The House of Government

by Slezkine, Yuri

  Boris Ivanov

  Even Sverdlov, whose “cheerfulness and optimism” were, according to Ivanov, the colony’s main “support for the weak,” would occasionally give way to despair. Once, when he had not received any letters for several weeks, his lip was swollen, and he was “shivering from the cold (or a cold, he wasn’t sure),” he wrote to Novgorodtseva, “Yesterday it got so bad that I felt like crying and moaning, and could not sleep. I had to use all my strength not to let myself go. I managed to pull myself together somewhat, but then got to the point of regretting that I didn’t have any potassium bromide pills with me—and I’m not sure I would’ve been able to keep from taking them, either.”62

  Those were rare moments, however, and they were always followed by expressions of hope based on some combination of comradeship, love, and faith in the truth of the prophecy. “The days of light will come; believe in it firmly, be full of this faith,” was the main theme of Sverdlov’s letters to his wife, sisters, and friends. Most of them, including Sverdlov himself, followed this injunction. Voronsky’s visions and doubts are dispelled by “conversations with comrades”; Piatnitsky’s passage about melancholy and depression is followed by an account of mutual support among the exiles; and Ivanov’s description of the long Arctic nights ends with an image of the “heavenly depths” that is sublime, not crushing. “The sky is covered with countless stars, which shine much more brightly here than they do at home or in the south. The fantastic bands of the northern lights dance around like searchlights, and, every once in a while, a white fiery pillar rises from the earth all the way to the sky or a spray of blue, red, and violet lights might shoot up.”63

  Postyshev, too, found solace in nature (and in belles lettres):

  It is not easy for me to describe these mountains in all their glory—when they are painted golden by the rising sun and, high above them, the turquoise sky is glistening, and the fiery dawn clings so closely to the earth that it seems that the earth might catch fire. At sunset, I prefer to walk between the mountains, in the “gashes,” as they are called here. Then the mountains are shrouded in a blue haze; their tops seem to touch the clouds; and the rays of the setting sun radiate through the pine trees. At such moments, your eyes can perceive magic; your soul becomes transcendent; and you wish to live and to hug everyone in sight and to forgive and be forgiven.64

  A true Bolshevik could not indulge in such sentiments for too long, and neither could the wilderness. In 1913, Postyshev and two of his friends were celebrating “the great proletarian holiday, May First” in the taiga. “The noise of the giant trees was like the triumphant hymn of a million-strong army of the proletariat. That wild but majestic music penetrated to the very bottom of our hearts. We stood and listened to that powerful victory song. The chords kept changing: first a piercing scream full of hatred and thirst for vengeance, then the heavy moan of a huge, huge army.”65

  For Sverdlov, the “victory” referred to two things: his reunion with Novgorodtseva and the coming of the real day. The former came first. They met briefly in 1912 on the Ob River in West Siberia, and then, in May 1915, two years after the birth of their daughter Vera, Novgorodtseva came to join Sverdlov permanently in the village of Monastyrskoe, on the Enisei River. Boris Ivanov remembers first seeing their house:

  The forest came right up to the house, in the form of numerous low fir trees and bushes. The house had three rooms and four windows. The furniture was of the simplest kind: wooden benches, a table with a white tablecloth, a pile of books on a little stool. Among them, I could see the first volume of Das Kapital, a book in German, and an open issue of The Russian Wealth. On the windowsill, there was a huge heap of newspapers.

  A black-eyed boy of about six, dressed in a white linen suit, was looking at me with curiosity.

  “Adia, come on, stop staring! This comrade has just arrived from Petersburg. Say hello to him!,” said Sverdlov, lightly pushing the boy toward me.

  “This is my little critter,” he said with a smile.66

  Andrei (Adia) Sverdlov was four, not six, but he had already traveled a great deal: visiting his father in the Tomsk prison, spending time in his mother’s cell in St. Petersburg, and living in two different places of exile. Thanks to their extra earnings, the Sverdlovs had been able to buy a cow for fresh milk for the children.

  Sverdlov usually got up around 6:00 a.m. and skied to the river bank to record meteorological data (Novgorodtseva’s official job).

  Having come back from the Enisei [writes Novgorodtseva], Yakov Mikhailovich would chop wood, feed the cow, clean out the manure, start a fire in the stove, boil water, and make breakfast. Around eight the children would wake up. Yakov Mikhailovich always washed and dressed them. The children were his responsibility: despite my protests, he never let me interfere.

  We usually had breakfast at about half past eight, and after that I would set off on my round of lessons. Yakov Mikhailovich received his pupils … at home. Around noon he would finish tutoring and start making lunch.

  The main staples in Monastyrskoe were fish and Siberian dumplings with reindeer meat. Both Novgorodtseva and Ivanov claim that Sverdlov was unsurpassed as a filling maker; Ivanov, a baker by trade, was the dough-molding “artist.” “We usually had lunch around 2:00 p.m. After that I would do the dishes (having won this right after many a battle), and then we would both do some sewing, mending, and, if need be, washing. By five or six, Yakov Mikhailovich would be free from household chores, and by seven, people would start coming over.” About ten of Monastyrskoe’s twenty or so exiles came regularly. Sverdlov would “officiate” at the stove, while the others tried to follow Ivanov’s lead in molding the dumplings. “There was no end to the jokes and laughter, but there was never any alcohol. Yakov Mikhailovich never drank either vodka or wine.” This was true of most Bolshevik circle members, both the “students” and the workers.67

  Sometimes they held formal lectures, debates, or party meetings. Such gatherings were illegal, but in the winter, according to Ivanov,

  The windows [of Sverdlov’s house] would be covered with a thick layer of ice, so you could not see anything from the outside…. Only the light of the kerosene lamp would show through the frozen glass and cast a pale reflection on the snow drifts near the house…. The Bolshevik exiles usually gathered in a small room that did not look like a setting for a lecture or a presentation. A pot of hot tea would be standing on the table. Valentina Sergushova would pour it out into mugs. Guests would be sitting in comfortable positions around the table, although some might be lying on reindeer skins spread out on the floor next to the iron stove with its burning cedar log. Their faces would be just barely visible in the semidarkness of the room.68

  After the lectures they would often go for walks. Their favorite activity was singing, and their favorite songs were “the roaring battle hymns of the revolutionary proletariat of that time.” Sometimes, during those hikes, they would start playfully pushing each other around. “Occasionally such rough-housing would turn into real battles, with people throwing snowballs at each other and shoving each other into snow drifts. Sad was the fate of those who could not react fast enough to an opponent’s sudden move!” Sverdlov, who was “the initiator and ringleader” of most such battles, made up in aggression what he lacked in size. According to Novgorodtseva, he particularly enjoyed “sitting astride his vanquished playmates and stuffing handfuls of snow down their collars.”

  Finally, Yakov Mikhailovich would announce loudly, “Let’s go have some tea!” and we would troop back to our place, exhausted, red-cheeked, loud, and happy. Once inside, everyone would get right to work: someone would start the samovar, others would get the dishes, set the table, etc. Then the tea drinking would begin, and the merry, free-flowing conversation would start up again. Andrei and Verushka, long used to all kinds of noise, would be fast asleep in the next room.

  Around nine or ten, everyone would head for home, and Yakov Mikhailovich would sit down to work. Night was the time for serious
concentration. For at least four or five hours, he would sit over his books and manuscripts, reading, taking notes, copying out passages, and writing. He would not go to bed until one or two in the morning, and then at six or seven he would be up again.69

  Exiles in Monastyrskoe. Sverdlov is seated, in the white shirt.

  Klavdia Novgorodtseva and Andrei Sverdlov are seated in front.

  Between them, wearing a hat, is Grigory Petrovsky.

  Stalin (Dzhugashvili) is in the back, in a black hat; on his left is Lev Kamenev. Far right in a leather jacket is Filipp Goloshchekin.

  Exile stood for suffering, intimacy, and the sublime immensity of the heavenly depths. It offered a perfect metaphor for both what was wrong with the “world of lies” and what was central to the promise of socialism. “The gap between reason and what is beyond reason is created by deformations in social life,” thought Voronsky as he “roamed through glades and climbed up slopes.” “Only under socialism will the fundamental contradiction between the conscious and the unconscious be eliminated. The leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom will be accomplished: there will be no tragic chasm between the conscious and the unconscious; reason will tame the elements while remaining connected to their immense power.” In the meantime, the memory of banishment would serve as a promise of liberation and a sacred bond among “comrades-in-arms, fellows in freedom, and friends.” “They are my family, my country, my cherished past and glorious future. They blossom in my soul like rare flowers on a mountain slope, right next to the edge of the snow. Here’s to our free, loyal fellowship, firm handshakes, sincere conversations on stormy nights, our laughter, jokes, bravery, daring, restless wanderings, our willingness to help each other at the cost of our lives, our certainty and faith in the bitterest of years, our marvelous, unique, valiant band!”70

  ■ ■ ■

  The free fellowships preparing for the leap to the kingdom of freedom (by means of agitation and propaganda and through the trials of prison and exile) were organized into “parties,” each one with its own program and statutes, but all of them sharing a fundamental rejection of the existing order of things and a withdrawal into a secret community of the self-chosen. The most important part of being a revolutionary was, in Voronsky’s words, the “habit of dividing people into two camps: us and them.”

  “Us” was the underground: a secret, exclusive circle of people fastened together by a voluntary, iron bond of mutual responsibility, with our own understanding of honor, right, and justice. This circle was invisible but always present, militant and unbending. It was like a volcanic island rising up in the middle of the ocean. Everything else—huge, ever multiplying, earthbound—was the world of the enemy. Everything else needed to be remade and reshaped; it was loathsome and deserved to die; it kept resisting, persecuting, expelling, pursuing, and living its own life. And so I learned how to despise everything that was outside our secret free fellowship.71

  Aleksandr Voronsky

  The first part of Voronsky’s autobiography came out in Novyi mir in 1927; the full version appeared as a book in 1929. Some critics did not like its excessive “reflexivity,” but, as Voronsky’s wife wrote at the time, its “content could not possibly raise any objections.” Gorky called it “the voice of a true revolutionary, who knows how to talk about himself as a real, live human being.” The book’s publication was approved by the censorship office and formally endorsed by Viacheslav Molotov (formerly Skriabin), on the recommendation of Platon Kerzhentsev (formerly Lebedev), under the “editorial responsibility” of Semen Kanatchikov (formerly a Gustav List worker). Voronsky’s underground self seemed no different from that of any other revolutionary.72

  I used to walk down Nevsky. The sight of the glittering shop windows, the carriages and trotting horses, the top hats and bowlers filled me with a sense of superiority. I would think to myself: here is a gentlemen with a bushy moustache wearing a shiny English suit, and here is a stout lady with a pink face rustling her silks…. They can walk into a store, casually pick out something expensive, have it delivered to their home by a delivery boy, walk into this or that restaurant, go to the opera in the evening and then sit down to dinner, unfolding a crisp, well-starched napkin. And here am I, with a fifty-kopeck coin in my pocket, wearing a ragged fall coat and rust-colored, worn-out shoes, but I don’t mind: I am carrying out the will of the anonymous people who are marching unwaveringly toward their goal of destruction. I, too, am a member of their secret fraternity. In the shop window, precious stones sparkle with all the colors of the rainbow: they are for you, the full-bellied, the well-groomed, the satisfied. Inside my coat, piles of leaflets are stuffed under my tight belt. They are for you, too. They are just as good as dynamite or a Browning pistol. You walk by, shoving me aside, but you don’t know what I know; you don’t suspect anything; you don’t realize the danger you’re in. I am stronger and more powerful than you, and I enjoy walking among you, unnoticed.73

  The underground men had a variety of names for the loathsome “everything else” that “kept living its own life” outside their secret free fellowship. The most common was “philistines” (obyvateli), or people without higher principles or interests, people absorbed in the pleasures and failures of everyday existence, people whose “opinions, thoughts, gossip, and desires were petty and pitiful,” people who were not fully human because they had no spark of “consciousness.” In Russia, according to Voronsky, they were doubly damned, and possibly not human at all, because they combined protocapitalist acquisitiveness with the “primeval and utter swinishness” of provincial backwardness: “the driveling, hiccuping, and lip-smacking gluttony, the unctuousness mixed with beastliness.”74

  Have you ever been to the meat row at the market? Pig and cow carcasses hang from the ceiling, and counters and carts are all covered with chunks of fat, yellow grease, and coagulated blood. Pieces of bone and brain fly everywhere, attracting packs of dogs. Aprons are stiff with blood, and the sickly-sweet, nauseating stench of rotting flesh is stifling. I always imagine these to be the embodied feelings, hopes, and thoughts of the average inhabitant of our Okurovs, Rasteriaevs, and Mirgorods. They are his life, his world. Observe his excitement as he turns over and digs through the lumps of fat and lard! His eyes are oily; his lower lip droops; his filthy, foul-smelling mouth fills with saliva; afraid that someone might snap up the coveted piece before him, he snarls hungrily and sticks out his elbows. Shove against him at this moment, touch him by accident, and he is ready to kill you on the spot. I’ve seen people standing by the meat counters with their eyes glassed over and their fingers trembling, looking at the hunks of meat the way some men stare at naked women. You think I’m exaggerating? Go see for yourself, but make sure you look closely.75

  The “philistine” had long been the stock antipode of the “intelligent,” and provincial Russia was his natural habitat. “The town of Okurov” was Gorky’s version; “Rasteriaeva Street” was Gleb Uspensky’s; and Mirgorod was Gogol’s pastoral prototype. What the socialists did was to turn the philistine into a “bourgeois” and sentence him to death as a matter of Marxist inevitability and personal gratification. What the socialists feared was his ability to grow new heads and tempt new victims. The most common metaphor for “philistinism” was a “swamp” that posed as solid ground while seeping into homes, souls, and Bolshevik reading circles. Voronsky’s native town of Tambov reminded him of the swamp he used to go to when he was a little boy. “Under its murky, dead film, the swamp bubbled, rumbled, rotted, and gurgled, exhaling foul odors and swarming with myriads of midges, soft, plump tadpoles, water spiders, red beetles, and frogs; it slurped and rustled with reeds and bulrushes. Farther in, if you made it across the shaky hillocks of grass to its depths, the quagmire yawned. Any calf, cow, or horse that lost its way would perish there.”76

  Whereas the SRs believed that the revolution would prevent the swamp from submerging the whole of the Russian countryside, the Marxists assumed that the flood was a fait
accompli, welcomed it as a necessary interlude, and endorsed Engels’s warning to the driveling gluttons: “You shall be allowed to rule for a short time. You shall be allowed to dictate your laws, to bask in the rays of the majesty you have created, to spread your banquets in the halls of kings, and to take the beautiful princess to wife—but do not forget that ‘The hangman stands at the door!’” The Bolshevik-Menshevik disagreement concerned the question of who the hangman should be: the Mensheviks favored the proletariat; the Bolsheviks (some of whom recognized the original Heine in the prophet’s words) demanded the leading role for themselves.77

  Voronsky’s alter ego Valentin was a true Bolshevik.

  Some day soon the third angel will sound his trumpet. And then we will show all those who wish to enjoy life with some fat, a little manure, a bit of dirt, and a few legalized rapes what the end of the world is about. We will show them the price of categorical imperatives and civic cloaks. We will remind them of their little albums of those who have been hanged and the little amateur libraries they have collected about them. We won’t forget anything: the innocent tears of the children, the wasted youth in the back alleys and basements, the destroyed talents, the mothers’ grief, Sonechka Marmeladova and little Ilya, and all those hanged on the gallows as the sun was sending out its first, sinless rays.78

  Valentin was deliberately, defiantly Dostoevskian. Few Russian socialists would have understood every one of his allusions or endorsed his combination of prophetic fire with self-doubting introspection, but most of them shared his vision. The revolutionaries were going to prevail because of the sheer power of their hatred. It cleansed the soul and swelled like the flood of the real day. “It rushes along to the gates of a new kingdom, drenching its path in human blood and leaving behind death, moaning, and cursing. It rushes past the cowardly and the petty, sweeping along the brave, the daring, and the strong.” It was the main weapon of the weak and the guarantee of future salvation. “Man must return to his lost paradise, and he will return there—no longer as nature’s slave or contemplator, but as its free master, ruler, and creator.”79