Chapter VI: In the Hollow of Their Hand

Turning into the Nevsky Prospect was like opening a telegram. I could never be quite certain what I would find there, but the first glance always told the whole story.

Nevsky was the revolutionary thermometer. When the City of Peter pursued the calm and normal way, the wood-paved avenue indicated the fact. When the hectic passions of revolt ran high, the temper of the populace was as plainly registered.

It was on the Nevsky Prospect, in the early days of March, that the first courageous crowd of men and women dared Cossack whips and sabers and cast amazed glances at the soldiers who gave them smiles and words of encouragement when they had expected the stinging lash and the deadly blade. It was here that the multitudes gathered for rejoicing when the victory was won, and here also they came, tragic and proud, bearing their martyred dead upon their shoulders. Each succeeding moment of joy or grief or protest was recorded here, and I quickly learned to read the signs.

At ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning in July, I stepped out of the Nicolaievski Station into the circle, to find the mercury rising and the Nevsky of the hour strangely different from that with which I had parted. The talking crowds in the Znamensky Square were gone. Alexander III sat alone on the bronze horse, undisputed monarch once more of all he surveyed. There wasn’t a street-car in sight. The only visible _izvostchik_ wanted double his former price to carry me to the War Hotel.

It was the hour when shutters should be coming down from shops. Instead they were fastened tight, and in front of the Gostinny Dvor men were out with hammers, nailing boards across the plate-glass windows. Had something already happened, or was something about to happen? I could not be sure. The _izvostchik_ kept up a rapid-fire conversation, pointing an excited finger occasionally toward a freshly made bullet-hole in the glass fronts.

At the moment I was interested in nothing in the world so much as my clean little blue-and-white room and a hot bath. My trench khaki was caked with mud and reeked of the odors of barracks and stuffy trains. On the way back from the front, I had spent two sleepless nights sandwiched with fourteen other people into a compartment intended to accommodate four. The first night I shared the upper berth with another woman. It was so narrow that we had to lie head to foot. There were no pillows or bedding, and I am sure that neither of us closed our eyes. The next night I insisted on her sleeping alone, and I sat below, listening to the crowd talk. Toward morning a pathetic-looking little peasant woman, nodding uncomfortably back and forth, bumped against me. I glanced at her hair. It was hopelessly in need of a shampoo. I decided that, after all, dirt didn’t really matter, and settled her head on my shoulder. She went peacefully to sleep.

This morning all that was past. With soap and water so close at hand, dirt mattered more even than probable revolution. At the hotel I hastened upstairs without stopping to ask questions. An hour later I emerged, remade and ready for anything.

I hurried toward the Nevsky. Again the scene was changed, and there was no mistaking the signs. The Bolsheviki were taking possession of the city. The uprising that Petrograd had been expecting hourly for weeks had come. The Bolsheviki, radical minority in the Soviet of Workmen and Soldiers’ Deputies, were making a demonstration against coalition with the bourgeoisie. Led by Nicolai Lenine and Leon Trotzky, the Red Guard, composed of armed workers from the factory districts and of sailors from the naval station at Kronstadt, had come out to demand “all power to the Soviet,” and with banners of flaming red were crying: “Down with the capitalist ministers!” “Land to the peasants!” “Control of industry by the workers!” and “Immediate general peace!”

The night before, thousands upon thousands of armed workers had marched through the streets singing the “Marseillaise.” This morning they were continuing the demonstration in more menacing terms.

The deserted Nevsky was suddenly filled with people. Down the street came a huge motor-truck, a vicious-looking machine-gun mounted behind and another on each side. It was filled with Red Guardsmen and sailors. Each man was armed with a rifle, and its threatening nose was pointed in the direction of the crowd.

I stood there watching, wide-eyed and wondering, recalling that whispered prophecy that had been sounding perpetually through the spring days: “The streets of Petrograd will run rivers of blood.”

Could it be that these words were about to come true there before my eyes? I could not believe it. Unreality was in the air. The truck looked as if it had been wheeled on to the stage from the property-room. The guns might have been of papier-maché. The occupants themselves seemed like boys playing a new game, rather than like men going out to kill and to die.

An automobile driven by a civilian whirled from a side street. Three sailors and a couple of armed factory workers ordered the chauffeur to halt. They backed their command by pointing their guns at his head, and he promptly obeyed. One of them took the front seat. Two stretched themselves flat on the mud-guards and pointed their rifles in front of them. The others climbed into the tonneau. The car whizzed away out of sight.

The crowds on the sidewalk kept one eye on the guns, and one eye on a convenient exit in case of trouble. I walked in the direction of the Hotel Europe. I had gone a distance of three or four blocks when the sound of a shot brought all to a sudden stop. The crowd turned as a single man and fled in the opposite direction. The crowd was quicker and more earnest in flight than I. Before I had time to realize what had happened, I had been knocked to my knees. I found myself jammed against the iron grating of a basement door, with what seemed like half of Petrograd pushing me through the bars.

A moment later some one in the rear shouted, “Kharasho!” (All right), and the crowd climbed off my back. I picked myself up unhurt. A soldier standing near had been shoved through a plate-glass window, and his face and hands were covered with ugly cuts splashing blood liberally on the sidewalk.

I waited while a formidable armored car passed, then crossed the street and turned the corner leading to the hotel. Just as I reached the entrance, I heard the rush of running footsteps behind me, and turned to see a crowd of men, women, and children tumbling out of the Nevsky as fast as willing legs could carry them.

Off in the direction of the Gostinny Dvor the staccato _rat-a-tat-tat_ of machine-guns sounded like the beat of a snare-drum, interrupted at intervals by the sharp, quick crack of rifles.

However much those men with guns had seemed like small boys playing at being dangerous, there was no doubt that the sounds were ominous enough.

All that day Petrograd lay terrified and trembling in the hollow of the Bolsheviki hand. Most of the time the armored cars rode peacefully up and down the Nevsky. Now and then something, nobody knows what, would start things. The guns rattled and the crowds ran.

“Somebody shot from the window,” one of the Bolsheviki would venture furiously.

“Provokator! Provokator!” some one in the crowd would cry.

Occasionally the moan of a wounded man rose above the clatter of hurrying feet, but the guns were mercifully inaccurate and the death toll unbelievably small.

What the night might have brought forth if the weather had been fine, no one can know. Early in the evening it began to rain, and rain has a more dampening effect on the ardor of Russians than any amount of armed force. The populace stayed indoors. There was no one on the Nevsky to see the armored cars rush up and down, so they stopped rushing.

The sailors sailed back to Kronstadt again in the boats that had brought them, and the Red Guard retired to the opposite side of the Neva. Before they left they encountered a group of Cossacks on the Liteiny, and turned the machine-guns on them. The Cossacks wheeled their horses about and fled, but not before half a dozen of them had gone down before the guns. The horses were still there next morning when I ventured out into the rain. Around them stood a curious circle of men and women and little boys in red peasant blouses, who looked as though they expected the beautiful ponies to rise up again and tell them what all this trouble was about.

The government crisis was acute. Most of the ministers had resigned. The majority of the Council of Workmen and Soldiers had refused to take all the power. Taking power was a thankless task. The Council was already the government behind the government, and to become the government would be to become the scapegoat for all the various brands of a discontent growing daily more rampant in Russia, and for all those that were to follow as food became scarcer and living more difficult.

Also, the majority of the Deputies, in spite of the general demand for peace, had voted against an immediate and independent termination of the war. The split between the majority made up of Mensheviki and Social Revolutionists and the Bolshevist minority was of ancient origin. It had its inception in the Socialist Conference in Switzerland in 1903, when the Bolsheviki rejected the Menshevist proposal to work with the Russian liberals for the spread of democracy in Russia, and advocated armed revolution. Nicolai Lenin, the leader then, as he is now, called the Mensheviki “opportunists,” and declared that the masses of the Russian people could never free themselves from economic as well as political slavery, except by means of a class war.

When Kerensky determined to bring troops from the front to defend the government, the executive council of the Soviet sanctioned the decision. By noon on Wednesday, the government, or so much of it as was still in office, began to get things into its own hands. On the Nevsky, that day, a few of the food shops were open, but most of the shutters remained down and the doors barred. There were no street-cars running, and all the bridges except one were swung open. That part of the city that lay beyond the Neva, and is known as the Petrograd side, was practically isolated. Only the palace bridge remained closed, and guards from the troops loyal to Kerensky were stationed at the entrance and examined all who crossed over.

The rain came down in torrents, and the streets were a desert. In the afternoon I walked to the Dvortsovy Square, where the War Department and the General Staff were housed in a great crescent-shaped building fronting the Winter Palace. The square had suddenly become an armed camp. Armored cars and Red Cross ambulances, motor-trucks for transporting soldiers, and all the paraphernalia that the Bolsheviki had similarly flaunted on the Nevsky the day before, was drawn up in front of the Staff office, awaiting signs of further disturbance.

All day Thursday and Friday the troops came in from the front. Thursday morning a bicycle regiment arrived, cycled through the city and across the Field of Mars. That evening from the War Hotel I watched an endless procession of Cossacks file through St. Isaac’s Square. They came riding on gray horses, the descending sun flashing on the tips of their lances. Blankets and tents, kit-bags and _balalakis_ were strapped to their saddles. The regimental band headed the procession, and the regimental priest and four bullocks brought up the rear. Sandwiched in between the soldiers and the priest were the soup kitchens on wheels, and the wagons filled with hay for the horses. They came clattering across the cobbles, making such a din that it hushed the cheers of the bystanders to a whisper.

At midnight I heard a band outside the window playing the “Marseillaise.” I hurried into the square, to find another procession of soldiers arriving from the front. When the band passed out of hearing, the soldiers tramped to a marching tune of their own making.

Thursday morning the Bolsheviki were still in control of the Fortress of Peter and Paul, and were directing their operations from the palace of a famous ballet-dancer who had been a favorite of the Tsar.

Friday morning the Neva was swarming with people. Most of the shops opened, and the street-cars were running on their usual uncertain schedule. The trouble seemed to be over, yet Petrograd’s nerves were not quite relaxed.

At twelve that night I was lying in bed reading, when suddenly again came the unmistakable sputterings of the machine-guns and the crack of rifles. I slipped into a dressing-gown and out into the hall. It was rapidly filling with officers and their wives, all in a similar state of undress. The lights were quickly extinguished. Nobody could tell where the firing was, but it seemed to be directly below us.

I leaned out of the window on the sixth floor and looked at the square. Nothing was visible in the strange gray light of that darkest hour of the white night. There were no shouts, no cries, no single sound but the rattle of the machine-gun and the bark of the rifles.

The women stood about in frightened groups, talking in hushed tones. “It’s civil war,” somebody said. “The streets will run blood before this thing is over.”

An officer arriving at that moment reassured them.

“You have nothing to fear here,” he said. “They are fighting on the palace bridge across the Neva. Some troops just landed from the front have been attacked by the Bolsheviki.”

At one o’clock we crept back to our beds. The firing had stopped as suddenly as it had commenced. At two the silence was broken by a few stray rifle shots on the Morskaya in front of the telephone exchange two blocks away. After that there was quiet for the night.

By Sunday fear had lifted from the heavy heart of Petrograd. Her people were being happy while they could. St. Isaac’s Square was flooded with sunshine. The church bells, deep resounding bases and tinkling sopranos, called the faithful to worship.

The nerves of Petrograd were completely relaxed. This sunny, smiling summer afternoon had been bought and paid for. But for the evidence of mangled bodies in the hospital morgues, we might have dreamed the week just past. But for the boarded windows in the Nevsky, and the sentries still guarding the telephone exchange and encamped before the Winter Palace, the sound of the machine-guns and the sight of the frightened crowd fleeing in terror might have been only a nightmare. There were no rivers of blood; the gutters did not run red. There was only a handful of victims where we had feared there might be hundreds.

The Bolsheviki proclaimed the uprising a success. They said they had no desire for bloodshed, and wished only to make a demonstration of power. They had done that, and were satisfied. The riots were significant chiefly because they introduced the Bolsheviki to a world that was soon to know much more of them, and because they foreshadowed events to come.

The Cossacks were hailed as deliverers. The conservative and reactionary papers wrote pæans of praise of them. The moderate Socialist press was silent. Though they had been in favor of the suppression of the Bolshevik uprising, their traditional hatred of the system of force for which the Cossacks stood made it impossible for them to rejoice. Some of the Cossacks refused to accept the rôle of hero, and passed a resolution declaring that they did not wish to be praised by the bourgeoisie. They made it clear that they were revolutionists who were with the working-people and that they could not be counted upon to defend bourgeois law and order against the masses. It was the beginning of the breach in the Cossack ranks--a breach that was to be a vital factor in revolutionary movements of the future.

Late one afternoon the soldiers carried their dead in silver coffins into the great cool recesses of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, and laid them in state before the “holy gate,” with the towering columns of lapis lazuli and malachite to keep watch through the night.

The next morning the soldiers gathered in the square, black mourning flags fluttering from the tops of their lances. There were thousands and thousands of them--a military spectacle such as Petrograd had not seen since the days of the Tsars. The cavalry lined up on both sides of the square, their horses standing at perfect attention. The infantry stacked their rifles and squatted on the cobblestones during the long mass. The priests, in mourning robes of black and silver, carried ecclesiastical banners; and the caskets were borne on ornate canopied hearses drawn by black horses.

There were Red Cross nurses carrying huge wreaths of artificial flowers. Foreign diplomats and members of the Allied military missions came to pay their respects. And, just as the last coffin was carried from the church, a limousine drove up. Alexander Kerensky stepped out and fell into line, and a mighty cheer broke from the crowd.

The funeral procession lasted most of the day. Scouts rode along the line of march, ordering all windows to be closed against the stray shots of provokators. There were no carriages, no automobiles. In Russia they follow their dead to their graves on foot, and the tragic strains of the Russian funeral music sob their way into your very soul.

The casual observer in Petrograd would have said that revolutionary disturbances were a thing of the past; that order had come to stay. But the casual observer would have failed to understand the breadth and depth of the movements stirring beneath the surface.

As I stood watching the funeral procession file past, an acquaintance, opposed to the new Russian order, joined me for a minute. “This is the end of Socialism,” he said triumphantly.

On the contrary, it was only the beginning of the class struggle in the Revolution.