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The summer of 1906 became known in Russia as the “ex” summer, “ex” being an abbreviation for expropriation. After their defeat in the revolution of 1905, the resistance forces lay prostrate and powerless. Some of the leaders, among them Trotsky and Kamenev, then close collaborators of Lenin, were in prison. Stalin was in exile. Punitive expeditions exterminated thousands of active revolutionaries. The terrorist organization, which received a mortal blow through the treachery of Azef, was further weakened during the uprising and the succeeding executions.
There was also the question of funds needed for their activities. It was a costly affair to smuggle arms from abroad and to maintain an illegal printing press. Revolutionaries like any other mortals, needed money to live on. While the revolution was in the upsurge, funds were forthcoming from sympathizers, some of whom were very rich. The millionaire manufacturer, Morozov, contributed large sums of money to the cause of revolution.
He hated the regime that hampered the expansion of industry. Others contributed because they wanted to be on good terms with the revolutionaries just in case they came out the victors. During the Moscow insurrection, we in Belaya Tserkov collected considerable sums of money for its support. The same went on in other communities. With reaction triumphant, the flow of money ceased. It was too dangerous for both collector and contributor. Because of this, the revolutionaries resorted to forcible means to secure the needed funds.
Thus came into being the expropriation of banks, post offices, and other government establishments, private enterprises alone being spared. The most sensational “ex” occurred in the town of Tiflis, Georgia. One day an armored car carrying close to a million rubles left the central bank. A few armed men, some in the uniforms of guards, surrounded the car. Close behind them was an “officer” on a white horse.
To the onlookers, it appeared as though the guards were protecting the car. Before anybody could realize what was going on, the car was forced open, and a sack containing the money was seized by the “officer.” There was some shooting, and a few of the expropriators and some of the bystanders were killed. The money disappeared. For some time it was stored in the home of the Governor himself through the complicity of his valet. Later, some of the money was smuggled abroad. Maxim Litvinov was arrested in Paris for passing bills from this loot. The organizer of this spectacular “ex” was Stalin. The officer was his closest friend, the most daring of revolutionaries, called Kemo.
Less important expropriations became a frequent occurrence. In time, professional “hold-up” men muscled in, robbing indiscriminately both government and private enterprises. The line of demarcation between revolutionaries and plain robbers became obliterated. The “ex” was discredited, and the revolutionary press issued warnings not to participate in any further acts. It was during this period that a man of unmistakably Jewish appearance came to see me. He gave his name as Mark and told me that he had to lie low for a while and that Svetlana (an uncommon woman’s name in Russian) gave him my name. This was a prearranged signal. I did not ask him any questions, and he did not volunteer any further information. The next day, a room was found for him. Ten days passed without incident, and then it came.
The local bank was robbed of more than 35,000 rubles. From what I knew then and found out later, this was the situation. Mark contacted a local revolutionary, “Sasha” by name, who was both active and daring. The latter enrolled his cousin, a railroad worker, and two other men. The bank was on the upper floor of a two-story building. The front entrance was from the street; the back door opened into a narrow alley on the other side of which was the house of a Jewish family named Tartakover. There were two boys in the family. The younger was a clerk in the bank. He was the “finger.” The older one was to be on the alert to receive the money and to shelter Mark, conditions permitting. One man was unobtrusively stationed at the front door, the other at the back. Their task was to protect Mark when he came out. The rest, all of them masked, entered the bank.
At the time, there were few patrons in the bank, among them my father-in-law. They were ordered to raise their hands and not to move. Mark forced the cashier to open the strong box whose contents he emptied into a bag. Meanwhile, one of the patrons made a move toward the open window. A shot rang out. The bullet missed, and the man jumped, suffering a fracture of both legs. The shot gave the alarm. Mark rushed out through the back door, threw the money over the fence, and now unmasked began to run with a crowd in pursuit. He zigzagged until he finally emerged in Zlatopolsky Street. As fate would have it, he reached the gate to our house; and there, entirely exhausted by the long run, leaned for a moment on the fence and shot himself.
Sasha and his cousin ran in different directions. Sasha was hit by a brick thrown by one of the pursuers, fell to the ground, and was captured. His cousin shot it out, wounded a policeman, and was killed. The other two escaped. The fact that Mark stopped at my house and killed himself was incriminating, but still worse was the fact that any investigation could have established my close relations with him. What saved me and a number of other people was something I did not know at that time. Sasha was a close relative of the chief of police, and it was not to his interest to delve into the plot. Sasha was promptly disposed of by being shot in what was presumably an attempt to escape, and the case was presented to the higher authorities as a robbery by professionals.
Mark's real name was Boris Levinson, son of a rich Siberian merchant. He was incriminated in a revolutionary act, expelled from the University of Tomsk, Siberia, and in some devious way reached Belaya Tserkov. Tartakover, Sr., found the money and claimed that only 8,000 rubles were in the loot. He sent the money to a prearranged person in Kiev, but it never reached its destination. The messenger, an old-time “sympathizer,” disappeared with the money and was never heard from. About one year after Mark's death, his mother came to town and erected an expensive monument on his grave. At the same time, the Tartakovers were building themselves an expensive house. Thus, three good men died in vain.
When the excitement caused by the “ex” subsided with no evidence of any investigation, I left Belaya Tserkov and went to Kiev. My wife joined me shortly, and a new struggle for existence began. Fortunately, my wife obtained a teacher's position in a professional school of the same type in which she had worked before. I also had a good break. A gymnasium teacher of Latin, to whom I was introduced by a friend, recommended me to some of his backward pupils. My income was not great and not too steady either. It was also hard to combine the strenuous study of medicine with the work of a tutor, especially since Latin was not my strong point, but I managed it and actually we did not suffer great privation. The cost of living for an unpretentious student was not high. We had our dinner in an all-Jewish student restaurant at a very low cost, and those who could not pay had it free, since the restaurant was supported by the Jewish community. The food was good and served in grand style.
Tea and bread were free of charge and available to all students. Some Gentile students availed themselves of this opportunity, and some came regularly to drink tea and to play chess. One of the most frequent visitors was a student named Bogolubov with whom I played chess a great deal and who later became the world's chess champion for a time. Tuition was a great problem, but one could borrow the money from a students' treasury. The last two years of my study, I also had a stipend from a fund established by the local millionaire, Brodsky, for three meritorious, needy students. We lived in one room in the home of a family of intellectuals. One of the girls worked with my wife; she was a bundist-nationalist. Another was a medical student who later married David. The son was a brilliant student on the mathematics faculty. Visitors would come to the house to drink tea and to discuss current events guardedly. Occasionally, a new book was read. Sholom Aleichem was read for relaxation, and it never failed to evoke laughter and merriment. It was a pleasant place to live, its only drawback being that the apartment was on the sixth floor with no elevator.
Our main amusement was the theater, especially the opera. Students were privileged to buy cheap tickets in the gallery. When one got a seat in the topmost row in the gallery it was difficult to see what was going on on the stage, but the cheapness compensated for this; and there was also the advantage of being able to relax. Once, when I was very tired and my shoes of cheap leather a size too small were vexing me, I allowed myself the pleasure of taking off the shoes. The student next to me followed my example promptly, and we had a good time even though we could not distinguish between Faust and Mephistopheles. When a celebrity appeared at the opera for a performance, it was very hard to get tickets, and students would form a line 24 hours prior to the opening of the doors. Through various manipulations, we succeeded in gaining entrance to the opera for the performance of Chaliapin, Tchaikovsky, Nijinski, and Isadora Duncan. Life was good at times, especially during the first two years of my student days. Politically, these years, coming in the wake of the defeated revolution, were the most repressive. It was the period of the reign of the so-called “dark forces.” The camarilla, headed by Rasputin, was the real power behind the throne. Rasputin, born Gregory Novik of peasant extraction, was totally uneducated and illiterate. In his native village in Siberia he had the reputation of a drunkard, libertine, and thief.
When caught in the act of stealing a horse, he was beaten and expelled from the community. In his wanderings, he reached some obscure monastery where immorality was practiced in abhorrent forms, and there he got his title of “monk.” An outstanding characteristic was his almost superhuman power over women. The fair sex from the humblest peasant woman to the highest on the social scale succumbed to him. It has been said that his magnetic eyes fascinated them, but skeptics claimed that his eyes had nothing to do with his powers of conquest. In some devious way, Rasputin reached the capitol. It did not take long before he became the idol of the noblewomen, the wives and daughters of high officials who overlooked the disgrace of their women in order to get into the good graces of the powerful Rasputin. One of his greatest admirers and a constant visitor to his sumptuous apartment where bacchanalian scenes took place was the Grand Duchess Virubova, the favorite lady in waiting of the Tsarina. Virubova introduced Rasputin to the Court, and the ignorant and superstitious Tsarina fell under his spell. She was not his mistress. He wielded his power over her in a conspiracy with Virubova. The life of the Tsarina revolved around the safety of her son, Alexis, the heir to the throne. He was a sickly boy and a hemophiliac. Whenever Rasputin was away from the court, Alexis would become sick because Virubova put harmful ingredients in his food.
Rasputin would be summoned hastily and the health of the Tsarevich restored. Once, when Alexis was ready to go for his meal in his private dining room, Rasputin issued a warning of impending danger. A few minutes later, a heavy chandelier hanging over the table, having been tampered with by Virubova, fell down, crushed the table, and wounded a servant. Thus the reputation of Rasputin as a savior and miracle worker was enhanced until his power became limitless. Under his influence the second Duma, which opposed the regime more strongly than the preceding one had and which also castigated and ridiculed Rasputin, was dissolved. The pretext was a trumped-up military conspiracy. This “coup d’etat” took place in June 1907, after two months of the existence of the Duma. The liberal electoral law was then changed in a way which opened the door wide for the conservatives and reactionaries and barred liberals and leftists from being elected. The “center” of the third or “Black Duma” consisted of conservatives called “Octobrists” because they paid lip service to the October Manifesto or whatever was left of it. The Cadets were almost entirely out.
The Black Hundred constituted a big majority. A few Socialists were elected, among them an agent of the Okhrane, Malinovsky, who was encouraged to make fiery Jacobin speeches to justify the oppressive measures of the regime. Two Jews were also elected. They were never allowed to speak from the rostrum because of the obstruction of the Blacks. They were called Zhyds and made fun of by the deputy Purishkevich, the blackest of the Black. He clowned, using such exclamations as “Oi vey iss mir” (woe is me) and “Gevalt ratevet mir” (please save me) accompanied with improper gestures. The Duma prompted the government to use more and more restrictive measures and violence toward Jews, students, and radicals. Not that the government needed prompting. The minister of interior, Stolypin, was a worthy disciple of Plehve. His rule was symbolized by the common expression, “Stolypin's necktie” (hangman's noose). But even he did not satisfy the Black Hundred. The silence of the grave dominated the country. The jails and gallows became the emblem of governmental authority. It was this condition that compelled Leo Tolstoy to publish his famous letter, “I Cannot Keep Silent,” in which he condemned the regime in no ambiguous words. Even the bloody autocracy dared not punish him directly, but he was excommunicated by the Church--he who was the most Christian of all people who accepted Christ--and kept under police surveillance.
The life of Tolstoy was bitter enough. Of all his family, only his daughter Tatayana was in sympathy with him. His wife, Sophia Andreevna, was bitter because he, the descendent of the greatest ancient nobility, dressed himself like a peasant, tilled the land, refused to meet her noble friends, and spent a lot of time with a neighboring shoemaker and with a Jewish rabbi who taught him Hebrew. The fact that he refused to accept money for his later writings was the greatest of his sins in her opinion. The oldest son, Ilya, was very antagonistic. One time he and his mother plotted to have Tolstoy declared insane. This was too much for him. One stormy winter night in 1910 he left his beloved estate, “Yasnaya Polyana,” the Mecca of admirers the world over to become a wanderer at the age of 82. He reached a station a few miles away, was taken ill with pneumonia and died. The rebel found eternal rest in his beloved soil.