The White Terror and The Red: A Novel of Revolutionary Russia

by Abraham Cahan

  CHAPTER XXXVIII.

  THE NIHILISTS' GUARD.

  Pavel's mother, the countess, had not been in Miroslav since March. Shelived in retirement on one of her estates in another province, in aconstant tremour of fear and compunction. The image of Alexander II.bleeding in the snow literally haunted her. She took it for granted thatPavel had had a hand in the bloody plot, and she felt as though she,too, had been a party to it.

  To ascertain the situation with regard to the riot rumours Pavel calledon his uncle, the governor. He found him dozing on a bench in hisorchard, a stout cane in one hand and a French newspaper in the other.The old satrap was dressed in a fresh summer suit of Caucasian silk,which somehow emphasised the uncouth fleshiness of his broad nose. Hewas overjoyed to see his nephew, and he plunged into the subject of theriots at once and of his own accord. It was evidently one of thosesituations upon which he usually had to unburden his mind to somebody.

  "Can you tell me what they are up to in that great city of yours?" hesaid, referring to St. Petersburg and the higher government circles andblinking as he spoke. "There is an administration for you! Perhaps youyounger fellows are smarter than we oldsters. Perhaps, perhaps." He tookout a golden cigarette case, lit a cigarette and went on blinking,sneeringly.

  His words implied that Pavel, being one of the younger generation, was,morally at least, identified with the administration of the young Czar.

  "What do you mean, uncle?" he inquired.

  "What do I mean? Why, I mean that they don't want those riots stopped.That's plain enough, isn't it?"

  This was a slap at the doctrine of Pavel's party concerning theoutrages, and he resented it as well as he could.

  "But you have no evidence for such an accusation, uncle," he said."That's a mere theory of yours."

  "I knew you would stick up for your generation. Ha, ha, ha! Quitecommendable in a young chap, too. Ha, ha, ha!"

  "But where is your evidence?"

  "You want to know too much, Pasha. Too young for that. If they wantedthe riots stopped, it would be a case of one, two, three, and there shegoes! That's as much as I can tell you, and if you are really clever youcan understand the rest yourself."

  "He is in league with his fellow fleecers, the Jewish usurers," Pavelremarked inwardly. "He simply cannot afford an anti-Jewishdemonstration, the old bribe-taker."

  "Neither can you," a voice retorted from Pavel's heart, "though forquite different reasons."

  * * * * *

  Prince Boulatoff called on Orlovsky, the government clerk in whose housethe local revolutionists held their meetings. The first thing thatstruck him was Orlovsky's loss of girth.

  "Hello, Aliosha," he said heartily, meeting him at the gate.

  "Why, Pasha!" The clerk flung himself upon him, and they exchanged threeprolonged kisses.

  "By Jove," Pavel went on, "you are so changed I came near letting youpass. Why, what has become of your bulk, old boy? Have you been ill?"

  "Not exactly," the other answered, leading the way indoors; then, as hisface broke into an expression of wan joy, he added: "Been in love, devilwrench it. I take these things rather too hard, I suppose, but that's asmall matter. How have you been? Climbing upward in the service of therevolution, aren't you?"

  The room was the same. The huge tin samovar stood on the floor.

  "Well, and how is your Circle? First-rate fellows all of them," Pavelsaid.

  "Yes, indeed. Only we miss Clara now more than ever."

  "Anything specially the matter?" Pavel asked, colouring slightly.

  "Well, it really used to be a splendid circle--in our humble way, thatis--but those riots have had a bad effect on us, deuce take it. RememberElkin? It was he who got us together, and now it's he who has broughtdiscord into our ranks. He is organising people who want to go toAmerica. This is his hobby now."

  "Why, have the riots knocked all his socialism out of him?" Pavel asked,grimly.

  "Oh, no," Orlovsky answered with something like dismay. "I wouldn't saythat. It's as an organiser of communistic colonies that he is going toemigrate. Only he says the Jewish people have a more direct claim uponhim than Russia."

  "There is a revolutionist for you!" Pavel roared, bitterly. "I never didattach much importance to that fellow. The sooner he goes the better.God speed him."

  "You're too hard on him, Pasha. He's a good fellow. If we had Clara hereshe would straighten it all out. We miss her very much. As a matter offact, it was she--indeed, I don't see why I shouldn't tell it to you--itwas she with whom I was in love."

  "Was it?" Pavel asked, colouring.

  He paused, in utter confusion, and resumed, without looking at him."Well, you must excuse me, Aliosha, but I fear your frankness goes a bittoo far. Such things are not meant to be published that way."

  "Why? Why? What a funny view you do take of it, Pasha! Suppose afellow's heart is full and he meets an intimate old friend of his, is itan indiscretion on his part if he opens his mind to him?"

  "I certainly am a friend of yours, and a warm one, too, old boy," Pavelreplied with a smile. "But still, things of that sort are usually keptto oneself."

  Several other members came in. The gigantic samovar, the improvisedsugar bowl, a huge loaf of rye bread, some butter and a lamp made theirappearance on the table. Elkin dropped in later in the evening. He andPavel had not been conversing five minutes when they quarrelled.

  "What you are trying to do is to blend the unblendable--to mix socialismwith Jewish chauvinism," Boulatoff said in an ill-concealed rage.

  "Am I?" the other retorted with one of the most virulent of his sneers."Can socialism be mixed with the welfare of the Russian peopleonly?--the welfare of the Russian people with a pailful or two of Jewishblood thrown in; in plainer language, socialism can only be mixed withanti-Semitism. Is that it?"

  "Oh, nonsense!" Pavel hissed. "There are other Jews in the movement,lots of them, and one does not hear that kind of stuff from them. Theyhave not sickened of the bargain on account of the riots."

  "I don't know whom you mean. Perhaps some of them are still under thespell of the fact that a Gentile or two will speak to them or even callthem by their first names."

  "Calm down, Elkin," the judge with the fluffy hair and the near-sightedeyes interposed. "Come, you won't say that of Clara, for instance?"

  "No, not of Clara. But, then, you have not yet heard from her. Sooner orlater she, too, will open her eyes and come to the conclusion that it iswiser to be a socialist for her own people than for those who willslaughter and trample upon them. I am sure she will give it all up andjoin the emigration--sooner or later."

  "The devil she will," Pavel said quietly, but trembling with fury.

  "Yes, she will," Elkin jeered.

  Pavel felt like strangling him.

  "She is too good a revolutionist to sneak away from the battlefield,"snapped Ginsburg, the red-headed son of the usurer, without raising hiseyes from the table. "Of course, America is a safer place to be asocialist in. There are no gendarmes there."

  Elkin chuckled. "You had better save your courage for the time the riotbreaks out in this town," he said. "You know it is coming. It may burstout at any moment, and when it does we'll have a chance to see how ahero like you behaves himself when the 'revolutionary instincts of thepeople are aroused.'"

  "Very well, then, let him go back to the synagogue," Pavel shouted tothe others, losing all his self-control. "But in that case, what's thesense of his hanging around a place like this?"

  "Oh, I see, you are afraid I'll send spies to this house, are you? Well,there is less danger of that than that you should take a hand in theslaughter of Jewish shoemakers, blacksmiths or water-bearers as a bit ofpractical 'equality and fraternity,' I can assure you. But then, afterall, you may be right. Good-bye, comrades! Don't judge me hard."

  Tears stood in Orlovsky's eyes. He, the judge, and Mlle. Andronoff, thejudge's fiancee, were for running after him, but the others stoppedthem.

 
Left to themselves, the group of Nihilists began to discuss the comingoutbreak. Everyone felt, in view of Elkin's charge, that whatever elsewas done, no effort should be spared to keep the mob from attacking theJewish poor. Much was said about "directing the popular fury intorevolutionary channels," and "setting the masses upon the government,"but most of those who said these things knew in their hearts that theymight as well talk of directing the ocean into revolutionary channels orof setting a tornado upon the Russian government. Orlovsky alone took itseriously:

  "It begins to look something like, by Jove," he said beamingly. "We'llgo out, and when the mob gets going, when the revolutionary fightingblood is up in them, we'll call out to them that Jewish usurers are notthe only enemies of the toiling people; that the Czar is at the head ofall the enemies of the nation. And then, by Jove, Miroslav may set thepace to all Russia. See if it doesn't."

  The son of the usurer called attention to the extreme smallness of theirnumber, but he thought it enough to keep the mob from assaulting workingpeople. He knew that his own relatives were all safe personally. As tohis father's property, he said he would be glad if it was all destroyedby the "revolutionary conflagration," and he meant it.

  Pavel took no hand in the discussion. Instead, he was pacing to and fromopingly.

  At last, after some more speeches, including one by the gawkyseminarist, who came late and who disagreed with everybody else, it wasdecided that in case of a riot every Gentile member of the Circle shouldbe out in the streets, "on picket duty," watching the mob, studying itsmood and "doing everything possible to lend the disturbance arevolutionary character."

  * * * * *

  Eight Jewish women, including three little girls, were brought to theJewish hospital of Miroslav from a neighbouring town, where they hadbeen outraged in the course of an anti-Semitic outbreak. The littlegirls and the prettiest of the other five died soon after they arrived.The next day the Gentile district bubbled with obscenity. To be sure,there were expressions of horror and pity, too, but the bulk of theChristian population, including many an educated and tender-heartedwoman, treated the matter as a joke. Where a Jew was concerned the moraland human point of view had become a reeling blur. The joke had anappalling effect. While the stories of pillaged shops kindled thepopular fancy with the image of staved vodka barrels and pavementsstrewn with costly fabrics, the case of the eight Jewish women gave riseto a hideous epidemic of lust. There were thousands of Gentiles for whomit became no more possible to pass a pretty Jewish woman than to lookinto the display window of a Jewish shop without thinking of ananti-Semitic outbreak.

  The storm was gathering. The mutterings of an approaching riot werebecoming louder and louder. Many Jewish shops were closed. Tavernsserving as stations for stage lines were crowded with people begging tobe taken away from the city before it was too late.

  The Defence Committee did not rest. The volunteers of the several Jewishdistricts were organised into so many sections, and a signal system wasperfected by which the various sections were to communicate with eachother. The raiders were sure to be drunk, it was argued, while theDefence Guard would be sober and acting according to a well-consideredplan. The Guard was spoiling for a fight.

  The Nihilists "on picket duty" were strolling around the streets.

  Troops were held in readiness and placards had been posted forbiddingpeople to assemble in the streets. Having ordered this, GovernorBoulatoff announced himself ill and in need of a fortnight's leave ofabsence. When a delegation implored him to postpone the journey, hereplied curtly that all had been done to insure order. He was in badspirits and treated them with unusual rudeness.

  He left Miroslav in the morning. At about noontime of the same day thetown was full of sinister rumours. One of these was about the poisoningof twelve Christian wells by Jews.

  A few yards off a retired government clerk, in dilapidated thoughcarefully shined boots and with a red nose, stood in front of one of thegovernor's placards forbidding people to congregate in the streets, witha crowd of illiterate Gentiles about him.

  "'So by an All High ukase,'" he pretended to read, "'all people of theorthodox Christian faith are hereby ordered to attack the Jews, destroytheir homes and shops, tear their pillows and drink their vodka andwine, take from them all they have plundered from Christians andadminister a drubbing to them.'"

  As he proceeded he worked himself up to a tone of maudlin solemnity.

  "Aye, the day of reckoning hath come," he went on. "Let not a man ofthat unchristian tribe escape. Let the blood of Jesus and of hisfollowers be avenged." Here, however, he spoiled it all by suddenlybreaking off with a grin of inebriate roguishness.

  The revolutionary seminarist was watching this man philosophically.

  Similar scenes occurred in other neighbourhoods. When in one instancethey had led to an attack upon a rabbinical looking old man who was leftbleeding and unconscious on the pavement, the troops were ordered out.Then there was a scramble for rooms in Gentile hotels. Twenty-fiverubles a day was charged for a ruble room, and there were a dozenapplicants for each room. Still, those who had money contrived to findshelter. Much greater difficulty was encountered in many cases ingetting a Christian cabman to take a Jew to a place of refuge. Many aGentile rented part of his dwelling to Jews at an enormous price, aguarantee of safety being included in the bargain. Then, too, there wasa considerable number of Gentiles who received some of their prosperousJewish neighbours into their houses without accepting any offer ofpayment. Prosperous, because the poorer Jews for the most part livedhuddled together in the Ghetto and were far removed from the Gentilepopulation. At Pavel's instance Orlovsky went to take Clara's sister andher family to the house of a relative of his, but he found their doorlocked. They were taking refuge with the Vigdoroffs.

  Toward five o'clock, when the crimson sunlight was playing on the goldsteeple of the Church of Our Saviour and the dazzling blue and white ofhussars' uniforms, a small crowd of men and boys came running to thesquare in front of the sacred structure.

  "We want to carry out the holy vessels and banners," said a spokesman toan officer. "We hear the Jews have decided to set fire to God's temple."

  "We won't let them, you may be sure of that," the hussar officeranswered. "You can safely go home."

  The crowd was slowly dispersing, when a man in a red shirt shouted:

  "Boys, I know a Jewish cellar where twenty-five Christian corpses arekept in empty vodka casks. Come on!"

  The officer did not interfere, and the crowd followed the red-shirtround the corner to a closed drink-shop. Half an hour later the streetsin that locality rang with a drunken sing-song: "Death to the Jews!Death to the Christ-killers!"

  The shop was the property of a Jew, who was hiding with his familysomewhere, but the street was inhabited by Gentiles. Meanwhile on alittle square near Nicholas Street, the best street running through theJewish quarter, a mob of five hundred men and boys, mostly from the scumof the population, had seemingly dropped from the sky. A savage"Hee-hee-hee!" broke loose, scattered itself, died away, and was takenup again with redoubled energy. All over the district Jews, men andwomen, most of them with children clasped in their arms, were runningalong the middle of the streets as people run at the sound of a volcano.Some were fleeing from their shops to their homes and some from theirhomes to the hiding places which they had prepared for themselves. Theeyes of most of them had the hollow look of mortal fear. They ran infamily groups, holding close to each other. Here and there a man, hisfeet giving way under him, sick and dizzy with fright, would slackenpace for a minute, as if giving himself up for lost; then, wiping thecold sweat from his face, he would break into a fresh run, moredesperate than before. Some simply walked quickly, a look of grimdetermination on their faces. Here and there an aged man or woman, toofeeble to run, were making a pitiful effort to keep up with the youngermembers of their families, who were urging them on with a look ofghastly impatience. Often a frail little woman with two or threechildren in h
er arms could be seen running as she might down a steephill.

  Christians stood on the sidewalks, jeering and mimicking their frightand making jokes.

  Pavel watched the spectacle in a singular state of mental agitation. Hisheart leaped at sight of that chaotic mob as it paraded through thestreets. Visions of the French Revolution floated through his brain,quickening his pulse. "So our people are _not_ incapable of rising!" hefelt like exclaiming. "The idea of a revolution is _not_ incompatiblewith the idea of Russia!" It was as if all the sacrifices he had beenmaking during the past few years had finally been indorsed by lifeitself, as if they were once for all insured against proving to be thesenseless sacrifices of a modern Don Quixote. He could have embracedthis mass of human dregs. And while his mind was in this state, thepanic-stricken men, women and children with oriental features who wererunning past him were stranger than ever to him. He simply could notrouse himself to a sense of their being human creatures like himself atthis moment. It was like a scene on a canvas. Clara did not seem tobelong to these people; and when it came fully home to him that shedid, and how these scenes were apt to stand between him and her, hisheart grew faint within him; whereupon he felt like a traitor to hiscause, and at the same time he was overcome with a sense of his inwardanarchy and helplessness.

  Within the Jewish houses and on their courtyards there was a rush forsub-cellars, garrets, barrels. As they ran, clambered, tiptoed,scrambled, they smothered the cries of their frightened babies withseveral cases of unconscious infanticide as a result. Christianshastened to assert the immunity of their houses by placing the image ofthe Virgin (a Jewess!) in their windows; and so did many a Jew who hadprocured such images for the purpose. Some smashed their own windows andpiled up fragments of furniture in front of their doors, to give theirhomes or shops the appearance of having already been visited by mobfury. Here and there a man was chalking crosses on his gate or shutters.

  While this was in progress several hundred Jews burst from gateways onand about Nicholas Street and bore down on the enemy with frantic yellsin Russian and in Yiddish. They were armed with crowbars, axes, hammers,brass knuckles, clubs and what-not. As to the rioters they were mostlyunarmed. Following the established practice of the crusade, they hadexpected to begin with some hardware store and there to arm themselveswith battering rams and implements of devastation--an intention whichthey had not yet had time to carry out. At sight of this armedmultitude, therefore, they were taken aback. Resistance was not whatthey had anticipated. Indeed, for some seconds many of them were underthe impression that the crowd now descending on them was but anotherhorde of hoodlums. They wavered. A crowd of Jewish butchers, lumberers,blacksmiths, truck-drivers--the advance guard of the Defence--made adash at them, jeering and howling at the top of their lungs, in Yiddish:

  "Let's hack them to pieces! Lively boys! Let's drive right into theirlungs and livers! Let's make carrot-pudding of them! Bravely, fellows,they're drunk as swine!"

  At this point Orlovsky and the seminarist instinctively joined therioters. Elkin and Vigdoroff were on the other side. Pavel was lookingon from the sidewalk.

  The Defence was mistaken. The rioters were almost as sober as they, for,indeed, it was another part of the stereotyped program of anti-Semiticriots that drink-shops should be among the very first targets of attack,so that the invaders might fit themselves for the real work of the riotby filling themselves full of Jewish vodka. But the Jews, as we haveseen, descended upon them before they had torn down a single door. Whatthe outcome would have been had the two opposing crowds been left tothemselves is unknown, for a troop of hussars whose commander had beenwatching the scene charged on both when they were a few inches apart,and dispersed them both. Some fifty arrests were made, more thantwo-thirds of the prisoners being Jews. The arrested Gentiles went topolice headquarters singing an anti-Semitic refrain and mimicking thefrightened cry of Jewish women. Bystanders, some of the Nihilist"pickets" among them, shouted:

  "Don't fear, boys. You'll soon go home." And the answer was:

  "Sure we will, and then we'll give them a shaking-up, the scurvy Jews,won't we?"

  On another business street some boys threw a few tentative stones at ashop window. There being no interference on the part of the military, amob of grown men sprang up. Doors were burst in and rolls of silk andwoollen stuffs came shooting to the pavement.

  "Don't, boys; you had better go home," said a handsome young lieutenant,affecting the basso of a general.

  The raiders did not desist. While some went on emptying the shop intothe street others were slashing, tearing or biting at the goods. Theydid it without zest and somewhat nervously, as if still in doubt as tothe attitude of the authorities. A servant girl unrolled a piece of bluevelvet over a filthy spot on the cobblestones before a lieutenant of thehussars, saying:

  "Here, sir! Why dirty the dear little feet of your horse? Here is Jewishvelvet for them."

  "Thank you, my dear girl, but you had better go home," the lieutenantanswered, smiling. A crumpled mass of unrolled fabrics, silk, woollen,velvet, satin, cotton, lay in many-coloured heaps on the pavement and inthe gutter. The rioters, whose movements were still amateurish andlacked snap, soon wearied of the job. Several of them then broke into agrocery store and brought forth a barrel of kerosene.

  "What are you going to do?" asked the lieutenant.

  "We'll pour it over the stuff and set fire to it, your high nobleness."

  "That you can't do," the officer returned decisively. "You'll have to gohome now."

  The rioters obeyed at once, many of them taking rolls of silk or velvetalong.