The dawn in Russia

by Henry Woodd Nevinson

When I got back that Wednesday from the station to the middle of the city, I found the general strike already proclaimed. All the banks were shut and barricaded. If any shops were still open, parties of strikers or revolutionists went into them and compelled the owners to put the shutters up. The schools were closed, the work-people walked out of the mills, clerks left their offices, and several hundred thousand men and women were turned loose into the streets with nothing to do. Such gas as was in the retorts was allowed to burn itself out, but electricity was cut off at once, both for light and for the trams, and so was the water for a time. People began to store it in baths and pails; they even searched the roofs for clean snow and melted it down; but next day the water supply was restored on the ground that it was essential for the existence of the poor. Bread was essential too, and a few bakeries were allowed to keep working; but even that afternoon women were standing in line outside the bakers’ shops, and in the following days they began to gather there long before dawn. In the hotels, and I suppose in most well-to-do homes, bread sank from white to grey, vegetables disappeared, the price of meat doubled, unknown portions of animals were seen, beer ceased to flow, and the suffering rich almost learnt how the poor die daily.

I went up the Tverskaya, already mentioned as the chief radius of Moscow for shops and cafés. It was full of wandering and uncertain crowds. Where the circle of Boulevards crosses it by the Strastnoi convent, I found a troop of horse drawn up in front of the poet Pushkin’s statue. They were facing a thick and excited crowd, from the midst of which a white-faced orator came forward and, standing at the very nose of the officer’s charger, addressed him with impassioned harangues, imploring him to abandon the cause of tyranny, and no longer to trample over the corpses of his fellow-countrymen. The officer listened with genial politeness, and sometimes even answered an argument or raised some objection with a smile. His pleasing manners encouraged hope. The women of the crowd began to say nice things to him, and all through Russian life there is a familiarity among the classes which we have never reached. A friendly sympathy pervaded the air. Could it be possible that the troops would “fraternize”? Ah, how often revolutionists in all countries had told me the troops would fraternize!

But the officer gave an order, and the detachment wheeled off, two deep, down the Boulevard to their barracks, the crowd clapping their hands, the women waving their scarves and blowing kisses to them in cheerful mockery as they went. Two were left behind, waiting for a third whose horse they held, and on them the orator now turned his eloquence, while the rest laughed and cheered, and tried to pat their horses. But they were only two common peasants with broad, red faces, and had no pretty answers to make.

They only sat there looking straight before them while the taunts grew louder and the people began to crush threateningly upon them. I was close at their side and could see their fists doubled tightly round the loaded whips on their saddles. But at that moment their comrade came back, and all three galloped after the others amid a storm of derision and angry cries.

Hardly had they gone when from a tea-house opposite three red flags on poles emerged and were marched into the square. Uncertain what to do next, the boys who were carrying them started down the Tverskaya, and the crowd followed in a dense mass, shouting the “Marseillaise.” They reached the open space in front of the Governor-General’s house where the loyalists had held their panic the day before. But hardly had they passed the porch, when a squadron of Cossacks swept into the crowd behind from a side street at right angles and pursued the red flags at full gallop, whirling their nagaikas and riding down all before them. The procession scattered like leaves. The squadron divided, part charging down the main street, and part across the square. In a few seconds nothing remained upon that open space but some men and girls stretched upon the snow, and the three long strips of red cotton which lay as the emblems of freedom before the Governor-General’s door. The police carried off the wounded to the cells; an infantry battalion was brought out to line the square, and many days were to pass before I could cross it again.

That night, all the main streets stood in absolute darkness, only the narrow side-streets being lit with a glimmer of gas. No sledges ran. Here and there a beggar shuffled out upon me from his lurking-place, or a figure visible for a moment disappeared silently. No women walked; on them too the strike had fallen. Houses and churches stood black and lifeless, like an abandoned city which time had not yet ruined.

The next day was ominously quiet; no business was done; no newspapers were published; people kept indoors; even the restaurants and provision shops were shut, and in the Hotel Métropole the music ceased. Instead of that melancholy orchestra, a battery of eight guns lay hidden there now; the guests were turned out, and it was said the Governor-General himself had made the hotel his headquarters. Others had seen him take refuge in the sacred enclosure of the Kremlin, where the ancient gates were all shut and guarded. Even in the Old Town they brought planks and beams, and nailed up nearly all the gates. Troops were posted at the Nicolai or St. Petersburg station and the line kept open for the arrival of reinforcements. The engines were worked by soldiers and the whole length of the road watched by pickets who were provisioned from the trains. The Government dared not trust the ordinary Moscow garrison, but if outside troops could only be spared from the other capital, all might be well.

A large meeting of the strikers assembled at the Aumont or Aquarium and called upon the revolutionary bands or “militia” (drouzchina) to begin. They pointed to the shameless reaction of the past two weeks, to the imprisonment of the labour leaders in St. Petersburg, the arrest of all Progressive editors, the refusal of the Tsar to make the expected concessions on his name-day. He had made no concessions, he had only sought to buy the loyalty of the troops by promises of better food. It was evident that the Government was forcing civil war upon the people, and unless the revolutionists would act at once, the workmen would throw up the game, go back to their work, and abandon all hope of change for ever.

The revolutionists hesitated. They were not ready—they would not be ready till February—not really ready till April. They were ill-armed, had only eighty rifles as yet; a good many revolvers certainly, but not enough bombs. Besides, if the Government wanted a rising, they obviously ought not to rise. It is a bad strategist who lets the enemy dictate the time for battle. The strike had been proclaimed in St. Petersburg, certainly, but the leaders were all in prison, and already it was seen to be a very half-hearted affair. Both the strike and revolutionary action should be simultaneous in all the large cities, if the great end was to be won. Christmas was near, and all the work-people liked to save up a little money for the festival. Every one bought a bottle of vodka, if nothing else. The peasants would be turned against the revolution if the railway remained blocked over Christmastide, and they could not sell their produce. Already threats had come in from the country, prophesying horrible deaths for the railway men unless the strike ended at once. There was just time to appease the peasants now, for the Russian Christmas Day was still sixteen days ahead. So they hesitated, appealing for delay and a better opportunity.

But the Government had determined that neither delay nor opportunity should be given. Their one thought was the urgent need of money. The power that commands force is the Government, and the power that commands money can command force; that was their just and simple argument. Their one hope was to stir up an ill-prepared rebellion, to crush it down, and stand triumphant before the nations of Europe, confidently inviting new loans in the name of law and order, so as to pay the interest on the old and “maintain the value of the rouble.” For this object it was essential that people should be killed in large numbers. The death of every Progressive went to establish the credit of the Treasury, and unless the slaughter came quickly, the officials could not count upon their pay. The only alternative was national bankruptcy in the face of the world, and no more hope of pleasant loans again. So troops and police were stationed round the Aquarium meeting and met the crowd as it came out with showers of blows from clubs and whips. At all costs the people must be goaded into violence, or the Government’s strategy would have failed.