Red Mutiny (27 page)

This being the case, Vishnevetsky was right to be cautious in preparing his proclamation. At 7
P.M.
, the captains gathered their crews at the forecastle of each ship and read Vishnevetsky's words straight from the page, beginning, "Brothers, an incident unprecedented in the Russian fleet's history has taken place on the battleship
Potemkin.
The crew has revolted, and, it's rumored, murdered the commander and raised the revolutionary flag."

The officers then explained their plan to fight a war of attrition against the
Potemkin,
whose supplies of food and coal would last for no more than seven days, turning the ship eventually from a "fortress to a trap." There was a lesson here for any sailor who attempted a similar crime. This squadron had been sent to "tame" the
Potemkin
and "to end the scandal." Its size guaranteed that the mutinous battleship's crew would understand the threat and capitulate.

The captains read the conclusion of the proclamation:

I have no intention of attacking the
Potemkin,
thereby only exacerbating this shameful situation. I'll take every action to bring about a peaceful resolution. In this, I'm relying on your cooperation, my brothers, and ask you to heed the voice of reason, which tells us to act just as I've described. Nothing, however, prevents us from being attacked. In this case, God forbid, our blood will spill, or we'll spill the blood of our comrades. We will have to respond to the attack with force.

Remember, brothers, and believe me when I say that every word written in this proclamation proceeds directly from my heart and is dictated by the love for the Russian sailor, which I bear.

Rear Admiral Vishnevetsky.

On the
St. George,
Captain Ilya Guzevich finished and dropped his hand, holding the paper to his side. Looking out at his crew, he demanded they do their duty. With a faint reply, less than one in every ten sailors of the 616-man crew said, "We'll try." The rest remained silent. Just as on the
Twelve Apostles,
a band of sailor revolutionaries, organized by Tsentralka leader Dorofey Koshuba, were on board the
St. George,
plotting to stop their officers from firing on the
Potemkin.
Despite what Vishnevetsky might like them to believe, he and the rest of the officers were no brothers of theirs.

The sun was setting over the city when Matyushenko and the others returned to the battleship, having survived the ambush. They found a crew that had grown even more anxious as another day ended with the ship anchored outside of Odessa.

The boatswains had kept the sailors occupied. Even at idle, the crew maintained their watches and duties. Gunners scoured the barrels to prevent deterioration from humidity and sea air. The cooks peeled potatoes and scrubbed dishes. The telegraphists hovered over their machines, waiting for any intercepts. The mechanics and stokers below cleaned the boilers, lubricated the engines, and swept away the coal ash. Guards stood watch over the quarterdeck. Medics bandaged the injured, and the cobbler mended shoes. The bakers baked, and the launderers laundered. The
Potemkin
was like a small city, and there was always work to do.

But as much as they kept to their routine, the sailors knew they were on a rogue battleship that the tsar would blow out of the water, if need be. Sitting outside the harbor, the battleship made an inviting target, and the ship's leaders still had not indicated what they planned to do next. Doubts about these leaders were heightened by the petty officers, who whispered to the crew that surrender was their best—and only—option. Otherwise, they promised, the sailors were signing their own death warrants. Then, late that afternoon, a ship had been sighted on the horizon, instigating cries of "The squadron is coming!" It turned out to be the training ship
Prut,
which never approached the harbor; but the panic it caused revealed the crew's raw nerves.

When Matyushenko came aboard, the sailors were gathering for a general assembly. Although the sailor committee had earlier agreed to shell the military council meeting and had procured a few city maps for this purpose, they had hesitated in revealing this decision to the crew, precisely because of the uneasy mood. Nonetheless, they needed the men's approval before turning the guns on the city.

The sailors formed an impromptu amphitheater around the capstan, where the committee leaders spoke. In the front rows, sailors sat cross-legged on the deck. Behind them, several rows of sailors stood, arms akimbo or held tightly across the chest. Above them, sailors dangled their legs over the sides of the upper decks or sat atop the twelve-inch guns, looking down on Kirill, who was the first to speak. They listened skeptically as the Odessan revolutionary told of the enslaved Russian masses and the heroic struggle in which they were joined.

Then sailor Dymchenko stood and introduced Feldmann, saying simply, "Here, lads, a good man wants to say a word to you."

In the sharp, fluid speech of a veteran debater looking to score point after point, Feldmann told the sailors that the line had been crossed and their chances of pardon were lost. Their struggle now was to the end.

"True. Very true," some sailors called out," bolstering Feldmann.

"We must deal the enemy a deadly blow," he urged. "The troops in Odessa are ready to come over to us. They're only waiting for the first step. This step
you
must take. Every moment of delay strengthens the enemy and weakens us. Ahead of you is the glory and honor that are granted to fighters for the people. Behind you is the yoke of your former torturers. You choose which one you want. What we must do is to open fire on the city, now—without wasting any more time."

Caught up in the revolutionary fervor, the crew shouted, "Hurrah!" But this excitement dissolved into protests against firing on the town. One sailor pushed forward, saying that bombing Odessa would hurt the people, not the tsar or his government. Such arguments splintered the crew. Perhaps they were better off leaving the city behind in their wake, some felt.

Kirill sidled up to Feldmann after he stepped off the podium. "You went to work too abruptly. It can't be done like that." Only one man, Kirill admonished, one of the sailors, could demand that kind of action.

"Away with the landsmen!" the crew chanted. Then they looked to Ensign Alekseyev, calling for him to speak. The officer meekly retreated from the deck.

Mingling among the crew on the quarterdeck, Matyushenko watched the sailors quarrel; a few almost came to blows. Unable to remain silent another second, he jumped onto the capstan. The shouting faded into murmurs. Then silence. Then he began, channeling all his inner resources: his sadness over Vakulenchuk's death, his desire for revenge for what Kakhanov had done over the past twenty-four hours, his hatred of the tsar. The words came almost as a release, and they gushed forth.

"Stay, brothers! We must have unity! Our rulers have done enough in setting us against each other, and now you want to fall to killing yourselves. All the people are looking to you now. Listen, we were beaten and harassed by our officers, treated worse than dogs. We couldn't stand to live like that any longer, and we killed our dragons. Now we rule ourselves, yet will the Russian people have a better life because we dropped our officers into the sea? Will a peasant or worker be better off because of that? Don't forget, I'm not talking about strangers—our brothers and fathers are among them. The people are broke, many of them are being killed in the war, and the whole Pacific fleet has been sunk."

The sailors were enthralled, as much with Matyushenko's delivery as with what he had to say. On the capstan, he spoke with the urgency of a commander in the midst of battle. But more than anything, his power over the men came from the intensity of his movements. He threw his whole body, slight and lost as it was in his uniform, into his speech. He swayed and twisted and rocked back and forth. He thrust his arms up and down and left and right with a conductor's frenzy. And the sailors followed where he led.

"Now they want to hang us all, because we stand up for what's right. No, we won't let them finish us without a fight. If we want a better life for the people, not only for ourselves, we must fight. We're here with an entire fortress loaded with huge guns, but we're just watching indifferently while our brothers get killed. Shame on us! The Russian people will damn us in the future. We can't let it happen! We'll achieve freedom or die today, together with our brothers!"

"We stand for the same cause!" the crew roared—almost involuntarily, they were so galvanized by his speech—"We will die all together!"

"Okay, then. Let's start the bombardment of the city today," Matyushenko returned. "We can't wait any longer. They should pay for the blood of the workers they spilled. Do you agree?"

"We agree!" the crew answered.

"Well, brothers, now stand steady. Go to your places."

When Matyushenko stepped down, sailors slapped his back and shook his hand. In that moment, and for the moment, his words had unified the crew again, and they set off to prepare to fire on the city. Matyushenko, too, was swept away by his own words and by the feeling that had overcome him as he spoke. Afterward, he embraced Kirill and, holding him by the arms, said, "We will die together." His tone was that of one who had chosen and accepted his own fate.

"Weigh anchor and get up steam!" came the order across the quarterdeck. A bugle sounded across the
Potemkin,
hurrying the sailors to their stations. Black smoke coughed out of the funnels. The decks were cleared, the iron hatches battened down. Gunners brought up shells from the magazines and removed the tompions from the gun muzzles. A first-aid team led by Dr. Golenko prepared bandages and stretchers as if they were going into battle. Matyushenko strode toward the bridge while sailors drenched the wooden decks with cold seawater to prevent fires catching from the shells. Within ten minutes, every gun, from the quick firers to the twelve-inchers, was loaded. Spare dark-gray shells coated with greasy lubricant were stacked on the decks. At 6:35
P.M.
, the
Potemkin
moved out half a mile to take up a better firing position.

Dusk had fallen over the city, the silhouettes of its buildings fading with each passing minute. In the port, a scattering of unattended warehouse fires still burned; a slight breeze drew the smoke across the harbor's waters. As the
Potemkin
turned its starboard side toward Odessa, the sailors stood silently at their posts, most of them feeling a strange blend of nervous excitement and somberness. On the bridge, Matyushenko waited beside Dymchenko, Nikishkin, Kovalenko, and Ensign Alekseyev, all looking out toward the city. Their three targets, identified on a map without any scale, included the city theater where the council meeting was taking place and Odessa's military and city government headquarters. Kirill and Feldmann watched from the bridge as well, standing well back and out of the way.

The sailor committee had voted to fire three blank shots in succession from the thirty-seven-millimeter guns to warn the city's residents to take cover. That these shots also gave the military council the chance to do the same was a risk they accepted. A trumpet blasted a few staccato notes, signaling the gunners to fire. The sailors cringed, waiting for the concussion, though they would be startled by its earsplitting blast nonetheless.

Boom.

The trumpet blared again.

Boom.

The trumpet.

Boom.

The acrid smoke from the first three shots drifted away as a sailor hoisted a red battle flag on the foremast. Using a range finder, senior signalman Frederick Vedenmeyer, a redheaded sailor who was also a committee member, relayed the range and bearing to the six-inch-gun crew. The gun mount turned slowly into position. A trumpet sounded again. Silence. Then a thunderous clap followed a flash of white and green light from the gun's muzzle. The
Potemkin
quaked. The crew looked toward Odessa, the concussion echoing in their ears.

With the firing of the shell, Matyushenko felt that he was sending a message personally to the tsar. He should free the land to the peasants. He should give up the factories to the workers. He should open his palaces to the people. Otherwise, the sailors would force him from the throne.

"Overshot!" Vedenmeyer called out to the bridge.

A horrified hush fell on the
Potemkin
as everybody realized that the errant high-explosive shell likely meant innocent deaths. Matyushenko harshly instructed Vedenmeyer, "Get it right this time. We must hit the theater and nothing else, do you understand?"

Vedenmeyer relayed new coordinates to the battery. The bridge signaled fire. The crew covered their ears. The gun flashed. Kovalenko heard the shell whine and, with his binoculars, spotted people on the Primorsky Boulevard dashing for cover. Along with everyone on the bridge, he prayed this shell would find its mark.

In Odessa's streets, panic reigned. After the warning shots, many hurried to their basements or simply dropped to the floor. Off Preobrazhenskaya Street, soldiers who were camped in the square scattered to the nearest buildings, yelling to one another that the
Potemkin
had finally launched its campaign of destruction. The American consul foolishly stood at his window to watch the barrage, swearing later to his superiors in Washington that he saw the first shell arc into the sky.

That first shell crashed into a corner building in the city center. A cloud of dust and smoke consumed the house. The walls groaned, then fell in on themselves. A three-yard section of an adjoining roof teetered for a moment before shearing off and shattering on the street below. Hysterical screams filled the area. A pair of startled carriage horses bolted down the street, throwing off their driver. A resident next to the destroyed house came out on his balcony, pushing aside hunks of stone and wood, in complete shock. He looked down to the street, asking a tailor who worked in a neighboring shop why someone would want to blow up his house.