Byzantium Endures: The First Volume of the Colonel Pyat Quartet

by Michael Moorcock

  Ougron in dem feuhr, in die trå mit miene ami podanný velebný—przy tej czerwonej rózy moja siostra. Siostra! Rózy. Siostra takiej wezesnej wiosny. Mon—my sister from der—it is—sister of early spring — ghosts…

  drowning. fill mouth. I am bursting. They lied —prawda—ta wielka prawda—and degraded moja siostra … nie znam tej rózy … historia Polska tapiekna pani papezenstvi polska! Ich mein fraulein … Nein! … Papezenstvi Pani—les diables— honneur … speak— What use?

  Delenda est Carthago! Israel. robbed me. conspired.. … took train. Pyat.

  Prawda! Five times.

  Conquer Carthage!

  say they’ll parley. Skrcek.

  Stastny? How dare they? Azbuka—anglicina—No work—THINK! Bajka.

  Zna arciblaz en bacauce—slavik … slava! Snih … rypak … paperka snehu …

  Kartago… seredy. . preziti … pamatorati … vycitky … zid … sperk … jewels … Israil. Shulchan Aruch. Lucifer Zid ? Jewels? Tech… …

  pages engulf me. pages… and boxes. Christ! Jews stripped you of gold and all majesty. Snow blood runs from eyes, from your nose. fills sky—banners dipped in blood of humble and weak they cry Peace! Power to peasants! they kill. tear skins from carve signs in bodies. cry: masses inherit birthright! machine-guns and cannon churches, ikons, villages only ashes. Jerusalem! my blood! Christ is killed. Where salvation? Guilt lies. Prawda! swallowed by paper. swallowed by women. swallowed by snow. Beast in me I afraid. It still alive. I still afraid. too old now be use. Too old be possessed. What can offer? wants youth. wants my honour. shall not devour humanity … It shall not devour my honour. were devils. made cry. were Jews. am silver brain. am THAT. will not devour me. My pride not devour my honour. women with their rods… never came to Berlin … MAKE ME FREE! promises. Hamburg London could not would not destroy devil Jew BROKE RODS ON HIS BONES! dragged by horses death. seen fire. impersonal shots robbed me of love. terror! The shtetl … I never grovelled as they grovelled. want life so much? Or for startled, uncomfortable children? Or need grovel? I bentbefore whip Is same? wantabsolution murder Christ? murder honour? not different. peasants as bad. devoured one another. I saw it. Jew or Slav. not matter. pride devils. people. Cannibals! one thing: ONE WAR! MY LAND! perished before possess trees and corn burning. steppe ash. Black snow put hands out of nobody came. all lost. betrayed. bloody red flag black flag of death armies of desolation. green flag of jealousy all stupidity PRIDE! PRIDE! PRIDE! all forgotten What are they, those Jews? Why seek destruction with such merciless will?

  Israel to Byzantium. Israel to Germany. Carthage returned. Babylon returned. Tyre returned. Carthage atoms scattered across world sought revenge. we destroyed. Carthage on wind. Carthage in air we breathed in bread we ate. Zion! Trumpets of brass, gongs of gold East to West, avenging Zion Carthage Genghis Khan. on steppe-pony, machine-gun cart traces. Hannibal second challenge to second Rome. ISRAEL! Romans killed Jew. They killed the Jew. two thousand years silence fell. Then out of East came wind Is howling still …

  are whores, those women. will not be my whores.

  OH,GOD! GIVE ME WHORE! GIVE ME WHORE!

  GIVE ME WHORE! OH, GOD! GIVE ME

  WHORE! WHY NOT!!!???

  I live too long. Ninteen hundred years went I sleeping. could taught so much. could given everything. But was sleeping.

  ISRAEL. Where monuments? all is ruins, where are architecture, engineering, marvels? Is all you have in box? Is pride? bring nothing but tradition? And wailing chanting biding time

  senile old God claims earth. refuses own son birthright? refuses Love I deny drooling God denies Son, clings to Authority, supplies precedent desperate priests

  share power failing, greedy, grasping, sad and ancient God. should be put in Home. Put in Home with all other dirty, mumbling old gods;

  Odin

  Zeus

  God-Magog; with Kali terrified of death sends disciples to kill and kill and kill in hope Life finite and if enough die, more Life left for her. begging for pork crackling, unable to bite; only to suck Suck, suck, suck, toothless gods. Die! And let sons be

  free! You piss in robes. make Heaven foul with

  uncontrollable functions. LET US GO!

  Carthage marching through ruins. Carthage with black

  lisping tongue. Carthage laughing world turns red. I could made it all white WHITE EMPIRE. VIRGIN SILVER!

  Israel destroyed in day. Imperial Carthage destroyed in day. Imperial Peru destroyed in day. empires of Sioux and Zulu destroyed in day. Manchu empire destroyed in day. Imperial Russia destroyed in day. What had left but pride?

  honour gone, honour and nation was one. honour could have saved them. pride destroyed them.

  Ibe ybenester! Forbid … Let them wave spears. I saw them. They are dead.

  Fear Africa. Fear Tatar. Fear vengeance from East Their elephants. their shields. is alliance will destroy us.

  have no mercy.

  One unlucky tremor of sun and we gone. All gone. they whine of Man’s Destructive Will! Life is destruction. It is universe. is no greater celebration of life than explosion of Hydrogen Bomb!

  I submit! I submit! I submit to Death

  resurrection of Ego. Oh, Jerusalem!

  Oh, beauty! orphaned bones. darling, fortune and undoing. Zoyea with little birds. Birds fill breast. Birds peck within whistling to be free. My empire, my soul. Birds die within me. One by one.

  Abraham, first great sacrificer of your own humanity: where did your knife touch your trusting son? Ancient, darling, fear-drenched Sumer. Deny the Jew and you deny your past. In what Mesopotamian corner of the universe was God born to dismiss His very divinity, His purity, by the death of His own son? Evil achieved another of its temporary triumphs and so won confidence enough to trap itself and fade into that hideous weakness from which it grew. Famous Abraham; fanatic procreator of the Myth of Sacrifice. Man was born to live and give joy to life. Fanatic Man denies the universe, sees it as cruel, and wretchedly apes that cruelty which is not cruelty at all, but sublime equilibrium. You are a false prophet, Marx. Marx, in your agony you rationalised Man back into an age of darkness. The cities breathe and are themselves: identity and the city fuse. The only hope for us is to rise above all superstition and understand ourselves and our function in the life of the city. For the cities are the testament of our humanity: the triumph of the Lamb. Let the desert warriors hurl their brave horses into the very heart of the city: and rear in terror of that ordinary complexity, that simple model of the human mind. Let them curse ‘Magic!’ and put a torch to some brother’s brain; they destroy their own salvation, nothing more.

  They pillaged Addis Ababa; they pillaged Nikolaieff and Ekaterinoslav. The Jew alone knows the nature of the city, but pride and ritual and sentiment keep the secret hidden from him. Sumer: first land of cities. Anu? Ur? I am not familiar with those names. The riders of the steppes and the deserts; the riders of the plateaux and the plains; they yearn for the ignorance and the peace they call freedom, but it is the freedom of childhood; there must always be a patriarch to maintain it. And, wherever Abraham lifts his knife, there is no true freedom at all: only a constant series of promises and betrayals. Zion is a retreat from destiny, a mere consolation. Why try to make sense of the storm when, if one pauses, one can listen with lifting heart, to its song? The Lamb in the city needs no shepherd; only knowledge. If a man must fear God, then it means that God himself must be afraid.

  Appendix B

  A Brief Account of the Russian Civil War

  After the Kerenski revolution of February 1917, the Ukraine set up its own Rada, or parliament, although still acknowledging the authority of the Provisional Government. Its first president, Michael Hrushevsky, made tentative claims for Ukrainian nationalism, apparently under pressure from soldiers and ‘Haidamaki’ (armed peasants borrowing their name from those who had resisted Polish and Russian imperialism in previous centuries). Although paying lip-service to the idea that it was a branch of the Russian constitutio
nal assembly, the Rada became increasingly nationalist in its claims and ambitions. The Ukrainian Party of Socialist Federalists, the dominant political movement at this time, was liberal rather than radical. Hrushevsky eventually left to join the more left-wing Ukrainian Party of Social Revolutionaries which was soon elected as the majority party in the Rada. Further to the left was the Ukrainian Socialist Democratic Labour Party. One of its leading lights was Semyon (Simon) Petlyura, a convinced nationalist. Dissatisfaction with delays in announcing an independent Ukraine led to the First All-Ukrainian Military Congress in Kiev, May 18, 1917. Free Cossacks (militia formations) and units from every Ukrainian fighting force (then still at war with the Central Powers) were represented and came together in defiance of Kerenski, Minister of War. It elected a council of 130 to the Central Rada, to represent the interests of Ukrainian soldiers and sailors. Other groups—including Bolsheviks and Anarchists-resisted the idea of nationalism, which they saw as reactionary, but sometimes supported the idea of federalism within the states of a dismembered Russian Empire. In June 1917 relations with the Provisional Government had degenerated so badly that the nationalists broke with it and announced the impossibility ‘of collaboration with the Russian government’. A coalition Rada formed the first provisional Ukrainian government. The Russians continued to attempt to negotiate with the Ukrainians. The Ukraine was a vital area and Ukrainian soldiers were needed to continue the war against the Central Powers. For an understanding of the important geographical and economic position of the Ukraine in the politics of this area see the map in the introduction (pp. x–xi). Before matters came fully to a head between Kerenski and the Rada, the Bolshevik counter-revolution of November (October, old calendar) 1917 took place and politics in Kiev were further confused by various groups supporting Bolsheviks, Kerenski, democratic Whites, full-blooded nationalism, or even a return to Russian authoritarian monarchism. A miniature civil war broke out between these factions. From it the Central Rada again emerged as the leading force, faced with the problems of large gangs of demobilised troops looting the rural areas. These gangs frequently described themselves as ‘Cossacks’ or ‘Haidamaki’ and claimed loyalty to a variety of political parties. Those who supported, say, the Bolsheviks were called by the Bolsheviks ‘revolutionary soldiers’, those who did not support them were called by the Bolsheviks ‘bandits’. They were primarily hungry, weary, brutalised and confused men who were often not even certain which country they were in. It is now impossible to tell how many were actually motivated by revolutionary idealism or loyalty to an earlier régime; most were ferociously tired. The Jews (the Ukraine was the chief Russian territory ‘beyond the Pale’) were, as always, their main victims.

  On November 20, 1917, the Rada announced the formation of the Ukrainian National Republic. They paid lip-service, once more, to federalism, but refused to accept the legitimacy of the Bolshevik régime. Its principles were democratic and included the abolition of capital punishment, the right to strike and amnesty for all political prisoners. Their main support came from the rural population and land reform was one of their main promises. Semyon Petlyura became Secretary for Military Affairs, soon resigning after an argument over general policy. Various revolutionary groups, including Social Revolutionaries, Bolsheviks and Anarchists, continued to agitate against the Rada.

  The Ukrainian army at this time was primarily made up of’Free Cossack’ volunteer units. The most important of these units was the two-battalion Haidamats’kyi Kish Slobids’koi Ukrainy, which Petlyura led under the title of ‘Ataman’ (a word originally meaning an elected Cossack leader). Also important as a fighting force was the Galician Battalion of Sichovi Strel’tsi (Sich Riflemen) formed from West Ukrainian prisoners formerly in the Austrian army. The Entente forces tried to recruit the aid of the Ukrainians but could offer no real support since Turkey still controlled the Black Sea and the Bolsheviks controlled Murmansk. An armed left-wing uprising in Kiev in December 1917 was put down and the First Ukrainian Corps, under General Paul Skoropadskya, with the aid of some Free Cossacks, defeated the Bolshevik-led Second Guard Corps near Zhmerynka. Open war between Bolshevik Russia and the Ukraine began in late December (the Bolsheviks claiming to be lending support to the ‘official Ukrainian Soviet government’ which existed in Kharkov, maintained by Bolshevik troops). The real Bolshevik invasion began on December 25. In charge of it was the able Red Army leader Antonov. The Bolsheviks were extremely successful in the face of the somewhat disorganised Ukrainian defence and took many key cities. Under Muraviev, Bolshevik troops attacked Kiev. The three thousand defending Ukrainian troops evacuated the city. Muraviev occupied Kiev and ordered mass executions of the Ukrainian (‘nationalist’) population. The Red Cross estimated that some five thousand people were killed in Kiev during this period. Elsewhere in the Ukraine a similar ‘terror’ was implemented.

  In response to this situation the Rada signed a separate peace with the Central Powers. German and Austrian units aided nationalist units led by Petlyura, Skoropadskya and others to drive back the Reds. The battles were fought primarily for control of railway lines and stations (armoured trains and cavalry units being of main strategic importance in this kind of warfare). By August 1918 there were some thirty-five Central Powers divisions in the Ukraine and they were acting as an occupying army, dictating policy to the Rada which did its best to resist Austro-Hungarian and German demands (principally for grain to feed its fighting armies). In April, the German commander, Field Marshal Eichborn, began to issue decrees without reference to the Rada. The Rada was all but powerless and lost its popular support to the more right-wing Socialist-Federalist party. On April 25, Eichborn issued an order making Ukrainians subject to German military tribunals for offences against German interests. He went on to order the disarmament of Ukrainian units and, when the Rada complained, sent a German detachment into the Rada building in Kiev to arrest two ministers. A day later Hrushevsky was elected President of the Republic but was ousted immediately in a coup d’état, supported by Germans and right-wing elements, led by Skoropadskya who proclaimed himself ‘Hetman of the Ukraine’—another romantic Cossack title, designed to appeal to those who nostalgically identified Ukrainian freedom with the old Cossack uprisings. Skoropadskya was a German puppet who willingly aided their efforts to put down dissident elements, allowing the ruthless German military police units full rein. Resistance to his régime and the German occupying forces was carried on most successfully by Petlyura on the one hand and, most dramatically, by Nestor Makhno, the Anarchist-Socialist, whose exploits were so daring and so cleverly organised that he was popularly considered to be the ‘Robin Hood’ of Southern Ukraine. Skoropadskya’s ‘Hetmanate’ seemed an ideal refuge for thousands of Russians fleeing, for one reason or another, the Bolsheviks. Kiev and Odessa became, in particular, centres of bourgeois and aristocratic opposition to any form of radicalism or nationalism. These cities, along with most of the Ukraine’s other industrial cities, had large ‘non-Ukrainian’ populations (primarily Russians and Jews). The pogroms became worse. Skoropadskya introduced grandiose elements into his régime, clothing his soldiers in elaborate nineteenth-century uniforms and making increasingly pompous and empty decrees. His support came entirely from extreme right-wing Russian interests and from the occupying forces, though many of the old Rada ministers continued to hold office so long as they did not act against German interests. The Union of Representatives of Industry, Commerce, Finance and Agriculture (Protofis), made up of industrialists, important merchants, bankers arid big landowners, also supported the Hetman. Pyat apparently belonged to this Union for a time, though his rôle in it is uncertain. Catholics were inclined to be nationalist-sympathisers, while the Orthodox Church was divided between those who refused to acknowledge the authority of leaders who had accepted the Bolsheviks, those who supported the nationalists, those who supported ‘official’ Russian leadership and those who wanted a break altogether with the historical authority of Russia. Both Churches maintain
ed a decidedly antisemitic attitude.

  After the ratification of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Hetman visited Germany and was received cordially by the Kaiser. The Austro-Hungarians postponed ratifying the Treaty because of secret claims on Ukrainian border-territories, Galicia and Bukovina. When Rumania occupied Bessarabia in March 1918, the Hetman could only make a token protest. Further difficulties arose with the proclamation of Crimean independence and threatened action from the Don region, now under the leadership of Ataman Pyotr Krassnoff, which remained unrelentingly monarchist, but a treaty was eventually signed between the Ukraine and the Don Cossack Host in August 1918. With the end of hostilities between the Great Powers the Germans began to withdraw from the Ukraine, leaving Skoropadskya without any real support. Liberal forces resumed control of the Rada, but leftist and nationalist (‘Greens’) groups refused to co-operate. In November 1918 a Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic was formed to lead the uprising against Skoropadskya. The Directory’s chief leaders were Vinnichenko, Petlyura, Shets, Makerenko and Andriievsky. Kiev was defended by Russian and German units. The Directory (‘Greens’) forces offered a guarantee to the Germans that they would be allowed to return safely home if they declared their neutrality. The Germans accepted. On December 14 the Hetman abdicated and fled with the Germans. On December 19 the Directory forces entered Kiev and the nationalist leadership became the official government of the Republic.

  Although controlling most of the Ukraine, the Directory was almost immediately faced with the threat of invasion from a recently independent Poland, anxious to reclaim its Ukrainian empire, from the Bolsheviks and from the White Russians (who had supported the Hetman) in the northern Caucasus. By this time Entente (Franco-Greek) forces were supporting the White Russians and were threatening Odessa and Nikolaieff. Fundamentally a ‘moderate’ socialist régime, the Directory had support from a number of other left-wing elements, although Bolsheviks and Anarchists (who were inclined to take an internationalist view) refused to acknowledge it as anything but a ‘bourgeois-liberal’ government and continued to work against it. When the Bolsheviks began their second invasion in earnest (under the command of Trotsky and Antonov) many of these elements agreed to bury their differences and fight against the Red Army. By this time Makhno commanded a very large and effective fighting force, using innovative tactics which the Red Cavalry were eventually to borrow wholesale. Other ‘revolutionary or insurgent leaders of sometimes doubtful political conviction included Hrihorieff (Grigoriev) fighting in the Kherson region, Ataman Anhel in Chernihiv, Shepel in Podilia and Zeleny in northern Kiev province. These had some of the characteristics of the Warlords, who would later take advantage of China’s civil unrest, but by and large at this stage they were all content to hold their own territory rather than attack Petlyura or give active support to the Bolsheviks, whom they mistrusted as Russian imperialists. In January 1919, however, the Bolsheviks, now aided by some insurgents, drove for Kiev and in February the Directory forces evacuated the city and allied themselves with the French and, therefore, the Whites. This lost them considerable mass support. Hrihorieff, in particular, put his army at the disposal of the Bolsheviks and attacked the Directory’s forces. Hrihorieff then appears to have developed strong personal ambitions and begun a broad attack on various towns and cities with the object of reaching Odessa and ousting the Entente-White forces holding the Ukraine’s most important port. The best account of this may be found in Bolsheviks in the Ukraine by Arthur E. Adams, Yale University, 1963. For a while Hrihorieff was enormously successful, emerging as the Ukraine’s most colourful leader, to the chagrin of Antonov and Trotsky who tried desperately to control the insurgent troops and failed miserably.