Reason read: Reading 1001, Estonian literature, historical fiction.
The background for the story; 1909 is the year four years after the signing of the Portsmouth Treaty, after the Russo-Japanese War in which at one blow the Japanese defeated Russia's navy. Professor Friedrich Fromhold Martens, an Estonian native. Martens became a professor of international law. Shortly after his career began, he was asked to serve the Czarist regime as an expert in treaties -- asked to put together a complete history of every treaty Russia and the Empire has ever been involved with -- all of this to aid in the decisions to be made in creating a treaty with the Japanese after Russia's defeat at their hands.

So this novel based on a real life individual explores the inner thought life the man. It also has flashbacks a century back to another Martens almost as if in parallel worlds.
This part made it hard to stay oriented to the story. All of the story occurs during a train ride from the professors home town to St. Petersburg but while the time is short, the story is very dense and hard to stay engaged. I think it was good to read it at this time when Russia is back in the news, has probably violated treaties and the US has violated treaties and wonder if we had a negotiator worth their weight, could we resolve this current event and are we at risk of taking on what other countries have previously failed. ( )

no spoilers here...just a synopsis

A very difficult book to read in the sense that there is so much detail that you absolutely must give this story your full attention, and not everything is spelled out for you in terms of the book's underlying message. It is one of those novels you really must think about while and after you're reading it. If, however, you want a very good work by an Estonian author, this is it. I've already ordered two more of Kross's books - he is a very gifted writer. I think my only criticism of this book would be the depth of detail because it is easy to become lost if you are not paying careful attention. It also tends to impede an uninterrupted session of reading when there are so many details. But beyond that, I felt the book to be insightful and a very good story.

1909 is the year in which this book takes place; it is four years after the signing of the Portsmouth Treaty, after the Russo-Japanese War in which at one blow the Japanese defeated Russia's navy. Professor Friedrich Fromhold Martens, an Estonian native, is riding the train from Parnu, his hometown, to St. Petersburg, where he has been summoned. The book is composed of his thoughts and a review of his life and career in the service of Imperial Russia under the Czar. Martens became a professor of international law, and shortly after his career began, he was asked to serve the Czarist regime as an expert in treaties -- asked to put together a complete history of every treaty Russia and the Empire has ever been involved with -- all of this to aid in the decisions to be made in creating a treaty with the Japanese after Russia's defeat at their hands.

As he searches his life through his mind musings, his overaching thoughts seem (to me, imho) to be of his own concept of limitations placed on him throughout his life, either because of nationality or self interest, and regrets caused by what he did and did not do in his lifetime. But his realizations come too late. For example -- he notes how in private, he and his colleagues "exercise our light sarcastic wit on the Emperor, his ministers, his court, the secret police, the rascals favored by the state, Rasputin.... - but always within limits...in the presence of outsiders, we hold our tongue." (83) Then he proceeds to contrast his own actions against those of Tolstoy, who spoke out in favor of anarchy rather than government under the brutal regime of Czarist Russia. Time and again, Martens muses on how he could have done things differently, but did not, even when what the Emperor (Nicholas II -- "the chicken-brain" (102)) asked him to do contradicted what he really believed. Even during one of Czarist Russia's darkest moments in 1905, "Bloody Sunday," he had knowledge ahead of time and did not warn anyone what was about to happen. Even his own basic beliefs regarding the state and its obligation to the individual(135) reflected his understanding about what should be, yet he holds back in practice.

There is a LOT in this novel, so this is just a bare-bones outline. Anyone interested in Czarist Russia and the place of the "provincials" from the Balkan countries during that time should definitely put this on their list of books to read.

I would recommend this book to readers of historical fiction, but prepare to devote all of your energy to reading it. ( )

Kross was Estonian, arrested in 1946 after which he spent nine years in the Gulag. He has other works available in English, though out-of-print, so I will have to search a bit to find them.

The story concerns a Professor Martens, of Estonian origin, who has through his career become an internationally recognized expert on international law and treaties and the conduct of war; a polyglot who speaks, writes and thinks equally well in six or seven languages; a man who has pulled himself up from humble origins to become a world-renowned jurist and Privy Councillor who advises the Minister of Foreign Affairs and through him, even the Tsar himself; a man who has always been ambivalent about his national origins, pretending when necessary to be of German stock which has a higher value in Russian circles than does Estonian; a man who turns his back on the nascent nationalism of his own country and the backlash against the repressiveness of the Tsarist regime; a man who posits that states can only have international legitimacy if they respect human rights within their borders, but who uses his authority and abilities to justify various actions by Russia; and, finally, a man who, towards the end of his career and life reflects upon the moral and personal costs of the honours and recognition that he has achieved. He is, at the same time, haunted by the memory or knowledge of a German jurist who lived some years before him, and of whom he believes he may be the reincarnation, and whose career and compromises mirror his own. Finally, he also strives to resolve, in his mind, a lack of honesty and candour in his relationship with his wife.

As an historical novel, the book conveys with light strokes the growing unrest in the empire (the time is 1909), and the essential weaknesses at its core which foreshadow the collapse of the empire and increasing nationalism of some of its peoples.

Professor Martens comes to the realization that he has dedicated his life and considerable talents to supporting a regime that is basically hollow and undeserving, and which will trample over him as easily as any of its subjects when the need arises, or when the machinations of those in power prevail. He realizes that he is but a cog in a much larger enterprise, and that by not lifting his eyes or ambitions higher, despite opportunities to do so, he has sacrificed himself and his values. A quote from a recent article by William Rees Moog is appropriate here:

A Hitler creates the myth; an Eichmann develops the mechanism that turns myth into reality. The world has rather few Hitlers, it has only too many Eichmanns, the obedient technocrats of large-scale organization, abdicating responsibility to other's ideas.
A thousand Eichmanns on their own would not have had the imagination or the will, to create a holocaust. They are inert until a figure such as Hitler triggers their energies and sets them to work.
That does not make the civil servants of the holocaust free of moral responsibility. The demons that Hitler called forth already existed inside them. The Eichmanns of this world do not so much sell their souls to the devil; they give their souls to him as thanks for his inspiration. We still have reason to fear the potential of Hitler's "new age of magic".
(from a discussion on Eichmann's diaries, The Times of London, and Ottawa Citizen, August 15.1999)

Martens is not an Eichmann in the substance of the gross harm done to other human beings, but he is a fellow-traveller as a technocrat who obeys and abdicates his own responsibilities. (2005)
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Should have checked my own reviews before I re-read the book and wrote another review of it!....but, for better or worse, here is the second one!

Friedrich Fromhold Martens (1845-1909) was a real person. Born Estonian in the Russian Empire, he became an internationally recognized jurist and expert on international law, contributed a number of books and compilations on the subject, was active in various peace conferences and as one the first international arbitrators settling disputes between various countries; was a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1902. He became a full professor at the University of St.Petersburg and then a member of the Russian Foreign Ministry. A polyglot, he spoke and worked fluently in half-a-dozen languages.

The novel is set on a train ride that Professor Martens takes from his home town to St.Petersburg during which he reflects upon his life, his rise, entirely on his own merits, from humble origins to a position of international renown and privilege in Russia. The novel reminds me of Marguerite Yourcenar’s, Hadrian in that it takes an historical personage and tries to get inside his head to construct a feasible world; both are successful in this regard. A major difference between the two men is that a Roman Emperor creates his own world and his own morality while an ordinary human being must live within and adjust to his circumstances. This is much of what Martens reflects upon: his pride at rising from his humble origins, but his sense that he has always fallen just a little bit short because of the social prejudices of his age. He cannot admit openly that he is of Estonian origin because that would condemn him to the lower ranks; he has his enemies and must bear professional and personal slights; but he remains the loyal retainer, always ready to serve. And in this he feels a failure in himself because he never took a moral stand (even when a nephew becomes involved in a nationalist movement) and, he realizes, that his international legal stature in fact gave a patina of respectability to the repressive regime in Russia, a regime always ready to use his talents, but never ready to fully admit him to its ranks. He goes further and admits his moral culpability in the age-old consideration of the agglomeration of large and small contributions necessary to make oppression work.

“ Whatever else our professional obligations may be in this era of oppression, all of (not me, thank God, for that, at least)—or many of us—have been made accomplices in the violence oppression requires…Parnu’s stationsmaster Huik, that decent fellow, has been put in charge of prison transports and so have his colleagues up and down the line. The engine drivers are carting prisoners from one town to the next. Instead of investigating the crimes of which those prisoners are accused, the judges are obliged to hand down blanket death-sentences. Young recruits may find themselves ordered to act as executioners…..To be honest, I can’t deny my own part in all this. I’m an accomplice too, perhaps the most culpable one, at least compared to the Huiks and the engine drivers….Because I am in a position to really to see the big picture. In fact, am I not the one who renders the most important services to the machinery of the state—even if I don’t directly serve the machinery of slaughter---God, no, not that…One might even say that I’m the one who has helped that machinery of the state to survive, that I have generated a rather essential portion of the energy it has needed to go on functioning during these years of massacres!”

Although he recognizes this, Martens cannot summon the courage to do otherwise than he does, he cannot, for instance, do other than remain neutral in the “increasingly vocal groundswell of resistance among my own German countrymen”, even though he reaches a harsh judgment on himself: “Should I renounce the esteem in which I am held—as well- or ill-deserved as it may be? My reputation as a conscientious peacemaker, gained by years of hard work? Give it all up, because it is, in the final analysis, a lie?”

In his contemplations, Martens also holds imaginary conversations with his wife, Kati, in which he reflects on their life together, the strength she has been for him, and admits to his unfaithfulness with a woman whom he loved but again, did not have the strength to renounce his life of privilege and respect to be with her.

A thoughtful, thought-provoking book.