In various accounts about the history of our beloved city, one often hears or reads the phrase “Square of Imperial Wrath.” Everyone seems to have a story to tell about how the residents of Kharkiv once angered Emperor Paul I. Perhaps the legend associated with Voznesenskaya Square is one of the most popular in our city.
I don’t see any point in retelling it here. This is because in 1957, issue No. 12 of the journal *Prapor* published a study by the distinguished historian and archivist Nikolai Vasilyevich Gorbany titled “The Kharkiv ‘Paskvil’ of 1800.” This work was subsequently published in 2003 in the third issue of the *Kharkiv Historical Almanac*, published by the “Kharkiv Private Museum of the City Estate,” and is now freely available to anyone who wishes to read it.
So today I’d like to tell you about one of the actual sites of “imperial wrath” in our beloved city—though not that of Paul I, but of Nicholas I. The site remains beautifully preserved to this day. However, few people associate the old building of Kharkiv University with this event. In 1831, in the city of Mykolaiv, a son named Peter was born to the family of Isaia Semenovich (Volfovich) Weinberg, a merchant of the Second Guild who had converted to Orthodox Christianity. After the family moved to Odessa, Pyotr Isaevich was educated at V. A. Zolotov’s boarding school, then at the gymnasium attached to the Richelieu Lyceum, and later at the law faculty of the Richelieu Lyceum. In 1850, he enrolled in the Faculty of History and Philology at Kharkiv University, where he completed his studies.
In 1905, Pyotr Vainberg—already a well-known poet, translator, and literary historian—published a short memoir about his college years titled “Kharkiv University in the 1850s.” It is thanks to these memoirs that we can experience the emperor’s wrath through the eyes of a direct participant and eyewitness to those extremely interesting events, which left a deep mark on the author’s soul and memory.
In 1850, Emperor Nicholas I, on his way back to St. Petersburg from the southern part of the empire, was scheduled to stop in Kharkiv. The entire city, including the university, began actively preparing for his arrival.
Among these preparations were the rehearsals for the emperor’s visit, which the university inspector organized in the auditorium. At that time, the inspector was Colonel Stroev—a man of limited intellect but extremely good-natured. He was pleased with the students’ performances and had no complaints about them.
I invite you to see what happens next through the eyes of Peter Weinberg.
But what was the impression made by that review compared to the one left on us for the rest of our lives by Emperor Nicholas Pavlovich’s visit to the university, which followed shortly thereafter? It was in the spring of 1850. While awaiting the emperor, who had announced that he would visit the university after reviewing the garrison, we were lined up in the auditorium. The medical faculty was positioned along one side wall; the law and natural sciences students stood along the opposite wall; and our faculty—history and philology, the smallest of all—stretched along the middle wall, directly opposite the entrance doors. Behind us stood a tall and wide lectern from which speeches were delivered at ceremonial gatherings. Among my classmates was a student named Sibilev, a stocky, tall young man with hair of an almost fiery color that looked like stiff bristles, and enormous, equally bristly sideburns; wearing such facial hair was not prohibited.
We waited anxiously for the sovereign to appear. But then the moment of ceremony arrived. Nikolai Pavlovich strode into the hall, accompanied by the trustee and his entourage; he paused for a few seconds in the middle of the room and then just as quickly made his way straight toward us, the hapless history and philology students.
There, he pointed his finger at the student Sibilev and, turning to Kokoshkin, shouted angrily:
“Who is this fellow?”
Whether our trustee was flustered by the angry outburst or simply did not understand the question, he hastened to reply:
“The department, Your Imperial Majesty!”
Nikolai Pavlovich flew into a terrible rage.
“I’m not asking about her,” he shouted in a voice so loud that everyone gathered in the hall literally froze. “But about this freak…” (He pointed directly at Sibilev.) “Cut his hair and shave him immediately!” And from the sovereign’s lips poured an unstoppable torrent of menacing words addressed to Kokoshkin, among which the phrase rang out like a command:
“Drive everyone out—let at least one remain, but let him look like a human being!”
Fifty-five years have passed since those moments, yet in my memory they stand as vividly as if they were yesterday; as vivid as life, the colossal, handsome figure of Nikolai rises before my eyes, with his eyes from which sparks literally flew, with a light froth at the corners of his lips, with a voice that was thunderous yet musically resonant… As soon as he entered the hall, the frown on his face caught our attention; as it turned out later, he had arrived at the university already angered by the disorder he had witnessed during the military review. After the incident with the Sibyl-style sideburns, the gathering of clouds on the sovereign’s face erupted into a terrible storm…
The feeling this scene evoked in us was not the ordinary—albeit strong, yet still ordinary—fear that a person experiences when trembling for their personal safety; we felt nothing like such fear, just as neither indignation, nor outrage, nor anything of the sort arose in our hearts—and only after the menacing visitor had departed, and we had somewhat come to our senses, did that hypnotic state give way to another, one that was conscious and, I hope, understandable to everyone…
After the emperor’s departure, a purge began at the university. The governor of Kharkiv took the words “Drive them all out; let at least one remain, but make sure he’s human!” literally.
About two-thirds of the students were expelled. The barber and the shaver, meanwhile, were busy from morning till night shaving and cutting the hair of the “pardoned” students. By order of the tsar, Inspector Stroev was placed under guard and then removed from his post. He was replaced by an extremely cruel man, Colonel Euler. He was actively assisted by Sub-Inspector Zasyadko, who—because of his gait and temperament—was nicknamed “the hyena” by the students, who were terrified of his skillful denunciations. In his memoirs, Pyotr Isaevich describes a very interesting story connected with him.
I remember, by the way, the little scenes that unfolded after our trustee sent the university that famous directive: “Ensure (i.e., university administration) that no impression remains in the students’ minds from the lectures of Professor Mickiewicz (brother of the famous poet), who taught Roman law in Kharkiv. In the days following this directive, Zasadka’s patrols through the hallways, between lectures, became particularly frequent and vigilant. And the students would approach him, bring their foreheads close to his eyes, and say, “Dementiy Ivanovich, perhaps you’d like to look inside our brains to examine the impressions left by Mickiewicz’s lectures?” “You’re joking, you’re joking, gentlemen,” our “hyena” replied imperturbably, with his wicked little smile, “Your brains are open to me as well…”
However, the emperor’s wrath was not directed solely at the university. Nicholas I then went to the gymnasium and visited the infirmary. The gymnasium students lying there rushed from their beds to the windows to watch the sovereign’s arrival, but on the doctor’s orders, they were forced to return to their beds. In the ensuing commotion, many of them got their beds mixed up.
In those days, small signs hung above the patients’ beds, indicating the name of each patient’s illness. For this reason, when the emperor asked several people about their illnesses, their answers did not match the information on the signs. This enraged the emperor. So much so that, without heeding the doctor’s explanation that the patients had mixed up their beds “out of joyful excitement at the prospect of seeing the emperor,” Nicholas I ordered the doctor to be placed under guard, and he refused to even glance at the gymnasium students gathered in the auditorium.
The doctor in question was Ivan Nikolaevich Reipolsky, a man of great wit and originality. Weinberg recalls the following about him:
When, after spending seven days in the guardhouse, he came to the university duty office on some business, “the hyena” Zasyadko greeted him with a venomous smirk and a question.
“So, Ivan Nikolaevich, did you spend some time in a cage?”
“I did,” replied the old man with unflappable calm. “And here’s what I’ll tell you, honorable Dementiy Ivanovich: lions and other noble animals usually sit in cages, while donkeys and pigs—never. My regards.”
A year later, Nikolai Pavlovich visited our city again. Long before the emperor’s arrival, the university administration—at the expense of the academic process—had set about “cleansing” and “polishing” the students. However, alas! All of this came to nothing. After all, upon his arrival in Kharkiv, Nicholas I did not wish to visit the university. “I know,” he said to Kharkiv Governor Kokoshkin, “that you’ve now had their hair cut and shaved them properly…” Eventually, after the emperor’s wrath had descended upon the university, calm was restored. Virtually all of the expelled students were reinstated. Among them was the nobleman Nikolai Sibilev, who successfully graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology at Kharkiv Imperial University in 1853.
To understand this situation, it should be noted that students and all officials during the reign of Nicholas I were required to shave their beards and mustaches. However, in the emperor’s opinion, the student standing before him simply hadn’t shaved his chin thoroughly enough…
Years have passed, and universities are still preparing for visits from high-ranking officials. However, it now takes much more than a light stubble to provoke their anger. And the old university building and the Faculty of History and Philology have forever remained in the history of our beloved city as the “site of imperial wrath.”
- About the military pilot school and the airfield in Kharkiv… - 04.11.2020
- Kharkiv Artisans and the 1887 Exhibition - 17.08.2020
- Nikanor Savich—A Political Career by Mistake - 13.07.2020