“Welcome to Vitebsk,” says Lydia as she greets us at the train station. The Vitebsk railroad terminal is a classic Soviet period piece – an assertive, ordered building dominated by polished marble and huge chandeliers. The station design was one of the finest efforts of Boris Sergeyevich Mezentsev, one of those railway architects who fell from favor soon after Stalin’s death. Some were assigned to out-of-the-way universities to write their memoirs. Mezentsev was luckier than most. He went on to work successfully in the Uzbek Soviet Republic and in Russia’s Volga region.
Today Vitebsk station is as efficient as on the day it first opened in 1953. This is a detail that Lydia is keen to impress on us. “We do things properly here in Vitebsk,” she says, going on to explain that Vitebsk is a world apart from St. Petersburg or Moscow.
From time to time a city or region becomes the nexus of a very special creative energy. A very particular creativity emerged in Vitebsk during the first quarter of the 20th century. At that time, this city 300 miles west of Moscow nurtured more artistic talent than most European capitals.
The story of how Vitebsk rose to prominence in the arts starts not in the city itself but in Zdravneva, a small community about a dozen miles northeast of Vitebsk. It is a slip of a place that might easily have stayed forever obscure had not the Russian painter Ilya Repin purchased a riverside estate there in 1892.
Repin was one of the Peredvizhniki group of artists, often dubbed The Wanderers or The Itinerants by Anglo-American art critics. Repin was the master of Russian realism, most often remembered in the West for densely populated tableaux that powerfully evoke the colorful texture of Russian life. His Kursk Easter Procession and his Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Sultan are among his most celebrated works. Indeed, it was the lucrative and timely sale of the latter canvas that allowed Repin to acquire the property at Zdravneva. Repin sold the picture to Alexander III in 1891 for more than R30,000, to that point the most ever paid for a Russian painting.
In Repin’s day, Zdravneva was a special place. And it is just as beautiful today. There is a hint of Paradise in the gently undulating country that surrounds the Western Dvina here. The river flows sedately past the house where the artist once lived and worked in splendid isolation. In Repin’s day, it took three hours via the daily steamer to reach Vitebsk.
In winter, the snow-stifled air hangs heavy over the estate, ice and slush lingering in some years until well after Easter. But when spring comes Zdravneva bursts into color with horse chestnuts spreading their rich crowns. There are pale snowdrop anemones, a flood of yellow scorzonera and dark violets aplenty. Frogs unite in throaty chorus, water lilies flower in backwaters and midges swarm over the watery meadows and forests. The country around Zdravneva inspired some of Repin’s most beloved paintings, including his realist interpretations of Russian landscapes.
Yet the legacy of Repin’s years in Zdravneva was not just in his art. Repin sought to encourage local artists. He invited them to visit Zdravneva. One of the Vitebsk artists who took the steamer upriver out to Repin’s home was Yehuda Pen, a charismatic teacher ten years younger than Repin. Pen was the undisputed patriarch of Vitebsk art, a man who gave his life to painting and who used the artistic vocabulary of the Peredvizhniki to record on canvas the faces and street scenes that colored the Vitebsk cityscape. Pen’s enthusiasm for art was boundless, and, with the encouragement of Repin, Pen founded a school of art in Vitebsk. It was the first private school of art anywhere in the Russian Empire.
Moyshe Shagal was just five years old when Ilya Repin settled at Zdravneva. Moyshe led the simple life of most Jewish boys in Vitebsk. Although Vitebsk was far from the sea, Moyshe’s father made a living from herring – salted, pickled or preserved in a dozen different ways. And Moyshe’s mother ran a small shop out of the front room of the family’s small red brick home on Pokrovskaya ulitsa.
“That’s where he lived. Somewhere over there,” says Lydia, pointing vaguely north from the station. “I’m not exactly sure where,” she continues. “It’s a part of town that I never visit,” she explains. Moyshe evidently does not figure large on Lydia’s personal radar.
Moyshe was brought up respecting the twin pillars of Jewish life in Vitebsk: trade and the Torah. The two went hand in hand on Pokrovskaya, where Shagal’s family respected the Yiddish aphorism that Toyre iz di beste skhoyre. Yet in truth young Moyshe had little interest in either. He lived in his own imaginative world, one fueled by images from the old Yiddish tales that every Jewish family in Vitebsk knew and loved. Moyshe dreamed of magicians wandering through mythical landscapes. And in the evenings he and other local children gathered in the courtyard behind the red brick house to hear the latest story by Sholem Aleichem, whose fabulous tales were full of characters who deftly defied the laws of physics.
After his bar mitzvah, Moyshe stopped attending the local Jewish heder and enrolled in the Russian school on the opposite bank of the river. Vitebsk was a divided city, with the Jewish community on the west bank of the Western Dvina, around Kolbanovsky’s tobacco factory. There were small workshops, synagogues and the banya (steam bath). Yet this was no small town shtetl. Vitebsk was within the Pale – that area of the Russian Empire where Jews were permitted to settle. But no other city in the Pale was as close to both St. Petersburg and Moscow, and Vitebsk’s Jewish community reflected that proximity in its urbane, educated and outward-looking demeanor.
It was only in Vitebsk that a Jewish boy like Moyshe could end up attending a Russian school – and then probably only because Moyshe’s mother had slipped the teacher a little incentive to admit the boy from the wrong side of the river.
Yet Moyshe Shagall’s education was not just at the Russian high school. The most formative element of his education was elsewhere. Traveling on the tram across the river bridge on the way to school one day, the boy spotted an advertisement for Yehuda Pen’s art college. It was a simple sign with fragile white letters set against a blue background, proclaiming “The school of drawing and painting of the artist Pen.”
By the end of the week, Moyshe had attended his first tutorial with Pen. The lesson was paid for on the day. Pen charged just one ruble. It was not long before Moyshe’s future career path was set. More studies in St. Petersburg, a spell in Paris, and the artist by then known as Marc Chagall was well on his way to recognition as an emerging star in the world of European art.
Repin, Pen and Chagall are just three of many artists associated with the city of Vitebsk and its hinterland. Pen had a remarkable capacity for spotting talent, coupled with a penetrating compassion for those who wanted to draw or paint, but who had little idea how to get started. He taught a galaxy of artists who went on to have celebrated careers, including the sculptor Ossip Zadkine and the designer and architect El Lissitzky.
Chagall returned to Vitebsk after the 1917 revolution. Although just 30 years old, Chagall already had a formidable reputation. His art had been displayed in Paris and Berlin. So it was no surprise when Comrade Chagall was appointed Commissar for Arts in the Vitebsk region, a position to which the young artist initially devoted himself with considerable enthusiasm, riding the revolutionary wave of euphoria that inspired the Vitebsk artistic community in 1918.
The young commissar set about sealing Vitebsk’s place on the cultural map of Russia, and in late 1918 the city celebrated the first anniversary of the revolution with much aplomb. Enlisting the help of students from Yehuda Pen’s art school, Commissar Chagall ensured that Vitebsk was the best decorated city in all Russia. Imagine an entire city resplendent with giant Chagallesque scenes: serious Jewish faces, magicians, images of people and houses seemingly flying through the Vitebsk skies. Every kommunalka in Vitebsk vied to demonstrate its loyalty to and appreciation of the city’s homegrown talent.
The celebrations for the anniversary of the revolution over, Chagall turned to his next grand project: the People’s Art College. There was no art college anywhere in Russia outside Moscow and Petrograd which was empowered to grant degrees. Chagall created the first such provincial institution. As a result, the Vitebsk college attracted many of Russia’s finest artists – from traditionalists to the most radical representatives of the avant-garde. Chagall’s teacher, Yehuda Pen, naturally played a key role in the venture, serving as Vice Rector of the college.
Such an energetic initiative was bound to spawn many creative frictions, and Chagall, for all his artistic talent, was not the man to manage the college’s highly charged and politicized atmosphere. He moved on to other projects, including a new museum of modern art for the city.
In 1920, he moved to Moscow and two years later left the Soviet Union, settling first in Kaunas, Lithuania, then moving to Berlin and, in 1923, to France, where he spent much of the rest of his long life.
Although Chagall never again returned to Vitebsk, he remained forever a son of the city on the Western Dvina. His art was thoroughly rooted in the Judeo-Russian tradition pioneered by Pen. Street scenes from Vitebsk, with its colorful wooden houses, churches and deeply textured faces, featured in Chagall’s art for decades after he left his native city. In an article for a Jewish periodical in New York in 1944, Chagall wrote: “The best thing that I could ever wish is that you could say that I have been faithful to you.”
That Chagall kept faith with Vitebsk is not in doubt. But Vitebsk did not keep faith with Chagall.
Soon after he left the Soviet Union, Chagall’s name was excised from the lexicon of great Soviet artists. His work, insofar as it was referred to at all, was derided for its whimsical theatricality, its perceived childishness and its almost nostalgic preoccupation with pre-revolutionary topics. Yet the People’s Art College in Vitebsk did go on to have a seminal position in the development of Soviet art. And the other institutions founded or encouraged by Chagall during his brief tenure all left their mark: theater, music and literary circles all flourished in Vitebsk during the nineteen twenties.
The mysterious characters who fly through Chagall’s painted skies do not fly through just any skies. They are the skies of Vitebsk. Today those skies are pierced by concrete spires commemorating glorious victories, and by the spires of ancient churches. Since the war, apartment blocks have marched ever further east out of the city center, gobbling up fields along the way. Some of the wooden cottages typical of Chagall’s works survived the planners’ onslaught. Tram lines were continually extended to the city limits as they inched further towards the Pskov Highway.
“Our suburbs are bigger and better than those of many a Russian city,” Lydia boasts.
The comparison with Russia is everywhere in Vitebsk. For the city is no longer in the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union, but the Republic of Belarus. Still, Vitebsk is the most Russian of the republic’s cities. Lydia’s gloss on Belarusian history is unequivocal. “We stayed true to many of the old ideals,” she says, pointing out the heroic poses of the soldiers at the war memorial on Victory Square.
Vitebsk has a peculiarly Soviet feel. It is a city that has not succumbed to the wave of rampant commercialism that has engulfed most of modern Russia. And, like so much of Belarus today, Vitebsk is a city that seems impressively efficient. It is a case of Swiss organization colliding with Soviet style. Of course, all is not entirely happy in the Belarusian garden, and critics are quick to point at the alleged shortcomings of the country’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko, now in his third term as president of the republic.
Lydia has no quibbles with Lukashenko or the Minsk government. She points to the orange-clad army of litter collectors making a sweep over Victory Square. “Look, the streets are kept clean here. Things work here. You could not always say the same of Russia today.”
Vitebsk walks a cultural tightrope, ever proclaiming its proximity to Russia without denying its loyalty to Minsk. The town does actually have a name in Belarusian, Viciebsk, but it is not routinely used by locals. “Everyone here calls the place Vitebsk,” explains Lydia. The enthusiasm for the Belarusian language, so evident in some parts of Belarus in the early 1990s, has faded. Vitebsk never shared that enthusiasm anyway, and probably quite a few in the city smiled approvingly when Lukashenko derided the language as being ill-suited to grand thoughts. Try as you might, it would be well nigh impossible to pick up a copy of the Belarusian language newspaper Nasha Niva anywhere in Vitebsk.
Yet, amid the knotty issue of language politics, there is a hint of Belarusian identity that is perceptible even in Vitebsk, close as it is to the border with Russia. And Chagall, until recently variously labeled Jewish, Russian or French by devotees of his art, is now being reconstructed as a Belarusian.
Ludmila Khmelnitskaya is the energetic director of the Chagall Museum in Vitebsk, a modest collection of mementos housed in the very building on Pokrovskaya where Chagall spent his childhood years. Khmelnitskaya is intent on recovering Chagall for Belarus.
“Yes, he was Jewish. And that led to some difficulties in Chagall being properly recognized here for many years,” Khmelnitskaya says. “Art historians tend to label him as Russian or French. But here in Vitebsk, we now see Chagall as one of the most famous of all Belarusians.”
The growing Chagall industry is breathing new life into Vitebsk’s tourism sector. Promoting and preserving selective memories is an art form unto itself.
Khmelnitskaya distributes a prospectus for transforming the rather run down part of town that was once the city’s Jewish quarter. “Look,” she says. “This project is not just about Chagall. It will promote the reconstruction of almost a quarter of the historical section of Vitebsk.” Minsk architect Leonid Levin is throwing his weight behind the development. Khmelnitskaya highlights a proposed zone for élite residential housing, gift shops and art studios – emphasizing that the vision is to recreate Vitebsk as it was in Chagall’s day.
Lydia is skeptical that Khmelnitskaya’s plan will come to fruition, recalling a dozen other ambitious projects across the city that she judges to be more deserving of public funding. But Khmelnitskaya looks not to local funding but to foreign investors who might fund an airbrushed reconstruction of Chagall’s Vitebsk – a Jewish quarter that no longer has the fumes from Kolbanovsky’s tobacco factory and no longer smells of herring. It would be a Jewish quarter without a working synagogue, a community no longer able to muster a minyan.
On the road that runs out south out of the city center, there is a fiercely patriotic monument that overlooks the Western Dvina. “This is my favorite place in the city,” says Lydia, pointing out the vast plaza dominated by huge sculptures of soldiers. There are ceremonial vistas, ponds and flowerbeds. And plenty of concrete. It is by the concrete pillars that a pair of young newlyweds poses for photographs in the hazy sunshine. Two women in bright orange overalls step forward and interrupt the photo-shoot, insisting that every piece of litter is picked up before any pictures are taken. “Look,” says Lydia. “We do things properly in Belarus.”
Most visitors to Belarus require a visa to enter the country, which must be applied for well in advance. Only citizens of select CIS nations benefit from a visa exemption. Do not be misled by the very sparse border controls on the frontier between Russia and the Republic of Belarus. A visa is still essential. Equally, if you enter Belarus from Russia and plan to return to Russia, you need a double-entry Russian visa.
Belarus is a very easy country to get around in. There are good hotels and excellent rail and bus services linking major cities. Some knowledge of Russian is a great asset.
Vitebsk is best visited during the spring or summer months. There are many spots within easy reach of Vitebsk that are deserving of a visit. Ilya Repin’s former riverside estate at Zdravneva, with the artist’s home and studio, is enchanting. Just 60 miles northwest of Vitebsk is the historic city of Polotsk, one of the most attractive in Belarus.
The Slavyansky Bazaar takes place in the second week of July each year. Ever since 1992, Vitebsk has hosted this annual festival of music, art and culture. It kicks off with a spectacular opening ceremony, usually attended by President Alexander Lukashenko. Presidential words of greeting evoke respectful applause and presage an evening of heavy bass, diamenté thongs, showy gymnastics and folksy dance ensembles. Over the ensuing week, performances ranging from pop to poetry attract some of the best artists from across the Slavic world.
The nearest international airport to Vitebsk is 200 miles away at Minsk. The marshrutka ride from Minsk to Vitebsk takes about four hours. The fastest trains, which are far more comfortable than a marshrutka taxi, take four hours and twenty minutes. Direct trains from St. Peters-burg’s Vitebsky Station and Moscow’s Belorusskaya Station both take about eight hours. The city is also easy to reach from Central Europe, with direct trains to Vitebsk, not always daily, from both Prague and Berlin.
The non-profit think-tank Freedom House has labeled Belarus (as well as Russia and most of Central Asia) “not free,” giving the country a score of 7 for political rights and 6 for civil liberties (where 1 is the best and 10 is the worst).
Sholem Aleichem – nom de plume of Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich, the Yiddish writer who was at the height of his popularity during Marc Chagall’s boyhood years in Vitebsk. Aleichim’s stories and plays contributed greatly to the growing confidence of Jewish settlers in the Pale of Imperial Russia.
minyan: a Hebrew word meaning “to enumerate,” referring to the quorum of ten males deemed necessary for communal prayer.
Nasha Niva is published in Minsk by an editorial team that has done much to promote the use of the Belarusian language – not a strategy that always finds favor with the government.
Marc Chagall was a man of many names. On his admission certificate to the Russian school in Vitebsk his name was entered as Мойша Захарович Шагалов (Moyshe Zakharovitch Shagalov), a Russian rendering of his Yiddish birth name. He adopted “Marc Chagall” after settling in France in 1923.
The Pale of Settlement, or cherta osedlosti, was designated in 1791 as a prescribed settlement zone for Jews who refused to convert to Orthodox Christianity. By the late 19th century, Vitebsk was attracting a significant number of Jewish intellectuals and artists who valued the city for its proximity to Russia’s principal cities – where they could visit but were prevented from settling.
Toyre iz di beste skhoyre is a Yiddish aphorism that can be translated as “the Torah is the best merchandise.”
Yehuda Pen was not only an accomplished teacher, but also a very fine artist in his own right. In the main remembered for his peculiarly spiritual paintings of old men, Pen also executed a very delicate portrait of the young Marc Chagall.
Locally, Vitebsk’s river is usually referred to merely as the Dvina, but the region actually has two rivers of the same name. It is therefore useful to distinguish between the Zapadnaya Dvina (Western Dvina), which flows through Vitebsk to the Baltic, and the Severnaya Dvina (Northern Dvina) which drains north into the Arctic Ocean.
Mezentsev later coordinated the team that designed the memorial to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in the Bolshevik leader’s hometown of Ulyanovsk.
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