a fan set with gems. Plaintive cries of the peahens
sounded like piercing wails of mourners. The waters of the fountain,
trickling from an overhanging rock along the thin, hair-like grass, fell
into the sea, drop after drop like silent tears, as though a nymph
was weeping in the cave, bewailing her sisters. All this sad villa
brought to mind some dark Elysium, the subterranean grove of
shadows, the burial ground of dead gods; of gods who had died,
who had risen again, and again had died.
“Could you believe it, gracious mistress, it is well nigh three years
since I had a vapour bath!” continued Æsop.
“Ah! could I but have a few fresh birch twigs and then some
cherry honey after the bath,” sighed Afrossinia.
“Tears almost rise to my eyes when drinking the sour stuff of this
place, and remember our vodka,” moaned Æsop.
“And some pressed caviar!” echoed Afrossinia.
“And salt sturgeon!”
“And smelt from the White Lake!”
Thus they went on, aggravating their regrets. The Tsarevitch
listened to them, while looking at the villa and involuntarily smiled.
The contrast seemed so strange between these prosaic dreams and
the fantastic reality.
Another boat was gliding along the fairy path of the sea, leaving a
black trace in the quivering gold. The sound of a mandoline and a
song sung by a young girl’s voice was wafted across the water.

Quant’ è bella giovinezza,

Che si fugge tuttavia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia;
Di doman non c’è certezza!

This love song had been composed by Lorenzo di Medici Il

Magnifico, for the triumphant procession of Bacchus and Ariadne at
Florentine festivities. It sounded the short-lived joy of the
Renaissance, and infinite sorrow for its loss. The Tsarevitch listened,
unable to make out its meaning, yet the music filled his soul with
sweet melancholy.

Fair fleeting youth must snatch at happiness.

He knows not if to-morrow curse or bless.

“And now, Mistress, a Russian song!” begged Æsop.

He meant to go down on his knees, but floundered and just
escaped tumbling into the water. He was not over steady on his feet,
owing to the continual sipping of the sour wine from a bottle, which
he modestly tried to conceal under the lapel of his coat. One of the
oarsmen, a half-naked, fine, dark fellow seemed to understand his
request, for he smiled at Afrossinia, beckoned Æsop and handed him
a guitar. The latter started jingling on it as on some three-stringed
balalaïka.
Afrossinia smiled, glanced at the Tsarevitch and suddenly began
her song in a loud, slightly shrieking voice, just as she used to sing
in the choir on dusky spring evenings near the birch grove which
overshadowed the banks of the river. The shores of Naples, antique
Parthenope, resounded with the unwonted alien strains:—

“Oh my pretty balcony, newly

Built with maple tree, latticed fair!”

Infinite yearning for the past—the distant—breathed in the Italian

song:—

Chi vuol esser lieto, sia;

Di doman non c’è certezza.

Infinite desire for the future breathed in the Russian:—

Fly my falcon fair, far away from here,

To that country dear, which was once mine own!
 Both songs, the known and the unknown, mingled in one. The
Tsarevitch could hardly restrain his tears; never yet had he loved
Russia so dearly as now. But he loved it with a new, all-embracing
love as part of Europe, he loved the foreign country as his own. And
this love for his own country mingled harmoniously with his love for
the foreign one, like the two songs over the water.

CHAPTER II
The Emperor, when he took the Tsarevitch under his protection,
the more securely to hide him from his father, lodged him, under the
name of a Hungarian Count, in the solitary, inaccessible castle of
Ehrenberg—a real eagle’s nest, clinging to the peak of a rock in the
upper Tyrolean mountains, on the road from Fussen to Innsbruck.
The Tsarevitch felt himself a prisoner, but safe.
“Immediately on receiving this,” ran the Emperor’s instructions to
the commander of the fortress, “have two rooms ready for the chief
person, with strong doors and iron-barred windows. Soldiers and
their wives must not be allowed to leave the fortress under severe
penalty, even death. If the distinguished prisoner expresses a desire
to talk to you, you may do as he wishes, both in this case and in
several others; as for instance if he asks for a book or something
else for diversion, or even if he should invite you to dine or to take
part in some game. Moreover, you may grant him permission to walk
about in the rooms or the courtyard for fresh air, but always take
precautions lest he escape.”
Alexis had spent five months at Ehrenberg; from December until
April.
Notwithstanding all precautions, the Tsar’s spies, Roumiantzev,
captain of the guards, together with three other officers, who had
secret orders to obtain possession of a certain person at all costs,
and bring him to Mecklenburg, learnt of the Tsarevitch’s sojourn in
Ehrenberg. They arrived in Upper Tyrol and secretly installed
themselves in the tiny village of Reite at the very foot of the
Ehrenberg Rock.
The Resident Vesselóvsky declared “that his Majesty the Tsar will
be exceedingly hurt by the answer, given in the Emperor’s name,
that a certain person was not to be found in the Emperor’s domains,
while a messenger had seen his retinue in Ehrenberg, where he is
kept at the Emperor’s cost. Not only Captain Roumiantzev, but all
Europe, knows that the Tsarevitch is within the Emperor’s domains.
Suppose the Archduke should run away from his father and find
refuge in Russia, and this refuge be accorded to him secretly, how
would this affect the Emperor? Would it not be a grief to him?”
“Your Majesty,” wrote Peter to the Emperor, “may infer what we,
as a father, must feel in regard to our first-born son, who, showing
us such disobedience, left us without our sanction, and is now kept
under a stranger’s protection or arrest, which we know not. On this
point we desire an explanation from your Majesty.”
The Tsarevitch was informed that the Emperor left it to him to
decide whether he would return to Russia or continue under his
protection. In the latter case it was obvious that he must be
transferred to some remoter place, for instance Naples. At the same
time it was hinted to Alexis that the Emperor wished him to leave
behind at Ehrenberg, or quite dispense with, the company of certain
persons his father had raised objections to in his letter, and thus rob
the Tsar of any just ground of complaint that the Emperor was
extending his protection to worthless creatures. This was said with a
view to Afrossinia. It really seemed unbecoming for the Tsarevitch to
implore the Emperor’s protection in the name of his dead wife, who
was sister to the Empress, and at the same time to bring with him a
woman with whom it was rumoured he had been allied even during
his wife’s lifetime.
Alexis declared his readiness to go wherever the Emperor sent
him, and live in whatever way the Emperor desired, provided he was
not delivered up to his father.
On the 15th of April, at three o’clock in the morning, Alexis, in
spite of the spies, left Ehrenberg as an imperial officer. He had only
one servant with him, this was Afrossinia in the disguise of a page.
“Our Neapolitan pilgrims have safely arrived,” reported Count
Schönborn, “I will send my secretary at the very first opportunity
with detailed description of this journey—very entertaining, as might
be expected. Our little page, among other things, was discovered to
be a woman, neither married and still less a maid. She is declared to
be a mistress and indispensably necessary.”
“I take no end of measures to keep our company from drinking so
often and so much, but all effort is vain,” reported Schönborn’s
secretary, who was accompanying the Tsarevitch.
They passed through Innsbruck, Mantua, Florence, and Rome. On
May 6, 1717, at midnight, they reached Naples and put up at the
Three Kings Hotel. On the eve of the next day the Tsarevitch was
taken in a hired carriage outside the town as far as the sea, then
brought by a secret way into the castle. There he remained for two
days, during which time the chambers especially assigned to him in
the St. Elmo Fortress were being prepared. The fortress stood on a
high hill overtowering Naples.
Though here also he lived as a kind of prisoner, yet he did not feel
dull or oppressed by the fact; the higher the walls, the deeper the
ditch round the fortress, the more trustworthy protection they were
to him from his father.
The windows of his apartments, with a covered balcony,
overlooked the sea. Here he spent whole days. He fed, just as he
used to in Russia, the pigeons which, flocking from all sides, were
soon tamed by him; he read historical and philosophical books,
chanted psalms and litanies, gazed at Naples, Vesuvius, Ischia,
Procida and Capri, which glowed like sapphires in the distance; but
by more than anything was he attracted by the sea; he could not
tear himself away from looking at it. It seemed to him that this was
the first time he had ever seen the sea. The northern dull waters of
Petersburg, the sea of commerce and war, so beloved by his father,
was quite unlike this southern, blue, boundless expanse.
Afrossinia was with him. When he forgot his father he was almost
happy.
He was guarded with great strictness. He had obtained however,
after great difficulty, a pass for Æsop into St. Elmo. Æsop had
already made himself indispensable. He amused Afrossinia, who was
often dull; played cards and draughts with her, diverted her by jokes,
tales and fables, thus acting the part of the real Æsop.
What Æsop enjoyed most of all was relating to the pair his own
travels in Italy. Alexis listened to him with interest, while reviving his
own impressions. Much as Æsop longed to return to Russia, much as
he missed the Russian bath and vodka, it was evident that he also,
like the Tsarevitch, was beginning to love the foreign country as if it
were his own, to love Russia as a part of Europe, with a new all-
embracing love.
“The way is extremely dreary, and difficult,” he used to narrate,
describing the pass across the Alps. “The path is very narrow; on
one side mountains tower high as the clouds, on the other yawn
exceedingly deep precipices, which boisterous torrents fill with
incessant noise like watermills. And to look down makes men shiver.
Those hills are always covered with much snow because the
sunbeams never penetrate among them.
“But coming down we found, although it was winter in the
heights, fair summer reigning in the valleys. Along both sides of the
road a mass of vine and fruit trees, lemons, oranges, and among the
trees creepers formed curious figures. The whole of Italy seemed
one great garden, an image of God’s Paradise! On March 7th we
noticed fruit; lemons and oranges, some ripe, some not quite; others
green, or yet in the germ, and even blossoms, the same tree bearing
all.
 “There, hard by the hills in a pleasant place stood a house called a
villa, built in a very superb style. This house is surrounded by a most
beautiful garden and orchards; people spend their time in walking
there. And in those gardens all the trees are planted regularly, even
the foliage is clipped in keeping with the rest. Flowers and grass are
sown in pots and placed about according to design. A splendid
perspective is maintained. And many a famous fountain is fitted up
in these gardens from which springs extremely clean water in
various cunning ways; and along the paths, instead of curb-stones,
marble men and women are placed. Jove, Bacchus, Venus, and
other heathen gods, so well made that they almost seem alive. And
these statues belonging to past ages had been dug from the earth.”
About Venice he recited such wonders that for a long time Afrossinia
did not believe him, and confused Venice with a legendary town
spoken of in Russian tales.
“You are a great inventor, Æsop,” she would say, yet listened to
him with avidity.
“Venice stands in the water; sea-water covers all the streets and
lanes, and boats are used to go about in. There are no horses or
other beasts; neither, Madam, are there any carriages, landaus,
carts; as for sledges they have never even heard of them. In
summer the air is oppressive, and sometimes filled with an
extremely bad smell coming from stagnant water, such as we get in
Petersburg from the Fontanna canal when it is choked up. And all
over the town there are lots of carrier boats, called gondolas, which
are constructed in a peculiar manner: long and narrow like those
made of one tree trunk, both bow and stern are pointed; an iron
comb crowns the bow, and in the middle stands a hut with glass
windows and damask curtains; all the gondolas are black, covered
with black cloth, looking very much like coffins; as for the oarsmen,
one of them stands at the bow while the other, at the stern, rows
and steers with the same oar. They have no rudders yet manage
perfectly without them.
 “There are such wonderful operas and comedies played in Venice!
Beyond one’s power to describe accurately. Nowhere in the whole
world can one meet with such extraordinary comedies and operas.
And the halls in which these operas are performed are large and
round, the Italians call them ‘theatrum,’ and in these halls numerous
closets are fitted up five stories high with ingenious gilt work. And in
these operas the ancient legends of heroes, Greek and Roman gods
are represented. Everyone has in his theatre that legend performed
which he prefers. These operas are frequented by people wearing
masks so that one should not recognise another. Also during the
whole of Carnival time they wear masks and curious dresses;
everybody walks just where it pleases them; they have music on
their gondolas, dance, eat sweetmeats and drink fine lemonades and
chocolates. Thus they are constantly amusing themselves and are
not in the least inclined to do without merriment. These revels,
though, often lead to sin; for when they thus come together all
masked, many of the women and maidens without the slightest
shame take foreigners by the arm and amuse themselves without
stint.
“The women folk of Venice are extremely good-looking, tall,
slender, fine and well mannered; they are rusées and dress
extremely well. They despise manual labour. They spend their time
in indolence; they love pleasure and have a weakness for carnality,
simply because they want money. It is their only trade. Many of the
wenches live in separate houses and in no way consider their
profession a thing to blush at. Others who have no houses of their
own live in separate streets in low small chambers on the ground
floor. Every room has a door leading straight into the street, and
when they see a man coming towards them each one does her best
to capture him. The day that brings most visitors is reckoned the
happiest. As a consequence they suffer from the French malady, and
they who visit them are soon generously gratified by a share of it.
The clergy sermonise, but do not otherwise interfere. They are
extremely skilful,” said Æsop meditatively, “in curing the French
complaint in Venice.”