180 To Kiev with Potocki [^95 



Russians less than the rest. He does not believe that Russia will 

 succeed in recovering her lost position in the country." 



Slavuta and its stud have acquired a tragic notoriety since this entry 

 was written, having been the scene of one of those hideous outrages 

 which distinguished the Bolshevik revolution of 191 7. Prince Sang- 

 uscko, the owner of the stud, was in his country house at Slavuta, when 

 a number of disbanded soldiers recently returned from the Russian 

 army broke into his house and took him out of it and brutally ill- 

 treated him, killing him at last with their bayonets, and then pillaging 

 the chateau and destroying the whole of his Arabian stud. This oc- 

 curred in the autumn of 1917. 



' 16th Sept. — I was to have left to-day for Kiev, but heavy rain has 

 fallen and the roads are impassable. 



" iSth Sept. — Potocki and I drove last night to Czerny Ostrov and 

 dined at the house there of a certain Countess, once a woman of some 

 fashion at Paris in the days of Napoleon III, still full of gossip, ancient 

 and modern, for she goes yearly to Nice for the winter. At Czerny 

 Ostrov she has a nice villa with gardens and grounds, and a select circle 

 of such fashionable friends as the town affords, with an ancient ad- 

 mirer much dyed and painted. 



Then Joseph and I travelled on through the night and arrived in 

 the morning at Kiev. The country for thirty miles or so south of Kiev 

 is a great oak forest with spaces of cleared land — no very large trees, 

 but growing well, they say, for the first 100 years, till their roots come 

 to the gravel, when their growth is stopped. Oaks and birches are 

 evidently the natural growth of the country, with alders in the swampy 

 places and a few other trees, though there is a certain admixture of 

 Scotch firs, new comers I should say. The Dnieper is the boundary 

 beyond which the great fir forests of the north begin. The cleared land 

 is a wide desolation of stubbles and beetroot, stretching for miles with- 

 out hedge or landmark. 



' Potocki's business in Kiev is connected with the sugar trade, in 

 which he, in common with all the landed proprietors, is interested. The 

 market now is overstocked, and he tells me he is working his factories 

 at a loss. A few years ago they were giving a prodigious income, but 

 the production has become 25 per cent, more than the home consump- 

 tion, and the general world's sugar market at Odessa has fallen below 

 cost price. He has something like 30,000 acres of land in hand, and 

 his stake in beetroot sugar is a large one. While he went to his sugar 

 conference, I made the round of Kiev with his agent Kosacki, who 

 showed me everything. It is a very beautiful and interesting place 

 with the finest situation, perhaps, of any town in Europe. The view 

 northwards over the Dnieper and beyond over the great forest towards 

 Moscow is splendid, and this evening, with a wonderful effect of light 



