The Russians Collection

by Michael Phillips

  Mariana seemed settled and fairly content. She had begun her first term at the Women’s Medical School. As Sergei thought about how that had transpired, a slight smile bent the corners of his lips.

  As expected, Eugenia had been horrified and adamantly opposed to the idea when Dmitri and Mariana had approached her. Sergei, for once, could somewhat understand the woman’s reaction, for he himself initially harbored some concerns over this progressive school. But he had visited it and found it was not the hotbed of revolution and free-living as he had imagined. Eugenia was far too closed-minded to even make a visit, much less to allow the facts to sway her.

  Amazingly, Dmitri had come to Mariana’s defense. Mariana had later described the scene to her adoptive parents.

  “How do you expect your daughter to make a good marriage if she is rubbing shoulders with such outrageous riffraff?” Eugenia had railed.

  “It’s not like that at all,” Mariana tried to explain.

  “Hush up, girl! This is between your father and me.” Eugenia then all but ignored Mariana through the remainder of the exchange. “I have three excellent marriage prospects already lined up for her.”

  “But I am not ready to marry!” insisted Mariana firmly.

  “Mother,” said Dmitri, “she really wants this—”

  “Who cares what she wants? You are her father; it is what you want that should matter. Don’t be such a mouse, Dmitri. Show some backbone!”

  Mariana dropped to her knees before her father and took his hands in hers. “Please, Père! I shall simply die if I must spend the rest of my life as a pampered lady, with no purpose in life but to choose a proper gown for the ballet. I want to have a chance to do something meaningful with my life.”

  “Those peasants she mingles with have brought her to this,” said Eugenia. “I knew they’d brainwash her.”

  Mariana told Anna and Sergei that even though she had planned to cry if necessary, the tears that finally rose in her eyes were real. The prospect of the life Eugenia had planned for her was completely demoralizing.

  Dmitri had looked down into his daughter’s glistening eyes with real compassion. Sergei wondered if Dmitri had, in that moment, seen Katrina’s eyes and remembered all the unhappiness he had brought to his wife.

  “I want Mariana to be happy,” Dmitri said.

  “Happy!” snorted Eugenia. “While we all starve? You always were a fool, Dmitri.”

  Something must have happened in Dmitri, for he jumped up from his chair and faced his mother nose to nose, at last demonstrating the backbone Eugenia had asked for. Unfortunately for the countess, the backbone was directed at her, not Mariana.

  “Yes!” Dmitri shouted. “She deserves to be happy. Heaven knows, someone in this family ought to be. And if you try to stand in her way—”

  “If what?” challenged Eugenia.

  Of course, Dmitri had no appropriate counter-threat, but he didn’t back down. “Don’t press me, Mother!” His voice was cool and menacing, and his eyes were as steady as if he were bluffing in a high-stakes faro game.

  Eugenia was so shocked at her son’s behavior that she fell for the bluff and gave up the fight.

  “To blazes with the lot of you!” she retorted. “I don’t need you and I don’t need this filthy city. I shall return to Moscow.”

  Sergei no longer had to worry about Mariana it seemed. Even though Eugenia was still in St. Petersburg, her threats appeared empty. Perhaps those regarding Sergei were empty as well.

  Dmitri had imposed one rule upon Mariana—a good one, Sergei thought. She must return home immediately after her classes, and she was not to socialize with the other students. Eugenia still managed to keep Mariana’s social calendar active, but Mariana didn’t mind so long as it didn’t hinder her schoolwork.

  For Sergei, the real obstacle to leaving the city was his reluctance to take Anna away from her daughter. They saw each other two or three times a week, and they all attended Mass together every Sunday. Anna and Mariana were becoming friends, and Sergei knew they’d be heartbroken if they parted.

  But Sergei also knew it could not go on like this forever. He had been looking for other work, but little was available. He had prayed fervently for something to happen, for a change in the drudgery that had become his life. He worked twelve hours a day, six days a week, in a building filled with dust and lint and dirt. Most days he could barely breathe, and frequently he waited an hour or so after work before going home so that Anna would not see him wheezing so badly. Was it any wonder that the mortality rate of employees in these factories was so scandalously high?

  If it had provided adequate financial compensation, perhaps he’d have been able to bear it. But he earned a mere sixty kopecks a day,2 and most of that was swallowed up by fines levied by his employers for such offenses as breaking tools—old and substandard though they were—or not meeting quotas. Once when the foreman could find absolutely no cause against Sergei, he fined him for talking during a meal break with two other men; the foreman said it was illegal to congregate in a group!

  As if this were not enough, it was the policy of the textile mill—as it was with the majority of Russian factories—to pay their employees only twice a year, at Christmas and Easter. Consequently, while Sergei awaited his first payday, he had been forced to accumulate a debt at the company store, buying food on credit at blatantly inflated prices. Oleg told him that last Easter on payday he had ended up receiving nothing but a bill from his employer, telling him that he owed more than he had earned!

  Sergei was ready to join the revolutionaries. And in trying to see his miserable situation through spiritual eyes, he believed the good he gained from his experience was that he was at last truly aware of the vast injustices in his country. As a young, liberal, and idealistic aristocrat, he had supported reform, but mostly as an idea, a theory. He would never have espoused the overthrow of the government. But in the last twenty years he’d had the opportunity to see national wrongs from several different vantage points. He had experienced the deplorable exile system, he had seen the damaging apathy of the peasant masses, and now was a part of the “urban proletariat,” as some of the radicals were labeling the working class. No healthy nation could produce such virulent forms of disease.

  In response to these new perceptions, Sergei was using what little spare time he had to write another book. His last book had brought doom upon him; if this new novel were ever completed and published, it most likely would do the same. But he had to express his renewed consciousness somehow, even if no one but Anna ever read it.

  As Sergei turned the corner onto the street where the textile mill was located, he sensed deep within himself that something must happen soon. Yet, even as certain as he was of this, he hadn’t the slightest inkling that his faithful God was about to answer his prayers that very day.

  1. About $10,000.

  2. About 30¢

  62

  Two or three hundred people were milling around outside the entrance to the factory. Sergei had never seen a strike before, but this had all the earmarks of one.

  A man stopped him, thrusting a piece of paper into his hand. “Do you work at the mill?”

  “Yes.”

  “Read this and join us. A new day is coming to this factory!”

  “Good,” said Sergei. He walked away, his eyes scanning the sheet in his hand.

  It said, simply and to the point: Proletarian! Stand with us! The owners and management of this factory cannot and will not continue to treat Russian workers like animals! The moment has come! Do not let them trample you down any longer. Only where freedom is crushed will apathy flourish! Do not let the self-seeking owners control your destiny. Be free today—free from the chains of the bourgeois! Workers unite! Strike!

  He folded the paper and stuffed it into his pocket. Many of the men in the crowd were waving similar papers in the air and shouting. In past years Sergei might have wondered if they could even read the page. But he had noticed that many of his co-
workers could read. Oleg told Sergei that after coming to the city he had learned to read in self-defense, so that his employers did not cheat him, and so that when agitators gave out their pamphlets, he’d know what it was all about. To control their workers, the factory owners preferred to keep them illiterate and drunk, but many workers, finding new purpose in the growing political parties such as the Social Democrats and the Social Revolutionaries, were turning from the ways of the past.

  Sergei did not have to debate about what he would do. Some of the faces in the throng were unfamiliar, but he recognized many of the strikers as co-workers and acquaintances. He would join his friends. He had nothing to lose.

  The shouts of the mob eventually brought out the mill manager. “I tell you,” he shouted back from the safety of an upstairs window, “that you are breaking the law! But if you quit this lunacy now and return to work, you will not be penalized.”

  “You penalize us every day by forcing us to come to this death house!” yelled a man Sergei did not know.

  The manager smirked. “No one forces you to come here. If you don’t want to work, go away. There are others who can fill your place.”

  “Not this time!” cried a worker.

  “No one will enter your factory until our demands are met,” said another.

  “And what are your demands?” asked the manager, although his tone clearly indicated he wasn’t much interested.

  The first speaker, apparently the spokesman, stepped forward and gave a paper to the manager. The manager scanned it, then looked contemptuously at the spokesman. “You ask for too much.”

  “We ask for no more than workers in every civilized nation on earth already receive from their employers.”

  “Well . . . I will have to confer with the owners. I have no authority to make this kind of decision. Perhaps in a week or two—”

  “We want our answer now! Unless you want this factory shut down for a week or two. Now! Do you hear?”

  “That’s impossible.”

  The manager’s words were drowned out by a rising cry from the crowd:

  “Answer us now! Answer us now!”

  At that moment a troop of Cossacks rode upon the scene. Apparently the manager had sent out a call to the police before he braved the mob. There were twenty Cossacks on horseback; their weapons were holstered and sheathed except for the nightsticks several of them carried.

  “That’s my answer!” retorted the manager triumphantly.

  Suddenly the mob heaved forward. Some pressed toward the factory, as if trying to reach the manager; others—the foolish ones—pushed toward the Cossack line. Chaos ensued as the angry mob, surprised by the turn of events, seemed to lose control. They had not counted on battling Cossacks!

  Some would have given up the cause then, but others, agitators and revolutionaries, kept up the aggression, stirring the apathetic ones with impassioned words. Sergei was almost positive he saw one man, who looked like a worker, rush behind a Cossack and press something into his mount’s flank. The animal reared wildly, throwing the unsuspecting Cossack from his mount. Could it be that some were actually instigating trouble?

  The Cossacks rushed the crowd, swinging their clubs. Skittish horses reared, and the crowd of strikers scattered in every direction to avoid the Cossack offense. No longer was the mob acting in unity; it became two hundred frightened, fleeing angry individuals.

  Suddenly, Sergei was knocked to the ground by a horse. He rolled frantically to avoid being trampled as its hoofs crashed to the ground. But the panicked charge of the workers was almost as dangerous. Sergei jumped to his feet, unscathed except for a few scratches.

  A voice of command rose above the noise of the mob. “Troops, retreat and regroup!” Sergei thought the voice sounded familiar—

  The sound was lost as a Cossack club crashed against Sergei’s head with a sickening force. The blow knocked him to the ground again, nearly unconscious. In a blurry haze he struggled to regain his feet, but the surge of the mob overwhelmed him. The Cossacks formed a perimeter around the mass of strikers. There were only a fraction of them compared to the number of workers, but it was an imposing, heavily armed fraction. Even the agitators were unwilling to risk such odds.

  The sight must have finally affected the strikers, for they began a sudden rush back toward the factory and their jobs, hoping the jobs, such as they were, still awaited them. Someone bumped Sergei and he toppled over again, weak and groggy. Another man stumbled over him, and another kicked him.

  Sergei groaned. Just before he passed out he saw five or six other injured men lying on the cobblestone street.

  When the blackness lifted, Sergei felt a hand cradling his aching head, and looked up into a concerned face staring down at him.

  “Misha! You do turn up at the most fortunate times.”

  “I must be your guardian angel.”

  “You don’t look like an angel . . .”

  “Nor do I feel much like one just now.” Misha paused and looked away. After all, his Cossacks had clubbed his friend. “Are you all right?”

  “You mean besides feeling nauseous and half blind?”

  A taut smile creased Misha’s earnest features. “Can you walk?”

  “Give me a hand.”

  The minute Sergei tried to stand, the world threatened to go black once more. His knees buckled under him, and he would have hit the ground except that Misha’s strong arms held him up.

  “I’ll take you home, my friend,” said Misha. “I must speak to my lieutenant first.”

  In a few moments Misha returned, and with the help of one of his men, he got Sergei up on Misha’s mount. Then the two rode away.

  63

  Another refugee from the textile mill strike had a different fate. Stephan Alexandrovich had slipped inside the mill with the workers in hopes of eluding the Cossacks and the police, who had also turned up on the scene. He had tried to blend in, thinking no one would notice him.

  But one of the workers who had received a gash on his head in payment for listening to the agitators was not feeling kindly disposed toward them. The moment he spotted Stephan as an outsider, he told the foreman.

  “Hey you!” yelled the foreman at Stephan. “You don’t work here.”

  Stephan didn’t bother to answer, but darted away, zigzagging between machines and looms until he finally reached an exit. Outside, he was immediately spotted by a member of the Okhrana, who had come to investigate the strike. The policeman was quicker than the foreman. He caught up with Stephan and grabbed him by the collar.

  “And what’s your big hurry, fellow?” said the policeman.

  “Nothing, I—” but Stephan had no ready answer.

  “Let me see your identification.”

  In a desperate burst of strength, Stephan wrenched out of the man’s grip, tearing his jacket away from his body. He was on the run once more, but the Okhrana now had his coat—and his identification.

  Stephan did not look back. He ran for a few more minutes, then dodged into an alley, crossing one street and then another. For fifteen minutes he progressed in this erratic fashion, walking rather than running so as not to draw attention to himself. By ducking into shops and alleys, doubling back, and turning down side streets, he finally lost his pursuer.

  He was near Nevesky Prospect when he realized he was no longer being chased. He paused for a breath, and to ponder his plight. He could not return to the university because they had his identification and would be waiting for him. He could never return to school. And it would not be wise for him to seek out his comrades, either. Some of them were already being watched by the police, and those who weren’t were best left alone and above suspicion. If he had money, he could try to leave the country. But it would require more than train fare; he would need to have false papers made, and they didn’t come cheap.

  He knew only two people in this city he could trust, people who had any money. Mariana was immediately out of the question. He’d turn himself into the police bef
ore he would involve her. That left only one other choice.

  The newspaper office was not far away, a fifteen-minute walk if he took careful precautions.

  Daniel was surprised to see Stephan. He had never come to the newspaper office before, and their last meeting, during that unfortunate confrontation with Mariana, had not ended on friendly terms. Stephan had been working with Daniel on an article for the Register on the impact of strikes in the Russian work force, but Daniel had engaged the assistance of others among his new radical contacts to complete the story.

  In all the time he had not seen Stephan, Daniel had also not seen Mariana. He had been sent to cover the Boxer Uprising, and for much of the summer had been caught in the Boxers’ siege of Peking. He had returned home only a couple of weeks ago. He tried twice to see Mariana. Both times she wasn’t home. He left messages, but when no response came and it appeared she was ignoring them, he decided to back off for a while. But his thoughts frequently strayed toward her.

  “Can I speak with you in private?” Stephan asked after exchanging formal greetings.

  “Sure,” said Daniel, “we can use Cranston’s office.”

  Cranston vacated his office in hopes that this troubled-looking stranger might have some news for them.

  “What’s wrong?” Daniel asked when they were alone.

  “Everything.”

  “Mariana!” A sudden panic seized Daniel.

  “No. Calm down. I’m the one who needs help.”

  Relief washed over Daniel. “So, what’s happened?” Daniel could guess it must have something to do with Stephan’s political activities. “You in trouble with the police?”