November 1916

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  But how could a girl with a limited provincial outlook, your very own pupil, show such grasp, such assured taste, and a level of critical understanding not inspired by your lessons? She could be so hurtful that you didn’t want to open her letters, but after a while you would read them and find that the wretched girl’s criticism stuck fast and couldn’t be shaken off. Sometimes, for a joke, you relayed them to your brother, in return for his enthusiastic praise, and he was amazed: “You show yourself no mercy! You really must be a genius if you can take that!”

  One thing Fyodor Dmitrich was quite sure of—and Zina confirmed it: he had an extraordinary memory for everything that ever caught his ear. Conversational exchanges seemed to linger in his memory, undistorted, for years on end. And he could retrieve a slice of life from such depths that it had no need of psychological embellishment to fascinate. He knew very well that he had these abilities. He knew his real potential. In his fifteen years as a writer no one had yet divined it—but he knew. Something inside him, something secret, miraculously communicated to him when he was little more than an infant, had made him choose this path and plod along it. He had a strange, fearful presentiment of the heights to which he could rise and the soul-stirring books he could someday write. And sure enough, in the past few years his rough sketches had begun to mold themselves into something like a finished product. This main character, that episode, these completed chapters—are they right? Is that how they should be? There were no precise limits, everything was in flux, it would not set, it was not strictly speaking a novel, it would be more like a prose poem, perhaps with the simplest of titles—The Quiet Don, because the Don and the nourishing scents of his beloved patch of land pervaded the whole thing. Part One was, in fact, finished, but Fedya was too shy to offer it to the public. There was no knowing what the result might be. What if they complained in chorus that there was too much irrelevant description of Cossack life, too much landscape, and that freedom’s cause seemed to be neglected?

  The main obstacle was not the hostility or envy of others, but himself. Perhaps his taste really was insufficiently discriminating. Or perhaps his way of life was all wrong. Perhaps he should stop traipsing around Russia and haunting editorial offices, perhaps, like the colonel there, he should even stop reading newspapers. Cut himself off from talkative acquaintances, boon companions, extrovert friends, and inquisitive women.

  Only … that way he might never write anything.

  Meanwhile, I mustn’t let my traveling companion slip through my fingers. As soon as he goes out into the corridor, I’ll open my notebook on the table and quickly, furtively jot down his characteristics. It may never be needed, but it might find a place in the novel, you never know. And just in case—let’s have something about his wife, with her wide hat and the brittle notes of command in her voice. Women like that were too hungry for power, and Fyodor was afraid of them. Let them start screaming, and there’d never be an end to it. Best to give in right away. Such women always insisted on traveling with their husbands. Strange that she’d let him go alone.

  The colonel wore the aiguillettes of a General Staff officer. He was absorbed in his own thoughts, and had looked at Fedya to begin with as if through a fog. His face was framed by a vigorous, close-clipped, bristly, auburn beard. He seemed very sure of himself (once his wife had gone). He sat cross-legged, quite motionless, without the slightest change of position, at rest, but not slumped in his seat (his training? professional stiffness? trench cramps?). He seemed to have become one with the seat. No fidgeting of the hands, no rubbing of the knee, no stroking of the beard. Not so much as a pursing of the lips. But those slight turns of the head showed that his mind was busy, and the look in his eyes changed continually. When he was listening, they showed that he was taking in all that was said. When he spoke, another look showed that he was intent on making himself understood. You could tell from his eyes whether he was about to speak or remain silent.

  The general line in contemporary literature, the general feeling among editors and intellectuals was one of hostility toward army officers, of contempt for them as boneheaded servitors of the regime, drilled in their benighted training schools to be arrogant, self-opinionated, and cruel. And Fedya himself did not like those of them who came from aristocratic families, officers at whose feet an effortless career in the Guards unrolled like a soft carpet. A Cossack by birth and at heart—but unhappily barred from military service by poor eyesight, and now too sluggish anyway, for lack of a horse to ride—Fedya could not help liking and understanding army life, and secretly envying those daring and dashing people for whom the army meant a life of constant exposure to battle. How ardently he would have embraced a Cossack career! He found little in common with writers, but officers he liked. He was glad to be traveling with one, and wanted to be accepted as an equal.

  A bit disconcerting, of course, that he never reads our stuff. And he hadn’t even heard of the Vyborg appeal. Imagine that!

  What an occasion that had been, in the Hotel Belvedere at Vyborg. A gathering of rebel parliamentarians presided over by the president of the Duma, the superb Muromtsev, in person. In the corridors bewitching lady intellectuals hopped onto easy chairs, without removing their shoes, to scarify eminent jurists with their scorching arguments. The dissolution of the First Duma had looked like the great turning point in Russia’s history, the end of the Liberation movement. Accept it without protest and no Duma would ever again be summoned! It would mean the end of the newborn parliament, of newborn freedom! The government had committed a crime against the state, and the people would not forgive its representatives if they did not answer blow with blow! After all those furious denunciatory speeches in the Duma how could they remain silent now? Not words but deeds (what deeds, though? what deeds?) must show the people the path of resistance—and it would follow! (And although Kovynev, as a sober inhabitant of an out-of-the-way rustic spot, knew very well that the people would be going nowhere, that this cry from the parliamentarians—don’t give them soldiers! don’t pay your taxes!—would come to nothing, would be obeyed by no one, he too acknowledged his overriding obligation to freedom, and signed together with other overheated deputies.) After which they returned from Finland burning to disseminate the appeal in millions of copies, and fearlessly expecting to be arrested to a man as soon as they reached Beloostrov! Not a finger was laid on any of them.

  And in spite of it all the inert mass of the people did not stir. The rebellious deputies were brought to trial after long delay. No attempt was made to halt the long speeches of the defendants. Trivial sentences of three months’ imprisonment were handed down, and they were disqualified from office in their own localities for ten years. And now, ten years later, a colonel on the General Staff didn’t know what a Vyborger was.

  How could the masses be moved? Could the masses ever be set in motion?

  The First Duma! The deputies had entered the Tauride Palace not to collaborate with a moldering government, but to continue the majestic march of the revolution! People saw off deputies at railway stations with intransigent cries of “Land and Freedom!” And when the deputies traveled from the Winter Palace to the Tauride by river steamer the Petersburg crowd on the embankment cried “amnesty!” (for terrorists). Delegations of electors forced their way into the Catherine Hall, peasant petitioners arrived from far-off places, elegant women descended from the galleries to embrace delegates who had made daring speeches or twitter encouragement to those about to speak.

  And now, ten years later?

  As for Kovynev’s own modest speech (lavishly praised in the lobbies at the time, and tailored for his audience: no one rose to make a speech unless it had a high anger content), it had left no mark on Russia’s history. Yet, as you mounted the Duma platform, you had to imagine that your words would cause an upheaval and change everything. Why was it Cossacks who were forced to crush the revolutionary people? Cossackdom bore the yoke of a service that disgraced it! The oath of loyalty had been perverted: they had
been hypnotically distracted while subjugation to authority was substituted for defense of the fatherland. It was a terrible code that demanded unquestioning obedience! (But could it be otherwise in an army?) Demobilize our regiments! Release us from the hangman’s role! Our age-old Cossack freedom and the freedom for which the whole Russian people now strives are one and the same.

  It was not the strength of the wine, nor its bouquet, as he poured it two-handed from the heavy bottle into the tumblers, but his consciousness that it came from home, from the Don, from Cherkassk, that made him warm to the colonel—who, anyway, seemed friendly enough, by no means obtuse, and capable of understanding things outside his experience, though at present very much preoccupied.

  “Just try to put yourself in the position of a Cossack … semi-intellectual, let’s call him—there aren’t many of them—who’s thumbed through Herzen and Chernyshevsky, then finds himself at an early age, and with no say in the matter, wearing a uniform jacket and wide breeches with side stripes, detached willy-nilly from the land and village life, enrolled for what?—to defend the throne against all enemies. There’s a man like that from my part of the world, same age as me—Filipp Mironov, maybe you’ve heard of him? He’s a lieutenant colonel now, second-in-command of the 32nd Don Regiment?”

  “Er—no, I don’t think so … Though the 32nd Don Regiment isn’t so very far from us.”

  “You might have heard about him in the Japanese war. He served there with great distinction. And it’s the same this time. Reconnaissance … surprise attacks … amazing river crossings … he goes looking for death. One minute he’s blowing up a bridge behind German lines, the next he’s rescuing a surrounded regiment with a single company. By now he has seven or eight medals, including a Vladimir. Well, in 1906 he was sent with a detachment to crush some rebellious peasants. So what does he do but parcel out the landowner’s meadows to them! That’s the way he operated! Then at the Ust-Medveditskaya district meeting about the same time …” [In their district meeting at Ust-Medveditskaya in those heady days of freedom, who do you think were the main orators? Fedya and Filya, who else?] “he urged category 2 Cossacks not to let themselves be drafted for police duty! And they didn’t report! Later on Filipp too was a candidate for the Duma, the Second, but the prosecutor struck his name off. And he was under house arrest for eight months. But the revolution was petering out by then. And General Samsonov, the ataman appointed by the Tsar, pardoned him and sent him back into the service at the very time when he banished me from the district. But can you explain to me how a man can serve once he starts thinking? You can serve either the people or the Tsar, obey either your conscience or your oath—there’s no avoiding the choice.”

  “Serving your country is the same as serving the people,” Vorotyntsev retorted.

  “Maybe so. Maybe not. A Cossack in Mironov’s company got a letter telling him his wife had died, his mother was sick, and there was nobody to look after his two children. Mironov promised him a month’s leave and let him go into town to send a telegram. But the Cossack was so fazed he met the regimental commander in town and didn’t salute him. The commander ordered Filipp to punish the man. He stands him in full marching order for two hours, then goes to try to arrange his leave. The commander’s answer? Punishment insufficient, leave denied. Well, you get rats like that wearing epaulets, don’t you?”

  “Alas, yes.” The colonel agreed almost too readily. “Still, if we gave up saluting the army would go to the dogs.”

  There was a grinding of brakes, but for some reason the carriages did not budge. Then the locomotive backed slightly, and slowly moved out.

  “Yes, but there was more punishment to come! Think of it—for the grave offense of failing to salute, twenty-five strokes of the birch before the whole company. That’s the sort of hangmen we Cossacks are: we get thrashed ourselves, like little children. Mironov begged the commander to cancel the order. Very well, then, flog him before the whole regiment! I ask you, how can anyone serve with such people.”

  Such people? Meaning “with you”?

  “The days when officers struck their men are over,” the colonel said confidently. “Nowadays an officer would feel ashamed to do it. And birching is a rarity. It was introduced to make courts-martial unnecessary.”

  “Well, Mironov stood before the regiment and gave this order: ‘So-and-so, ten paces forward, march! As your immediate superior officer I forbid you to lie across that bench of shame. About face, fall in!’ ”

  The colonel’s eyebrows twitched very slightly. Soldiers must salute officers, but this showed spirit.

  “And what happened?”

  “It was his third offense! He was obviously incorrigible. He was recalled to Novocherkassk, the same General Samsonov watched his adjutant strip the mutineer of his lieutenant’s epaulets, and his service in the Don Army was over. That’s how it is—you may be a hero, and famous and a medal winner, but once you begin thinking … How are we Cossacks supposed to think? Isn’t it harder for us than for anyone else? But still people curse us …”

  Kovynev mopped his brow. He squinted through the window. The light was fading, and he could hardly see a thing.

  “And that’s what vexes me. What a malicious joke history has played on us. It had to be the Cossacks. The Cossacks, who were the most intransigent enemies of servitude. They fled from it to the outermost edge of the land, in search of freedom. Only to return to Russia, reborn in their posterity, to deprive others of that freedom. Deprive the have-nots from whose ranks they themselves sprang. To gallop, whooping and whipping, into the thick of their own people. The Cossack soul has been corrupted. It is pitiful. They aren’t evildoers—they just don’t know what they’re doing.”

  The colonel would not be drawn on the subject of servitude and freedom, but he wanted to know what became of Mironov in the end.

  “He had to think what to do, and this was it. His father wasn’t at all well fixed, he couldn’t afford a horse for his son to take to the army, he used to carry water around Ust-Medveditskaya in a barrel. So now the cashiered lieutenant did the same. He pinned all his medals on his army greatcoat—without epaulets—and started taking water around in a barrel himself, a kopeck for a bucketful!”

  A vignette for a fine artist in prose—thrown away, blurted out to a traveling companion. Life was so full of people, of happenings—what pen could keep up with them?

  “Suddenly they felt ashamed of themselves. They made him a clerk in the agricultural office at Novocherkassk. Filipp was as uppity as ever: he submitted a scheme for redistribution of all Don Cossack lands … Once the seed of freedom is sown in a man there’s no curing him.”

  Fedya himself was an example.

  “He volunteered to fight in this war. And how gallantly he’s fighting!”

  The light outside was ebbing. The tantalizing glimpses of the changeable scene grew fainter, distracting the passengers less and less, concentrating their attention on each other more and more.

  “So you’re a Don Cossack born and bred?”

  “In fact, my father was village headman.”

  “But you never served yourself?”

  “I myself never served,” Fyodor Dmitrich confessed, embarrassed as always, as though it was a disgrace. “Because of my eyesight. Nor my brother—he’s lame. So we didn’t have to find mounts either. I studied at St. Petersburg, in the Historical and Philological Faculty. I taught for ten years at the Orel high school and another four at Tambov.”

  “Tambov? I went there myself once.” The colonel laughed. “To get married.”

  “Really?” Fyodor Dmitrich said hesitantly, “D’you know, I myself very nearly …” He heaved a sigh. “In the winter I’m in Petersburg, but I spend three or four months in the village every year. And the folks back there accept me, they come to me for advice as if I was a justice of the peace or a lawyer. Sometimes even use me as a doctor. Or I’m chairman of the village cooperative.”

  (Or you can laze around with the young C
ossacks, the bachelor boys, by the wattle fence under the cherry trees. Never mind that you’re fiftyish. In fact, that makes it all the better. They’re your own kind, those boys, part of you, like the grass and the earth.)

  “So I can tell what the village is thinking. And how the city sees things. When I’m living in the village I forget all about Petersburg. I feel that I’m a Don Cossack, and nothing more. And I judge everything in the world according to whether it will be good or bad for the Don alone. Then I go back to Petersburg, and in a matter of hours, after the first few editorial meetings, or in the Mining Institute, where I’m librarian and lodge with another man from the Don, I come to my senses, my field of vision expands to take in all Russia again, and it seems strange that three days back I couldn’t see beyond the Don, and didn’t want to know anything more. Looked at from Russia, the Don is its mischievous child. And looked at from the Don, the Don is not Russia.”