November 1916

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  The restless Guchkov had always been ahead of the Kadets in his development (one horse ahead on the carousel?) and in more of a hurry than they were to break with the accursed defeatist regime. But in 1916 he was quicker than the Kadets to take fright at what he had previously urged.

  Our methods of struggle are double-edged, and given the high feeling of the people at large and especially the workers, they could be the spark to start a conflagration the dimensions of which no one can foresee or localize.

  When the regime is utterly impervious to persuasion, and society’s conflict with it threatens to ignite and blow up Russia as a whole—what then? What else is there left except a conspiracy, well hidden and confined to a small group, actively working for a palace revolution?

  By the autumn of 1916 Guchkov’s plans and aspirations were more and more sharply focused on one thing only—a palace revolution.

  [42]

  Neglect an opportunity like today’s and your conspiracy would never take shape. But it was no good just talking in hints. Svechin’s irascibility was, to be sure, a reason for caution. But he was too decent a man to blab—no doubt about that. And Vorotyntsev’s ready responsiveness made up for Svechin’s recalcitrance. Vorotyntsev was one of those gratifying listeners who draw you out, make talking enjoyable as you gaze into their eyes.

  “A month ago a sort of unofficial conference of various … thinkers … took place here. Kadets, most of them. In a private apartment, which is where public life in general is carried on nowadays. I was one of those present. Just listening, most of the time. I sampled all imaginable points of view. Let’s sample what they say again, you and me.

  “They’re all agreed that the regime rests on nothing. It would need one push. And that events are moving inexorably in the direction of a great popular upsurge—in other words, a revolution. But nobody makes the slightest move to prevent it, to reach out and stop this upsurge. All they can think about is what will happen when the blow falls. Can the government, contemptible, will-less, and unsure of itself as it is, successfully resist? No. They are all agreed about that. So then they consider two alternatives. The first is that the helpless government, when it really starts drowning, will cry out to the educated public, to the legislative institutions, for help … Meaning, of course, to Milyukov and the Progressive Bloc. And that’s all they’re waiting for! Educated society, needless to say, will agree to help the dying government, will, needless to say, not shrink from responsibility, but will take over the reins, while preserving the monarchy—they have sense enough for that. Perhaps with a change of Emperor—they’ll have to see when the time comes. The second alternative is that the regime holds out stubbornly to the last, fails to see reason even at the moment of destruction, which incidentally is more its style.”

  Vorotyntsev’s eager face clouded over.

  Guchkov allowed himself to digress. “It’s human nature. It’s the cause of all the cataclysms in history. You’d think it would be enough to say come to your senses, get out before you’re thrown out, how many hints do you need, how often have you been shown the door! But no! Can you see them yielding because common sense demands it, and not because they’re coerced into it? Not for anything in the world!”

  He thought a moment and qualified this.

  “It’s different in Europe. Here nothing will make them step down until an almighty fist crashes down on their damn silly noggins. They gave way just once, with the Manifesto, and they were hopping mad, and started snatching it back like the dirty thieves they are.”

  Svechin quietly smoked on. He seemed less inclined to argue, but also less attentive.

  “So, in the second version, the regime collapses ingloriously without summoning the franchised classes to its aid. For a while the elemental forces prevail. What do the franchised classes do? They refuse to side with the mob, and calmly await their moment. After the joys of anarchy and the street celebrations a moment will inevitably arrive when a new form of government must be organized, and then they say it will be their turn—the turn of people with experience in state matters, who will inevitably be invited to govern the country—because who except themselves is capable of doing so? In both versions, then, all “we” have to do is sit quietly and await the call—right?” Guchkov laughed, inviting their reaction.

  Vorotyntsev also laughed. Svechin showed no interest.

  “Milyukov is sure that he’s drawn the winning number—whether the regime gives way voluntarily or is knocked off its perch by revolution—the ministers, the anarchists, the Allies, or whoever will inevitably come and pay homage to the Kadets.”

  Vorotyntsev’s eager upturned face twisted in a grimace.

  “What’s wrong?” Guchkov asked.

  “Why are you so sure, Aleksandr Ivanych, that there will be a revolution? Where do you see it coming from? I see no sign of it anywhere.”

  “Oh dear, how mistaken you are. I decided that revolution was inevitable back in the spring of 1914. The war prevented it.”

  “I don’t think that’s true. There’s no such thought in the heads of our soldiers.”

  (There was, though, that business the other day on the Vyborg side …)

  Svechin was expressionless. There was no trace of feeling in that rugged, big-nosed face.

  Guchkov explained further. “They dream of something like what happened in respectable France in 1848. But even in France one revolution was never like another. The only way in which they are alike is that it would have been better if none of them had happened.”

  He twisted his triangularly folded napkin.

  “I told them straight: Gentlemen, whoever starts the revolution will take command of it and assume power. You are profoundly mistaken if you think that one force will do all the hard work of revolution, then summon another to govern Russia. If we allow our monarch to be overthrown by re-vo-lu-tion-aries, it’s all up with us! Get your necks ready for the guillotine! It’s no good sitting around waiting like drooling idiots for a dainty little revolution. We must use our minds and our will to stop revolution! Or get around it.” He extended his short hand obliquely, gripping the napkin as though it was the rein of an invisible horse. A stubby hand, but skilled in handling firearms. And with no little experience of shooting.

  Vorotyntsev’s quick eyes absorbed the scene, but he did not interrupt. Svechin enveloped himself in smoke, so that he looked like a balding, dark-haired idol in a cloud of incense.

  This time Guchkov pressed the napkin to his breast, acknowledging with feeling: “If we have let Russia get into this hopeless state it is for us, the upper classes and educated society, to find a way out that will not shake her to her depths. If the masses start moving the state will come tumbling down and all Russia with it. Revolution would mean the collapse of the front. We must make sure at all costs that nothing sets the great boulder in motion.”

  Surely that much was beyond doubt. Not among the Kadets perhaps. But what objection could anyone else find to it?

  Hold back the boulder? Vorotyntsev was ready to put his shoulder to it. It would take not one but twenty like him of course. Why not try?

  “All that would be needed is to address that thought—of a possible upheaval, an overthrow, to the crowd and afterward …”

  He glanced at Svechin. Sparks on the thatch? Sorry, sorry. I used to get carried away at times with Kadets. Sometimes in the heat of the moment, I brought things to the surface I didn’t really want to see there. Only a year ago I was trying to get them to come out and fight openly.

  His heart was like that … sometimes beating fit to burst his rib cage. But now he understood things better …

  “Once the mob is allowed to rise … (they’ll force their way in here, into our private room at Cubat’s, into our comfortable and orderly way of life) … you’ll never drive them back where they belong. The mob must have no part in politics, it must be fed only what others have prepared. That is the rational lesson of all history.”

  Was he expecting objecti
ons? There were none.

  “But whose task is it to prevent the conflagration from engulfing Russia? Who has to be on the alert, to forestall the elemental forces, who if not ourselves, the leaders of Russian society, the strong and active? It is our duty. And it is also in our interest politically.”

  Up to this point it was just one of those conversations you might hear anywhere and everywhere in Russia—between friends or chance acquaintances, in drawing rooms, even those of Grand Dukes, among Guards officers, or Duma deputies, zemstvo councillors, first-class passengers, patients taking the waters at Kislovodsk. But a barely perceptible rephrasing, a few elusive words, a tone of voice that could not be recorded, and instead of the stiff collar of your shirt or tunic you would begin to feel around your neck the tickling of a well-soaped noose. The walls of your cozy study would dissolve into those of a casemate in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

  The words they were using seemed just the same, except for a few trifling variations.

  “And when nobody’s words of warning have any effect on the highest level … And if the personal characteristics … of those people who … on whom the burden of guilt for Russia’s misfortunes rests most heavily … er … leave no hope of including them in any salutary political arrangement …?” He glanced again at Svechin. There was a sort of enigmatic hostility about the man. Yet how useful he would be, there at GHQ! Why keep up this game of nods and winks? Out loud, irrevocably:

  “The Emperor, who cannot be parted from his witch of a wife, must be made to give up the throne. A palace revolution is Russia’s only salvation.”

  The words had been spoken. And there was no hint of fear in the hazel eyes.

  He looked at Svechin.

  Vorotyntsev leaned forward expectantly. His gaze followed Guchkov’s, questioning Svechin.

  The hush of one of those tremendous moments when the pistons of history start silently moving but have not yet set the main shaft in motion.

  Thick-skinned Svechin, though, seemed insensitive to the solemnity and the significance of those moments. His large mouth was twisted in a half smile that was not a smile. He looked like a Ukrainian, standing by his cart in the market and being offered a ridiculous price for one of his pots. “Hicks from the sticks, gentlemen! A coup d’état in wartime? It’ll cause a landslide, total collapse.”

  Vorotyntsev wasn’t with him. “All you know,” he said thoughtfully, “is duty—duty today and duty tomorrow. Just doing your duty will land you in a hopeless situation one of these days. Right now …”

  No, Svechin couldn’t see why they were treating him as an idiot, pretending his goods were worth nothing. He turned on Vorotyntsev, lowering his head like a bull about to charge, meaty lips turned outward: “Aleksandr Ivanych wants to save us from revolution, but he’s calling for it louder than anybody. If our system of government is rotten, as Aleksandr Ivanych and his friends have been chanting for the past ten years …”

  “Five,” was Guchkov’s curt correction.

  “… we couldn’t have gone on fighting a war like this for three years. We would have caved in by now.”

  Five years! Guchkov had deliberately drawn the line there? Meaning “from Stolypin’s murder”? Yes, ever since that day it had been clear that the monarch was incorrigible and that any attempt to help him was wasted effort. And now that the villain Kurlov was the clandestine Minister of the Interior, hiding behind Protopopov, while the slimy Spiridovich and all the others involved in the cover-up infested the higher levels of government … Everything had changed.

  It was a vibrant moment. Everything was in the balance. Who knew which side the scale would come down on? A gentle change of regime to save Russia from an upheaval—but what if another upheaval followed? Could you save Russia simply by overthrowing the Tsar? Just like that?

  Vorotyntsev felt the ground move under his feet.

  One thing he was certain about: “You’re at GHQ tallying figures,” he told Svechin. “You don’t see the men doomed to die, you don’t feel it.”

  “How does that come into it?” Svechin asked, through clenched teeth.

  “I’ll tell you how!” A tremor passed over him as the pent-up and suppressed tension of the twenty-six months sought release.

  “A government that can send its subjects to destruction for no good cause, smashing whole divisions to smithereens, like someone sweeping crockery from a table with a careless sleeve … That government’s subjects are in fact released from their obligations.”

  But he was cooling down as he spoke. The unfortunate thing about speaking without thinking is that you always speak crudely and imprecisely.

  The Mad Mullah trembled violently, struggling to contain himself. His big lips writhed. “So you … so how can you call yourself a monarchist?”

  Vorotyntsev mopped his tense brow.

  Guchkov rushed to his aid. “Don’t confuse monarchism and legitimism. No sensible person objects to monarchy.”

  (Though for all anybody knew Guchkov himself might be a republican.)

  “Your starting point must be Russia’s situation, not the abstract principle of monarchy. If the monarchy can only be saved by removing the monarch, I show that I’m a monarchist by doing so. There’s no better way of proving yourself a loyal monarchist than by taking part in such a coup. The monarchic system will not only survive, it will be reinforced. It will be precisely that—a monarchist coup.”

  Svechin made no further response. His gaze was fixed steadily, grimly, on a point somewhere between the two of them.

  “And another thing,” Guchkov reminded him. “This should fit in with your convictions, if you’re consistent. There’s another reason for hurrying up with a palace coup to forestall revolution: so that it is carried out by Russian hands alone. Do it without the plebs, yes, but also without the Jews. So that the country will develop along Russian lines.”

  A weighty argument?

  Svechin remained expressionless. Just sat there, shrouding himself in smoke again. He needed, after all, to relax—after the meal, after all that drink—before his journey.

  Perhaps they shouldn’t have begun this conversation in his presence? They had let themselves be tempted by the fact that he was at GHQ.

  Vorotyntsev did not disguise his eagerness to hear what would come next.

  Neither his eye nor his memory had let Guchkov down: this officer was just as he remembered him, his loyalties were not those of a mediocre garrison captain. Five colonels and fifteen captains like him was all you would need.

  Various plans had already been discussed. Except for his occasional descents on the front—and it was difficult to foresee and exploit these trips—the Tsar was always at either Tsarskoye Selo or GHQ. At Tsarskoye there would be serious resistance and therefore bloodshed. At GHQ it would be impossible without the participation or at least the acquiescence of the High Command.

  But perhaps this was not the time to stir up these depths?

  Although … Svechin, fed and resting, looked more and more peaceable. He was drinking Narzan. The stolid khokhol was homeward bound from market with all his pots.

  For Vorotyntsev’s sake Guchkov had to go on talking. “So, then, there is no need to involve a large number of soldiers. The fewer, the better. It should be on a smaller scale than the Decembrist affair.”

  If Guchkov thought of himself as following in the Decembrists’ footsteps, surely he must feel the rope lightly tickling his neck. The neck which the Empress had already measured and lovingly marked for her own.

  In conspirator’s language: a gentle palace revolution. In the language of authority: a grave treasonable act.

  Noticing, or anticipating, some reaction of this sort in his companions, Guchkov smiled understandingly. “There is some risk in every fight. But people usually exaggerate it.”

  Where there was no risk at all he himself felt limp and weak.

  “An open appeal to the soldiers, explaining our objectives fully, might result in mass revolution. We need just
a few of them—say, one or two units—behind us at the last moment, to march them out in a public demonstration perhaps. That’s what we need to be sure of.”

  And this was just what Guchkov found most attractive in officers of the Vorotyntsev type: they could, at the crucial moment, quickly and forcefully carry the soldiers with them, perhaps explaining, but if necessary without a single word.

  Vorotyntsev was someone to whom Guchkov felt he should disclose almost every detail of his scheme there and then: precisely which unit he would be commanding and where he should immediately get himself transferred for that purpose. This was to provide for a third possibility—that the coup would take place not at GHQ or at Tsarskoye Selo, but somewhere between them. The Emperor, who found the boredom of GHQ oppressive, and hankered after the peace and quiet of home, was forever darting back and forth between GHQ and Tsarskoye, always by the same route, and always ordering the train to slow down at night so that the clatter would not disturb his sleep. That would be the best solution: to seize the Emperor en route, at night, when he was almost defenseless, using a small force of railroad troops or auxiliary units stationed along the line. Guchkov was already studying these units and trying to select reliable officers (though so far without much success).

  But, in Svechin’s presence, how could he possibly …?

  The way he was sitting, Svechin might as well have been absent. He was sufficiently absent for it to be impossible to read him. And sufficiently present to be in the way.