Alexander Avgustovich Hesse (; 18 March 1889, Pskov – 25 March 1941, Leningrad) was a Russian teacher, White Army officer, and activist in Russian Christian and cultural affairs in the Pechory (Petseri) region of interwar Estonia. He was executed by the Soviet authorities in 1941 and posthumously rehabilitated in 1989. He is recorded in church memorial lists of victims of Soviet repression.
Family background
Alexander Hesse was born in Pskov to the insurance agent and entrepreneur August Fyodorovich Hesse. Both his father and mother were originally Narvan burghers, Baltic Germans who professed the Lutheran faith. In the 1890s, August Hesse became the owner of a tannery and joined the merchant estate, and in 1905 he was granted the title of hereditary honorary citizen, an estate status in the Russian Empire. His son accordingly described himself in official documents as being "of the Evangelical Lutheran confession, from hereditary honorary citizens."
Alexander also had a brother Boris (who died young of tuberculosis) and two half-sisters, Elsa and Maria, from his father's first marriage.
Biography
Alexander's early childhood was spent in the Aristova house on Sadovaya Street (now Pushkin Street), where his parents rented an apartment. In the mid-1890s, August Hesse built a four-storey apartment building on Sergievskaya Street (now Oktyabrsky Prospekt, 12), which has since been known as the "Hesse House". The Hesse family moved into one of the apartments. Alexander lived in this apartment even after the revolution, until his departure for Estonia in 1919, subsequently settling in Pechory after recovering from illness.
From 1905 to 1908, Alexander Hesse studied at the Pskov Sergievsky Realschule. He then enrolled at Imperial Moscow University, in the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. Pskov journalist and writer Oleg Kalkin writes that Hesse graduated with honours,Kalkin, O. Na myatezhnykh rubezhakh Rossii. Ocherki o pskovichakh-uchastnikakh Belogo dvizheniya na Severo-Zapade v 1918–1922 gg. [On the Rebellious Frontiers of Russia: Essays on Pskovians in the White Movement in the Northwest, 1918–1922]. Pskov, 2003. Pp. 145–150. but according to the memoirs of his son Boris, he was expelled for participation in student unrest and had to complete his degree as an external student at Imperial Saint Petersburg University (1913). There he also completed a one-year pedagogical course, and in 1914 took a teaching position at one of the capital's educational institutions.
World War I
Alexander Hesse entered military service during World War I in 1914. In later interrogations by the NKVD, he claimed to have been conscripted — a version that found its way into most biographies, whereas the family memoir describes his entry into service as voluntary. He entered service as an enlisted man. He was subsequently promoted to acting praporshchik (28 October 1914). He served in the 325th Pskov Infantry Druzhina of the State Militia, where from 15 November 1915 he held the position of clerk of the druzhina court. In 1916 he was promoted to podporuchik (sub-lieutenant). "For exemplary zealous service and labours undertaken during military operations", he was awarded the Order of St. Stanislaus, 3rd class (order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the Northern Front No. 87, 7 February 1917; Russian Estonia gives a seniority date of 5 October 1916).
After demobilisation in 1917, he returned to Pskov, where he took a position as a mathematics teacher at the Mariinsky Women's Gymnasium.
Russian Civil War
In February 1918, German forces advancing on Petrograd occupied Pskov. The occupation lasted nine months. During this period, Hesse, for whom German was his native language, worked as an interpreter in the city administration. This took place during the Russian Civil War. In the autumn of 1918, the formation of the Pskov Separate Volunteer Corps of the Northern (later Northwestern) White Army began in the occupied city. The population enlisted reluctantly, and by November the corps numbered about 4,500 men, a third of whom were former Imperial officers. Hesse did not join the White forces at this stage.
On 25 November 1918, units of the 7th Army of the RKKA occupied Pskov. The Germans left the city without a fight. The White forces attempted to resist but were defeated and retreated into Estonian territory. Soviet power was established in the city. Extraordinary Commissar of the Pskov sector of the front Jānis Fabriciuss set up his headquarters in the "Hesse House". All former Imperial officers remaining in Pskov were required to register with the military and report monthly to the military commissariat, where they had to fill in questionnaires about their attitudes towards the new government, Marxism, Bolshevik policies, and so on. Their freedom of movement was strictly limited. The constant inspections, re-inspections, and restrictions caused resentment among the former career military men.
On 13 May 1919, a joint offensive by Estonian forces and the White Northern Corps of General Rodzyanko towards Petrograd began. Pskov was taken by the Estonians in late May, after which a detachment of Colonel Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz entered the city and immediately began a campaign of White Terror. The situation in the city remained unstable. Fearing the return of the Bolsheviks and forced conscription into the Red Army, many of the retired officers who had previously hesitated began to join the Whites. Among them was A. A. Hesse.
On 7 June 1919, Hesse was enlisted in the newly formed Northwestern Army (order of the Commander-in-Chief No. 171, 31 July 1919, Narva). With his background in mathematics, he was assigned to the army's Inspector of Artillery. First, Hesse served as head of communications of the 1st Separate Light Artillery Battalion, then as commander of a reconnaissance company of the artillery battalion of the 4th Gdov Infantry Regiment. He was promoted to poruchik (lieutenant).
On 26 August, Pskov was retaken by the Red Army. Yudenich's army retreated into Estonia once more to prepare for a new offensive, which began in the autumn. The division of General A. F. Dzerozhinsky, in which Hesse served, initially operated on the auxiliary Pskov–Luga axis, was then placed in reserve, and in late October, after the unsuccessful assault on Petrograd, helped contain the Red Army counteroffensive in the Gatchina area, cutting the Luga–Gdov railway line.
In Gdov, Hesse, who had weak lungs, fell seriously ill. In this condition he was evacuated by the retreating Whites through Narva into Estonia. In December, Dzerozhinsky's division was disarmed by the Estonians on the Narva–Yuryev road and left outdoors without shelter in freezing conditions. Epidemic typhus raged among the soldiers. Hesse survived despite his illness and the harsh conditions. On 22 January 1920, the Northwestern Army was officially dissolved. Having recovered from his illness, Hesse, with the help of his former schoolmate and fellow "Northwesterner" G. V. Svidzinsky, obtained a position as a mathematics teacher at the Russian gymnasium in Pechory, which was then on Estonian territory.
In Pechory
The Pechory County of Estonia during the interwar period was a centre of Russian cultural life. The Civil War brought members of the first wave of Russian emigration to the region, which also attracted visitors interested in its Russian cultural institutions. Until the mid-1930s, relatively liberal minority rights legislation was in effect in Estonia. The Russian language in the Pechory region was official alongside Estonian. During the 1920s, Russian residents established public organisations, which in 1923 united into the Union of Russian Educational and Charitable Societies in Estonia.
People working in the arts, sciences and religious life in Pechory included the poet B. K. Semyonov, chemist N. V. Potin, artist and actor S. S. Beregavskikh, engineer A. P. Rozhansky, musicians and choral conductors M. F. Grivsky, N. A. Vekhnovsky, B. P. Zhemchuzhyn, Bishop Ioann (Bulin), and others. The locally born, self-taught sculptor A. M. Denisov, formerly a curator of sculptures at the Tsarskoye Selo palace ensemble, returned from Petrograd. P. V. Nesterov, a scholar and traveller who had been a privat-docent at Saint Petersburg University, taught at the local gymnasium. Over the years, the town was visited by philosophers Nikolai Berdyaev, Vasily Zenkovsky, Sergei Bulgakov, Lev Zander, Ivan Ilyin, writer Ivan Shmelev, and Feodor Chaliapin gave concerts. Kalkin characterises the public and cultural life of the Pechory "oasis" as distinguished by ideological and political tolerance, the absence of social and class antagonisms, and a genuine democratic spirit almost impossible under pre-revolutionary Russian conditions.
Hesse taught in Pechory for about 20 years. Former pupils recalled his teaching favourably. Pechory local historian Nikolai Pavlovich Zlatinsky recalled him many years later:
A former pupil of Hesse, P. A. Dyatlov, who himself became a teacher, said of him in the 1980s:
Hesse participated in Pechory's cultural and public life. He was a member of the local cultural-educational society, assisted in the work of its libraries, took part in organising public concerts and theatrical performances, played the piano performing works of Frédéric Chopin, Alexander Scriabin, and Franz Liszt, and gave lectures. He also participated in the activities of the Russian Christian Movement. It is unknown when Alexander Hesse converted from Lutheranism to Orthodoxy, but after settling in Pechory he regularly attended services at the Pskov-Caves Monastery.
While living in Estonia, A. A. Hesse took an interest in the fate of the Russian peasantry and had contacts with representatives of the Peasant Russia party, founded in 1921 in Prague by the Socialist Revolutionary S. S. Maslov. He also met with Maslov himself, who visited Pechory in 1927. Hesse was also acquainted with the economist P. A. Bogdanov, who during the Civil War had served as Minister of Agriculture in the Northwestern Government, and in the late 1920s worked as a surveyor in Pechory. With them, Alexander Avgustovich discussed the prospects of peasant policy and co-operation. Bogdanov briefly noted these conversations in his diary:
In 1932, Alexander Hesse took an active part in the election campaign to nominate representatives of the Russian population of the Pechory region to the Estonian State Assembly.
In a recollection published by Postimees in 2011, former pupil Leonid Gordejev described Hesse as a teacher of mathematics and physics in both the Russian and Estonian sections of the school. He also identified Hesse in a school photograph taken in 1936.
Marriage
A. A. Hesse married Maria Vasilyevna Denisova (1900–1989), a member of the Pechory Old Believers family of the Pomorian confession. The founders of the Denisov lineage are considered to be the brothers Aleksey and Semyon Denisov, according to tradition descendants of Prince Myshetsky. The family also included the Pechory sculptor A. M. Denisov, whose works decorated the Russian gymnasium building where Hesse taught. Alexander and Maria Hesse had a daughter, Irina (born 1927), and a son, Boris (born 1930).
In 1936, Hesse built his own five-room house in Pechory on Koidu Street (now Sovetskaya Street), taking a bank loan for the purpose. The family lived comfortably, receiving guests on Sundays.