Caught in the Revolution

by Helen Rappaport

  Louise Bryant was shocked by the long lines of ‘scantily clad people standing in the bitter cold’ and by how ‘pitifully empty’ the shops were; to her horror, a small five-cent bar of American chocolate currently cost seven rubles – or about seventy-five cents.fn2 She was struck by the absurd anomaly that although she was told the city had barely enough food to last three days and there were no warm clothes to be bought anywhere, she passed ‘window after window full of flowers, corsets, dog-collars and false hair’.14 Even more absurd was the fact that the corsets were of the ‘most expensive, out-of-date, wasp-waist variety’ and the women of the old aristocracy who might wear them had ‘largely disappeared from the capital’. But ‘Red Petrograd’ itself impressed her, with its tremendous solidity and presence, ‘as if it were built by a giant who had no regard for human life’. It had retained the ‘rugged strength’ of Peter the Great, who had built it two hundred years previously with such despotic determination; and all the depredations of war heaped upon it still had not altogether stifled its spirit or its cultural life.

  ‘The Nevsky after midnight was as amusing and interesting as Fifth Avenue in the afternoon,’ Bryant remarked; ‘the cafes had nothing to serve but weak tea and sandwiches but they were always full’. ‘Champagne still sparkled in cabarets and night-clubs by candle-light, long after the electric supply was cut off.’15 The Cinematograph, where you could see the latest American movies featuring the likes of Chaplin, Fairbanks and Pickford, were ‘ablaze with lights till nightfall, and crowded to the doors’. You could still go to the opera at the Mariinsky – to see Prince Igor or Boris Godunov – and hear Chaliapin sing, or join the sell-out audiences watching the exquisite Karsavina dancing Paquita.16 After an absence of several months, the French troupe had returned to the Mikhailovsky with a repertoire of light-hearted French comedies to counter the dramatic gloom of Meyerhold’s production of Alexey Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan the Terrible, which was running at the Alexandrinsky.17 ‘The only difference was the clientele’, which was now ‘a motley crowd smelling of boot-leather and perspiration’ and had probably ‘gone without bread to buy the cheap little tickets’.18

  John Reed was similarly taken by surprise to see that ‘gambling clubs functioned hectically from dusk to dawn, with champagne flowing and stakes of twenty thousand roubles. In the centre of the city at night prostitutes in jewels and expensive furs walked up and down, crowding the cafes’.19 ‘Like Pompeii of old, the city feasted and made merry’ while the volcano rumbled, noted one eyewitness.20 There was, nevertheless, considerable nervousness generated by rumours of a German advance, and the threat of Zeppelin and even aeroplane raids continued. Frequent drills were carried out ‘in case of an attack, with the sounding of sirens, the mobilization of firemen, and the putting out of lights’, but these seemed futile in a city where few buildings had cellars in which people could take refuge. Such was the current air of desperation that some people openly expressed the wish ‘that the German armies might come and take possession – the sooner the better – in order that the distress might be ended, even by the occupation of a foreign power’.21 Anything was better than this perpetual state of uncertainty. ‘Each day Russian morale sinks lower, and soon it may settle to a point where Germany can do with it as she wills,’ wrote Leighton Rogers. ‘It seems to me that a few million dollars’ worth of vigorous Allied propaganda, conducted by men who understand the situation, would be able to counter the Germans and save this great, generous people to us. But we have no such propaganda and are losing by default.’22

  As the fractured political life of the city juddered on from one crisis to the next, a nine-day Democratic Congress opened on 14 September at Petrograd’s Alexandrinsky Theatre, attended by around 1,600 delegates, at which the national leadership was to introduce a programme of revolutionary democracy for the new government to be voted in by the Constituent Assembly. Much as the Moscow Congress in August had been, it was a last-ditch attempt to build some kind of unity between the right-wing establishment, the liberal Kadets and the socialist left, in the midst of the continuing political chaos. But few held out any hope of success. ‘The Democratic Conference is like a rough and hastily constructed lean-to, full of gaps and crevices,’ wrote Harold Williams. ‘People have crowded into it for warmth and shelter from the cold and bitter winds that are blowing over Russia in this autumn of the Revolution, but there is little comfort to be found.’23 The American quartet of Beatty, Bryant, Reed and Rhys Williams were all there, as too were a few other foreign reporters and Allied diplomats, allowed in to observe the proceedings from the former imperial boxes, whose Romanov insignia had been hacked off and replaced with red flags and revolutionary banners.

  For the sophisticated socialite Somerset Maugham, the experience of a volatile and combative socialist congress populated by plebeians of the kind with whom he would never normally associate was quite an eye-opener. He scanned the ‘peasant’ types in the audience with considerable disdain, his overall impression being of a ‘backward, loutish people’ with ‘ignorant faces and a vacuous look’. Despite their lack of education, this assembly seemed happy to be subjected to lengthy speeches given with ‘great fluency, but with a monotonous fervour’ by orators who were the kind of men, Maugham thought, whom you might see ‘addressing the meeting of the Radical candidate for a constituency in the South of London’. He found them, for all their fluency and table-thumping, mediocre; and thought it ‘amazing’ that such people should ‘be in control of this vast empire’.24

  Arthur Ransome was there too – on one of his last assignments before returning to England – and noted that ‘the only real enthusiasm aroused in the meeting was by Kerensky’, who took to the rostrum dressed in plain soldier’s khaki. Maugham was struck by Kerensky’s lack of physical strength. He seemed to be ‘green in the face with fright’ and to have ‘a strangely hunted look’ as he gave an intense, impassioned speech for over an hour without notes, in which he asked for a vote of confidence, insisting that only a coalition government could save the country.25 Ransome, who was ‘within a yard’ of Kerensky, noticed that he seemed to be in an extremely stressed state. ‘I saw the sweat come out on his forehead, I watched his mouth change as he faced now one, now another group of his opponents,’ he wrote in his despatch to the Daily News, impressed by the ‘tremendous effort’ Kerensky made to deal with the ‘constant interruption from the Left’.26

  Reporting for the Daily Chronicle, Harold Williams could not warm to Kerensky’s rasping declamatory style, always delivered at the same relentless pitch, and he winced at the contrived moments of ‘painful emotionalism’. But he had to admit that ‘whether Kerensky [was] a great or a small man’, there was ‘no other man in Russia’ at that time who could take his place; certainly not his sneering Bolshevik detractors.27 Ransome was dismayed by their behaviour: ‘They alone at a moment of terrible difficulty brought to the assembly the irresponsible nonchalance of a debating society,’ as they sat there ‘smiling, indifferent to words that to their speakers represented blood and tears’.28

  During his speech Kerensky had ‘stood practically among the audience as though he sought to appeal to each man personally’; Somerset Maugham could see that his appeal ‘was to the heart and not to the mind’. For him it was a ‘facile expression of feeling’ that he, as a reserved Englishman, found ‘a little embarrassing’, but which Kerensky manipulated so skilfully, and which clearly had an ‘overwhelming effect’ on the more openly susceptible Russians, who seemed easily won over by the power of words. At the end of his speech Kerensky received an ovation, but it would be his last. ‘The final impression I had,’ recalled Maugham ‘was of a man exhausted.’29 Kerensky’s exhaustion proved symptomatic of a congress that had been ever more fraught with disunity, marred by a shambolic voting system and by endless, excruciating delays in proceedings. An extremely hostile Bolshevik response to all conciliatory gestures had prevailed, culminating in a mass walkout, allowing a resolution for Kerensky to form a
pre-parliament prior to the election of a Constituent Assembly to be passed by a small majority.30

  Arthur Ransome headed home by sea on 26 September with a very clear sense of approaching danger; what he had seen at the congress had convinced him that the Bolsheviks were preparing the ground to seize power. He hoped, however, that a brief respite in England, for much-needed rest and a spot of fishing, would allow him time to recoup his energies before returning to Petrograd for the final showdown. But he was wrong: events would not wait for him.fn3 His friend and fellow journalist Harold Williams stayed in Petrograd to await the inevitable, feeling ever more gloomy about what was to come: ‘It matters little what resolutions are passed,’ he wrote soon after the congress. ‘The fate of Russia is not to be decided here. Other forces are at work, real, stern, inexorable, which are guiding Russia, to what destinies who in this bitter and tragical time can foresee or foretell?’31 Sir George Buchanan, who had also observed some of the sessions, was emphatic about their impact: writing to the Foreign Office, he declared that ‘the only result has been to split up the democracy into an infinite number of small groups, and to undermine the authority of its recognized leaders’. And he went on to issue a warning:

  The Bolsheviks, who form a compact minority, have alone a definite political programme. They are more active and better organized than any other group, and until they and the ideas which they represent are finally squashed, the country will remain a prey to anarchy and disorder . . . If the Government are not strong enough to put down the Bolsheviks by force, at the risk of breaking altogether with the Soviet, the only alternative will be a Bolshevik Government.32

  In contrast to so much gloom and despondency, the energetic US Red Cross envoy Raymond Robins had remained defiantly optimistic. He had attended every session of the congress, even though it had proved to be ‘a continuous performance of the most exacting nature’, with sessions lasting till four in the morning on two occasions. He had been excited by this, the ‘first Social-Democratic Conference in which the power of government was represented under socialist leadership in the history of the world’.33 But while he noted Kerensky’s undoubted gifts as a speaker, Robins had observed the charismatic Trotsky marshalling his Bolshevik supporters during the conference, and came away feeling that ‘the most skillful and dangerous leader of the extreme left was Trotsky’ – moreover, that the congress had brought nearer an inevitable clash between the Bolsheviks (the ‘party of destructionist separate peace tendencies’) and the moderates. Many people had already left Petrograd, ‘believing that the commune and civil war with murder and looting are just a day or two ahead,’ Robins told his wife on 24 September, but he remained convinced that the new Coalition Government would ‘yet master the situation’. Despite all the uncertainties, he was bullish about the success of his mission: ‘The fact that we live on the edge of a volcano and that we may be overwhelmed any day simply adds to the zest of the service . . . I am satisfied that the Revolution will never turn backward, and that Russia will achieve a great realization of liberty and social progress.’34

  The weary Sir George Buchanan, after many years in Russia, had no such optimism. Shortly after the Democratic Congress he called on his French, Italian and American colleagues to make a collective approach to Kerensky’s government ‘on the subject of both the military and internal situations’.35 David Francis had declined to take part, a fact on which his aide J. Butler Wright commented with dismay: ‘Everyone, with only the exception of [Francis], believes that a clash – and a serious one – is bound to occur soon. We fervently wish that it would come and get it over with.’36 On 25 September, Buchanan and his other colleagues met Kerensky to urge the government to ‘concentrate all its energies on the prosecution of the war’ and restore internal order, increase factory output and re-establish discipline in the army. But when Sir George read out their moderately stated joint declaration, Kerensky cut short their interview with ‘a wave of his hand’ and ‘walked out exclaiming: “You forget that Russia is a great power!’’’ Sir George found such a petulant ‘Napoleonic touch’ unworthy of him. As fellow diplomat Louis de Robien neatly observed: ‘The Tsar also refused to listen to Sir George in similar circumstances: a few weeks later he lost the crown!’37

  As September turned to October, Petrograd life continued to be measured by the same, tedious factional infighting and sloganeering, by stultifying meetings, wildcat strikes, rumour and counter-rumour. ‘The endless talk when action was needed, the vacillations, the apathy when apathy could only result in destruction, the high-flown protestations, the insincerity and half-heartedness that I found everywhere sickened me,’ wrote Somerset Maugham wearily.38 ‘The agitators are persistently at it,’ noted Leighton Rogers. ‘Meetings are held every day in various sections of the city protesting against this and that, anything as long as it is a protest . . . Just as you bolster up a little hope some disheartening rumor comes along and knocks it down. The level of spirit in the city is sinking slowly but inevitably.’fn4 ‘Always the same chaos, the same uncertainty,’ wrote French resident Louise Patouillet. ‘This revolution truly is the road to Calvary.’39

  A distinct whiff of approaching winter now filled the air, as the starving city once more became a place of dank mists, bone-chilling winds, little or no sun and persistent rain. The streets were a sorry sight, with pavement blocks taken up and gaping holes left in their place. Grass was growing between the cobblestones on the once imposing square in front of the Winter Palace. Petrograd’s crowded thoroughfares in autumn, with their drab people drained of the colour of summer, gave out ‘an intense impression of dirt and din and chaotic movement’.40 Under rain-filled, leaden skies the city seemed ever more melancholy. ‘Poverty and filth. These are my impressions on arrival here,’ wrote the disconsolate new Belgian ambassador, Jules Destrée, when he got off the train in mid-October 1917:

  In this late-autumn time, Petrograd is a revolting cesspool. Liquid, sticky mud covers the carriage-way and the causeways. It has splashed up onto the windows of the lower stories of buildings and spreads over the ruts in the road, squirting treacherously underfoot, making stepping onto loose cobblestones risky. I’ve never seen anything as horrible, except in certain muddy streets in Constantinople. The locals smile at my squeamishness as they flounder around in this quagmire with their customary resignation. It’s one of the evils of the war – there are others, much worse. In days of old, the roadways were fine and well maintained, but the army has commandeered all manpower and filth has got the better of the defenceless capital.41

  It was the faces of the starving, shabby population standing in line that most distressed Destrée, as they did all new visitors to the city: they seemed ‘docile, submissive and, without any prompting by the police, they just fall in line, one behind the other . . . they just wait in the rain and the icy blast, shivering’. He concluded that they had ‘the mindset of fatalistic slaves’ and it mattered not which kind of government ruled over them.42

  As Petrograd languished in an apathy induced by hunger and exhaustion, a new danger haunted the streets. With the domestic electricity supply reduced to the hours between 6.00 p.m. and midnight and the street lights not lit for fear of Zeppelin raids, there had recently been a dramatic rise in robbery, rape and murder at night. Very few people ventured out after 11.00 p.m.; those foreigners who did so kept to the middle of the street, away from dark recesses and corners and, if they had one, carried a revolver in their pocket.43fn5 Arthur Reinke noted that his friends were buying revolvers to protect themselves – paying $125 apiece. ‘I find it desirable at night to carry 30 roubles,’ he added, ‘ready to hand out to a hold-up man in order to avoid a painful and messy interview.’ The dangers on the streets for foreign residents at that time were legion:

  Women had their shoes taken from their feet; men had their clothes removed in the street. Three men entered a fur store opposite the hotel; one began to pack up some valuable furs he had not paid for; the owner called for help, which broug
ht an angry mob; the three men were quickly surrounded by the mob and beaten to death; it afterwards developed that two were innocent customers. A friend of mine had his necktie pin removed on the Nevsky in broad daylight by a soldier . . . His mother had her leather bag taken from her lap while seated in a street car by a soldier; the latter turned at the door playfully threatening her with his finger, as one might a child, and jumped off . . . a guest from our hotel disappeared and his body was found a week later in the river – minus a large sum of money he was known to have carried.44

  People were frequently stabbed and killed simply because they did not hand over their valuables quickly enough when confronted, and Reinke recalled that the thieves always wore soldiers’ uniform and carried a rifle, stopping pedestrians on the pretext of asking to see their papers, upon which they would ‘clean out the pockets’ of their victims. Many items, meanwhile, ended up in the centre of the city at a ‘Soldiers’ Market’, where hundreds of soldiers could be seen ‘selling the spoils of their thieving’: ‘almost every conceivable article, including their uniforms, boots, weapons, jewelry, paintings, statuary and other things obviously stolen by them’.45 Thieving was endemic, and not just in Petrograd. Supplies from the food-growing districts were constantly being disrupted because the trains carrying them to Petrograd were attacked and plundered long before they even reached the city. Such violence was symptomatic of what was now going on in the Russian countryside, where the long-suppressed genie of anarchy had finally been let loose with a terrifying, brutal vengeance. The peasants, particularly in southern Russia, were running riot on country estates, killing their landlords, sacking and vandalising their manor houses and setting them on fire, slaughtering livestock and burning the grain in their barns.