Mass Media Overview
David Francis links St.Louis with Russian city Vologda
25.03.2008 15:40
St. Louis Business Journal/ Feb 3, 1997/ by Robert Archibald, president of the Missouri Historical Society
In the northern Russian city of Vologda, a building that was within recent memory a car repair shop is becoming a public museum on the diplomatic corps. Alexander Bykov, professor of history and director of this emerging history center, visited St.Louis last month to investigate a St.Louisan who had important connections with Bykov's native city of Vologda.
On a very cold December morning, almost cold enough to make a northern Russian feel at home, the young professor visited the Missouri Historical Society and discussed his research concerning David R. Francis, ambassador to Russia.
David R. Francis, successful businessman, mayor of our city, governor of our state, Secretary of the Interior during Cleveland's presidency, and of course, president of the 1904 St.Louis World's Fair, was sent to Russia as ambassador in 1916 in hopes of forming a new trade treaty with Tsar Nicholas. The well-liked St. Louisan (and booster!) was an excellent choice.
But commercial negotiations were low in priority for the revolutionaries who overthrew the tsarist regime within a year of Francis' arrival. The situation worsened as the Provisional Government fell to the Bolsheviks and the German Army threatened from without. In 1918, Francis removed the American embassy from the Russian capital to a provincial city. Vologda in 1918 was a diplomatically neutral site, and the junction of two major railways, thus a transport center with availability of communications, yet suitably distant from the dangers of Petrogard and Moscow. Eleven embassies immediately followed Francis, who remained leader of the diplomatic corps during its nearly half-year sojourn in Vologda.
Dr. Bykov knew all of this story before he journeyed to the ambassador's hometown. He even concluded correctly that we would have photographs of his history center, for it was indeed the building to which Francis moved the embassy. What he found here in St.Louis pleased and surprised him. The cache of details about daily life at the embassy was a bonus and a real excitement to the professor from Vologda.
David R. Francis was intrigued by the fact that he was staying in a town established nearly 350 years before his own country was even discovered by Europeans. He enjoyed the beauty of the city, the river, the churches (Vologda had 57, plus three monasteries), its history. He sent some exquisite Vologda lace to his niece and commented on his affection and admiration for the Russian people. His African-American valet, Philip Jordan, shopped at the local market and kept up a correspondence to Francis' wife back in St. Louis. These and other facts and impressions Dr. Bykov found in the archives of the Missouri Historical Society.
I asked whether any Vologdans remained who might have known Francis or remembered the days of the diplomatic center. Rather matter-of-factly, Bykov replied that anyone in a position to have known the ambassador would have been executed in the purges of the 1930s or killed during World War II.
Vologda (pop. 300,000) is a cultural center, with three major theaters, a library affiliated with the Library of Congress, a score of museums and other cultural organizations. But it is only recently that intellectual activity has gained respect.
People who worked in trades, explained Bykov, lived fairly well, but teachers and other such professionals did not have the same kind of material reward and value in the community. Cultural organizations were perceived as recipients, that is, receiving money but returning only cultural or spiritual goods to the community. This is changing, and not only because of an increased awareness of the inherent value of those cultural "goods."
Bykov offered himself as an example. He earns his living in this profession, and his institution operates a research center and publishing house evidently beginning, to use American terms, to show a profit.
My conversation with this colleague from a distant place caused me to reflect on the differences in perceptions and development in our two cultures and also invoked connections between our cities, our work, our concerns.
When David R. Francis was asked to write his memoirs, his response, according to a story in a local paper, was, "When a man begins to consider the past, he loses interest in the future." I believe that Dr. Bykov would strongly disagree with those words. Bykov's interest in the past is very much concerned with the future, the future of his endeavors at his history center and of the city of Vologda building on its past. In remembering and retelling an important part of Vologda's history, Bykov brings a new perspective to our own past, a new connection with our present, even an inspiration for our future.