Chapter: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Tolstoy was the last of a trio including Dostoevsky and Turgenev who raised Russian literature to a height second to none. Other great talents, Gorky, Chekhov, and a number of lesser luminaries enriched the Russian literature. All these writers differed in talent, and their works are of unequal importance, but all of them possessed two characteristics in common--they all resisted despotism. Dostoevsky paid for it with years of hard labor in the Siberian mines, the “katorga.” Turgenev spent most of his life in involuntary exile in France. Tolstoy was persecuted and driven from his home. Another common trait was that they did not treat sex in a way that appeals to the lower instincts of men. Love is a motive in most of their novels, but lovemaking is neither emphasized nor glorified. Women were put on a pedestal. A mother was sacred. A striking example is Gorky's novel, “The Mother.” A wife, even if not beyond reproach, was treated with respect.
Anna Karenina takes a lover, but she is certainly not a degraded woman. The lowly prostitute was pictured as a victim of men's temperament under unfavorable circumstances, not to be condemned and despised but rather to be sympathized with. Sonia Marmeladova in “Crime and Punishment” by Dostoevsky is a sensitive, delicate, decent girl who sacrifices herself for the sake of a drunken father and a sick sister. Kuprin in his novel “The Pit” (the actual name of the red-light district in Kiev) tells the story of a student and a prostitute named Luba. The student, not unlike the “regretting noblemen” of old strives to atone for his sins and those of others who have degraded and mistreated these girls. He takes Luba out of the house of prostitution and marries her. The experiment ends in failure through no fault of Luba’s, and the sympathies of the author are clearly with the girl and not with the “noble” student. In Tolstoy's “Resurrection,” the hero follows the prostitute Katia to Siberia because he caused her downfall in times past.
During the time of deep reaction, another type of literature came into being. It extolled sex in its crudest forms. Representative of this literature was a novel called “Sanin,” by Artsybashev, a writer of some talent. Sanin is a cynic and egotist who ridicules all principles. His life revolves around the “sex pole,” as one critic put it. He drinks vodka from wine glasses, brays like a stallion at the sight of a woman and makes love indiscriminately. His own sister is to him a “beautiful mare” whom he tries to take by force in a state of drunkenness. The company he keeps consists of libertines and promiscuous women, all of the intelligentsia. There is neither dignity nor shame. They do not care for privacy in their intimate relations. Satiety brings about deterioration, despondency, apathy, and suicide. A group of students published a protest directed toward Artsybashev, the slanderer. His reply was curt: “Do not blame the mirror if your face is ugly.” He was partially right.
Society at that time was governed by two slogans coined in France at the time of the Restoration: “Enrich yourself” and “Enjoy yourself.” A host of schemers, promoters, dishonest contractors, and venal officials appeared on the scene, getting rich and spending lavishly and ostentatiously while multitudes starved. Former radicals and revolutionaries became cynics caring for nothing but their enjoyment. Drunkenness and sexual indulgence increased among the students while their spirit of rebellion was dampened. The red-light district spread out of bounds. Dens of prostitution for women of society appeared all over town. During raids, numerous places, richly furnished, were discovered where albums of women, married and single, were kept for the benefit of patrons who could select for a fee the choicest women for their pleasure. One popular young professor committed suicide because the picture of his fiancée was found in one of the albums.
Such a state of affairs did not directly concern the circle in which we revolved. We had neither the means nor the inclination for such a life. My wife and I had enough worries of our own. The year 1908, the third year of my studentship, was one of the hardest. The study of medicine became more arduous because of the subject matter and the necessity of attending clinics situated far apart. This consumed a great deal of time and left very little leisure for the delicate task of earning a living. Shulim’s condition worried us greatly. The summer of 1907, he spent in a newly founded quasi-sanatorium in the pine forest. It consisted of a few portable tents inadequately protected from changes of weather. The patients were obliged to fold and unfold the tents and were forced to take long walks. It was a preposterous idea and did a great deal of harm. His condition became worse, and it was decided to send him to the Crimea. There were two weighty obstacles--lack of money and the necessity of obtaining a license to live in this guarded, forbidden zone.
A student friend of Shulim's had ideas. The problem of a license, he said, could be solved by a bribe. The money he believed we could procure from the local millionaire and philanthropist, Brodsky. Inquiry showed that he was abroad; but the student, nothing daunted, decided to try our luck with his son-in-law, Baron Ginsburg. It took some effort to get an audience with the august Baron, but one morning we were admitted to his home. It was the first and the last time I had a glimpse into the home of a millionaire, and it took my breath away. The Baron met us in his breakfast nook that was the size of a dance hall. We put the matter before him saying that he could save a life for as cheap as 300 rubles. “Well,” said the Baron, “I am leaving for Monte Carlo. If I win, I will send you 500.” The quick-witted student retorted, “Give us the 300 rubles now, Baron, and we shall pray for you to win so that you may send us the rest.” The Baron laughed and even condescended to tell us some incidents from his student days. The next morning his secretary handed us 300 rubles together with a letter to an influential person in Yalta, Crimea. Shulim was never bothered during his stay there.
It was shortly after this that I was taken ill with an inflammatory process of the middle ear belatedly diagnosed. An emergency operation saved my life. The danger was over, but the wound did not heal and left me very weak. I lost a year in my studies. How we managed to live through this year I cannot understand to this day. I would have dropped my studies altogether if it had not been for my wife who consoled me, encouraged me, and urged me to continue. The next three years were full of hardship, increasing toil and privations. In 1910, my wife was with child. It was no longer possible to live with the friendly family, and we parted to our mutual regret. We rented a small apartment and took in boarders, students of my former extern friends. Luckily, I received at that time a stipend, one of three established by the philanthropist Brodsky for meritorious, needy students. A man named David Zaslovsky, the brother of one of my wife's colleagues in school, was co-editor of a liberal newspaper in Kiev. He offered me the job of reporting University news. Because of censorship, the important news was barred. The rest was of little interest, and the compensation was meager. (Zaslovsky, by the way, became the official mouthpiece of the Bolshevik paper, “Pravda” (Truth). His writings have been quoted and criticized innumerable times in the American press. From time to time, I would get a remunerative pupil. With all that, life was precarious in the extreme.
On the political side, the outstanding event was a land reform promulgated by Stolypin. It was this reform which made the Civil War so obstinate and bloody. Upon the emancipation of the serfs, land was given to the peasants, not in private ownership but on a communal basis, the land being parceled out by the commune to individual families in accordance with their size. Since no family was stationary any length of time, subdivisions were effected every five years. The tilling of the land was also communal although this was not obligatory. The commune was allowed a degree of self-government through periodical meetings called “Skhodka” at which time commune needs were discussed and an elder called “Starosta” was elected for a certain term. It was because of such a state that the “Narodniki” or Socialist Revolutionaries believed that the peasants would accept Socialism, a most important point of controversy with the Social Democrats. Under the reform, semi-self-government was restricted, and the peasants were now encouraged to leave the commune and to settle on individual farms to which additional land was granted and a number of privileges extended. Thus, in time, a well-to-do class of peasants called “Kulaks” was created. These were the ones who resisted collectivization with all possible means. It was a fight to the finish, and they were the losers.
While the land reform was an important phase of the regime, its main effort was bent toward the abolition of every vestige of freedom still in existence and to the further oppression of the Jews. The school norm was now extended to include the preparatory schools and the externs. Since there never were any Christian externs, it was tantamount to sealing the loophole through which some Jews had managed to slip into the universities. The right of Jewish soldiers to live in the Far East was abrogated. Thousands of families were expelled from the big cities under one pretext or another. More and more restrictive measures tending to make of the Jews real pariahs were prepared by the Black Duma, such as the exclusion of Jews from military service and their total elimination from the schools of higher learning. The word “Zhyd” and the adjective “Zhydovsky” along with other scurrilous epithets became common usage in the Duma and from there spread all over the country. In 1911, the position of the Jews in Russia became still more precarious because of two events that took place in Kiev.
One was the famous Beiliss process, manufactured by the local Black Hundred and aided by their accomplices in the Duma. A Russian boy from a family belonging to a band of thieves and burglars was murdered because he knew too much. His body was found in the neighborhood of a brick kiln belonging to a poor simple Jew called Beiliss. This afforded the anti-Semites the opportunity of bringing forward the old charge of ritual murder. The efforts of the Black Hundred and government officials to implicate Beiliss were not successful. A number of press reporters and amateur sleuths appeared on the scene spreading false rumors and inventing non-existent evidence. Among them was one named Brazol who is credited with the fabrication of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” which stirred the anti-Semites of this country including the late Henry Ford. For two years, a wild anti-Semitic campaign was carried on among the so-called better classes, on the street, in the Black press, and in the Duma. Paraphrasing the dictum of the Roman censor Cato, “Carthago est delenda” (Carthage must be destroyed), Purishkevich, called Haman by the Jews, repeated again and again, “Beiliss must be punished and with him all the Jews.”
On the other hand, the liberals bent all their efforts to show his innocence, and the best legal minds of both Christians and Jews came to his defense. The trial took place in 1913, and Beiliss was acquitted despite the fact that the judges were rabid anti-Semites and the jury consisted mainly of illiterate persons who believed in the ritual murder legend. Beiliss went into hiding for fear of being murdered and later found his way to the States. His trial was in some ways analogous to that of the Dreyfus affair a few years previously. Both of the men were innocent. It was in both cases a fight between the liberal-minded and the forces of reaction. An attack with intent to kill one of the defenders was made in Paris and in Kiev. The main difference was that the Jews in France did not suffer as a result of the Dreyfus process, while the trial of Beiliss imperiled the entire Jewish population of Russia.
The other event was the assassination of Stolypin in the Opera House in the presence of the Tsar and the dignitaries of the state. The assassin was a student called Bogrov, the son of a rich baptized Jew. The motive of this act was not entirely clear. Some believed that he belonged to a terrorist organization. Another version was that the assassin was an agent of the Okhrane. This was more likely, since otherwise it would hardly have been possible for him to gain admission to the theater, which was so well guarded against intrusion. Because Bogrov was of Jewish extraction, it produced a paroxysm of fury in the camp of the anti-Semites who lost in the person of Stolypin an exalted patron. Preparations were openly made for the massacre of the Jews. However, a pogrom on a large scale did not materialize, most likely because of the presence of accredited members of foreign embassies. In addition, the chief of police was heavily bribed, and his pogromist ardor cooled perceptibly. Numerous arrests were made and I, for reasons unknown to me, was also caught in the net and led to the precinct jail after a perfunctory search was made of the apartment.
I was locked in a room that was intended for the accommodation of 20 people to judge by the number of bunks, but there were already at least twice as many persons in it. It was a mixed crowd of different nationalities, ages, and social standing. Students prevailed, but there were also workers, merchants, a doctor, and, of all people, an old cantor who bewailed the fact that he had not been allowed to take his phylacteries. The room was bare except for a rickety table and one long bench. In one corner was a wooden vessel containing water with a rusty tin cup chained to it. In another corner stood a larger vessel called in jail jargon, “Parasha,” for the benefit of those who needed to relieve themselves during the night. The windows were barred with an aperture on top for ventilation. The air was suffocating and the stench unbearable.
Since I was a latecomer, I had no place to sleep. I could hardly have slept anyway under these conditions, worried as I was for my wife who was left with a baby and no monetary resources. We were given two meals a day consisting of watery soup, black bread, and barely sweetened tea. We were allowed 15 minutes during the day for “recreation” and a breath of fresh air in the enclosed court. The two fellows who carried out the “Parasha” were given 15 minutes extra. Because of this privilege, the number of volunteers was so great that lots were cast for the right of performing the task. During the day we occupied ourselves with story telling and chess playing, the pieces being modeled of bread by an ingenious student. We abstained from any discussions for fear that there might be spies who were usually planted in jails where “politicals” were kept.
There was one tragicomic incident. According to the jail routine, every morning the names of the prisoners were called from a list of the arrested to make sure that nobody escaped. One by one, the prisoners identified themselves while the names were called. When it came to a name, “Chasan,” there was no response. The functionary then took a count, and the number of prisoners was identical to that given on the list. The functionary was puzzled and disturbed, consoling himself by the use of the choicest abuse in which the Russian lexicon is so rich, directed toward the prisoners. Finally, by a process of elimination, it was established that the cantor was the one who did not identify himself. It transpired that he spoke hardly any Russian, and when asked who he was at the time of his arrest had replied, “I am chasan,” the Yiddish word for cantor. His real name was Berstein. He was still in jail when I left. I was released on the fourth day without being questioned. No explanation for my arrest was given. It was good to be free again.