Chapter: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
The war with Japan continued, conducted with the same inefficiency, incompetence, corruption, and treason. The destruction of the fleet at Tsushima necessitated its replacement. Taking the remainder of the fleet as a nucleus, the new commander, an inept relic called Rosdestvensky, tried to strengthen it with battleships from the Baltic and Black Seas. Most of these were obsolete vessels with antiquated guns. On the long, circuitous route to the ocean, some ships were stalled in different harbors; others were tampered with by mutinous sailors and damaged beyond repair. The rest were intercepted by the Japanese and swiftly destroyed. The army suffered defeat at Mukden, an event laid at the door of the official observer at the front, Manacevitz-Manuilov, an international swindler, blackmailer, and adventurer--a protégé of the infamous Rasputin, “the boss of the imperial house.” At the beginning of the war, he got hold of the Japanese code, thus being able to give some useful information to the Russians. The Japanese authorities, however, soon learned that their code was known and changed it. Manuilov, facing the loss of large sums of money for his dispatches, continued to supply the authorities with false information that he fabricated. With the defeat at Mukden, hostilities were over. Peace negotiations began with Theodore Roosevelt as mediator. Peace was concluded in September 1905, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Russia lost all her gains in the Far East and conceded to Japan half of the Island of Sakhalin.
Demobilization was conducted with habitual inefficiency. Derailments and collisions were numerous. Trains were so slow that thousands of impatient soldiers left the trains to become marauders, terrifying the countryside. When locked in the cars, the soldiers would overpower or even kill the commanding officers and then disperse. Hungry, dejected, soldiers committed acts of violence, robbery, and even staged pogroms in the towns they passed. When a train was due to come through Belaya Tserkov, a reception committee was formed by the indomitable Gerstein with some of the propagandized soldiers participating. The train was met at the station by a hastily improvised band, a greeting of welcome was given, and food and non-intoxicating drinks were served. The soldiers were mollified, moving through the town in orderly fashion with no unpleasant incidents. However, they gave vent to their pent-up grievances at the next station, a little community called Fastov, by looting and killing a few Jews.
Demobilization added greatly to the general confusion and unrest. The authority of the bureaucracy was at low ebb. The usually timid liberals joined the stream of the rebellion (verbally, at least), and a deputation was dispatched to the court asking for reforms. A liberal paper came out with the slogan, “We need no reforms; what we need is A reform” (meaning a constitution). The “Black Hundred,” which had been called into being by the autocracy to stem the revolutionary tide, proved to be a Frankenstein that could not be controlled. They reverted to type. They beat the students and the Jews to be sure, but they also committed acts of robbery, rape, and murder. Rival gangs fought between themselves and also battled the police. The situation became chaotic and the autocracy was forced to give way. The reactionary cabinet was dismissed and a new one formed under Witte, a man purported to be of German-Jewish ancestry, capable, energetic, and an opportunist. Under his direction, a constitution was made public providing a truncated Imperial Duma with advisory functions.
Some liberties were granted. Most important among them was academic self-government. The autonomous professional council lifted all restrictions with regard to the Jews. A wave of agitated Jews, hundreds of former externs including myself, were drawn into the whirling sea of the Russian student body. One of the Linetski boys, Shulim, had entered the University earlier the same year in the “norm,” having graduated from the gymnasium first in his class with a gold medal. It turned out that unfortunately he would not be able to take advantage of his opportunity. He was already carrying the germs of tuberculosis, which were to cut his life short. However, at that time nobody suspected this, and we had a gay party with some drinking, much story telling, and singing of the “International” alternatively with “Hatikva” for the benefit of the oldest of the boys, the Zionist, Leo. Shulim and I were presented with shiny student caps; and a few days later, having dusted off my diploma, I left for Kiev to enter the University and a new career as a doctor, sharing in this respect the aim of the overwhelming majority of Jewish students. As a few generations earlier, the cherished hope of every parent was to see his son become a rabbi, so now the coveted aim was to have his son become a doctor. The price of a doctor on the “match market” was the highest. Not that the Jewish students had a predilection toward medicine. The move was not idealistic but prosaic. A Jewish lawyer was barred from the courts until he served as an apprentice for five years; even then, very few were admitted to the bar. An engineer could not hope to get a position in an industrial plant. A teacher would have to depend on employment by some government agency that was out of the question. A doctor, however, was independent. He was free to hang his shingle and hope for the best in any city in Russia outside of Siberia, where a Jew could live only as an exile. Some doctors were also employed by the “Zemstvos,” a self-governing body of landowners, largely of liberal tendencies, who taxed themselves in order to establish hospitals and schools in rural communities.
The University of St. Vladimir was situated on a street of the same name. Just across from the University was an imposing monument of the “Iron Tsar,” Nicholas the First. Not far away was the statue of Bogdan Kmelnitzky on horseback. There was also in this street the magnificent opera house. The main building on the University grounds was a big three-story, ugly structure bearing more resemblance to a barracks than to an institution of learning. It was painted red. Such an unusual color in a lovely city was explained by the fact that when Nicholas I inspected the building just after it was built, he blurted out, “A red color will do.” Red it was for nearly 100 years. The whim of a Tsar was a law to be obeyed, as shown by another incident. It was once reported to Nicholas that a noble courtier had seduced a lady in waiting. His resolution read that the scoundrel was to be exiled, and the lady was to be considered a virgin. And so she was.
The interior of the University was as forbidding as its exterior. The lecture rooms were small, badly lighted, and poorly ventilated. The walls were bare; the floor was of dirty asphalt. I was, however, little concerned with the looks of the University. Important was the fact that I was in. The University was formally opened on the first day of October 1905. The speech of greeting was delivered by a famous liberal professor, Count Trubetzkoy. It ended with the words, “The University is free; the country is not.” This statement was met with wild cheers and prolonged applause by the majority of the students, by whistles and catcalls from the ranks of the Black Hundred. The lecture hall was filled with pandemonium, curses, abuse, and fist fights. The next day, the disorders continued and the doors of the University were closed, not to be opened for a year. Students held an open meeting of protest on the street. They armed themselves with bricks from a building being erected on the grounds and threw up a barricade of logs. A police detachment was unable to cope with the situation. Then the Cossacks, “the watch dogs of the Tsar,” arrived. Their magnificent swift horses took the primitive barricades in stride, and the riders began to lash the students with their inseparable “nahaikes,” short whips with thongs loaded with lead. Some students were wounded, others were arrested, and the rest fled.
Student disorders spread to nearly all institutions of learning. Workers went on strike in factories and railroads, government employees joined, and the strike became general. Autocracy recoiled before the revolutionary tempest but secretly prepared a blood letting of a magnitude never before witnessed. On October 17, 1905, an imperial manifesto was published establishing a Duma as a legislative center and granting all the desired liberties to the populace. It was a day of indescribable joy and excitement. In Belaya Tserkov, I saw strangers congratulating and kissing each other. Orthodox Jews went to the synagogues to pray. The radical elements paraded the streets with red flags singing revolutionary songs. It was the general belief that autocratic Tzardom was vanquished and that liberty reigned supreme. The very next day, joy was turned to horror. The massacre of the forces of liberty and the extermination of the Jews began according to plan. Pogroms differing in fury spread all over Russia and lasted for seven days. The most atrocious occurred in Odessa where at least 300 Jews were killed and twice as many wounded. Belaya Tserkov was not spared, although the pogrom was limited in scope. These atrocities differed from previous ones in that soldiers and policemen openly participated, and the defenders obviously could not withstand attack by rifles and sabres. Students and radicals also suffered.
This sinister counter-revolution, coming directly upon the issuing of the manifesto aroused the indignation and hatred of all decent elements. The liberals, organized at that time in a party called “Constitutional Democrats” or “Cadets,” made sharp protestations. Political and economic strikes assumed a character of anarchy. To bring order, a council of workers and peasants called a “Soviet” was established in St. Petersburg under the leadership of Trotsky who had slipped into the country from abroad. For a time, the Soviet was the actual ruler of the town. Similar soviets were established in a number of cities. A peasant movement arose accompanied by burning of estates and manors and the seizure of land. A separatist movement developed in Finland and the Baltic states. In December, Moscow witnessed an armed insurrection lasting for 10 days with barricades and all the paraphernalia of a popular revolution. The autocracy was in an agonized condition; but as long as the Cossacks, the officer core, and the soldiers at large were loyal to the government, the revolution could not win. The Soviet members were arrested; the Moscow rebellion quelled with thousands of insurgents shot without trial. Punitive expeditions were sent into the countryside under the direction of General Kurlov, a bloodthirsty sadist who left a trail of blood wherever he went. Thousands of Jews, intellectuals, strikers, and common peasants were shot or hanged. Historians claim that the French General Gallifet, who suppressed the Paris commune in 1870, gave orders to shoot everybody with calloused hands. Kurlov went him one better. He shot everybody on sight. It is estimated that at least 200,000 perished in the course of his expeditions.
Election into the Duma under a reign of terror did not arouse any enthusiasm. The masses were indifferent. The parties of the left boycotted the elections. The Black Hundred resorted to violence and intimidation but did not elect a single deputy. When the Duma was convened on April 27, 1906, it was composed almost entirely of “Cadets.” An old-time liberal, president of the Zemstvos League, was elected president. Outstanding figures were Paul Milukov, a student of international affairs, a noted historian and scholar, and the Russian Mirabeau, the “golden tongued” Rodichev. The Jews elected 12 deputies, among them the internationally known jurist, Winaver, and Dr. Levin, a Zionist leader. The delegates to the Duma were animated, the speeches superb, the criticism of the autocracy violent, the legislative measures adopted, beneficial. Unfortunately, they were not carried out because they were not approved by the Tsar, or rather by the camarilla which was under the influence of Rasputin (whose real name was Novick; Rasputin means a libertine and rake). When equal rights for Jews was proposed, the Tsar was supposed to have said, “So long as I am Tsar of Russia, no Zhyd will have any rights.” On July 7, the Duma, aroused by a fearful pogrom in Byalistock, passed a resolution violently denouncing the policy of the government as one of oppression and extermination. This created a situation unprecedented in the history of civilized countries. The next day, the Duma was dissolved by an Imperial ukase after having been in existence less than three months. The deputies went, to Viborg, Finland, and issued a manifesto exhorting the population to refuse to pay taxes and to rise to the defense of their national assembly. The manifesto had virtually no effect; the country was deeply immersed in gloom and apathy.
A feeling of frustration and hopelessness also permeated our personal life. The house on Zlatopolsky Street ceased to be a center. The former externs, now students without a place of study, dispersed. Gerstein disappeared, destination unknown. I suspected at that time, and it was confirmed by him years later, that it was because of a casualty within the ranks of the pogromists. Propaganda was both dangerous and futile. At the same time, a series of calamities befell the Linetski family. Jacob, who had fled to Germany, came back a sick man and died shortly afterward. Shulim now showed marked signs of the same, then deadly disease, tuberculosis. The youngest son, David, an impressionable boy, then a senior in the gymnasium, became morose and apathetic. He spent a great deal of time at his brother's grave, began to write decadent poetry, lost interest in his studies, and quit school altogether to the despair of his father. Mr. Linetski, who was becoming markedly senile, lost his equanimity, displayed very little tolerance toward the unhappy David, and tried to find solace in religion with no great success.
At that time, little was known about the nature of tuberculosis, diagnostically or therapeutically. Sanatoria were practically non-existent and rest cure unrecognized. Stress was laid upon excessive nourishment and climatic conditions. Places with an abundance of pine trees were considered particularly beneficial. Midway between Belaya Tserkov and Kiev was a summer resort situated in a forest of ancient pines. On hot days, the air saturated with the emanation of pines became so dense that you could “cut it with a knife,” a condition which was more harmful than beneficial to a person with diseased lungs. It was decided to send Shulim to the resort for the summer. My wife, who had a strong sense of duty and readiness for sacrifice, volunteered to take care of him despite my feeble protestations. It was there that she most likely contracted the disease that caused her long-suffering and untimely death.
It was a bad time for me. I was isolated, worried about my wife, and greatly disturbed over David who came to live with me in order to avoid friction at home that tended to aggravate his condition. He was very melancholy, adopted Tolstoy's philosophy of non-resistance, became a vegetarian, and wrote poetry with morbid and suicidal tinge. Suddenly there came an event fraught with mortal danger to me. It was a fearful terroristic act committed in Belaya Tserkov in which I became indirectly involved. My former revolutionary sins had caught up with me.