Russka (147 page)

It had been bewildering to watch. It sometimes seemed to Bobrov that anyone who had an ounce of talent was dismissed. Only blind loyalty to the Tsar was rewarded. And the endless list of appointments and dismissals – over forty new provincial governors in a single year! – had made one Duma wit remark that the administration was having an epileptic fit. All faith in the government had evaporated. Ugly rumours about the Empress and Rasputin had even reached the troops at the front. They were said to be secretly in league with the Germans.

Thank God, in December 1916, two aristocratic patriots had murdered the evil Rasputin; but by then the damage had been done.

Before his eyes, Bobrov had witnessed the signs of the breakup. Every party in the Duma, even the conservatives, had turned against the Tsar. Though the army held firm along the front, there had been a million desertions. And then a terrible winter had left the capital short of food and fuel.

It couldn’t go on. For weeks the entire Duma had been in an uproar. Those close to the Tsar said he showed signs of depression. Even some of his relations, the Archdukes, said he should step down to save the monarchy and spoke of a regency.

‘But personally,’ Nicolai Bobrov would always say afterwards, ‘I think it was the weather that really did for the Tsar.’

For suddenly in February 1917, after a bitter winter, the weather turned warm, and in Petrograd everyone came out on to the streets.

The demonstrations were spontaneous. The people had had enough. Not only strikes but massive street disruptions began. The police and Cossacks were hopelessly outnumbered. And then the authorities made a huge mistake: they called out the garrisons.

They were not regular troops. Most of them were recent conscripts, taken from their villages and cooped up for months in overcrowded barracks. Why should they fire on the people? They mutinied, and joined the protestors.

And then, on 28 February, it was over. The Tsar, trapped outside the capital after visiting the front, sent word that the Duma should disband until April. ‘And we refused,’ Bobrov would say, with a calm smile. ‘We refused to go, and suddenly realized we were the government.’

The deputies declared it. The mobs in the street seemed to agree. After all, what else was there, if not the Duma? The next day, the Duma asked the Tsar to abdicate, and the Russian monarch found that he had not a friend in the world.

Where was the young fellow? Nicolai was very proud of his son. Alexander was able to walk about now; he was still an officer, but had been pronounced unfit for further active service and had been spending the last weeks in the capital with his father. Though still a monarchist, he nowadays tolerated his father’s liberal views with good humour; and even he had been shocked by the conduct of the government in recent months. He’s been gone such a time, Nicolai now concluded, there must be some news just coming through.

And then Nicolai smiled. How strange, he thought. Here he was, a widower, aged sixty-two. He had lost his estate. His country was locked in a terrible war, with no end in sight. His monarch had
just fallen. Yet today he felt as if his whole life was beginning again.

He was sorry for the Tsar, personally. He didn’t think he was a monster – just an inadequate man in an impossible position. But although he had worked hard for years to reach some sort of liberal compromise with the stubborn ruler, now Nicholas was gone, he realized he was relieved. Democracy could begin at last.

What was it his son had said the other day? He had argued so passionately.

‘You don’t see what you’re doing, Father,’ he had warned. ‘The whole empire has been set up to revolve around the Tsar. Everything, everyone, is attached to him. It’s like some huge machine that turns around a single lynchpin. Take that pin out and the whole apparatus will just fly apart.’

Would Russia fly apart? Nicolai didn’t see why. ‘The Duma is there,’ he had said. ‘There are sensible men in it.’

‘Ah, you liberals,’ Alexander had replied with sad affection. ‘You always think people are going to be reasonable.’

The Duma would do very well, in Nicolai’s view. At least for the time being. It was, after all, the nearest thing to a democratic body that Russia possessed. Already it had chosen a group to act as a Provisional Government, and almost all the parties had agreed to support it. Yesterday, he had heard, some of the workers’ leaders and Mensheviks in St Petersburg had formed some sort of workers’ council – a ‘soviet’, they called it. He knew one or two of the leaders, not bad fellows. They could certainly help to restore some order in the factories.

And then there would be progress. The programme of the Provisional Government was already clear – prosecute the war. Everyone except the Bolsheviks agreed to that – and the Bolsheviks didn’t count for much these days. Then move quickly to hold elections to a new Constituent Assembly which would replace the Duma. A full democratic body. One man, one vote. Everyone, left and right, was agreed about that too.

‘I can feel it,’ he murmured, as he gazed into the street. ‘A warm ray of hope.’

And then he saw Alexander.

The fellow was hurrying along, certainly. He had a piece of paper in his hand and he looked excited. This must be it, then: the
formal abdication. With a happy smile, Nicolai prepared to greet him.

So why was the boy frowning? Had the Tsar said something foolish, even now?

‘The abdication came through?’ he enquired.

‘No. The Tsar still can’t bring himself to sign it. But he will. He hasn’t any choice. The army chiefs are telling him to go as well.’

‘Then what’s this?’ Nicolai pointed to the paper.

Alexander handed it to him without a word. And Nicolai read.

It was not long. It was addressed to the Petrograd military garrison, and it contained seven terse clauses.

It told every company to elect committees who would remove control of all arms and equipment from the officers. Officers were no longer to be addressed by honorary titles or saluted off duty. The committees were also to elect representatives to the Petrograd Soviet, which announced that it, and not the Provisional Government, was now the final authority on all military matters.

It was signed by the Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, dated the previous day. And it was headed, simply and without further explanation: Order No. 1.

Nicolai stared at it in disbelief. Then he exploded with laughter.

‘This is absurd! The Petrograd Soviet is just an informal workers’ body. It’s not elected by anyone and has no authority. Nobody’s going to take any notice of it.’

‘But they already are. I’ve been to some of the barracks. They’re all going to comply. Some of them just laughed at me because I was wearing an officer’s uniform.’

‘But the regular troops, our soldiers at the front …’

‘The order’s already on its way to them. I tell you, most of the troops will follow it.’

Nicolai was silent, thunderstruck.

‘Then who’s in charge?’ he cried.

Alexander shrugged.

‘God knows.’

Boris Romanov grunted with satisfaction as he stepped from the shady verandah into the salon. Only the ticking of the clock in its marble case could be heard.

He enjoyed the house with its green walls, its little white portico and its cool interior. He went up every afternoon and sat on the verandah. Once it had belonged to the Bobrovs; then Vladimir Suvorin. And now, to all intents and purposes, it was his. He smiled grimly at the thought. The revolution – his revolution – had finally come.

The last few months at Russka had been strange. News of the Tsar’s abdication and of the new Provisional Government had only filtered slowly through to the provinces. Boris had not known for sure until ten days afterwards. He had met a peasant travelling from Riazan province who, a month later, still refused to believe it.

And what did these events in Petrograd mean? The Provisional Government had promised a Constituent Assembly. Good. There was complete freedom of speech and assembly now. No harm in that. But above all, the fall of the Tsar must mean one thing.

‘Now,’ he told his family, ‘we shall get the land.’

Everyone knew it. The Provisional Government was discussing how it was to be done. All that spring, soldiers had been deserting from the front and making their way home, so as not to miss out on the distribution. Two had appeared back in the village.

But nothing had happened. The Provisional Government, as it did in all things, moved slowly, legalistically and hesitantly.

It was in late April that he had led the villagers onto the estate. It had been very simple. There was nobody to stop them. When he entered the house, only Arina had been there to protest.

‘What right have you got to do this?’

He had grinned. ‘The people’s right.’ And when she had foolishly tried to bar his way, he had just shoved her aside with a laugh. ‘This is the revolution,’ he had told her.

It was a curious situation – as if the place had entered a sort of limbo. Technically the estate still belonged to Vladimir Suvorin, just as did the factories at Russka. But Vladimir was in Moscow now. Arina continued to live in the house; so did her son Ivan, who for the time being continued his woodwork. Meanwhile, the
villagers cut down some of Suvorin’s trees and grazed their cattle on the slope before the house. And who was going to say anything? It was only a question of time before it was all made legal, whatever that might mean.

And as far as Boris Romanov was concerned, this was the revolution.

To others, perhaps, it might involve something more. That very month there had been an attempt to take over the Provisional Government in Petrograd. A madcap plan – an armed rising – by those Bolsheviks. Boris knew about Bolsheviks. They were fellows like that accursed red-head, Popov. They had been growing in numbers lately with their slogan ‘All power to the Soviets’, and their screaming editorials in their paper,
Pravda
. But their revolt had been smashed. One of their leaders, Trotsky, was in jail. Another, Lenin, had fled abroad. ‘And let’s hope that’s the last of them,’ Boris had said.

There was a new man at the head of the government now, a Socialist called Kerensky. He’d called in General Kornilov to restore order. Perhaps he’d speed up the Constituent Assembly and the legalizing of the land distribution, too.

Slowly now Boris mounted the stairs. During the last three months he had examined the house and its contents with interest. There were certainly some strange-looking books and paintings there. The grand piano, however, he had much admired. One of his sons had played a tune on it.

Only today had it occurred to him that there was one part of the house he had never investigated. He would go to the attic.

Rather to his disappointment, however, he found that Suvorin had made no use of it. The long low room under the roof was almost empty, the floorboards bare. Only at one end did he notice, under a small round window, a few dusty old boxes.

With slow deliberation, but not much interest, he opened them, then made a grimace. Papers. Old letters, bills, and other nonsense of the Bobrovs. He shrugged. He couldn’t be bothered to look at them, and he was just about to turn away when he noticed one piece of paper that seemed to be sticking out slightly from the rest. Along the top, he noticed, was a heading: ‘Fire at Russka’.

He frowned and pulled it out, to find another slip of paper folded inside the first. It seemed to be a letter of some sort.

It was signed: Peter Suvorin.

It was one in the morning and they were alone.

The night before, when the Moscow Kremlin had still been holding out, there had been fighting in the streets; but now the city was quiet. In Petrograd and in Moscow, Lenin and his Bolsheviks were now in power.

Or were they?

Popov smiled at Mrs Suvorin, and despite all that was passing, she smiled back. She thought he looked younger.

‘So tell me,’ she said, ‘what really happened.’

And then he laughed.

The world-shattering event known as the October Revolution was, strictly speaking, nothing of the kind. It was a coup by a minority party, about which the majority of the population did not even know.

All through that year of 1917, since the abdication of the Tsar, Russia had staggered along under a strange duality: a Provisional Government, which had little real power, and a Congress of Soviets, which had a growing network of local bases in factory, town and village, but no real legitimacy. Elections were needed to form a democratic Constituent Assembly; but the government, even after its leadership fell upon the popular Socialist, Kerensky, was painfully slow. Meanwhile the economy was collapsing, there were food shortages, and the members of the government themselves were becoming weary.

It was while this government was wavering that the Bolshevik party began to make steady progress in the soviets. In July, foolishly, they had attempted an insurrection which was crushed; but this did not stop their political advance. By the start of September, Trotsky and his Bolsheviks had a majority in the Petrograd Soviet. A few days later, the Bolsheviks also had a majority in Moscow. In the country as a whole, however, they remained in a minority. With time it seemed possible that the Bolsheviks would become the dominant leftist party: but then again they might not. And it was in this rather uncertain situation
that, in the month of October 1917, Lenin with some difficulty persuaded his fellow Bolsheviks to gamble once more on a bid for instant power.

It began on the night of 24 October and it was orchestrated, chiefly by Trotsky, from the former convent and girls’ school, the Smolny Institute, which had become the home of the Petrograd Soviet.

‘And the amazing thing,’ Popov declared, ‘was how easy it all was.’ He grinned: ‘We did the main part by stealth.’

All through the evening the conspirators had done something so simple it was brilliant. They had just gone from one vital installation to another, picketing or taking over, and few of the workers they had relieved had bothered to oppose them. They had already done their best to win the military garrisons over, but they need not have worried, for the military was not much inclined to act, and poor Kerensky failed to make any proper defensive plans. By morning, almost all the city’s key points had been quietly taken over.