Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy)

by Ken Follett

  When next he looked they were out of range. Peasants and the staff were pouring out of the house by all its doors. The windows were strangely bright, and Fitz realized that the place was on fire. As he looked, smoke drifted from the front door, and an orange flame licked up from an open window and set fire to the creeper growing up the wall.

  Then the carriage topped a rise and rattled downhill, and the old house disappeared from view.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  October and November 1917

  Walter said angrily: "Admiral von Holtzendorff promised us the British would starve in five months. That was nine months ago."

  "He made a mistake," said his father.

  Walter suppressed a scornful retort.

  They were in Otto's room at the Foreign Office in Berlin. Otto sat in a carved chair behind a big desk. On the wall behind him hung a painting of Kaiser Wilhelm I, grandfather of the present monarch, being proclaimed German emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

  Walter was infuriated by his father's half-baked excuses. "The admiral gave his word as an officer that no American would reach Europe," he said. "Our intelligence is that fourteen thousand of them landed in France in June. So much for the word of an officer!"

  That stung Otto. "He did what he believed was best for his country," he said irately. "What more can a man do?"

  Walter raised his voice. "You ask me what more a man can do? He can avoid making false promises. When he doesn't know for sure, he can refrain from saying he knows for sure. He can tell the truth, or keep his stupid mouth shut."

  "Von Holtzendorff gave the best advice he could."

  The feebleness of these arguments maddened Walter. "Such humility would have been appropriate before the event. But there was none. You were there, at Castle Pless--you know what happened. Von Holtzendorff gave his word. He misled the kaiser. He brought the Americans into the war against us. A man could hardly serve his monarch worse!"

  "I suppose you want him to resign--but then who would take his place?"

  "Resign?" Walter was bursting with fury. "I want him to put the barrel of his revolver in his mouth and pull the trigger."

  Otto looked severe. "That's a wicked thing to say."

  "His own death would be small retribution for all those who have died because of his smug foolishness."

  "You youngsters have no common sense."

  "You dare to talk to me about common sense? You and your generation took Germany into a war that has crippled us and killed millions--a war that, after three years, we still have not won."

  Otto looked away. He could hardly deny that Germany had not yet won the war. The opposing sides were deadlocked in France. Unrestricted submarine warfare had failed to choke off supplies to the Allies. Meanwhile, the British naval blockade was slowly starving the German people. "We have to wait and see what happens in Petrograd," said Otto. "If Russia drops out of the war, the balance will change."

  "Exactly," said Walter. "Everything now depends on the Bolsheviks."

  { II }

  Early in October, Grigori and Katerina went to see the midwife.

  Grigori now spent most nights in the one-room apartment near the Putilov works. They no longer made love--she found it too uncomfortable. Her belly was huge. The skin was as taut as a football, and her navel stuck out instead of in. Grigori had never been intimate with a pregnant woman, and he found it frightening as well as thrilling. He knew that everything was normal, but all the same he dreaded the thought of a baby's head cruelly stretching the narrow passage he loved so much.

  They set out for the home of the midwife, Magda, the wife of Konstantin. Vladimir rode on Grigori's shoulders. The boy was almost three, but Grigori still carried him without effort. His personality was emerging: in his childish way he was intelligent and earnest, more like Grigori than his charming, wayward father, Lev. A baby was like a revolution, Grigori thought: you could start one, but you could not control how it would turn out.

  General Kornilov's counterrevolution had been crushed before it got started. The Railwaymen's Union had made sure most of Kornilov's troops got stuck in sidings miles from Petrograd. Those who came anywhere near the city were met by Bolsheviks who undermined them simply by telling them the truth, as Grigori had in the schoolyard. Soldiers then turned on officers who were in on the conspiracy and executed them. Kornilov himself was arrested and imprisoned.

  Grigori became known as the man who turned back Kornilov's army. He protested that this was an exaggeration, but his modesty only increased his stature. He was elected to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party.

  Trotsky got out of jail. The Bolsheviks won 51 percent of the vote in the Moscow city elections. Party membership reached 350,000.

  Grigori had an intoxicating feeling that anything could happen, including total disaster. Every day the revolution might be defeated. That was what he dreaded, for then his child would grow up in a Russia that was no better. Grigori thought of the milestones of his own childhood: the hanging of his father, the death of his mother outside the Winter Palace, the priest who took little Lev's trousers down, the grinding work at the Putilov factory. He wanted a different life for his child.

  "Lenin is calling for an armed uprising," he told Katerina as they walked to Magda's place. Lenin had been in hiding outside the city, but he had been sending a constant stream of furious letters urging the party to action.

  "I think he's right," said Katerina. "Everyone is fed up with governments who speak about democracy but do nothing about the price of bread."

  As usual, Katerina said what most Petrograd workers were thinking.

  Magda was expecting them and had made tea. "I'm sorry there's no sugar," she said. "I haven't been able to get sugar for weeks."

  "I can't wait to get this over with," said Katerina. "I'm so tired of carrying all this weight."

  Magda felt Katerina's belly and said she had about two weeks to go. Katerina said: "It was awful when Vladimir was born. I had no friends, and the midwife was a hard-faced Siberian bitch called Kseniya."

  "I know Kseniya," said Magda. "She's competent, but a bit stern."

  "I'll say."

  Konstantin was leaving for the Smolny Institute. Although the soviet was not in session every day, there were constant meetings of committees and ad hoc groups. Kerensky's provisional government was now so weak that the soviet gained authority by default. "I hear Lenin is back in town," Konstantin said to Grigori.

  "Yes, he got back last night."

  "Where is he staying?"

  "It's a secret. The police are still keen to arrest him."

  "What made him return?"

  "We'll find out tomorrow. He's called a meeting of the Central Committee."

  Konstantin left to catch a streetcar to the city center. Grigori walked Katerina home. When he was about to leave for the barracks, she said: "I feel better, knowing Magda will be with me."

  "Good." Grigori still felt that childbirth seemed more dangerous than an armed uprising.

  "And you'll be there too," Katerina added.

  "Not actually in the room," Grigori said nervously.

  "No, of course not. But you'll be outside, pacing up and down, and that will make me feel safe."

  "Good."

  "You will be there, won't you?"

  "Yes," he said. "Whatever happens, I'll be there."

  When he got to the barracks an hour later he found the place in turmoil. On the parade ground, officers were trying to get guns and ammunition loaded onto wagons, with little success: every battalion committee was either holding a meeting or preparing to hold one. "Kerensky has done it now!" said Isaak jubilantly. "He's trying to send us to the front."

  Grigori's heart sank. "Send who?"

  "The entire Petrograd garrison! The orders have come down. We're to change places with soldiers at the front."

  "What's their reason?"

  "They say it's because of the German advance." The Germans had taken the islands in the G
ulf of Riga and were heading toward Petrograd.

  "Rubbish," said Grigori angrily. "It's an attempt to undermine the soviet." And it was a clever attempt, he realized as he thought it through. If the troops in Petrograd were replaced by others coming back from the front, it would take days, perhaps weeks of organization to form new soldiers' committees and elect new deputies to the soviet. Worse, the new men would lack the experience of the last six months' political battles--which would have to be fought all over again. "What do the soldiers say?"

  "They're furious. They want Kerensky to negotiate peace, not send them to die."

  "Will they refuse to leave Petrograd?"

  "I don't know. It will help if they get the backing of the soviet."

  "I'll take care of that."

  Grigori took an armored car and two bodyguards and drove over the Liteiny Bridge to the Smolny. This looked like a setback, he reflected, but it might turn into an opportunity. Until now, not all troops had supported the Bolsheviks, but Kerensky's attempt to send them to the front might swing the waverers over. The more he thought about it, the more he believed this could be Kerensky's big mistake.

  The Smolny was a grand building that had been a school for daughters of the wealthy. Two machine guns from Grigori's regiment guarded the entrance. Red Guards attempted to verify everyone's identity--but, Grigori noted uneasily, the crowds going in and out were so numerous that the check was not rigorous.

  The courtyard was a scene of frenetic activity. Armored cars, motorcycles, trucks, and cars came and went constantly, competing for space. A broad flight of steps led up to a row of arches and a classical colonnade. In an upstairs room Grigori found the executive committee of the soviet in session.

  The Mensheviks were calling on the garrison soldiers to prepare to move to the front. As usual, Grigori thought with disgust, the Mensheviks were surrendering without a fight; and he suffered a sudden panicky fear that the revolution was slipping away from him.

  He went into a huddle with the other Bolsheviks on the executive to compose a more militant resolution. "The only way to defend Petrograd against the Germans is to mobilize the workers," Trotsky said.

  "As we did at the time of the Kornilov Putsch," Grigori said with enthusiasm. "We need another Committee for Struggle to take charge of the defense of the city."

  Trotsky scribbled a draft, then stood up to propose the motion.

  The Mensheviks were outraged. "You would be creating a second military command center alongside army headquarters!" said Mark Broido. "No man can serve two masters."

  To Grigori's disgust, most committeemen agreed with that. The Menshevik motion was passed and Trotsky's was defeated. Grigori left the meeting in despair. Could the soldiers' loyalty to the soviet survive such a rebuff?

  That afternoon the Bolsheviks met in Room 36 and decided they could not accept this decision. They agreed to propose their motion again that evening, at the meeting of the full soviet.

  The second time, the Bolsheviks won the vote.

  Grigori was relieved. The soviet had backed the soldiers and set up an alternative military command.

  They were one large step closer to power.

  { III }

  Next day, feeling optimistic, Grigori and the other leading Bolsheviks slipped quietly away from the Smolny in ones and twos, careful not to attract the attention of the secret police, and made their way to the large apartment of a comrade, Galina Flakserman, for the meeting of the Central Committee.

  Grigori was nervous about the meeting and arrived early. He circled the block, looking for idlers who might be police spies, but he saw no one suspicious. Inside the building he reconnoitered the different exits--there were three--and determined the fastest way out.

  The Bolsheviks sat around a big dining table, many wearing the leather coats that were becoming a kind of uniform for them. Lenin was not there, so they started without him. Grigori fretted about him--he might have been arrested--but he arrived at ten o'clock, disguised in a wig that kept slipping and almost made him look foolish.

  However, there was nothing laughable about the resolution he proposed, calling for an armed uprising, led by the Bolsheviks, to overthrow the provisional government and take power.

  Grigori was elated. Everyone wanted an armed uprising, of course, but most revolutionaries said the time was not yet ripe. At last the most powerful of them was saying now.

  Lenin spoke for an hour. As always he was strident, banging the table, shouting, and abusing those who disagreed with him. His style worked against him--you wanted to vote down someone who was so rude. But despite that he was persuasive. His knowledge was wide, his political instinct was unerring, and few men could stand firm against the hammer blows of his logical arguments.

  Grigori was on Lenin's side from the start. The important thing was to seize power and end the dithering, he thought. All other problems could be solved later. But would the others agree?

  Zinoviev spoke against. Normally a handsome man, he, too, had changed his appearance to confuse the police. He had grown a beard and cropped his luxuriant thatch of curly black hair. He thought Lenin's strategy was too risky. He was afraid an uprising would give the right wing an excuse for a military coup. He wanted the Bolshevik party to concentrate on winning the elections for the Constituent Assembly.

  This timid argument infuriated Lenin. "The provisional government is never going to hold a national election!" he said. "Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool and a dupe."

  Trotsky and Stalin backed the uprising, but Trotsky angered Lenin by saying they should wait for the All-Russia Congress of Soviets, scheduled to begin in ten days' time.

  That struck Grigori as a good idea--Trotsky was always reasonable--but Lenin surprised him by roaring: "No!"

  Trotsky said: "We're likely to have a majority among the delegates--"

  "If the congress forms a government, it is bound to be a coalition!" Lenin said angrily. "The Bolsheviks admitted to the government will be centrists. Who could wish for that--other than a counterrevolutionary traitor?"

  Trotsky flushed at the insult, but he said nothing.

  Grigori realized Lenin was right. As usual, Lenin had thought farther ahead than anyone else. In a coalition, the Mensheviks' first demand would be that the prime minister must be a moderate--and they would probably settle for anyone but Lenin.

  It dawned on Grigori--and at the same time on the rest of the committee, he guessed--that the only way Lenin could become prime minister was by a coup.

  The dispute raged until the small hours. In the end they voted by ten to two in favor of an armed uprising.

  However, Lenin did not get all his own way. No date was set for the coup.

  When the meeting was over, Galina produced a samovar and put out cheese, sausage, and bread for the hungry revolutionaries.

  { IV }

  As a child on Prince Andrei's estate, Grigori had once witnessed the climax of a deer hunt. The dogs had brought down a stag just outside the village, and everyone had gone to look. When Grigori got there the deer was dying, the dogs already greedily eating the intestines spilling out of its ripped belly while the huntsmen on their horses swigged brandy in celebration. Yet even then the wretched beast had made one last attempt to fight back. It had swung its mighty antlers, impaling one dog and slashing another, and had, for a moment, almost looked as if it might struggle to its feet; then it had sunk back to the bloodstained earth and closed its eyes.

  Grigori thought Prime Minister Kerensky, the leader of the provisional government, was like that stag. Everyone knew he was finished--except him.

  As the bitter cold of a Russian winter closed around Petrograd like a fist, the crisis came to a head.

  The Committee for Struggle, soon renamed the Military Revolutionary Committee, was dominated by the charismatic figure of Trotsky. He was not handsome, with his big nose, high forehead, and bulging eyes staring through rimless glasses, but he was charming and persuasive. Where Lenin shouted and bullied, T
rotsky reasoned and beguiled. Grigori suspected that Trotsky was as tough as Lenin but better at hiding it.

  On Monday, November 5, two days before the All-Russia Congress was due to start, Grigori went to a mass meeting, called by the Military Revolutionary Committee, of all the troops in the Peter and Paul Fortress. The meeting started at noon and went on all afternoon, hundreds of soldiers debating politics in the square in front of the fort while their officers fumed impotently. Then Trotsky arrived, to thunderous applause, and after listening to him they voted to obey the committee rather than the government, Trotsky, not Kerensky.

  Walking away from the square, Grigori reflected that the government could not possibly tolerate a key army unit declaring its loyalty to someone else. The cannon of the fortress were directly across the river from the Winter Palace, where the provisional government was headquartered. Surely, he thought, Kerensky would now admit defeat and resign.

  Next day Trotsky announced precautions against a counterrevolutionary coup by the army. He ordered Red Guards and troops loyal to the soviet to take over the bridges, railway stations, and police stations, plus the post office, the telegraph office, the telephone exchange, and the state bank.

  Grigori was at Trotsky's side, turning the great man's stream of commands into detailed instructions for specific military units and dispatching the orders around the city by messengers on horseback, on bicycles, and in cars. He thought Trotsky's "precautions" seemed very similar to a takeover.

  To his amazement and delight, there was little resistance.

  A spy at the Marinsky Palace reported that Prime Minister Kerensky had asked the preparliament--the body that had so miserably failed in its task of setting up the Constituent Assembly--for a vote of confidence. The preparliament refused. No one took much notice. Kerensky was history, just another inadequate man who had tried and failed to rule Russia. He returned to the Winter Palace, where his impotent government continued to pretend to rule.

  Lenin was hiding at the apartment of a comrade, Margarita Fofanova. The Central Committee had ordered him not to move about the city, fearing he would be arrested. Grigori was one of the few people who knew his location. At eight o'clock in the evening Margarita arrived at the Smolny with a note from Lenin ordering the Bolsheviks to launch an armed insurrection immediately. Trotsky said tetchily: "What does he imagine we're doing?"