Without the revolutionary will, without the revolutionary deed, there is no hope for Russia!
No one, though, doubts that revolution will come!
Only it is frightening to think of the centuries-wide gulf that divides us from the people.
A country of great and frightening absurdities.
As Petrunkevich once said, wild and unbridled forces are coming into play, but that is a cause for rejoicing. It means that we do not live in a graveyard!
Yes, we are waiting for, hoping for this catastrophe! Thinking Russia is quite ready for revolution.
In any case, the war will not end well for Russia. The country will collapse.
And after the war, we can no longer expect … It … to happen.
In Russia it’s always either “too late” or “too soon.” Revolution? It’s always somehow too soon. Reform? Always somehow too late.
If only those soldiers would plot a little coup. Instead of just talking!
My wish, my ardent desire is that it should be an honorable revolution and carry the war on to the end! That fervent hope makes us choose revolution!
What came next was anyone’s guess. They were hushed in delicious anticipation.
The sagacious lecturer—gigantic pincers lying on the table—spoke up, weighing his words. “It’s not too late to save the situation even now. By ceding power to a responsible administration.”
Enchantment is as fragile as crystal. The younger lady suddenly looked as if she had breathed out the frenzied inspiration which had driven her in circles around the room for the last half hour. Weak at the knees, she sank into a chair.
The older lady was less ready to relax her militancy. “How long must we tolerate their cynical defiance of public opinion? People have been cabinet-making for a year or more. All a waste of time, the Tsar will never fall for it. The parliamentarians have only themselves to blame—they won’t do anything decisive!”
Obodovsky, quitting his isolated observation post with an impatient wave of the hand—for it or for the lecturer—said, “A responsible government wouldn’t know what to do first either.”
“What to do first?” The older lady was amazed. “Save the people, of course.”
She would undoubtedly have gone on to explain, but just then there was a ring at the door. And the older lady rushed to meet the messenger.
She clutched at chairs, but her width prevented her from getting any nearer to the corridor. While the younger lady, as if wafted on the breeze—whence this resurgent vigor?—fluttered past and was there first.
No, not quite first. Vera was there already. It was she who opened the door.
The eagerly awaited harbinger of the Unusual, in a cap dog-eared by the wind, and a leather jacket, was surprised himself.
“You here?”
No flush, no strain, no torment in his longish, unremarkable features hinted at the news he was bringing. They expressed nothing but surprise at seeing Vera: “You here?”
He removed his cap from his smooth, dark, neatly parted hair, raised the slender white hand held out to him …
And kissed it.
Then he was engulfed in a crowd of women.
“What’s happening? Where is it?”
“On the Vyborg side? Have they gone into the city?”
“Occupied the Nevsky?”
“Tell us everything!”
“Take your coat off, and begin at the beginning!”
There was a certain awkwardness or angularity in his movements, perhaps because they were so deliberate. He took off his coat more slowly than the occasion demanded, as though his arms were of different lengths. He wore an engineer’s jacket with what looked like crossed hammers in the lapels.
He didn’t even know whose apartment he was in, and, after reading the brass plate, was not sure whether he was in the right place. Vera quickly whispered something in his ear. He looked around for his host, but was addressed by the one other person there he knew (and knew very well).
“Come in, Misha, come in.” A shake of the hand and a lowered voice for some reason, perhaps because so many loud voices were speaking at once: “Is it serious?”
Dmitriev, wide-eyed and somber, said still more quietly, “Very.”
Very! Very serious! Though it was barely a whisper, the ladies had heard, and pushed past the others to surround him.
Obodovsky drew him into the dining room.
“Ladies and gentlemen! Engineer Dmitriev!”
Seeing how impatient they all were, he spared them the handshakes. Some sat, some stood, some propped themselves against the table.
“Come on then! Let’s hear it!”
“We’re waiting, we’re all ears!”
“But begin at the beginning!”
Dmitriev didn’t sit either. He stayed by the wall, near the door to the corridor, which seemed to be the most convenient place for addressing nine people. Even there, he stood lopsidedly, with all his weight on one foot and one shoulder higher than the other. And his head bowed.
Begin from the beginning? He seemed to have difficulty finding it.
“Hmm, well … There weren’t any strikes in the factories all summer, nor in September, nor in October … But just lately strange rumors have been going around among the workers. Such persistent rumors, somebody must be spreading them deliberately. First a building is supposed to have collapsed at some factory—where exactly they don’t say—and crushed hundreds of workers. Then at some other factory there’s supposed to have been an explosion and that’s killed hundreds as well. Which factory? you ask. I go around from one to another, on the Neva side, the Narva side, the Vyborg side, and I’ve found nothing of the kind. But they won’t believe me. Then the stories get taller: there’s a general uprising in Moscow, the police have refused to suppress it, and so have the troops. A man I know arrives from a Moscow factory and says there it’s the other way around: the rising was supposed to be in Petrograd, the Gostiny Dvor had been wrecked and looted, and the police wouldn’t intervene. There are even leaflets going around saying the same kind of thing. This last week there’s been such tension that if a piece of sheet metal falls with a crash—nothing unusual about that—they leave their benches and crowd around the exits, they think the whole place is coming down around their ears. Then there are rumors that another call-up is on the way, men previously registered will be taken, and all exemption certificates will be checked.”
Yes, yes, but what was happening on the Vyborg side?
“On the Vyborg side they’ve got the highest wage rates and the biggest range of skills. So they can be sure they won’t be fired or drafted. That makes them the cockiest of them all. Think they can get away with anything. And nobody has it in for the police like they do. If an iron plate flies out of the window at Ericsson’s it won’t land just anywhere but on some policeman’s head. The soldiers catch it from the workers. There are workers from the area in reserve units there, and soldiers go out with women workers, so they’re all connected one way or another. Say an NCO is marching soldiers to the bathhouse and they see a policeman on duty, they won’t go past him quietly, they yell at him from the ranks: ‘filthy copper,’ ‘pigface,’ everybody laughs, and the policeman has to grin and bear it, what else can he do? Since last Thursday they’ve been holding snap meetings at Ericsson’s and at Lessner’s—the old factory and the new one—the usual sort of thing, when they come off the shift they block the way and start yelling. Last Friday instead of going home after the meeting the men at the Old Lessner factory walked out singing the ‘Marseillaise’ and got as far as the Finland station before they were dispersed. At the munitions plant they were shouting, ‘Smash the merchants, they’re hiding their goods.’ That’s the easiest way to heat things up nowadays: if shopkeepers are rogues and thieves, wrecking shops is legitimate. This morning the day shift at the munitions plant, three thousand workers, came out singing the ‘Marseillaise,’ and sat down on the railroad track.”
Three thousand? Singin
g the “Marseillaise”? So there is something in it! We did well to wait for him!
To start things rolling, to set the whole mass in motion, just one such episode was needed. Like the beginning of a landslide. From the Vyborg side to Old Petersburg, from Petersburg to the whole of Russia!
Dmitriev was as excited as the rest of them. No one had noticed it till now, though he had been far from calm when he arrived. There are people like that. No sign of agitation shows on those thick lips, that tough, dull skin.
“What demands are they making?” the older lady asked.
“That’s just it—they aren’t making any,” Dmitriev said darkly.
Not making any! That struck a chill. If they refused even to talk, things were as serious as they could be.
“Then this afternoon about a thousand people put down their tools at Renault, and marched up Great Sampsonyevsky. Some of them dashed into the New Lessner works to try to bring them out. They were arrested, but the strike was on just the same, and the Lessner workers joined the march along the Prospect. It was peaceful at first …”
You wouldn’t have thought so looking at Dmitriev.
“They’re right next door, Russian Renault and the New Lessner. And right opposite Renault are the barracks of the 181st Infantry Reserve Regiment. It was about four o’clock when the New Lessner workers set off along Great Sampsonyevsky Prospect, right past the barracks, and …
SCREEN
Factory buildings, dark red brick, seen over high brick walls. The kind of uncomfortable buildings in which cultured people like us never find ourselves, having no business there.
But there they are. Towering. Stretching into the distance.
An indeterminate noise.
Down below.
= Workers pouring, streaming out of the gate. Walking down the street, the boring, bricked-in, edge-of-town street, in no sort of order, not walking like an organized demonstration, apparently still unsure themselves where they are going, or why, but carried helplessly along.
Confused voices.
Caps, more caps, caps with peaks, caps without peaks … Just occasionally, a hat.
Leather jackets with fleecy collars, autumn coats, tunics, raincoats … A mass of black and gray …
Faces shaven, clean-shaven, young and old, very few beards, a few mustaches (foppish ones). Differences of age and character evened out by this almost unrelieved clean-shavenness and uniformity of dress.
They are borne along by their shared anxiety. Borne along easily, but with never a cheerful face among them.
= A little farther along the street, a police patrol: perhaps a dozen constables on foot.
Seen closer.
They have black fur hats, black astrakhan collars, tightly belted greatcoats, swords, revolvers, they are more than adequately equipped, well-turned-out, strapping fellows.
Now the local police inspector, wearing a gray officer’s overcoat with a narrow belt.
Still closer.
They all wear something orange-colored, the braid on the shoulders of the policemen, the tabs on their lapels, the piping of the officer’s epaulets.
What, though, is different about the faces of the police? Because they are quite different. More mustaches? More ugly mugs—where did they find them all? No—mainly, there’s no trace of feeling. Stony-faced discipline.
The inspector, silver-braided, gives a wave of the hand …
We see them in a long shot.
= gives the order
We do not hear it.
A whole bunch of them! Marching now, in formation, march, march, marching, in our direction.
They can! The law! That’s what they are! Defy them, and see what happens.
Nearby: voices, workers calling to each other, urging each other to line up, not to lose heart, to remember whatever it was they had promised each other.
A squad advancing on us in formation! Only ten men, but they mean business!
Timid voices: if you can’t walk over it, you have to turn around.
= Front of the crowd. Jam-packed. Mostly youngsters. But no movement forward. The crowd begins to give ground.
But then from someone invisible, a single audacious voice sings out:
“Like ravening dogs the rich and greedy
Rend and devour the fruit of your toil.”
Nobody joins in but it has its effect: resentment is fiercer, faces grimmer. But the mouths on the screen remain closed.
Two or three voices, whose we cannot see, do join in:
“The sweat of your brow fattens gluttons.
They snatch the last crust from your mouth.”
Well, not the last crust—no one quite so emaciated meets our eyes. Some of those present have the dignified bearing of men whose skills are valued. When they unbutton, some are wearing suit jackets, or even white shirts. But the words of the song are true! That’s how we feel! They steal our last crust, and only in our songs can we make ourselves heard. Sing out, brothers, sing out!
= The police squad draws nearer. They march as if crushing us underfoot.
The inspector, quick to notice, spots something in our midst and yells: “Soldiers! Get out of the crowd! Stand aside!” A few soldiers, convalescents, have, it seems, got wedged into the crowd. Got the bit between their teeth!
One, with one ear bandaged and one arm in a sling, wears a George medal.
Just doing your duty? Tell us about it! Who’s shed their blood?
The inspector’s voice. Close up. Harsh.
“Soldiers! I’m warning you for the last time!”
The one with the bandages over his ear, an undisciplined lad, answers with his whole mouth, and his whole face.
We can’t hear,
but he must have given a robust answer—there’s laughter in the ranks! They’re laughing! They’ve found their courage! Now we can see the song leader. Lanky, skinny, no cap (dropped it?), hair ruffled. His face is distorted by the strain of singing for all of them, his mouth wrenched into a strange shape, his Adam’s apple jumps.
“Starve, while they feed their fat faces,
Starve, while they gamble on ’Change …”
His efforts are not in vain! It begins to catch on! A song sets hearts aflame as no amount of exhortation can! Now a dozen throats chorus in support, bawling out words that express their deepest feelings.
“Starve, while they stuff their fat bellies
And put up their honor for sale …”
= Now the police! We see their swords! Unsheathed!
They advance!
With drawn swords? Perhaps they’ll use only the flat of the blade, to turn the crowd and disperse it. Ah, but the policemen’s faces tell us that if they have to draw blood they will not turn a hair.
The inspector calls out, as if on the battlefield:
“Soldiers! Mutineers will be put under arrest!”
= The crowd falters, begins to give way. They are frightened. They press closer together, rub shoulders, embolden each other with their numbers, and with their voices, humming the “Marseillaise,” they don’t know the words, only the song leader does, belting it out fit to burst—in desperation—why are you retreating, boys? remember what you promised …
“The Tsar is a vampire, the Tsar’s a tormentor.
A vampire drinking the people’s blood.”
The soldier with the George medal looks black, his wounded arm has been crushed, but he won’t move! They’ve picked on the wrong man!
= But the swords! Raised swords advancing on them! Frightening!
= The crowd falls back, the game is lost.
They retreat obliquely, press against a low board fence, about three feet high.
With all his remaining strength, as though it was the last song of his life, the song leader sings on:
“He needs banquets, he needs palaces.
He needs you to pay with your blood.”
= The police. Eyeball to eyeball now.
Full screen.
Those in fro
nt wonder: Flat of the blade? Or cutting edge? With these devils you never know. One step toward us! One more step toward us!
The hostile faces. Laugh at us, would you? Don’t think we won’t let you have it!
Wider screen.
= We’re backing off, only fools defy swords. If they use those things we’ll run.
A thousand of us from a dozen of them. It’s worse for those in front, safe enough in the rear.
The voices have all sunk and died.
One step! Two steps! They are pushing the workers away from the fence, clearing a space along the fence. The police press forward with raised swords.
One last cry from the desperate song leader.
“Kill them, the dogs, the rich robbers …
Kill the vile vampire, the Tsar.”
And again, yet again, there is a brief outburst of muffled voices, like damp wood bursting into flame.
“Kill them, the dogs, the rich robbers!”
And they’ve stopped moving! We must not run.
If we run, we can’t call ourselves human beings.
Demands? We have no demands. The day of reckoning has come, that’s all!
And we raise our voices merrily in songs of desperation. Hell, we’ve nothing to lose.
“Smite the villains, let hell have them,
That the day of a better life may dawn.”
At the fence, wedged together now in tight confrontation, the front rank of the police and the front of the crowd. Swords raised, is it? Right—fists forward. Eyes popping, we sing our own savage song.
“Smite the villains, let hell have them”
= Where will it get you—defying armed policemen?
= And where will it get you—defying the whole people?
= The police have no song. The police need no song. What they have is the word of command. The head villain, the inspector, orders, “Flat of the blade!” And they lay on! They—lay—on! You, you, and you—here’s one on the head! That’s strength for you! Let that jug-eared soldier have it! That’s the way! Tight-packed, wedged together, staggering backward, that’s as far as we can go. What now? The police move along the fence. Means a lot to them, that fence. Determined to clear it for some reason—just the fence.
November 1916 Page 57