Imagine being confined to a hotel, not in a fancy suite with a view and room service, but in a sixth floor garret, dusty and cramped. Imagine this after being born to a life of wealth and privilege. You have been warned by the authorities that you will be shot if you should venture out of the hotel. And imagine this for more than thirty years. Such is the lot of Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov in the era that followed the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. He is punished for the crime of having been a member of the “nobility” and for declining to repent his unchosen place in life, as none of us chooses the circumstances of our birth. He is saved from execution only by virtue of his actions in support of workers during the turmoil of 1905, an uprising that was ultimately put down brutally by the Tsar. But he is stripped of nearly all of his possessions, declared a “Former Person”, and confined to the Metropol Hotel in Moscow.
The thing I like most about historical fiction is that it brings real characters and events into focus, and imagines the ways people must have felt. On numerous occasions while reading this book I paused to look something up on the internet to see what was readily available. The Metropol Hotel was, and still is, a fine hotel in Moscow, a short walk from Red Square, the Kremlin, the onion domes of St. Basil’s, and in easy sight of the Bolshoi. It’s easy to look at in satellite view on mapping apps. In another instance I found that, in their fierce opposition to collectivization, peasants in the early 1930’s did in fact slaughter their own livestock rather than turn it over to the state. I find history fascinating. Plus it seems events in real life are always more extreme, more unbelievable than in fiction. No novelist would write the events of American politics over the past two decades because it’s just too contrived to be believable.
Back to the story, Count Rostov is a full-throated gentleman, not in the sense of feeling entitled to make demands of others, but in the sense of treating others with courtesy and respect, and always behaving with dignity. His philosophy, manifested in his actions over the ensuing three decades boils down to this: A man must master his circumstances or he will be mastered by them. [Apologies to any women readers. I’m just stating it as it would have been stated by a Russian gentleman in 1922.] As it happens, the Metropol Hotel accommodates highly placed government apparatchiks, diplomats from other countries, and well-heeled travelers from around the world, in short, just the class of people the Count knows best. Thus, without giving away essential details, I can affirm that the Count makes his place in the hotel and masters his circumstances as best could be imagined.
The political aspects of the story beg a comment. Mr. Towles uses his characters to deliver insightful thoughts on the matter. My thought is that, sure enough, in the days of the monarchy, there must have been people of privilege who, like Count Rostov, acted with decency and dignity, a credit to their class. But there were also just as surely privileged rogues and incompetents who flaunted their unearned position. After the revolution, when all were supposedly equal--obviously they were not. Party officials most certainly celebrated lavishly in the same banquet halls of the Metropol that previously served nobles--the same wealth, or poverty, was shared by the competent and the incompetent alike. Fools enjoyed unearned parity with those whose good works deserved greater rewards. In both regimes it’s the unearned position that rankled. The United States, a meritocracy in principle, boasts equality of opportunity, with rewards proportionate to people’s good works. That’s the principle. I suppose the tension between that principle and reality will exist as long as the nation does, a part of the journey toward a more perfect union. Viva the journey, long may it live!
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