The Russians Collection Read online

  Originally published in seven separate volumes:

  The Crown and the Crucible © 1991 Michael Phillips and Judith Pella

  A House Divided © 1992 Michael Phillips and Judith Pella

  Travail and Triumph © 1992 Michael Phillips and Judith Pella

  Heirs of the Motherland © 1993 Judith Pella

  The Dawning of Deliverance © 1995 Judith Pella

  White Nights, Red Morning © 1996 Judith Pella

  Passage Into Light © 1998 Judith Pella

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Ebook edition created 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-2928-1

  The Russian fable in chapter 2 is based on a folktale retold in the book The Snow Child by Freya Littledale. Published by Scholastic, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

  This book is a work of fiction. With the exception of historical personages, all characters are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to living persons, past or present, is coincidental.

  Cover design by Dan Pitts

  Judith Pella is represented by The Steve Laube Agency.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Book 1: The Crown and the Crucible

  Book 2: A House Divided

  Book 3: Travail and Triumph

  Book 4: Heirs of the Motherland

  Book 5: The Dawning of Deliverance

  Book 6: White Nights, Red Morning

  Book 7: Passage Into Light

  About the Authors

  Other Books by the Authors

  © 1991 by Michael Phillips and Judith Pella

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Ebook edition created 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-2974-8

  The Russian fable in chapter 2 is based on a folktale retold in the book The Snow Child by Freya Littledale. Published by Scholastic, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

  This book is a work of fiction. With the exception of historical personages, all characters are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to living persons, past or present, is coincidental.

  Cover design by Melinda Schumacher

  To

  Alaina Allender

  One of God’s young women, whose heart,

  like Anna’s of this story,

  hungers after purity and righteousness.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  A Cast of Characters

  Prologue: Beginnings of Empire

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  Part I: A Father’s Heart

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  Part II: Destiny of a New Life

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  Part III: Near the Crown

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  Part IV: Seeds of Conflict

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  Part V: Into the Crucible

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  About the Authors

  Fiction by Michael Phillips

  Books by Judith Pella

  A Cast of Characters

  The Burenin Family:

  Yevno Pavlovich Burenin

  Sophia Ilyanovna Burenin

  Anna Yevnovna Burenin (Annushka)

  Paul Yevnovich Burenin (Pavushka)

  Tanya

  Vera

  Ilya

  The Fedorcenko Family:

  Prince Viktor Makhailovich Fedorcenko

  Princess Natalia Vasilyovna Fedorcenko

  Prince Sergei Viktorovich Fedorcenko

  Princess Katrina Viktorovna Fedorcenko (Katitchka)

  Count Dmitri Gregorovich Remizov—Sergei’s best friend

  Lt. Mikhail Igorovich Grigorov—Cossack guard

  Count Cyril Vlasenko—Local Chief of Police

  Dr. Pyotr Anickin—Fedorcenko family physician

  Basil Pyotrovich Anickin—doctor’s revolutionary son

  Fedorcenko Servants:

  Sarah Remington

  Polya

  Leo Vasilievich Moskalev

  Olga Stephanovna

  Nina Chomsky

  Fedorcenko Acquaintances:

  Alex Baklanov

  Uspenskij’s

  Princess Marya Nicolaievna Gudosnikov

  Durnovo’s

  Elizabeth Cerni

  The custom in Russia is to be known by three names—the Christian name, the patronym (“son of . . .” or “daughter of . . .” your father’s name), and the surname. The patronym is formed by adding the appropriate suffix to the individual’s father’s Christian name. The endings are usually vich or ovich for a male, and vna or ovna for a female. These patronyms are often used almost interchangeably with the surname. Nicknames or “little” (diminutive) names are also used in intimate conversation between family and close friends—Pavushka, Annushka, Katitchka, Misha, Sasha, etc.

  Anna and Katrina’s story begins on Part I, chapter 1. But for those of you who love history as we do and who have become fascinated with the land of Russia and its people, we invite you to read the Prologue. It will introduce the historical roots of our story with some fictional characters and symbolic events as well as expand the historical framework with the sect
ions in italics. Though the Prologue is not essential to understanding the story, some readers may wish to begin with chapter 1 and come back to the Prologue later.

  1

  368 AD

  The solitary figure of a man receded into the distance.

  He made his way slowly, but with purposeful step and determined gaze fixed on the unknown path before him. The warm southern plains had been good to his people. But more and more invaders—Orientals from the east, Huns and Celts from the European west—were now intruding into the land between the Dnieper and Don. And this was not a man who desired to fight other men. He would not take a life to retain even something he considered his own. He would rather battle the elements, and the earth itself. He had no stomach to contest against humankind.

  Thus he had begun his sojourn away from that temperate region of the south. Behind him he left the conflicting mix of peoples already beginning to crowd in upon one another. He was of that breed that needed room and space.

  He would take his Slavic bloodline to the north. There he would find a wife. There he would raise a family. There he would make his home, in a region where the snows were fierce and the earth hard. But at least he would not have to contend against others of his species. Something stirred within the heart of the lonely traveler, telling him that to do so was wrong.

  As he walked, there was no smile on his rugged-featured face. His was an arduous life, the life of a nomad in search of a place to lay his head. In his veins flowed the blood of a people hardened and made somber by the ceaseless toil by which they wearily attempted to sustain themselves, a people only just learning to fashion implements and tools and weapons from what the earth begrudgingly gave them, a people calloused by the struggle just to stay alive with only their hands and what ingenuity they possessed to assist them. Hard work was the commodity of necessity, happiness a luxury reserved for scant moments around a fire at night, with a stomach full of roasted rabbit or wild sage-hen.

  Onward he trudged. He could not hear them, but in time would be heard, somewhere in the regions of space above this land he traversed, the faint lonely tones, dark and somber, of a choir singing in minor key. They would be the sounds of the descendants, and would gradually during the coming centuries fill this land over which their progenitor now trekked. The voices of a hundred generations to follow would sing as a steadily rising tide as the people of this huge and awesome land. Now empty and silent, these voices would one day rise and ultimately step forward as one of the great peoples in one of the most powerful nations the world has ever known.

  But for now, these voices remain silent, for the ears of future to hear.

  And still the man plods on, ever northward, toward his destiny as one of the first of the great conflux of men and peoples and races which will one day be known as “the Russians.”

  2

  400–800 AD

  By its very immensity, the land itself defies comprehension.

  Russia . . . the Motherland . . . a land mass nearly the equal of most entire continents, containing a diversity of races, tongues, and ethnic heritages unparalleled in any nation on earth.

  Who are the people we call “Russians?”

  Whence spring their roots? What fuels their passions? Where do they derive their strength? Why have we of the West and they of the great land where East and West mingle so thoroughly eyed one another for generations with misunderstanding . . . even suspicion?

  As their land is huge, their history is long. And from out of that history emerge the beginnings of answers to such questions that we—on both sides of the borders long separating East from West—of the late 20th century now find ourselves asking. It is a history kaleidoscopic in its scope, its changeableness, its contrasts, but with ever and again hues and shades of darkness permeating the colorful display of its peoples marching and toiling across the pages of time. It is a historic opera sung in minor key, whose cast of characters reflect looks of weary labor, yet where now and then a radiant smile suddenly brightens and energizes the entire stage.

  All stories begin with people and places. So too does the chronicle of the people known as Russians. The people were a great variety of Slavic tribes and clans migrating northward out of the ashes of the fallen Roman empire. The place of this history was the steppes, plains, and especially the northern forests between the Black and the Baltic Seas—that no-man’s-land in continental theory where Europe gradually gives way to Asia. In the centuries after Rome’s collapse, the Slavs came northward and eastward from the Carpathians and gradually peopled and subdued this great land, and made it their home.

  The diversity of the land presented these early Slavic tribes with very different challenges in the livelihood of survival. In the south, they traipsed across vast plains, or steppes, where the earth was fertile but where not a tree was visible for miles. In the north they encountered forests so thick and unending that the soil, if it could be found at all, could scarcely hope to produce crops for lack of sunlight.

  The Slavs therefore became both farmers and foresters, wielding the iron implements of necessity—the plough in the south, the ax in the north—subjugating both steppe and timberland, and sustaining life with what the land gave them in return.

  In the south, though the land was tame, its surrounding inhabitants were not. Not only were the fertile regions of what would later be known as the Ukraine enviably tempting, so too did the flat steppes north of the Black Sea offer the most accessible route of travel, commerce, and conquest between East and West. Thus the Slavs had to compete for the land with Huns and Avars, Ostrogoths and Visigoths, the Celts, and later the Mongol Horde from China and Mongolia. The lack of natural barriers exposed them to threats of invasion wherever they turned, imbedding into the consciousness of these pre-Russian peoples a wary and apprehensive eye toward their neighbors in all directions. It would grow over the centuries into an obsession which would dominate the future history of their descendants.

  In the north, however, the chief threat to survival did not come from conquering tribes from the outside. The land itself—the snow of its harsh winters, the resistance of its hard ground to give of its fruits, the thick skin and thicker trunks of its sole source of fire—provided adversity aplenty for the stout-hearted Slavic father who would feed his children and keep them warm.

  Nor was the climatic cruelty of those northern latitudes the only menace he faced. If the forest gave life—with their wood, berries, rabbits, honey, and skins—so too were they filled with danger. Reindeer ranged through the forests to be sure, but so too did wolves and wild boar—neither a friend of man.

  Most formidable threat of all, however, was the legendary Russian bear, whose high rank in old folklore was a status earned by his constant struggle with early man over the right to supremacy in the forest.

  3

  726 AD

  With one hand the youth wiped a trickle of sweat from his tawny brow. With the other he gripped his razor-sharp ax. With this ax, and the one borne by his father a few paces in front of him, man and boy had made a clearing and built the hut where their family now dwelt. However, today’s quarry was not trees, and both father and son knew that life itself hung in the balance.

  He was a boy no longer, but a strapping, muscular youth, whose father now preceded him on the hunt, a bear of a man himself. Yet the old man wore a palor on his ruddy cheeks because he was no hunter. But for his family’s sake he had braved the elements and the forest, and now would brave the fight. The eyes of both man and youth scanned the shadowy woods for sign of the treacherous beast that had been raining havoc on the little settlement they called home. Deeper and deeper into the thick trees they walked . . . listening . . . intent . . . eyes squinting as they probed in all directions.

  The man saw him first.

  He raised a hand to signal his son. They both stopped dead in their tracks. If the youth could have seen his father’s face he would have seen as much fear, mingled with awe, as in his own. The beast was as wide around i
ts girth as two mighty trees, and with his shiny umber coat the comparison was not unreasonable.

  Forty feet away from where they stood, the bear saw his two mortal enemies immediately, also stopped, lifted his huge head toward them with his nose in the air as if to confirm by scent that these were indeed men into whose path he had stumbled, then bared his teeth in an evil snarl. Slowly he shifted his weight, then suddenly lunged backward and reared up on his hind legs, forepaws seemingly inviting a close fight which only he could win.

  Terrified, the boy instantly felt all the dread of his young life take hold of him. The beast, even at that distance, towered over the two men seemingly two or threefold. Unconsciously he retreated a step or two, even as he tried to gather back his vanished courage.

  His father silently signaled for him to creep around to the left to cover the flank, while he himself continued forward to mount a frontal attack. Had he been able to find the voice to whisper an objection, the boy would have said, “Let us face him together.” But the father would have refused. The old man would have preferred anything to what lay ahead, but he would not endanger his son. He was the elder and the protector of his family. He was the one who must make the forest safe for man. He must squelch any omens he might perhaps detect in the bear’s menacing eyes, and go forward . . . alone. It was his destiny, his fate. Duty, not fear, would guide his footsteps.

  He took a step forward, slowly, stealthily—his ax at the ready—then another, creeping ahead, eyes riveted on his adversary. His foot fell upon a fallen branch. The snap seemed to echo and vibrate like a peel of thunder through the deathly silent wood. The noise seemed to wake the waiting bear. It swung its shaggy head about on his powerful humanlike shoulders, then let out a mighty deafening roar and lumbered forward toward its enemy.

  Feeling dwarfed and impotent, though no less determined, the Slavic forester raised his ax. A panicked voice inside him shouted to attack—now! But logic told him he must wait until the mighty brute was closer. He would be able to aim but once. His throw had to be accurate.

  The man stood awaiting the attack, his old heart pounding in his chest. The black monster drew closer, then slowed his step, wary. It did not charge, though the great drops of foaming drool pouring from his fangs indicated no intimidation. Another great roar went forth, as if in final warning to this pitiful specimen of the animal kingdom who would dare challenge him. Then towering in the air, he plunged crashing through the underbrush for the final kill. The man’s arm drew behind his head, then heaved a mighty swing.