No need for lengthy expositions. A name was enough. The pulverizing of the Guards in September at Svinyukhi-Korytnitsa (“Pigs’ Trough”—the name of the place told you just what the operation was worth). Or the absurd March offensive near Lakes Naroch and Drisvyaty, which never had the slightest chance of success. In their hurry to get it over with before the thaw they advanced heedless of casualties, roads became impassable, there was water knee high in the trenches, the artillery and supply trains were immobilized.
And all that just to save the Allies at Verdun. And even the battle at Verdun was started by the Germans, the Allies would never have brought themselves to do it. Vorotyntsev saw everything in the same color, that of despair.
But Svechin, looking at it all from GHQ, could afford to be fairer.
“Verdun was a massacre. The French also lost a hundred thousand men there.”
Vorotyntsev wasn’t so easily won over.
“Well, their fame will resound throughout the world, they’ll go down in history. But how many men did Evert lose? Must have been …”
“Seventy thousand.”
“You see! And never a peep. That’s how we die.”
Svechin knows a lot. It’ll take time to drag it all out of him.
And the arms they send us! All their rejects. They don’t refuse our crackly new leather harness or our hardwood caissons. But we need three hundred locomotives—and they won’t provide them. Their standard excuse is: “The needs of the Western Front are enormous, and we cannot deprive it of anything.”
But that’s nothing! Think of the men! … Shortly after Samsonov’s disaster the Allies had the barefaced cheek to ask us to send four army corps to France via Archangel. Then their crack Senegalese troops had heavy losses and from March this year onward they have been shamelessly demanding four hundred thousand of our soldiers, at the rate of forty thousand a month, to fight on their front.
Vorotyntsev did not exactly hiss his next words, but spoke like a locomotive letting off steam. “Tha-a-at’s why they came here, Viviani and Thomas, why their handsome mugs were in all the picture papers. And they did get their Russian Expeditionary Corps! Anything crazier it was impossible to imagine: Russian peasants stuck in somebody else’s trenches, at the back of beyond, as if they were colonial troops from Senegal.
“I would never, never have given them that corps!” Vorotyntsev said, seething. “No, they’ll fight to the last drop of blood, as long as it’s Russian blood. No, the Emperor is incapable of firmness, quite incapable.”
His eyes searched Svechin’s face, for his opinion of the Emperor. He ought not to have changed.
“What could we do?” Svechin countered, with his usual calm pessimism. His head was shaven bare, his face clean-shaven except for the small, close-clipped black mustache under his big nose. “Alekseev haggled with the Emperor and with the French, but in the end we had to let them have six brigades, each ten thousand strong. The Allies argue with iron logic that as long as a shortage of arms prevents the Russians from using all their forces, it’s not for them to let us have additional arms, but for us to assign our surplus personnel to their front.” He gave a short laugh. “As a fashionable poet puts in his public readings: ‘With Russian dead the foe must pave the way, or ne’er set foot in Paris.’ ”
Looking past Svechin’s shoulder, Vorotyntsev’s eyes fell upon the couple sitting three tables away. And for some reason the “fashionable poet” merged with the ringleted decadent sitting with his back to the officers. Likonya was sitting half turned toward him and could be conveniently studied.
Vorotyntsev had long ago dismissed them from his thoughts—his conversation with Svechin was vitally important, he wanted only to plunge more and more deeply into it—and yet some residual awareness of them lingered in his eye and in his mind. What could they be talking about? What kind of lives did they lead? And why should he concern himself with this girl, whom he would never see again? Some piquant essence emanated from her, it was impossible not to feel her presence. Women, it appeared, were not all feminine in the same way. This girl seemed to Vorotyntsev like a concentrate of all that he had drunk in such deep drafts those last few days. But from the way in which she had jumped from the cab into the young man’s arms, her display of affectionate abandon at the cloakroom counter, the most disinterested observer could only regretfully conclude that this Likonya, with the slow, watchful eyes and the double cascade of hair …
“They’re quite frank about it: give us your soldiers and then we’ll give you arms. They are mildly excited by our feats but they demand payment like usurers: for all the arms we order we pay on the dot, we deposit gold in a London bank, we get nothing on credit. And now that our hard cash has run out we can’t order arms, we’re having to cut down.”
Svechin wrinkled his big rugged nose as if at a bad smell.
Not even on credit? Well, there’d been enough warning signs, you’d learned to expect the worst—yet there were still things you would never anticipate. They demand forty thousand Russian bodies a month, and still want payment on the nail, and in gold, for every scrap of iron. No, Western business methods are something we will never understand! How long will we let ourselves be fleeced?
“Damned hucksters! They don’t see us as comrades in misfortune, but as a handy cudgel. France has simply bought us. How could we, rich as we are, fall for it? How can we make war on such unequal terms?”
And all the time he was asking these questions he saw in his mind’s eye the same imperial face—looking at once embarrassed and apathetic. He, of course, knew all this. Why, then, did He give way so easily? Why had He put his head in this noose? Why did He not tell His allies straight … either you … or else we’ll get out of the war?
“We’re all alone, really,” Vorotyntsev said, pouring out the bitterness that had fermented in him for so long. “What good have the English or French ever done us? Why, when you think of it, are they our allies? How lightly we forgave them for the Crimean war! And what about the war with Japan?”
England had, after all, been Japan’s ally, had made that country a gift of two battleships with British crews, sold her thirty or so auxiliary craft, supplied the Japanese fleet with coal—Togo fought all his battles on their coal. And France had an entente cordiale with Japan, while, needless to say, keeping up her alliance with us against Germany. What were we to make of that? What were we thinking of? Even now the Allies are at it all the time, seeing who can bellyache the loudest about “us democrats having to put up with foul reactionary Russia as an ally.” Last year Lloyd George publicly gloated over our retreats and losses.
“And this is the second war in which their friends the Americans have been undisguisedly hostile to us. Why, and to what purpose, are we their allies?”
They had resumed what used to be their customary roles: Vorotyntsev hotly denouncing, Svechin sometimes reminding him with grim sarcasm of the hopeless facts, but as a rule saying nothing and smoothly pursuing his career.
Vorotyntsev hadn’t finished yet.
“And what about the Balkans? Was it worth our taking Plevna or freezing on Mount Shipka for the Bulgarians? The whole idea of making ourselves the leaders of Slavdom is a false one—Constantinople or no Constantinople! It was for the sake of Slavdom that we clashed with the Germans. They were moving into the Balkans, and looking toward Mesopotamia—but why should we care? Let England worry. And all we’ve done for the Serbs—where has that got us? We’ve been fighting over two years for Serbia and Montenegro—and what’s the result? They’re wiped off the face of the earth. And we ourselves are getting shaky. Millions under the ground, two million POWs, if not more, fortresses destroyed, whole provinces surrendered—all for our allies! How is it that England could take a whole year transferring troops to the Continent—and we’re supposed to get ours into position in a couple of weeks? After Samsonov, couldn’t we have stopped pressing on Germany—contrary to our own military doctrine—and putting our standing army through the meat grin
der? And it’s the French who saddled us with the Romanians as allies!”
Svechin neither agreed nor disagreed but laughed cynically between two puffs of smoke. “Yes, and we get blamed because our armies aren’t making a big enough effort in Romania. And our setbacks in that country are put down to Russian treachery.”
“Is that what they say? Well, there you are! And all because of the Constantinople mirage!” Vorotyntsev snapped. “As if our dear allies would ever cede the Straits to us poor fools! What are we using for brains? Such stupid greed! Almost everybody is infatuated with Constantinople—damn the place, I say! Even Dostoevsky had his eye on it. All the way from the extreme right to the Kadets, Shingarev included—without Constantinople they don’t think life is worth living.”
“Well, what about our Golovin?” Svechin said with a laugh. “Remember? ‘Russia’s like a house boarded up so that there’s no way in except through the chimney.’ ”
“They’ve forgotten where the doors and windows are! Our own windows are blocked by heaps of junk! I’ve spent a little time in Kadet circles while I’ve been here. You can’t let out a peep against England, they’re up in arms immediately. When we were with Golovin eight years back we kept saying expand the defense industry so that we won’t be dependent on anybody. But the mothballed elders and the Duma alike begrudged the gold. The same gold they’ve now shipped abroad—all of it.”
The prices on the menu were incredibly high. But there was a wide choice. Vorotyntsev couldn’t very well afford it … Still, what were they going to drink? A general’s stars had to be christened, surely? They must be able to rustle up some vodka here—on the q.t. no doubt.
Just as religious discipline is always rigorously enforced on the common people, whereas polite society is permitted certain indulgences, so here there were bound to be exceptions.
Svechin, much as he might agree, merely gave his little laugh. Svechin knew where to draw the line. He was a critic of a special sort, you had to get used to him. He could have told Vorotyntsev even more distressing things about the Allies, but he was not one for jumping stone walls. Grumble all you like, but do your job in your own little patch.
“Did you know, by the way, that Alekseev recommended making peace with Turkey and doing away with that front altogether?”
“You amaze me! You mean even he’s clever enough for that? So what came of it?”
“Nothing at all. What would you expect of us? … But is it your idea that we should have allied ourselves with the Germans?”
“One retired corps commander said the moment war was declared, ‘That’s it, then, two empires are doomed, the Russian and the German.’ I didn’t attach enough importance to it at the time. I’m not saying we should have allied ourselves with them, but we could have confined ourselves to friendly neutrality. They suggested it more than once, in 1907 for instance.”
“But we had to break loose from Germany’s stranglehold.”
“We could have done that without necessarily going to war. Rapprochement with the Central Powers was something you dared not even mention out loud! The Kadets made it difficult for us to arm ourselves, but at the same time didn’t want reconciliation with Germany! Of course, once we had a treaty with France we had to come to her rescue. But we should have realized earlier that we didn’t need that treaty or that alliance or any additional territory. What we needed was simply to get on with developing our country. Stolypin understood that, and was doing it.”
A great hulk like Svechin was not so easily shifted.
“Yes, but Germany also intrigued against us during the Japanese war. The purpose of their alliance with us was to strangle us with a trade agreement, so that they could get our grain for nothing. And while we’re remembering the past, who was it who denied us the Straits at the Congress of Berlin? Why did Skobelev say that the road to Constantinople runs through Berlin? The Germans have always looked on Russia as manure for their own crops.”
True enough. Whenever you looked back you saw nothing but humiliation. So much for Russian policy.
“In any case, there were ways of dodging this war. And we should have done so.”
“No. Once Germany had made up her mind to go to war with us we couldn’t have dodged it without humiliation. They’d have forced us into it, and it would have been one disgrace after another. If we were to remain on an equal footing with Germany, an alliance with France was essential. Which is why Aleksandr III accepted it. If he hadn’t we would have been facing the enemy alone.”
“And what of it? Is Russia’s back weaker than Germany’s? No, it is not! Yet another Fatherland War? Our people would have stood together, united, to the last man, not like now. Put yourself in Germany’s place—isn’t she alone? What allies has she really got? None. But they’re standing up to the whole world. If they can stand alone couldn’t a gigantic country like ours have held out? Why should we care about what is really a commercial conflict between England and Germany? It’s no concern of ours. Why are we bogged down in it? If Russia gets involved abroad, it’s only because she doesn’t know where her strength lies. If we knew what was good for us we’d never go barging in on their childish games. Why do we feel bound to get into every dustup? Our policies are thought up by idiots. Or rather not thought about at all. The firmer our footing within our own boundaries, the stronger we are. Yes, you’re right, the Turkish war was meant as a lesson to us: we fought and died while others remained neutral, never lifted a finger, and managed things to suit themselves. Yet all we had to do was not to get mixed up in that war, say, ‘Keep on fighting, it’s got nothing to do with us,’ stand by peacefully for a couple of years—and there would have been no power to compare with ours.”
“Come on, Yegori, what can’t be cured must be endured. Right or wrong, you can’t remake history. Why get so hot under the collar?”
“Because we can deduce from all that what we should be doing next,” Vorotyntsev said stubbornly.
“And that is?” asked Svechin, preparing to laugh.
“We-ell … we must change our views on the conduct of this war. Stop banging our heads against a wall regardless of lives lost.”
“Too bad they didn’t appoint you instead of Alekseev! But how would you go about it?”
“Me?” His answer was ready, there was no hesitation. “At the very least I would have slept through 1916 and not stuck my neck out at all.”
At that moment the noise from the banqueters grew louder. An announcement was made, and all of them—racketeers still at large, pharmacists who had gotten rich selling opium and cocaine—clapped their beautifully manicured hands. Someone bowed. (What was it all about? A wedding? No. An anniversary, then? A profitable deal?) The curtain was twitched aside, and behind it …
Behind it hung a wheel. Two staff members quickly lit the wheel at various points and hastily jumped out of the way.
The wheel started revolving, self-propelled, spraying a shower of sparks while the flame spread to envelope the whole disk. There were three colors—silver at the center, blue over most of the circle, red around the rim. Like the national flag, but revolving. A revolving, a spinning flag.
Oh, what fun! What a marvelous idea! The racketeers laughed, cheered, applauded. But there was something the pyrotechnicians had not allowed for. The silver color faded, the blue faded, both were exhausted, and still the surrounding red was not the least bit dimmer. The blazing rim went on spinning by itself.
Red.
Crimson.
Blood red.
Fiery.
Spinning and spinning, scattering sparks.
It reminded him of something not quite the same, but …
Of course! The burning mill at Usdau!
[39]
Their vodka was served in a mineral water bottle. The devil is ingenious. How was it done? Obviously Cubat’s had bribed the police to turn a blind eye.
If these uniformed guests ordered salty snacks with their mineral water it was obviously an eccentric whim of th
eirs.
At one table “white tea” was served in an obese teapot. Yes, they were managing all right.
All right, shall we start?
A shot at a time. They were out of practice, and the drink warmed and cheered them immediately.
In that hour with Svechin, Vorotyntsev’s complacent triumphalism had deserted him. The reverberations of the gong had died away. His body had reverted to its normal state and his dreamy mind was clearing.
The war had to be fought differently. Instead of hoping that it would be over by next summer—change its whole character.
Svechin agreed. Yes, we must change our methods of making war. Bogged down in the trenches the way we were, it wasn’t easy to break out, we could be stuck there for ten years. There was, however, one idea which nobody at GHQ would listen to: instead of trying to push forward all along each front, deploy well-trained and superbly equipped shock troops, all on horseback or on wheels. Open up a breach, however narrow, in the front, if only for a few hours, and throw in one of these groups in a raid deep behind the lines. Jerry wouldn’t stand up to this sort of warfare, it would be better than the partisan warfare in the Fatherland War. And he couldn’t use the same tactics in reply, because our raids into territory inhabited by our own people would find support, whereas he wouldn’t.
No. They had gone over the ground where there was no disagreement, but now their views diverged sharply because their experience in the past two years had been so different.
“It’s not a question of method, Andreich. Certainly not of tactical method. I’m trying to tell you that we must change the whole character of the war.”
The view from GHQ was not the same as that from a regimental dugout. Those who held staff jobs too long ceased to feel for those who died in battle. They could tally up all those zeros at the end of the number. But …
“Think back and try to realize how many of our people we have slaughtered already. Among the officers, all the best, and all the middling good ones, have been killed already, don’t forget. How many regiments are there like the 1st Siberian, with not a single officer left? Instead of regular officers you’ve got ensigns “with ideas.” We destroyed the majority of our NCOs in 1914. More Russians have been killed than at any other time in our history, in all the wars you care to mention. And it is precisely and almost exclusively Russian blood. We don’t draft the Caucasians—fair enough. The Central Asians were unwilling to serve even behind the lines, and we accepted that—fair enough.”
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