Chapter: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
The war was going from bad to worse. On the insistence of the hard-pressed allies, Russia undertook an offensive on June 1916, against the Austrians who had overrun Romania. At first the drive, led by the capable General Bruskov, was a great success. The Austrian army was driven into the Carpathian Mountains, and nearly 400,000 prisoners were taken. However, this was a Pyrrhic victory and actually hastened the disintegration of the Russian army. The lines were greatly extended; ammunition became short; and the food supply was inadequate because of disruption of transportation and criminal negligence of the administration in the interior. Added to this was the fact that the farmers, who could not get any farm equipment or household goods because the industry concentrated on producing armament, were hiding their produce instead of bringing it to market.
The big cities were first to feel the pinch, especially Petrograd, which more than doubled its population during the war and was far removed from the agricultural districts. Food riots became a daily occurrence. Robberies multiplied. Fear and despair gripped the population. It was at that time in December of 1916 that Rasputin, the evil spirit of the monarchy, was killed. He was lured to the palace of Count Usupov, a relative of the Tsar, and there with the aid of Purishkevitz, an extreme rightist in the Duma, clown and leader of the Black Hundred, Rasputin was poisoned and shot. Not sure that he was dead, the plotters carried him to the Neva River and threw him down a prepared hole in the icy cover.
The death of Rasputin had immediate, far-reaching repercussions and hastened the fall of the monarchy by alienating even the staunch monarchists who still had some sense of decency. It was revolting to them to see the Czarina walking at the funeral procession in deep mourning and weeping, and the Tsar carrying, along with the highest dignitaries of the regime, the coffin of a former horse thief, drunkard, and rake. More than a hundred members of the royal family signed a protest condemning the behavior of the Tsar. A plot was disclosed to dethrone Nicholas and replace him by the former commander-in-chief of the Army, his uncle, a cruel and energetic man. Because of this characteristic, he was supposed to be able to cope successfully with the rising tide of the revolution.
The situation in the Army and in the country at large meanwhile became extremely chaotic. The jokes current at that time in Petrograd illustrate the condition of the armed forces. There was the story of two soldiers, the last survivors in a trench, who had some kind of a feud and were bitter enemies in the past. One of them had a rifle; the other was unarmed. The latter became very solicitous about the armed one, giving him part of his meager ration and generally caring about his health by giving him the driest part of the trench. It was not generosity but self-preservation because in case the soldier became sick, the rifle would be transferred to the unarmed one and he would have to fight.
There was also the story of the officer in charge of a trench who ordered the soldiers to applaud as hard as they could to simulate shooting. While these were jokes, the fact is that in many instances the practice was to allow one rifle for two men. Such lack of arms coupled with scarcity of food and inadequate clothing resulted in large-scale desertion. These deserters, along with habitual criminals, terrorized the city and added to the confusion and despair of the hungry people. Strikes and demonstrations in different parts of the city became a daily occurrence. One day in January 1917, such a demonstration was staged in the new village. The police, sensing the coming storm, were apathetic and did not show enthusiasm in dispersing the demonstrators.
When the gendarmes appeared on the scene, shots were exchanged and the demonstrators were stopped at the bridge leading to the city proper. Late at night, I was called to an apartment house populated by workers to render help to an injured person. The injured, a man of many aliases, was known to me as Stepan. Blond, tall, and of unusual physical strength, he was a legendary figure. At the outbreak of the war, he lived in a small town on the border of Germany. When the town was captured by the Germans, Stepan, whose mother was German, was pressed into the Army. There, having been beaten by a German officer for insubordination, he crushed him to death with his bare hands and deserted. For a few days he wandered in the dense forest of this region. Behind the Russian front, he was picked up by a Russian patrol, accused of being a spy, and condemned to death.
While he was in prison awaiting execution, the Germans attacked the town. In the ensuing confusion, the prisoners set fire to the building and dispersed. Stepan again went into hiding and, by devious ways, reached Petrograd. He went to work in a factory in the village and became the head of the union and the moving spirit of revolt in the workers' circle. Now he was in bed with a bullet in his right shoulder. I extracted the bullet without administering an anesthetic, which he refused, saying that a stiff drink would do. We all had a drink and got in a discussion, Stepan having displayed a considerable knowledge of the Marxian dialectic although he never had any schooling to speak of. In parting, I refused the offered fee and assured him that the incident would not be mentioned.
I had some misgivings about this promise, but the police were by that time frightened and lax. When I went to the office the next morning, the policeman on the beat asked me, “How is the baby?” He winked at me and that was that. The little favor I did for Stepan was richly rewarded in the years to come. After the triumph of the Bolsheviks, Stepan was appointed Commissar of the village. As such, he was in position to protect me and be of help to me in more than one way. I was never molested by house and personal search, which were common practices during the civil war. I was allowed a generous ration, which, however meager, was enough to sustain life. If I survived at all in this hungry and cold city where hundreds of thousands died of starvation, it was due to the generosity of Stepan and his successor who replaced him when he went to the front. The demonstration in the village was just a prelude to much wider and bloodier disorders. They were not really organized and directed by some central power. They were spontaneous outbursts by hungry women, rebellious workers, radical students, and Army deserters. The revolution was on the march.