Vorotyntsev was getting impatient, he wanted to talk about his own main concerns, to speak out before anyone broke in on them. But he was reluctant to interrupt while the famous deputy was speaking so freely. Strange, he thought, that I’ve lived all these years in Russia, lived a very active life, yet never knew any of this, any more than I knew about the Vyborg appeal. And so he sat sunk in the old sofa listening, for some reason, to a detailed account of matters fifteen years out of date. With Shingarev looking down upon him from his wicker chair.
The apolitical doctor had, then, been sucked into the whirlpool of party politics. To begin with, he had joined the League of Liberation, which was so attractive to all intellectuals. Once parties with a separate identity appeared he found himself a Kadet … And anyway, when he was still a youngster, Fronya, also a student, engaged to Andrei Ivanovich, had taken part in a Christmas fortune-telling game. She wrote predictions on little slips, these were stuck onto the sides of a big basin, water was poured into the basin, and a little candle in a nutshell was floated on the water. Whichever slip it approached foretold your future. Shingarev’s slip read: “Will be a deputy in the first Russian parliament.” That was when Aleksandr III was still on the throne, and however hard he peered into the future nobody could imagine that a Russian parliament would ever be a reality. But it had come to pass, exactly as predicted. Shingarev was the first Kadet deputy elected to the First Duma from Voronezh. But the local committee of the Kadet Party didn’t want him to go off to the capital, they kept him in Voronezh. And what was the result? The Vyborg appeal, a prison term, and disqualification from further political activity were the unavoidable lot of the first deputies—while Shingarev was elected to the Second Duma, and again to the Third. When he was not allowed to stand again in Voronezh, he was elected in Petersburg, where he was by then well known.
The point of this long story was that nothing can be achieved without a struggle against authority. If you thought about it—perhaps it really was so? Had not Vorotyntsev come along with some such idea in his head?
In the Second Duma no one had thought that the duty of the people’s elected representatives was work, work, and yet more work. It was as though there was no Russia, no Russian people—just the ambitions of party politicians. The extreme left shouted, “We don’t need this sort of Duma! To hell with it!” And a handful of rightists yelled back, “You don’t deserve even a Duma of this sort! You’ve been too greedy.” All the same, the day of its dissolution was an agonizing one.
“I foresaw that the government coup would pass almost unnoticed by the people.”
(Was it really a government coup? It sounded strange. Vorotyntsev hadn’t noticed or remembered anything of the kind.)
“But although I had fully expected it the silence of Petersburg and Moscow on 16 June was astonishing. The fact that something or other had happened to the Duma not only provoked no disturbances, it aroused not the slightest interest. The imperial manifesto was printed and posted on walls, but passersby didn’t even pause to read it. Cabbies trotted briskly by, drays rumbled on their way. We thought of ourselves as ‘the Duma of the people’s aspirations,’ but when we were dissolved nobody batted an eye.”
(So maybe nothing terrible had happened?)
Shingarev moved over to sit beside him on the sofa, sinking into a second cavity. As he prepared to move on from reminiscence to the present, his searching gray eyes examined the other man closely. There was nothing of the big city about him, he was just an affable country doctor, concerned for his companion’s health and ready to examine him and listen to his chest there and then.
Where had Vorotyntsev been at the time?
In June 1907? Right here in Petersburg. Taking my first-year exams at the Academy. To tell the truth, I didn’t notice a thing.
Shingarev nodded. Quite so. The very ailment he had suspected.
“Still, in the Third Duma we were at one in wanting to work. Now, in the Fourth, everything has seized up, nothing gets done. All because of the obstinacy and stupidity of our rulers. Yet they have never had a more favorable time for rapprochement with the public than now, in the midst of this war! They didn’t want it. Last year, after the retreat and the criminal surrender of the fortresses, our Military Commission submitted a very frank memorandum to the Tsar. And no answer was forthcoming. In spite of the fact that we’re on the commission, and can discuss whatever we like—whereas in the Third Duma, Guchkov wouldn’t have us on the Military Commission, he said the Kadets were ‘not patriots.’ ”
This frankness deserved a frank reply.
“Nobody can say that about you personally, Andrei Ivanovich, but cast your eye over your party comrades—are they really patriots? I’d say Aleksandr Ivanovich was more or less right.” He softened his boldness with a laugh.
“We are working for the good of the people—what does that make us?” Shingarev said heatedly.
Vorotyntsev stuck to his guns. “There’s more than one way of doing that. You might think a strong Russia isn’t necessary for the purpose, you might not mind if Russia collapses, if the result is freedom …”
“A strong Russia not necessary? We want just that—we want victory! We base all our calculations on the patriotism of the people—nothing else! That’s our one salvation, this extraordinary gift of our people, the cure for all our maladies—and that after all the ill treatment the people have been made to endure!”
He had evidently sized up Vorotyntsev as a representative, though a peculiar one, of that same Russian people. Vorotyntsev sensed that some sort of decisive pronouncement was expected of him. But out of the corner of his eye he saw looming the rock that might at any moment divide them. So now they were patriots, greater patriots than he was? He didn’t want to remind Shingarev that before the war he had held up the Duma’s approval of budget allocations to the armed forces.
He wedged himself deeper into the ruptured sofa.
He longed to smoke but felt awkward about it. The air in the study was heavy with the smell of books, but there wasn’t a whiff of tobacco.
Shingarev’s view was that everything done for the war was the work not of the bureaucracy but of the “public.” Russia should step up her war effort to the maximum by the end of the year and reach the zenith of her power early in 1917. But everything was going to pieces because of pigheaded obstruction on the part of the regime. The home front was shaky and might not hold up.
The home front again. Fixed prices, tariffs, compulsory procurement? The Defense Commission, the Budget Commission, hundreds of educated people with their statistical tables and economic reference books. And changing anything in Russia would mean more tables, more reference books, all those people would have to be consulted. And the sword hanging in the entrance hall, or two dozen such gimcrack swords, would be of no avail against that. Even at the Academy officers did not study civil law or administration.
Shingarev was piling it on “… a black period, a barren period. We produce no great statesmen. Prophets and great writers alike have abandoned Russia. But what I find hardest to understand is why no good generals come to the fore. This is the third year of a war without precedent, one such as Russia has never waged before, fourteen million men have borne arms at one time or another, so why have we no Suvorov? No Skobelev even?”
Generals …?
“Do you mind if I smoke?”
Generals! Vorotyntsev never stopped thinking about them. (And of himself in the same context.) That none were produced was no accident. They were in fact produced—but somebody’s stupidity made the upper rungs of the service ladder inaccessible to them. “There are now plenty of competent generals commanding divisions, corps, and even armies, compared with those around at the beginning of the war. Take Lechitsky, or Gurko, or Shcherbachev, or Kaledin, or Denikin, or Krymov … But higher up—the way is barred. It’s the same as with you and the ministers.”
Shingarev liked that. Restlessly twining and untwining his fingers, he began asking the sort
of questions which should wrest the required answers from the colonel. He wanted to be told that the army’s potential was still inexhaustible! That it had the strength to overcome all trials on the road to victory, and that its commanders would yet shine. Just rid us of this rotten government and victory is ours!
But the colonel he had chanced on could not and would not promise any of these things so passionately desired. Nor could he utter such words—half prayer, half promise—about the government and the Supreme Power, though he himself had no respect for them whatever.
Perhaps the complete mutual understanding they had hoped for was a mirage?
Vorotyntsev felt a growing desire to make a clean breast of it—but what an impossible position for an officer and a fighting soldier: to address a civilian audience like some sort of pacifist the moment he arrived from the front. It would be like a bass singer suddenly breaking into falsetto. These people are for the war and for victory—but am I? How easy it is for them to talk about “stepping up the war effort to its maximum"! Try stepping it up while you squirm in the trenches day after day!
People back here were very bellicose and victory-minded. But the more clearly Vorotyntsev saw what the nation really needed, the harder it proved to express it in educated language.
How can we win the war? Shingarev was waiting to be told. We’ve begrudged nothing, spared ourselves nothing. We dare not fail to atone for all the lives we’ve sacrificed—by winning the war. The shades of the dead would arise and ask, “For what did you destroy us?” Yes, the Kadets were ready to attack the government with whatever it took!
That was the very question that always hampered and challenged Vorotyntsev’s present way of thinking. To what end have so many been sacrificed? What is our duty toward the dead? He was more keenly conscious of that duty than were those who might argue with him in Petersburg. The dead meant rows and rows of faces and names well known to him, or now half forgotten, often with the circumstances of their death, or burial, or dispatch to the rear gravely wounded. But though he never forgot a single one of them he was still more urgently aware of the groans of the living.
It was obvious what he should say—to Shingarev particularly, as chairman of the Duma’s Military Commission. And someone who would never play a dirty trick. But it was difficult to get the words out. He began in a roundabout way. “Maybe the first thing to do is to reduce the army. Reduce it considerably. By as much as a third. We don’t need an enormous army, we need an army of crack troops—almost entirely volunteers, to be used at decisive points. What we’ve rounded up isn’t an army, it’s a rabble. We’re trying to make up with numbers for what we lack in expertise.”
“Yes, yes,” Shingarev said, unsurprised. “We’ve heard such opinions expressed occasionally. You share them, then? We can’t allow ourselves to say it out loud in the Duma. There would be more hands to work the land, wouldn’t there? Fewer mouths to feed, fewer supply trains?”
“The main thing is there’d be less of a scuffle in the trenches. One-third fewer wounded. We need to fight with skill not numbers. Do you know what our reserve units look like now? Battalions almost the size of divisions. Teeming hordes. Festering pockets of plague. The men loll around without weapons, with nothing to do. Just think—soldiers still in reserve units get the feeling that they are inescapably, and senselessly, doomed. When replacements reach their new regiment they know nothing, and have to be taught everything. The boneheads in the Defense Ministry and the government have one fixed idea: it’s a big war, so rope in the greatest possible number of soldiers. Once those up top get something into their noodles what hope is there of changing their minds? Who can make them see reason?”
Up top? That was glaringly obvious to Shingarev. The Russian “top” casting its shadow over every sensible question, blocking every sensible way forward. Yes, indeed! So that even in Duma debates the deputies come up against a blank wall—and ours is not the sort of parliament to knock it down with a vote.
But Vorotyntsev knew it wasn’t just up top … The man beside him, looking into his eyes, a sincere man for whom Russia was the breath of life … could he be made to think afresh? He was seeing difficulties already.
“Send workers back to the factories en masse? There’d be resentment in the army, petitions, recriminations—everybody would be saying, ‘Why not me?’ With the peasants it would be worse still. Those left behind would be demoralized. And what would the Allies say? Something very like demobilization in the middle of a war like this? They’d regard it as a betrayal. I talked to a lot of people in London and Paris this year and I simply can’t imagine broaching any such subject. How could we prove to them that it is a practical necessity, that we are not conserving our strength at their expense? That we really haven’t lost our determination to fight on to the last soldier and the last ruble?”
What? What’s this I’m hearing? Can this be the same Shingarev?
“Andrei Ivanovich,” he said vehemently. “What about the people in Novozhivotinnoye? Must they too fight to the last man? You … You have to realize that the infantry is at the end of its tether. The peasant cannot comprehend the need for all these sacrifices for the third year in succession. All he sees is that somebody, for some reason, is sacrificing him and that he must inevitably die or be left a cripple. You remember what you said about that leaseholder: that’s how the soul of the people decays! That’s just it—it is decaying!”
No! He didn’t understand! The eyes were the same—eager, brilliant, sometimes moist, the look on his face was as cordial as ever, his voice just as disarmingly persuasive … No! He didn’t understand! The young man crushed in the limestone quarry was not a casualty of patriotism … his fate had nothing to do with … the war, with victory, with the Allies, with Russia’s historical destiny.
Vorotyntsev lost control of himself. “To hell with the Allies! Do you think they care about our losses? I wouldn’t sacrifice even the last but one soldier for them.”
Shingarev was astonished by the colonel’s outburst. “But how could we make such an abrupt about-face? What would we have to do … and how?”
“Drastic actions would of course be necessary.” Vorotyntsev spoke emphatically. He had no clear idea what those actions would be, and knew now that it was no good looking to his present companion for them.
Shingarev, however, shared the extraordinary readiness of all the Kadets to jump to conclusions, and saw Vorotyntsev’s “drastic actions” in his own long-established perspective.
“You’re right of course! Only drastic changes can save the country! Don’t misunderstand me,” he said apologetically, “I’m no leftist. I understand that a serious and responsible party, even in opposition, must support the government when it gets into an awkward situation. Otherwise the whole state would go to blazes … What worries my comrades is that if we cooperate with the government we may isolate ourselves from the left-wing groupings. And also that we might not do a good job of exposing the government, and that after the war, when it is brought to trial … will we live to see the day …? We could be reproached for not … For my part I would cooperate with them to the full! I’d forgive them everything, I’d forgive the present regime everything, if I knew that their hearts too ache for the people. That they too, in their sleepless nights, think only of the people! But their hearts don’t ache! They have no such thoughts even in broad daylight, sitting in uniform at their office desks. They don’t understand, they don’t feel that horrible events, heartrending events, are inexorably advancing on Russia.”
Stinging tears clouded his eyes—the eyes of a good-natured bandit—and he had to close them.
“The government is in a state of collapse. The Tsar in command of the army—it’s a catastrophe. We may be very close to the brink. Before long even the State Duma will not be able to keep the masses in check!”
Aha! This was the place for free speech! No one was so bold in the army.
Vorotyntsev held up a hand. “Andrei Ivanovich … surely you do
n’t suppose … can anyone suppose … that there will be a revolution?”
Shingarev, dry-eyed now, looked hard at him.
“We, the Duma, exist for just that—to prevent revolution. We are the safety valve. A revolutionary explosion would relieve everybody of responsibility: they could say, ‘If that hadn’t happened to hinder us we would have …’ And what an enormous service revolution would do for Germany! We are the safety valve, and we reduce the pressure as much as we can. But what if the regime is impervious to all persuasion? Or what if treasonable thoughts are ripening within the government?”
“That’s nonsense! Nothing like that is happening.”
“What makes you so sure? What if Russia is being bundled along the road to defeat?” His hands fell resignedly into his lap. “Alas, this last year I’ve seen less and less hope of preventing it … It’s probably no longer in our power.”
The doorbell rang.
“That must be Pavel Nikolaevich!”
Shingarev raised a respectful, promissory finger. He rose with alacrity and went to the door.
Professor Milyukov next! They’ll all be pitching into me! Have to think and answer back quickly.
Vorotyntsev hurriedly finished his second cigarette and quickly reviewed the major error in Shingarev’s last words. Already half resigned himself to revolution? All the more reason to act, with a small compact force if necessary—to stop being timid, stop letting things slide, stop wasting time. That was something else they’d got wrong—why did they connect the government with defeat? Sapping the nation’s spiritual strength was what it should be accused of. The great boulder had, after all, shifted and separated them. They want to “save the war.” When what Russia needs is to free itself from the war.
November 1916 Page 45