Kisnemsky had proposed prismatic bars with grooves in quadratic section, stubbornly insisting that the quantity of gas formed at the moment of ejection would be ten times greater. But it didn’t work out! Enough experiments had been carried out on the range to show beyond a doubt that this was not the answer. The grains disintegrated too soon and burned out degressively. Kisnemsky, however, would not admit defeat and leave the field to other competitors. He now needed permission from the War Ministry to transfer the experiments interrupted in Petersburg to the Tambov powder factory, and was asking the War Industry Committee to support his application.
What Obodovsky had to do was weigh the chances of success against the risk of misusing the plant. And to decide how best to explain it to the ministry.
The desk lamp was less and less necessary. The late dawn of autumn in Petersburg had by now revealed the cobbled courtyard outside in all its dreariness, and an anemic gray light was seeping into the room.
Kisnemsky was followed by an engineer from the Commission for the Manufacture of Asphyxiating Gases, also seeking support. Eighteen months earlier it would have been impossible to mention such a thing, and still more absurd to imagine oneself having a hand in the production of poison gas for love of one’s country. The chemists had been insistent, but the Grand Duke would not give his consent: un-Russian, he said. But after the German gas attacks at Ypres, resistance collapsed: if the enemy is unfastidious in his methods we will have to make the stuff too! So the relevant commission had been in existence for over a year, two hundred factories were working on it, with senior scientists on their staff, while people in offices and laboratories calmly discussed the effectiveness of particular toxic substances. And suddenly Obodovsky was one of them, heedless of the bone-shaking bump in the road along which logic had taken him.
It was getting on for noon, and by now the feeble light of a dim, drizzly day pervaded the room. At twelve Obodovsky was expecting Dmitriev, who had rung him at home the night before asking to see him on an urgent matter. Meanwhile a railway engineer from the Amur had insinuated himself among the artillery experts to discuss the requirements of a newly opened two-verst concrete bridge, the longest in Russia. After him two bothersome inventors, Podolsky and Yampolsky, no longer allowed over the threshold of the Artillery Committee, and turned down by the Chief Artillery Administration, slipped in and occupied the two vacant chairs. Obodovsky would have turned them away, but they said they needed only three minutes, they weren’t asking for an interview, they only wanted Pyotr Akimovich to put their request to Aleksandr Ivanovich … who would surely not refuse to take an interest in a grandiose project which promised Russia speedy and complete victory.
Well aware that long-range artillery was the current problem, this duo had abandoned their previously rejected projects and were now proposing to propel shells not by explosives but by electromagnetic power: build a gun fifty yards long operating on the magnetomotive principle and a range of three hundred versts was attainable! The Russian army need advance only a short distance and it could bombard Berlin! And think of all the other advantages—no noise, no smoke, no flash! Casting would be no problem—there was no need for a thick tube. And the weapon would be practically immortal, it need never wear out!
Obodovsky was drawn into the discussion in spite of himself. But although his own expertise was in geology he had a clear enough view of what was involved.
“Tell me, gentlemen,” he said with an inquisitorial frown, “won’t you need a current of a million amperes? What sort of storage battery will you use? What would the capacity of your power station have to be?”
Although it was pretty obviously fanatical or fraudulent poppycock, they stormed the desk from both ends—how could a miner take it upon himself to reject what was possibly the greatest weapon of the twentieth century?
“Well, gentlemen, couldn’t you redesign your model for a range of just fifteen versts, with a barrel one-twentieth as long?”
Podolsky and Yampolsky exchanged glances. They could manage that too, but would still like the present project to be passed on to Guchkov.
Dmitriev came in at this point, with spots of rain on his jacket, and stood listening. The discreetly satirical smile under his big nose finally reassured Obodovsky that he would not be suppressing a major invention by withholding his support.
But it took him a long time to shake them off and rescue a chair for Dmitriev.
Also on the day’s agenda was a briefing on a project for modifying other field guns to function as howitzers, using the new idea of a universal detonator with alternating deceleration. But Dmitriev had come to discuss the trench mortar. Not the technicalities: experimental models had been made and tested in battle but they would need a lot of support before they could start mass production. They had meant to discuss it the previous Monday at Shingarev’s, but had not gotten around to it. It was only the manufacturing process, not the concept itself, that needed discussion, but Dmitriev’s large, stolid face looked weary and sad. He lowered himself onto a chair, with both legs to one side of it.
“Akimovich. The men at the Obukhov factory have refused to do overtime. Some of them had promised me they would come in on Sunday, but now they won’t.”
It didn’t take much thinking about. After all the excited and highly technical talk that morning here was something succinct and simple. Plan and draw and fantasize all you like—it’s all just stardust until it is materialized in the form of metal by means of the workshop, the workbench, and workers’ hands.
The way he was sitting—was Dmitriev just taking a rest? He probably hadn’t done much sitting down since late summer when he got back from the trials of his trench mortar on the Northern Front. It certainly wouldn’t do him any harm to sit a while.
His gloomy passivity had communicated itself to Obodovsky. His nervous, sinuous lips were set in a doleful grimace under his faint brushstroke of a mustache.
“What’s happened?”
“Nothing’s happened. It’s only that the agitators got around to them, and said, ‘How is it that half Petrograd was on strike last Tuesday and Wednesday but not the Obukhov factory?’ Said, ‘How dared you refuse to support them?’ ”
That unlucky mortar! The need for it had been realized as long ago as the war with Japan. The Putilov model for a rapid-firing assault gun had been put up for approval in 1910. It was considered, it was approved, but it was not put into production. So they’d spent the ten years after the Japanese war thinking about it and gone into this war without trench artillery. Then, when the initial maneuvering abruptly ended and they settled down in the trenches, there was an outcry: we must have it! hurry up with it! and make it lighter! The three-inch mountain gun that took four horses to pull it was no good. Last year a project for a one-and-a-half-inch trench gun had started making its leisurely way around the departments, but there were so many Petersburg generals and others in high places whose consent had to be obtained—and no shells were dropping on them, no machine guns harassing them. The whole year was spent on design and experimental models and now that they were ready to put it into production the workers …
“And without overtime?”
“The machines would be idle all evening and all night, and the foundry wouldn’t be casting. Anyway, worse things are rumored—they’re thinking of a general strike any day now.”
Obodovsky’s brows, never at rest for long, shot up.
“General strike? What for?”
“No special reason. They’re just thinking about it.”
“Some anniversary or other?”
The passion of the Social Democrats for anniversaries and red-letter days was as full-blooded as that of the royal family. There was a revolutionary calendar showing strike days of obligation: 22 January, 17 April (anniversary of the shootings in the Lena goldfields), 1 May, obviously, but also 17 November, the day on which their group in the Duma was arrested, also the day in February on which they were tried, also … also … also … They tor
e page after page out of the calendar, heedless of the effect on Russian industry. And each of these dates emerging so suddenly from nowhere meant an obligation to strike which only traitors to the working class could evade.
“Or is there smallpox in Turkestan?”
There had been an epidemic in Baku, in which a dozen workers had died—and for some crazy reason all Petrograd had to strike immediately.
Dmitriev sat in silence and gave no help with this guesswork.
“At the Metal Factory not long ago some pipsqueak of an agitator was fired and the whole place was on strike for two days. The management reasoned with them, told them they were halting work on four minelayers in for repairs. That every day on strike meant a fall of fifteen thousand in the production of shells. That every shell not fired for that reason might cost the lives of two Russian infantrymen. Thirty thousand of your brothers on active service! What do you say to that? We say to hell with it, give us back our agitator.”
Obodovsky’s nervous fingers drummed on the desk.
“Can you imagine such a strike in England or France right now, in wartime? It’s unthinkable. If any clear-cut demands are put forward they can be examined, and some sort of agreement reached. Obviously people only begin to understand the meaning of freedom at a certain level of political awareness. Below that critical level—there are only irrational dark forces … a bear rolling a log.
“Free England has militarized industry, and nobody is outraged by it. But here we get ‘betrayal of the workers’ interests,’ ‘tyrannical repression of the individual’ … If we can mobilize an army, why not war industry? A soldier obeys orders knowing it may cost him his life, and doesn’t shout about abuse of power. Why, then, should a worker in a factory of military significance have the right to discharge himself, to absent himself without leave, to strike? How can we fight with one hand tied behind our backs? If you judged by the Petersburg factories you’d think we hadn’t begun the war yet. And Petersburg factories produce half of our arms and ammunition.”
But you and I don’t need to keep telling each other these things.
This is a strange fate for a civilian who’s hated army types and army ways all his life!
The swarms of bureaucrats who get up in the morning to spend the whole day at their troughs don’t let such things worry them. And the Kadets and Social Democrats demand liberation from feudalism! As for Guchkov’s committees—they’re in no big hurry for militarization either.
The Guchkov committees had emerged as a new and fresh coordinating mechanism, side by side with the slow and rusty bureaucratic machine, and seemed capable of getting things moving and producing results where the old system had failed. Obodovsky had immediately expected to find in the Guchkov committees those altruistic social forces which would rally round from all sides to close every breach and save the day. And he had been wrong. Over the past eighteen months the War Industry Committees had become just another clumsy, self-sufficient system, burdened with an inflated staff. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they really had been altruistic. But everyone on the staff of the committees was desperate to increase his salary, every subcontractor wanted a higher commission, every factory wanted a higher return, so that the help which the Guchkov committees gave to the country was becoming an expensive luxury: their three-inch cannon cost 12,000 rubles, that produced by the government 7,000, and for a Maxim machine gun, for which the government enterprises charged 1,370 rubles, Tereshchenko was asking 2,700, and expecting the government to supply barrels. In fact, everything that the committees produced was twice or three times as expensive as its equivalent from a state enterprise, and Guchkov’s activists felt not the least bit ashamed but, on the contrary, considered themselves the benefactors and saviors of their country because they delivered the goods quickly (although not all that quickly). Even Rodzyanko, who supplied birch-wood gunstocks for rifles, was given an extra ruble per rifle by the War Ministry, “to keep him sweet”—and Rodzyanko accepted it without demur!
Where Obodovsky had expected a close-knit group of selfless patriots he was distressed to find a nexus of selfish interests and ulterior motives. So it was not only people of practical ability who were lacking in Russia but disinterested people too? There were none in the state machine, but there were none among the educated public either, so where were they? Was anyone working all out for his native land with no thought for himself? By a bitter irony, that was the lot of this former revolutionary and outcast. And he saw very few others of his kind around him.
More important, the Guchkov committees were preoccupied not with supplying arms but with reinforcing their own position in society and attacking the regime. This ulterior purpose of theirs did not escape Obodovsky—it was visible even in Guchkov himself. From time to time an unnecessary conference or congress of representatives of the War Industry Committees would be held, at which the main subject for discussion was not technical or organizational but political: the regime did not measure up to the tasks before the country, the government was inspired by dark forces and was leading the country to destruction, the cabinet ought to be composed of persons in whom the country had confidence.
Obodovsky did not need persuading that Russia needed more freedom and an injection of new strength from society at large into the administrative system! But it sickened him to see people digging in and engaging in political struggle while the country was at war. It was dishonorable! And dangerous to Russia.
True, the regime had shown itself to be totally unprepared for the tempo and pressure of events in the war. No other European country had been fully prepared either, but their way of life was more dynamic, and their rulers were not in a complacent trance. Russia was too slow turning herself around. So everybody had to show as much speed as he could. And the more self-seeking Russia’s ostensible helpers proved to be, the more desperately the real ones must exert themselves.
Dmitriev’s powerful chest heaved a sigh, and he turned his big head to look at Obodovsky.
“I’ve got one senior fitter working on the trench gun, Malozemov, who says on the quiet, ‘Do whatever you can to stop the strike, Mikhail Dmitrievich. None of us old-timers, none of us skilled men want it. We’ll work till we drop, we’ll do anything you like, only save us from the hooligans. We don’t dare go against them ourselves.’ And that’s just it—we’ve got good-for-nothings and common laborers giving the skilled men their orders.”
That was how strikes always came about in Russia, beginning with the first, famous one at the Obukhov factory. The workers are walking along to the factory with nothing unusual on their minds. But toughs with caps pulled down over their eyes are standing there at the crossroads, some of them strays from other factories, and they stop each one: hold on, comrade, there’s going to be a strike. And anybody who won’t stop is hit over the head with sticks or stones. Those already on the shop floor are ordered out. Anybody who doesn’t come out is pelted with nuts and bolts. By now they’ve taught the men to move without waiting for that—they just block the doors and shout, “Attention, comrades, we are going on strike.”
“Remember that skilled worker at Nikolaev last winter—Voronovoy? He said no to the strike so they did him in—with a revolver. No attempt was made to find the murderer: he’d killed a nobody, not a Grand Duke. Whole factories are lost that way. And cities.”
He drummed loudly on the desk.
“No, we can’t let this go on! We’re just getting cowardly. If we’re against abuse of power at all times and in every form, if we’ve never in our lives given in to the autocratic variety, why give in to any other bully? What was the point of it all if we’re just going to change one oppressor for another? It’s disgraceful to be afraid of the autocratic regime, but is fear of stone-throwing hooligans any less so? The working class? I’ll tell them what I tell you.”
When Lysva was in an uproar, and the workers had killed the manager, he had calmed them down. Resistance only made Obodovsky more stubborn. It was the story of his life. He
wanted to spring from his chair, sling his topcoat over his shoulders and a scarf around his neck, cram his cap on any which way, and rush for the tram, get down to the factory.
He was pulled up by a sudden thought.
“Isn’t it just the same in Western Europe? Only they don’t throw stones and hide their faces. They set up picket lines instead. Industry is militarized now, of course, but they used to organize strike pickets: we’re on strike, so you people next door mustn’t breathe without permission. What’s that if not abuse of power? Strike if you want to, I say, that’s your right as an individual, but I have a right not to strike, so don’t touch me. No, I don’t call that civilized. Why bring all that to Russia?”
His anxious brows twitched incessantly. Cooling down a little, he said, “Maybe the very concept of freedom is flawed? We somehow haven’t thought about it enough.”
When did we engineers part company with the workers? In 1905 we supported them with petitions, and resigned to show solidarity. We used to go down the pit in the same cage. Then a rift opened up and the engineers were left standing on the owners’ side, not with the workers. Nowadays it’s difficult to cross the divide, there’s no mutual trust, we’re the gentry. And any engineer who tries reasoning with workers like a human being, like an older brother, is attempting that somersault in which so many gentlefolk broke their necks in the last century.
November 1916 Page 63