Földvári Books

[Paris]: 1905. Collection of manuscripts in pencil and ink by various hands. Fedorov’s autograph memoir in pencil (title leaf and 21 ff.), on blank paper, written on both sides of the leaves, mounted with hinged transparent tracing-paper guards, folded once, with a few marginal nicks and small losses to the first and last leaves, skilfully restored. Kalyayev’s farewell letter copied in ink on a lined bifolium, written only on the first page and folded twice. The contemporary fair copy (30 ff.), in ink on lined paper, written on both sides of the leaves and preserved in an exercise book; the copyist initially writes on alternate ruled lines before continuing on every line. A few marginal edge restorations. The original printed cover of the exercise book, now faded, is preserved and bound into the volume. Housed in a later custom-made red cloth binding. The individual manuscript leaves are mounted on heavy paper leaves. ff [60]. Paper lightly toned throughout. The 1910 French provenance statement is preserved as an enlarged colour photocopy (3 ff.). Overall in fine condition.

The complete autograph memoir of the imperial prosecutor who witnessed the final hours and execution of the revolutionary Ivan Kalyayev, preserved with its original draft, contemporary fair copy, and Fedorov’s autograph copy of Kalyayev’s farewell letter to his mother.

Executed on 10 (23) May 1905 for the assassination of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, Ivan Platonovich Kalyayev (1877–1905) became one of the principal martyrs of the Socialist-Revolutionary Combat Organization and one of the defining figures of the revolutionary movement that shook the Russian Empire during the Revolution of 1905. Born in Warsaw, the poet and former university student became involved in revolutionary politics during the 1890s. After passing through Social-Democratic circles, he joined the Combat Organization of the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries in 1903, participating in preparations for the assassination of Interior Minister Vyacheslav Plehve before being selected to kill Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, Governor-General of Moscow and uncle of Nicholas II. Having abandoned an earlier attempt because the Grand Duke was accompanied by members of his family, Kalyayev carried out the assassination in the Kremlin on 4 (17) February 1905 and was immediately arrested. His refusal to seek imperial clemency, his deliberate acceptance of death, and his execution at Shlisselburg Fortress were rapidly transformed into a powerful revolutionary legend, celebrated in contemporary publications, memoirs, and later literature. His combination of revolutionary idealism, political terrorism, and insistence on the moral distinction between a targeted political assassination and indiscriminate violence made him one of the emblematic figures of the late Imperial revolutionary movement, while his life and death later inspired Albert Camus’s drama Les Justes (1949).

The present archive preserves the memoir of Nikolai Fedorov, then Assistant Prosecutor of the St Petersburg District Court, charged with supervising the execution of Kalyayev at Shlisselburg Fortress. Fedorov repeatedly met Kalyayev during the final hours of his life and witnessed his execution. Written only a few months later, in September 1905, the memoir gives a detailed first-person account of these events.

The archive preserves Fedorov’s original working draft in pencil, extensively revised with deletions, corrections, and cancellations; his autograph ink copy of Kalyayev’s farewell letter to his mother; and a contemporary fair copy of the memoir in ink, made in a blue exercise book by Madame Lavrova, a young Russian woman who had met Fedorov in France. The memoir records Kalyayev’s final hours in Shlisselburg, his refusal to seek imperial clemency, his insistence that this refusal be formally recorded, and his conviction that his execution would serve the revolutionary cause more powerfully than the assassination itself. Fedorov also provides a detailed eyewitness account of the execution. Throughout, he presents a restrained psychological portrait of Kalyayev, whose composure, sincerity, and unwavering convictions profoundly impressed even an official charged with overseeing his execution.

The subsequent transmission of the memoir is complex. To our knowledge, it has never been published in its entirety and appears to have circulated, at least in part, in manuscript. One of the earliest published accounts derived from it was that incorporated by Maurice Paléologue in An Ambassador’s Memoirs. Although considerably abridged, Paléologue’s narrative follows Fedorov’s account closely, naming him explicitly and recounting his role in the unsuccessful attempts to persuade Kalyayev to seek clemency, the preparation of the farewell letter, and the execution itself.

A portion of the memoir was published in 1986 in New York, in the Transactions of the Russian Academic Group in the United States, under the title The Execution of the Terrorist Ivan Kalyayev (Казнь террориста Ивана Каляева). The editor explained that the only part of the memoir available to him was its concluding and most dramatic section, preserved in a French translation, from which the Russian text was prepared. There the author was identified simply as “A. Fedorov,” following the French manuscript from which the text was translated. This erroneous initial appears subsequently to have entered the scholarly literature.

The present archive consistently identifies the author as Nicolas (Nikolai) Fedorov, strongly suggesting that the initial “A.” introduced into the published tradition is incorrect. The same attribution was later repeated by Anna Lavryonova in her edition of the memoirs of the Shlisselburg gendarme Vladimir V. Parfyonov (2017), where she describes Fedorov’s memoir as, until the publication of Parfyonov’s account, the only known memoir by a direct participant in Kalyayev’s execution. Parfyonov’s independently written recollections cover many of the same events, but differ in several important respects and assign a less prominent role to the deputy prosecutor than does Fedorov’s own account.

The collection is accompanied by a French provenance statement dated Paris, 14 May 1910, preserved only as an enlarged contemporary colour photocopy of the original. Written by an unidentified friend to whom Fedorov had entrusted the papers, it identifies the various manuscript components and their respective hands, records that Fedorov wrote the memoir in September 1905, while undergoing treatment at Dr. Beaussenat’s nursing home in Neuilly-sur-Seine, identifies Madame Lavrova as the copyist of the fair copy, confirms Fedorov’s authorship of the autograph copy of Kalyayev’s farewell letter to his mother, and documents the transfer of the archive into private custody.

Taken together, the manuscripts preserve the complete original text, composition, and early transmission of Fedorov’s memoir. Long known only through abridged publications and later retellings, it is here preserved in the form in which it was first written, restoring the fullest surviving version of the account that helped shape the revolutionary legend of Kalyayev and the historical memory of his final hours.

Literature: Fedorov, A. (1986). Казнь террориста Ивана Каляева [The execution of the terrorist Ivan Kalyayev]. Записки Русской академической группы в США, 19, 205–220.; Paléologue, M. (1921). La Russie des Tsars pendant la Grande Guerre (Vol. 1). Plon; Parfyonov, V. V. (2017). Судьба жандарма. Воспоминания ротмистра В. В. Парфёнова о службе в Шлиссельбургской крепости. Часть 3. Шлиссельбургские казни [The fate of a gendarme. Memoirs of Staff Captain V. V. Parfyonov on his service at Shlisselburg Fortress. Part 3. The Shlisselburg executions]. Обозреватель–Observer, 5(328), 113–118.

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Price: €30,000.00