Byzantium Endures: Pyat Quartet

by Michael Moorcock

  Our Ukrainian war was the first great war between Urban- and Country-dweller. To survive today, one must league oneself with the city. Those who leave are at best sentimentalists, at worst deserters. Ukraine was a land of wealthy industrial cities drawing on our mineral resources; of wealthy kulaks drawing on our infinite wheatlands. More than anywhere else in Russia, Ukraine displayed both the dilemma and the solution. That is why we have suffered so much up to the present day. I do not speak from self-pity. There is little of that in my nature. I speak objectively. The problem could have been defined. It could have been remedied. Ukraine could have become the world’s first modern civilisation. Trotsky and the Nationalists between them put an end to that. Two negative forces collided. Ego: they all thought they knew best. Chaos and Old Night were released upon the world.

  Brodmann and I became friends, of sorts. He admired me and would often ask for practical advice. I did what I could to modify his excesses. I invented examples drawn from my fictitious Red activist life. As a result, my reputation grew. My engineering skills were often called upon as we moved from camp to camp. I was still a prisoner. Of course, they did not know it. Dozens of times I pointed out I would be more useful to them in Odessa. I was now ignored. They began to plan in earnest the assassination of Hrihorieff. They had received direct orders from their Moscow superiors. The Ataman was acting out of hand, refusing to take orders, winning over Bolshevik liaison men to his own point of view, seducing some of their best people. I was asked to make an infernal machine to blow up the Cossack chieftain. My conscience would not let me. I claimed materials were hard to come by. Of course they offered to requisition everything I needed. I said it was a dangerous business. Whoever used the bomb might also be blown up. They would employ someone not particularly ‘useful to the Party’. I mentioned the possibility of people other than Hrihorieff dying. I was told that those who had gathered about him were as much responsible as the Ataman himself. I heard the whole litany: the now-familiar Bolshevik rationalisation of cold-blooded murder. This, too, would establish itself in the consciousness of all kinds of socialists, including the National Socialists, who hampered their own cause by adopting the tactics of those they opposed. They also inherited the Bolshevik talent for efficient-sounding neologisms. Lenin and Trotsky and Stalin have a great deal to answer for. Stalin regarded himself as a philologist. I was not surprised to learn that. It was easy for him. He had invented the very language he pretended to examine. Zamyatin, with his eloquence and insight, pointed this out in his book Mi (We in English). He had all his ideas stolen by Huxley and Orwell, those poor imitators of H.G. Wells. The Anarchists on the other hand were always bad at inventing new words, though most of their best slogans were taken over by the Bolsheviks. This was probably the reason for Anarchism’s failure. It could not simplify problems. Lenin understood how effective simplification could be. Cheka. The word is a chilling abbreviation of words meaning Special Commission for Internal Affairs. We would be wary of such a name, but we would not immediately fear it. In Scandinavian the word for terror is something like Skrek. Skrek would have the same mixture of coldness and authority: a no-nonsense sound. And how the Chekists loved to use their name!

  ‘Cheka!’ And off would come the hats and caps. Men and women would even kneel. Russians were still scarcely aware they were no longer serfs, let alone that they were ‘comrades’. ‘Cheka!’ And out would come the pathetic little hoards, or the papers, or the pleas for mercy. And the machine-guns would go cheka-cheka-cheka just to prove what mercy meant: a quick death rather than a slow one. Of course the Chekists turned on one another in the end. Down they went, in cellars, in ditches, in camps, until the name was so foul it had to be changed and Beria began his rule, whispering words of fear in Stalin’s ear. They say he laughed when he saw Stalin was really dead. He strutted about as if he had achieved that death himself. He thought he had triumphed entirely. We should have had a Jewish Tsar sitting on the Russian throne. Luckily Beria met the fate of Rasputin, an amateur at manipulation compared to his famous successor. Stalin was ready to begin an action against the Jews. That was why Beria poisoned him. But these facts are obscured. What did Stalin do, for instance, with .Hitler’s body? To that uncertain, Georgian mind it was his by right of vendetta. Or was Stalin the first true robot; this Man of Steel? Is that the joke Beria played upon the world? In Russia they still call KGB ‘cheka’: it has become a slang word.

  Brodmann confided to me, at last, that he wanted no part of the assassination plan. I told him I agreed. As a professional saboteur, the killing of Hrihorieff was beneath me. ‘My violence is done to machines and communications,’ I said. We shared a Wagon-Lit. It had been parked in a siding somewhere to the north of Nikolaieff. We got few reports. Hrihorieff seemed undecided which town to attack first. Antonov did not want Hrihorieff to attack either. He claimed he wished to ‘save’ the citizens from outrage. He really needed to prove himself to his masters, to claim Hrihorieff’s glory. Hrihorieff, in turn, boasted of a dozen conquests a day. Half the towns taken were shtetls or gypsy camps. But his boasting had the desired effect. More and more partisans joined him as he moved towards the cities: firing threatening cables before him as an ancestor might have fired human heads; to frighten the garrisons and undermine their morale.

  At some time in March we learned Hrihorieff had taken Kherson by storm. His telegrams ‘To All, All, All!’ came back and were posted up throughout South Ukraine. The city was occupied in the name of ‘The Working People of the World’, but the tone of his messages was clear: Hrihorieff, Ataman of the Zaporizhian Cossacks, had done what the Bolsheviks could not do. The pogroms continued. Even Antonov, in control of Kiev, had been unable to stop the sacking of Podol by regular Red Army soldiers.

  There was a multitude of rumours. We were fifty versts behind the lines and received no direct information. I was only interested in Hrihorieff as far as he concerned me. I still could not get permission to go to Odessa. Antonov had become suspicious of Bolsheviks playing ‘happy ships’ with Hrihorieff. This naval term describes what happens when one crew falls in love with another. The Bolshevik officially in command of irregular units did whatever Hrihorieff ordered. We were not all so sure of the chieftain’s ability to hold his gains. This was why Antonov wanted him liquidated.

  What had happened in Kherson was this: Hrihorieff issued an ultimatum to the garrison’s C-in-C. The dignified Greek replied it was his duty to defend the city to the last. He had confined leftist hostages and their families in a warehouse. The French frigates in the river opened fire on Hrihorieff’s Cossacks as they swept into Kherson. The French used incendiary shells. These set the warehouse alight. Hundreds of men, women and children were burned alive. Hrihorieff took ghastly revenge. The French escaped, but not a single Greek was spared. They were killed as they fought or as they surrendered. Hrihorieff filled a ship with their bodies and sent it down the river to Odessa: the first modern corpse-ship. The effect on the morale of the French garrison in Odessa and, when the news came, Nikolaieff’s German garrison, was of course devastating.

  Kherson had given up her materiel: tanks, guns, ammunition, food. The city was looted in true Cossack fashion. Hrihorieff continued to pretend he served ‘Soviet’ authority. His men were seen selling their booty in our camp, in every village they stopped at: women’s dresses, suits, boots, crucifixes, ikons, paintings, delicacies, antiques. Half the ‘boorzhoos’ had sought refuge in Kherson. The Cossacks had found them easy victims.

  Nikolaieff surrendered soon after this and Hrihorieff gained greater strength. Thousands of Cossacks, Haidamaki, partisan divisions, tanks, infantry in armoured trains, began to move on Odessa. Panic filled me. Anything could happen to my mother and Esmé. I applied through Antonov’s field commanders to be returned to Odessa. I received no reply.

  I heard a rumour. One of our trains was leaving for the ‘Odessa Front’. It carried Bolshevik troops. Antonov hoped to strengthen Hrihorieff’s units and pretend Bolsheviks were resp
onsible for the victory. With Brodmann and one other, I at last got myself assigned as political commissar: because I knew the city well I could contact Bolshevik comrades already spreading propaganda amongst the French, local people and Whites.

  I shared the staff-carriage with a dozen half-drunk Red Army officers, Brodmann and the other commissar. His name was something like Kreshchenko. When the train was on its way the officers revealed their orders. We were not going direct to Odessa. Our first job was to contact Makhno to try to gain his sympathy and help in curtailing Hrihorieff. Apparently Makhno disapproved of Hrihorieff. His support, the equal to the Ataman’s, had been given reluctantly. The Red Army men said the French were weak, divided at home, confused in their orders, understanding nothing of the issues involved. Those Moscow Bolsheviks could as easily have said the same of themselves. They had no clear idea of Makhno’s or Hrihorieff’s political stand. Their distaste for the irregulars was evident (they were all ex-Tsarists). I sympathised, but I had been forced to survive amongst the rabble. I knew at least how feelings ran. Even the Red Cossacks believed ‘Russian chauvinists’ were not true Communists. The Cossacks, they argued, were Communists by tradition and experience. The single fact Trotsky understood was that Ukrainian partisans were hard to discipline. It had been easy enough for him to take over the remnants of the Tsar’s army; but he loathed the peasant fighters. He would destroy as many as he could once they had served their turn. Stalin completed his work. Every Bolshevik success involved a revival of Tsarist methods. Tell me who was vindicated. Tell me who was responsible for Pan-Islam? We have no Cossacks now.

  The ghosts of those murdered Greeks hang over the misty waters of the Dnieper; they rise and fall on the bloody waves of the Black Sea. The marrow was sucked from their bones. Greece, Mother of Civilisation: your children dishonour your name. And what if Cassandra had been there to see, to warn them, would they have listened? The good do not listen; the innocent do not listen; only the evil listen. Their faces were smashed with rifle-butts. Their clothing was torn from their bodies. They were piled like rotten meat into the boats and sent down our Russian river to our own sea. How the Turk must have chuckled when he learned with what brutality we had turned upon one another. Those noble Greeks. Betrayed by French and Russians alike. And we allow ourselves to speak of Democracy. We use their language, their religion, their culture, their logic, and we let them rot. We give them up to the infidel. Greece is our common cause and we do not see it. Our standard, our ideal. Those tourists coo over the bones of Greece; those perverts leer at naked statues and make a mockery of the teachings of Plato; they disgrace themselves with kebabs and retsina and silly dances. In Athens, the Greeks sell themselves to anyone; they destroy their honour: but can they be blamed? Greece, Mother of the World, raped by her own sons. So she becomes a cynical, painted whore? Odysseus! We built a city in your name; and we defiled it. We filled it up with offal. We killed your brave men. We stabled our horses in your holy places. We raped your priestesses. We tore down your golden paintings and smashed your statues. But Greece must rise as Christ shall rise; ennobled by sacrifice, strengthened through pain. They beat me with their rods. And God comes to me. Istanbul? What sort of feeble name is that for the city of Constantine the Great, who brought Faith to Rome? Byzantium! These are names to sing. But Istanbul! That is a name to wail from corrupted towers raised by self-pitying, greedy, cruel Turks; to shriek for jehad and revenge on the People of the Lamb. Aйя-coфия...и bcem beκam – ιιρиmρ ІΟctиhиaha... For a thousand years she guarded the East. Even the Turk could not conquer her. Below the trappings, the tired images of Communism, she still lives, the ikons glow, the Mother of God, the Son of God; and the old man is Stalin drooling in his death-agonies. God the Son has not perished. His day is not yet. Byzantium and Rome will unite against the Tatar, the Negro, the Jew, the Teuton. Let the Turks celebrate their Suleimans and Harouns, their treacherous Lawrences. Their oil will flow into the sea and the world shall die. Fear Africa. No one will listen. They are fools. They are innocents. They call me a racist. I am not. Race is nothing. It is their religion I fear. Religion based on hate and envy. Carthage, with its dark and ancient eye, its red lips, its blue-black beard, growls for vengeance. Byzantium shall rise. The drums shall cease. The gongs shall not echo. The snow shall be our own and our rivers will be silver. We defended Europe. We built a Byzantine colony on the ruins of Carthage but it was foredoomed; for the Romans dedicated the ruins to the infernal gods and invoked an evil which exists to this day. I have been there. At least, to Tunis. We must be ready. Brave, free Cossacks and the Byzantine Faith. Are they to go the way of Greece? Will our Cossacks dance and drone on dull red stages and our priests sell dirty photographs in Leningrad streets? Where is peace? Where is the Lamb of God? They took Krassnoff and they hanged him from a black tree. They plotted to kill Hrihorieff. They killed Makhno’s commanders. They drove others to suicide. And you tell me they are not to be feared? You think this is God’s plan? How can it be? Has God changed sides? How could the Turk fulfil His purpose? Are we not tested enough? For two thousand years we have suffered. Is it guilt? Carthage was destroyed. Is it guilt? For what?

  Brodmann was nervous of visiting Makhno. He sat in a corner of the carriage and complained. He hated Anarchists worse than Whites. He had probably supported both in his time. He argued that History was not ready for Kropotkin’s dreams. Men were too vicious and self-seeking; they had to be trained to the idea of Communism, as dogs. He was like a religious convert who turns against all he once admired because it has not proven perfect. I have met the type often. He sought to impose a grey vision on the objective world because he had lost his centre, his inner life. Christian or Communist, the temperament is the same. They hated Makhno, in those days. The Bolsheviks, the Whites, the Allies. Not only was he as successful as Hrihorieff, he had been able to hold his gains better. He became a drunkard in Paris. A lost, wretched, confused consumptive whose wife and child left him, who talked and coughed and wept his way to extinction. I was to meet him there, in Paris, where so many lonely Russians live.

  * * * *

  SIXTEEN

  I DECIDED TO ESCAPE. In the night, while we were stopped and everyone slept, I took a map from the table, took a bottle of vodka and some food, and left the train. There was no snow worth mentioning. My plan was to strike out for the nearest good-sized town. Now I was au fait with the ways of partisans I could bluff someone in authority and get transport to Odessa. It might be possible to find a truck. I could repair it as easily as I had repaired Grishenko’s. I was in something of a trance. My memory of those days is hazy. But I know I was anxious to reach my mother and Esmé. I had no other particular plan in mind, save that I might sell Yermeloff’s pistols and purchase a passage on a ship bound for Yalta, which was then in Deniken’s hands. Nobody was sure the French would be able or willing to defend Odessa for long.

  Those infernal gods have gathered their forces. They ride the wind which blows upon the West. Nika! Vanquish. The British are to blame. They will let any evil in. They let the east into their own country. Look at Portobello Road. Look at Birmingham. T’hiyyat hametim. Carthage is camped on the island the Phoenicians established as their trading base. Is anything changed? The British will sell their own birthright to Phoenicia for a few rayon scarves and a badly-carved wooden elephant. A culture cannot hold Light and Dark in eternal balance. Persia knew. What have the British made of their Empire? An empty name. And Carthage remains. The gods of Babylon and Tyre will crush London beneath stone feet. Moloch will open his flaming maw: into it will march the British, singing one of their songs. Good riddance! It is all they deserve. They shall be slaves of the Phoenicians again. They shall learn to grovel. They shall become a scattered race of money-grubbing, forehead-touching, dust-eating wretches and they shall weep and wail in their pride, and they shall forget their honour, and they shall tell of a past when they were great, and they shall be heard with contempt, for they shall be great no longer. Nich
t kinder. Nicht einiklach.

  I came to a dark village. It stank, as so many of them did, and it was silent. The houses were ramshackle. Some were crude thatched huts. It was like an extended, badly-run farmyard. I had been through such places with the Cossacks. I had seen them burn. Before dawn, I settled down against a wall and slept for a little while. I awoke to find a Jew standing over me: a Hasid rabbi. In Yiddish he asked me if I were hungry. I told him I was not. I got up. I had fallen into the hands of Zion. A shtetl. Everywhere signs in Yiddish and Hebrew. The sun shone bright and cold on this stronghold of avarice. I had been sleeping next to a synagogue. My bones ached. The marks of Grishenko’s whip stung, every one, as if fresh. I told him I could not speak Yiddish. He smiled. He spoke through his beard in halting Hebrew. I told him in Russian that I could not speak Hebrew. He did not understand my Russian. I used German. It was better than Ukrainian, which was like Yiddish to me. Even this was difficult. How did they trade? How did they manage to exist? The land was poor here. It was rocky. It was not like our Russian steppe. It was like Old Testament Palestine. The rabbi beckoned to me to follow him. I shook my head.