The dawn in Russia

by Henry Woodd Nevinson

As I looked out over the silent mills to the open country and wretched villages beyond, the sound of a big gun suddenly came from Moscow. Turning round, I saw the great city glittering with domes and crosses, distinct with towers and lines of brilliant light under the frosty sun, while all the church bells were booming and tinkling for the vigil of some feast. Again came the sound of a gun, and then again, and I had known from the first there was no mistaking it. I had not then heard of the attack on Fiedler’s house, for one of the peculiarities of Russian life is that the Last Judgment might be in progress in one street while, unaware of your danger, you continued increasing your record of sins in the next. But now there could be doubt no longer; the open war had begun.

In half an hour I was crossing the bridge and climbing the Kremlin hill to the Red Square. Crowds of well-dressed people, clerks, and shop-boys were hurrying past me away from the city. In spite of the strike, they had walked in by habit that morning, or merely to see what was going on. But guns in the street were a breach of business habits, and now they had seen enough and preferred to lunch at home. Similarly, I think, Brixton would be unusually full at midday if the shells were bursting in Cheapside; and it was in the Cheapside of Moscow that the guns were then at work.

If we may take Moscow as a circle with the Kremlin for centre, it was on the north-west segment of the circle that the revolutionists made their most serious attack. Certainly, there were other attacks as well—two on the St. Petersburg station, against which the whole effort of the rising ought to have been concentrated; and one attack was made on the Rezan station close by. The rumour came in every morning for the next week that both had been burnt to the ground, though when I visited them, I always found them untouched. Other attacks were also made, and there was a certain amount of fighting on the south side of the wandering little river. But the main interest lay in that north-west segment, of which the Tverskaya, the Dmitrovka, and Petrovka are the main radii, while the Boulevards enclosing the “White Town” form the nearer of the two concentric arcs, and the Sadovaya, or garden circle, the further. The Sadovaya, which runs round the whole city, was a real circumference or boundary to the fighting area during the first few days, and if one started from the red triumphal arch near the Nicolai station, and followed the arc westward and south till the river was reached, the whole scene of action would be included in that segment. But concentric circles make the most puzzling plan on which a town can be built, because it is difficult in walking to allow for the almost imperceptible curves. Only in Moscow and Monastir have I seen such arrangements of streets, and only in those two towns have I ever hesitated about my way.

The revolutionists had chosen this segment for attack because it contained the Government house, the Prefecture of Police, the great Central Prison, from which the exiles used to start for Siberia, and at least three important barracks. As far as they had any definite plan at all, their idea seems to have been to drive a kind of wedge into the heart of the city, supporting the advance by barricades on each side, so as to hamper the approach of troops. The point of the wedge was to be driven down the Tverskaya as far as the Government house, and if once that position had been gained, they probably hoped that the rest would be easy. Accordingly, during the night they had thrown up barricades across all streets leading into the Tverskaya beyond the circle of the Boulevards, and in all streets parallel to it. By morning the point of the wedge had nearly reached the open space where the Boulevard runs and the Pushkin statue confronts the Strasnoi Convent.

A MINOR BARRICADE.

A MILITARY POST AT MOSCOW.

That was the main and serious line of attack, as the revolutionists designed it. But at the time it was hard to understand their purpose, for in street fighting one can get no view, the firing comes from many sides at once, and you are open to equal danger from friend or foe. There is no front or rear, and you feel you are nothing but flanks. To every point of the compass you are exposed; there is no obvious line of advance, for the enemy may always be behind you. And there is no line of retreat, for at any moment your communications with your base may be cut, and you may be shot at for hours from street to street before you can get home for food or sleep. But the greatest difficulty in grasping the situation at once arose from the mere numbers of the barricades which had been already thrown up since the previous night. Over a large part of the district barricades had grown up quite at random. They appeared in every lane. Miniature barricades crossed the footpaths on the Boulevard gardens. They were especially thick in the Tsvietnoi, or Flower Boulevard, and often so flimsy that a push would knock them over. As signs of spiritual grace, nothing could have been nobler, for they were the work of high-hearted young men and girls, who, having read that barricades are the proper things in revolution, hastened to build them anywhere and anyhow. Tubs, shutters, gates, iron railings, telegraph poles, and front doors were hurriedly piled across a street or path, and left standing there as a menace to tyrants. So they were a menace to tyrants. Every bandbox there proved the deep-rooted hatred to tyranny. But not one of them would stop a bullet, and there was no possibility or intention of defending them for a moment. They were the work of splendid children learning to make war, and when at last they were torn up and burnt, one passed over their smouldering ruins with the regret we feel for broken toys.

The very multitude of these barricades (early next morning I counted one hundred and thirty of them, and I had not seen nearly half) made it difficult to understand the main purpose of all the fighting, when I found myself suddenly plunged into the middle of it that first afternoon. Alone, and very ignorant both of the language and the town, I could not at first discover any design on either side, beyond setting up barricades and knocking them down again. It seemed as if the Government might have left the revolutionists alone, and simply issued a proclamation to the citizens of Moscow: “Keep your streets blocked up if you like. We should have thought it inconvenient, but it really makes no difference to us.” Like most other people, I had no experience of street fighting to guide me, and it was with this sense of uncertainty and bewilderment that I made my way from point to point towards the part of the Tverskaya from which the sound of guns came. To get into the main street itself was impossible, for every approach was guarded by sentries, who cried “Halt!” and then fired with inconsiderate rapidity. To the crowds of peaceful citizens, such behaviour was novel and pleasantly exciting. They gathered in thick groups behind the shelter of any street corner, or up the passages, and even in the porches of big shops and banks. Every now and then some one would snatch off his cap and dash across an exposed street as though he were finishing for a hundred yards. The crowd held their breaths and watched eagerly, hoping to see him fall, as an audience hopes to see the tight-rope girl break her neck. But when he reached safety and waved his arms, they cheered and another started.