Revisiting Tchaikovsky’s Supposed Suicide: A Rebuttal

By Nina Berberova, Princeton University 
Malcolm Brown, Indiana State University 
Simon Karlinsky, University of California, Berkeley

As specialists with significant experience in the study of Russian culture, we are dismayed by the uncritical Western acceptance of an unsubstantiated and unconfirmed version of Pyotr Tchaikovsky's cause of death, presented in Joel Spiegelman's article "The Trial, Conviction, and Death of Tchaikovsky." In addition to Professor Spiegelman's material, Ms. Orlova has propagated her theory in Russian émigré publications, particularly zealously in the New York newspaper Novy Amerikanets in the issues of November 5-11 and 12-18, 1980. She also managed to convince the English biographer of Tchaikovsky, David Brown, of the legitimacy of her version, resulting in the reproduction of her theory in the August issue of the new edition of Grove Dictionary. Both the method of argumentation and the "evidence" presented by Orlova struck us with their lack of credibility (historical, medical, physiological).

"The history of the composer's suicide has long been a subject of discussion in certain circles of Russian society," claims the subtitle of Spiegelman's article. Yes, rumors about Tchaikovsky's suicide have circulated since his death and have never subsided. The most persistent variant was the legend that Tchaikovsky was caught during a love affair with one of the tsar's nephews or some other young man and was forced (by the tsar or the parents of this young man, or some other group of people) to commit suicide. These rumors never came from people who were actually close to Tchaikovsky or knew him personally. Nina Berberova—one of the authors who signed this letter, while researching Tchaikovsky's biography and interviewing people close to the composer's circle in Paris in the 1930s, concluded that none of his friends (such as Alexander Glazunov, Sergei Rachmaninoff, the widow of Tchaikovsky's brother Anatoly, art historian Vladimir Argutinsky-Dolgorukov, who lived at that time in the same apartment with the composer's brother Modest) ever doubted that Tchaikovsky died of cholera. On the other hand, those convinced of the composer's suicide were precisely those people who never communicated with him, and therefore relied only on the opinions of others whom they considered trustworthy.

Probably, the origins of these rumors are rooted in the combination of the tragic mood of Tchaikovsky's last completed composition—the Pathétique Symphony, the well-known fact of his homosexuality, and the scandal in connection with his romance with the son of the prominent surgeon Nikolai Sklifosovsky, a scandal that erupted but was instantly prevented shortly before the composer's death. As some of Tchaikovsky's friends recalled, he feared that Professor Sklifosovsky might expose him, and even thought about leaving for the French Riviera.

In her article published in the newspaper Novy Amerikanets, Ms. Orlova claims that suspicions about the official cause of Tchaikovsky's death first arose for her in Klin, when she discovered in the archive a note of condolence addressed by Lev Bertenson, the doctor who was present at the composer's death, to Modest Tchaikovsky. The note mentions the "terrible disease" that took his "beloved brother," which according to Ms. Orlova is evidence of "dishonest play": Why would the attending physician, expressing sympathy to the deceased's brother, return to the causes of his death if Modest already knew that he died of cholera? This kind of thinking, which suspects "conspiracy" in everything, rejects eyewitness testimony and readily accepts very dubious third-hand evidence, permeates her entire chain of constructions. Dr. Bertenson's letter, according to Spiegelman's article, was not lost. It was copied in Klin by Nicolas Slonimsky in 1935 and appeared in English translation in Herbert Weinstock's book, Tchaikovsky (A. Knopf 1943, p. 364). It is an honest document, based on facts and not raising any questions or doubts.

Ms. Orlova also bases her rejection of Tchaikovsky's death from cholera on the absence of quarantine in his apartment during his illness, and on the fact that his coffin was not sealed during the funeral. However, at the time of the composer's death, the etiology of cholera was not known. In those years, it was believed that cholera infection was transmitted only through contaminated food and water, not through contact with patients. In the summer of 1892, Novoye Vremya, the most widely read newspaper in Russia, published a series of articles by Dr. Modest Galanin on methods of preventing cholera infection. This and other similar publications considered quarantine, sealing coffins, and isolation of cholera patients in the early stages of the disease to be outdated. Anyone who refers to Anton Chekhov's letters, who served as a medical inspector during the cholera epidemic of 1892-93, will not find in them even the slightest mention of practices similar to those that Ms. Orlova considers mandatory for those years.

But even without considering these objections, Ms. Orlova's claims about a "conspiracy"—a fabricated "cholera death scenario"—are simply devoid of elementary logic: on the one hand, Dr. Bertenson persuades Modest Tchaikovsky to reject thoughts of his brother's suicide, helps foist upon him a diagnosis of death from cholera, and on the other hand, does it so ineptly, so absurdly that no one believed him. And this is said about a recognized, famous doctor, a friend and colleague of Chekhov, Tchaikovsky, and many other celebrities of that time.

On the issue of society's attitude toward homosexuals, Ms. Orlova, and following her, Spiegelman, are as far from reality as they are on the issue of cholera quarantine. In his last major novel Resurrection, written in the 1890s, Leo Tolstoy laments the prevailing tolerance towards homosexuality that had developed by the end of the 19th century. His observations are confirmed in real life. Tchaikovsky and his friends were part of a large homosexual community that existed in Russia at that time, a community that also included grand dukes (uncles and cousins of the last two emperors). Spiegelman's assertion that in those years homosexuality was considered "a disgrace, a crime against God and man, worthy of prison or exile," is simply misinformation. According to published documents, in Tchaikovsky's time, homosexuals held very high positions in society. The famous traveler Nikolai Przhevalsky, who had become a national hero by the time of his death in 1888, always traveled on expeditions accompanied by a young lover, whom the government, at his choice, specially appointed as an officer assigned to him for protection. (See Przhevalsky's biography, The Dream of Lhasa by Donald Rayfield. Ohio University Press, 1977). Anna Evreinova, publisher of the prestigious journal Severny Vestnik and one of the first female Russian lawyers, did not hide her love union with another woman. Journalist and publisher Prince Vladimir Meshchersky, whose homosexuality was widely known, was nevertheless received at the court of Alexander III and Nicholas II. In 1887, Meshchersky was caught in a very ticklish situation with an imperial court guardsman, which threatened criminal proceedings. However, Alexander III ordered all charges against him dropped, (see Oxford Slavonic Papers. Vol. X, 1982). When Oscar Wilde was convicted of homosexuality in Great Britain in 1895, most of the Russian press, including the ultra-conservative journalist Vasily Rozanov, who specialized in defending the rights of homosexuals, considered the trial of the brilliant writer an example of hypocritical persecution.

Therefore, although Tchaikovsky indeed feared all his life that his homosexuality would become widely public, it was precisely in the 1890s that he would have least reason to fear the consequences of such publicity. Moreover, Tchaikovsky at the end of his life became close to Sergei Diaghilev and young artists who later formed the Mir Iskusstva group. Unlike Tchaikovsky's generation, these young men felt no awkwardness about their own homosexuality. If any of them had learned about forced suicide due to sexual orientation, they would undoubtedly have drawn public attention (especially due to the relaxation of censorship after the 1905 revolution) to such a gross violation of rights, especially the rights of a composer whom they all revered.

Since Ms. Orlova's information regarding both the treatment of cholera and the status of homosexuals in pre-revolutionary Russia is so unreliable, what remains of her sensational discovery? Why are widely known gossip, passed down fourth-hand, gossip which, as always in such cases, cannot be addressed to anyone specific among the people surrounding Tchaikovsky in the last two days of his life, taken as the basis of a "theory"? We are asked to believe that Tchaikovsky poisoned himself solely on the testimony of a certain person who spoke about this to Ms. Orlova in 1966, and who himself learned about it in 1913 from a woman who, in turn, heard about this fact from her husband, who died back in 1902. We are asked to believe that Tchaikovsky's colleagues from his studies at the School of Law prepared him for taking poison—a situation as absurd for Russia of those times as for modern America. Such a custom never existed throughout Russian history. Why would Tchaikovsky obey the decision of a court of fellow students if he had not contacted them for many years? The court of honor, which took place in professional and social groups of that time, was only a platform for expressing their own opinion, nothing more. The only sanction that such a court could impose—exclusion from their ranks—is hardly a justified reason for suicide. Even if Tchaikovsky had been threatened with a major scandal, he could have easily gone abroad. And the authorities would not have hindered him in this, especially considering his international fame. Ms. Orlova's "discoveries" are nothing more than a web of fiction, rumors, and misinformation. This is similar to speculation about who really killed John F. Kennedy. Spiegelman turns to rumors of a "conspiracy" to open our eyes to Tchaikovsky's suicide, which Ms. Orlova calls "one of the greatest scandals in the history of music." In our opinion, the real scandal lies in the ease with which serious scholars and musicologists have accepted this tale as a credible fact.