A Gentleman in Moscow

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016

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Themes

The Inevitability of Change

In A Gentleman in Moscow, change is compared the turning of the glass shards of a kaleidoscope: with “the slightest turn of the wrist, the shards begin to shift and settle into a new configuration—a configuration with its own symmetry of shapes, its own intricacy of colors, its own hints of design” (174). This reconfiguration occurs “in the city of Moscow in the late 1920s” (174) and also at the Metropol. This reconfiguration also occurs in the Count himself. His adherence to the Russia of the past is evident during his first meeting with Osip, who notes the Count was born in Leningrad, to which the Count replies, “I was born in St. Petersburg” (208)—the city’s name before it was renamed after Lenin in 1924. The Count accepts the inevitability of change by moving with the times while keeping the past alive in discreet ways.

When the novel opens, Russia is transforming after a political upheaval. Characters who support the Bolshevik Party indicate that the Bolsheviks seek to separate from the past, in which privileges were for the fortunate few. When he visits the Count in his room, Mishka, a member of the Bolshevik Party, looks around at the items that “had been culled from the halls of Idlehour” (81) and believes them to be “reminders of Elysian days” (81). Those days “belonged in the past” (83); they were of an age “when a lucky few dined on cutlets of veal and the majority endured in ignorance” (83). Osip tells the Count that before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, “Russia was a barbarian state” (297). They were living “exactly as their forefathers had lived five hundred years before” (297). Osip suggests Russians’ “reverence for all the statues and cathedrals and ancient institutions was precisely what was holding us back” (297) and argues that Russia and America “will lead the rest of this century because we are the only nations who have learned to brush the past aside instead of bowing before it” (298).

Though the Count is confined within the walls of the Metropol, he observes minor changes that indicate the larger changes occurring outside. Signs of the new Bolshevik regime are all over the hotel. When Vasily is looking at a map with a guest, the Count does not recognize the street names. The lobby does not have Christmas decorations, the florist shop has closed, wine labels are temporarily removed from the bottles, and Emile, grappling with economic decline, struggles to create dishes with limited ingredients. Over the years, the Count begins to hear the word “comrade” used more and more frequently, and he is told the staff will no longer call him “Your Excellency.” When riding back to the hotel after leaving Sofia in the hospital, the Count observes his beloved Tverskaya Street go by, but he recognizes nothing, for most buildings “had been razed and replaced with towers, in accordance with a new ordinance that buildings on first-rate streets stand at least ten stories tall” (312). Even in his personal relationships, the Count watches the passage of time: Nina grows up and moves out of the hotel, and Mishka visits less and less as his relationship with Katerina grows more and more serious.

In Book 2, the Count prepares to take his own life, unable to cope with the obliteration of all he knows and with the slow disappearance of his identity and relevance. After the removal of the wine labels, the Count thinks about how one’s way of life can disappear “in the comparative blink of an eye” (144). He laments how many “aspects of his life” (144) were “all behind him” (144), for “the Bolsheviks, who were so intent upon recasting the future from a mold of their own making, would not rest until every last vestige of his Russia had been uprooted, shattered, or erased” (144). Having been left behind by his friends and by history, the Count begins to feel as if he is blending into obscurity, and he decides to “shed this mortal coil, once and for all” (145).

The Count’s life is saved upon his realization that the past is not fully behind him, that it is possible to move toward a new future while taking the past with him, albeit in a new form. Just as he is preparing to jump off the roof, he is interrupted by Abram, who informs the Count that Abram’s bees have returned and that their honey tastes of the apples of Novgorod Nizhny. This taste of home—this realization that the past becomes relevant in unexpected ways—inspires the Count, the very next day, to speak with Andrey about becoming a waiter in the Boyarsky. This encounter with Abram has shown him that times will change, but one need not abandon one’s identity completely. The Count’s move to working in the Boyarsky demonstrates his willingness to adjust.

The Count’s ability to adjust to the times is shown throughout the novel. When the Count is told his possessions will become the property of the people, he states simply, “Very well” (11). When the man in the barbershop cuts off his mustache, the Count ponders the shifting of the universe and asks the barber for a “clean shave” (37). When Mr. Halecki informs him that the staff will not address him by his title because “the times have changed” (75), the Count concedes that “[i]t is probably for the best” (75). Like the asparagus server and other antiquated items he finds in the storeroom with Nina, the horn in the painting that hangs in Mr. Halecki’s office is “a carefully crafted object expressive of beauty and tradition” but that has also “outlived” its “usefulness” (76). Ultimately, the Count manages to “master his circumstances” (18); he proves that when “[i]t is the business of the times to change” (75), it is also “the business of gentlemen to change with them” (75). It is his ability to accept new ideas that enables Sofia’s escape to America: though the Count at first resisted the idea of American “conveniences,” he is willing to embrace this new world because he knows doing so will save his daughter.

Anna, too, is able to adjust to the times in her willingness to take acting roles that are more in line with tastes and preferences. When her movies about “the era of princes and princesses,” with their depictions of “waltzing and candlelight and marble stairs,” are deemed out of touch and lacking in “historical immediacy,” Anna falls from popularity, for her pictures focus too much on “the trials and triumphs of the individual” (193). Realizing that continuing to attach herself to her director “was a stone that could quickly drag her to the depth” (194), Anna begins cutting her ties with him. She begins taking roles in more modern movies, and when she plays a middle-aged factory worker who speaks about grit and determination, her popularity once again begins to rise. Later, in her fifties, she returns to the stage, which “seemed to understand the virtues of age” (340). Even her method of procuring roles shows ability to reassess her circumstances. Because she is kept waiting at the Metropol for a director with whom she is having dinner, she ensures in the future her dates arrive first; because the director declines her invitation to her room, she no longer invite future dates upstairs. Anna’s continued survival and her rise from hardship is the result of her ability to change and adapt.

The novel, which falls into the genre of historical fiction, suggests that those who are able to adjust to the times survive, while those who remain immovable are crushed by the machine of history. Mishka, the Count’s fiery, passionate, ideal-driven best friend, cannot move past a request for him to censor a letter by Chekhov; he spends the morning musing on his favorite poets and becoming angrier about their silencing, then bursts into the office of his editor and, without restraint, regales against Stalin and against the obsequiousness of his supporters. He is unable to control himself even as the editor tries to calm him and convince him to speak privately in his office later. Though Mishka’s outburst is “satisfying” (270), it results in his being questioned and tried, then sent to “Siberia and the realm of second thoughts” (270). Nina, who is impatient with disagreement and whom the Count has always feared would miss enjoying life as a result of “the force of her convictions” (189), follows her husband when he is sentenced to hard labor in Sevvostlag and ultimately disappears “into the vastness of the Russian East” (271).

Early in the novel, the Count compares himself to Robinson Crusoe, who studied his “island’s topography, its climate, its flora and fauna” while simultaneously watching “for sails on the horizon and footprints in the sand” (29). Similarly, the Count takes stock of his circumstances and flexes accordingly, offering concessions while retaining hope that the cycle will turn in his favor once more. Though sometimes nostalgic—the Count frequently muses on the dignity of the past, and he secretly plans a traditional dinner with Andrey and Emile—the Count survives by accepting change. In fact, his ability to adjust ends up offering more than mere survival. The Count takes joy in many of his new experiences, admitting that “in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to [him] most” (352).Ultimately, the Count finds that change, like the shards in a kaleidoscope, shifts but does not obliterate. Standing before the burned-down ruins of Idlehour, he discovers that “one can revisit the past quite pleasantly, as long as one does so expecting nearly every aspect of it to have changed” (461).

The Cycle of History

One can apply the saying the more things change, the more they stay the same to many aspects of the novel. Though the Bolsheviks reject privilege in favor of the collective whole, they retain the expensive silver at the Metropol because they, too, will have banquets one day. Bolshevik assemblies look remarkably similar to the balls the Count attended. An “old revolutionary” accepts “the deference of […] two young Bolsheviks […] while sitting in the very chair from which the Grand Duchess Anapova had received the greetings of dutiful young princes at her annual Easter Ball” (67). The Count finds that “the patch on the elbow” (67) is no different from “the epaulette on the shoulder” (67), for both are intended “to strike a particular note” (67). The Bolsheviks even enjoy luxurious homes and furnishings, justifying these extravagances by claiming the items are part “of the vast inventory of the People” (192). Most importantly, the Bolsheviks become as oppressive as the tsarist regime they’ve supplanted. In order to prevent “feelings of discontent or ill will” (374), they censor a letter in which Chekhov claims Russians don’t know how good bread can be; however, Chekhov’s “observation was no longer even accurate” (374), for the Russian people, starving under the Bolsheviks, “knew better than anyone in Europe how good a piece of bread could be” (374). The new regime thus is similar to the old regime.

However, this cycle turns even within the Bolshevik regime itself. Eventually, wine bottles are allowed to retain their labels. Jazz, which the Bolsheviks originally had shunned due to “its intrinsic decadence” (213), is embraced “so they could study more closely how a single idea can sweep the globe” (213). Stalin, concerned about how Russia looks in “the Western press” (229), initiates the encouragement of “a little more glamour, a little more luxury, a little more laughter” (230). Christmas trees also return. The Count believes that though Fatima’s florist shop has closed, flowers are bound to come back to the Metropol, for “flower shops of Paris [were] shuttered under the ‘reign’ of Robespierre” (33), but now “that city abound[s] in blossoms” (33). The Count sometimes muses on the frequent overturning of regimes themselves; for example, on recalling how he and Helena used to listen to church bells before they were melted by the Bolsheviks into artillery, he considers how perhaps “the cannons that had been salvaged from Napoleon’s retreat to make the Ascension’s bells had been forged by the French from the bells at La Rochelle; which in turn had been forged from British blunderbusses seized in the Thirty Years’ War” (90). Thus “the fate of iron ore” (90) is to be forged “[f]rom bells to cannons and back again, from now until the end of time” (90). Similarly, it is the fate of power to be transferred from one regime to the other, none of which are so different.

Mishka’s comment to the Count that “Russians have proven unusually adept at destroying that which [they] have created” (290) reinforces that eras come and go, and that the cycle is ever-turning. Mishka imagines Napoleon, having marched into Moscow, awakening to find the city ablaze with fires set by Russian patriots. He states that Russians’ willingness to destroy its art, churches, or livestock to prevent others from destroying or conquering them is Russia’s “great strength” (291). His conclusion, that “[w]e have not burned Moscow to the ground for the last time” (291), suggests that this era, too, will turn over for another.

Mishka’s imprisonment itself illustrates the turning of cycles. Mishka, originally a supporter of the Bolshevik party, eventually is destroyed by it, as the Bolsheviks seek to “efface the Enemies of the People” (289). Like many other Bolsheviks, and like Nina, Mishka is initially drawn to the Bolshevik ideal, but his “faith in the Party [is] tested” (227) by the Party’s harsh tactics. Even Mishka’s personal journey, in which he moves from “out of step” (86) to “in perfect sympathy” (86) with the times, and back to out of step once more, indicates the turning of the cycle.

Imprisonment Versus Freedom

A Gentleman in Moscow suggests that freedom is possible even when one is imprisoned. Early in his imprisonment, the Count is deeply aware of his constraints. His room in the belfry is too small for his tall frame; he can stand at his full height only along the outer wall. He feels crowded by the small selection of furniture he’s brought, and he removes much of it to another room in the belfry. Shortly after, he sneaks into his old suite with Nina and is haunted by a tea service on the table, for his own small room does not offer “enough space to accommodate such a civilized hour” (62) as tea time. When he looks at this “moment in the daily life of a gentleman at liberty” (62), he is reminded of his own limitations as the result of his imprisonment. He finds himself with little to do and eagerly awaits visits from Mishka, who tends to cancel or to leave him early. He rereads the same newspaper he read the day before. Feeling an alluring draft from the coatroom, he is drawn toward the fresh air, and as he examines the coats that have been left there, he imagines how their owners would have arrived at the hotel. He begins “to be threatened by a sense of ennui—that dreaded mire of the human emotions” (55). As he looks out at the city before he plans to jump from the roof, he considers how “sending a man into exile at home” (164) is a unique kind of punishment, for “when you exile a man into his own Country, there is no beginning anew” (164). A man’s “love for his Country will not become vague or shrouded by the mists of time” (164). It thus creates a special torment, for it dangles freedom before the prisoner, who knows he will never again possess it.

However, the Count begins to create his own freedom in the Metropol even as he is confined within its walls. Nina, who is “confronted with her own version of confinement” (56), makes the walls of the Metropol grow “outward,” rather than “inward, expanding in scope and intricacy” (57). As she and the Count explore the hotel with her passkey, the Count sees views of the hotel he never would have otherwise; once like a steamship passenger who believes “he has made the most of a journey at sea” (57), the Count is now exposed to “those lower levels that teem with life and make the passage possible” (57). In this way, the Count not only sees new parts of the hotel; rather, in being exposed to the processes that make his home what it is, the Count acquires a new vision of his own life.

His “course of study” (57) with Nina inspires him to explore his own small room, and he discovers he can create a secret study on the other side of his closet. He is finally able to expand his space, and he brings back the possessions he had banished to other rooms in the belfry. More importantly, he creates freedom in his mind, for while “a room that exists under the governance, authority, and intent of others seems smaller than it is, […] a room that exists in secret can, regardless of its dimensions, seem as vast as one cares to imagine” (64). It is not the only time in the novel having a secret provides him with a sense of freedom: his helping Andrey and Emile secretly prepare the bouillabaisse is an act of subversion that makes him feel as if more is possible than might appear.

The Count also finds freedom by opening himself to new experiences in the hotel. His many conversations with different kinds of people offer him new ideas and perspectives. The Count speaks with people of various nationalities, and he befriends a journalist, a Bolshevik officer, an orchestra conductor, and a State Department official, not to mention the staff of the hotel itself. While at the hotel, he becomes a waiter at the Boyarsky and also a father. These unexpected roles expand the Count’s knowledge, perception, and sensitivity, demonstrating that growth is not impeded by one’s physical circumstances.

The Count ultimately obtains physical freedom, but only with the help of those he meets in the hotel. He enlists the help of Pudgy Webster, Richard Vanderwhile, and Andrey, and he steals items from the barbershop and the rooms of hotel guests. Fittingly, his knowledge of the secret rooms—his first lesson in freedom, imparted to him by Nina—enables him to lock the Bishop in the storeroom. That the Count uses the hotel to escape from it suggests the power of imagination and spirit.

The Importance of Friendship

During his time in the Metropol, the Count is sustained by the friendships he makes. His friends are varied in age, nationality, and personality. His friendships with Andrey and Emile begin as a relationship between staff member and guest but evolve into that of cherished partners; this “Triumvirate” meets daily to discuss reservations and menus, but they also plan a secret dinner and provide support during quickly-changing times. With Nina, the Count has the opportunity to experience childhood again; he explores the hotel with her, crawling into the balcony of the ballroom and eating ice cream with her in the Piazza. As Nina grows, he sees less and less of her but always retains a sense of fatherly responsibility for her. Fittingly, his fatherly responsibility is passed on to him through Nina’s daughter, Sofia, the care of whom becomes the most important, meaningful aspect of the Count’s life.

The Count’s friendship with the passionate Osip provides him with a deeper understanding of the Bolshevik cause. Richard Vanderwhile, level-headed and intelligent, offers respite, for he and the Count, both born of privilege, can relate to each other. From Marina, the Count receives honesty and encouragement; along with Anna, Marina acts as a mother figure to Sofia. Anna herself is the love of the Count’s life, and the two develop a closeness that spans decades.

Mishka is the Count’s oldest friend, and the Count looks forward eagerly to his visits. When Mishka passes away, the Count weeps for him and “for himself,” for at his death, “there went the last of those who had known [the Count] as a younger man” (374). The Count feels this loss “[d]espite his friendships with Marina and Andrey and Emile, despite his love for Anna, despite Sofia—that extraordinary blessing that had struck him from the blue” (374). This feeling of loss illustrates the significance of friendship in his life. Each friend means something different, unique, and beautiful to him, and each is important in their own way.

A Gentleman in Moscow offers many examples of friends helping and making sacrifices for each other. Given their friendship, the Count does not hesitate to take Sofia for Nina. He also, readers learn, agreed years before to publish Mishka’s poem under his own name. Andrey pretends to have a tremor in his hand so the Count can serve the dinner with the Presidium and the Council of Ministers. Richard Vanderwhile agrees to help Sofia find freedom in America, and Viktor Stepanovich plants items in the railroad station to make the authorities believe the Count has gone to Finland. Osip, a Bolshevik official who is “charged with keeping track of certain men of interest” (211), does not pursue the Count after his escape, ensuring he will remain free. The message, ultimately, is a hopeful one, for even in difficult times, one’s network of friends can be depended upon.

Serendipity

After the Count has escaped from the Metropol, Viktor Stepanovich, while watching Casablanca, ponders how “the smallest of one’s actions […] can restore some sense of order to the world” (459). In A Gentleman in Moscow, chance encounters and occurrences change the course of people’s lives.

The Count tells Sofia that had the man in the barbershop not cut off his mustache, he and Nina would not have met, for it was only the absence of his mustache that inspired Nina to approach his table. Anna’s date her first night at the Metropol—the round-faced man with the receding hairline—becomes Minister of Culture, and his relationship with Anna is what prevents Sofia from being taken away from the Count. Later, Anna will use her connection with the Minister to prevent Sofia from being taken with the Red October Youth Orchestra to Stalingrad. Though the Minister does not actually speak in the novel and never personally meets the Count, his minor appearance has long-lasting effects.

Viktor Stepanovich happens to walk past the ballroom when Sofia is playing Mozart; he is so entranced by her talent that he agrees to take her on as a student, which leads to Sofia’s going to Paris and ultimately to her escape to America. The Count’s friendship with Viktor plays a key role in his escape to Novgorod Nizhny, for Viktor leaves the coat, hat, and guidebooks in the train station to suggest the Count is in Finland. Viktor’s friendship with the Count renews his own hope, as well, for his mentorship of Sofia inspires him to join a chamber orchestra.

The Count’s encounter with Abram on the roof and the return of Abram’s bees saves the Count’s life, for the taste of Novgorod Nizhny apples in the honey restores the Count’s hope and optimism.

Even the Count’s learning from his godfather about the pistols in the hotel manager’s office helps the Count escape the Bishop before he leaves the Metropol for good.

Chance events can cause destruction, as well. The Count explains how the temperature dropping just a few degrees sparked a complex chain of events that led to his not being present at his sister Helena’s death.

These chance events seem insignificant at the time but often play important roles, even after years’ time, suggesting that our actions are relevant and important. Even a small act of goodness can cause a ripple effect in the lives of others.

The Specter of the Past

As he attempts to adjust along with changing times, the Count is haunted by the past, which he thinks of with nostalgia throughout the novel. As he determines what to take with him to his room in the belfry, he laments that he will have to say goodbye to so many personal items. He often speaks to his portrait of Helena and in fact remembers her in an almost idealized setting, sitting outside with him “on glorious spring days when the orchards herein bloom and the foxtails bobbed above the grass” (23). The Count reveres his godfather, the Grand Duke, attaching sentimental value to his desk, which was from the time of Louis XIV. The past also surfaces in the Count’s devotion to formality and finery. He is pleased to witness a “modern young couple proceeding toward romance in the age-old fashion” (104). During his first meeting with Osip, he resists sitting at the table “as a matter of decorum” (206). He also recalls days when terms such as “Your Excellency” and “Your Eminence” reflected “that one was in a civilized country” (75). The Count is reminded of the past when he looks at the items in his room, peruses the Boyarsky’s extensive wine list, and reminisces with Abram about the apples of Novgorod Nizhny. The past hangs over his thoughts even as he opens to new experiences; people and places from the past are often remembered as larger than life or idyllic.

Human Frailties and Flaws

When the Count has his final standoff with the Bishop, he discovers that the Bishop has kept files of the Count and his friends. The files contain “a careful accounting of human flaws” (435). The notes in the files are not “spurious or inaccurate” (435), for the Count’s friends “[n]o doubt […] had been guilty of these human frailties at one point or another” (435). The Count believes that he “could have compiled a file fifty times larger that cataloged their virtues” (435). A Gentleman in Moscow does not present perfect people. Nina is impatient and stubborn, Mishka is rash, and Emile loses his temper. Other characters overcome their flaws; for example, Anna becomes less haughty. The Count, of course, has his own flaws, in that he can fail to be objective about the extravagance of his lifestyle. However, these characters have great love for each other and make great sacrifices for each other. They are all, ultimately, good people, and the Count is forgiving of these flaws.

Much of the novel explores the relationship between beauty and pain. The Count appreciates the beauty of fine objects while simultaneously acknowledging their uselessness. Anna’s acting journey is bittersweet, for while she is able to transform herself, she is no longer the glamorous young starlet of the past. The Count’s sending Sofia off to America is his greatest display of love for her: though he knows it is best for her, it means they must say goodbye. In this context, frailties have their own beauty, for they distinguish who we are. They illustrate characters’ vulnerabilities, making them relatable and human.