Vasily Baranshchikov (1755 — ?) — an involuntary traveler
Nizhny Novgorod residents merchant, Vasily Baranshchikov was perhaps the first Russian to open up America to his compatriots in the second half of the eighteenth century. His knowledge of Spanish, Turkish, and Italian, together with the copying for his book of eleven brands burned into his own body, confirmed the authenticity of the seven-year wanderings of this Nizhny Novgorod long-sufferer across three parts of the world.
He was born in 1755 into a merchant family. Having lost his parents early, he received a meager education. The resourceful young man began earning his daily bread together with his brothers, who had organized a trading cooperative in Nizhny Novgorod. The Baranshchikovs traveled to fairs in the Russian provinces selling leather goods. In the spring of 1780, after successfully selling morocco leather, yuft, and tanned hides in Rostov, Vasily was robbed clean by traveling companions who had plied him with drink. To pay off his creditors and keep his family from ruin, he set off for St. Petersburg in hopes of earning good money. The sturdy fellow was taken on as a sailor aboard a merchant vessel, where he loaded mast timber bound for France. During a stop in Copenhagen, he was lured by trickery onto a Danish ship heading for the West Indies. On the island of Saint Thomas, the prisoner, shackled in chains, was converted to Lutheranism under the name Michel Nikolayev and forced to serve in the colonial army. In a foreign land, Vasily longed not only for his homeland but even for homemade bread fresh from the oven — the bondsmen were fed a nauseating mixture of banana pulp, ground coffee, and poor-quality flour. Before long the commandant sold the unreliable "Rus" to the governor of Puerto Rico. Thus Baranshchikov ended up in a Spanish colony in South America. The lack of fresh water, the unbearably savage insects whose bites raised his scratched skin into blisters, wore him to exhaustion. On the coffee plantations, under a scorching sun and the malevolent gaze of overseers wielding oxhide whips, even Negroes accustomed to the heat could not endure it. The Nizhny Novgorod residents had no one with whom to exchange a single word in his native tongue; only prayers and silent messages to his loved ones kept him from forgetting it. A fierce longing to return home kept Vasily from despair and dejection. He suffered two years in slavery under a Spanish general, until one day the Governor wife, who had taken a liking to the handsome, muscular prisoner, learned that the indomitable Russian had a wife and three young children waiting for him at home. By that time Baranshchikov already understood Spanish and managed to make himself understood to the sentimental general's wife. Using her high position, the woman helped him obtain a passport and put him on a ship bound for Genoa. And it was there that the former merchant jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. Off the shores of Tunisia, pirates seized the vessel. Aboard their galley, under threat of death, the Nizhny Novgorod man converted to Islam and became the property of the captain, who was making for the Turkish port of Haifa. From Michel, the captive was transformed into Selim. Yet, addressing his God in his native tongue, he prayed to be granted freedom, the slave Vasily, a sinner beyond measure. The hapless traveler attempted to escape but was caught and "severely beaten on the soles of the feet with sticks of boxwood and could not walk for more than a month, but crawled." Nevertheless, on recovering, Vasily fled again — this time successfully: a Greek sea captain whose ship lay in port came to his aid. From that captain's deck he stepped onto the quay of Istanbul, from which home was but a short distance away. But at the Russian embassy no one would even hear him out. A merchant from the Gostiny Dvor where Vasily was working as a porter happened to learn that he was a runaway. Using his connections, for a handsome bribe he helped the fellow, darkened by the tropical sun, become a guard at the court of the sultan himself. Vasily was compelled to marry a Turkish woman. His every step was watched, he was blackmailed, and his wages were taken from him. While his thoughts never left Russia, he was obliged to do his utmost to appear a devout Muslim. And the Nizhny Novgorod man managed once again to escape — directly from a palace parade, clad in the garb of a janissary! After long wandering through the Balkans he finally reached a Russian border post. Vasily Baranshchikov received a Russian passport from the Kiev viceroy, who regarded the wanderer's return to his homeland as a deed of great patriotic merit. In Nizhny Novgorod, however, creditors and an impoverished family awaited the missing merchant. For seven years no one here had had any news of him. The city magistrate ruled: "Collect from the meshchanin Vasily Yakovlev son of Baranshchikov all unpaid taxes and levies for the entire period of his absence." Otherwise, he was threatened with being sent to the salt works in Balakhna. The wanderer sat a full year in a debtor's prison. He was helped by the Bishop of Nizhny Novgorod, Damascene, who had extensive connections in St. Petersburg. Baranshchikov set off once more for the capital of the Russian Empire, this time with a manuscript about his misadventures abroad. At the end of the eighteenth century, the travel narrative was an extremely popular genre among the reading public. "The Unhappy Adventures of Vasily Baranshchikov, a Meshchanin of Nizhny Novgorod, in Three Parts of the World: America, Asia, and Europe" was published four times during the author's lifetime and, bringing him unheard-of renown, allowed him to escape renewed bondage and disgrace. This courageous Russian man endured the most brutal of trials in order to return to his homeland and reclaim his good name.