We continue the series of articles about the history of Kaluga and the region.
Let us remind you that every Friday at 20:00 we publish historical essays about our city, famous fellow countrymen and their fate.
All historical publications can be viewed in the History of Kaluga section.
Today we will tell you the story of Nikolai Shelgunov.
Nikolai was born on November 22, 1824 in St. Petersburg, into a noble family. His great-grandfather and grandfather were sailors.
Father, Vasily Ivanovich, served in the civil department and died suddenly, while hunting, when Nikolai was three years old. After this, since the family had no funds, the boy was sent to the Alexander Cadet Corps for minors, where he stayed until he was ten years old.
Shelgunov recalled: “At the age of four I was sent to the Aleksandrovsky Junior Cadet Corps. This original institution was located in Tsarskoe Selo and prepared young children and orphans of officers for the St. Petersburg corps.
There were up to five hundred students in the building. The age limit was twelve years, and there was no limit below. I had one pupil with me – an infant.
We were led and controlled by women, nannies ran the bedrooms, and the company commanders were the widows of distinguished officers. The only man I remember was the lamp maker, who terrified us because he was called upon for extreme punishments.
In ordinary cases, we were flogged by the nannies or the company commanders themselves in the homely way: they would lower the criminal’s pants, bend him over, put his head between his knees and beat him with rods. The terrible lamp maker appeared with a bench, with long rods and flogged “for real.”
What we were taught, where they taught us and who taught us – I don’t remember anything. But I remember very well that once my head was between the knees of the company commander, and another time I was wearing a stupid cap made of blue sugar paper with the inscription “Thief”, and in this form I stood in the corner.
My fault was this: the nannies of our company always had croutons with raisins in the top drawer of their chest of drawers, which were incredibly attractive to us.
And so, seizing a moment when the nannies were leaving, we made expeditions to their room and carried this treasured fruit, giving preference, of course, to raisins over croutons. One of the expeditions turned out to be unsuccessful: my comrades fled, and I was caught.
.. From life in the Alexander building, I remember only a large bedroom with rows of beds, long shirts with long sleeves that we wore at night, a corridor, a locked door from it to the room with raisins, and two cases of punishment… I remember that he came to us since Emperor Nicholas…
I also remember that we always rejoiced at the arrival of the sovereign, because we were gathered in the recreation hall, he would start some kind of fuss, and we, feeling much freer than usual, took advantage of the opportunity to pinch and squeeze our “commanders” in the crush.
At the age of 10, Shelgunov moved to the Forestry Institute, where children were accepted. He wrote about this time: “This was an institution of a completely different type than the Alexander Corps. The Institute was under the jurisdiction of Count Kankrin (Minister of Finance), who was very concerned about the development of forestry education.
In the summer, Kankrin lived in one of the outbuildings of the institute, very close to the house in which we lived, but he rarely looked at us, and in general his close proximity to us was not felt: no one pulled us in, and we lived freely and easily. We loved Kankrin, firstly, because we did not feel him, and, secondly, for his “democracy”.
He addressed himself very simply, had the habit of saying “father” (he also called us “fathers”), and, although he wore a military general’s uniform, he had a completely homely, “civilian” appearance. We had various jokes about Kankrin…
In my first memories of the Forestry Institute, nothing integral remained; only the general impression of something very free, bright and good remained.”
Traveled abroad
After graduating from college, Nikolai Shelgunov joined the forestry department. In the summer he traveled to the provinces for forest management, in the winter he returned to St. Petersburg and wrote books on forestry.
In 1849, Shelgunov worked in Samara, where he met the historian and literary researcher Pyotr Pekarsky. He attended evenings, played violin and cornet in amateur concerts, even conducted an orchestra and wrote musical plays.
At the same time, he spent most of his time writing the history of Russian forest legislation, for which he later received a diamond ring and a prize.
Shelgunov was abroad twice. I studied forestry there. I visited Herzen in London, then met with him in Paris.
Returning home, he was a professor at the institute for some time, reading the history of forestry legislation. And in March 1862 he retired with the rank of colonel of the forest ranger corps.
From 1859 he began to collaborate with Russkiy Slovo, and then with Sovremennik, when the magazine was headed by Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky.
Wife and her lovers
In 1850, Shelgunov married his cousin Lyudmila Petrovna Michaelis. But after some time she left him for Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s close friend, poet Mikhail Mikhailov, from whom a year later she gave birth to a son, Mikhail.
She also had a lover, Alexander Serno-Solovyevich, who in 1862, as a member of the leadership of “Land and Freedom,” was exiled to Europe.
Shelgunov with his wife.
Shelgunov described Mikhailov as follows: “Mikhailov was short, thin and slender. He stood somewhat upright, like all short people. There was something in his graceful figure that imparted harmony, grace and some kind of neatness to all his manners and movements. This natural grace was conveyed by Mikhailov to everything he wore.
The tie, the most ordinary on others, looked completely different on Mikhailov, and this depended on the fact that Mikhailov, with his thin, “smart” fingers, knew how to tie it with feminine accuracy and grace. The most ordinary frock coat, sewn by the most ordinary tailor, took on a slender, neat look on Mikhailov, as if from a brand new place (in his best times, Mikhailov sewed dresses from French tailors)…
Mikhailov was not handsome: his small, narrow, slanted, Kirghiz-like eyes and pale, dark complexion had something of the eastern steppe, Orenburg. And his raised and arched eyebrows gave his face a peculiar originality. But it was precisely this originality of his face that was in harmony with his entire figure…
He had to make an effort with his eyebrows in order to open his eyes, and from this his whole figure took on a kind of elevated appearance, as if the effort of his eyebrows to raise his eyelids lifted his whole self.
And this ugly face shone with inner beauty, radiated with soothing meekness and softness, something so pretty and femininely attractive that it was impossible not to love Mikhailov. And everyone loved him.”
In the spring of 1862, Shelgunov accompanied his ex-wife to Nerchinsk. She needed to visit Mikhailov in exile. According to one version, Lyudmila wanted to arrange for him to escape abroad. During this trip, Shelgunov was arrested for proclamation and sent to St. Petersburg, to the Peter and Paul Fortress.
In 1864, in Europe, Shelgunov’s ex-wife gave birth to another son from the revolutionary Serno-Solovyevich. And Shelgunov was sent to the Vologda province that same year.
Organized a library
In the Vologda province he lived in exile in a settlement and continued to write for the Russian Word. Five years later he was allowed to leave, but was forbidden to live in St. Petersburg. And Shelgunov went to Kaluga.
Here he, together with liberal officials, organized a library with a reading room at the Podvorye cooperative partnership. His works are dedicated to Kaluga: “Podzavalye”, “Cases of the Kaluga “Podsporye””, “Konovalovskoe Case”.
Then Nikolai Shelgunov left for Novgorod, then to Vyborg. And only at the end of the 1870s he was able to return to St. Petersburg.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Shelgunov died on April 12, 1891 from pneumonia.
Tatiana Svetlova
Tags: luck wife exiled revolutionary publicist Nikolai Shelgunov lived Kaluga Kaluga News
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