, Артур Иванович Бенни) was a Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

-born English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 citizen, known in Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 (where his name was spelled Арту′р Ива′нович Бе′нни) as a journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

, Hertzen associate, Socialist activist and women liberation commune-founder. He served a three months prison sentence as part of the "32 Process", was deported from the country and died in 1867 in Menton

Menton

Menton is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France.Situated on the French Riviera, along the Franco-Italian border, it is nicknamed la perle de la France ....

 hospital, after having been injured, as a member of the Giuseppe Garibaldi

Giuseppe Garibaldi

Giuseppe Garibaldi was an Italian military and political figure. In his twenties, he joined the Carbonari Italian patriot revolutionaries, and fled Italy after a failed insurrection. Garibaldi took part in the War of the Farrapos and the Uruguayan Civil War leading the Italian Legion, and...

's squad. Arthur Benni's activities and persona caused controversy in Russia where rumours of him being a spy and a 3rd Department

Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery

The Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery was a secret department set up in Imperial Russia, inherited from Tayny Prikaz, Privy Chancellery and Specialty Chancellery, effectively serving as the Imperial regime's secret police for much of its existence. The organization was...

 agent were being spread, much to his outrage and distress. Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...

 and Nikolai Leskov

Nikolai Leskov

Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov was a Russian journalist, novelist and short story writer, who also wrote under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky. Praised for his unique writing style and innovative experiments in form, held in high esteem by Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky among others, Leskov is...

 did much to clear Benni's name. The latter (who chose Benni as a prototype for Rainer, the No Way Out novel's revolutionary character) wrote a posthumous essay on him called The Mystery Man.

Biography

Arthur Benni was born in 1839 (1840, according to other sources) to a Jewish father and English

English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 mother, the fifth child in the family (he's had two brothers, Hermann and Karl, and two sisters, Anna and Maria). His father, Iohann Benni, a Hebraist

Hebraist

A Hebraist is a specialist in Hebrew and Hebraic studies. Specifically, British and German scholars of the 18th and 19th centuries who were involved in the study of Hebrew language and literature were commonly known by this designation, at a time when Hebrew was little understood outside practicing...

 scholar, was an evangelical pastor in Tomaszow. Although a Polish native he, much under the influence of his wife (who's never even attempted to learn Polish language) was keeping an "English house", bringing his sons up in a 'knighthood' tradition and gave them a classic primary education, so that Arthur, as he at the age of 10 joined the local lyceum, felt, in his own words, "more a Sparta

Sparta

Sparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...

n or Roman

Roman

Roman or Romans may refer to:* A thing or person of or from the city of Rome-History:* Ancient Rome ** Roman Kingdom ** Roman Republic ** Roman Empire...

 man, than a Polish citizen".

Being up until then totally ignorant of the native ways, Benni's got instantly appalled with them. "Common with those boys were lies, deceit and dirty talk which in my father's home was unheard of. What was totally unacceptable to me, though, was the contemptuous way they treated people of lower classes and their own servants, while in our house servants were treated in the mildest possible manner", Benni remembered, according to his friend, writer Nikolai Leskov

Nikolai Leskov

Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov was a Russian journalist, novelist and short story writer, who also wrote under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky. Praised for his unique writing style and innovative experiments in form, held in high esteem by Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky among others, Leskov is...

. Still without any books to aid, he came to the conclusion that at the root of all the injustice in the world around him was the economic and political system. He's become friends with some Russian soldiers (simply in defiance of his Polish classmates, who hated them), have learned from them of primal ways of collective ownership (obschina, artel

Artel

Artel is a general term for various cooperative associations in Russia and Ukraine, historical and modern.Historically, artels were semi-formal associations for various enterprises: fishing, mining, commerce, of loaders, loggers, thieves, beggars, etc. Often artels worked far from home and lived...

) and principles of mutual responsibility which existed in their country and, having formed in his mind his own, totally idealistic concept of Russia, decided that was the land where he was destined to put his Socialist ideas into practice.

After leaving school Benni left for England to enroll at the technical college and, upon the graduation, joined the Woolwich

Royal Arsenal

The Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, originally known as the Woolwich Warren, carried out armaments manufacture, ammunition proofing and explosives research for the British armed forces. It was sited on the south bank of the River Thames in Woolwich in south-east London, England.-Early history:The Warren...

 arsenal as an engineer. By this time, in 1858 he became close to the circle of Russians in exile, led by Hertzen, Bakunin and Ogaryov. Full of idealistic aspirations, Benni has got the English passport and volunteered to go to Russia to investigate the revolutionary situation there (which was quite ripe, as his new friends were assuring him) and distribute Hertzen's Kolokol

Kolokol (newspaper)

Kolokol was the first Russian censorship-free weekly newspaper in Russian and French languages, published by Alexander Herzen and Nikolai Ogaryov in London and Geneva . Circulation – up to 2500 copies...

s latest issue he were to smuggle there. The self-proclaimed revolutionaries' sympathizer, a Russian merchant named Tomashewski who happened to be in London, agreed to accompany the 22-year old Benni on his mission. In Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 Tomashewski declared that their ways from then on were to part, or either he'd report him to the police. Unthwarted, Benni, load of Kolokol with him, found himself in Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

 in the summer of 1861, still eager to "serve the great cause of Russian liberation".

Benni in Russia

In the Russian capital Benni was befriended by a group of radicals (Nikolai Kurochkin, Pavel Yakushkin, Andrei Nichiporenko and others) who started referring to him as 'a Hertzen's envoy' (something Benni had never claimed to be) and instilling into him the idea that "everything was ready in Russia for a revolt". Unimpressed, Benni demanded some demonstration of forces, but only five people came up, some by foot "others by cabs so as to make a retreat easier, just in case", as Leskov put it. Disillusioned with the 'revolutionary situation' in Saint Petersburgh, Benni with Nichiporenko, the Kolokol edition with them, embarked upon a trip to the province, where, as the latter assured the young man, 'revolutionary forces' could be found in much better shape. Nichiporenko's outrageous behaviour and general unpleasantness, though, ensured the pair has been thrown out of every house they've tried to stay in, following their recommendation list. Finally, the two got in trouble with local Cossacks (while trying to help a drunken man whom the latter, apparently, mugged) and, after the police' visit, burnt the whole stack of Kolokol. Outraged with his companion's obnoxiousness, Benni started making attempts to leave him behind. Nichiporenko retaliated by coming back to Saint Petersburgh with the theory of Benni being an "English spy", backing his allegations by stories of the latter's "suspicious behaviour" which involved, among other things, refusing to participate in drinking sprees and sex orgies, and defending 'reactionaries' whom Nechiporenko was habitually insulting in their own homes. The idea was instantly accepted by Petersburg "revolutionaries" who by now (according to Leskov) were embarrassed and frightened by Benni's eagerness. Another project of Arthur Benni, collecting signatures under the Constitutional petition, addressed to the Tsar, failed too.

Meanwhile, Nichiporenko came to England, met Hertzen there, made a good impression upon him and became another ‘envoy’. With the load of another issue of Kolokol, though, he was stopped at the Russian border, got arrested and was taken to the Russian capital for interrogation where he eagerly reported on every person he knew, including Benni and Leskov, and some he'd never met, like Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...

. By this time Benni become a member of Severnaya ptchela, a respectable newspaper where for the first time in Russia he's found himself among people who treated him with respect and sympathy.

Benni the communard leader

For some reason the women liberation movement activists in Russia preferred to involve their protégés in printing business which naturally made authorities, who were hunting the proclamations distributors, suspicious. "There were few honest men in the capital who sincerely wanted to provide women with jobs at the time, and Benny was one of them", Leskov wrote. What Benni did first was bring a group of women translators to the Severnaya ptchela editorial office, then took them to the Grech house in Saint Petersburgh, where they became known as The Grech commune. This enterprise proved inefficient: Benni himself had to do all the work and pay his employees from his own pocket. As the commune disintegrated, Benni brought four type-setting machines into the house and invited four more female communards in. "This enterprise was doomed, like all of the others he's been involved in, for Benni, whom simple men thought to be 'a scheming type', was in fact naïve as a child. This tragicomic 'naturalized English subject' who came to Russia with the view of making social-democratic revolution… has demonstrated such inability to organize other people's as to quickly turn this new business of his into a joke," Leskov commented. The commune proved a disaster. What was worse, by this time a bunch of male 'communards', being 'true Socialists', made his flat their home, using his money, stealing his clothes and even driving him off, from time to time. Benni became seriously ill after spending two sleepless nights in the open air on the banks of Neva embankment when a woman, thrown out of her home by husband, came to his flat and settled in his bedroom.

Meanwhile, another literary figure, Sleptsov, created the Znamensky commune. One of the workers there was Maria Kopteva, a girl from respectable Moscow family, and Benni fell in love with her. Quickly falling into destitute, Benni started looking for a job and soon realized what his reputation of a "spy" meant in reality: none of the "progressive" press wanted him. Warmer was the reception in the centrist magazines, Dostoyevsky's Epokha and Biblioteka dlya tchtenya, led by Pyotr Boborykin

Pyotr Boborykin

-Biography:Boborykin was born into the family of a landowner. He studied at Kazan State University and the Dorpat University, but he never completed his education. He made ​​his debut as a playwright in 1860. In 1863-1864 he published an autobiographical novel, The Pathway...

, the later even suggested he’d become a stuff translator in his magazine. In both magazines Benni's been treated with great sympathy and forged friendships – notably, with Nikolai Strakhov and Nikolai Voskoboinikov. In March 1862 Benni participated in the publication of the two issues of illegal Russkaya pravda neaspaper. Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

' Our Mutual Friend

Our Mutual Friend

Our Mutual Friend is the last novel completed by Charles Dickens and is one of his most sophisticated works, combining psychological insight with social analysis. It centres on, in the words of critic J. Hillis Miller, "money, money, money, and what money can make of life" but is also about human...

novel was published in 1864 by Boborykin in Arthur Benni's translation. By this time though, according to Leskov, "he was a wasted, disillusioned man, taken to apathy… Even his love for a Russian girl failed to bring him happiness, in fact, it seemed to make him even more lost and misguided, his whole persona seemed to disintegrate under this emotional stress."

Deportation

Starting to neglect his professional obligations, Benni soon lost all of his money and possessions, then became homeless. "He was talking nonsensical things in those days, making plans to go to Siberia

Siberia

Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...

 and free Chernyshevsky, cried and prayed a lot", remembered Leskov, who's given him shelter. In the spring of 1863 Benni was arrested for debts in Leskov's Kolomna

Kolomna

Kolomna is an ancient city and the administrative center of Kolomensky District of Moscow Oblast, Russia, situated at the confluence of the Moskva and Oka Rivers, southeast of Moscow. The area of the city is about . The city was founded in 1177...

 home and sent to a single cell in the Spassky jail. Pastor Hermann Benni sent in the money to pay his brother's debts, but by the time they came in, Benni was considered already a political prisoner, accused of helping another Herzen's associate, Vasily Kelsiev, who came to Russia illegally and in March 1862 stayed at Benni's place (the fact Nichiporenko has reported to the authorities). The Russian Senate sentenced him to three months imprisonment and deportation which was a mild sentence. Benni applied for the Russian citizenship but was refused. In jail he spent his time reading a lot, and reportedly, once confessed: "Would you imagine, it is only now, as they are throwing me out of Russia, that I can see how ignorant I was… All my misfortunes here stem from the fact that I've failed to read Dead Souls

Dead Souls

Dead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book as a "novel in verse". Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part, Gogol...

in time. Had I done it, I'd be the first to dispute Herzen's idea of making revolution in Russia". Asked why, he replied: "Because no one can hope to instill any of the noble principles into the likes of Nozdryov and Tchichikov, ever".

In October 1865 Benni was deported to Prussia

Prussia

Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

 and settled in Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

. It was there that he officially married Maria, the girl he was in love with. One article he published in England, though, showed that "even The Dead Souls reading behind, Benni was still under the impression the revolution in Russia would be not only possible, but desirable," according to Leskov.

Death

In the end of 1867 a small note appeared in Illustrirovannaya gazeta, edited by Vladimir Zotov, according to which "Arthur Benni, of whom different contradictory, mostly unfavourable rumors were being spread, has been killed in Menton". This story, short as it was, provided ground for a new rumour, that of Benni having been killed by Garibaldi man, as a Russian spy. "And the same industrious people, who could have been blamed for poor Benni's initial troubles, all of a sudden with unheard of energy started to support this new slander, which seemed all the more bitter for not a trace of possible thread for reinstating the truth was in sight", Nikolai Leskov wrote in The Mystery Man. Then in June 1870 Nedelya (## 21-23) published memoirs of Alexandra Jacobi who spent several months with Garibaldi men and was beside Benni all through November 1867. By the time of the battle at Menton, Benni was in the Garibaldi camp, where he arrived as a Fortnightly Review

Fortnightly Review

Fortnightly Review was one of the most important and influential magazines in nineteenth-century England. It was founded in 1865 by Anthony Trollope, Frederic Harrison, Edward Spencer Beesly, and six others with an investment of £9,000; the first edition appeared on 15 May 1865...

correspondent. According to Jacobi, as the 9th regiment commander had been killed, Garibaldi's son Menotti asked Benni to take the leadership upon himself. He did, was injured in the right hand and on November 4 found himself in the St.Onofrio hospital, in the most awful conditions. Alexandra Jacobi, assisted by an English priest, managed to transfer him to St.Agatha hospital where conditions were better. What appeared to be a slight wound led to the amputation of the right hand, but even this proved to be too late. On November 27 (December 27, according to other sources) Arthur Benni died, from compliucations of ergotism

Ergotism

Ergotism is the effect of long-term ergot poisoning, traditionally due to the ingestion of the alkaloids produced by the Claviceps purpurea fungus which infects rye and other cereals, and more recently by the action of a number of ergoline-based drugs. It is also known as ergotoxicosis, ergot...

 (according to other sources, gangrene

Gangrene

Gangrene is a serious and potentially life-threatening condition that arises when a considerable mass of body tissue dies . This may occur after an injury or infection, or in people suffering from any chronic health problem affecting blood circulation. The primary cause of gangrene is reduced blood...

). Two days later he was buried at the Protestant cemetery, his grave "full of white and red flowers with green leaves, symbolizing Italy’s colours", according to Alexandra Jacobi.

External links

• The Mystery Man by Nikolai Leskov
  Nikolai Leskov
  Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov was a Russian journalist, novelist and short story writer, who also wrote under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky. Praised for his unique writing style and innovative experiments in form, held in high esteem by Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky among others, Leskov is...
  
  . The original Russian text.