Chapter: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
The monstrous atrocity, the Kishinev massacre, cast a dark shadow over the town of Belaya Tserkov. A feeling of despair mixed with fear for their own safety gripped the Jewish population. Rumors of pogroms in different localities were afloat. Any incident, slight as it may have been, was interpreted as a forerunner of a pogrom. Because of such uncertainty, our wedding was postponed for some time. When finally held in June, of 1903, it was, on the insistence of the bride's parents, a “real” wedding with music, big crowds, and all the other attributes of such an event, including a complete bridal attire. It inflated my ego to be asked by my friends, half jokingly and half seriously, “How did you ever manage to catch such a prize of a girl?” And they did not even know the half of it.
It is customary for newlyweds in this country to go to Niagara Falls, Florida, or any place of gaiety in accordance with ones' taste and financial standing. The only waterfalls in European Russia, at the mouth of the Dnieper River, were considered holy ground since Kmelnitzky and his band of robbers once trod there. A Jew would not have been allowed to approach them. The Russian Florida, the Crimea, the playground of the nobility, was of course in the forbidden zone. We could have gone to the gay town of Kiev, only a few miles away, but this would have entailed the necessity of a special permit without which we ran the risk of being arrested and deported. As matters stood at that time, it was better not to try getting a permit, so we stayed home and were happy all the same. Our little house on Zlatopolsky Street became a social center. My wife's brothers came to play chess, to tell stories, and to discuss current events. Her colleagues from school established a literary club with headquarters in our house. Bachelor externs came singly and in groups. In the latter case, they would bring food and sometimes drinks stronger than tea, and we would have a real party.
A frequent visitor was a new arrival, a friend of mine from the Pereyaslav days called Leo Gerstein. He had a rather unusual background. His father was an adventurer, leaving town from time to time, destination unknown. His mother, a swarthy, robust woman, was, according to rumors, a non-Jewish Oriental. The family apparently had ample funds. Gerstein was of dark complexion, heavily built, and a man of few words in contrast to the usual talkative extern, but great in action--determined and fearless. He organized a fairly strong self-defense unit which up to that time had been in an embryonic state and laid the foundation of a revolutionary “cell,” complete with a primitive printing press. Some nights he went out alone, armed only with a heavy cane, to distribute propaganda leaflets in the suburbs inhabited by peasants and laborers. More than once he was attacked by hooligans, repulsing them with more damage to the attackers than to himself, his motto being, “Hit first and don't run.” His life was stormy and his end tragic. At the outbreak of World War I, he was married and living in Petrograd where he was drafted and given the post of an official translator. In 1916, I went to Petrograd, visited him, and was invited to live with him in a two-room apartment until my family arrived. The room assigned to me was scrupulously cleared of all suspicious literature. This turned out to be fortunate. On the third night of my stay, an agent of the Okhrana accompanied by two policemen searched the room and my belongings, ripping the lining of my overcoat. Since they did not find anything illegal and I could prove that I had just arrived, I was freed. Gerstein, however, was arrested, being accused of military conspiracy. He was imprisoned in the formidable Peter and Paul fortress at the banks of the Neva River, a dungeon in which generations of revolutionaries were held, the unruly ones chained to the walls. The revolution freed him. He became a member of the central committee of the Socialist Revolutionist Party, the avowed foes of the Bolsheviks. For a time, he was assistant secretary of war under Kerensky and later was elected a member of the short-lived constituent assembly. With the overthrow of Kerensky's regime, he fought the Bolsheviks on different fronts, was arrested, and taken to the Moscow central prison, the “Butirka.” Here, he committed suicide by setting his mattress on fire.
Living in Russia at that time was like living at the foot of a volcano. One made the best of it, knowing that an eruption might come at any moment. In August 1903, a fearful pogrom broke out in the town of Homel. This highly cultured town was the stronghold of the “Bund,” with a strong resistance organization in which other revolutionary elements were represented. Because of this, the pogrom did not take on such dimensions as in Kishinev. There were at least as many victims in the ranks of the pogromists as among the defenders. At the end of the day, an attachment of troops fired a volley in the direction of the Jews driving them off the streets, thus giving a free hand to the pogromists. The administration accused the Jews of instigating the pogrom and demanded that the names of the organizers of the self-defense unit be revealed lest all the community suffer.
Lesser pogroms were frequent. At the same time, the Ghost of War was stalking the country. The policy of the Czarist regime had been one of expansion since the time of Peter the Great who “cut a window into Europe” by establishing Russia on the shores of the Baltic at the expense of Sweden. Under Catherine the Great, Russia came into possession of the greatest part of Poland and the Crimea, “the brightest jewel in the crown of the Czar.” The Crimean War in 1855 ended in defeat for Russia, while the war with Turkey in 1877-1878 brought no perceptible advantages to a victorious Russia because of Britain's interference, from then on called “Perfidious Albion.” Progress toward the west was checked, and the Czar turned his eyes toward the Far Eastern waste spaces. At the time of the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900, Russia seized Port Arthur in Manchuria and began to build the trans-Siberian railroad, of which Port Arthur was the terminus. This angered Japan who had long considered China her vassal and Manchuria her sphere of influence. Protracted negotiations followed, and war was declared in February of 1904. This brought personal tragedy to the Linetski family. One of the boys, Jacob, was in the reserves. Fearing the draft, he left shortly before war was declared for Germany where an uncle of his was living. This uncle proved to be a rich assimilated Jew who gave the “uncultured” eastern nephew the cold shoulder. The unfortunate fugitive starved, contracted tuberculosis, and died soon upon his return home at the end of the war.
The autocracy made every effort to whip up some enthusiasm for the war. Amnesty was declared for criminals, although not for political prisoners or Jews. Patriotic demonstrations were staged with the slogan, “For the Czar, the holy faith, and the country.” Church bells boomed, priests sprinkled holy water on the marching troops. Icons, crosses, and portraits of the Czar were abundant; guns and cartridges were scarce. Profiteers made the soldiers' boot soles of cardboard and their uniforms of shoddy material. The administration was venal; even the minister of war was tried at the end of the hostilities for taking bribes. A commanding post in the army was in most cases a sinecure with no regard for merit. The Russian army suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of the Japanese, contemptuously called monkeys by the Russians. Port Arthur surrendered after a short siege. The commanding general, Stassel, managed to evacuate his own property and that of his “personal cow” who was allotted a separate railroad car, while all the ammunition was left for the benefit of the Japanese and most of the garrison entrusted to their “generosity.”
The Russian fleet suffered a disastrous defeat at Taushima. The flagship was sunk with all hands aboard. Other vessels were damaged, and the fleet ceased to exist as a combat unit. A scapegoat was badly needed under such circumstances. Rumors were spread that the Jews were helping the “monkeys,” their kinsmen by race, in order to wreak vengeance on the Russian patriots for the Kishinev pogrom. Preposterous accusations were made by the reactionary press, such as that the Jews were buying horses for the enemy, that they were building a cruiser for the Mikado, and so on. It is true that the Jews rejoiced in the defeat of the Russian army, having no enthusiasm to fight for Manchuria where they were not allowed to live, but the same defeatist attitude was also taken by the Russian radicals and liberals. In the midst of war came an event which was the greatest single factor in shattering the regime. This was the bloody Sunday of January 9, 1905. The workers of the greatest industrial plant in Petrograd, the Pritilov heavy machine shop, went to the Winter Palace to petition the “Czar-father” for economic and political reforms. Carrying crosses and portraits of the Czar, they moved in orderly, peaceful fashion under the leadership of the priest Gapon. At that time, he was considered a real revolutionary of no mean ability. In the town of Belaya Tserkov, we sold pictures of him at 50 cents apiece to raise funds for our activities. Later, he was found to be an agent of the Okhrana and was hanged by the revolutionaries. It was never clear whether he intentionally led the procession into a trap or whether he did not realize himself of what treachery the Okhrana was capable. Be that as it may, the crowd of peaceful supplicants was fired upon at the gates of the palace with the Czar watching from a safe vantage point. Hundreds were killed and a great number wounded.
This event destroyed the legend current among the simple and credulous that the Czar cared for his people as a father for his sons and that whatever wrong was done was the fault of his advisers who were false to him. It showed clearly the cowardice, duplicity, treachery, and cruelty of the Czar. Faith in him was gone. It marked the beginning of an open revolution in which social, political, and economic demands were interwoven. Strikes spread all over Russia; demonstrations were frequent, resulting in bloody clashes. College youth were in ferment. Terroristic acts were numerous, the most sensational being the assassination of Grand Duke Sergius, uncle of the Czar and the most hated of the Romanoffs. A student named Kalaev hurled a bomb at his carriage literally tearing him to pieces that gave rise to a pun, “the scatterbrained Duke.”
The administration, unable to cope with the situation, called into being a patriotic organization called the “Black Hundred,” brought to the surface from the lowest depths of the Russian underground. They issued proclamations such as, “Slay the Zhyds and students. Remember Kishinev!” And slay they did. A fierce three-day pogrom occurred in April, 1905, in a big Jewish center called Zhitomir. The pogromists met with stout resistance and many victims fell on both sides, among them a Christian student named Blinov who was tortured and beaten to death because he dared to side with the Jews. It was the first pogrom aimed at the Reds along with the Jews. Pogroms of lesser violence took place in various cities. The Black Hundreds attacked also Christian liberals and radicals and hunted students with intent to kill. It was at that time that the students began to discard their uniforms and change to civilian clothes to avoid recognition.
The revolution was also progressing in our town. The house on Zlatopolsky Street was still a center but of a different kind. My wife and I did not belong officially to any revolutionary party. We were sympathizers or “fellow travelers.” A fellow traveler here in America does not travel at all unless for his own pleasure. A sympathizer in Russia traveled more often than not to Siberia under escort. Our house became what is known in Russia as a “yavka” or rendezvous. A person would appear and be recognized by a prearranged sign. It would then be our duty to bring him in touch with the revolutionary cell, and it would be their task to find a place for him. It was understood that under no circumstances would such a person stay at the house for any length of time. However, at times we could not make the connections needed, and we had to give shelter to an unwelcome guest “volens-nolens.” Once a ferocious looking man carrying a worn valise that I was sure did not contain souvenirs for children had to spend the night in our house. In order to allay our noticeable fears, he pulled out an ugly looking automatic saying, “This will teach them a lesson if they come for me.” It was not very consoling, since we could not possibly cherish the idea of a shooting foray; but, as the Russian saying goes, “If you call yourself a cucumber, you can expect to be pickled at one time or another.” In this business, one developed a fatalistic point of view.
The house eventually became a place for dissemination of propaganda. Not far from our place were the barracks of an infantry regiment. A Jewish soldier named Plich once came to the house and stated that there was a lot of discontent among the soldiers, some of whom might be receptive to revolutionary ideas. I referred him to the “cell” where he was given literature for distribution. Later, he began to bring soldiers to the house for contact and propaganda purposes. It was a risky affair, not free from amusing incidents. The agitator was usually Gerstein, a glib speaker who knew more about revolutionary tactics than anybody else. He also had the advantage of not resembling a Jew, and he spoke without any trace of accent. Once, being engaged elsewhere, he sent a fellow who was a typical Jew with a pronounced accent and Talmudic intonation. Just when he warmed up and began to expound the theory of dialectical materialism as posited by Hegel and Marx, the soldier blurted out, “I am not going to let any Zhyd teach me!” It took a lot of tact and a few glasses of strong tea to pacify him.
It was an ironclad rule that the soldiers must come to the house singly and never during the daytime. Once when I came home unexpectedly, I found the kitchen reeking of tobacco and the little peasant girl of 14 who helped with the housework in tears. When questioned, she admitted that one of the propagandized soldiers came to the house, used our leaflets for rolling cigarettes, and tried to make love to her. Despite such frivolity, he was a reliable, active revolutionary, both then and later when he was out of military service. I remember also another interesting incident of great significance. The soldier was intelligent and receptive; nodding approval while the talk went along political lines. However, when the speaker advocated the redistribution of land to relieve the sufferings of the peasants, he exploded, “Redistribution be damned. Anyone who comes to me with such intentions will be met with an axe!” It later transpired that he and his two brothers possessed jointly more than 200 acres of fertile land. This was the type of person who became known in later years as the “kulack” and who used more than an axe to protect his property.
Such were our activities, which went at a rapid tempo. After the overthrow of the regime in 1917, the archives of the Okhrana were opened and a long list of agents provocateurs was published. I had the surprise of my life when I found among them such names as Azef, Gapon, Malinovsky (a member of the Duma) and Plich, our connecting link with the soldiers. Why he never betrayed us remains a mystery; it was a narrow escape.