Crucible

by Charles Emmerson

  On Kronstadt island, the rebel sailors produce their last newspaper. ‘Socialism in Quotation Marks’ is the title of its main article. That evening, Misha prepares his final assault. The Kronstadt garrison have little ammunition left. Medical supplies have run out. The sailors survive on canned horsemeat. At three in the morning, Misha’s troops start across the ice through freezing fog. No talking, no smoking. By five they are nearing the first of Kronstadt’s defensive forts, approaching it on their bellies. Then an electric lamp is switched on. Blinding light. The firing begins. For nearly two days the battle for Kronstadt rages: house to house, street to street. The Bolsheviks consider using poison gas. Some sailors attempt to flee across the ice to Finland. In the days to come, the government in Helsinki asks Moscow to clear the corpses: it is feared they will cause a public health risk in the thaw. Captured rebel leaders are either shot or sent to a prison camp above the Arctic Circle.

  The ideals of 1917 are very far away. All power to the Soviets! Who remembers that now? The day that Kronstadt is conquered is the fiftieth anniversary of the Paris Commune, notes one revolutionary exile in Petrograd, expelled from the United States last December. She came to Russia in hope, singing revolutionary songs. Now Emma Goldman is appalled. The revolution has murdered its children. Trotsky’s hands are covered with their blood. Lenin’s rule has become a dictatorship. Opposition to the Bolsheviks is repressed by the Cheka. John Reed is dead. World revolution is delayed. Dreams of new ways of living, new forms of organisation, new ideas of art and society, have been disappointed. Electrification is held up as the new ideal where freedom once stood.

  NEW YORK: Clare Sheridan embarks on a lecture tour of the United States.

  She talks passionately about Russia, and about Trotsky in particular. (One evening, playing charades, she has to act out his name, first imitating a horse trotting along, and then someone skiing down a mountain.) Clare excites audiences large and small with her devil-may-care attitude, feminine vivacity and vague radicalism. ‘I worship force as an element, force and energy in humans, force and power in machinery’, she tells one hall. She compares Pittsburgh steel mills to Bolshevism: ‘something so tremendous that my mind cannot grasp it’. While in America, Clare exchanges a few letters with Winston Churchill, in which he says he is almost prepared to forgive her for consorting with the Bolsheviks–‘fiends in human form’, as he calls them–while she suggests to him that, given the excellent high-level contacts she has established, she should now be made British Ambassador in Moscow.

  In New York, there is an exhibition of Clare’s work–mostly bronze busts of the leading figures of the Russian revolution. Some visitors come to ogle their political heroes, blinking reverently at the mute figures of Lenin and Trotsky. Others tell Clare to her face how much they hate them. ‘I am always amused by people who want to kill off all Bolsheviks, all Sinn Féiners and all Jews’, she writes in her diary. ‘It would make for a wonderfully emptier world: anyway, it is very emblematic of the Christian spirit of today!’

  The city fairly bubbles with concern for the situation in Ireland. Clare has been warned of an anti-British mood. One day she attends a public lecture by a loyalist British Catholic on the situation in Ireland which is interrupted by a group of hecklers waving Irish flags. On St Patrick’s Day, her taxi ride across town is held up by a large Sinn Féin procession through the city. Her Russian cab driver is unsympathetic to all this protesting. It is action the Irish need, he tells Clare, not placards. The Russians rose up and killed the Tsar, he points out: why don’t the Irish rise up and kill King George?

  MOSCOW: The Bolshevik regime works overtime to downplay the significance of Kronstadt, and spreads rumours that it was nothing more than a final episode in Russia’s long civil war. Red against White–and the Reds have prevailed.

  ‘The Kronstadt affair is itself a very petty incident’, Lenin tells a journalist from New York. ‘It does not threaten to break up the Soviet state any more than the Irish disorders threaten to break up the British Empire.’ People in America are foolish to imagine that if only the Bolsheviks were overthrown then some kind of admirably middle-of-the-road government would take over. Wrong! The only alternatives are ‘butcher generals and helpless bureaucrats’. He is hoping for more trade with America: fur for tractors, timber for shoes.

  Comrade Stalin is admitted for an operation to remove his appendix. Vladimir sends the Georgian four bottles of the best port wine to be found. He is ordered to go to a spa to recover. Stalin chooses Nalchik, the town in the Caucasus where Inessa died.

  BERLIN–MUNICH–BERLIN: Germany lurches towards a new crisis.

  In order to force the Germans to pay reparations as required, the French and their allies move in to take control of the German cities of Düsseldorf, Duisburg and Ruhrort. Over the next few weeks, trains carrying foreign soldiers arrive at the cities’ main stations every day.

  While the government in Berlin is reeling from that first blow to its authority, a wave of Communist-inspired strikes breaks out in the central German province of Saxony. Policemen are attacked, courthouses bombed and banks robbed–part of an ‘offensive theory’ backed by Béla Kun. He is keen to have a second go at revolution; local Communists are not sure the conditions are right. Three thousand striking workers occupy Germany’s biggest chemical works. The Saxon crisis gives the police an excuse to crush the Communists. Kun returns to Moscow with his tail between his legs. Hitler starts a Bavarian tour under the question ‘Statesmen or National Traitors?’, blaming the politicians for the country’s dire straits.

  In amongst all the violence, a murder in Berlin goes almost unnoticed. Talaat Pasha, one of the triumvirate who ran the Ottoman Empire during the war, is shot dead one day while out walking with his wife. His assailant, a twenty-five-year-old Armenian student who survived the massacres, is hauled before a German court and acquitted on the grounds of mental trauma. Witnesses attest to the horrors perpetrated against Armenians during the war. Talaat’s killing is deemed an understandable response.

  PARIS: The latest edition of Littérature appears. Inside, a chart. And on the chart, a statistical ranking of the men and women of the age according to the opinions of the magazine’s leading lights: André Breton, Tristan Tzara and the rest. The range is somewhat arbitrary, from–25 (representing total aversion) to +20 (representing something akin to hero-worship). A score of zero is taken to mean indifference. The purpose of the rankings, so Littérature claims, is not ‘to grade, but to degrade’.

  No surprises at the bottom end of the scale: Anatole France, John Stuart Mill, Émile Zola and Rodin all come off badly on the judges’ score sheet. The Unknown Soldier, buried physically only a few months previously, is now buried figuratively on the pages of Littérature: both Breton and Tzara give him–25. (Pretty much the only positive score Tzara gives is to Breton, and even then, only a measly 12 out of a possible 20.)

  Further up the rankings things are more ambivalent: a mild distaste for the Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ (an average across the board of–1.72 and–1.54 respectively), and a slightly more negative view of Lenin and Trotsky (–3.72 and–3.63). Kaiser Wilhelm comes in at–2.09, well above D’Annunzio (–7.36), and at the midpoint between Henri Matisse (–3.27) and Oscar Wilde (–1.45).

  Jostling for position in the upper tier of the rankings are, amongst others, Einstein (+9.54), Freud (+8.63) and Shakespeare (+9.18, despite another–25 from the Romanian). At the very top of the chart–surprise, surprise–feature the contributors and editors of Littérature themselves: Breton in the lead (+16.85), Soupault just behind (+16.30) and Aragon (+14.10) snapping at their heels. Tzara is a little behind on +13.30. (Suppressing his doubts, André publicly awards Tzara 18 points, but, privately, there is an awkwardness about their relationship now, like two lovers who have learned too soon the other’s imperfections.)

  The surprise of the rankings, however, is amongst the runners-up. With a positive score across the board from every judge, in third place: t
he actor Charlie Chaplin.

  ISTANBUL: The British Ambassador has an audience with the Sultan. Vahdettin is angry and depressed. The French and Italian Ambassadors are made to wait outside for over two hours.

  The list of the Sultan’s complaints is long. Ankara, he says, is a ‘mad-house’. He is furious at the equal billing given to Kemal’s representatives at a recent conference in London reopening the Sèvres terms. He distrusts the French, who are now thought to only have eyes for Syria and commercial opportunities in the wider Middle East. The Italians are said to be providing arms to Ankara on the side. Vahdettin dislikes even his own ministers. He pointedly threatens the British Ambassador with abdication. That way the British would have no one in Istanbul to negotiate with at all. He wonders aloud as to the true nationality of the cashiered general who once accompanied him to Berlin. ‘A Macedonian revolutionary of unknown origin’, the Sultan calls Mustafa Kemal spitefully. The Sultan decides he must be Serbian.

  His fevered speculations are whirlpools in an Ottoman teacup now. Vahdettin is isolated. The Sultan-Caliph still has the trappings of imperial authority. He still appears to the faithful in the selamlik procession each Friday. But politically, he is a busted flush. Nationalists view him as a British puppet. Militarily, he has no power.

  All the advantage now lies with Ankara. Anatolia has been largely pacified by Mustafa Kemal’s forces. His position gets stronger by the day. Kemal’s associates have finally signed a real treaty with Moscow. A trickle of Russian weapons becomes a flood. After the Turkish military successes of last autumn and the treaty with Moscow, Turkey’s borders in the Caucasus are decided between Moscow and Ankara alone. Istanbul is cut out entirely. (The Armenians and Georgians–outnumbered, outgunned, and now theoretically part of their own Soviet Socialist Republic–have no choice but to accept Moscow’s decision.)

  There are now only the Greeks left to deal with. In late March, they attack again.

  MUNICH: Adolf appears to be making headway with Munich’s power-brokers. At the end of winter, one of the party’s new acolytes introduces him to Erich Ludendorff, now engaged in defending his image, explaining the causes of Germany’s defeat and plotting his return. Ludendorff looks at Hitler and sees the kind of effective propagandist he could have done with during the war; Hitler looks at Ludendorff and sees the political capital of his name (and the fundraising possibilities).

  MILAN: The flying lessons continue. In March, Benito is involved in that most Futurist of events: a crash. He emerges unscathed. Another story to add to his legend. Another story to raise his profile. Someone writes a song about it. ‘The airplane and the bomb wanted to oust you’, it goes. ‘You answered to Lady Death: come back another time.’

  Across Italy, the tempo of political violence has not slackened even as the threat of a socialist takeover has diminished. The squadristi have become more brazen than ever. Socialist offices are ransacked with joyful abandon. Left-wing newspapers have their printing presses smashed. Socialist politicians live in fear of the sound of a truck pulling up outside their door. Local magistrates are too afraid to act. Many condone the Fascist violence. In Mantua, Fascists charged with six separate counts of murder all get off while sixteen socialists are awarded a collective century in jail for the murder of two squadristi. So successful have the gangs become that it now looks as if they and their leaders, the ras, are the true leaders of Italian fascism (particularly given D’Annunzio’s retreat into writing books). Mussolini is worried. If he does not watch out, perhaps the ras will come to dominate the movement he helped to found.

  In a speech in Trieste, he is forced to defend himself for not having come to the rescue of D’Annunzio in Fiume. What was he supposed to do? ‘Revolutions are not jack-in-the-boxes which can be set off at will’, he says. ‘Revolutions are made with armies, not against them; with arms, not against them; with disciplined movements, not with amorphous masses called to attend a gathering in the town square’. Fiume tried to mix ‘the devil and Holy Water’, anarchists and nationalists. The army and navy did not switch sides. Fascism must be smarter in the future. It must think big, it must choose its time, and use tactics which will bring success rather than just adulation. ‘I reject all forms of Bolshevism’, Benito tells his audience, ‘but if I was forced to choose one it would be that of Moscow and Lenin, if only because its proportions are gigantic, barbaric, universal.’

  He looks to Rome and to the elections. The prestige of national office would surely help him against the pretenders for the Fascist throne. He makes friends with the political class and insinuates himself into an electoral alliance. On the principle of holding one’s rivals close, and basking in reflected glory, Mussolini even pays a visit to that old roué D’Annunzio and asks him whether he would like to stand alongside him in the elections. The poet declines.

  PARIS: A few days before Easter Sunday 1921 a Spanish diplomat wearing a pair of dark glasses arrives in the French capital on the night express from Strasbourg. There he picks up the Vienna train. Finally, after spending the night at a friend’s apartment in the Austrian capital, the same man is driven westwards towards Hungary. But at the border, the Spanish diplomat has changed. A remarkable metamorphosis. Now he wears motoring goggles rather than dark glasses to hide his face. And he is no longer a diplomat but, according to his passport, a British representative of the Red Cross. The motor car is nodded through. Charles Habsburg keeps the goggles on.

  The drive through the Hungarian–Austrian borderlands is picturesque. It is almost like old times: girls dressed in dirndls, and schnitzel and cucumber salad for lunch (paid for with French money). Afterwards, still in disguise, Charles and his party run into an Easter procession, at which sight the successor of the Holy Roman Emperors is moved to kneel down in the street to pray. It all seems to be going so well–until the car breaks down. The last few miles to Szombathely are completed in a horse and cart. There, Charles spends the night in the house of the local bishop, while the Minister-President, who happens to be on a shooting holiday nearby, is called over to give his advice on the situation with Horthy in Budapest.

  The capital can only be reached the following day. Expecting Horthy to turn over power without a fight–after all, Horthy is only a regent, supposedly standing in for the Habsburgs during their absence–Charles dispenses with the idea of taking any soldiers with him to his capital. When Charles arrives at his old palace, there is no one there to greet him. There is no fanfare, no red carpet. When he meets the once-loyal admiral, Horthy is rather rude. He tells Charles to go back to Switzerland at once. The timing is wrong.

  Charles has miscalculated. The French seemed willing to support a Habsburg back in Budapest–maybe even in Vienna. But not a Habsburg so witless as to conduct his own restoration without even a revolver. Conservative Hungarians might have sympathy–but are they willing to risk a civil war to have Charles back? Meanwhile, in Prague, Bucharest and Belgrade, there is outright fury. The governments there threaten military intervention.

  Charles beats a hasty retreat from Budapest and holes up in Hungary’s royalist west for a week or so, while recovering from the flu. He ponders his options. The international chorus telling him that a Habsburg restoration will not be accepted grows louder. Charles gathers around his closest followers and suggests a new tack: perhaps one of their number could return to Switzerland disguised as him, while he remains in Hungary. An embarrassed silence. No one volunteers. It is time to go into exile, again.

  DOORN: Wilhelm has little time for Schadenfreude at the embarrassment of that ridiculous man Charles. At home at Huis Doorn, the atmosphere is heavy. The Kaiser is preoccupied with the state of his wife’s health. And, increasingly, another subject which he has been reading up on: the Jews.

  One evening, he breaks into an anti-Semitic diatribe over dinner. There will be a reckoning, he warns. All these people will have to give up their art collections and their houses. They will be banned from public office.

  SPRING

  MO
SCOW: Vladimir has returned to his old habits. He cannot seem to help himself.

  He sends a note to the head of the Commissariat of Enlightenment ordering a barrage of propaganda measures to emphasise the importance of developing the local peat industry, a source of fuel in which Russia is particularly rich. He demands ‘leaflets, pamphlets, mobile exhibitions, films, publication of textbooks; teaching about the peat industry to be introduced as a compulsory subject in schools and higher technical colleges; textbooks must be written; study groups must be sent abroad annually’. A hundred thousand copies of the pamphlet Peat are to be printed within the week. Why are people so slow?

  The same day, the impatient revolutionary fires off a note to Comrade Trotsky’s deputy on military matters. His sister Maria has gone off to the Crimea with a few colleagues, Vladimir explains. They have a special coach on their train, of course. But he is worried about time. ‘Could you not give orders that if the passengers ask, this coach should be attached to military trains in order to speed it up?’ he asks. Vladimir adds in brackets: ‘there and back’.