Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov

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Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov in the uniform of a battalion adjutant (1914)

Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov ( Russian Владимир Дмитриевич Набоков : * 9;; Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov emphasis jul. / 21st July  1870 greg. In Tsarskoye Selo ; † 28. March 1922 in Berlin ) was a Russian lawyer , journalist and liberal politician . He was the father of the Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov .

Life

In the Russian Empire

Nabokow was the offspring of a Russian aristocratic family that can be traced back to the 14th century. His father Dmitri Nikolajewitsch Nabokow (1826-1904) was Minister of Justice in the governments of Alexander II and Alexander III from 1878 to 1885 . Andrew Fields speculation that he was in fact the illegitimate son of the Tsar or his brother is not given weight today. After Nabokow graduated from high school in 1887 with honors, he studied law in St. Petersburg , then in Halle and Leipzig . During his student days in Russia, he took part in a demonstration for university autonomy and was imprisoned for four days. He turned down the offer to leave the prison on the same day because it was only for him as the son of the former Minister of Justice and not for his fellow students.

Nabokov's town house at 47 Morskaya Street in St. Petersburg, photo from 2014

From 1896 on, Nabokow taught at the Imperial School of Jurisprudence . He repeatedly spoke out against the anti-Semitism widespread in Russia . After he had published a critical article on the Jewish pogrom of Chișinău and its promotion by the police in 1904 in the legal journal Prawo ("Das Recht", Russian: Право), which he founded in 1898, he lost the rank of chamberlain , which he had held since 1895. The corresponding uniform , which he no longer needed, he offered for sale in a newspaper advertisement. Shortly before, in 1904, he had held the closing session of the first national congress of the Zemstvo , the local self-government of Russia, in his magnificent house on St. Petersburg's Morskaya Street: the tsarist government had only approved the event provided that it took place in private houses . When the management of the Imperial School asked him how he could combine his teaching activities there with political agitation, he protested against the monitoring of his off-duty activities and resigned.

Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov. Caricature from 1911

In the following years, Nabokow worked as a criminologist and journalist and campaigned for a liberal criminal law and against the death penalty . From 1905 to 1917 he was chairman of the Russian section of the International Society for Criminology, from 1906 to 1917 he published the liberal daily Retsch (“Die Rede”, Russian Речь). He belonged to the Constitutional Democratic Party , the so-called "Cadets" and was elected to the first Duma after the revolution in 1905 . He and other leading cadets publicly protested against their dissolution by Emperor Nikolaus II in the Vyborg Manifesto on July 9th . / July 22, 1906 greg. which earned him a three-month prison sentence and the loss of his right to vote in 1908. In 1913 he published a critical article in Retsch about the Beilis affair , an alleged ritual murder in Kiev. The accused Jew was acquitted and Nabokov was fined 100 rubles .

When the First World War broke out , Nabokov was drafted and worked as a battalion adjutant, later regimental adjutant in Staraya Russa , later in Vyborg and finally in Haynasch . In September 1915 he was transferred to the Asian department of the Russian General Staff and lived again in Petrograd. In February 1916 he traveled to France and England as a correspondent for the Retsch . In several articles, which also appeared as a book, he praised the democracy of Russia's allies , which the censorship of the autocratic tsarist state could not object to.

In the Russian Revolution

The February Revolution of 1917 welcomed Nabokov much, although he preferred to stay during their violent start at home since the officers on the road shoulder pieces were demolished. On February 17th, Jul. / March 2,  1917 greg. he was involved in the formulation of the letter with which Grand Duke Mikhail Romanov , the tsar's brother, renounced the throne. Nicholas II had actually resigned in his favor, but had allowed himself to be persuaded not to accept the successor. A heated argument ensued over the text with the future Foreign Minister of the Provisional Government , Pavel Milyukov , who demanded that Nabokov formulate a letter of abdication . The latter emphasized, however, that the decision of Nicholas II to make Mikhail and not his son Alexei Romanov his successor was not constitutional. A letter of abdication would recognize Mikhail as emperor , which is why it could only be a matter of renouncing the throne. With this view Nabokow was able to prevail. The text was based on a draft by Nikolai Nekrasov , but since all the people involved were overwhelmed by the precipitous events and overtaken, Nabokov had been asked to join. With the text formulated by him together with Boris Emanuilowitsch Nolde and Vasili Vitalievich Schulgin, the rule of the Romanovs ended and the way was clear for the Provisional Government.

As a result, Nabokow was appointed to the rank of State Secretary as Managing Director of the Provisional Government, which roughly corresponds to a chancellery . He had to coordinate the meetings and the legislative process. Leon Trotsky counts him among the "inspirers" of the Provisional Government . As early as March, according to his memoirs, he said he had ventured the idea of ​​a separate peace with the German Reich , whose troops were deep in Russian territory, to Minister of War Alexander Gutschkow . Trotsky contradicts this by pointing out that as recently as August 1917, at a conference of the deputies of all Dumas in Moscow , Nabokov "already rejected the idea of ​​the possibility of a separate peace".

From the spring of 1917 he was on the Legal Committee of the Provisional Government, in a commission for the revision of the Criminal Code and in the committee for drafting the law on the election to the Russian Constituent Assembly . After the July uprising of the Bolsheviks, Nabokov spoke out against the Cadets withdrawing from the Provisional Government.

Nabokov experienced the storming of the Winter Palace as unspectacular: in the morning he heard about the uprising of the Military Revolutionary Committee through his maid and then, with some difficulty, visited the Presidium of the Council of the Republic, in which all parties were represented, and the Winter Palace , where the Provisional Government met. After only encountering perplexity and a lack of determination there, he left the building again, just a few minutes before the Bolshevik sailors arrested the members of the government who were still present.

Together with Nikolay Nikolayevich Avinov, Nabokov had become chairman of the election committee for the Constituent Assembly. As such, he wrote an appeal after the October Revolution in which he warned of "anarchy and terror" of the Bolsheviks and insisted that the deadline for July 30th . / November 12, 1917 greg. fixed elections would have to take place. The newspapers that published this appeal were then banned, and the editorial offices of Nabokov's Retsch were devastated. The elections took place nonetheless, but dragged on until the end of November because of the revolutionary unrest. On November 10th July / November 23, 1917 greg. Nabokov was imprisoned with about twelve members of the electoral committee who belonged to the cadets. The group was held in a narrow chamber in the Smolny Institute , the seat of the Petrograd Soviet , which contained only two bed places. Relatives and friends brought her food and blankets, and after five days she was released without any explanation. On November 14th, Jul. / November 27, 1917 greg. Nabokov attended a meeting of the electoral committee at which the leading Bolshevik Moisei Uritsky asked the participants to part, but they refused. The next day, Nabokov learned of a decree from Lenin's Council of People's Commissars , according to which members of the Cadets were to be arrested and brought to justice.

Nabokov evaded his arrest on the same day and fled Petrograd to Haspra in the Crimea , where Sofja Panina had already given shelter to his family. He took over the justice department in the government of the white general Anton Denikin , but his powers were limited, which is why he mockingly referred to himself as the “minister of justice”. After an unsuccessful attempt to get back to Petrograd, he returned to the Crimea in the summer of 1918 and wrote his memoirs on the Russian Revolution, which were published in 1922 by a Berlin emigrant publishing house.

In exile

In view of the looming defeat of the whites in the civil war , Nabokov went into exile in early 1919. He lived temporarily in London , then in Berlin, where he was one of the editors of the liberal émigré newspaper Rulʹ ("Das Steuerruder ", Russian: Руль). In his notes from the time after the October Revolution, there are derogatory remarks against the Jews, who were disproportionately represented among the Bolsheviks. The narrative of supposedly Jewish Bolshevism was widespread among Russian emigrants. In his memories of the revolution, for example, there is a derogatory remark about Uritski's supposedly “cheeky Jewish physiognomy”.

The grave

In Berlin, Nabokov protested against the strategic reorientation of the Cadets proposed by Pavel Miliukov in his exile in Paris, namely to cooperate with the Social Revolutionaries in the fight against the Bolsheviks . Nabokov prevailed, he remained on friendly terms with Miliukov and invited him to Berlin. During his lecture in the old Berlin Philharmonic , Peter Schabelskij-Bork, a monarchist Russian exile, carried out a revolver attack on Milyukov, whom he resented for allegedly insulting the honor of Empress Alexandra . Nabokov wrestled him down and snatched the weapon from him, but a second assassin named Sergei Taboritzki stepped up and fired three times at Nabokov. He was dead after a few seconds, Milyukov survived unharmed. The perpetrators came from far-right Belarusian circles who had brought the Protocols of the Elders of Zion , an anti-Semitic, conspiracy - theoretical diatribe, to Germany. They were arrested and sentenced to twelve and fourteen years in prison for assault and death . In 1927 they were released under an amnesty . In May 1936 the Nazi regime appointed Taboritzki and Schabelskij-Bork as deputy and secretary Vasili Biskupskijs, the head of the newly established state "Russian Confidential Office in Germany". Nabokow was buried on April 1, 1922 in the Russian cemetery in Berlin-Tegel .

family

In 1897 Nabokov married Jelena Ivanovna Rukanischnikowa, the daughter of a neighboring landowner on the Oredesch , where he owned an estate. They had five children together:

Afterlife

Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov can be found repeatedly in the literary works of his son Vladimir Nabokov, for whom his murder was a trauma . In his memoirs he sets up a literary monument to his father, but shows himself unable to tell his death: on March 28, 1922, he spoke to his mother about Alexander Blok's Italian poetry , “when the phone rang.” This breaks the description from. In Nabokov's 1938 novel Die Gabe , the protagonist tries to write a biography of his missing father. In The True Life of Sebastian Knight , the protagonist's father is killed in a duel. The motif of the revolver attack, in which someone other than the target victim is mistakenly killed, plays a role in Nabokov's 1962 novel Pale Fire .

Works (selection)

Petrograd 1917
  • Petrograd 1917. The short summer of the revolution . From the Russian by Norbert Randow, foreword by Vladimir Nabokov, afterword and glossary by Günter Rosenfeld. Rowohlt Berlin, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-87134-049-9

literature

  • Virgil Dewain Medlin, Steven L. Parsons (Eds.): Nabokov and the Russian Provisional Government, 1917 . Introduction Robert P. Browder. Yale University Press, New Haven 1976, ISBN 0-300-01820-7 .

Web links

Commons : Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Vladimir Nabokov: Speak, memory, speak. Reunion with an autobiography . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1984, p. 52.
  2. ^ Brian Boyd : Vladimir Nabokov. The Russian years 1899–1940 . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1999, p. 38.
  3. ^ Brian Boyd: Vladimir Nabokov. The American years 1940–1977 . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2005, p. 922.
  4. ^ Brian Boyd: Vladimir Nabokov. The Russian years 1899–1940 . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1999, p. 50.
  5. ↑ Brian Boyd: Vladimir Nabokow. The Russian years 1899–1940 . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1999, p. 68.
  6. ↑ Vladimir Nabokov: Speak, memory, speak. Reunion with an autobiography . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1984, p. 178 f.
  7. ^ Brian Boyd: Vladimir Nabokov. The Russian years 1899–1940 . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1999, p. 91 ff.
  8. ↑ Vladimir Nabokov: Speak, memory, speak. Reunion with an autobiography . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1984, p. 179.
  9. ↑ Vladimir D. Nabokow: Petrograd 1917. The short summer of the revolution. Rowohlt, Berlin 1992, p. 19.
  10. ↑ Mark R. Hatlie: The newspaper as a center of the emigration public: The example of the newspaper Rul ' . In: Karl Schlögel (ed.): Russian emigration in Germany 1918 to 1941. Life in the European civil war . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-05-002801-7 , p. 156 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
  11. ↑ Vladimir D. Nabokow: Petrograd 1917. The short summer of the revolution. Rowohlt, Berlin 1992, p. 23 f. and 27
  12. ^ Brian Boyd: Vladimir Nabokov. The Russian years 1899–1940 . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1999, p. 210, p. 613; Tsuyoshi Hasegawa: The February Revolution, Petrograd, 1917. The End of the Tsarist Regime and the Birth of Dual Power . Brill, Leiden / Bosten 2017, p. 612 f.
  13. ↑ Jörg Baberowski : The meaning of the story. Theories of history from Hegel to Foucault . CH Beck, Munich 2005. p. 16.
  14. ↑ Leon Trotsky: History of the Russian Revolution. February and October Revolution (1930) on linkswende.org, p. 84 (accessed on July 14, 2019).
  15. ↑ Vladimir D. Nabokow: Petrograd 1917. The short summer of the revolution. Rowohlt, Berlin 1992, p.
  16. ↑ Leon Trotsky: History of the Russian Revolution. February and October Revolution (1930) on linkswende.org, p. 355 (accessed on July 14, 2019).
  17. ↑ Vladimir D. Nabokow: Petrograd 1917. The short summer of the revolution. Rowohlt, Berlin 1992, pp. 18 and 136.
  18. ↑ Mark R. Hatlie: The newspaper as a center of the emigration public: The example of the newspaper Rul ' . In: Karl Schlögel (ed.): Russian emigration in Germany 1918 to 1941. Life in the European civil war . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-05-002801-7 , p. 157 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
  19. ↑ Vladimir D. Nabokow: Petrograd 1917. The short summer of the revolution. Rowohlt, Berlin 1992, pp. 150-155; Jörg Baberowski: The meaning of the story. Theories of history from Hegel to Foucault . CH Beck, Munich 2005. p. 16 f.
  20. ^ Brian Boyd: Vladimir Nabokov. The Russian years 1899–1940 . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1999, p. 232 f.
  21. ↑ Decree of the Council of People's Commissars (SNK) on the arrest of the leaders of the civil war against the revolution, November 28 (December 11) 1917 (PDF) on 1000dokumente.de , accessed on July 9, 2019; Vladimir D. Nabokow: Petrograd 1917. The short summer of the revolution. Rowohlt, Berlin 1992, pp. 167-170.
  22. ↑ Vladimir D. Nabokow: Petrograd 1917. The short summer of the revolution. Rowohlt, Berlin 1992, p. 170 f.
  23. ↑ Vladimir Nabokov: Speak, memory, speak. Reunion with an autobiography . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1984, p. 180.
  24. ↑ Vladimir D. Nabokow: Petrograd 1917. The short summer of the revolution. Rowohlt, Berlin 1992, p. 171; Günter Rosenfeld : Epilogue . In: ibid, p. 172.
  25. ↑ Matthias Vetter: The Russian Emigration and its "Jewish Question" . In: Karl Schlögel (ed.): Russian emigration in Germany 1918 to 1941. Life in the European civil war . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-05-002801-7 , p. 110 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  26. ↑ Vladimir D. Nabokow: Petrograd 1917. The short summer of the revolution. Rowohlt, Berlin 1992, p. 170.
  27. ^ Brian Boyd: Vladimir Nabokov. The Russian years 1899–1940 . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1999, p. 312 f .; Annemarie H. Sammartino: The Impossible Border: Germany and the East, 1914-1922. Cornell University Press, Ithaca 2010, ISBN 978-0-8014-7119-3 , pp. 187 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  28. ↑ Armin Pfahl-Traughber : The anti-Semitic-anti-Masonic conspiracy myth in the Weimar Republic and in the Nazi state . Braumüller, Vienna 1993, p. 60.
  29. ^ Bettina Dodenhoeft: Vasilij von Biskupskij - An emigrant career in Germany . In: Karl Schlögel (ed.): Russian emigration in Germany 1918 to 1941. Life in the European civil war . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-05-002801-7 , SS 223 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online); Dieter E. Zimmer : What Happened to Sergey Nabokov , 2015 (PDF) on de-zimmer.de, accessed on July 10, 2019.
  30. ^ Thomas R. Beyer: Andrej Belyjs Russia in Berlin . In: Karl Schlögel (ed.): Russian emigration in Germany 1918 to 1941. Life in the European civil war . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-05-002801-7 , p. 320 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
  31. ↑ Sergej Vladimirovich Nabokov on the website of Dieter E. Zimmer , accessed on July 9, 2019.
  32. ↑ Olga Vladimirovna Nabokov on the website of Dieter E. Zimmer, accessed on July 9, 2019.
  33. ↑ Elena Vladimirovna (Hélène) Nabokov on the website of Dieter E. Zimmer, accessed on July 9, 2019.
  34. ↑ Kirill Vladimirovich Nabokov on the website of Dieter E. Zimmer, accessed on July 9, 2019.
  35. ↑ Vladimir Nabokov: Speak, memory, speak. Reunion with an autobiography . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1984, p. 48, quoted in Schamma Schahadat: Vladimir Nabokov: Speak, Memory. An Autobiography Revisited (1966) . In: Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf (Ed.): Handbook of Autobiography / Autofiction. Vol. 3: Exemplary Texts . De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2019, ISBN 978-3-11-027981-8 , p. 1852 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
  36. ^ Brian Boyd: Vladimir Nabokov. The American years 1940–1977 . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2005, p. 687 f.
personal data
SURNAME Nabokow, Vladimir Dmitrievich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Набо́ков, Влади́мир Дми́триевич
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian lawyer, publicist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH July 21, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Tsarskoye Selo
DATE OF DEATH March 28, 1922
Place of death Berlin