Russians in Switzerland

High in the Alps, just north of the village of Andermatt, the turbulent waters of the River Reuss tumble through a fierce gorge. Gray-green rocks tilt at angles so steep that even the nimble chamois keeps its distance from the precipitous cliffs. The spray from the furious waters creates a faint haze. A lone eagle circles in the Swiss sky, patient, watchful, alert to every movement in the deep valley below.

He who hopes to control the north-south trade through the Swiss Alps must first secure control of this wild gorge. The ancient stone bridge that ambitiously links the two sides of the chasm is called the Teufelsbrücke (Devil’s Bridge). In a huge rocky amphitheatre above the bridge, two flags flutter in the moist breeze. One is the bold, square Swiss ensign – a white cross on a red background. The other comes as a surprise to those who know nothing of the history of Switzerland in general or the Gotthard region in particular. It is the Russian tricolor: a bright splash of white, blue and red against the dark, alpine backdrop.

No other spot captures so perfectly the rich web of links between Switzerland and Russia. In fact, the two flags are part of a dramatic memorial to the army of General Alexander Suvorov, which in 1799 battled its way over the Gotthard Pass and confronted Napoleon’s forces at the Teufelsbrücke. In the ensuing military campaign, Suvorov’s army took to the mountains to avoid territory held by the French. Thousands of men, with their horses and equipment, crossed ice fields and wilderness, enduring conditions that are heroically recalled in paintings by the Russian artists Alexander Kotzebue (1815-1889) and Vasily Surikov (1848-1916).

Vasily Surikov’s 1899 painting of Suvorov crossing the Alps.

The memorial to Suvorov’s army by the Teufelsbrücke at Andermatt.

Both painters tackled big historical themes in their work. Kotzebue, an artist in the Romantic tradition, was commissioned by the Russian tsar to produce a series of five paintings of Suvorov’s Swiss campaign. Yet it is one painting in particular, completed by Vasily Surikov on the centenary of Suvorov’s Swiss adventure, that has done more than any tourist guide to inscribe Switzerland in the Russian psyche. Surikov favored the realist style of Ilya Repin’s peredvizhniki;1 his depiction of General Suvorov’s army traversing ice-clad slopes is in the high canon of Russian art, fixing in the minds of millions the notion that Switzerland is a land of glaciers and formidable terrain. Surikov’s painting gave an extra nuance to Russian perceptions of Switzerland as a land of fabled wonder.

Even before General Suvorov had bravely marched over the Alps to save Switzerland from Napoleon, Russians were well disposed towards the Alpine confederation. This is reflected in the work of Nikolai Karamzin. As a young man, before he ever left Russia, Karamzin was inclined to idealize Switzerland. In 1786, at just 19, he wrote with enthusiasm of the simple lives of Swiss shepherds. No surprise perhaps that, when he eventually reached Switzerland in 1789, Karamzin was overcome with emotion:

“Having journeyed just two versts from Bâle, I leapt down from my carriage, fell on the blossoming banks of the green River Rhine and kissed the ground in my rapture.”

Karamzin’s rapture on arriving in Switzerland may have been accentuated by revolutionary events in France that propelled the young traveler to curtail his stay in Strasbourg. He had witnessed major riots there and made haste for Switzerland – a country that for generations of Russians ever since has epitomized stability and security. For Karamzin, it was even more. In his Letters of a Russian Traveller, serialized in a Moscow periodical in 1791 and 1792, Karamzin recalled:

“In this land of innocence and happiness, it seems as though the local air is invigorating. I breathe lightly and freely, my step is a little firmer, my head held high and with some pride I reflect that it’s good to be alive.”

The local air is certainly invigorating around the Teufelsbrücke, in the mountain gorge north of Andermatt. A steady stream of visitors walk to the belvedere where the Swiss and Russian flags fly side by side. Set into the cliff face behind the viewpoint is a monumental tribute to the bravery of Suvorov’s army. Many who stop are Russians or have some clear connection with Russia. But they are outnumbered by the Swiss visitors to the memorial.

“It’s a reminder of Switzerland’s debt to Russia,” explained Yvette, a high-school teacher from Neuchâtel who was visiting Andermatt with her husband and two small children. “Every Swiss child learns in school how the Russian forces helped deflect Napoleon, and thus helped our country preserve its independence. That’s why Russians are always assured of a warm welcome in Switzerland.”

Russian Geneva

The steep fall in the value of the ruble over the past year has trimmed Russian enthusiasm for visits to western Europe, and so the number of Russian visitors enjoying a warm Swiss welcome has tumbled. In Switzerland, there has been an added factor in 2015. The Swiss National Bank’s surprise decision in mid-January to no longer peg the value of the Swiss franc to the euro led to a 20 percent appreciation in the value of the Swiss currency overnight – making an already pricey destination even more expensive.

Caroline Melly, a specialist in the Russian market at Geneva Tourism, conceded that visitor numbers for summer 2015 are down versus last year. “But Geneva continues to have a strong appeal for Russians,” she said. Melly is a rare creature in modern Switzerland: a woman who admits she’s not keen on high mountains. This preference for the tamer landscapes around Lake Geneva prompted her move from her home in the ski resort of Verbier – one of a string of Swiss ski centers that have wooed Russian visitors over the last 20 years. Others include St. Moritz and Klosters in the easternmost canton of Grisons (Graubünden in German) and Gstaad in the Bernese Oberland.

Nervous hoteliers in these ski resorts tell of empty rooms last winter, as Russians stayed away. Last season was the first after the Winter Olympics held in the mountains above Sochi in early 2014. Those games upped the visibility of the first-class ski facilities created for the Olympics, and many Russians took their winter holidays at home. Swiss resorts are waiting to see if Russian guests will return in January 2016. A storeowner in Gstaad remarked: “This past spring I still had leather Gucci sleds on my inventory at the end of the season. Usually, those sleds are snapped up by rich Russians. But they are nervous about traveling to western Europe just now, with the sanctions and everything.”

Ah, yes! The sanctions. The Berne government has not actually acceded to many of the European Union sanctions against Russia, but Switzerland has enacted measures to ensure that the country’s banks and businesses are not used as a way to circumvent the sanctions. Moscow’s countersanctions against selected imports from western Europe thus do not apply to Switzerland. So watches, cheese and chocolate from Switzerland are still available in the Russian Federation – albeit at prices that most Russians can never afford.

Empty hotel rooms and unsold Gucci sleds tell one tale of Swiss-Russian relations. The babble of Russian voices around the breakfast buffet at Geneva’s Hotel Bristol tell quite another. The Bristol is one of several Russian-friendly hotels in a city that boasts more Russian connections than any other in Switzerland. As the Swiss-based Russian writer Mikhail Shishkin observed in his book, Russian Switzerland (not available in English): “Geneva is the Russian capital of Switzerland.”

Geneva historian Cyrille Wohlschlag agreed. “The future destiny of Russia was forged in these streets,” Wohlschlag said as we strode along the rue de Candolle, an area where the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks once tussled over theories and tactics. Geneva still has a radical streak and Wohlschlag is proud of it. “We’ve twice in recent years had a socialist mayor,” he said, referring to Rémy Pagani’s two spells in the hot seat.

“See over there,” Wohlschlag said, pointing at a sushi restaurant on the corner of rue de Candolle. “That’s where Lenin would regularly sit at a table by the front window and discuss routes to revolution.”

The idea of Lenin and sushi tests the imagination, but in Lenin’s day the restaurant was a more basic affair, offering the best sausages and sauerkraut in town. It was called the Café Landolt and was run by two Hungarian brothers. “It’s long gone, more’s the pity,” Wohlschlag added, recounting a tale of how the café table on which Lenin once carved his name mysteriously disappeared when the Landolt closed.

Just a few doors down is the one-time home of Georgi Plekhanov, the theoretician often acknowledged as the father of Russian Marxism. When in 1895 Lenin made his first trip outside Russia, he headed straight for Marxist Russian émigrés in Geneva, and his first port of call was Plekhanov’s home. The great thinker was away on holiday at Les Diablerets, a mountain resort well east of Lake Geneva. It is a mark of Plekhanov’s status that Lenin, already exhausted after his long journey to Switzerland, immediately traveled to Les Diablerets to meet the master.2

Geneva was (and still often is) the first destination of new arrivals from Russia. It was a safe first step, and the strong émigré community looked after new arrivals. But few settled for good in Geneva. The Russian trail leads inevitably around the shores of Lake Geneva towards the Swiss Riviera, where a cluster of communities have for 150 years been a hub of Russian life and culture.

Riviera Life

On a summer afternoon, one of those memorable Swiss days that produce sun and clouds in equal measure, we slip through a gate on the rue des Communaux in the town of Vevey and discover the icon painters. Tucked away between the road and the railway is the Russian Orthodox church of Saint Barbara. Its garden is a haven of quiet, the perfect spot for half a dozen Russian residents of the region to meet and work on their icons for a few hours.

Vevey is in the middle of the Russian sector – that part of the lakeshore from Lausanne in the west to Château de Chillon in the east that has long attracted Russian settlers. But they are scattered along a dozen mile stretch around the lake. This is not another Karuzhka. “It’s often hard for Russians when they first come here,” said one of the icon painters. “When I arrived, I was very lonely. Back home in Russia, I’d always chat with people as we stood in line at the shops. Here in Switzerland, there are no lines.”

Between Vevey and Lausanne, the beautiful Lavaux vineyards drop down to the shore of the lake. East from Vevey are Clarens and Montreux; just beyond Montreux is the island castle at Chillon, a picture-perfect romantic cameo that fired the imagination of so many European writers: from Lord Byron and Victor Hugo to Nikolai Gogol and Leo Tolstoy.

“We’ve probably had more Romanovs and more Russian writers staying here than anywhere on the French Riviera ,”3 said a concierge at the Hotel des Trois Couronnes in Vevey. “And the view from here is far better than from the French Riviera beaches,” he added, gesturing over the lake to the wild Alpine peaks in the distance.

The roll call of well-connected Russians who settled along this shore is impressive. For some, like Vladimir Nabokov,4 it was a place to retire. Royalties from Nabokov’s novel Lolita, supplemented by family assets, allowed the writer and his wife Vera to live for 16 years in a suite at the Montreux Palace Hotel – a base from which Nabokov would regularly venture out on his excursions, chasing butterflies in the Valais region.

Icon painters at Vevey.

Ludmila and André Bovard of Association Léman Russe.

But for most Russians who moved to this region, the lake and the surrounding Alps were full of creative potential. Fyodor Dostoyevsky tired of Geneva, his affection for the city dimmed by the tragic death of his daughter Sonya. Sonya was born in Geneva in March 1868 and baptised in that city’s Russian Orthodox cathedral in May, but died of pneumonia just a few days later. She is buried in the city’s small Cimetière des Rois, where she enjoys the distinguished company of the Protestant reformer John Calvin and the Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges.

After Sonya’s death, Dostoyevsky and his wife Anna boarded a cargo boat in Geneva and sailed the length of the lake to a new home in Vevey, where the author concentrated on The Idiot – a task punctuated by excursions to the casino at Saxon in the adjacent canton of Valais (from which Dostoyevsky inevitably returned penniless).

In seeking inspiration from the landscapes of the Vevey region, Dostoyevsky was following Nikolai Gogol, who wrote much of Dead Souls while living on the shores of Lake Geneva. Despite his artistic connection with gambling – Gogol’s play The Gamblers was first performed while the author was in Switzerland – there is no evidence that Gogol was tempted by any casino. He preferred instead to visit Château de Chillon where, on one occasion, in a minor act of vandalism, he carved his name on one of the stone pillars in the dungeon that inspired Byron’s narrative poem The Prisoner of Chillon. There was no space, Gogol explained in a letter in November 1836 to the poet Vasily Zhukovsky (who had translated Byron’s poem into Russian, ensuring that the castle at Chillon featured on the itinerary of every Russian bound for Switzerland, even through to the present day), to squeeze in his name under Byron’s, so it is tucked away at the base of the pillar, where it can still be seen today.

Among the many Russians who escaped Geneva’s cold winds by moving to the Swiss Riviera was the anarchist and revolutionary Peter Kropotkin. He and his wife Sophie Ananiev, whom Kropotkin met and married in Switzerland, moved to Clarens in 1880. The move was prompted in part by Sophie’s ill health, but for Kropotkin Clarens held immense appeal as the home of the distinguished French anarchist geographer Élisée Reclus. In moving to Clarens, Peter Kropotkin was following in the wake of the seasoned anarchist Mikhail Bakunin who had also lived in Clarens and benefited from contact with Reclus (strangely, however, Bakunin and Kropotkin never met in Switzerland, though their paths repeatedly overlapped).

To the icon painters in the garden of the Orthodox church in Vevey, the roll call of famous Russians does not capture the reality of the region. “The talk of Nabokov, Gogol and Tolstoy makes visitors think that this is a region full of extraordinary Russians,” said Ludmila Bovard, whose Russian home was in Yaroslavl. “Most of us are just ordinary Russians whom fate has brought together here in this corner of Switzerland.”

Bovard is a leading light in Association Léman Russe (Ассоциация Русский Леман),5 a non-profit organization that promotes Russian culture and values in the Lausanne, Vevey and Montreux area. Bovard said evening soirées – with a focus on Russian music, art and literature – have long been a feature of the area. She said Nadine Karpouchko regularly hosted such events until her death in 2010. “Our association has taken up the baton from Madame Karpouchko,” she added. Born in 1920 to an Italian father and a Russian mother, who left Russia after the 1905 revolution, Karpouchko’s life reflected the complicated personal biographies of many Russians living in Switzerland.

The Russian Orthodox church at Vevey.

The Château de Chillon is a star attraction for Russian visitors to Switzerland. It sits on an island at the eastern end of Lake Geneva.

“We have many members who might find it hard to say quite where home is,” Bovard said. “But we all have a part of our soul in Russia.” Her own extraordinary journey from Yaroslavl to Lausanne, began when she was a translator in the Yeltsin years. That took her on an assignment to a Swiss equipment supplier in Winterthur, where a chance meeting with André opened up a new chapter in her life.

“But starting anew does not mean forgetting the past,” Bovard said. It’s a sentiment that would surely be echoed by all who focus on their icons in the church garden in Vevey. And it is the philosophy behind the Association Léman Russe. “For example, we’ve done a lot of work supporting an orphanage in Yaroslavl,” said her husband André, who is as closely involved in the association as his Russian wife.

“Of course André plays a key role,” Bovard emphasized. “Integration cuts both ways. I’ve learned Swiss culture and Swiss conventions. And André is now as much Russian as he is Swiss.” André adds a few words in Russian, as if to prove the point. RL

NOTES:

1. The peredvizhniki (Передвижники, literally “itinerants”) were a group of humanistic Russian artists who defied the prevailing artistic traditions. They favored literal and realistic styles that spoke of the lot of peasants, soldiers and serfs.

2. The story of the encounters between Plekhanov and Lenin, which over the years became increasingly fraught, are well told in Helen Rappaport’s excellent 2009 book Conspirator: Lenin in Exile.

3. A feature on the French Riviera Russians appeared in the Jul/Aug 2011 issue of Russian Life.

4. Nabokov’s grave in the cemetery at Clarens has become a place of pilgrimage for Nabokov devotees from far and wide. It is also the final resting place for many other Russian expats and exiles.

5. The word Léman in the association’s name is derived from the French name for Lake Geneva: Lac Léman. It is also the old name of the canton which covers the entire northern shore of Lake Geneva. That canton is nowadays called Vaud.

200 Years and Counting

Russia’s tango with Switzerland was boosted by Suvorov and then placed on a firm footing in 1814 when, on the eve of the Congress of Vienna, Tsar Alexander I agreed that Russia would protect Switzerland’s interests at the Congress. Russia thus became the guarantor of Swiss territorial integrity and neutrality.

This was not something that the tsar took lightly. He twice visited Switzerland in the months leading up to the Congress. Russian landscape painter Sylvester Shchedrin recalled the tsar’s interest in Switzerland in a particularly fine scene showing Alexander I and his much younger sister Grand Duchess Ekaterina Pavlovna against the dramatic backdrop of the Rhine Falls at Schaffhausen.

Alexander’s visits to Switzerland led to the two countries establishing formal diplomatic relations in 1814. To mark 200 years of strong cultural and diplomatic ties between Russia and Switzerland, the Château de Penthes in the northern suburbs of Geneva last winter hosted a major exhibition, Russian Switzerland: Artistic and Historical Perspectives. The exhibition was a resounding success, not least because the Swiss are endlessly fascinated by what others make of their country. Major Russian galleries and museums lent over 300 exhibits, including a particularly fine range of nineteenth-century Russian art. They included Swiss scenes by Russian landscape painters Fyodor Matveyev, Mikhail Erassi, Alexei Savrasov and Ivan Shishkin – as well as other artists mentioned in this article. The exhibition also included a very strong collection of letters and other items relating to Russian revolutionaries who settled in Geneva and the Swiss Jura in the second half of the nineteenth century.

A very fine book was prepared in parallel with the exhibition at Château de Penthes. La Suisse par les Russes: regards artistiques et historiques 1814-2014 is published by Éditions Infolio (infolio.ch). There are also Russian and English language editions of the book. To track down the English version look for ISBN 978-2-88474-686-1.

Karuzhka and la petite Russie

Joseph Conrad’s celebrated novel Under Western Eyes, a story set in Geneva and St. Petersburg, opens with a mention of la petite Russie, the area of Geneva that, beginning in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, was home to the city’s large Russian émigré community. The area, dubbed Karuzhka by the Russians who lived there, centers on the rue de Carouge, which runs south from the university quarter towards the River Arve. It is now, just as in Lenin’s day, a lively quarter. Students rub shoulders with local workers in modestly priced cafés and bars – a far cry from the chic boulevards and lakeshore promenades for which Geneva is more noted.

Russians slip easily into the mainstream of Geneva life. Visitors and locals gather for Sunday afternoon chess at Parc des Bastions not far from Karuzhka.

Lenin moved to the rue de Carouge in 1904. He and his wife Nadya, along with Nadya’s mother, took rooms at 91 rue de Carouge, in a building that soon after became the office and library of the Geneva Bolsheviks – ousting Lenin and family to another nearby apartment. The library was a great success and became the focal point for the politicization of Geneva Russians who were interested in the developing Bolshevik movement. While the library provided food for the mind, the generally impoverished Russians needed look only next door for cheap meals. Olga Lepeshinskaya ran a canteen, passing on the small profits from the enterprise to the Bolsheviks. After the Revolution, Lepeshinskaya returned to Russia to have a long and distinguished scientific career; she was often described as the queen of Soviet biology. She died in 1963.

The Karuzhka district was a magnet that nurtured talent. Among those seduced by its allure was Isabelle Eberhardt, the Geneva-born Swiss-Russian travel writer who penned some of the most exquisite prose ever written about desert communities. As a young woman, Eberhardt rubbed shoulders in the cafés of Karuzhka with anarchists and dissidents. The daughter of an Armenian-born Orthodox priest who had converted to Islam (and who espoused the anarchist ideas that found favor among Geneva’s Russian community in the 1870s), Eberhardt found in Karuzhka a medley of radical creeds that immensely influenced her life and writing.

Yet, for a very different group of Genevois, the term la petite Russie has quite other connotations. It recalls the area around the city’s striking Russian Orthodox cathedral, which stands out as a beacon of the East on high ground south of the lake. This sedate and bourgeois Geneva – another world from Karuzhka – also gets an outing in Conrad’s Under Western Eyes.