November 1916

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Two bright female voices could be heard outside the door. Shingarev returned alone.

  “No, it wasn’t Pavel Nikolaevich. Two of our ladies, party members.”

  He lowered himself into his old hollow in the sofa, thought a minute, and returned to what he had been saying. His words were still doom-laden, but he now seemed almost to relish them.

  “If revolution becomes a fatal necessity—what then? We can only try not to be too horrified. We can only try to believe in a miracle, believe that Russia will be reborn, even as a result of revolution. This bloody war, God willing, will bring complete freedom.” He was not speaking only for himself, but for many others he could think of. “We shall yet see a great blossoming of social forces. We shall see enlightened, reasonable individuals, with respect for the freedom of a great people, in power. We must just not lose faith in Russia’s future! We must believe in the spontaneously active forces in society. We must believe in the spiritual soundness of the people!”

  At those last words his voice again sank and throbbed with emotion. For a moment he was unable to speak.

  How muddled their minds were! Vorotyntsev could scarcely keep up with it: one minute—victory at all costs … the next—acceptance of defeat or even revolution, just so long as freedom followed.

  Ah, but they contrived somehow to reconcile the two things.

  “But then, after the revolution the army will acquire new strength, as happened in France. The officer corps will be reconstructed. Discipline will be reinforced. A new enthusiasm will spread through the ranks and the troops will …”

  “You really think so?” In spite of himself there was a tinge of irony in Vorotyntsev’s question.

  “We all think so,” Shingarev answered artlessly. “Could we have gone on for year after year without that faith?”

  O blessed faith! If only you could surrender to it! But one regiment is one “people,” another is another. And the same regiment is one people in the morning and another in the evening. And anyway, every regiment is just a faceless blur occupying so much space. Wars are won by volunteers, scouts, daredevils, the first into the attack. As surely as history is made by an elite minority.

  He told Shingarev some of this, clumsily. And left him unconvinced.

  But what about the young man crippled in the stone quarry?

  Shingarev could not be diverted.

  “Lately I’ve been reading a bit of French history, the late eighteenth century. D’you know what—the similarity is terrifying! You can’t get away from the feeling that it’s all happening now! That this is our debacle! That this is our own blind and brainless regime! That these are our lost battles! That those insidious rumors of treachery in high places are just like ours!”

  “Andrei Ivanovich! Andrei Ivanovich!” Vorotyntsev felt bound to check him in full spate, seizing both his hands in a friendly grip. “Aren’t we just asking for such analogies to be drawn? Shouldn’t we be exerting ourselves to make them irrelevant? It’s no good our repeating their history. How to avoid it—that’s what we want to know! Spare us revolution, I beg you!”

  “Well, since you ask,” Shingarev said with a charming laugh. “But what do we get in return?”

  Fair enough. When the state was stuck in a hopeless predicament what would any civilian expect from the military? “What are you waiting for? Why don’t you help us?” Vorotyntsev was acutely, ashamedly, aware of this obligation. But how was he to help? Well, that was what he had come to find out.

  “Of course,” Shingarev said with a sigh, “a moderate coup d’état can be a splendid solution. But we Russians aren’t very good at that sort of thing. Perhaps we’re incapable of it. Guchkov says the regime has no props—one good push and … He’s mistaken. It has many props. The state machine. The mental inertia of human beings. The self-interest of certain circles. The lack of courage in its subjects.”

  Were those words “lack of courage” a reproach? A hint? No, he was just thinking aloud. Anyway, courage was not enough—you had to have insight, you had to use your head, to learn, to understand. You’re all right, in the center of things here … And once again Guchkov was cited. What a tight little world even sprawling Russia was!

  “So all we can do is hope, Russian fashion, that something, somehow, sometime … If only the regime would come to its senses! That would be the simplest solution. It won’t, though!” Shingarev clutched the graying but still thick hair on the top of his head. “It’s astounding, this inability to understand the relentless march of history! To see that if you’ve got to give way in the end, it’s best to do it in good time, while the going’s good. No, they’ll wait till they’re smashed to smithereens before they give an inch. They just don’t recognize that there’s no avoiding the ladder of progress. Like it or not, we shall have to struggle up the same steps that the West has left behind it. But I grieve for the Russian people—we’re paying too dearly for what others obtain cheaply. Do you know the legend of the Sibyl? It was quoted in the first issue of Liberation.”

  “Liberation?” Something else new. He didn’t want to ask about it.

  Another ring at the door.

  “Pavel Nikolaevich!” Shingarev sprang up eagerly (all his movements were swift and purposeful) and went to open the door.

  An elderly male voice was heard. Its owner was on first-name terms with Shingarev. “Has he come?”

  “Not yet, but he’s expected.” And Vorotyntsev rose to greet another distinguished Kadet—a man with a tense, ironic, perhaps even mocking face, sharp eyes behind pince-nez, and a painstakingly elongated wedge of blond beard.

  “Mili Izmailovich Minervin, a member of our Central Committee and of the Kadet group in the Duma. I was about to tell Georgi Mikhailovich the legend of the Sibyl. Will you? You do it better.”

  Of course he would! Without waiting to be asked twice, or inquiring why this unenlightened colonel wanted to know the legend of the Sibyl, he lowered himself onto the same old sofa, ignoring the hollow, and with no change of expression, voice, or manner he launched into a speech not just for this one-man audience but for a whole auditorium, calling upon all his histrionic and vocal skills, so that the dark red curtains of history’s stage swayed mysteriously.

  “She came to the Roman king Tarquin and offered to sell him the Book of the Fates. The king, however, thought the price too high and would not pay it. The Sibyl flung part of the book into the fire—and asked the same price for the rest. The king hesitated but still refused. Then the Sibyl threw another part of the book into the fire, and asked the same price for what was left. The Tsa-a-ar”—Minervin savored the word, shedding his historical disguise—"the Tsa-a-ar was shaken, consulted his augurs, and bought the remnants. And there you have it!!”

  Gazing out at his public through the pince-nez attached by a long ribbon to his collar, Minervin espied some soldier or other in the front row, and explained the moral of the play to him. “It is dangerous to haggle with historical necessity; the longer you carry on, the more stubborn it becomes. Whoever refuses to read the Book of the Fates in the proper order will pay dearly for the last pages, for the denouement!!”

  Stepping down from the stage, back again in Shingarev’s study, he said, “We published that fourteen years ago. And what did our rulers think it meant? That they should give way to society and the Duma, and so avoid revolution? They’ve missed their chance year after year. Last year yet again. And even this year.”

  The telephone rang in the corridor and Shingarev hurried out.

  “Pavel Nikolaevich,” he said on his return. “Says he’s held up.”

  * * *

  SKIP, SKIP, SKIP, BUT MIND YOU DON’T TRIP.

  * * *

  *Great Mint Street. [Trans.]

  Document No. 1

  November 1916

  TO THE PETERSBURG PROLETARIAT

  Proletarians of all lands unite!

  … this criminal war, brought about by the predators of international capital … As soon as they have drai
ned the vital juices from the peoples on the other side, the governing classes will say that their task is accomplished. The war brings unprecedented profits to the ruling class, giving them enormous returns on their capital.

  The rule of the Tsarist robber gang complicates matters for Russia. The two-headed eagle hovers over the devil’s dance of rampaging predators.

  Only by declaring total WAR ON WAR … HURRAH FOR THAT WAR! THE ENEMY OF EACH PEOPLE IS IN ITS OWN COUNTRY.

  Long live the RSDRP!

  Petersburg Committee of the RSDRP

  [21]

  In prim and proper army circles you could, especially if you never picked up a newspaper, afford to disapprove of the Kadets, or even despise them. But in their lively, quick-witted company you were bound to have mixed feelings: flattered by their welcome, you were also bewildered to find them so knowledgeable and well informed. Of the two Duma leaders one was impetuously outgoing, the other self-importantly sarcastic. There were two ladies, not, like most women, husbands’ accessories, but party activists, presently engaged in collecting books, tobacco, underwear, toffees, and soap for the troops (“From Petrograd to the Defenders of the Motherland”), forever organizing something important, remarkable for their emancipated behavior, and the older lady (with the double-barreled name, Pukhnarevich something-or-other) also for her intelligence and her outspokenness. The younger of the two was rather pretty, and although nothing of importance tripped from her tongue her expression said that it was there, biding its time, waiting for an opening. The hostess was, by comparison, a simple housewife, made simpler by her large family, not like the consort of a parliamentary deputy. Another arrival was a young lecturer in economics, with black horn-rims, very guarded in utterance, very careful not to show his feelings. When he did speak, though, it was in a rich, compelling youthful bass which defied contradiction. This lecturer, rather than the two Kadet leaders, overawed Vorotyntsev: quite young, quite unknown, but so knowledgeable, so conspicuously clever. There must be so many like him in Petersburg society. An ocean of clever people. They knew so many things you didn’t know. If the Russian state took a different turn tomorrow you would look to them for answers. They would have to point the way.

  These were just the people he was interested in meeting. He had moved long enough in the company of soldiers.

  The moment they left the study, and introductions were over, the lecturer informed them, quoting his sources in full, that the population of Petrograd was now a million and a quarter more than normal. He did not fail to add (undaunted even by Minervin’s presence) that the urban population of Russia, thirty million before the war, or one-sixth of the empire, was now, as a result of mass migration, sixty million. This made the job of extracting foodstuffs from the peasants twice as hard as it used to be. They were money-grubbing profiteers, reluctant to put their grain on the market, and if this tendency wasn’t nipped in the bud, it would be the beginning of social disintegration.

  Some of the things he said were quite surprising, but the ladies present seemed to know the script, and spoke their own lines, declaring that the government, unlike the speakers, had anticipated nothing of all this. No amount of indignation sufficed for the government’s absurd actions. Society, and the Duma, had given the motherland all they could, and society was not to blame if all those sacrifices had brought no results. The reason for the whole debacle was the tradition of ordering the people’s lives without consulting the people themselves.

  From that moment on, all Vorotyntsev heard told him that each of them knew in advance what the others would say, but that it was imperative for them to meet and hear all over again what they collectively knew. They were all overpoweringly certain that they were right, yet they needed these exchanges to reinforce their certainty. Only Vorotyntsev, who was ignorant of such matters, hung back, and couldn’t get out a single word of any importance. He merely tried to follow. He nonetheless felt that he was being sucked into their shared certainty. Yes, oh yes! He was learning to see as they saw, and now he knew that he had long known some of these things beyond doubt.

  He sought Vera’s warm glances to reassure himself further. She had seemed well satisfied with the way the three men looked as they left the study, and glad that she had brought her brother along.

  So this was what life in the capital was like! No need to invite guests specially, no fixed date or time (and this was Monday!), guests assembled anyway, as if they were all there on business—and suddenly it was a soiree after all, and everybody had to be fed. Not much of a party, though, with none of the ladies wearing evening gowns, but at most the sort of newish blouse favored by ladies of the opposition (a studied carelessness in dress carried over from student days as a sort of uniform). They all wore their hair slicked down, as far as possible diverting attention from their appearance. Vera’s plain, straight brown dress was ostentatious in comparison.

  Three girls, the oldest fourteen, also drifted in for supper, and were introduced. Shingarev’s sons were not at home—the elder was in his last year in officers’ school. (It crossed Vorotyntsev’s mind that another little girl had died—Vera had warned him.)

  Fathers often feel awkward with outsiders present, but Shingarev beamed whenever he looked at his children.

  Vorotyntsev had never had a child. He knew that children were supposed to be life’s greatest joy, that you were expected to admire them and ask them questions. But it was a tie he did not need himself.

  No Pavel Nikolaevich just yet—might as well get to the table. As Vera had foretold, there was black bread, not white, fish in aspic, pickled mushrooms, boiled potatoes, and sauerkraut. But, to be fair, these people were as indifferent to what was put on their plates as to dress and the rickety furniture. They helped themselves without ceremony, but nothing seemed to find its way into their mouths. The talk was what mattered.

  “They’ll never learn!”

  “They’re hopeless!”

  “You get nothing from an autocracy just for the asking!”

  The older lady’s elbow-length sleeves looked as though they were rolled up for work, or a fight. “Putting it bluntly,” she said, “nothing worthwhile can be done until we get rid of this regime!”

  The lecturer, eyebrows like devil’s horns, elbows resting on his chest, and fingertips joined to form a triangle, said, “We can expect nothing as long as we have an autocratic system. Without a total change of government we can neither halt the Germans nor stem the wrath of the people.”

  Vorotyntsev heard all this without feeling insulted. He had heard the same old tune at home in his youth: the Decembrists had wanted what was best for the country, and only by continuing their glorious tradition could the country be saved. He found nothing reprehensible even in the undisguised wish of all present for a republic. Nobody talked or thought like that in military circles, but, from a broader view, the country could prosper under more than one form of government. Who could tell?

  The girls ate heartily, without wasting words. They really were nice children. Vorotyntsev could imagine how happy they must all be in that large, harmonious, successful family.

  Evfrosinya Maksimovna was not too busy to tell them which was the bought cabbage and which came from the school plot: the whole class had grown a splendid crop, supplied a military hospital, given all the girls some, and put some in brine for school use. Their pickled mushrooms they got from Grachevka—not just a wartime arrangement, they always had, every year. Grachevka? Yes, in the Usman rural district, his late father’s farm, left to Andrei Ivanovich as the oldest of six children. The garden and the orchard we manage to cultivate with our own hands, we’re there every year from spring to autumn, all of us except Andrei Ivanovich. The arable land and the meadows we can’t manage ourselves, and renting them out would be immoral, so we allow the neighbors to use them.

  Five children could be as much of a worry as a whole company of soldiers, to be sure.

  Then it was back to those triply incomprehensible fixed prices. Shingare
v, as it happened, was decidedly in favor of them. Vorotyntsev couldn’t reconcile two things: Shingarev was the passionate champion of the village, but what he had learned on the train now told him that Shingarev was against the village.

  There was no time to work it out and the topic slipped by without friction.

  He did, without thinking, say something to the effect that firm prices needed a firm hand. He had nothing very special in mind, it was just an obvious association of ideas.

  But his listeners were up in arms immediately.

  “Firm hands aren’t always clean hands!”

  “Firm hands usually go with thick heads!”

  Vorotyntsev was put out, and even blushed: was this a dig meant for him?

  He was making the naïve newcomer’s usual mistake—forgetting that he was more closely watched and more clearly seen by others than they were by him. Those present had of course heard a good deal about him in advance—most probably as a rebel against GHQ, who had been unfairly treated because …

  “No,” he said, answering somebody’s question, “I didn’t go to cadet school, I went to a modern high school.”

  They liked that.

  “A modern-school boy? So you weren’t meant for an army career? … Did you have any doubts about it?”

  He could, and perhaps should, have humored them but he answered honestly. “No, I never had any doubts, I knew what I wanted from my childhood on. Father hoped I’d change my mind and persuaded me to put it off and go to modern school.”