The dawn in Russia

by Henry Woodd Nevinson

The final stroke was given the next day (Friday, December 22nd) and it proved entirely successful. It was evening, and a body of some two hundred of the revolutionary bands, including several women, was gathered in a flat belonging to a leader named Fiedler, I think a lawyer. He lived in the top floor of a tall white house, just opposite the British Consulate, and not far from the post office.

The place had long been watched by spies. About ten o’clock, as the bands were debating war and peace, a knock came at the door and a summons to surrender. They looked out of the window, and the street below was full of dark forms with gleams of steel. So it had begun in earnest at last! “And there shall be no drawing back,” thought one of their number, and seizing up a small bomb from the table, he threw it with all his might among the dark figures below. It burst with a flash that revealed the waiting troops, and an officer rolled in the dirt, never to be loved by women again. Two men also were wounded. Some said two officers were killed; some said twenty, and hundreds of men. But to have been in a town where men are really killed sheds a reflected glory, and the more numerous the dead, the finer the reputation of survivors.

The flash of that bomb was a signal for war. The enemy was ready. They had made their preparations for the event, and answered bomb by bomb. While the meeting was breaking up in confusion, rushing from room to room, some peering into the street, some fighting their way downstairs, a shell came whizzing through the corner window and burst against the opposite wall. From the description and the hole it made, I think it was a segment or percussion shell, but it was followed rapidly by case-shot, and at so short a range it is possible that nothing but case shot was used. For the guns had been placed in a main street, at not much more than fifty yards’ distance, and commanded an uninterrupted sight of the whole top story. At once the fatal disadvantage of the revolutionists was seen. Probably there was not a man among them who could have thrown a bomb fifty yards clear; but to the Government’s guns it was a childish range even for case-shot, and without cause for pride they could throw shrapnel and percussion bombs up to four thousand yards two or three times a minute.

The bombardment of the house continued for about half an hour, the shells crashing through the windows and against the brickwork, but not doing very much damage except to furniture and glass, for most of the revolutionists were crowded together on the staircase, and many were escaping through backyards and over walls. A few, however, with great gallantry remained and kept up a revolver-fire from the windows to cover the retreat of the others. Four or five of them were killed by shell-fire, and fifteen were badly wounded. It was said next day that Fiedler was among the killed, and I was told how he had stood outside a window in defiance and been blown to pieces. I was even shown bits of his coat and trousers still sticking to the window-frame; but I was not quite convinced, especially when I heard of his being shot in gaol a fortnight later. In such cases it is hardly ever possible to discover the truth from either side. Even eye-witnesses are generally too excited or too terrified to see, and the Russian Government lives upon the lie.

FIEDLER’S HOUSE.

EFFECT OF SHELLS.

Towards midnight, a hundred and twenty revolutionists, including ten girls, surrendered. A high official told me next day that the girls had been released, but it is not thus that the Government treats girls, and I know now that he was lying or repeating a lie. As to the rest, he admitted they would be shot, because the prisons were already too full to hold them. The loss of over a hundred was a very serious thing for the party of progress. All manner of estimates of the revolutionary fighting strength have been made. Some of the best authorities said they refused to put it over 15,000 men. A very careful onlooker, who certainly had special opportunities of knowing, fixed on 1,500 as the just figure. The revolutionists themselves maintained, and still maintain, that only 500 were engaged on the barricades. In that case, they had lost a sixth part of their force at the first stroke, and they could not afford to lose a man. For myself, I believe no estimate of numbers in wartime, unless given by the man who issues rations—and to the revolutionists no one issued rations. But to me it is utterly incredible that only 500 were opposed to the Government troops during the following nine days. Five hundred is only half a battalion, and every colonel knows how tiny a handful even a full battalion is when it comes into action. They may mean that only 500 were adequately armed, but in that case the estimate is too high. The revolutionists were said to have possessed two or three machine-guns, though I never saw them or heard them, and attribute the rumour to the identity of the word for machine-gun and repeating rifle (Pulemet). But by their own admission they had only eighty rifles, with very few cartridges, and the remainder were armed with various kinds of revolver, especially the so-called “Brownings” of Belgian make. They are good enough weapons, and will kill at a hundred yards if they hit at all. But few revolvers can be depended on over twenty yards, and I have never found them much good, except as a moral influence, or for the re-assuring comfort of suicide in extremis.

Five hundred could not have done the work. That night the face of a third of Moscow was changed. The morning brought rumours of an assault on the Nicolai station with the loss of 200 men; of assaults on the Government house and the Prefecture of police; but, worse than all, of a serious rising in some cotton and lace mills south of the city, and the probable danger of several English overseers and their families. Driving out early in a sledge to the beginning of the open country, near the place on the river where the Russian people once built a house for their painter Verestchagin, I found a few families of Lancastrians and Nottingham men, anxious and apprehensive indeed but not surrounded by bloodthirsty mobs as we had heard. The hands on strike had been marching with red flags up and down the road as usual the day before and singing the “Marseillaise,” when they were set upon in front and rear by Dragoons and Cossacks with the usual results. Now they were hanging about their factories or living-barracks, indignant and dangerous with the sense of wrong, but outwardly quiet, and only cursing and threatening us with fists and stones as we went about among them. Not that the English overseers were hated. In themselves they were popular, but as the rulers and the best-paid workmen, with separate houses of their own, they were marked as the representatives of overwhelming capitalism.